GOD AND MY NEIGHBOUR

By Robert Blatchford

("Nunquam")

 To My Son ROBERT CORRI BLATCHFORD This book is dedicated

PREFACE

INFIDEL!

I put the word in capitals, because it is my new name, and I want to getused to it. 

INFIDEL!

The name has been bestowed on me by several Christian gentlemen as areproach, but to my ears it has a quaint and not unpleasing sound. 

Infidel! "The notorious infidel editor of the _Clarion_" is the formused by one True Believer. The words recurred to my mind suddenly, whileI was taking my favourite black pipe for a walk along "the pleasantStrand, " and I felt a smile glimmer within as I repeated them. 

Which is worse, to be a Demagogue or an Infidel? I am both. For whilemany professed Christians contrive to serve both God and Mammon, thedepravity of my nature seems to forbid my serving either. 

It was a mild day in mid-August, not cold for the time of year. I hadbeen laid up for a few days, and my back was unpropitious, and I wastired. But I felt very happy, for so bad a man, since the sunshine wasclear and genial, and my pipe went as easily as a dream. 

Besides, one's fellow-creatures are so amusing: especially in theStrand. I had seen a proud and gorgeously upholstered lady lollinglanguidly in a motor car, and looking extremely pleased withherself--not without reason; and I had met two successful men of greatpresence, who reminded me somehow of "Porkin and Snob"; and I hadnoticed a droll little bundle of a baby, in a fawn-coloured woollensuit, with a belt slipped almost to her knees, and sweet round eyes aspurple as pansies, who was hunting a rolling apple amongst "thewild mob's million feet"; and I had seen a worried-looking matron, frantically waving her umbrella to the driver of an omnibus, endangerthe silk hat of Porkin and disturb the complacency of Snob; and I feltglad. 

It was at that moment that there popped into my head the full style andtitle I had earned. "Notorious Infidel Editor of the _Clarion_!" Thesebe brave words, indeed. For a moment they almost flattered me into thebelief that I had become a member of the higher criminal classes: a boldbad man, like Guy Fawkes, or Kruger, or R. B. Cuninghame Graham. 

"You ought, " I said to myself, "to dress the part. You ought to have anS. D. P. Sombrero, a slow wise Fabian smile, and the mysterious trousersof a Soho conspirator. "

But at the instant I caught a sight of my counterfeit presentment in ashop window, and veiled my haughty crest. _That_ a notorious Infidel!Behold a dumpy, comfortable British _paterfamilias_ in a light flannelsuit and a faded sun hat. No; it will not do. Not a bit like Mephisto:much more like the Miller of the Dee. 

Indeed, I am not an irreligious man, really; I am rather a religiousman; and this is not an irreligious, but rather a religious, book. 

Such thoughts should make men humble. After all, may not even John Burnsbe human; may not Mr. Chamberlain himself have a heart that can feel foranother?

Gentle reader, that was a wise as well as a charitable man who taught usthere is honour among thieves; although, having never been a member ofParliament himself, he must have spoken from hearsay. 

"For all that, Robert, you're a notorious Infidel. " I paused--justopposite the Tivoli--and gazed moodily up and down the Strand. 

As I have remarked elsewhere, I like the Strand. It is a very humanplace. But I own that the Strand lacks dignity and beauty, and thatamongst its varied odours the odour of sanctity is scarce perceptible. 

There are no trees in the Strand. The thoroughfare should be wider. The architecture is, for the most part, banal. For a chief street in aChristian capital, the Strand is not eloquent of high national ideals. 

There are derelict churches in the Strand, and dingy blatant taverns, and strident signs and hoardings; and there are slums hard by. 

There are thieves in the Strand, and prowling vagrants, and gaunthawkers, and touts, and gamblers, and loitering failures, with tragiceyes and wilted garments; and prostitutes plying for hire. 

And east and west, and north and south of the Strand, there is London. Is there a man amongst all London's millions brave enough to tell thenaked truth about the vice and crime, the misery and meanness, thehypocrisies and shames of the great, rich, heathen city? Were such a manto arise amongst us and voice the awful truth, what would his receptionbe? How would he fare at the hands of the Press, and the Public--and theChurch?

As London is, so is England. This is a Christian country. What wouldChrist think of Park Lane, and the slums, and the hooligans? What wouldHe think of the Stock Exchange, and the music hall, and the racecourse?What would he think of our national ideals? What would He think of theHouse of Peers, and the Bench of Bishops, and the Yellow Press?

Pausing again, over against Exeter Hall, I mentally apostrophise theChristian British people. "Ladies and Gentlemen, " I say, "you areChristian in name, but I discern little of Christ in your ideals, yourinstitutions, or your daily lives. You are a mercenary, self-indulgent, frivolous, boastful, blood-guilty mob of heathen. I like you very much, but that is what you are. And it is you--_you_ who call men 'Infidels. 'You ridiculous creatures, what do you mean by it?"

If to praise Christ in words, and deny Him in deeds, be Christianity, then London is a Christian city, and England is a Christian nation. Forit is very evident that our common English ideals are anti-Christian, and that our commercial, foreign and social affairs are run onanti-Christian lines. 

Renan says, in his _Life of Jesus_, that "were Jesus to return amongstus He would recognise as His disciples, not those who imagine they cancompress Him into a few catechismal phrases, but those who labour tocarry on His work. "

My Christian friends, I am a Socialist, and as such believe in, and workfor, universal freedom, and universal brotherhood, and universal peace. 

And you are Christians, and I am an "Infidel. "

Well, be it even so. I am an "Infidel, " and I now ask leave to tell youwhy. 

FOREWORDS

It is impossible for me to present the whole of my case in the space atmy command; I can only give an outline. Neither can I do it as well asit ought to be done, but only as well as I am able. 

To make up for my shortcomings, and to fortify my case with fullerevidence, I must refer the reader to books written by men betterequipped for the work than I. 

To do justice to so vast a theme would need a large book where I canonly spare a short chapter, and each large book should be written by aspecialist. 

For the reader's own satisfaction, then, and for the sake of justice tomy cause, I shall venture to suggest a list of books whose contents willatone for all my failures and omissions. And I am justified, I think, insaying that no reader who has not read the books I recommend, or othersof like scope and value, can fairly claim to sit on the jury to try thiscase. 

And of these books I shall, first of all, heartily recommend the seriesof cheap sixpenny reprints now published by the Rationalist PressAssociation, Johnson's Court, London, E. C. 

 R. P. A. REPRINTS Huxley's _Lectures and Essays. _ Tyndall's _Lectures and Essays. _ Laing's _Human Origins. _ Laing's _Modern Science and Modern Thought. _ Clodd's _Pioneers of Evolution. _ Matthew Arnold's _Literature and Dogma. _ Haeckel's _Riddle of the Universe. _ Grant Allen's _Evolution of the Idea of God. _ Cotter Morrison's _Service of Man. _ Herbert Spencer's _Education. _

Some Apologists have, I am sorry to say, attempted to disparage thoseexcellent books by alluding to them as "Sixpenny Science" and "CheapScience. " The same method of attack will not be available against mostof the books in my next list:

 _The Golden Bough_, Frazer. Macmillan, 36s. _The Legend of Perseus_, Hartland. D. Nutt, 25s. _Christianity and Mythology_, Robertson. Watts, 8s. _Pagan Christs_, Robertson. Watts, 8s. _Supernatural Religion_, Cassels. Watts, 6s. _The Martyrdom of Man_, Winwood Reade. Kegan Paul, 6s. _Mutual Aid_, Kropotkin. Heinemann, 7s. 6d. _The Story of Creation_, Clodd. Longmans, 3s. 6d. _Buddha and Buddhism_, Lillie. Clark, 3s. 6d. _Shall We Understand the Bible?_ Williams. Black, 1s. _What is Religion?_ Tolstoy. Free Age Press, 6d. _What I Believe_, Tolstoy. Free Age Press, 6d. _The Life of Christ_, Renan. Scott, 1s. 6d. 

I also recommend Herbert Spencer's _Principles of Sociology_ and Lecky's_History of European Morals_. Of pamphlets there are hundreds. Readerswill get full information from Watts & Co. , 17 Johnson's Court, London, E. C. 

I can warmly recommend _The Miracles of Christian Belief_ and _TheClaims of Christianity_, by Charles Watts, and _Christianity andProgress_, a penny pamphlet, by G. W. Foote (The Freethought PublishingCompany). 

I should also like to mention _An Easy Outline of Evolution_, by DennisHird (Watts & Co. , 2s. 6d. ). This book will be of great help to thosewho want to scrape acquaintance with the theory of evolution. 

Finally, let me ask the general reader to put aside all prejudice, andgive both sides a fair hearing. Most of the books I have mentioned aboveare of more actual value to the public of to-day than many standardworks which hold world-wide reputations. 

No man should regard the subject of religion as decided for him untilhe has read _The Golden Bough_. _The Golden Bough_ is one of those booksthat _unmake_ history. 

CONTENTS

 PREFACE

 FOREWORDS

 THE SIN OF UNBELIEF

 ONE REASON

 WHAT I CAN AND CANNOT BELIEVE

 THE OLD TESTAMENT--

 Is the Bible the Word of God? The Evolution of the Bible The Universe Jehovah Bible Heroes The Book of Books Our Heavenly Father Prayer and Praise

 THE NEW TESTAMENT--

 The Resurrection Gospel Witnesses The Time Spirit Have the Documents been Tampered with? Christianity Before Christ Other Evidences

 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION-- What is Christianity?

 DETERMINISM-- Can Man Sin against God?

 CHRISTIAN APOLOGIES-- Christian Apologies Christianity and Civilisation Christianity and Ethics The Success of Christianity The Prophecies The Universality of Religious Belief Is Christianity the Only Hope? Spiritual Discernment Some Other Apologies Counsels of Despair

 CONCLUSION-- The Parting of the Ways

GOD AND MY NEIGHBOUR

THE SIN OF UNBELIEF

Huxley quotes with satirical gusto Dr. Wace's declaration as to theword "Infidel. " Said Dr. Wace: "The word infidel, perhaps, carries anunpleasant significance. Perhaps it is right that it should. It is, andit ought to be, an unpleasant thing for a man to have to say plainlythat he does not believe in Jesus Christ. "

Be it pleasant or unpleasant to be an unbeliever, one thing is quiteclear: religious people intend the word Infidel to carry "an unpleasantsignificance" when they apply to it one. It is in their minds a term ofreproach. Because they think it is _wicked_ to deny what they believe. 

To call a man an Infidel, then, is tacitly to accuse him of a kind ofmoral turpitude. 

But a little while ago, to be an Infidel was to be socially taboo. Buta little while earlier, to be an Infidel was to be persecuted. But alittle earlier still, to be an Infidel was to be an outlaw, subject tothe penalty of death. 

Now, it is evident that to visit the penalty of social ostracism orpublic contumely upon all who reject the popular religion is to erect anarbitrary barrier against intellectual and spiritual advance, and to puta protective tariff upon orthodoxy to the disadvantage of science andfree thought. 

The root of the idea that it is wicked to reject the popular religion--awickedness of which Christ and Socrates and Buddha are all representedto have been guilty--thrives in the belief that the Scriptures are theactual words of God, and that to deny the truth of the Scriptures is todeny and to affront God. 

But the difficulty of the unbeliever lies in the fact that he cannotbelieve the Scriptures to be the actual words of God. 

The Infidel, therefore, is not denying God's words, nor disobeying God'scommands: he is denying the words and disobeying the commands of _men_. 

No man who _knew_ that there was a good and wise God would be so foolishas to deny that God. No man would reject the words of God if he knewthat God spoke those words. 

But the doctrine of the divine origin of the Scriptures rests upon theauthority of the Church; and the difference between the Infidel andthe Christian is that the Infidel rejects and the Christian accepts theauthority of the Church. 

Belief and unbelief are not matters of moral excellence or depravity:they are questions of evidence. 

The Christian believes the Scriptures because they are the words of God. But he believes they are the words of God because some other man hastold him so. 

Let him probe the matter to the bottom, and he will inevitably find thathis authority is human, and not, as he supposes, divine. 

For you, my Christian friend, have never _seen_ God. You have neverheard God's voice. You have received from God no message in spokenor written words. You have no direct divine warrant for the divineauthorship of the Scriptures. The authority on which your belief in thedivine revelation rests consists entirely of the Scriptures themselvesand the statements of the Church. But the Church is composed solely ofhuman beings, and the Scriptures were written and translated and printedsolely by human beings. 

You believe that the Ten Commandments were dictated to Moses by God. ButGod has not told _you_ so. You only believe the statement of the unknownauthor of the Pentateuch that God told _him_ so. You do not _know_ whoMoses was. You do not _know_ who wrote the Pentateuch. You do not _know_who edited and translated the Scriptures. 

Clearly, then, you accept the Scriptures upon the authority of unknownmen, and upon no other demonstrable authority whatever. 

Clearly, then, to doubt the doctrine of the divine revelation of theScriptures is not to doubt the word of God, but to doubt the words ofmen. 

But the Christian seems to suspect the Infidel of rejecting theChristian religion out of sheer wantonness, or from some base orsinister motive. 

The fact being that the Infidel can only believe those things which hisown reason tells him are true. He opposes the popular religion becausehis reason tells him it is not true, and because his reason tells himinsistently that a religion that is not true is not good, but bad. Inthus obeying the dictates of his own reason, and in thus advocating whatto him seems good and true, the Infidel is acting honourably, and is aswell within his right as any Pope or Prelate. 

That base or mercenary motives should be laid to the charge of theInfidel seems to me as absurd as that base or mercenary motives shouldbe laid to the charge of the Socialist. The answer to such libelsstares us in the face. Socialism and Infidelity are not popular, norprofitable, nor respectable. 

If you wish to lose caste, to miss preferment, to endanger your chancesof gaining money and repute, turn Infidel and turn Socialist. 

Briefly, Infidelity does not pay. It is "not a pleasant thing to be anInfidel. "

The Christian thinks it his duty to "make it an unpleasant thing" todeny the "true faith. " He thinks it his duty to protect God, and torevenge His outraged name upon the Infidel and the Heretic. The Jewsthought the same. The Mohammedan thinks the same. How many crueland sanguinary wars has that presumptuous belief inspired? How manypersecutions, outrages, martyrdoms, and massacres have been perpetratedby fanatics who have been "jealous for the Lord?"

As I write these lines Christians are murdering Jews in Russia, andMohammedans are murdering Christians in Macedonia to the glory of God. Is God so weak that He needs foolish men's defence? Is He so feeble thatHe cannot judge nor avenge?

My Christian friend, so jealous for the Lord, did you ever regard yourhatred of "Heretics" and "Infidels" in the light of history?

The history of civilisation is the history of successions of brave"Heretics" and "Infidels, " who have denied false dogmas or brought newtruths to light. 

The righteous men, the "True Believers" of the day, have cursed theseheroes and reviled them, have tortured, scourged, or murdered them. Andthe children of the "True Believers" have adopted the heresies as true, and have glorified the dead Heretics, and then turned round to curse ormurder the new Heretic who fain would lead them a little further towardthe light. 

Copernicus, who first solved the mystery of the Solar System, wasexcommunicated for heresy. But Christians acknowledge now that the earthgoes round the sun, and the name of Copernicus is honoured. 

Bruno, who first declared the stars to be suns, and "led forth Arcturusand his host, " was burnt at the stake for heresy. 

Galileo, the father of telescopic astronomy, was threatened with deathfor denying the errors of the Church, was put in prison and tortured asa heretic. Christians acknowledge now that Galileo spoke the truth, andhis name is honoured. 

As it has been demonstrated in those cases, it has been demonstratedin thousands of other cases, that the Heretics have been right, and theTrue Believers have been wrong. 

Step by step the Church has retreated. Time after time the Churchhas come to accept the truths, for telling which she persecuted, ormurdered, her teachers. But still the True Believers hate the Hereticand regard it as a righteous act to make it "unpleasant" to be an"Infidel. "

After taking a hundred steps away from old dogmas and towards the truth, the True Believer shudders at the request to take one more. After twothousand years of foolish and wicked persecution of good men, the TrueBeliever remains faithful to the tradition that it "ought to be anunpleasant thing" to expose the errors of the Church. 

The Christians used to declare that all the millions of men and womenoutside the Christian Church would "burn for ever in burning Hell. " Theydo not like to be reminded of that folly now. 

They used to declare that every unbaptised baby would go to Hell andburn for ever in fire and brimstone. They do not like to be reminded ofthat folly now. 

They used to believe in witchcraft, and they burned millions--yes, millions--of innocent women as witches. They do not like to hear aboutwitchcraft now. 

They used to believe the legends of Adam and Eve, and the Flood. Theycall them allegories now. 

They used to believe that the world was made in six days. Now they talkmildly about "geological periods. "

They used to denounce Darwinism as impious and absurd. They have since"cheerfully accepted" the theory of evolution. 

They used to believe that the sun revolved round the earth, and thathe who thought otherwise was an Infidel, and would be damned in the"bottomless pit. " But now--! Now they declare that Christ was God, andHis mother a virgin; that three persons are one person; that those whotrust in Jesus shall go to Heaven, and those who do not trust in Jesuswill be "lost. " And if anyone denies these statements, they call himInfidel. 

Are you not aware, friend Christian, that what was Infidelity is noworthodoxy? It is even so. Heresies for which men used to be burned aliveare now openly accepted by the Church. There is not a divine livingwho would not have been burned at the stake three centuries ago forexpressing the beliefs he now holds. Yet you call a man Infidel forbeing a century in advance of you. History has taught you nothing. Ithas not occurred to you that as the "infidelity" of yesterday has becomethe enlightened religion of to-day, it is possible that the "infidelity"of to-day may become the enlightened religion of to-morrow. 

Civilisation is built up of the "heresies" of men who thought freely andspoke bravely. Those men were called "Infidels" when they were alive. But now they are called the benefactors of the world. 

Infidel! The name has been borne, good Christian, by some of the noblestof our race. I take it from you with a smile. I am an easiful old pagan, and I am not angry with you at all--you funny, little champion of theMost High. 

ONE REASON

I have been asked why I have opposed Christianity. I have severalreasons, which shall appear in due course. At present I offer one. 

I oppose Christianity because _it is not true_. 

No honest man will ask for any other reason. 

But it may be asked why I say that Christianity is not true; and that isa very proper question, which I shall do my best to answer. 

WHAT I CAN AND CANNOT BELIEVE

I hope it will not be supposed that I have any personal animus againstChristians or Christian ministers, although I am hostile to the Church. Many ministers and many Christian laymen I have known are admirable men. Some I know personally are as able and as good as any men I have met;but I speak of the Churches, not of individuals. 

I have known Catholic priests and sisters who were worthy and charming, and there are many such; but I do not like the Catholic Church. Ihave known Tories and Liberals who were real good fellows, and cleverfellows, and there are many such; but I do not like the Liberal and Toryparties. I have known clergymen of the Church of England who were reallive men, and real English gentlemen, and there are many such; but I donot like the Church. 

I was not always an Agnostic, or a Rationalist, or an "Infidel, " orwhatever Christians may choose to call me. 

I was not perverted by an Infidel book. I had not read one when Iwavered first in my allegiance to the orthodoxies. I was set doubting bya religious book written to prove the "Verity of Christ's Resurrectionfrom the Dead. " But as a child I was thoughtful, and asked myselfquestions, as many children do, which the Churches would find it hard toanswer to-day. 

I have not ceased to believe what I was taught as a child because I havegrown wicked. I have ceased to believe it because, after twenty years'hard thinking, I _cannot_ believe it. 

I cannot believe, then, that the Christian religion is true. 

I cannot believe that the Bible is the word of God. For the word of Godwould be above criticism and beyond disproof, and the Bible is not abovecriticism nor beyond disproof. 

I cannot believe that any religion has been revealed to Man by God. Because a revealed religion would be perfect, but no known religionis perfect; and because history and science show us that the knownreligions have not been revealed, but have been evolved from otherreligions. There is no important feature of the Christian religionwhich can be called original. All the rites, mysteries, and doctrines ofChristianity have been borrowed from older faiths. 

I cannot believe that Jehovah, the God of the Bible, is the Creator ofthe known universe. The Bible God, Jehovah, is a man-made God, evolvedfrom the idol of an obscure and savage tribe. The Bible shows us thisquite plainly. 

I cannot believe that the Bible and the Testament are historically true. I regard most of the events they record as fables, and most of theircharacters as myths. 

I cannot believe in the existence of Jesus Christ, nor Buddha, norMoses. I believe that these are ideal characters constructed from stillmore ancient legends and traditions. 

I cannot believe that the Bible version of the relations of man and Godis correct. For that version, and all other religious versions knownto me, represents man as sinning against or forsaking God, and God aspunishing or pardoning man. 

But if God made man, then God is responsible for all man's acts andthoughts, and therefore man cannot sin against God. 

And if man could not sin against God, but could only act as God ordainedthat he should act, then it is against reason to suppose that God couldbe angry with man, or could punish man, or see any offence for which topardon man. 

I cannot believe that man has ever forsaken God. Because history showsthat man has from the earliest times been eagerly and pitifully seekingGod, and has served and raised and sacrificed to God with a zeal akin tomadness. But God has made no sign. 

I cannot believe that man was at the first created "perfect, " andthat he "fell. " (How could the perfect fall?) I believe the theory ofevolution, which shows not a fall but a gradual rise. 

I cannot believe that God is a loving "Heavenly Father, " taking a tenderinterest in mankind. Because He has never interfered to prevent thehorrible cruelties and injustices of man to man, and because He haspermitted evil to rule the world. I cannot reconcile the idea ofa tender Heavenly Father with the known horrors of war, slavery, pestilence, and insanity. I cannot discern the hand of a loving Fatherin the slums, in the earthquake, in the cyclone. I cannot understand theindifference of a loving Father to the law of prey, nor to the terrorsand tortures of leprosy, cancer, cholera, and consumption. 

I cannot believe that God is a personal God, who intervenes in humanaffairs. I cannot see in science, nor in experience, nor in history anysigns of such a God, nor of such intervention. 

I cannot believe that God hears and answers prayer, because the universeis governed by laws, and there is no reason to suppose that those lawsare ever interfered with. Besides, an all-wise God knows what to dobetter than man can tell Him, and a just God would act justly withoutrequiring to be reminded of His duty by one of His creatures. 

I cannot believe that miracles ever could or ever did happen. Becausethe universe is governed by laws, and there is no credible instance onrecord of those laws being suspended. 

I cannot believe that God "created" man, as man now is, by word of mouthand in a moment. I accept the theory of evolution, which teaches thatman was slowly evolved by natural process from lower forms of life, andthat this evolution took millions of years. 

I cannot believe that Jesus Christ was God, nor that He was the Son ofGod. There is no solid evidence for the miracle of the Incarnation, andI see no reason for the Incarnation. 

I cannot believe that Christ died to save man from Hell, nor that Hedied to save man from sin. Because I do not believe God would condemnthe human race to eternal torment for being no better than He had madethem, and because I do not see that the death of Christ has saved manfrom sin. 

I cannot believe that God would think it necessary to come on earth asa man, and die on the Cross. Because if that was to atone for man'ssin, it was needless, as God could have forgiven man without Himselfsuffering. 

I cannot believe that God would send His son to die on the Cross. Because He could have forgiven man without subjecting His son to pain. 

I cannot accept any doctrine of atonement. Because to forgive the guiltybecause the innocent had suffered would be unjust and unreasonable, andto forgive the guilty because a third person begged for his pardon wouldbe unjust. 

I cannot believe that a good God would allow sin to enter the world. Because He would hate sin and would have power to destroy or to forbidit. 

I cannot believe that a good God would create or tolerate a Devil, northat he would allow the Devil to tempt man. 

I cannot believe the story of the virgin birth of Christ. Because for aman to be born of a virgin would be a miracle, and I cannot believe inmiracles. 

I cannot believe the story of Christ's resurrection from the dead. Because that would be a miracle, and because there is no solid evidencethat it occurred. 

I cannot believe that faith in the Godhood of Christ is necessary tovirtue or to happiness. Because I know that some holding such faith areneither happy nor virtuous, and that some are happy and virtuous who donot hold that faith. 

The differences between the religious and the scientific theories, or, as I should put it, between superstition and rationalism, are clearlymarked and irreconcilable. 

The supernaturalist stands by "creation"; the rationalist stands by"evolution. " It is impossible to reduce these opposite ideas to a commondenominator. 

The creation theory alleges that the earth, and the sun, and the moon, and man, and the animals were "created" by God, instantaneously, by wordof mouth, out of nothing. 

The evolution theory alleges that they were evolved, slowly, by naturalprocesses out of previously existing matter. 

The supernaturalist alleges that religion was revealed to man by God, and that the form of this revelation is a sacred book. 

The rationalist alleges that religion was evolved by slow degrees andby human minds, and that all existing forms of religion and all existing"sacred books, " instead of being "revelations, " are evolutions fromreligious ideas and forms and legends of prehistoric times. It isimpossible to reduce these opposite theories to a common denominator. 

The Christians, the Hindoos, the Parsees, the Buddhists, and theMohammedans have each their "Holy Bible" or "sacred book. " Each religionclaims that its own Bible is the direct revelation of God, and is theonly true Bible teaching the only true faith. Each religion regards allthe other religions as spurious. 

The supernaturalists believe in miracles, and each sect claims that themiracles related in its own inspired sacred book prove the truth of thatbook and of the faith taught therein. 

No religion accepts the truth of any other religion's miracles. TheHindoo, the Buddhist, the Mohammedan, the Parsee, the Christian eachbelieves that his miracles are the only real miracles. 

The Protestant denies the miracles of the Roman Catholic. 

The rationalist denies all miracles alike. "Miracles never happen. "

The Christian Bible is full of miracles. The Christian Religion isfounded on miracles. 

No rationalist believes in miracles. Therefore no rationalist can acceptthe Christian Religion. 

If you discard "Creation" and accept evolution; if you discard"revelation" and accept evolution; if you discard miracles and acceptnatural law, there is nothing left of the Christian Religion but thelife and teachings of Jesus Christ. 

And when one sees that all religions and all ethics, even the oldestknown, have, like all language and all science and all philosophy andall existing species of animals and plants, been slowly evolved fromlower and ruder forms; and when one learns that there have been manyChrists, and that the evidence of the life of Jesus is very slight, and that all the acts and words of Jesus had been anticipated by otherteachers long before the Christian era, then it is borne in upon one'smind that the historic basis of Christianity is very frail. And when onerealises that the Christian theology, besides being borrowed fromolder religions, is manifestly opposed to reason and to facts, then onereaches a state of mind which entitles the orthodox Christian to callone an "Infidel, " and to make it "unpleasant" for one to the glory ofGod. 

That is the position in which I stand at present, and it is partly tovindicate that position, and to protest against those who feel as I feelbeing subjected to various kinds of "unpleasantness, " that I undertakethis Apology. 

THE OLD TESTAMENT

IS THE BIBLE THE WORD OF GOD?

The question of the divine inspiration of the Scriptures is one of greatimportance. 

If the Bible is a divine revelation, if it contains the actual wordof God, and nothing but the word of God, then it is folly to doubt anystatement it contains. 

If the Bible is merely the work of men, if it contains only the wordsof men, then, like all other human work, the Bible is fallible, and mustsubmit to criticism and examination, as all fallible human work must. 

The Christian Religion stands or falls by the truth of the Bible. 

If the Bible is the word of God the Bible must be true, and theChristian Religion must be true. 

But, as I said before, the claim for the divine origin of the Bible hasnot been made by God, but by men. 

We have therefore no means of testing the Bible's title to divinerevelation other than by criticism and examination of the Bible itself. 

If the Bible is the word of God--the all-wise and perfect God--the Biblewill be perfect. If the Bible is not perfect it cannot be the word of aGod who is perfect. 

The Bible is not perfect. Historically, scientifically, and ethicallythe Bible is imperfect. 

If the Bible is the word of God it will present to us the perfect God asHe is, and every act of His it records will be perfection. But the Bibledoes not show us a perfect God, but a very imperfect God, and such ofHis acts as the Bible records are imperfect. 

I say, then, with strong conviction, that I do not believe the Bible tobe the word of God; that I do not believe it to be inspired of God; thatI do not believe it to contain any divine revelation of God to man. Why?

Let us consider the claim that the Bible is the word of God. Let us, first of all, consider it from the common-sense point of view, asordinary men of the world, trying to get at the truth and the reason ofa thing. 

What would one naturally expect in a revelation by God to man?

 1. We should expect God to reveal truths of which mankind were ignorant. 

 2. We should expect God to make no errors of fact in His revelation. 

 3. We should expect God to make His revelation so clear and so definite that it could be neither misunderstood nor misrepresented. 

 4. We should expect God to ensure that His revelation should reach _all_ men; and should reach all men directly and quickly. 

 5. We should expect God's revelation of the relations existing between Himself and man to be true. 

 6. We should expect the ethical code in God's revelation to be complete, and final, and perfect. The divine ethics should at least be above human criticism and beyond human amendment. 

To what extent does the Bible revelation fulfil the above naturalexpectations?

1. Does the Bible reveal any new moral truths?

I cannot speak very positively, but I think there is very little moraltruth in the Bible which has not been, or will not be traced back tomore ancient times and religions. 

2. Does the Bible revelation contain no errors of fact?

I claim that it contains many errors of fact, and the Higher Criticismsupports the claim; as we shall see. 

3. Is the Bible revelation so clear and explicit that no difference ofopinion as to its meaning is possible?

No. It is not. No one living can claim anything of the kind. 

4. Has God's revelation, as given in the Bible, reached all men?

No. After thousands of years it is not yet known to one-half the humanrace. 

5. Is God's revelation of the relations between man and God true?

I claim that it is not true. For the word of God makes it appear thatman was created by God in His own image, and that man sinned againstGod. Whereas man, being only what God made him, and having only thepowers God gave him, _could_ not sin against God any more than asteam-engine can sin against the engineer who designed and built it. 

6. Is the ethical code of the Bible complete, and final, and perfect?

No. The ethical code of the Bible gradually develops and improves. Hadit been divine it would have been perfect from the first. It is becauseit is human that it develops. As the prophets and the poets of the Jewsgrew wiser, and gentler, and more enlightened, so the revelation ofGod grew wiser and gentler with them. Now, God would know from thebeginning; but men would have to learn. Therefore the Bible writingswould appear to be human, and not divine. 

Let us look over these points again, and make the matter still clearerand more simple. 

If the children of an earthly father had wandered away and forgottenhim, and were, for lack of guidance, living evil lives; and if theearthly father wished his children to know that they were his children, wished them to know what he had done for them, what they owed to him, what penalty they might fear, or reward they might ask from him; if hewished them to live cleanly and justly, and to love him, and at lastcome home to him--what would that earthly father do?

He would send his message to _all_ his children, instead of sending itto one, and trusting him to repeat it correctly to the others. He wouldtry to so word his message as that all his children might understand it. 

He would send his children the very best rules of life he knew. He wouldtake great pains to avoid error in matters of fact. 

If, after the message was sent, his children quarrelled and fought aboutits meaning, their earthly father would not sit silent and allow them tohate and slay each other because of a misconception, but would send atonce and make his meaning plain to all. 

And if an earthly father would act thus wisely and thus kindly, "howmuch more your Father which is in Heaven?"

But the Bible revelation was not given to all the people of the earth. It was given to a handful of Jews. It was not so explicit as to makedisagreement impossible. It is thousands of years since the revelationof God began, and yet to-day it is not known to hundreds of millionsof human beings, and amongst those whom it has reached there is endlessbitter disagreement as to its meaning. 

Now, what is the use of a revelation which does not reveal more than isknown, which does not reveal truth only, which does not reach half thosewho need it, which cannot be understood by those it does reach?

But you will regard me as a prejudiced witness. I shall therefore, in myeffort to prove the Bible fallible, quote almost wholly from Christiancritics. 

And I take the opportunity to here recommend very strongly _Shall WeUnderstand the Bible?_ by the Rev. T. Rhondda Williams. Adam and CharlesBlack; 1s net. 

There are two chief theories as to the inspiration of the Bible. One isthe old theory that the Bible is the actual word of God, and nothing butthe word of God, directly revealed by God to Moses and the prophets. Theother is the new theory: that the Bible is the work of many men whom Godhad inspired to speak or write the truth. 

The old theory is well described by Dr. Washington Gladden in thefollowing passage:

 They imagine that the Bible must have originated in a manner purely miraculous; and, though they know very little about its origin, they conceive of it as a book that was written in heaven in the English tongue, divided there into chapters and verses, with headlines and reference marks, printed in small pica, bound in calf, and sent down by angels in its present form. 

The newer idea of the inspiration of the Bible is also well expressed byDr. Gladden; thus:

 Revelation, we shall be able to understand, is not the dictation by God of words to men that they may be written down in books: it is rather the disclosure of the truth and love of God to men in the processes of history, in the development of the moral order of the world. It is the light that lighteth every man, shining in the paths that lead to righteousness and life. There is a moral leadership of God in history; revelation is the record of that leadership. It is by no means confined to words; its most impressive disclosures are in the field of action. "Thus _did_ the Lord, " as Dr. Bruce has said, is a more perfect formula of revelation than "Thus saith the Lord. " It is in that great historical movement of which the Bible is the record that we find the revelation of God to men. 

The old theory of Bible inspiration was, as I have said, the theory thatthe Bible was the actual and pure word of God, and was true in everycircumstance and detail. 

Now, if an almighty and all-wise God had spoken or written every wordof the Bible, then that book would, of course, be wholly and unshakablytrue in its every statement. 

But if the Bible was written by men, some of them more or less inspired, then it would not, in all probability be wholly perfect. 

The more inspiration its writers had from God, the more perfect it wouldbe. The less inspiration its writers had from God, the less perfect itwould be. 

Wholly perfect, it might be attributed to a perfect being. Partlyperfect, it might be the work of less perfect beings. Less perfect, itwould have to be put down to less perfect beings. 

Containing any fault or error, it could not be the actual word of God, and the more errors and faults it contained, the less inspiration of Godwould be granted to its authors. 

I will quote again from Dr. Gladden:

 What I desire to show is, that the work of putting the Bible into its present form was not done in heaven, but on earth; that it was not done by angels, but by men; that it was not done all at once, but a little at a time, the work of preparing and perfecting it extending over several centuries, and employing the labours of many men in different lands and long-divided generations. 

I now turn to Dr. Aked. On page 25 of his book, _Changing Creeds_, hesays:

 Ignorance has claimed the Bible for its own. Bigotry has made the Bible its battleground. Its phrases have become the shibboleth of pietistic sectarians. Its authority has been evoked in support of the foulest crimes committed by the vilest men; and its very existence has been made a pretext for theories which shut out God from His own world. In our day Bible worship has become, with many very good but very unthoughtful people, a disease. 

So much for the attitude of the various schools of religious thoughttowards the Bible. 

Now, in the opinion of these Christian teachers, is the Bible perfector imperfect? Dr. Aked gives his opinion with characteristic candour andenergy:

 For observe the position: men are told that the Bible is the infallible revelation of God to man, and that its statements concerning God and man are to be unhesitatingly accepted as statements made upon the authority of God. They turn to its pages, and they find historical errors, arithmetical mistakes, scientific blunders (or, rather, blunders most unscientific), inconsistencies, and manifold contradictions; and, what is far worse, they find that the most horrible crimes are committed by men who calmly plead in justification of their terrible misdeeds the imperturbable "God said. " The heart and conscience of man indignantly rebel against the representations of the Most High given in some parts of the Bible. What happens? Why, such men declare--are now declaring, and will in constantly increasing numbers, and with constantly increasing force and boldness declare--that they can have nothing to do with a book whose errors a child can discover, and whose revelation of God partakes at times of blasphemy against man. 

I need hardly say that I agree with every word of the above. If anyoneasked me what evidence exists in support of the claims that the Bible isthe word of God, or that it was in any real sense of the words "divinelyinspired, " I should answer, without the least hesitation, that theredoes not exist a scrap of evidence of any kind in support of such aclaim. 

Let us give a little consideration to the origin of the Bible. The firstfive books of the Bible, called the Pentateuch, were said to be writtenby Moses. Moses was not, and could not have been, the author of thosebooks. There is, indeed, no reliable evidence to prove that Moses everexisted. Whether he was a fictitious hero, or a solar myth, or what hewas, no man knows. 

Neither does there appear to be any certainty that the biblical booksattributed to David, to Solomon, to Isaiah, Jeremiah, and the rest werereally written by those kings or prophets, or even in their age. 

And after these books, or many of them, had been written, they wereentirely lost, and are said to have been reproduced by Ezra. 

Add to these facts that the original Hebrew had no vowels, that many ofthe sacred books were written without vowels, and that the vowels wereadded long after; and remember that, as Dr. Aked says, the oldest HebrewBible in existence belongs to the tenth century after Christ, andit will begin to appear that the claim for biblical infallibility isutterly absurd. 

But I must not offer these statements on my own authority. Let usreturn to Dr. Gladden. On page 11 of _Who Wrote the Bible?_ I find thefollowing:

 The first of these holy books of the Jews was, then, The Law, contained in the first five books of our Bible, known among us as the Pentateuch, and called by the Jews sometimes simply "The Law, " and sometimes "The Law of Moses. " This was supposed to be the oldest portion of their Scriptures, and was by them regarded as much more sacred and authoritative than any other portion. To Moses, they said, God spake face to face; to the other holy men much less distinctly. Consequently, their appeal is most often to the Law of Moses. 

The sacredness of the five books of "The Law, " then, rests upon thebelief that they were written by Moses, who had spoken face to face withGod. 

So that if Moses did not write those books, their sacredness is a myth. Now, on page 42, Dr. Gladden says:

 1. The Pentateuch could never have been written by any one man, inspired or otherwise. 

 2. It is a composite work, in which many hands have been engaged. The production of it extends over many centuries. 

 3. It contains writings which are as old as the time of Moses, and some that are much older. It is impossible to tell how much of it came from the hand of Moses; but there are considerable portions of it which, although they may have been somewhat modified by later editors, are substantially as he left them. 

On page 45 Dr. Gladden, again speaking of the Pentateuch, says:

 But the story of Genesis goes back to a remote antiquity. The last event related in that book occurred four hundred years before Moses was born; it was as distant from him as the discovery of America by Columbus is from us; and other portions of the narrative, such as the stories of the Flood and the Creation, stretch back into the shadows of the age which precedes history. Neither Moses nor any one living in his day could have given us these reports from his own knowledge. Whoever wrote this must have obtained his materials in one of three ways:

 1. They might have been given to him by divine revelation from God. 

 2. He might have gathered them up from oral tradition, from stories, folklore, transmitted from mouth to mouth, and so preserved from generation to generation. 

 3. He might have found them in written documents existing at the time of his writing. 

As many of the laws and incidents in the books of Moses were known tothe Chaldeans, the "direct revelation of God" theory is not plausible. On this point Dr. Gladden's opinion supports mine. He says, on page 61:

 That such is the fact with respect to the structure of these ancient writings is now beyond question. And our theory of inspiration must be adjusted to this fact. Evidently neither the theory of verbal inspiration, nor the theory of plenary inspiration, can be made to fit the facts, which a careful study of the writings themselves brings before us. These writings are not inspired in the sense which we have commonly given that word. The verbal theory of inspiration was only tenable while they were supposed to be the work of a single author. To such a composite literature no such theory will apply. "To make this claim, " says Professor Ladd, "and yet accept the best ascertained results of criticism, would compel us to take such positions as the following: the original authors of each one of the writings which enter into the composite structure were infallibly inspired; every one who made any changes in any one of these fundamental writings was infallibly inspired; every compiler who put together two or more of these writings was infallibly inspired, both as to his selections and omissions, and as to any connecting or explanatory words which he might himself write; every redactor was infallibly inspired to correct and supplement, and omit that which was the product of previous infallible inspirations. Or, perhaps, it might seem more convenient to attach the claim of a plenary inspiration to the last redactor of all; but then we should probably have selected of all others the one least able to bear the weight of such a claim. Think of making the claim for a plenary inspiration of the Pentateuch in its present form on the ground of the infallibility of that one of the scribes who gave it its last touches some time subsequent to the death of Ezra. "

Remember that Dr. Gladden declares, on page 5, that he shall state noconclusions as to the history of the sacred writings which will not beaccepted by conservative critics. 

On page 54 Dr. Gladden quotes the following from Dr. Perowne:

 The first _composition_ of the Pentateuch as a whole could not have taken place till after the Israelites entered Canaan. 

 The whole work did not finally assume its present shape till its revision was undertaken by Ezra after the return from the Babylonish captivity. 

On page 25 Dr. Gladden himself speaks as follows:

 The common argument by which Christ is made a witness to the authenticity and infallible authority of the Old Testament runs as follows:

 Christ quotes Moses as the author of this legislation; therefore Moses must have written the whole Pentateuch. Moses was an inspired prophet; therefore all the teaching of the Pentateuch must be infallible. 

 The facts are that Jesus nowhere testifies that Moses wrote the whole of the Pentateuch; and that he nowhere guarantees the infallibility either of Moses or of the book. On the contrary, he set aside as inadequate or morally defective, certain laws which in this book are ascribed to Moses. 

So much for the authorship and the inspiration of the first five booksof the Bible. 

As to the authorship of other books of the Bible, Dr. Gladden says ofJudges and Samuel that we do not know the authors nor the dates. 

Of Kings he says: "The name of the author is concealed from us. " Theorigin and correctness of the Prophecies and Psalms, he tells us, areproblematical. 

Of the Books of Esther and Daniel, Dr. Gladden says: "That they arefounded on fact I do not doubt; but it is, perhaps, safer to regard themboth rather as historical fictions than as veritable histories. "

Of Daniel, Dean Farrar wrote:

 The immense majority of scholars of name and acknowledged competence in England and Europe have now been led to form an irresistible conclusion that the Book of Daniel was not written, and could not have been written, in its present form, by the prophet Daniel, B. C. 534, but that it can only have been written, as we now have it, in the days of Antiochus Epiphanes, about B. C. 164, and that the object of the pious and patriotic author as to inspirit his desponding countrymen by splendid specimens of that lofty moral fiction which was always common amongst the Jews after the Exile, and was known as "The Haggadah. " So clearly is this proven to most critics, that they willingly suffer the attempted refutations of their views to sink to the ground under the weight of their own inadequacy. (_The Bible and the Child_. )

I return now to Dr. Aked, from whose book I quote the following:

 Dr. Clifford has declared that there is not a man who has given a day's attention to the question who holds the complete freedom of the Bible from inaccuracy. He has added that "it is become more and more impossible to affirm the inerrancy of the Bible. " Dr. Lyman Abbott says that "an infallible book is an impossible conception, and to-day no one really believes that our present Bible is such a book. "

Compare those opinions with the following extract from the first articlein _The Bible and the Child_:

 The change of view respecting the Bible, which has marked the advancing knowledge and more earnest studies of this generation is only the culmination of the discovery that there were different documents in the Book of Genesis--a discovery first published by the physician, Jean Astruc, in 1753. There are _three_ widely divergent ways of dealing with these results of profound study, each of which is almost equally dangerous to the faith of the rising generation. 

 1. Parents and teachers may go on inculcating dogmas about the Bible and methods of dealing with it which have long become impossible to those who have really tried to follow the manifold discoveries of modern inquiry with perfectly open and unbiased minds. There are a certain number of persons who, when their minds have become stereotyped in foregone conclusions, are simply _incapable_ of grasping new truths. They become obstructives, and not infrequently bigoted obstructives. As convinced as the Pope of their own personal infallibility, their attitude towards those who see that the old views are no longer tenable is an attitude of anger and alarm. This is the usual temper of the _odium theologicum_. It would, if it could, grasp the thumbscrew and the rack of mediaeval Inquisitors, and would, in the last resource, hand over all opponents to the scaffold or the stake. Those whose intellects have thus been petrified by custom and advancing years are, of all others, the most hopeless to deal with. They have made themselves incapable of fair and rational examination of the truths which they impugn. They think that they can, by mere assertion, overthrow results arrived at by the lifelong inquiries of the ablest students, while they have not given a day's serious or impartial study to them. They fancy that even the ignorant, if only they be what is called "orthodox, " are justified in strong denunciation of men quite as truthful, and often incomparably more able, than themselves. Off-hand dogmatists of this stamp, who usually abound among professional religionists, think that they can refute any number of scholars, however profound and however pious, if only they shout "Infidel" with sufficient loudness. 

Those are not the words of an "Infidel. " They are the words of the lateDean Farrar. 

To quote again from Dr. Gladden:

 Evidently neither the theory of verbal inspiration, nor the theory of plenary inspiration, can be made to fit the facts which a careful study of the writings themselves brings before us. _These writings are not inspired in the sense which we have commonly given to that word. _ The verbal theory of inspiration was only tenable while they were supposed to be the work of a single author. _To such a composite literature no such theory will apply. _

The Bible is not inspired. The fact is that _no_ "sacred" book isinspired. _All_ "sacred" books are the work of human minds. All ideas ofGod are human ideas. All religions are made by man. 

When the old-fashioned Christian said the Bible was an inspired book, hemeant that God put the words and the facts directly into the mind ofthe prophet. That meant that God told Moses about the creation, Adam andEve, Cain and Abel, Noah and the Ark, and the Ten Commandments. 

Many modern Christians, amongst whom I place the Rev. Ambrose Pope, ofBakewell, believe that God gave Moses (and all the other prophets) aspecial genius and a special desire to convey religious information toother men. 

And Mr. Pope suggests that man was so ignorant, so childlike, or soweak in those days that it was necessary to disguise plain facts inmisleading symbols. 

But the man, Moses or another, who wrote the Book of Genesis was a manof literary genius. He was no child, no weakling. If God had said tohim: "I made the world out of the fiery nebula, and I made the seato bring forth the staple of life, and I caused all living things todevelop from that seed or staple of life, and I drew man out from thebrutes; and the time was six hundred millions of years"--if God had saidthat to Moses, do you think Moses would not have understood?

Now, let me show you what the Christian asks us to believe. He asks usto believe that the God who was the first cause of creation, and kneweverything, inspired man, in the childhood of the world, with a fabulousand inaccurate theory of the origin of man and the earth, and that sincethat day the same God has gradually changed or added to the inspiration, until He inspired Laplace, and Galileo, and Copernicus, and Darwin tocontradict the teachings of the previous fifty thousand years. He asksus to believe that God muddled men's minds with a mysterious seriesof revelations cloaked in fable and allegory; that He allowed them tostumble and to blunder, and to quarrel over these "revelations"; that Heallowed them to persecute, and slay, and torture each other on accountof divergent readings of his "revelations" for ages and ages; and thatHe is still looking on while a number of bewildered and antagonisticreligions fight each other to achieve the survival of the fittest. Isthat a reasonable theory? Is it the kind of theory a reasonable man canaccept? Is it consonant with common sense?

Contrast that with our theory. We say that early man, having noknowledge of science, and more imagination than reason, would be alarmedand puzzled by the phenomena of Nature. He would be afraid of the dark, he would be afraid of the thunder, he would wonder at the moon, at thestars, at fire, at the ocean. He would fear what he did not understand, and he would bow down and pay homage to what he feared. 

Then, by degrees, he would personify the stars, and the sun, and thethunder, and the fire. He would make gods of these things. He would makegods of the dead. He would make gods of heroes. He would do what allsavage races do, what all children do: he would make legends, or fables, or fairy tales out of his hopes, his fears, and his guesses. 

Does not that sound reasonable? Does not history teach us that it istrue? Do we not know that religion was so born and nursed?

There is no such thing known to men as an original religion. Allreligions are made up of the fables and the imaginations of tribes longsince extinct. Religion is an evolution, not a revelation. It has beeninvented, altered, and built up, and pulled down, and reconstructed timeafter time. It is a conglomeration and an adaptation, as language is. And the Christian religion is no more an original religion than Englishis an original tongue. We have Sanscrit, Latin, Greek, French, Saxon, Norman words in our language; and we have Aryan, Semitic, Egyptian, Roman, Greek, and all manner of ancient foreign fables, myths, and ritesin our Christian religion. 

We say that Genesis was a poetic presentation of a fabulous story piecedtogether from many traditions of many tribes, and recording with greatliterary power the ideas of a people whose scientific knowledge was veryincomplete. 

Now, I ask you which of these theories is the most reasonable; whichis the most scientific; which agrees most closely with the facts ofphilology and history of which we are in possession?

Why twist the self-evident fact that the Bible story of creation was thework of unscientific men of strong imagination into a far-fetched andunsatisfactory puzzle of symbol and allegory? It would be just as easyand just as reasonable to take the _Morte d'Arthur_ and try to provethat it contained a veiled revelation of God's relations to man. 

And let me ask one or two questions as to this matter of the revelationof the Holy Bible. Is God all-powerful or is he not? If he isall-powerful, why did He make man so imperfect? Could He not havecreated him at once a wise and good creature? Even when man was ignorantand savage, could not an all-powerful God have devised some means ofrevealing Himself so as to be understood? If God really wished to revealHimself to man, why did He reveal Himself only to one or two obscuretribes, and leave the rest of mankind in darkness?

Those poor savages were full of credulity, full of terror, full ofwonder, full of the desire to worship. They worshipped the sun and themoon; they worshipped ghosts and demons; they worshipped tyrants, andpretenders, and heroes, dead and alive. Do you believe that if Godhad come down on earth, with a cohort of shining angels, and had said, "Behold, I am the only God, " these savages would not have left allbaser gods and worshipped Him? Why, these men, and all the thousandsof generations of their children, have been looking for God since firstthey learned to look at sea and sky. They are looking for Him now. Theyhave fought countless bloody wars and have committed countless horribleatrocities in their zeal for Him. And you ask us to believe that Hisgrand revelation of Himself is bound up in a volume of fables and errorscollected thousands of years ago by superstitious priests and prophetsof Palestine, and Egypt, and Assyria. 

We cannot believe such a statement. No man can believe it who tests itby his reason in the same way in which he would test any modern problem. If the leaders of religion brought the same vigour and subtlety of mindto bear upon religion which they bring to bear upon any criticism ofreligion, if they weighed the Bible as they have weighed astronomy andevolution, the Christian religion would not last a year. 

If my reader has not studied this matter, let him read the books I haverecommended, and then sit down and consider the Bible revelation andstory with the same fearless honesty and clear common sense with whichhe would consider the Bibles of the Mohammedan, or Buddhist, or Hindoo, and then ask himself the question: "Is the Bible a holy and inspiredbook, and the word of God to man, or is it an incongruous andcontradictory collection of tribal traditions and ancient fables, written by men of genius and imagination?"

THE EVOLUTION OF THE BIBLE

We now reach the second stage in our examination, which is the claimthat no religion known to man can be truly said to be original. Allreligions, the Christian religion included, are adaptations or variantsof older religions. Religions are not _revealed_: they are _evolved_. 

If a religion were revealed by God, that religion would be perfect inwhole and in part, and would be as perfect at the first moment of itsrevelation as after ten thousand years of practice. There has never beena religion which fulfils those conditions. 

According to Bible chronology, Adam was created some six thousand yearsago. Science teaches that man existed during the glacial epoch, whichwas at least fifty thousand years before the Christian era. 

Here I recommend the study of Laing's _Human Origins_, Parson's _OurSun God_, Sayce's _Ancient Empires of the East_, and Frazer's _GoldenBough_. 

In his visitation charge at Blackburn, in July, 1889, the Bishop ofManchester spoke as follows:

 Now, if these dates are accepted, to what age of the world shall we assign that Accadian civilisation and literature which so long preceded Sargo I. And the statutes of Sirgullah? I can best answer you in the words of the great Assyriologist, F. Hommel: "If, " he says, "the Semites were already settled in Northern Babylonia (Accad) in the beginning of the fourth thousand B. C. In possession of the fully developed Shumiro-Accadian culture adopted by them--a culture, moreover, which appears to have sprouted like a cutting from Shumir, then the latter must be far, far older still, and have existed in its _completed_ form in the fifth thousand B. C. , an age to which I unhesitatingly ascribe the South Babylonian incantations. ". .. Who does not see that such facts as these compel us to remodel our whole idea of the past?

A culture which was _complete_ one thousand years before Adam must haveneeded many thousands of years to develop. It would be a modest guessthat Accadian culture implied a growth of at least ten thousand years. 

Of course, it may be said that the above biblical error is only an errorof time, and has no bearing on the alleged evolution of the Bible. Well, an error of a million, or of ten thousand, years is a serious thing ina divine revelation; but, as we shall see, it _has_ a bearing onevolution. Because it appears that in that ancient Accadian civilisationlie the seeds of many Bible laws and legends. 

Here I quote from _Our Sun God_, by Mr. J. D. Parsons:

 To commence with, it is well known to those acquainted with the remains of the Assyrian and Babylonian civilisations that the stories of the creation, the temptation, the fall, the deluge, and the confusion of tongues were the common property of the Babylonians centuries before the date of the alleged Exodus under Moses. .. Even the word Sabbath is Babylonian. And the observance of the seventh day as a Sabbath, or day of rest, by the Accadians thousands of years before Moses, or Israel, or even Abraham, or Adam himself could have been born or created, is admitted by, among others, the Bishop of Manchester. For in an address to his clergy, already mentioned, he let fall these pregnant words:

 "Who does not see that such facts as these compel us to remodel our whole idea of the past, and that in particular to affirm that the Sabbatical institution originated in the time of Moses, three thousand five hundred years after it is probable that it existed in Chaldea, is an impossibility, no matter how many Fathers of the Church have asserted it. Facts cannot be dismissed like theories. "

The Sabbath, then, is one link in the evolution of the Bible. Like thelegends of the Creation, the Fall, and the Flood, it was adopted by theJews from the Babylonians during or after the Captivity. 

Of the Flood, Professor Sayce, in his _Ancient Empires_ of the East, speaks as follows:

 With the Deluge the mythical history of Babylonia takes a new departure. From this event to the Persian conquest was a period of 36, 000 years, or an astronomical cycle called _saros_. Xisuthros, with his family and friends, alone survived the waters which drowned the rest of mankind on account of their sins. He had been ordered by the gods to build a ship, to pitch it within and without, and to stock it with animals of every species. Xisuthros sent out first a dove, then a swallow, and lastly a raven, to discover whether the earth was dry; the dove and the swallow returned to the ship, and it was only when the raven flew away that the rescued hero ventured to leave his ark. He found that he had been stranded on the peak of the mountain of Nizir, "the mountain of the world, " whereon the Accadians believed the heavens to rest--where, too, they placed the habitations of their gods, and the cradle of their own race. Since Nizir lay amongst the mountains of Pir Mam, a little south of Rowandiz, its mountain must be identified with Rowandiz itself. On its peak Xisuthros offered sacrifices, piling up cups of wine by sevens; and the rainbow, "the glory of Anu, " appeared in the heaven, in covenant that the world should never again be destroyed by flood. Immediately afterwards Xisuthros and his wife, like the Biblical Enoch, were translated to the regions of the blest beyond Datilla, the river of Death, and his people made their way westward to Sippara. Here they disinterred the books buried by their late ruler before the Deluge took place, and re-established themselves in their old country under the government first of Erekhoos, and then of his son Khoniasbolos. Meanwhile, other colonists had arrived in the plain of Sumer, and here, under the leadership of the giant Etana, called Titan by the Greek writers, they built a city of brick, and essayed to erect a tower by means of which they might scale the sky, and so win for themselves the immortality granted to Xisuthros. .. But the tower was overthrown in the night by the winds, and Bel frustrated their purpose by confounding their language and scattering them on the mound. 

These legends of the Flood and the Tower of Babel were obviouslyborrowed by the Jews during their Babylonian captivity. 

Professor Sayce, in his _Ancient Empires of the East_, speaking of theAccadian king, Sargon I. , says:

 Legends naturally gathered round the name of the Babylonian Solomon. Not only was he entitled "the deviser of law, the deviser of prosperity, " but it was told of him how his father had died while he was still unborn, how his mother had fled to the mountains, and there left him, like a second Moses, to the care of the river in an ark of reeds and bitumen; and how he was saved by Accir, "the water-drawer, " who brought him up as his own son, until the time came when, under the protection of Istar, his rank was discovered, and he took his seat on the throne of his forefathers. 

From Babylon the Jews borrowed the legends of Eden, of the Fall, theFlood, the Tower of Babel; from Babylon they borrowed the Sabbath, andvery likely the Commandments; and is it not possible that the legendaryMoses and the legendary Sargon may be variants of a still more ancientmythical figure?

Compare Sayce with the following "Notes on the Moses Myth, " from_Christianity and Mythology_, by J. M. Robertson:

NOTES ON THE MOSES MYTH. 

 I have been challenged for saying that the story of Moses and the floating basket is a variant of the myth of Horos and the floating island (_Herod_ ii. 156). But this seems sufficiently proved by the fact that in the reign of Rameses II. , according to the monuments, there was a place in Middle Egypt which bore the name I-en-Moshe, "_the island of Moses_. " That is the primary meaning. Brugsch, who proclaims the fact (_Egypt Under the Pharaohs_, ii. 117), suggests that it can also mean "the river bank of Moses. " It is very obvious, however, that the Egyptians would not have named a place by a real incident in the life of a successful enemy, as Moses is represented in Exodus. Name and story are alike mythological and pre-Hebraic, though possibly Semitic. The Assyrian myth of Sargon, which is, indeed, very close to the Hebrew, may be the oldest form of all; but the very fact that the Hebrews located their story in Egypt shows that they knew it to have a home there in some fashion. The name Moses, whether it mean "the water-child" (so Deutsch) or "the hero" (Sayce, _Hib. Lect. _ p. 46), was in all likelihood an epithet of Horos. The basket, in the latter form, was doubtless an adaptation from the ritual of the basket-born God-Child, as was the birth story of Jesus. In Diodorus Siculus (i. 25) the myth runs that Isis found Horos _dead_ "on the water, " and brought him to life again; but even in that form the clue to the Moses birth-myth is obvious. And there are yet other Egyptian connections for the Moses saga, since the Egyptians had a myth of Thoth (their Logos) having slain Argus (as did Hermes), and having had to fly for it to Egypt, where he gave laws and learning to the Egyptians. Yet, curiously enough, this myth probably means that the Sun God, who has in the other story escaped the "massacre of the innocents" (the morning stars), now plays the slayer on his own account, since the slaying of many-eyed Argus probably means the extinction of the stars by the morning sun (cp. Emeric-David, _Introduction_, end). Another "Hermes" was the son of Nilus, and his name was sacred (Cicero, _De Nat. Deor. _ iii. 22, Cp. 16). The story of the floating child, finally, becomes part of the lore of Greece. In the myth of Apollo, the Babe-God and his sister Artemis are secured in float-islands. 

It is impossible to form a just estimate of the Bible without someknowledge of ancient history and comparative mythology. It would beimpossible for me to go deeply into these matters in this small book, but I will quote a few significant passages just to show the value ofsuch historical evidence. Here to begin with, are some passages from Mr. Grant Allen's _Evolution of the Idea of God_. 

THE ORIGIN OF GODS. 

 Mr. Herbert Spencer has traced so admirably, in his _Principles of Sociology_, the progress of development from the Ghost to the God that I do not propose in this chapter to attempt much more than a brief recapitulation of his main propositions, which, however, I shall supplement with fresh examples, and adapt at the same time to the conception of three successive stages in human ideas about the Life of the Dead, as set forth in the preceding argument. 

 In the earlier stage of all--the stage where the actual bodies of the dead are preserved--gods, as such, are for the most part unknown: it is the corpses of friends and ancestors that are worshipped and reverenced. For example, Ellis says of the corpse of a Tahitian chief, that it was placed in a sitting posture under a protecting shed; "a small altar was erected before it, and offerings of fruit, food, and flowers were daily presented by the relatives or the priest appointed to attend the body. " (This point about the priest is of essential importance. ) The Central Americans, again, as Mr. Spencer notes, performed similar rites before bodies dried by artificial heat. The New Guinea people, as D'Albertis found, worship the dried mummies of their fathers and husbands. A little higher in the scale we get the developed mummy-worship of Egypt and Peru, which survives even after the evolution of greater gods, from powerful kings or chieftains. Wherever the actual bodies of the dead are preserved, there also worship and offerings are paid to them. 

 Often, however, as already noted, it is not the whole body, but the head alone, that is specially kept and worshipped. Thus Mr. H. O. Forbes says of the people of Buru: "The dead are buried in the forest on some secluded spot, marked by a _merang_, or grave pole, over which at certain intervals the relatives place tobacco, cigarettes, and various offerings. When the body is decomposed the son or nearest relative disinters the head, wraps a new cloth about it, and places it in the Matakau at the back of his house, or in a little hut erected for it near the grave. It is the representative of his forefathers, whose behests he holds in the greatest respect. "

 Two points are worthy of notice in this interesting account, as giving us an anticipatory hint of two further accessories whose evolution we must trace hereafter: first, the grave-stake, which is probably the origin of the wooden idol; and second, the little hut erected over the head by the side of the grave, which is undoubtedly one of the origins of the temple, or praying-house. Observe, also, the ceremonial wrapping of the skull in cloth and its oracular functions. 

 Throughout the earlier and ruder phases of human evolution this primitive conception of ancestors or dead relatives as the chief known object of worship survives undiluted; and ancestor- worship remains to this day the principal religion of the Chinese and of several other peoples. Gods, as such, are practically unknown in China. Ancestor-worship, also, survives in many other races as one of the main cults, even after other elements of later religion have been superimposed upon it. In Greece and Rome it remained to the last an important part of domestic ritual. But in most cases a gradual differentiation is set up in time between various classes of ghosts or dead persons, some ghosts being considered of more importance and power than others; and out of these last it is that gods as a rule are finally developed. A god, in fact, is in the beginning, at least, an exceptionally powerful and friendly ghost--a ghost able to help, and from whose help great things may reasonably be expected. 

 Again, the rise of chieftainship and kingship has much to do with the growth of a higher conception of godhead; a dead king of any great power or authority is sure to be thought of in time as a god of considerable importance. We shall trace out this idea more fully hereafter in the religion of Egypt; for the present it must suffice to say that the supposed power of the gods in each pantheon has regularly increased in proportion to the increased power of kings or emperors. 

 When we pass from the first plane of corpse preservation and mummification to the second plane, where burial is habitual, it might seem, at a hasty glance, as though continued worship of the dead, and their elevation into gods, would no longer be possible. For we saw that burial is prompted by a deadly fear lest the corpse or ghost should return to plague the living. Nevertheless, natural affection for parents or friends, and the desire to insure their goodwill and aid, make these seemingly contrary ideas reconcilable. As a matter of fact, we find that even when men bury or burn their dead, they continue to worship them; while, as we shall show in the sequel, even the great stones which they roll on top of the grave to prevent the dead from rising again become, in time, altars on which sacrifices are offered to the spirit. 

Much of the Bible is evidently legendary. Here we have a jumble ofancient myths, allegories, and mysteries drawn from many sources andremote ages, and adapted, altered, and edited so many times that in manyinstances their original or inner meaning has become obscure. And it isfolly to accept the tangled legends and blurred or distorted symbols asthe literal history of a literal tribe, and the literal account of theorigin of man, and the genesis of religion. 

The real roots of religion lie far deeper: deeper, perhaps, thansun-worship, ghost-worship, and fear of demons. In _The Real Origin ofReligion_ occurs the following:

 Quite recently theories have been advocated attempting to prove that the minds of early men were chiefly concerned with the increase of vegetation, and that their fancy played so much round the mysteries of plant growth that they made them their holiest arcana. Hence it appears that the savages were far more modest and refined than our civilised contemporaries, for almost all our works of imagination, both in literature and art, make human love their theme in all its aspects, whether healthy or pathological; whereas the savage, it seems, thought only of his crops. Nothing can be more astonishing than this discovery, if it be true, but there are many facts which might lead us to believe that the romance of love inspired early art and religion as well as modern thought. 

And again:

 Religion is a gorgeous efflorescence of human love. The tender passion has left its footsteps on the sands of time in magnificent monuments and libraries of theology. 

This may seem startling to many orthodox readers, but it is no newtheory, and is doubtless quite true, for all gods have been made byman, and all theologies have been evolved by man, and the odour and thecolour of his human passions cling to them always, even after they arediscarded. Under all man's dreams of eternal gods and eternal heavenslies man's passion for the eternal feminine. But on these subjects"Moses" spoke in parables, and I shall not speak at all. 

Mr. Robertson, in _Christianity and Mythology_, says of the Bible:

 It is a medley of early metaphysics and early fable--early, that is, relatively to known Hebrew history. It ties together two creation stories and two flood stories; it duplicates several sets of mythic personages--as Cain and Abel, Tubal-Cain and Jabal; it grafts the curse of Cham on the curse of Cain, making that finally the curse of Canaan; it tells the same offensive story twice of one patriarch and again of another; it gives an early "metaphysical" theory of the origin of death, life, and evil; it adapts the Egyptian story of the "Two Brothers, " or the myth of Adonis, as the history of Joseph; it makes use of various God-names, pretending that they always stood for the same deity; it repeats traditions concerning mythic founders of races--if all this be not "a medley of early fable, " what is it?

I quote next from _The Bible and the Child_, in which Dean Farrar says:

 Some of the books of Scripture are separated from others by the interspace of a thousand years. They represent the fragmentary survival of Hebrew literature. They stand on very different levels of value, and even of morality. Read for centuries in an otiose, perfunctory, slavish, and superstitious manner, they have often been so egregiously misunderstood that many entire systems of interpretation--which were believed in for generations, and which fill many folios, now consigned to a happy oblivion-- are clearly proved to have been utterly baseless. Colossal usurpations of deadly import to the human race have been built, like inverted pyramids, on the narrow apex of a single misinterpreted text. 

Compare those utterances of the freethinker and the divine, and thenread the following words of Dean Farrar:

 The manner in which the Higher Criticism has slowly and surely made its victorious progress, in spite of the most determined and exacerbated opposition, is a strong argument in its favour. It is exactly analogous to the way in which the truths of astronomy and of geology have triumphed over universal opposition. They were once anathematised as "infidel"; they are now accepted as axiomatic. I cannot name a single student or professor of any eminence in Great Britain who does not accept, with more or less modification, the main conclusions of the German school of critics. 

This being the case, I ask, as a mere layman, what right has the Bibleto usurp the title of "the word of God"? What evidence can be sharked upto show that it is any more a holy or an inspired book than any book ofThomas Carlyle's, or John Ruskin's, or William Morris'? What evidenceis forthcoming that the Bible is true?

THE UNIVERSE ACCORDING TO ANCIENT RELIGION AND MODERN SCIENCE

The theory of the early Christian Church was that the Earth was flat, like a plate, and the sky was a solid dome above it, like an invertedblue basin. 

The Sun revolved round the Earth to give light by day, the Moon revolvedround the Earth to give light by night. The stars were auxiliary lights, and had all been specially, and at the same time, created for the goodof man. 

God created the Sun, Moon, Stars, and Earth in six days. He created themby word, and He created them out of nothing. 

The centre of the Universe was the Earth. The Sun was made to give lightto the Earth by day, and the Moon to give light to Earth by night. 

Any man who denied that theory in those days was in danger of beingmurdered as an Infidel. 

To-day our ideas are very different. Hardly any educated man or womanin the world believes that the world is flat, or that the Sun revolvesround the Earth, or that what we call the sky is a solid substance, likea domed ceiling. 

Advanced thinkers, even amongst the Christians, believe that the worldis round, that it is one of a series of planets revolving round the Sun, that the Sun is only one of many millions of other suns, that thesesuns were not created simultaneously, but at different periods, probablyseparated by millions or billions of years. 

We have all, Christians and Infidels alike, been obliged to acknowledgethat the Earth is not the centre of the whole Universe, but only a minorplanet revolving around, and dependent upon, one of myriads of suns. 

God, called by Christians "Our Heavenly Father, " created all things. Hecreated not only the world, but the whole universe. He is all-wise, He is all-powerful, He is all-loving, and He is revealed to us in theScriptures. 

Let us see. Let us try to imagine what kind of a God the creator ofthis Universe would be, and let us compare him with the God, or Gods, revealed to us in the Bible, and in the teachings of the Church. 

We have seen the account of the Universe and its creation, as given inthe revealed Scriptures. Let us now take a hasty view of the Universeand its creation as revealed to us by science. 

What is the Universe like, as far as our limited knowledge goes?

Our Sun is only one sun amongst many millions. Our planet is only one ofeight which revolve around him. 

Our Sun, with his planets and comets, comprises what is known as thesolar system. 

There is no reason to suppose that his is the only Solar System: theremay be many millions of solar systems. For aught we know, there may bemillions of systems, each containing millions of solar systems. 

Let us deal first with the solar system of which we are a part. 

The Sun is a globe of 866, 200 miles diameter. His diameter is more than108 times that of the Earth. His volume is 1, 305, 000 times the volumeof the Earth. All the eight planets added together only makeone-seven-hundredth part of his weight. His circumference is more thantwo and a-half millions of miles. He revolves upon his axis in 25 1/4days, or at a speed of nearly 4, 000 miles an hour. 

This immense and magnificent globe diffuses heat and light to all theother planets. 

Without the light and heat of the Sun no life would now be, or in thepast have been, possible on this Earth, or any other planet of the solarsystem. 

The eight planets of the solar system are divided into four inferior andfour superior. 

The inferior planets are Mercury, Venus, the Earth, and Mars. Thesuperior are Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune. 

The diameters of the smaller planets are as follow: Mercury, 3, 008miles; Mars, 5, 000 miles; Venus, 7, 480 miles; the Earth, 7, 926 miles. 

The diameters of the large planets are: Jupiter, 88, 439 miles; Saturn, 75, 036 miles; Neptune, 37, 205 miles; Uranus, 30, 875 miles. 

The volume of Jupiter is 1, 389 times, of Saturn 848 times, of Neptune103 times, and of Uranus 59 times the volume of the Earth. 

The mean distances from the Sun are: Mercury, 36 million miles; Venus, 67 million miles; the Earth, 93 million miles; Mars, 141 million miles;Jupiter, 483 million miles; Saturn, 886 million miles; Uranus, 1, 782million miles; Neptune, 2, 792 million miles. 

To give an idea of the meaning of these distances, I may say that atrain travelling night and day at 60 miles an hour would take quite 176years to come from the Sun to the Earth. 

The same train, at the same speed, would be 5, 280 years in travellingfrom the Sun to Neptune. 

Reckoning that Neptune is the outermost planet of the solar system, thatsystem would have a diameter of 5, 584 millions of miles. 

If we made a chart of the solar system on a scale of 1 inch to a millionmiles, we should need a sheet of paper 465 feet 4 inches wide. On thissheet the Sun would have a diameter of less than 1 inch, and the Earthwould be about the size of a pin-prick. 

If an express train, going at 60 miles an hour, had to travel round theEarth's orbit, it would be more than 1, 000 years on the journey. If theEarth moved no faster, our winter would last more than 250 years. Butin the solar system the speeds are as wonderful as the sizes. The Earthturns upon its axis at the rate of 1, 000 miles an hour, and travels inits orbit round the Sun at the rate of more than 1, 000 miles a minute, or 66, 000 miles an hour. 

So much for the size of the solar system. It consists of a Sun and eightplanets, and the outer planet's orbit is one of 5, 584 millions of milesin diameter, which it would take an express train, at 60 miles an hour, 10, 560 years to cross. 

But this distance is as nothing when we come to deal with the distancesof the other stars from our Sun. 

The distance from our Sun to the nearest fixed (?) star is more than20 millions of millions of miles. Our express train, which crosses thediameter of the solar system in 10, 560 years, would take, if it went 60miles an hour day and night, about 40 million years to reach the nearestfixed star from the Sun. 

And if we had to mark the nearest fixed star on our chart made on ascale of 1 inch to the million miles, we should find that whereasa sheet of 465 feet would take in the outermost planet of the solarsystem, a sheet to take in the nearest fixed star would have to be about620 miles wide. On this sheet, as wide as from London to Inverness, theSun would be represented by a dot three-quarters of an inch in diameter, and the Earth by a pin-prick. 

But these immense distances only relate to the _nearest_ stars. Now, thenearest stars are about four "light years" distant from us. That is tosay, that light, travelling at a rate of about 182, 000 miles in _onesecond_, takes four years to come from the nearest fixed star to theEarth. 

But I have seen the distance from the Earth to the Great Nebula in Oriongiven as _a thousand light years_, or 250 times the distance of thefixed star above alluded to. 

To reach that nebula at 60 miles an hour, an express train would have totravel for 35 millions of years multiplied by 250--that is to say, for8, 750 million years. 

And yet there are millions of stars whose distances are even greaterthan the distance of the Great Nebula in Orion. 

How many stars are there? No one can even guess. But L. Struve estimatesthe number of those visible to the great telescopes at 20 millions. 

Twenty millions of suns. And as for the size of these suns, Sir RobertBall says Sirius is ten times as large as our Sun; and a well-knownastronomer, writing in the _English Mechanic_ about a week ago, remarksthat Alpha Orionis (Betelgeuze) has probably 700 times the light of ourSun. 

Looking through my telescope, which is only 3-inch aperture, I have seenstar clusters of wonderful beauty in the Pleiades and in Cancer. Thereis, in the latter constellation, a dim star which, when viewed throughmy glass, becomes a constellation larger, more brilliant, and morebeautiful than Orion or the Great Bear. I have looked at these jewelledsun-clusters many a time, and wondered over them. But I have neveronce thought of believing that they were specially created to be lesserlights to the Earth. 

And now let me quote from that grand book of Richard A. Proctor's, _TheExpanse of Heaven_, a fine passage descriptive of some of the wonders ofthe "Milky Way":

 There are stars in all orders of brightness, from those which (seen with the telescope) resemble in lustre the leading glories of the firmament, down to tiny points of light only caught by momentary twinklings. Every variety of arrangement is seen. Here the stars are scattered as over the skies at night; there they cluster in groups, as though drawn together by some irresistible power; in one region they seem to form sprays of stars like diamonds sprinkled over fern leaves; elsewhere they lie in streams and rows, in coronets and loops and festoons, resembling the star festoon which, in the constellation Perseus, garlands the black robe of night. Nor are varieties of colour wanting to render the display more wonderful and more beautiful. Many of the stars which crowd upon the view are red, orange, and yellow Among them are groups of two and three and four (multiple stars as they are called), amongst which blue and green and lilac and purple stars appear, forming the most charming contrast to the ruddy and yellow orbs near which they are commonly seen. 

Millions and millions--countless millions of suns. Innumerable galaxiesand systems of suns, separated by black gulfs of space so wide that noman can realise the meaning of the figures which denote their stretch. Suns of fire and light, whirling through vast oceans of space likeswarms of golden bees. And round them planets whirling at thousands ofmiles a minute. 

And on Earth there are forms of life so minute that millions of themexist in a drop of water. There are microscopic creatures more beautifuland more highly finished than any gem, and more complex and effectivethan the costliest machine of human contrivance. In _The Story ofCreation_ Mr. Ed. Clodd tells us that one cubic inch of rotten stonecontains 41 thousand million vegetable skeletons of diatoms. 

I cut the following from a London morning paper:

 It was discovered some few years ago that a peculiar bacillus was present in all persons suffering from typhoid, and in all foods and drinks which spread the disease. Experiments were carried out, and it was assumed, not without good reason, that the bacillus was the primary cause of the malady, and it was accordingly labelled the typhoid bacillus. 

 But the bacteriologists further discovered that the typhoid bacillus was present in water which was not infectious, and in persons who were not ill, or had never been ill, with typhoid. 

 So now a theory is propounded that a healthy typhoid bacillus does not cause typhoid, but that it is only when the bacillus is itself sick of a fever, or, in other words, is itself the prey of some infinitely minuter organisms, which feed on it alone, that it works harm to mortal men. 

The bacillus is so small that one requires a powerful microscope to seehim, and his blood may be infested with bacilli as small to him as he isto us. 

And there are millions, and more likely billions, of suns!

Talk about Aladdin's palace, Sinbad's valley of diamonds, Macbeth'switches, or the Irish fairies! How petty are their exploits, how tawdryare their splendours, how paltry are their riches, when we compare themto the romance of science. 

When did a poet conceive an idea so vast and so astounding as thetheory of evolution? What are a few paltry, lumps of crystallised carboncompared to a galaxy of a million million suns? Did any Eastern inventorof marvels ever suggest such a human feat as that accomplished bythe men who have, during the last handful of centuries, spelt out themystery of the universe? These scientists have worked miracles beforewhich those of the ancient priests and magicians are mere tricks ofhanky-panky. 

Look at the romance of geology; at the romance of astronomy; atthe romance of chemistry; at the romance of the telescope, and themicroscope, and the prism. More wonderful than all, consider the storyof how flying atoms in space became suns, how suns made planets, howplanets changed from spheres of flame and raging fiery storm to worldsof land and water. How in the water specks of jelly became fishes, fishes reptiles, reptiles mammals, mammals monkeys; monkeys men;until, from the fanged and taloned cannibal, roosting in a forest, havedeveloped art and music, religion and science; and the children of thejellyfish can weigh the suns, measure the stellar spaces, ride onthe ocean or in the air, and speak to each other from continent tocontinent. 

Talk about fairy tales! what is this? You may look through a telescope, and see the nebula that is to make a sun floating, like a luminous mist, three hundred million miles away. You may look again, and see anothersun in process of formation. You may look again, and see others almostcompleted. You may look again and again, and see millions of suns andsystems spread out across the heavens like rivers of living gems. 

You will say that all this speaks of a Creator. I shall not contradictyou. But what kind of Creator must He be who has created such a universeas this?

Do you think He is the kind of Creator to make blunders and commitcrimes? Can you, after once thinking of the Milky Way, with its riversof suns, and the drop of water teeming with spangled dragons, and theawful abysses of dark space, through which comets shoot at a speeda thousand times as fast as an express train--can you, after seeingSaturn's rings, and Jupiter's moons, and the clustered gems of Hercules, consent for a moment to the allegation that the creator of all thispower and glory got angry with men, and threatened them with scabsand sores, and plagues of lice and frogs? Can you suppose that such acreator would, after thousands of years of effort, have failed even nowto make His repeated revelations comprehensible? Do you believe thatHe would be driven across the unimaginable gulfs of space, but of thetranscendent glory of His myriad resplendent suns, to die on a cross, in order to win back to Him the love of the puny creatures on one punyplanet in the marvellous universe His power had made?

Do you believe that the God who imagined and created such a universecould be petty, base, cruel, revengeful, and capable of error? I do notbelieve it. 

And now let us examine the character and conduct of this God as depictedfor us in the Bible--the book which is alleged to have been directlyrevealed by God Himself. 

JEHOVAH THE ADOPTED HEAVENLY FATHER OF CHRISTIANITY

In giving the above brief sketch of the known universe my object was tosuggest that the Creator of a universe of such scope and grandeur mustbe a Being of vast power and the loftiest dignity. 

Now, the Christians claim that their God created this universe--not theuniverse He is described, in His own inspired word, as creating, but theuniverse revealed by science; the universe of twenty millions of suns. 

And the Christians claim that this God is a God of love, a Godomnipotent, omnipresent, and eternal. And the Christians claim that thisgreat God, the Creator of our wonderful universe, is the God revealed tous in the Bible. 

Let us, then, go to the Bible, and find out for ourselves whether theGod therein revealed is any more like the ideal Christian God than theuniverse therein revealed is like the universe since discovered by manwithout the aid of divine inspiration. 

As for the biblical God, Jahweh, or Jehovah, I shall try to showfrom the Bible itself that He was not all-wise, nor all-powerful, nor omnipresent; that He was not merciful nor just; but that, on thecontrary, He was fickle, jealous, dishonourable, immoral, vindictive, barbarous, and cruel. 

Neither was He, in any sense of the words, great nor good. But, in fact, He was a tribal god, an idol, made by man; and, as the idol of a savageand ignorant tribe, was Himself a savage and ignorant monster. 

First then, as to my claim that Jahweh, or Jehovah, was a tribal god. Ishall begin by quoting from _Shall We Understand the Bible?_ by the Rev. T. Rhondda Williams:

 The theology of the Jahwist is very childish and elementary, though it is not all on the same level. He thinks of God very much as in human form, holding intercourse with men almost as one of themselves. His document begins with Genesis ii. 4, and its first portion continues, without break, to the end of chapter iv. This portion contains the story of Eden. Here Jahweh _moulds_ dust into human form, and _breathes_ into it; _plants_ a garden, and puts the man in it. Jahweh comes to the man in his sleep, and takes part of his body to make a woman, and so skilfully, apparently, that the man never wakes under the operation. Jahweh _walks_ in the garden like a man in the cool of the day. He even _makes coats_ for Adam and Eve. Further on the Jahwist has a flood story, in which Jahweh _repents_ that he had made man, and decides to drown him, saving only one family. When all is over, and Noah sacrifices on his new altar, Jahweh _smells_ a sweet savour, just as a hungry man smells welcome food. When men build the Tower of Babel, Jahweh _comes down_ to see it--he cannot see it from where he is. In Genesis xviii. The Jahwist tells a story of three men coming to Abraham's tent. Abraham gives them water to wash their feet, and bread to eat, and Sarah makes cakes for them, and "they did eat"; altogether, they seemed to have had a nice time. As the story goes on, he leaves you to infer that one of these was Jahweh himself. It is J. Who describes the story of Jacob _wrestling_ with some mysterious person, who, by inference, is Jahweh. He tells a very strange story in Exodus iv. 24, that when Moses was returning into Egypt, at Jahweh's own request, Jahweh met him at a lodging-place, and sought to kill him. In Exodus xiv. 15 it is said Jahweh took the wheels off the chariots of the Egyptians. If we wanted to believe that such statements were true at all, we should resort to the device of saying they were figurative. But J. Meant them literally. The Jahwist would have no difficulty in thinking of God in this way. The story of the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah belongs to this same document, in which, you remember, Jahweh says: "I will go down now, and see whether they have done altogether according to the cry of it which is come unto me; and if not, I will know" (Gen. Xviii. 21). That God was omniscient and omnipresent had never occurred to the Jahwist. Jahweh, like a man, had to go and see if he wanted to know. There is, however, some compensation in the fact that he can move about without difficulty--he can come down and go up. One might say, perhaps, that in J. , though Jahweh cannot _be_ everywhere, he can go to almost any place. All this is just like a child's thought. The child, at Christmas, can believe that, though Santa Claus cannot be everywhere, he can move about with wonderful facility, and, though he is a man, he is rather mysterious. The Jahwist's thought of God represents the childhood stage of the national life. 

Later, Mr. Williams writes:

 All this shows that at one time Jahweh was one of many gods; other gods were real gods. The Israelites themselves believed, for example, that Chemosh was as truly the god of the Moabites as Jahweh was theirs, and they speak of Chemosh giving territory to his people to inherit, just as Jahweh had given them territory (Judges xi. 24). 

 Just as a King of Israel would speak of Jahweh, the King of Moab speaks of Chemosh. His god sends him to battle. If he is defeated, the god is angry; if he succeeds, the god is favourable. And we have seen that there was a time when the Israelite believed Chemosh to be as real for Moab as Jahweh for himself. You find the same thing everywhere. The old Assyrian kings said exactly the same thing of the god Assur. 

 Assur sent them to battle, gave defeat or victory, as he thought fit. The history, however, is very obscure up to the time of Samuel, and uncertain for some time after. Samuel organised a Jahweh party. David worshipped Jahweh only, though he regards it as possible to be driven out of Jahweh's inheritance into that of other gods (1 Sam. Xxvi. 19). Solomon was not exclusively devoted to Jahweh, for he built places of worship for other deities as well. 

In the chapter on "Different Conceptions of Providence in the Bible, "Mr. Williams says:

 I have asked you to read Judges iii. 15-30, iv. 17-24, v. 24-31. The first is the story of Ehud getting at Eglon, Israel's enemy, by deceit, and killing him--an act followed by a great slaughter of Moabites. The second is the story of Jael pretending to play the friend to Sisera, and then murdering him. The third is the eulogy of Jael for doing so, as "blessed above women, " in the so-called Song of Deborah. Here, you see, Providence is only concerned with the fortunes of Israel; any deceit and any cruelty is right which brings success to this people. Providence is not concerned with morality; nor is it concerned with individuals, except as the individual serves or opposes Israel. 

In these two chapters Mr. Williams shows that the early conception ofGod was a very low one, and that it underwent considerable change. Infact, he says, with great candour and courage, that the early Bibleconception of God is one which we cannot now accept. 

With this I entirely agree. We cannot accept as the God of Creationthis savage idol of an obscure tribe, and we have renounced Him, and areashamed of Him, not because of any later divine revelation, but becausemankind have become too enlightened, too humane, and too honourable totolerate Jehovah. 

And yet the Christian religion adopted Jehovah, and called upon itsfollowers to worship and believe Him, on pain of torture, or death, orexcommunication in this world, and of hell-fire in the world to come. Itis astounding. 

But lest the evidence offered by Mr. Williams should not be consideredsufficient, I shall quote from another very useful book, _The Evolutionof the Idea of God_, by the late Grant Allen. In this book Mr. Allenclearly traces the origins of the various ideas of God, and we hear ofJehovah again, as a kind of tribal stone idol, carried about in a box orark. I will quote as fully as space permits:

 But Jahweh was an object of portable size, for, omitting for the present the descriptions in the Pentateuch--which seem likely to be of later date, and not too trustworthy, through their strenuous Jehovistic editing--he was carried from Shiloh in his ark to the front during the great battle with the Philistines at Ebenezer; and the Philistines were afraid, for they said, "A god is come into the camp. " But when the Philistines captured the ark, the rival god, Dagon, fell down and broke in pieces--so Hebrew legend declared--before the face of Jahweh. After the Philistines restored the sacred object, it rested for a time at Kirjath-jearim till David, on the capture of Jerusalem from the Jebusites, went down to that place to bring up from thence the ark of the god; and as it went, on a new cart, they "played before Jahweh on all manner of instruments, " and David himself "danced before Jahweh. ". .. The children of Israel in early times carried about with them a tribal god, Jahweh, whose presence in their midst was intimately connected with a certain ark or chest containing a stone object or objects. This chest was readily portable, and could be carried to the front in case of warfare. They did not know the origin of the object in the ark with certainty; but they regarded it emphatically as "Jahweh their god, which led them out of the land of Egypt. ". .. 

 I do not see, therefore, how we can easily avoid the obvious inference that Jahweh the god of the Hebrews, who later became sublimated and etherealised into the God of Christianity, was, in his origin, nothing more nor less than the ancestral sacred stone of the people of Israel, however sculptured, and, perhaps, in the very last resort of all, the unhewn monumental pillar of some early Semitic sheikh or chieftain. 

It was, indeed, as the Rev. C. E. Beeby says, in his book _Creed andLife_, a sad mistake of St. Augustine to tack this tribal fetish in hisbox on to the Christian religion as the All-Father, and Creator of theUniverse. For Jehovah was a savage war-god, and, as such, was impotentto save the tribe who worshipped him. 

But let us look further into the accounts of this original God ofthe Christians, and see how he comported himself, and let us put ourexamples under separate heads; thus:

Jehovah's Anger

Jahweh's bad temper is constantly displayed in the Bible. Jahweh madea man, whom he supposed to be perfect. When the man turned bad on hishands, Jahweh was angry, and cursed him and his seed for thousands ofyears. This vindictive act is accepted by the Apostle Paul as a naturalthing for a God of Love to do. 

Jahweh who had already cursed all the seed of Adam, was so angry aboutman's sin, in the time of Noah, that he decided to drown all the peopleon the earth except Noah's family, and not only that, but to drownnearly all the innocent animals as well. 

When the children of Israel, who had eaten nothing but manna for fortyyears, asked Jahweh for a change of diet, Jahweh lost his temper again, and sent amongst them "fiery serpents, " so that "much people of Israeldied. " But still the desire for other food remained, and the Jews weptfor meat. Then the Lord ordered Moses to speak to the people as follows:

 . .. The Lord will give you flesh, and ye shall eat. Ye shall not eat one day, nor two days, nor five days, neither ten days nor twenty days: but even a whole month, until it come out of your nostrils, and it be loathsome unto you; because that ye have despised the Lord, which is among you, and have wept before Him, saying, Why came we forth out of Egypt?

Then Jahweh sent immense numbers of quails, and the people ate them, andthe anger of their angry god came upon them in the act, and smote themwith "a very great plague. "

One more instance out of many. In the First Book of Samuel we aretold that on the return of Jahweh in his ark from the custody of thePhilistines some men of Bethshemesh looked into the ark. This madeJahweh so angry that he smote the people, and slew more than fiftythousand of them. 

The Injustice of Jehovah

I have already instanced Jahweh's injustice in cursing the seed of Adamfor Adam's sin, and in destroying the whole animal creation, except aselected few, because he was angry with mankind. In the Book of Samuelwe are told that Jahweh sent three years' famine upon the whole nationbecause of the sins of Saul, and that his wrath was only appeased by thehanging in cold blood of seven of Saul's sons for the evil committed bytheir father. 

In the Book of Joshua is the story of how Achan, having stolen somegold, was ordered to be burnt; and how Joshua and the Israelites took"Achan, and his sons, and his daughters, and his oxen, and his asses, and his sheep, and his tent, and all that he had, " and stoned them todeath, and "burnt them with fire. "

In the First Book of Chronicles the devil persuades David to take acensus of Israel. And again Jahweh acted in blind wrath and injustice, for he sent a pestilence, which slew seventy thousand of the people forDavid's fault. _But David he allowed to live. _ In Samuel we learn howJahweh, because of an attack upon the Israelites four hundred yearsbefore the time of speaking, ordered Saul to destroy the Amalekites, "man and woman, infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and ass. " AndSaul did as he was directed; but because he spared King Agag, the Lorddeprived him of the crown and made David king in his stead. 

The Immorality Of Jehovah

In the Second Book of Chronicles Jehovah gets Ahab, King of Israel, killed by putting lies into the mouths of the prophets:

 And the Lord said, Who shall entice Ahab, king of Israel, that he may go up and fall at Ramoth-gilead? And one spake, saying after this manner, and another saying after that manner. 

 Then there came out a spirit, and stood before the Lord, and said, I will entice him. And the Lord said unto him, Wherewith?

 And he said, I will go out, and be a lying spirit in the mouth of all his prophets. And the Lord said, Thou shalt entice him, and thou shalt also prevail: go out, and do even so. 

In Deuteronomy are the following orders as to conduct in war:

 When thou goest forth to war against thine enemies, and the Lord thy God hath delivered them into thine hands, and thou hast taken them captive. 

 And seest among the captives a beautiful woman, and hast a desire unto her, that thou wouldest have her to thy wife; Then thou shalt bring her home to thine house; and she shall shave her head, and pare her nails;

 And she shall put the raiment of her captivity from off her, and shall remain in thine house, and bewail her father and her mother a full month: and after that thou shalt go in unto her, and be her husband, and she shall be thy wife. 

 And it shall be, if thou have no delight in her, then thou shall let her go whither she will; but thou shalt not sell her at all for money, thou shalt not make merchandise of her, because thou hast humbled her. 

The children of Israel, having been sent out by Jahweh to punish theMidianites, "slew all the males. " But Moses was wrath, because they hadspared the women, and he ordered them to kill all the married women, andto take the single women "for themselves. " The Lord allowed thisbrutal act--which included the murder of all the male children--to beconsummated. There were sixteen thousand females spared, of which we aretold that "the Lord's tribute was thirty and two. "

The Cruelty Of Jehovah

I could find in the Bible more instances of Jahweh's cruelty andbarbarity and lack of mercy than I can find room for. 

In Deuteronomy, the Lord hardens the heart of Sihon, King of Hesbon, toresist the Jews, and then "utterly destroyed the men, women, and littleones of every city. "

In Leviticus, Jahweh threatens that if the Israelites will not reformhe will "walk contrary to them in fury, _and they shall eat the flesh oftheir own sons and daughters_. "

In Deuteronomy is an account of how Bashan was utterly destroyed, men, women, and children being slain. 

In the same book occur the following passages:

 When the Lord thy God shall bring thee into the land whither thou goest to possess it, and hath cast out many nations before thee, the Hittites, and the Girgashites, and the Amorites, and the Canaanites, and the Perizzites, and the Hivites, and the Jebusites, seven nations greater and mightier than thou;

 And when the Lord thy God shall deliver them before thee; thou shalt smite them, and utterly destroy them; thou shalt make no covenant with them, or show mercy unto them. 

That is from chapter vii. In chapter xx. There are further instructionsof a like horrible kind:

 Thus shalt thou do unto all the cities which are very far off from thee, which are not of the cities of these nations. 

 But of the cities of these people, which the Lord thy God doth give thee for an inheritance, thou shalt save alive nothing that breatheth:

 But thou shalt utterly destroy them; namely, the Hittites, and the Amorites, the Canaanites, and the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites, as the Lord thy God hath commanded thee. 

And here, in a long quotation, is an example of the mercy of Jahweh, andhis faculty for cursing:

 The Lord shall make the pestilence cleave unto thee, until he have consumed thee from off the land, whither thou goest to possess it. 

 The Lord shall smite thee with a consumption, and with a fever, and with an inflammation, and with an extreme burning, and with the sword, and with blasting, and with mildew; and they shall pursue thee until thou perish. 

 And thy heaven that is over thy head shall be brass, and the earth that is under thee shall be iron. 

 The Lord shall make the rain of thy land powder and dust: from heaven shall it come down upon thee, until thou be destroyed. 

 The Lord shall cause thee to be smitten before thine enemies: thou shalt go out one way against them, and flee seven ways before them: and shalt be removed into all the kingdoms of the earth. 

 And thy carcase shall be meat unto all fowls of the air, and unto the beasts of the earth, and no man shall fray them away. 

 The Lord will smite thee with the botch of Egypt, and with the emerods, and with the scab, and with the itch, whereof thou canst not be healed. 

 The Lord shall smite thee with madness, and blindness, and astonishment of heart:. .. 

 And he shall besiege thee in all thy gates, until thy high and fenced walls come down, wherein thou trustedst, throughout all thy land: and he shall besiege thee in all thy gates throughout all thy land, which the Lord thy God hath given thee. 

 And thou shalt eat the fruit of thine own body, the flesh of thy sons and of thy daughters, which the Lord thy God hath given thee, in the siege, and in the straightness wherewith thine enemies shall distress thee:

 So that the man that is tender among you, and very delicate, his eyes shall be evil toward his brother, and toward the wife of his bosom, and toward the remnant of his children which he shall leave. .. . 

 For a fire is kindled in mine anger, and shall burn into the lowest hell, and shall consume the earth with her increase, and set on fire the foundations of the mountains. 

 I will heap mischiefs upon them; I will spend mine arrows upon them. 

 They shall be burnt with hunger, and devoured with burning heat, and with bitter destruction: I will also send the teeth of beasts upon them, with the poison of serpents of the dust. 

 The sword without, and terror within, shall destroy both the young man and the virgin, the suckling also with the man of grey hairs. 

I think I have quoted enough to show that what I say of the Jewish GodJehovah is based on fact. But I could, if needful, heap proof on proof, for the books of the Old Testament reek with blood, and are horriblewith atrocities. 

Now, consider, is the God of whom we have been reading a God of love?Is He the Father of Christ? Is He not rather the savage idol of a savagetribe?

Man and his gods: what a tragi-comedy it is. Man has never seen one ofhis gods, never heard the voice of one of his gods, does not know theshape, expression, or bearing of one of his gods. Yet man has cursedman, hated man, hunted man, tortured man, and murdered man, for the sakeof shadows and fantasies of his own terror, or vanity, or desire. Wetiny, vain feeblenesses, we fussy ephemera; we sting each other, hateeach other, hiss at each other, for the sake of the monster gods ofour own delirium. As we are whirled upon our spinning, glowing planetthrough the unfathomable spaces, where myriads of suns, like goldenbees, gleam through the awful mystery of "the vast void night, " whatare the phantom gods to us? They are no more than the waterspouts on theocean, or the fleeting shadows on the hills. But the man, and the woman, and the child, and the dog with its wistful eyes; these know us, touchus, appeal to us, love us, serve us, grieve us. 

Shall we kill these, or revile them, or desert them, for the sake of thelurid ghost in the cloud, or the fetish in his box?

Do you think the bloodthirsty vindictive Jahweh, who prized nothing buthis own aggrandisement, and slew or cursed all who offended him, isthe Creator, the same who made the jewels of the Pleiades, and theresplendent mystery of the Milky Way?

Is this unspeakable monster, Jahweh, the Father of Christ? Is he the Godwho inspired Buddha, and Shakespeare, and Herschel, and Beethoven, andDarwin, and Plato, and Bach? No; not he. But in warfare and massacre, inrapine and in rape, in black revenge and deadly malice, in slavery, andpolygamy, and the debasement of women; and in the pomps, vanities, and greeds of royalty, of clericalism, and of usury and barter--wemay easily discern the influence of his ferocious and abominablepersonality. It is time to have done with this nightmare fetish of amurderous tribe of savages. We have no use for him. We have no criminalso ruthless nor so blood-guilty as he. He is not fit to touch ourcities, imperfect as we are. The thought of him defiles and nauseates. We should think him too horrible and pitiless for a devil, thisred-handed, black-hearted Jehovah of the Jews. 

And yet: in the inspired Book, in the Holy Bible, this awful creatureis still enshrined as "God the Father Almighty. " It is marvellous. Itis beyond the comprehension of any man not blinded by superstition, notwarped by prejudice and old-time convention. _This_ the God of Heaven?_This_ the Father of Christ? This the Creator of the Milky Way? No. He will not do. He is not big enough. He is not good enough. He is notclean enough. He is a spiritual nightmare: a bad dream born in savageminds of terror and ignorance and a tigerish lust for blood. 

But if He is not the Most High, if He is not the Heavenly Father, ifHe is not the King of kings, the Bible is not an inspired book, and itsclaims to divine revelation will not stand. THE HEROES OF THE BIBLE

Carlyle said we might judge a people by their heroes. The heroes of theBible, like the God of the Bible, are immoral savages. That is becausethe Bible is a compilation from the literature of savage and immoraltribes. 

Had the Bible been the word of God we should have found in it alofty and a pure ideal of God. We should not have found in it openapproval--divine approval--of such unspeakable savages as Moses, David, Solomon, Jacob, and Lot. 

Let us consider the lives of a few of the Bible heroes. We will beginwith Moses. 

We used to be taught in school that Moses was the meekest man the worldhas known: and we used to marvel. 

It is written in the second chapter of Exodus thus:

 And it came to pass in those days, when Moses was grown, that he went out unto his brethren, and looked on their burdens: and he spied an Egyptian smiting an Hebrew, one of his brethren. 

 And he looked this way and that way, and when he saw that there was no man, he slew the Egyptian, and hid him in the sand. 

 And when he went out the second day, behold two men of the Hebrews strove together: and he said to him that did the wrong, Wherefore smitest thou thy fellow? And he said, Who made thee a prince and a judge over us? intendest thou to kill me as thou killedst the Egyptian? And Moses feared, and said, Surely this thing is known. 

The meekest of men slays an Egyptian deliberately and in cold blood. Itmay be pleaded that the Egyptian was doing wrong; but the remarks of theHebrew suggest that even the countrymen of Moses looked upon his act ofviolence with disfavour. 

But the meekness of Moses is further illustrated in the laws attributedto him, in which the death penalty is almost as common as it was inEngland in the Middle Ages. 

Also, in the thirty-first chapter of Numbers we have the followingstory. The Lord commands Moses to "avenge the children of Israel of theMidianites, " after which Moses is to die. Moses sends out an army:

 And they warred against the Midianites, as the Lord commanded Moses; and they slew all the males. 

 And they slew the kings of Midian, besides the rest of them that were slain; namely Evi, and Rekem, and Zur, and Hur, and Reba, five kings of Midian: Balaam also the son of Beor they slew with the sword. 

 And the children of Israel took all the women of Midian captives, and their little ones, and took the spoil of all their cattle, and all their flocks, and all their goods. 

 And they burnt all their cities wherein they dwelt, and all their goodly castles, with fire. 

 And they took all the spoil, and all the prey, both of men and of beasts. .. . 

 And Moses was wroth with the officers of the host, with the captains over thousands, and captains over hundreds, which came from the battle. 

 And Moses said unto them, Have ye saved all the women alive?

 Behold, these called the children of Israel, through the counsel of Balaam, to commit trespass against the Lord in the matter of Peor, and there was a plague among the congregation of the Lord. 

 Now therefore kill every male among the little ones, and kill every woman that hath known man by lying with him. 

 But all the women children that have not known a man by lying with him, keep alive for yourselves. 

Moses is a patriarch of the Jews, and the meekest man. But suppose anypagan or Mohammedan general were to behave to a Christian city as Mosesbehaved to the people of Midian, what should we say of him? But God was_pleased_ with him. 

Further, in the sixteenth chapter of Numbers you will find how Moses theMeek treated Korah, Dathan, and Abiram for rebelling against himself andAaron; how the earth opened and swallowed these men and their familiesand friends, at a hint from Moses; and how the Lord slew with fire fromheaven two hundred and fifty men who were offering incense, and howafterwards there came a pestilence by which some fourteen thousandpersons died. 

Moses was a politician; his brother was a priest. I shall express noopinion of the pair; but I quote from the Book of Exodus, as follows:

 And when the people saw that Moses delayed to come down out of the mount, the people gathered themselves together unto Aaron, and said unto him, Up, make us gods, which shall go before us; for as for this Moses, the man that brought us up out of the land of Egypt, we wot not what is become of him. 

 And Aaron said unto them, Break off the golden earrings, which are in the ears of your wives, of your sons, and of your daughters, and bring them unto me. 

 And all the people brake off the golden earrings which were in their ears, and brought them unto Aaron. 

 And he received them at their hand, and fashioned it with a graving tool after he had made it a molten calf: and they said, These be thy gods, O Israel, which brought thee up out of the land of Egypt. 

 And when Aaron saw it, he built an altar before it; and Aaron made proclamation, and said, To-morrow is a feast to the Lord. 

 And they rose up early on the morrow, and offered burnt offerings, and brought peace offerings; and the people sat down to eat and to drink, and rose up to play. 

 And the Lord said unto Moses, Go, get thee down; for thy people which thou broughtest out of the land of Egypt, have corrupted themselves. 

Aaron, when asked by Moses why he has done this thing, tells a lie:

 And Moses said unto Aaron, What did this people unto thee, that thou hast brought so great a sin upon them?

 And Aaron said, Let not the anger of my lord wax hot; thou knowest the people, that they are set on mischief. 

 For they said unto me, Make us gods, which shall go before us: for as for this Moses, the man that brought us up out of the land of Egypt, we wot not what is become of him. 

 And I said unto them, Whosoever hath any gold, let them break it off. So they gave it to me: then I cast it into the fire, and there came out this calf. 

 And when Moses saw that the people were naked; (for Aaron had made them naked unto their shame among their enemies:)

 Then Moses stood in the gate of the camp, and said, Who is on the Lord's side? let him come unto me. And all the sons of Levi gathered themselves together unto him. 

 And he said unto them, Thus saith the Lord God of Israel, Put every man his sword by his side, and go in and out from gate to gate throughout the camp, and slay every man his brother, and every man his companion, and every man his neighbour. 

 And the children of Levi did according to the word of Moses; and there fell of the people that day about three thousand men. 

So much for this meek father of the Jews. 

And now let us consider David and his son Solomon, the greatest of theBible kings, and the ancestors of Jesus Christ. 

Judging King David by the Bible record, I should conclude that he was acruel, treacherous, and licentious savage. He lived for some time asa bandit, robbing the subjects of the King of Gath, who had given himshelter. When asked about this by the king, David lied. As to the natureof his conduct at this time, no room is left for doubt by the story ofNabal. David demanded blackmail of Nabal, and, on its being refused, setout with four hundred armed men to rob Nabal, and kill every male on hisestate. This he was prevented from doing by Nabal's wife, who came outto meet David with fine presents and fine words. _Ten days later Nabaldied, and David married his widow. _ See twenty-fifth chapter First Bookof Samuel. 

David had seven wives, and many children. One of his favourite wives wasBathsheba, the widow of Uriah. 

While Uriah was at "the front, " fighting for David, that king seducedhis wife, Bathsheba. To avoid discovery, David recalled Uriah from thewar, and bade him go home to his wife. Uriah said it would dishonourhim to seek ease and pleasure at home while other soldiers were enduringhardship at the front. The king then made the soldier drunk, but even socould not prevail. 

Therefore David sent word to the general to place Uriah in the front ofthe battle, where the fight was hardest. And Uriah was killed, and Davidmarried Bathsheba, who became the mother of Solomon. 

So much for David's honour. Now for a sample of his humanity. I quotefrom the twelfth chapter of the Second Book of Samuel:

 And Joab sent messengers to David, and said, I have fought against Rabbah, and have taken the city of waters. 

 Now therefore gather the rest of the people together, and encamp against the city, and take it: lest I take the city, and it be called after my name. 

 And David gathered all the people together, and went to Rabbah, and fought against it, and took it. 

 And he took their king's crown from off his head, the weight whereof was a talent of gold with the precious stones: and it was set on David's head. And he brought forth the spoil of the city in great abundance. 

 And he brought forth the people that were therein, and put them under saws, and under harrows of iron, and under axes of iron, and made them pass through the brick kiln: and thus did he unto all the cities of the children of Ammon. So David and all the people returned unto Jerusalem. 

But nothing in David's life became him so little as his leaving of it. Iquote from the second chapter of the First Book of Kings. David, on hisdeathbed, is speaking to Solomon, his son:

 Moreover thou knowest also what Joab the son of Zeruiah did to me, and what he did to the two captains of the host of Israel, unto Abner the son of Ner, and unto Amasa the son of Jether, whom he slew, and shed the blood of war in peace, and put the blood of war upon his girdle that was about his loins, and in his shoes that were on his feet. 

 Do therefore according to thy wisdom, and let not his hoar head go down to the grave in peace. 

 But show kindness unto the sons of Barzillai, the Gileadite, and let them be of those that eat at thy table; for so they came to me when I fled because of Absalom thy brother. 

 And, behold, thou hast with thee Shimei the son of Gera, a Benjamite of Bahurim, which cursed me with a grievous curse in the day when I went to Mahanaim: but he came down to meet me at Jordan, and I sware to him by the Lord, saying, I will not put thee to death with the sword. Now therefore hold him not guiltless: for thou art a wise man, and knowest what thou oughtest to do unto him; but his hoar head bring thou down to the grave with blood. 

These seem to have been the last words spoken by King David. Joab washis best general, and had many times saved David's throne. 

Solomon began by stealing the throne from his brother, the true heir. Then he murders the brother he has robbed, and disgraces and exiles apriest, who had been long a faithful friend to David, his father. Laterhe murders Joab at the altar, and brings down the hoar head of Shimei tothe grave with blood. 

After which he gets him much wisdom, builds a temple, and marries manywives. 

Much glamour has been cast upon the names of Solomon and David by theiralleged writings. But it is now acknowledged that David wrote few, ifany, of the Psalms, and that Solomon wrote neither Ecclesiastes nor theSong of Songs, though some of the Proverbs may be his. 

It seems strange to me that such men as Moses, David, and Solomon shouldbe glorified by Christian men and women who execrate Henry VIII. AndRichard III. As monsters. 

My pet aversion amongst the Bible heroes is Jacob; but Abraham and Lotwere pitiful creatures. 

Jacob cheated his brother out of the parental blessing, and lied aboutGod, and lied to his father to accomplish his end. He robbed hisbrother of his birthright by trading on his necessity. He fled from hisbrother's wrath, and went to his uncle Laban. Here he cheated his uncleout of his cattle and his wealth, and at last came away with his twocousins as his wives, one of whom had stolen her own father's gods. 

Abraham was the father of Ishmael by the servant-maid Hagar. At hiswife's demand he allowed Hagar and Ishmael to be driven into the desertto die. And here is another pretty story of Abraham. He and his familyare driven forth by a famine:

 And it came to pass, when he was come near to enter into Egypt, that he said unto Sarai, his wife, Behold now, I know that thou art a fair woman to look upon:

 Therefore it shall come to pass, when the Egyptians shall see thee, that they shall say, This is his wife: and they will kill me, but they will save thee alive. 

 Say, I pray thee, thou are my sister; that it may be well with me for thy sake; and my soul shall live because of thee. 

 And it came to pass, that, when Abram was come into Egypt the Egyptians beheld the woman that she was very fair. 

 The princes also of Pharaoh saw her, and commended her before Pharaoh: and the woman was taken into Pharaoh's house. 

 And he entreated Abram well for her sake: and he had sheep, and oxen, and he-asses, and menservants, and maidservants, and she-asses, and camels. 

 And the Lord plagued Pharaoh and his house with great plagues because of Sarai, Abram's wife. 

 And Pharaoh called Abram, and said, What is this that thou hast done unto me? why didst thou not tell me that she was thy wife?

 Why saidst thou, She is my sister? so I might have taken her to me to wife: now therefore behold thy wife, take her, and go thy way. 

 And Pharaoh commanded his men concerning him: and they sent him away, and his wife, and all that he had. 

But Abraham was so little ashamed of himself that he did the same thingagain, many years afterwards, and Abimelech King of Gerar, behaved tohim as nobly as did King Pharaoh on the former occasion. 

The story of Lot is too disgusting to repeat. But what are we to thinkof his offering his daughters to the mob, and of his subsequent conduct?

And what of Noah, who got drunk, and then cursed the whole of his sons'descendants for ever, because Ham had seen him in his shame?

Joseph seems to me to have been anything but an admirable character, and I do not see how his baseness in depriving the Egyptians of theirliberties and their land by a corner in wheat can be condoned. Jacobrobbed his brother of his birthright by trading on his hunger; Josephrobbed a whole people in the same way. 

Samson was a dissolute ruffian and murderer, who in these days would behanged as a brigand. 

Reuben committed incest. Simeon and Levi were guilty of treachery andmassacre. Judah was guilty of immorality and hypocrisy. 

Joshua was a Jewish general of the usual type. When he captured a cityhe murdered every man, woman, and child within its walls. Here is oneexample from the tenth chapter of the Book of Joshua:

 And Joshua returned, and all Israel with him, to Debir; and fought against it:

 And he took it, and the king thereof; and all the cities thereof; and they smote them with the edge of the sword, and utterly destroyed all the souls that were therein; he left none remaining: as he had done to Hebron, so he did to Debir, and to the king thereof; as he had done also to Libnah, and to her king. 

 So Joshua smote all the country of the hills, and of the south, and of the vale, and of the springs, and all their kings: he left none remaining, but utterly destroyed all that breathed, as the Lord God of Israel commanded. 

 And Joshua smote them from Kadesh-barnea even unto Gaza, and all the country of Goshen, even unto Gibeon. 

Elijah the prophet was of the same uncompromising kind. After he hadmocked the god Baal, and had triumphed over him by miracle, he said tothe Israelites:

 "Take the prophets of Baal. _Let not one of them escape. _" And they took them, and Elijah brought them down to the brook Kishon, and slew them there. 

Now, there were 450 of the priests of Baal, all of whom Elijah theprophet had killed in cold blood. 

And here is a story about Elisha, another great prophet of the Jews. Iquote from the second chapter of the Second Book of Kings. 

 And he went up from thence unto Bethel: and as he was going up by the way, there came forth little children out of the city, and mocked him, and said unto him, Go up, thou bald head; go up, thou bald head. 

 And he turned back, and looked on them, and cursed them in the name of the Lord. And there came forth two she bears out of the wood, and tare forty and two children of them. 

After this, Elisha assists King Jehoram and two other kings to waste andslaughter the Moabites, who had refused to pay tribute. You may read thehorrible story for yourselves in the third chapter of the Second Bookof Kings. There was the usual massacre, but this time the trees were cutdown and the wells choked up. 

Later, Elisha cures a man of leprosy, and refuses a reward. But hisservant runs after the man, and gets two talents of silver and somegarments under false pretences. When Elisha hears of this crime, hestrikes the servant with leprosy, _and all his seed for ever_. 

Now, it is not necessary for me to harp upon the conduct of these men ofGod: what I want to point out is that these cruel and ignorant savageshave been saddled upon the Christian religion as heroes and as models. 

Even to-day the man who called David, or Moses, or Elisha by his propername in an average Christian household would be regarded as a wickedblasphemer. 

And yet, what would a Christian congregation say of an "Infidel" whocommitted half the crimes and outrages of any one of those Bible heroes?

Do you know what the Christians call Tom Paine? To this day therespectable Christian Church or chapel goer shudders at the name of the"infidel, " Tom Paine. But in point of honour, of virtue, of humanity, and general good character, not one of the Bible heroes I have mentionedwas worthy to clean Tom Paine's shoes. 

Now, it states in the Bible that God loved Jacob, and hated Esau. Esauwas a _man_, and against him the Bible does not chronicle one bad act. But God _hated_ Esau. 

And it states in the Bible that Elijah went up in a chariot of fire toheaven. 

And in the New Testament Christ or His apostles speak of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob as being in heaven. Paul speaks of David as a "man after God'sown heart"; Elijah and Moses come down from heaven, and appear talkingwith Christ; and, in Hebrews, Paul praises Samuel, Jephtha, Samson, andDavid. 

My point is not that these heroes were bad men, but that, in a bookalleged to be the word of God, they are treated as heroes. 

I have been accused of showing irreverence towards these barbarouskings and priests. Irreverence! It is like charging a historian withdisrespect to the memory of Nero. 

I have been accused of having an animus against Moses, and David, andall the rest. I have no animus against any man, nor do I presume tocensure my fellow creatures. I only wish to show that these favouritesof God were not admirable characters, and that therefore the Biblecannot be a divine revelation. As for animus: I do not believe any ofthese men ever existed. I regard them as myths. Should one be angry witha myth? I should as soon think of being angry with Bluebeard, or theGiant that Jack slew. 

But I should be astonished to hear that Bluebeard had been promoted tothe position of a holy patriarch, and a model of all the virtues for theemulation of innocent children in a modern Sunday school. And I think itis time the Church considered itself, and told the truth about Jehovah, and Moses, and Joshua, and Samson. 

If you fail to agree with me I can only accept your decision withrespectful astonishment. 

THE BOOK OF BOOKS

Floods of sincere, but unmerited, adulation have been lavished on theHebrew Bible. The world has many books of higher moral and literaryvalue. It would be easy to compile, from the words of Heretics andInfidels, a purer and more elevated moral guide than this "Book ofBooks. "

The ethical code of the Old Testament is no longer suitable as the ruleof life. The moral and intellectual advance of the human race has leftit behind. 

The historical books of the Old Testament are largely pernicious, andoften obscene. These books describe, without disapproval, polygamy, slavery, concubinage, lying and deceit, treachery, incest, murder, warsof plunder, wars of conquest, massacre of prisoners of war, massacre ofwomen and of children, cruelty to animals; and such immoral, dishonest, shameful, or dastardly deeds as those of Solomon, David, Abraham, Jacob, and Lot. 

The ethical code of the Old Testament does not teach the sacrednessof truth, does not teach religious tolerance, nor humanity, nor humanbrotherhood, nor peace. 

Its morality is crude. Much that is noblest in modern thought has noplace in the "Book of Books. " For example, take these words of HerbertSpencer's:

 Absolute morality is the regulation of conduct in such way that pain shall not be inflicted. 

There is nothing so comprehensive, nothing so deep as that in the Bible. That covers all the moralities of the Ten Commandments, and all theEthics of the Law and the Prophets, in one short sentence, and leaves ahandsome surplus over. 

Note next this, from Kant:

 What are the aims which are at the same time duties? They are the perfecting of ourselves, and the happiness of others. 

I do not know a Bible sentence so purely moral as that. And in what partof the Bible shall we find a parallel to the following sentence, from anAgnostic newspaper:

 Freedom of thought, freedom of speech, freedom of action are helps to the children of men in their search for wisdom. 

Tom Paine left Moses and Isaiah centuries behind when he wrote:

 The world is my country: to do good my religion. 

Robert Ingersoll, another "Infidel, " surpassed Solomon when he said:

 The object of life is to be happy, the place to be happy is here, the time to be happy is now, the way to be happy is by making others happy. 

Which simple sentence contains more wisdom than all the pessimism ofthe King of kings. And again, Ingersoll went beyond the sociologicalconception of the Prophets when he wrote:

 And let us do away for ever with the idea that the care of the sick, of the helpless, is a charity. It is not a charity: it is a duty. It is something to be done for our own sakes. It is no more a charity than it is to pave or light the streets, no more a charity than it is to have a system of sewers. It is all for the purpose of protecting society, and civilising ourselves. 

I will now put together a few sayings of Pagans and Unbelievers as anexample of non-biblical morality:

 Truth is the pole-star of morality, by it alone can we steer. Can there be a more horrible object in existence than an eloquent man not speaking the truth? Abhor dissimulation. To know the truth and fear to speak it: that is cowardice. One thing here is worth a good deal, to pass thy life in truth and justice, with a benevolent disposition, even to liars and unjust men. 

 He who acts unjustly acts unjustly to himself, for he makes himself bad. The practice of religion involves as a first principle a loving compassionate heart for all creatures. Religion means self-sacrifice. A loving heart is the great requirement: not to oppress, not to destroy, not to exalt oneself by treading down others; but to comfort and befriend those in suffering. Like as a mother at the risk of her life watches over her only child, so also let every one cultivate towards all beings a bounteous friendly mind. 

 Man's great business is to improve his mind. What is it to you whether another is guilty or guiltless? Come, friend, atone for your own guilt. 

 Virtue consists in contempt for death. Why should we cling to this perishable body? In the eye of the wise the only thing it is good for is to benefit one's fellow creatures. 

 Treat others as you wish them to treat you. Do not return evil for evil. Our deeds, whether good or evil, follow us like shadows. 

 Never will man attain full moral stature until woman is free. Cherish and reverence little children. Let the slave cease, and the master of slaves cease. 

 To conquer your enemy by force increases his resentment. Conquer him by love and you will have no after-grief. Victory breeds hatred. 

 I look for no recompense--not even to be born in heaven-- but seek the benefit of men, to bring back those who have gone astray, to enlighten those living in dismal error, to put away all sources of sorrow and pain in the world. 

 I cannot have pleasure while another grieves and I have power to help him. 

Those who regard the Bible as the "Book of Books, " and believe it to beinvaluable and indispensable to the world, must have allowed their earlyassociations or religious sentiment to mislead them. 

Carlyle is more moral than Jeremiah, Ruskin is superior to Isaiah;Ingersoll, the Atheist, is a nobler moralist and a better man thanMoses; Plato and Marcus Aurelius are wiser than Solomon; Sir ThomasMore, Herbert Spencer, Thoreau, Matthew Arnold, and Emerson are worthmore to us than all the Prophets. 

I hold a high opinion of the literary quality of some parts of the OldTestament; but I seriously think that the loss of the first fourteenbooks would be a distinct gain to the world. For the rest, there isconsiderable literary and some ethical value in Job (which is notJewish), in Ecclesiastes (which is Pagan), in the Song of Solomon (whichis an erotic love song), and in parts of Isaiah, Proverbs, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and Amos. But I don't think any of these books equal to HenryGeorge's _Progress and Poverty_, or William Morris' _News from Nowhere_. Of course, I am not blaming Moses and the Prophets: they could only tellus what they knew. 

The Ten Commandments have been effusively praised. There is nothingin those Commandments to restrain the sweater, the rack-renter, thejerry-builder, the slum landlord, the usurer, the liar, the libertine, the gambler, the drunkard, the wife-beater, the slave-owner, thereligious persecutor, the maker of wheat and cotton rings, thefox-hunter, the bird-slayer, the ill-user of horses and dogs and cattle. There is nothing about "cultivating towards all beings a bounteousfriendly mind, " nothing about liberty of speech and conscience, nothingabout the wrong of causing pain, nor the virtue of causing happiness;nothing against anger or revenge, nor in favour of mercy andforgiveness. Of the Ten Commandments, seven are designed as defencesof the possessions and prerogatives of God and the property-owner. As amoral code the Commandments amount to very little. 

Moreover, the Bible teaches erroneous theories of history, theology, andscience. 

It relates childish stories of impossible miracles as facts. 

It presents a low idea of God. 

It gives an erroneous account of the relations between God and man. 

It fosters international hatred. 

It fosters religious pride and fanaticism. 

Its penal code is horrible. 

Its texts have been used for nearly two thousand years in defence ofwar, slavery, religious persecution, and the slaughter of "witches" andof "sorcerers. "

In a hundred wars the Christian soldiery have perpetrated massacre andoutrage with the blood-bolstered phrases of the Bible on their lips. 

In a thousand trials the cruel witness of Moses has sent innocent womento a painful death. 

And always when an apology or a defence of the barbarities of humanslavery was needed it was sought for and found in the Holy Bible. 

Renan says:

 In all ancient Christian literature there is not one word that tells the slave to revolt, or that tells the master to liberate the slave, or even that touches the problem of public right which arises out of slavery. 

Mr. Remsburg, in his book, _The Bible_, shows that in America slaverywas defended by the churches on the authority of the sacred Scriptures. He says:

 The Fugitive Slave law, which made us a nation of kidnappers, derived its authority from the New Testament. Paul had established a precedent by returning a fugitive slave to his master. 

Mr. Remsburg quotes freely from the sermons and speeches of Christianministers to show the influence of the Bible in upholding slavery. Hereare some of his many examples:

 The Rev. Alexander Campbell wrote: "There is not one verse in the Bible inhibiting slavery, but many regulating it. It is not, then, we conclude, immoral. "

 Said the Rev. Mr. Crawder, Methodist, of Virginia: "Slavery is not only countenanced, permitted, and regulated by the Bible, but it was positively instituted by God Himself. "

I shall quote no more on the subject of slavery. That inhumaninstitution was defended by the churches, and the appeal of the churcheswas to the Bible. 

As to witchcraft, the Rev. T. Rhondda Williams says that in one centurya hundred thousand women were killed for witchcraft in Germany. Mr. Remsburg offers still more terrible evidence. He says:

 One thousand were burned at Como in one year; eight hundred were burned at Wurzburg in one year; five hundred perished at Geneva in three months; eighty were burned in a single village of Savoy; nine women were burned in a single fire at Leith; sixty were hanged in Suffolk; three thousand were legally executed during one session of Parliament, while thousands more were put to death by mobs; Remy, a Christian judge, executed eight hundred; six hundred were burned by one bishop at Bamburg; Bogult burned six hundred at St. Cloud; thousands were put to death by the Lutherans of Norway and Sweden; Catholic Spain butchered thousands; Presbyterians were responsible for the death of four thousand in Scotland; fifty thousand were sentenced to death during the reign of Francis I. ; seven thousand died at Treves; the number killed in Paris in a few months is declared to have been "almost infinite. " Dr. Sprenger places the total number of executions for witchcraft in Europe at _nine millions_. For centuries witch fires burned in nearly every town of Europe, and this Bible text, "Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live, " was the torch that kindled them. 

Count up the terrible losses in the many religious wars of the world, add in the massacres, the martyrdoms, the tortures for religion'ssake; put to the sum the long tale of witchcraft murders; remember whatslavery has been; and then ask yourselves whether the Book of Booksdeserves all the eulogy that has been laid upon it. 

I believe that to-day all manner of evil passions are fostered, andall the finer motions of the human spirit are retarded, by the habit ofreading those savage old books of the Jews as the word of God. 

I do not think the Bible, in its present form, is a fit book to placein the hands of children, and it certainly is not a fit book to send outfor the "salvation" of savage and ignorant people. 

OUR HEAVENLY FATHER

The Rev. T. Rhondda Williams, in _Shall We Understand the Bible?_ showsvery clearly the gradual evolution of the idea of God amongst the Jewsfrom a lower to a higher conception. 

Having dealt with the lower conception, let us now consider the higher. 

The highest conception of God is supposed to be the Christian conceptionof God as a Heavenly Father. This conception credits the Supreme Beingwith supernal tenderness and mercy--"God is Love. " That is a verylofty, poetical, and gratifying conception, but it is open to one fatalobjection--it is not true. 

For this Heavenly Father, whose nature is Love, is also the All-knowingand All-powerful Creator of the world. 

Being All-powerful and All-knowing, He has power, and had always power, to create any kind of world He chose. Being a God of Love, He would notchoose to create a world in which hate and pain should have a place. 

But there is evil in the world. There has been always evil in the world. Why did a good and loving God allow evil to enter the world? BeingAll-Powerful and All-knowing, He could have excluded evil. Being good, He would hate evil. Being a God of Love He would wish to exclude evil. Why, then, did He permit evil to enter?

The world is full of sorrow, of pain, of hatred and crime, and strifeand war. All life is a perpetual deadly struggle for existence. The lawof nature is the law of prey. 

If God is a tender, loving, All-knowing, and All-powerful HeavenlyFather, why did He build a world on cruel lines? Why does He permit eviland pain to continue? Why does He not give the world peace, and health, and happiness, and virtue?

In the New Testament Christ compares God, as Heavenly Father to Man, toan earthly father, representing God as more benevolent and tender: "Howmuch more your Father which is in heaven?"

We may, then, on the authority of the Founder of Christianity, comparethe Christian Heavenly Father with the human father. And in doing sowe shall find that Christ was not justified in claiming that God is abetter father to Man than Man is to his own children. We shall find thatthe poetical and pleasing theory of a Heavenly Father, and God of Loveis a delusion. 

"Who among you, if his child asks bread, will give him a stone?" Noneamongst us. But in the great famines, as in India and Russia, God allowsmillions to die of starvation. These His children pray to Him for bread. He leaves them to die. Is it not so?

God made the sunshine, sweet children, gracious women; green hills, blueseas; music, laughter, love, humour; the palm tree, the hawthorn buds, the "sweet-briar wind"; the nightingale and the rose. 

But God made the earthquake, the volcano, the cyclone; the shark, the viper, the tiger, the octopus, the poison berry; and the deadlyloathsome germs of cholera, consumption, typhoid, smallpox, and theblack death. God has permitted famine, pestilence, and war. He haspermitted martyrdom, witch-burning, slavery, massacre, torture, andhuman sacrifice. He has for millions of years looked down upon theignorance, the misery, the crimes of men. He has been at once theauthor and the audience of the pitiful, unspeakable, long-drawn andfar-stretched tragedy of earthly life. Is it not so?

For thousands of years--perhaps for millions of years--the generationsof men prayed to God for help, for comfort, for guidance. God was deaf, and dumb, and blind. 

Men of science strove to read the riddle of life; to guide and tosuccour their fellow creatures. The priests and followers of Godpersecuted and slew these men of science. God made no sign. Is it notso?

To-day men of science are trying to conquer the horrors of cancer andsmallpox, and rabies and consumption. But not from Burning Bush nor HolyHill, nor by the mouth of priest or prophet does our Heavenly Fatherutter a word of counsel or encouragement. 

Millions of innocent dumb animals have been subjected to the horribletortures of vivisection in the frantic endeavours of men to find away of escape from the fell destroyers of the human race; and God hasallowed the piteous brutes to suffer anguish, when He could have savedthem by revealing to Man the secret for which he so cruelly sought. Isit not so?

"Nature is red in beak and claw. " On land and in sea the animal creationchase and maim, and slay and devour each other. The beautiful swallow onthe wing devours the equally beautiful gnat. The graceful flying-fish, like a fair white bird, goes glancing above the blue magnificence ofthe tropical seas. His flight is one of terror; he is pursued by theravenous dolphin. The ichneumon-fly lays its eggs under the skin of thecaterpillar. The eggs are hatched by the warmth of the caterpillar'sblood. They produce a brood of larvae which devour the caterpillaralive. A pretty child dances on the village green. Her feet crushcreeping things: there is a busy ant or blazoned beetle, with its backbroken, writhing in the dust, unseen. A germ flies from a stagnantpool, and the laughing child, its mother's darling, dies dreadfullyof diphtheria. A tidal wave rolls landward, and twenty thousand humanbeings are drowned, or crushed to death. A volcano bursts suddenly intoeruption, and a beautiful city is a heap of ruins, and its inhabitantsare charred or mangled corpses. And the Heavenly Father, who is Love, has power to save, and makes no sign. Is it not so?

Blindness, epilepsy, leprosy, madness, fall like a dreadful blightupon a myriad of God's children, and the Heavenly Father gives neitherguidance nor consolation. Only man helps man. Only man pities; only man_tries_ to save. 

Millions of harmless women have been burned as witches. God, ourHeavenly Father, has power to save them. He allows them to suffer anddie. 

God knew that those women were being tortured and burnt on a falsecharge. He knew that the infamous murders were in His name. He knewthat the whole fabric of crime was due to the human reading of His"revelation" to man. He could have saved the women; He could haveenlightened their persecutors; He could have blown away the terror, thecruelty, and the ignorance of His priests and worshippers with a breath. 

And He was silent. He allowed the armies of poor women to be torturedand murdered in His name. Is it not so?

Will you, then, compare the Heavenly Father with a father among men? Isthere any earthly father who would allow his children to suffer as Godallows Man to suffer? If a man had knowledge and power to prevent orto abolish war and ignorance and hunger and disease; if a man had theknowledge and the power to abolish human error and human suffering andhuman wrong and did not do it, we should call him an inhuman monster, acruel fiend. Is it not so?

But God has knowledge and power, and we are asked to regard Him as aHeavenly Father, and a God of infinite wisdom, and infinite mercy, andinfinite love. 

The Christians used to tell us, and some still tell us, that thisHeavenly Father of infinite love and mercy would doom the creatures Hehad made to Hell--for their _sins_. That, having created us imperfect, He would punish our imperfections with everlasting torture in a lakeof everlasting fire. They used to tell us that this good God allowed aDevil to come on earth and tempt man to his ruin. They used to say thisDevil would win more souls than Christ could win: that there should be"more goats than sheep. "

To escape from these horrible theories, the Christians (some of them)have thrown over the doctrines of Hell and the Devil. 

But without a Devil how can we maintain a belief in a God of love andkindness? With a good God, and a bad God (or Devil), one might getalong; for then the good might be ascribed to God, and the evil to theDevil. And that is what the old Persians did in their doctrine of Ormuzdand Ahrimann. But with no Devil the belief in a merciful and lovingHeavenly Father becomes impossible. 

If God blesses, who curses? If God saves, who damns? If God helps, whoharms?

This belief in a "Heavenly Father, " like the belief in the perfection ofthe Bible, drives its votaries into weird and wonderful positions. Forexample, a Christian wrote to me about an animal called the aye-aye. Hesaid:

 There is a little animal called an aye-aye. This animal has two hands. Each hand has five fingers. The peculiar thing about these hands is that the middle finger is elongated a great deal--it is about twice as long as the others. This is to enable it to scoop a special sort of insect out of special cracks in the special trees it frequents. Now, how did the finger begin to elongate? A little lengthening would be absolutely no good, as the cracks in the trees are 2 inches or 3 inches deep. It must have varied from the ordinary length to one twice as long at once. There is no other way. Where does natural selection come in? In this, as in scores of other instances, it shows the infinite goodness of God. 

Now, how does the creation of this long finger show the "infinitegoodness of God"? The infinite goodness of God to whom? To the animalwhose special finger enables him to catch the insect? Then what aboutthe insect? Where does he come in? Does not the long finger of theanimal show the infinite badness of God to the insect?

What of the infinite goodness of God in teaching the cholera microbe tofeed on man? What of the infinite goodness of God in teaching the grubof the ichneumon-fly to eat up the cabbage caterpillar alive?

I see no infinite goodness here, but only the infinite foolishness ofsentimental superstition. 

If a man fell into the sea, and saw a shark coming, I cannot fancy himpraising the infinite goodness of God in giving the shark so large amouth. The greyhound's speed is a great boon to the greyhound; but it isno boon to the hare. 

But this theory of a merciful, and loving Heavenly Father is vital tothe Christian religion. 

Destroy the idea of the Heavenly Father, who is Love, and Christianityis a heap of ruins. For there is no longer a benevolent God to build ourhopes upon; and Jesus Christ, whose glory is a newer revelation of God, has not revealed Him truly, as He is, but only as Man fain would believeHim to be. 

And I claim that this Heavenly Father is a myth: that in face of aknowledge of life and the world we cannot reasonably believe in Him. 

There is no Heavenly Father watching tenderly over us, His children. Heis the baseless shadow of a wistful human dream. 

PRAYER AND PRAISE

As to prayer and praise. 

Christians believe that God is just, that He is all-wise andall-knowing. 

If God is just, will He not do justice without being entreated of men?

If God is all wise, and knows all that happens, will He not know what isfor man's good better than man can tell Him?

If He knows better than Man knows what is best for man, and if He is ajust God and a loving Father, will He not do right without any advice orreminder from Man?

If He is a just God, will He give us less than justice unless we pray toHim; or will He give us more than justice because we importune Him?

To ask God for His love, or for His grace, or for any worldly benefitseems to me unreasonable. 

If God knows we need His grace, or if He knows we need some help orbenefit, He will give it to us if we deserve it. If we do not deserveit, or do not need what we ask for, it would not be just nor wise of Himto grant our prayer. 

To pray to God is to insult Him. What would a man think if his childrenknelt and begged for his love or for their daily bread? He would thinkhis children showed a very low conception of their father's sense ofduty and affection. 

Then Christians think God answers prayer. How can they think that?

In the many massacres, and famines, and pestilences has God answeredprayer? As we learn more and more of the laws of Nature we put less andless reliance on the effect of prayer. 

When fever broke out, men used to run to the priest: now they run tothe doctor. In old times when plague struck a city, the priests marchedthrough the streets bearing the Host, and the people knelt to pray;now the authorities serve out soap and medicine and look sharply to thedrains. 

And yet there still remains a superstitious belief in prayer, and mostsurprising are some of its manifestations. 

For instance, I went recently to see Wilson Barrett in _The SilverKing_. Wilfred Denver, a drunken gambler, follows a rival to kill him. He does not kill him, but he thinks he has killed him. He flies fromjustice. 

Now this man Denver leaves London by a fast train for Liverpool. BetweenLondon and Rugby he jumps out of the train, and, after limping manymiles, goes to an inn, orders dinner and a private room, and asks forthe evening paper. 

While he waits for the paper he kneels down and prays to God, for thesake of wife and children, to allow him to escape. 

And, directly after, in comes a girl with a paper, and Denver readshow the train he rode in caught fire, and how all the passengers in thefirst three coaches were burnt to cinders. 

Down goes Denver on his knees, _and thanks God for listening to hisprayer_. 

And not a soul in the audience laughed. God, to allow a murderer toescape from the law, has burnt to death a lot of innocent passengers, and Wilfred Denver is piously grateful. And nobody laughed!

But Christians tell us they _know_ that prayer is efficacious. And tothem it may be so in some measure. Perhaps, if a man pray for strengthto resist temptation, or for guidance in time of perplexity, and if hehave _faith_, his prayer shall avail him something. 

Why? Not because God will hear, or answer, but for two natural reasons. 

First, the act of prayer is emotional, and so calms the man who prays, for much of his excitement is worked off. It is so when a sick mangroans: it eases his pain. It is so when a woman weeps: it relieves herovercharged heart. 

Secondly, the act of prayer gives courage or confidence, in proportionto the faith of him that prays. If a man has to cross a deep ravine bya narrow plank, and if his heart fail him, and he prays for God'shelp, believing that he will get it, he will walk his plank with moreconfidence. If he prays for help against a temptation, he is reallyappealing to his own better nature; he is rousing up his dormant facultyof resistance and desire for righteousness, and so rises from his kneesin a sweeter and calmer frame of mind. 

For myself, I never pray, and never feel the need of prayer. And thoughI admit, as above, that it may have some present advantage, yet Iam inclined to think that it is bought too dearly at the price of adecrease in our self-reliance. I do not think it is good for a man to bealways asking for help, for benefits, or for pardon. It seems to me thatsuch a habit must tend to weaken character. 

"He prayeth best who loveth best all things both great and small. " Itis better to work for the general good, to help our weak or friendlessfellow-creatures, than to pray for our own grace, or benefit, or pardon. Work is nobler than prayer, and far more dignified. 

And as to praise, I cannot imagine the Creator of the Universe wantingmen's praise. Does a wise man prize the praise of fools? Does a strongman value the praise of the weak? Does any man of wisdom and power carefor the applause of his inferiors? We make God into a puny man, a manfull of vanity and "love of approbation, " when we confer on Him theimpertinence of our prayers and our adoration. 

While there is so much grief and misery and unmerited and avoidablesuffering in the world, it is pitiful to see the Christian millionssquander such a wealth of time and energy and money on praise andprayer. 

If you were a human father, would you rather your children praised youand neglected each other, or that brother should stand by brother andsister cherish sister? Then "how much more your Father which is inHeaven?"

Twelve millions of our British people on the brink of starvation! InChristian England hundreds of thousands of thieves, knaves, idlers, drunkards, cowards, and harlots; and fortunes spent on churches and thepraise of God. 

If the Bible had not habituated us to the idea of a barbarous God whowas always ravenous for praise and sacrifice, we could not tolerate themockery of "Divine Service" by well-fed and respectable Christians inthe midst of untaught ignorance, unchecked roguery, unbridled vice, and the degradation and defilement and ruin of weak women and littlechildren. Seven thousand pounds to repair a chapel to the praise andglory of God, and under its very walls you may buy a woman's soul for afew pieces of silver. 

I cannot imagine a God who would countenance such a religion. I cannotunderstand why Christians are not ashamed of it. To me the nationalaffectation of piety and holiness resembles a white shirt put on over adirty skin. 

THE NEW TESTAMENT THE RESURRECTION

VALUE OF THE EVIDENCE IN LAW

Christianity as a religion must, I am told, stand or fall with theclaims that Christ was divine, and that He rose from the dead andascended into Heaven. Archdeacon Wilson, in a sermon at Rochdale, described the divinity and Resurrection of Christ as "the centraldoctrines of Christianity. " The question we have to consider here is thequestion of whether these central doctrines are true. 

Christians are fond of saying that the Resurrection is one of the bestattested facts in history. I hold that the evidence for the Resurrectionwould not be listened to in a court of law, and is quite inadmissible ina court of cool and impartial reason. 

First of all, then, what is the fact which this evidence is supposed toprove? The fact alleged is a most marvellous miracle, and one upon whicha religion professed by some hundreds of millions of human beings isfounded. The fact alleged is that nearly two thousand years ago God cameinto the world as a man, that He was known as Jesus of Nazareth, that Hewas crucified, died upon the cross, was laid in a tomb, and on the thirdday came to life again, left His tomb, and subsequently ascended intoHeaven. 

The fact alleged, then, is miraculous and important, and the evidence inproof of such a fact should be overwhelmingly strong. 

We should demand stronger evidence in support of a thing alleged to havehappened a thousand years ago than we should demand in support of a factalleged to have happened yesterday. 

The Resurrection is alleged to have happened eighteen centuries ago. 

We should demand stronger evidence in support of an alleged fact whichwas outside human experience than we should demand in support of a factcommon to human experience. 

The incarnation of a God in human form, the resurrection of a man or aGod from the dead, are facts outside human experience. 

We should demand stronger evidence in support of an alleged fact whenthe establishment of that fact was of great importance to millions ofmen and women, than we should demand when the truth or falsity of thealleged fact mattered very little to anybody. 

The alleged fact of the Resurrection is of immense importance tohundreds of millions of people. 

We should demand stronger evidence in support of an alleged fact whenmany persons were known to have strong political, sentimental, ormercenary motives for proving the fact alleged, than we should demandwhen no serious interest would be affected by a decision for or againstthe fact alleged. 

There are millions of men and women known to have strongmotives--sentimental, political, or mercenary--for proving the verity ofthe Resurrection. 

On all these counts we are justified in demanding the strongest ofevidence for the alleged fact of Christ's resurrection from the dead. 

The more abnormal or unusual the occurrence, the weightier should be theevidence of its truth. 

If a man told a mixed company that Captain Webb swam the EnglishChannel, he would have a good chance of belief. 

The incident happened but a few years ago; it was reported in all thenewspapers of the day. It is not in itself an impossible thing for a manto do. 

But if the same man told the same audience that five hundred years agoan Irish sailor had swum from Holyhead to New York, his statement wouldbe received with less confidence. 

Because five centuries is a long time, there is no credible record ofthe feat, and we _cannot believe_ any man capable of swimming about fourthousand miles. 

Let us look once more at the statement made by the believers in theResurrection. 

We are asked to believe that the all-powerful eternal God, the Godwho created twenty millions of suns, came down to earth, was born of awoman, was crucified, was dead, was laid in a tomb for three days, andthen came to life again, and ascended into Heaven. 

What is the nature of the evidence produced in support of thistremendous miracle?

Is there any man or woman alive who has seen God? No. Is there any manor woman alive who has seen Christ? No. 

There is no human being alive who can say that God exists or that Christexists. The most they can say is that they _believe_ that God and Christexist. 

No historian claims that any God has been seen on earth for nearlynineteen centuries. 

The Christians deny the assertions of all other religions as to divinevisits; and all the other religions deny their assertions about God andChrist. 

There is no reason why God should have come down to earth, to be bornof a woman, and die on the cross. He could have convinced and won overmankind without any such act. He has _not_ convinced or won over mankindby that act. Not one-third of mankind are professing Christians to-day, and of those not one in ten is a true Christian and a true believer. 

The Resurrection, therefore, seems to have been unreasonable, unnecessary, and futile. It is also contrary to science and to humanexperience. 

What is the nature of the evidence?

The common idea of the man in the street is the idea that the Gospelswere written by Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John; that Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John were contemporaries of Christ; and that the Gospels werewritten and circulated during the lives of the authors. 

There is no evidence to support these beliefs. There is no evidence, outside the New Testament, that any of the Apostles ever existed. Weknow nothing about Paul, Peter, John, Mark, Luke, or Matthew, exceptwhat is told in the New Testament. 

Outside the Testament there is not a word of historical evidence ofthe divinity of Christ, of the Virgin Birth, of the Resurrection orAscension. 

Therefore it is obvious that, before we can be expected to believe thetremendous story of the Resurrection, we must be shown overwhelmingevidence of the authenticity of the Scriptures. 

Before you can prove your miracle you have to prove your book. 

Suppose the case to come before a judge. Let us try to imagine whatwould happen:

COUNSEL: M'lud, may it please your ludship. It is stated by Paul ofTarsus that he and others worked miracles--

THE JUDGE: Do you intend to call Paul of Tarsus?

COUNSEL: No, m'lud. He is dead. 

JUDGE: Did he make a proper sworn deposition?

COUNSEL: No, m'lud. But some of his letters are extant, and I propose toput them in. 

JUDGE: Are these letters affidavits? Are they witnessed and attested?

COUNSEL: No, m'lud. 

JUDGE: Are they signed?

COUNSEL: No, m'lud. 

JUDGE: Are they in the handwriting of this Paul of Tarsus?

COUNSEL: No, m'lud. They are copies; the originals are lost. 

JUDGE: Who was Paul of Tarsus?

COUNSEL: M'lud, he was the apostle to the Gentiles. 

JUDGE: You intend to call some of these Gentiles?

COUNSEL: No, m'lud. There are none living. 

JUDGE: But you don't mean to, say--how long has this shadowy witness, Paul of Tarsus, been dead?

COUNSEL: Not two thousand years, m'lud. 

JUDGE: Thousand years dead? Can you bring evidence to prove that he wasever alive?

COUNSEL: Circumstantial, m'lud. 

JUDGE: I cannot allow you to read the alleged statements of ahypothetical witness who is acknowledged to have been dead for nearlytwo thousand years. I cannot admit the alleged letters of Paul asevidence. 

COUNSEL: I shall show that the act of resurrection was witnessed by oneMary Magdalene, by a Roman soldier--

JUDGE: What is the soldier's name?

COUNSEL: I don't know, m'lud. 

JUDGE: Call him. 

COUNSEL: He is dead, m'lud. 

JUDGE: Deposition?

COUNSEL: No, m'lud. 

JUDGE: Strike out his evidence. Call Mary Magdalene. 

COUNSEL: She is dead, m'lud. But I shall show that she told thedisciples--

JUDGE: What she told the disciples is not evidence. 

COUNSEL: Well, m'lud, I shall give the statements of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Matthew states very plainly that--

JUDGE: Of course, you intend to call Matthew?

COUNSEL: No, m'lud. He is--he is dead. 

JUDGE: It seems to me, that to prove this resurrection you will have toperform a great many more. Are Mark and John dead, also?

COUNSEL: Yes, m'lud. 

JUDGE: Who were they?

COUNSEL: I--I don't know, m'lud. 

JUDGE: These statements of theirs, to which you allude: are they intheir own handwriting?

COUNSEL: May it please your ludship, they did not write them. Thestatements are not given as their own statements, but only as statements"according to them. " The statements are really copies of translationsof copies of translations of statements supposed to be based upon whatsomeone told Matthew, and--

JUDGE: Who copied and translated, and re-copied and re-translated, thishearsay evidence?

COUNSEL: I do not know, m'lud. 

JUDGE: Were the copies seen and revised by the authors? Did they correctthe proofs?

COUNSEL: I don't know, m'lud. 

JUDGE: Don't know? Why?

COUNSEL: There is no evidence that the documents had ever been heard ofuntil long after the authors were dead. 

JUDGE: I never heard of such a case. I cannot allow you to quote thesepapers. They are not evidence. Have you _any_ witnesses?

COUNSEL: No, m'lud. 

That fancy dialogue about expresses the legal value of the evidence forthis important miracle. 

But, legal value not being the only value, let us now consider theevidence as mere laymen. 

THE GOSPEL WITNESSES

As men of the world, with some experience in sifting and weighingevidence, what can we say about the evidence for the Resurrection?

In the first place, there is no acceptable evidence outside the NewTestament, and the New Testament is the authority of the ChristianChurch. 

In the second place, there is nothing to show that the Gospels werewritten by eye-witnesses of the alleged fact. 

In the third place, the Apostle Paul was not an eye-witness of thealleged fact. 

In the fourth place, although there is some evidence that some Gospelswere known in the first century, there is no evidence that the Gospelsas we know them were then in existence. 

In the fifth place, even supposing that the existing Gospels and theEpistles of Paul were originally composed by men who knew Christ, andthat these men were entirely honest and capable witnesses, there is nocertainty that what they wrote has come down to us unaltered. 

The only serious evidence of the Resurrection being in the books of theNew Testament, we are bound to scrutinise those books closely, as ontheir testimony the case for Christianity entirely depends. 

Who, then, are the witnesses? They are the authors of the Gospels, theActs, and the Epistles of Peter and of Paul. 

Who were these authors? Matthew and John are "supposed" to have beendisciples of Christ; but were they? I should say Matthew certainlywas not contemporary with Jesus, for in the last chapter of the Gospelaccording to Matthew we read as follows:

 Now while they were going behold some of the guard came into the city, and told unto the chief priests all the things that were come to pass. And when they were assembled with the elders, and had taken counsel, they gave large money unto the soldiers, saying, Say yet his disciples came by night and stole him away while we slept. And if this come to the governor's ears, we will persuade him, and rid you of care. So they took the money, and did as they were taught: and this saying was spread abroad among the Jews, and continueth until this day. 

Matthew tells us that the saying "continueth until this day. " Which day?The day on which Matthew is writing or speaking. Now, a man does not sayof a report or belief that it "continueth until this day" unless thatreport or belief originated a long time ago, and the use of such aphrase suggests that Matthew told or repeated the story after a lapse ofmany years. 

That apart, there is no genuine historical evidence, outside the NewTestament, that such men as Paul, Peter, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and Johnever existed. 

Neither can it be claimed that Matthew, Mark, Luke and John actuallywrote the Gospels which bear their names. These Gospels are calledthe Gospel "according to Matthew, " the Gospel "according to Mark, " theGospel "according to Luke, " and the Gospel "according to John. " Theywere, then, Gospels condensed, paraphrased, or copied from some olderGospels, or they were Gospels taken down from dictation, or composedfrom the verbal statements of the men to whom they were attributed. 

Thus it appears that the Gospels are merely reports or copies of someverbal or written statements made by four men of whom there is nohistoric record whatever. How are we to know that these men ever lived?How are we to know that they were correctly reported, if they ever spokeor wrote? How can we rely upon such evidence after nineteen hundredyears, and upon a statement of facts so important and so marvellous?

The same objection applies to the evidence of Peter and of Paul. Manycritics and scholars deny the existence of Peter and Paul. There is notrustworthy evidence to oppose to that conclusion. 

That by the way. Let us now examine the evidence given in these men'snames. The earliest witness is Paul. Paul does not corroborate theGospel writers' statements as to the life or the teachings of Christ;but he does vehemently assert that Christ rose from the dead. 

What is Paul's evidence worth? He did not see Christ crucified. He didnot see His dead body. He did not see Him quit the tomb. He did not seeHim in the flesh after He had quitted the tomb. He was not present whenHe ascended into Heaven. Therefore Paul is not an eye-witness of theacts of Christ, nor of the death of Christ, nor of the Resurrection ofChrist, nor of the Ascension of Christ. 

If Paul ever lived, which none can prove and many deny, his evidence forthe Resurrection was only hearsay evidence. 

Paul, in the Epistle to the Corinthians, says that after HisResurrection Christ was "seen of about five hundred persons; of whom thegreat part remain unto this present, but some are fallen asleep. "

But none of the Gospels mentions this five hundred, nor does Paul givethe name of any one of them, nor is the testimony of any one of thempreserved, in the Testament or elsewhere. 

Now, let us remember how difficult it was to disprove the statements ofthe claimant in the Tichborne Case, although the trial took place in thelifetime of the claimant, and although most of the witnesses knewthe real Roger Tichborne well; and let us also bear in mind that manycritics and scholars dispute the authorship of Shakespeare's plays, asto which strong contemporary evidence is forthcoming, and then letus ask ourselves whether we shall be justified in believing such amarvellous story as this of the Resurrection upon the evidence of menwhose existence cannot be proved, and in support of whose statementsthere is not a scrap of historical evidence of any kind. 

Nor is this all. The stories of the Resurrection as told in theGospels are full of discrepancies, and are rendered incredible by theinterpolation of miraculous incidents. 

Let us begin with Matthew. Did Matthew see Christ crucified? Did Matthewsee Christ's dead body? Did Matthew see Christ quit the tomb? DidMatthew see Christ in the flesh and alive after His Resurrection? DidMatthew see Christ ascend into Heaven? Matthew nowhere says so. Nor isit stated by any other writer in the Testament that Matthew saw any ofthese things. No: Matthew nowhere gives evidence in his own name. Only, in the Gospel "according to Matthew" it is stated that such things didhappen. 

Matthew's account of the Resurrection and the incidents connectedtherewith differs from the accounts in the other Gospels. 

The story quoted above from Matthew as to the bribing of Roman soldiersby the priests to circulate the falsehood about the stealing of Christ'sbody by His disciples is not alluded to by Mark, Luke, or John. 

Matthew, in his account of the fact of the Resurrection, says that therewas an earthquake when the angel rolled away the stone. In the otherGospels there is no word of this earthquake. 

But not in any of the Gospels is it asserted that any man or woman sawJesus leave the tomb. 

The story of His actual rising from the dead was first told by somewoman, or women, who said they had seen an angel, or angels, who haddeclared that Jesus was risen. 

There is not an atom of evidence that these young men who told the storywere angels. There is not an atom of evidence that they were not men, nor that they had not helped to revive or to remove the swooned or deadJesus. 

Stress has been laid upon the presence of the Roman guard. The presenceof such a guard is improbable. But if the guard was really there, itmight have been as easily bribed to allow the body to be removed, asMatthew suggests that it was easily bribed to say that the body had beenstolen. 

Matthew says that after the Resurrection the disciples were ordered togo to Galilee. Mark says the same. Luke says they were commanded not toleave Jerusalem. John says they did go to Galilee. 

So, again, with regard to the Ascension. Luke and Mark say that Christwent up to Heaven. Matthew and John do not so much as mention theAscension. And it is curious, as Mr. Foote points out, that the twoapostles who were supposed to have been disciples of Christ and mightbe supposed to have seen the Ascension, if it took place, do not mentionit. The story of the Ascension comes to us from Luke and Mark, who werenot present. 

Jesus rose from the dead on the third day. Yet Luke makes Him say to thethief on the cross: "Verily I say unto thee, to-day shalt thou be withme in Paradise. " Matthew, Mark, and John do not repeat this blunder. 

There are many other differences and contradictions in the Gospelversions of the Resurrection and Ascension; but as I do not regard thosedifferences as important, I shall pass them by. 

Whether or not the evidence of these witnesses be contradictory, thefacts remain that no one of them states that he knows anything about thematter of his own knowledge; that no one of them claims to have himselfheard the story of the woman, or the women, or the angels; that no oneof them states that the women saw, or said they saw, Christ leave thetomb. 

As for the alleged appearances of Christ to the disciples, thoseappearances may be explained in several ways. We may say that Christreally had risen from the dead, and was miraculously present; we may saythat the accounts of His miraculous appearance are legends; or we maysay that His reappearance was not miraculous at all, for He had neverdied, but only swooned. 

As Huxley remarked, when we are asked to consider an alleged case ofresurrection, the first essential fact to make sure of is the fact ofdeath. Before we argue as to whether a dead man came to life, let ushave evidence that he _was_ dead. 

Considering the story of the crucifixion as historical, it cannot besaid that the evidence of Christ's death is conclusive. 

Death by crucifixion was generally a slow death. Men often lingered onthe cross for days before they died. Now, Christ was only on the crossfor a few hours; and Pilate is reported as expressing surprise when toldthat he was dead. 

To make sure that the other prisoners were dead, the soldiers broketheir legs. But they did not break Christ's legs. 

To be sure, the Apostle John reports that a soldier pierced Christ'sside with a spear. But the authors of the three synoptic Gospels donot mention this wounding with the spear. Neither do they allude tothe other story told by John, as to the scepticism of Thomas, and hisputting his hand into the wound made by the spear. It is curious thatJohn is the only one to tell both stories: so curious that both storieslook like interpellations. 

But even if we accept the story of the spear thrust, it affords noproof of death, for John adds that there issued from the wound blood andwater: and blood does not flow from wounds inflicted after death. 

Then, when the body of Christ was taken down from the cross, it was notexamined by any doctor, but was taken away by friends, and laid in acool sepulchre. 

What evidence is forthcoming that Christ did not recover from a swoon, and that His friends did not take Him away in the night? Remember, weare dealing with probabilities in the absence of any exact knowledge ofthe facts, and consider which is more probable--that a man had swoonedand recovered; or that a man, after lying for three days dead, shouldcome to life again, and walk away?

Apologists will say that the probabilities in the case of a man do nothold in the case of a God. But there is no evidence at all thatChrist was God. Prove that Christ was God, and therefore that He wasomnipotent, and there is nothing impossible in the Resurrection, howeverimprobable His death may seem. 

Even assuming that the Gospels are historical documents, the evidencefor Christ's death is unsatisfactory, and that for His Resurrectionquite inadequate. But is there any reason to regard the Gospel storiesof the death, Resurrection, and Ascension on of Christ as historical?I say that we have no surety that these stories have come down to us asthey were originally compiled, and we have strong reasons for concludingthat these stories are mythical. 

Some two or three years ago the Rev. R. Horton said: "Either Christwas the Son of God, and one with God, or He was a bad man, or a madman. There is no fourth alternative possible. " That is a strange statementto make, but it is an example of the shifts to which apologists arefrequently reduced. No fourth alternative possible! Indeed there is; anda fifth!

If a man came forward to-day, and said he was the Son of God, and onewith God, we should conclude that he was an impostor or a lunatic. 

But if a man told us that another man had said he was a god, we shouldhave what Mr. Horton calls a "fourth alternative" open to us. Forwe might say that the person who reported his speech to us hadmisunderstood him, which would be a "fourth alternative"; or thatthe person had wilfully misrepresented him, which would be a fifthalternative. 

So in the Gospels. Nowhere have we a single word of Christ's ownwriting. His sayings come to us through several hands, and through morethan one translation. It is folly, then, to assert that Christ was God, or that He was mad, or an impostor. 

So in the case of the Gospel stories of the Crucifixion, theResurrection, and Ascension of Christ. Many worthy people may supposethat in denying the facts stated in the Gospels we are accusing St. Matthew and St. John of falsehood. 

But there is no certainty who St. Matthew and the others were. There isno certainty that they wrote these stories. Even if they did write them, they probably accepted them at second or third hand. With the best faithin the world, they may not have been competent judges of evidence. Andafter they had done their best their testimony may have been added to orperverted by editors and translators. 

Looking at the Gospels, then, as we should look at any other ancientdocuments, what internal evidence do they afford in support of thesuspicion that they are mythical?

In the first place, the whole Gospel story teems with miracles. Now, asMatthew Arnold said, miracles never happen. Science has made the beliefin miracles impossible. When we speak of the antagonism between religionand science, it is this fact which we have in our mind: that science haskilled the belief in miracles, and, as all religions are built up uponthe miraculous, science and religion cannot be made to harmonise. 

As Huxley said:

 The magistrate who listens with devout attention to the precept, "Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live, " on Sunday, on Monday dismisses, as intrinsically absurd, a charge of bewitching a cow brought against some old woman; the superintendent of a lunatic asylum who substituted exorcism for rational modes of treatment, would have but a short tenure of office; even parish clerks doubt the utility of prayers for rain, so long as the wind is in the east; and an outbreak of pestilence sends men, not to the churches, but to the drains. In spite of prayers for the success of our arms, and _Te Deums_ for victory, our real faith is in big battalions and keeping our powder dry; in knowledge of the science of warfare; in energy, courage, and discipline. In these, as in all other practical affairs, we act on the aphorism, _Laborare est orare_; we admit that intelligent work is the only acceptable worship, and that, whether there be a Supernature or not, our business is with Nature. 

We have ceased to believe in miracles. When we come upon a miracle inany historical document we feel not only that the miracle is untrue, butalso that its presence reduces the value of the document in which it iscontained. Thus Matthew Arnold, in _Literature and Dogma_, after sayingthat we shall "find ourselves inevitably led, sooner or later, " toextend one rule to all miraculous stories, and that "the considerationswhich apply in other cases apply, we shall most surely discover, witheven greater force in the case of Bible miracles, " goes on to declarethat "this being so, there is nothing one would more desire for aperson or document one greatly values than to make them independent ofmiracles. "

Very well. The Gospels teem with miracles. If we make the accountsof the death, Resurrection, and Ascension of Christ "independentof miracles, " we destroy those accounts completely. To make theResurrection "independent of miracles" is to disprove the Resurrection, which is a miracle or nothing. 

We must believe in miracles, or disbelieve in the Resurrection; and"miracles never happen. "

We must believe miracles, or disbelieve them. If we disbelieve them, weshall lose confidence in the verity of any document in proportion to theelement of the miraculous which that document contains. The fact thatthe Gospels teem with miracles destroys the claim of the Gospels toserious consideration as historic evidence. 

Take, for example, the account of the Crucifixion in the Gospelaccording to Matthew. While Christ is on the cross "from the sixth hourthere was darkness over all the land until the ninth hour, " and when Hedies, "behold, the veil of the temple was rent in twain from the top tothe bottom; and the earth did quake; and the rocks were rent; and thetombs were opened; and many bodies of the saints that had fallen asleepwere raised; and coming forth out of the tombs after His Resurrection, they entered into the holy city, and appeared unto many. "

Mark mentions the rending of the veil of the temple, but omits thedarkness, the earthquake, and the rising of the dead saints from thetombs. Luke tells of the same phenomena as Mark; John says nothing aboutany of these things. 

What conclusion can we come to, then, as to the story in the firstGospel? Here is an earthquake and the rising of dead saints, who quittheir graves and enter the city, and three out of the four Gospelwriters do not mention it. Neither do we hear another word from Matthewon the subject. The dead get up and walk into the city, and "are seen ofmany, " and we are left to wonder what happened to the risen saints, andwhat effect their astounding apparition had upon the citizens who sawthem. Did these dead saints go back to their tombs? Did the citizensreceive them into their midst without fear, or horror, or doubt? Hadthis stupendous miracle no effect upon the Jewish priests who hadcrucified Christ as an impostor? The Gospels are silent. 

History is as silent as the Gospels. From the fifteenth chapter of thefirst volume of Gibbon's _Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire_ I takethe following passage:

 But how shall we excuse the supine inattention of the Pagan and philosophic world to those evidences which were presented by the hand of Omnipotence, not to their reason, but to their senses? During the age of Christ, of His Apostles, and of their first disciples, the doctrine which they preached was confirmed by innumerable prodigies. The lame walked, the blind saw, the sick were healed, the dead were raised, demons were expelled, and the laws of Nature were frequently suspended for the benefit of the Church. But the sages of Greece and Rome turned aside from the awful spectacle, and pursuing the ordinary occupations of life and study, appeared unconscious of any alterations in the moral or physical government of the world. Under the reign of Tiberius the whole earth, or at least a celebrated province of the Roman Empire, was involved in a preternatural darkness of three hours. Even this miraculous event, which ought to have excited the wonder, the curiosity, and the devotion of all mankind, passed without notice in an age of science and history. It happened during the lifetime of Seneca and the elder Pliny, who must have experienced the immediate effects, or received the earliest intelligence of the prodigy. Each of these philosophers, in a laborious work, has recorded all the great phenomena of Nature, earthquakes, meteors, comets, and eclipses, which his indefatigable curiosity could collect. But the one and the other have omitted to mention the greatest phenomenon to which mortal eye has been witness since the creation of the globe. A distinct chapter of Pliny is designed for eclipses of an extraordinary nature and unusual duration; but he contents himself with describing the singular defect of light which followed the murder of Caesar, when, during the greatest part of the year, the orb of the sun appeared pale and without splendour. This season of obscurity, which surely cannot be compared with the preternatural darkness of the Passion, had been already celebrated by most of the poets and historians of that memorable age. 

No Greek nor Roman historian nor scientist mentioned that strangeeclipse. No Jewish historian nor scientist mentioned the rending of theveil of the temple, nor the rising of the saints from the dead. Nor dothe Jewish priests appear to have been alarmed or converted by thesemarvels. 

Confronted by this silence of all contemporary historians, and by thesilence of Mark, Luke, and John, what are we to think of the testimonyof Matthew on these points? Surely we can only endorse the opinion ofMatthew Arnold:

 And the more the miraculousness of the story deepens, as after the death of Jesus, the more does the texture of the incidents become loose and floating, the more does the very air and aspect of things seem to tell us we are in wonderland. Jesus after his resurrection not known by Mary Magdalene, taken by her for the gardener; appearing _in another form_, and not known by the two disciples going with him to Emmaus and at supper with him there; not known by His most intimate apostles on the borders of the Sea of Galilee; and presently, out of these vague beginnings, the recognitions getting asserted, then the ocular demonstrations, the final commissions, the ascension; one hardly knows which of the two to call the most evident here, the perfect simplicity and good faith of the narrators, or the plainness with which they themselves really say to us _Behold a legend growing under your eyes!_

Behold a legend growing under your eyes! Now, when we have to considera miracle-story or a legend, it behoves us to look, if that be possible, into the times in which that legend is placed. What was the "timespirit" in the day when this legend arose? What was the attitude ofthe general mind towards the miraculous? To what stage of knowledge andscience had those who created or accepted the myth attained? These arepoints that will help us signally in any attempt to understand such astory as the Gospel story of the Resurrection. 

THE TIME SPIRIT IN THE FIRST CENTURY

A story emanating from a superstitious and unscientific people would bereceived with more doubt than a story emanating from people possessing aknowledge of science, and not prone to accept stories of the marvellouswithout strict and full investigation. 

A miracle story from an Arab of the Soudan would be received with asmile; a statement of some occult mystery made by a Huxley or a Darwinwould be accorded a respectful hearing and a serious criticism. 

Now, the accounts of the Resurrection in the Gospels belong to theless credible form of statement. They emanated from a credulous andsuperstitious people in an unscientific age and country. 

The Jews in the days of which the Gospels are supposed to tell, and theJews of Old Testament times, were unscientific and superstitious people, who believed in sorcery, in witches, in demons and angels, and in allmanner of miracles and supernatural agents. We have only to read theScriptures to see that it was so. But I shall quote here, in supportof my assertion, the opinions taken by the author of _SupernaturalReligion_ from the works of Dean Milman and Dr. Lightfoot. In his_History of Christianity_ Dean Milman speaks of the Jews as follows:

 The Jews of that period not only believed that the Supreme Being had the power of controlling the course of Nature, but that the same influence was possessed by multitudes of subordinate spirits, both good and evil. Where the pious Christian of the present day would behold the direct Agency of the Almighty, the Jews would invariably have interposed an angel as the author or ministerial agent in the wonderful transaction. Where the Christian moralist would condemn the fierce passion, the ungovernable lust, or the inhuman temper, the Jew discerned the workings of diabolical possession. Scarcely a malady was endured, or crime committed, which was not traced to the operation of one of these myriad demons, who watched every opportunity of exercising their malice in the sufferings and the sins of men. 

Read next the opinion of John Lightfoot, D. D. , Master of Catherine Hall, Cambridge:

 . .. Let two things only be observed: (1) That the nation under the Second Temple was given to magical arts beyond measure; and (2) that it was given to an easiness of believing all manner of delusions beyond measure. .. It is a disputable case whether the Jewish nation were more mad with superstition in matters of religion, or with superstition in curious arts: (1) There was not a people upon earth that studied or attributed more to dreams than they; (2) there was hardly any people in the whole world that more used, or were more fond of amulets, charms, mutterings, exorcisms, and all kinds of enchantments. 

It is from this people, "mad with superstition" in religion andin sorcery, the most credulous people in the whole world, a peopledestitute of the very rudiments of science, as science is understoodto-day--it is from this people that the unreasonable and impossiblestories of the Resurrection, coloured and distorted on every page withmiracles, come down to us. 

We do not believe that miracles happen now. Are we, on the evidence ofsuch a people, to believe that miracles happened two thousand years ago?

We in England to-day do not believe that miracles happen now. Some of usbelieve, or persuade ourselves that we believe, that miracles did happena few thousand years ago. 

But amongst some peoples the belief in miracles still persists, andwherever the belief in miracles is strongest we shall find that thepeople who believe are ignorant of physical science, are steeped insuperstition, or are abjectly subservient to the authority of priests orfakirs. Scientific knowledge and freedom of thought and speech are fatalto superstition. It is only in those times, or amongst those people, where ignorance is rampant, or the priest is dominant, or both, thatmiracles are believed. 

It will be urged that many educated Englishmen still believe the Gospelmiracles. That is true; but it will be found in nearly all such casesthat the believers have been mentally marred by the baneful authorityof the Church. Let a person once admit into his system the poisonousprinciple of "faith, " and his judgment in religious matters will beinjured for years, and probably for life. 

But let me here make clear what I mean by the poisonous principle of"faith. " I mean, then, the deadly principle that we are to believe anystatement, historical or doctrinal, without evidence. 

Thus we are to believe that Christ rose from the dead because theGospels say so. When we ask why we are to accept the Gospels as true, weare told because they are inspired by God. When we ask who says that theGospels are inspired by God, we are told that the Church says so. Whenwe ask how the Church knows, we are told that we must have faith. Thatis what I call a poisonous principle. That is the poison which saps thejudgment and perverts the human kindness of men. 

The late Dr. Carpenter wrote as follows:

 It has been my business lately to inquire into the mental condition of some of the individuals who have reported the most remarkable occurrences. I cannot--it would not be fair-- say all I could with regard to that mental condition; but I can only say this, that it all fits in perfectly well with the result of my previous studies upon the subject, namely, that there is nothing too strange to be believed by those who have once surrendered their judgment to the extent of accepting as credible things which common sense tells us are entirely incredible. 

It is unwise and immoral to accept any important statement withoutproof. HAVE THE DOCUMENTS BEEN TAMPERED WITH?

I come now to a phase of this question which I touch with regret. Italways pains me to acknowledge that any man, even an adversary, hasacted dishonourably. In this discussion I would, if I could, avoid theimputation of dishonesty to any person concerned in the foundation oradaptation of the Christian religion. But I am bound to point out theprobability that the Gospels have been tampered with by unscrupulous orover-zealous men. That probability is very strong, and very important. 

In the first place, it is too well known to make denial possiblethat many Gospels have been rejected by the Church as doubtful or asspurious. In the second place, some of the books in the accepted canonare regarded as of doubtful origin. In the third place, certain passagesof the Gospels have been relegated to the margin by the translators ofthe Revised Version of the New Testament. In the fourth place, certainhistoric Christian evidence--as the famous interpolation in Josephus, for instance--has been branded as forgeries by eminent Christianscholars. 

Many of the Christian fathers were holy men; many priests have been, andare, honourable and sincere; but it is notorious that in every Churchthe world has ever known there has been a great deal of fraud andforgery and deceit. I do not say this with any bitterness, I do not wishto emphasise it; but I must go so far as to show that the conductof some of the early Christians was of a character to justify us inbelieving that the Scriptures have been seriously tampered with. 

Mosheim, writing on this subject, says:

 A pernicious maxim which was current in the schools, not only of the Egyptians, the Platonists, and the Pythagoreans, but also of the Jews, was very early recognised by the Christians, and soon found among them numerous patrons--namely, that those who made it their business to deceive, with a view of promoting the cause of truth, were deserving rather of commendation than of censure. 

And if we seek internal evidence in support of this charge we need go nofurther than St. Paul, who is reported (Rom. Iii. 7) as saying: "For ifthe truth of God hath more abounded through my lie unto His Glory, whyyet am I also judged as a sinner?" I do not for a moment suppose thatPaul ever wrote those words. But they are given as his in the Epistlebearing his name. I daresay they may be interpreted in more than oneway: my point is that they were interpreted in an evil way by manyprimitive Christians, who took them as a warranty that it was right tolie for the glory of God. 

Mosheim, writing of the Church of the fifth century, alludes to the

 Base audacity of those who did not blush to palm their own spurious productions on the great men of former times, and, even on _Christ_ Himself and His Apostles, so that they might be able, in the councils and in their books, to oppose names against names and authorities against authorities. The whole Christian Church was, in this century, overwhelmed with these disgraceful fictions. 

Dr. Giles speaks still more strongly. He says:

 But a graver accusation than that of inaccuracy or deficient authority lies against the writings which have come down to us from the second century. There can be no doubt that great numbers of books were then written with no other view than to deceive the simple-minded multitude who at that time formed the great bulk of the Christian community. 

Dean Milman says:

 It was admitted and avowed that to deceive into Christianity was so valuable a service as to hallow deceit itself. 

Bishop Fell says:

 In the first ages of the Church, so extensive was the licence of forging, so credulous were the people in believing, that the evidence of transactions was grievously obscured. 

John E. Remsburg, author of the newly-published American book, _TheBible_, says:

 That these admissions are true, that primitive Christianity was propagated chiefly by falsehood, is tacitly admitted by all Christians. They characterise as forgeries, or unworthy of credit, three-fourths of the early Christian writings. 

Mr. Lecky, the historian, in his _European Morals_, writes in thefollowing uncompromising style:

 The very large part that must be assigned to deliberate forgeries in the early apologetic literature of the Church we have already seen; and no impartial reader can, I think, investigate the innumerable grotesque and lying legends that, during the whole course of the Middle Ages, were deliberately palmed upon mankind as undoubted facts, can follow the history of the false decretals, and the discussions that were connected with them, or can observe the complete and absolute incapacity most Catholic historians have displayed of conceiving any good thing in the ranks of their opponents, or of stating with common fairness any consideration that can tell against their cause, without acknowledging how serious and how inveterate has been the evil. It is this which makes it so unspeakably repulsive to all independent and impartial thinkers, and has led a great German historian (Herder) to declare, with much bitterness, that the phrase "Christian veracity" deserves to rank with the phrase "Punic faith. "

I could go on quoting such passages. I could give specific instances offorgery by the dozen, but I do not think it necessary. It is sufficientto show that forgery was common, and has been always common, amongstall kinds of priests, and that therefore we cannot accept the Gospels asgenuine and unaltered documents. 

Yet upon these documents rests the whole fabric of Christianity. 

Professor Huxley says:

 There is no proof, nothing more than a fair presumption, that any one of the Gospels existed, in the state in which we find it in the authorised version of the Bible, before the second century, or, in other words, sixty or seventy years after the events recorded. And between that time and the date of the oldest extant manuscripts of the Gospel there is no telling what additions and alterations and interpolations may have been made. It may be said that this is all mere speculation, but it is a good deal more. As competent scholars and honest men, our revisers have felt compelled to point out that such things have happened even since the date of the oldest known manuscripts. The oldest two copies of the second Gospel end with the eighth verse of the sixteenth chapter; the remaining twelve verses are spurious, and it is noteworthy that the maker of the addition has not hesitated to introduce a speech in which Jesus promises His disciples that "in My name shall they cast out devils. "

 The other passage "rejected to the margin" is still more instructive. It is that touching apologue, with its profound ethical sense, of the woman taken in adultery--which, if internal evidence were an infallible guide, might well be affirmed to be a typical example of the teaching of Jesus. Yet, say the revisers, pitilessly, "Most of the ancient authorities omit John vii. 53--viii. 11. " Now, let any reasonable man ask himself this question: if after an approximate settlement of the canon of the New Testament, and even later than the fourth or fifth centuries, literary fabricators had the skill and the audacity to make such additions and interpolations as these, what may they have done when no one had thought of a canon; when oral tradition still unfixed, was regarded as more valuable than such written records as may have existed in the latter portion of the first century? Or, to take the other alternative, if those who gradually settled the canon did not know of the oldest codices which have come down to us; or, if knowing them, they rejected their authority, what is to be thought of their competency as critics of the text?

Since alterations have been made in the text of Scripture we can neverbe certain that any particular text is genuine, and this circumstancemilitates seriously against the value of the evidence for theResurrection. 

CHRISTIANITY BEFORE CHRIST

If the story of Christ's life were true, we should not expect tofind that nearly all the principal events of that life had previouslyhappened in the lives of some earlier god or gods, long sinceacknowledged to be mythical. 

If the Gospel record were the _only_ record of a god coming upon earth, of a god born of a virgin, of a god slain by men, that record would seemto us more plausible than it will seem if we discover proof that otherand earlier gods have been fabled to have come on earth, to have beenborn of virgins, to have lived and taught on earth, and to have beenslain by men. 

Because, if the events related in the life of Christ have beenpreviously related as parts of the lives of earlier mythical gods, wefind ourselves confronted by the possibilities that what is mythicalin one narrative may be mythical in another; that if one god is a mythanother god may be a myth; that if 400, 000, 000 of Buddhists have beendeluded, 200, 000, 000 of Christians may be deluded; that if the eventsof Christ's life were alleged to have happened before to another person, they may have been adopted from the older story, and made features ofthe new. 

If Christ was God--the omnipotent, eternal, and _only_ God--come onearth, He would not be likely to repeat acts, to re-act the adventuresof earlier and spurious gods; nor would His divine teachings be mereshreds and patches made up of quotations, paraphrases, and repetitionsof earlier teachings, uttered by mere mortals, or mere myths. 

What are we to think, then when we find that there are hardly any eventsin the life of Christ which were not, before His birth, attributed tomythical gods; that there are hardly any acts of Christ's which may notbe paralleled by acts attributed to mythical gods before His advent;that there are hardly any important thoughts attributed to Christ whichhad not been uttered by other men, or by mythical gods, in earliertimes? What _are_ we to think if the facts be thus?

Mr. Parsons, in _Our Sun God_, quotes the following passage from a Latinwork by St. Augustine:

 Again, in that I said, "This is in our time the Christian religion, which to know and also follow is most sure and certain salvation, " it is affirmed in regard to this name, not in regard to the sacred thing itself to which the name belongs. For the sacred thing which is now called the Christian religion existed in ancient times, nor, indeed, was it absent from the beginning of the human race until the Christ Himself came in the flesh, whence the true religion which already existed came to be called "the Christian. " So when, after His resurrection and ascension to heaven, the Apostles began to preach and many believed, it is thus written, "The followers were first called Christians at Antioch. " Therefore I said, "This is in our time the Christian religion, " not because it did not exist in earlier times, but as having in later times received this particular name. 

From Eusebius, the great Christian historian, Mr. Parsons, quotes asfollows:

 What is called the Christian religion is neither new nor strange, but--_if it be lawful to testify as to the truth_-- was known to the ancients. 

Mr. Arthur Lillie, in _Buddha and Buddhism_, quotes M. Burnouf assaying:

 History and comparative mythology are teaching every day more plainly that creeds grow slowly up. None came into the world ready-made, and as if by magic. The origin of events is lost in the infinite. A great Indian poet has said: "The beginning of things evades us; their end evades us also; we see only the middle. "

Before Darwin's day it was considered absurd and impious to talk of"pre-Adamite man, " and it will still, by many, be held absurd andimpious to talk of "Christianity before Christ. "

And yet the incidents of the life and death of Christ, the teachings ofChrist and His Apostles, and the rites and mysteries of the ChristianChurch can all be paralleled by similar incidents, ethics, andceremonies embodied in religions long anterior to the birth of Jesus. 

Christ is said to have been God come down upon the earth. The idea of agod coming down upon the earth was quite an old and popular idea at thetime when the Gospels were written. In the Old Testament God makes manyvisits to the earth; and the instances in the Greek, Roman, and Egyptianmythologies of gods coming amongst men and taking part in human affairsare well known. 

Christ is said to have been the Son of God. But the idea of a son-god isvery much older than the Christian religion. 

Christ is said to have been a redeemer, and to have descended from aline of kings. But the idea of a king's son as a redeemer is very mucholder than the Christian religion. 

Christ is said to have been born of a virgin. But many heroes before Himwere declared to have been born of virgins. 

Christ is said to have been born in a cave or stable while His parentswere on a journey. But this also was an old legend long before theChristian religion. 

Christ is said to have been crucified. But very many kings, kings' sons, son-gods, and heroes had been crucified ages before Him. 

Christ is said to have been a sacrifice offered up for the salvationof man. But thousands and thousands of men before Him had been slainas sacrifices for the general good, or as atonements for general orparticular sins. 

Christ is said to have risen from the dead. But that had been said ofother gods before Him. 

Christ is said to have ascended into Heaven. But this also was a veryold idea. 

Christ is said to have worked miracles. But all the gods and saints ofall the older religions were said to have worked miracles. 

Christ is said to have brought to men, direct from Heaven, a new messageof salvation. But the message He brought was in nowise new. 

Christ is said to have preached a new ethic of mercy and peace andgood-will to all men. But this ethic had been preached centuries beforeHis supposed advent. 

The Christians changed the Sabbath from Saturday to Sunday. Sun-day isthe day of the Sun God. 

Christ's birthday was fixed on the 25th of December. But the 25th ofDecember is the day of the Winter solstice--the birthday, of Apollo, theSun God--and had been from time immemorial the birthday of the sun godsin all religions. The Egyptians, Persians, Greeks, Phoenicians, andTeutonic races all kept the 25th of December as the birthday of the SunGod. 

The Christians departed from the monotheism of the Jews, and made theirGod a Trinity. The Buddhists and the Egyptians had Holy Trinities longbefore. But whereas the Christian Trinity is unreasonable, the olderidea of the Trinity was based upon a perfectly lucid and naturalconception. 

Christ is supposed by many to have first laid down the Golden Rule, "Dounto others as you would that they should do unto you. " But the GoldenRule was laid down centuries before the Christian era. 

Two of the most important of the utterances attributed to Christ arethe Lord's Prayer and the Sermon on the Mount. But there is very strongevidence that the Lord's Prayer was used before Christ's time, and stillstronger evidence that the Sermon on the Mount was a compilation, andwas never uttered by Christ or any other preacher in the form in whichit is given by St. Matthew. 

Christ is said to have been tempted of the Devil. But apart fromthe utter absurdity of the Devil's tempting God by offering Him thesovereignty of the earth--when God had already the sovereignty of twentymillions of suns--it is related of Buddha that he also was tempted ofthe Devil centuries before Christ was born. 

The idea that one man should die as a sacrifice to the gods on behalfof many, the idea that the god should be slain for the good of men, the idea that the blood of the human or animal "scapegoat" had power topurify or to save, the idea that a king or a king's son should expiatethe sins of a tribe by his death, and the idea that a god should offerhimself as a sacrifice to himself in atonement for the sins of hispeople--all these were old ideas, and ideas well known to the foundersof Christianity. 

The resemblances of the legendary lives of Christ and Buddha aresurprising: so also are the resemblances of forms and ethics of theancient Buddhists and the early Christians. 

Mr. Arthur Lillie, in _Buddha and Buddhism_, makes the followingquotation from M. Leon de Rosny:

 The astonishing points of contact between the popular legend of Buddha and that of Christ, the almost absolute similarity of the moral lessons given to the world between these two peerless teachers of the human race, the striking affinities between the customs of the Buddhists and the Essenes, of whom Christ must have been a disciple, suggest at once an Indian origin to Primitive Christianity. 

Mr. Lillie goes on to say that there was a sect of Essenes in Palestinefifty years B. C. , and that fifty years after the death of Christ thereexisted in Palestine a similar sect, from whom Christianity was derived. Mr. Lillie says of these sects:

 Each had two prominent rites: baptism, and what Tertullian calls the "oblation of bread. " Each had for officers, deacons, presbyters, ephemerents. Each sect had monks, nuns, celibacy, community of goods. Each interpreted the Old Testament in a mystical way--so mystical, in fact, that it enabled each to discover that the bloody sacrifice of Mosaism was forbidden, not enjoined. The most minute likenesses have been pointed out between these two sects by all Catholic writers from Eusebius to the poet Racine. .. Was there any connection between these two sects? It is difficult to conceive that there can be two answers to such a question. 

The resemblances between Buddhism and Christianity were accounted for bythe Christian Fathers very simply. The Buddhists had been instructed bythe Devil, and there was no more to be said. Later Christian scholarsface the difficulty by declaring that the Buddhists copied from theChristians. 

Reminded that Buddha lived five hundred years before Christ, and thatthe Buddhist religion was in its prime two hundred years before Christ, the Christian apologist replies that, for all that, the BuddhistScriptures are of comparatively late date. Let us see how the matterstands. 

The resemblances of the two religions are of two kinds. There is, first, the resemblance between the Christian life of Christ and the Indian lifeof Buddha; and there is, secondly, the resemblance between the moralteachings of Christ and Buddha. 

Now, if the Indian Scriptures _are_ of later date than the Gospels, itis just possible that the Buddhists may have copied incidents from thelife of Christ. 

But it is perfectly certain that the change of borrowing cannot bebrought against Augustus Caesar, Plato, and the compilers of themythologies of Egypt and Greece and Rome. And it is as certain thatthe Christians did borrow from the Jews as that the Jews borrowed fromBabylon. But a little while ago all Christendom would have denied theindebtedness of Moses to King Sargon. 

Now, since the Christian ideas were anticipated by the Babylonians, theEgyptians, the Romans, and the Greeks, why should we suppose thatthey were copied by the Buddhists, whose religion was triumphant somecenturies before Christ?

And, again, while there is no reason to suppose that Christianmissionaries in the early centuries of the era made any appreciableimpression on India or China, there is good reason to suppose that theBuddhists, who were the first and most successful of all missionaries, reached Egypt and Persia and Palestine, and made their influence felt. 

I now turn to the statement of M. Burnouf, quoted by Mr. Lillie. M. Burnouf asserts that the Indian origin of Christianity is no longercontested:

 It has been placed in full light by the researches of scholars, and notably English scholars, and by the publication of the original texts. .. In point of fact, for a long time folks had been struck with the resemblances--or, rather, the identical elements--contained in Christianity and Buddhism. Writers of the firmest faith and most sincere piety have admitted them. In the last century these analogies were set down to the Nestorians; but since then the science of Oriental chronology has come into being, and proved that Buddha is many years anterior to Nestorius and Jesus. Thus the Nestorian theory had to be given up. But a thing may be posterior to another without proving derivation. So the problem remained unsolved until recently, when the pathway that Buddhism followed was traced step by step from India to Jerusalem. 

There was baptism before Christ, and before John the Baptist. There weregods, man-gods, son-gods, and saviours before Christ. There were Bibles, hymns, temples, monasteries, priests, monks, missionaries, crosses, sacraments, and mysteries before Christ. 

Perhaps the most important sacrament of the Christian religion to-day isthe Eucharist, or Lord's Supper. But this idea of the Eucharist, or theceremonial eating of the god, has its roots far back in the prehistoricdays of religious cannibalism. Prehistoric man believed that if he ateanything its virtue passed into his physical system. Therefore he beganby devouring his gods, body and bones. Later, man mended his manners sofar as to substitute animal for human sacrifice; still later he employedbread and wine as symbolical substitutes for flesh and blood. This isthe origin and evolution of the strange and, to many of us, repulsiveidea of eating the body and drinking the blood of Christ. 

Now, supposing these facts to be as I have stated them above, to whatconclusion do they point?

Bear in mind the statement of M. Burnouf, that religions are builtup slowly by a process of adaptation; add that to the statements ofEusebius, the great Christian historian, and of St. Augustine, the greatChristian Father, that the Christian religion is no new thing, but wasknown to the ancients, and does it not seem most reasonable to supposethat Christianity is a religion founded on ancient myths and legends, on ancient ethics, and on ancient allegorical mysteries and metaphysicalerrors?

To support those statements with adequate evidence I should have tocompile a book four times as large as the present volume. As I havenot room to state the case properly, I shall content myself with therecommendation of some books in which the reader may study the subjectfor himself. 

A list of these books I now subjoin:

 _The Golden Bough. _ Frazer. Macmillan & Co. _A Short History of Christianity. _ Robertson. Watts & Co. _The Evolution of the Idea of God. _ Grant Allen. Rationalist

Press Association. _Buddha and Buddhism. _ Lillie. Clark. _Our Sun God. _ Parsons. Parsons. _Christianity and Mythology. _ Robertson. Watts & Co. _Pagan Christs. _ Robertson. Watts & Co. _The Legend of Perseus. _ Hartland. Nutt. _The Birth of Jesus. _ Soltau. Black. 

The above are all scholarly and important books, and should be generallyknown. 

For reasons given above I claim, with regard to the divinity andResurrection of Jesus Christ:

 That outside the New Testament there is no evidence of any value to show that Christ ever lived, that He ever taught, that He ever rose from the dead. 

 That the evidence of the New Testament is anonymous, is contradictory, is loaded with myths and miracles. 

 That the Gospels do not contain a word of proof by any eye-witness as to the fact that Christ was really dead; nor the statement of any eye-witness that He was seen to return to life and quit His tomb. 

 That Paul, who preached the Resurrection of Christ, did not see Christ dead, did not see Him arise from the dead, did not see Him ascend into Heaven. 

 That Paul nowhere supports the Gospel accounts of Christ's life and teaching. 

 That the Gospels are of mixed and doubtful origin, that they show signs of interpolation and tampering, and that they have been selected from a number of other Gospels, all of which were once accepted as genuine. 

 And that, while there is no real evidence of the life or the teachings, or the Resurrection of Christ, there is a great deal of evidence to show that the Gospels were founded upon anterior legends and older ethics. 

But Christian apologists offer other reasons why we should accept thestories of the miraculous birth and Resurrection of Christ as true. Letus examine these reasons, and see what they amount to. 

OTHER EVIDENCES OF CHRIST'S DIVINITY

Archdeacon Wilson gives two reasons for accepting the doctrines ofChrist's divinity and Resurrection as true. The first of these reasonsis, the success of the Christian religion; the second is, the evolutionof the Christlike type of character. 

If the success of the Christian religion proves that Christ was God, what does the success of the Buddhist religion prove? What does thesuccess of the Mohammedan religion prove?

Was Buddha God? Was Mahomet God?

The archdeacon does not believe in any miracles but those of his ownreligion. But if the spread of a faith proves its miracles to betrue, what can be said about the spread of the Buddhist and Mohammedanreligions?

Islam spread faster and farther than Christianity. So did Buddhism. To-day the numbers of these religions are somewhat as follows:

Buddhist: 450 millions. 

Christians: 375 millions, of which only 180 millions are Protestants. 

Hindus: 200 millions. 

Mohammedans: 160 millions. 

It will be seen that the Buddhist religion is older than Christianity, and has more followers. What does that prove?

But as to the reasons for the great growth of these two religions I willsay more by and by. At present I merely repeat that the Buddhist faithowed a great deal to the fact that King Asoka made it the State religionof a great kingdom, and that Christianity owes a great deal to the factthat Constantine adopted it as the State religion of the Roman Empire. 

We come now to the archdeacon's second argument: that the divinity ofChrist is proved by the evolution of the Christlike type of character. 

And here the archdeacon makes a most surprising statement, for he saysthat type of character was unknown on this globe until Christ came. 

Then how are we to account for King Asoka?

The King Asoka of the Rock Edicts was as spiritual, as gentle, as pure, and as loving as the Christ of the Gospels. 

The King Asoka of the Rock Edicts was wiser, more tolerant, more humanethan the Christ of the Gospels. 

Nowhere did Christ or the Fathers of His Church forbid slavery; nowheredid they forbid religious intolerance; nowhere did they forbid crueltyto animals. 

The type of character displayed by the rock inscriptions of King Asokawas a higher and sweeter type than the type of character displayed bythe Jesus of the Gospels. 

Does this prove that King Asoka or his teacher, Buddha, was divine? Doesit prove that the Buddhist faith is the only true faith? I shall treatthis question more fully in another chapter. 

Another Christian argument is the claim that the faithfulness ofthe Christian martyrs proves Christianity to be true. A most amazingargument. The fact that a man dies for a faith does not prove the faithto be true; it proves that he believes it to be true--a very differentthing. 

The Jews denied the Christian faith, and died for their own. Does thatprove that Christianity was not true? Did the Protestant martyrs proveProtestantism true? Then the Catholic martyrs proved the reverse. 

The Christians martyred or murdered millions, many millions, of innocentmen and women. Does _that_ prove that Christ was divine? No: it onlyproves that Christians could be fanatical, intolerant, bloody, andcruel. 

And now, will you ponder these words of Arthur Lillie, M. A. , the authorof _Buddha and Buddhism_? Speaking of the astonishing success of theBuddhist missionaries, Mr. Lillie says:

 This success was effected by moral means alone, for Buddhism _is the one religion guiltless of coercion_. 

Christians are always boasting of the wonderful good works wrought bytheir religion. They are silent about the horrors, infamies, and shamesof which it has been guilty. 

Buddhism is the only religion with no blood upon its hands. I submitanother very significant quotation from Mr. Lillie:

I will write down a few of the achievements of this inactive Buddha andthe army of Bhikshus that he directed:

 1. The most formidable priestly tyranny that the world had ever seen crumbled away before his attack, and the followers of Buddha were paramount in India for a thousand years. 

 2. The institution of caste was assailed and overthrown. 

 3. Polygamy was for the first time assailed and overturned. 

 4. Woman, from being considered a chattel and a beast of burden, was for the first time considered man's equal, and allowed to develop her spiritual life. 

 5. All bloodshed, whether with the knife of the priest or the sword of the conqueror, was rigidly forbidden. 

 6. Also, for the first time in the religious history of mankind, the awakening of the spiritual life of the individual was substituted for religion by body corporate. 

 7. The principle of religious propagandism was for the first time introduced with its two great instruments, the missionary and the preacher. 

To that list we may add that Buddhism abolished slavery and religiouspersecution; taught temperance, chastity, and humanity; and inventedthe higher morality and the idea of the brotherhood of the entire humanrace. 

What does _that_ prove? It seems to me to prove that Archdeacon Wilsonis mistaken. 

THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION WHAT IS CHRISTIANITY?

What _is_ Christianity? When I began to discuss religion in the_Clarion_ I thought I knew what Christianity was. I thought it wasthe religion I had been taught as a boy in Church of England andCongregationalist Sunday schools. But since then I have read manybooks, and pamphlets, and sermons, and articles intended to explainwhat Christianity is, and I begin to think there are as many kinds ofChristianity as there are Christians. The differences are numerous andprofound: they are astonishing. That must be a strange revelation of Godwhich can be so differently interpreted. 

Well, I cannot describe all these variants, nor can I reduce them to acommon denominator. The most I can pretend to offer is a selection ofsome few doctrines to which all or many Christians would subscribe. 

 1. All Christians believe in a Supreme Being, called God, who created all beings. They all believe that He is a good and loving God, and our Heavenly Father. 

 2. Most Christians believe in Free Will. 

 3. All Christians believe that Man has sinned and does sin against God. 

 4. All Christians believe that Jesus Christ is in some way necessary to Man's "salvation, " and that without Christ Man will be "lost. "

 But when we ask for the meaning of the terms "salvation" and "lost" the Christians give conflicting or divergent answers. 

 5. All Christians believe in the immortality of the soul. And I think they all, or nearly all, believe in some kind of future punishment or reward. 

 6. Most Christians believe that Christ was God. 

 7. Most Christians believe that after crucifixion Christ rose from the dead and ascended into Heaven. 

 8. Most Christians believe, or think they believe, in the efficacy of prayer. 

 9. Most Christians believe in a Devil; but he is a great many different kinds of a Devil. 

Of these beliefs I should say:

1. As to God. If there is no God, or if God is not a loving HeavenlyFather, who answers prayer, Christianity as a religion cannot stand. 

I do not pretend to say whether there is or is not a God, but I denythat there is a loving Heavenly Father who answers prayer. 

2 and 3. If there is no such thing as Free Will Man could not sinagainst God, and Christianity as a religion will not stand. 

I deny the existence of Free Will, and possibility of Man's sinningagainst God. 

4. If Jesus Christ is not necessary to Man's "salvation, " Christianityas a religion will not stand. 

I deny that Christ is necessary to Man's salvation from Hell or fromSin. 

5. I do not assert or deny the immortality of the soul. I know nothingabout the soul, and no man is or ever was able to tell me more than Iknow. 

Of the remaining four doctrines I will speak in due course. 

I spoke just now of the religion I was taught in my boyhood, some fortyyears ago. As that religion seems to be still very popular I will try toexpress it as briefly as I can. 

Adam was the first man, and the father of the human race. He was createdby God, in the likeness of God: that is to say, he was made "perfect. "

But, being tempted of the Devil, Adam sinned: he fell. God was so angrywith Adam for his sin that He condemned him and all his descendants forfive thousand years to a Hell of everlasting fire. 

After consigning all the generations of men for five thousand years tohorrible torment in Hell, God sent His Son, Jesus Christ, down on earthto die, and to go Hell for three days, as an atonement for the sin ofAdam. 

After Christ rose from the dead all who believed on Him and werebaptised would go to Heaven. All who did not believe on Him, or were notbaptised, would go to Hell, and burn for ever in a lake of fire. 

That is what we were taught in our youth; and that is what millionsof Christians believe to-day. That is the old religion of the Fall, of"Inherited Sin, " of "Universal Damnation, " and of atonement by the bloodof Christ. 

There is a new religion now, which shuts out Adam and Eve, and theserpent, and the hell of fire, but retains the "Fall, " the "Sin againstGod, " and the "Atonement by Christ. "

But in the new Atonement, as I understand, or try to understand it, Christ is said to be God Himself, come down to win back to Himself Man, who had estranged himself from God, or else God (as Christ) died to saveMan, not from Hell, but from Sin. 

All these theories, old and new, seem to me impossible. 

I will deal first, in a short way, with the new theories of theAtonement. 

If Christ died to save Man from sin, how is it that nineteen centuriesafter His death the world is full of sin?

If God (the All-powerful God, who loves us better than an earthly fatherloves his children) wished to forgive us the sin Adam committed agesbefore we were born, why did He not forgive us without dying, or causingHis Son to die, on a cross?

If Christ is essential to a good life on earth, how is it that many whobelieve in Him lead bad lives, while many of the best men and women ofthis and former ages either never heard of Christ or did not follow Him?

As to the theory that Christ (or God) died to win back Man to Himself, it does not harmonise with the facts. 

Man never did estrange himself from God. All history shows that Man haspersistently and anxiously sought for God, and has served Him, accordingto his light, with a blind devotion even to death and crime. 

Finally, Man never did, and never could, sin against God. For Man iswhat God made him; could only act as God enabled him, or constructed himto act, and therefore was not responsible for his act, and could not sinagainst God. 

If God is responsible for Man's existence, God is responsible for Man'sact. Therefore Man cannot sin against God. 

But I shall deal more fully with the subject of Free Will, and of theneed for Christ as our Saviour, in another part of this book. 

Let us now turn to the old idea of the Fall and the Atonement. 

First, as to Adam and the Fall and inherited sin. Evolution, historicalresearch, and scientific criticism have disposed of Adam. Adam wasa myth. Hardly any educated Christians now regard him as an historicperson. 

But--no Adam, no Fall; no Fall, no Atonement; no Atonement, no Saviour. Accepting Evolution, how can we believe in a Fall? _When_ did Man fall?Was it before he ceased to be a monkey, or after? Was it when he was atree man, or later? Was it in the Stone Age, or the Bronze Age, or inthe Age of Iron?

There never _was_ any "Fall. " Evolution proves a long slow _rise_. 

And if there never was a Fall, why should there be any Atonement?

Christians accepting the theory of evolution have to believe that Godallowed the sun to form out of the nebula, and the earth to formfrom the sun, that He allowed Man to develop slowly from the speck ofprotoplasm in the sea. That at some period of Man's gradual evolutionfrom the brute, God found Man guilty of some sin, and cursed him. Thatsome thousands of years later God sent His only Son down upon the earthto save Man from Hell. 

But evolution shows Man to be, even now, an imperfect creature, anunfinished work, a building still undergoing alterations, an animalstill evolving. 

Whereas the doctrines of "the Fall" and the Atonement assume that hewas from the first a finished creature, and responsible to God for hisactions. 

This old doctrine of the Fall, and the Curse, and the Atonement isagainst reason as well as against science. 

The universe is boundless. We know it to contain millions of suns, andsuppose it to contain millions of millions of suns. Our sun is but aspeck in the universe. Our earth is but a speck in the solar system. 

Are we to believe that the God who created all this boundless universegot so angry with the children of the apes that He condemned them allto Hell for two score centuries, and then could only appease His rage bysending His own Son to be nailed upon a cross? Do you believe that? Canyou believe it?

No. As I said before, if the theory of evolution be true, there wasnothing to atone for, and nobody to atone. _Man has never sinned againstGod. _ In fact, the whole of this old Christian doctrine is a mass oferror. There was no creation. There was no Fall. There was no Atonement. There was no Adam, and no Eve, and no Eden, and no Devil, and no Hell. 

If God is all-powerful, He had power to make Man by nature incapable ofsin. But if, having the power to make Man incapable of sin, God made Manso weak as to "fall, " then it was God who sinned against Man, and notMan against God. 

For if I had power to train a son of mine to righteousness, and Itrained him to wickedness, should I not sin against my son?

Or if a man had power to create a child of virtue and intellect, butchose rather to create a child who was by nature a criminal or an idiot, would not that man sin against his child?

And do you believe that "our Father in Heaven, our All-powerful God, who is Love, " would first create man fallible, and then punish him forfalling?

And if He did so create and so punish man, could you call that just ormerciful?

And if God is our "maker, " who but He is responsible for our make-up?

And if He alone is responsible, how can Man have sinned against God?

I maintain that besides being unhistorical and unreasonable, the olddoctrine of the Atonement is unjust and immoral. 

The doctrine of the Atonement is not just nor moral, because it impliesthat man should not be punished or rewarded according to his own meritor demerit, but according to the merit of another. 

Is it just, or is it moral, to make the good suffer for the bad?

Is it just or moral to forgive one man his sin because another issinless? Such a doctrine--the doctrine of Salvation for Christ's sake, and after a life of crime--holds out inducements to sin. 

Repentance is only good because it is the precursor of reform. But norepentance can merit pardon, nor atone for wrong. If, having done wrong, I repent, and afterwards do right, that is good. But to be sorry and notto reform is not good. 

If I do wrong, my repentance will not cancel that wrong. An actperformed is performed for ever. 

If I cut a man's hand off, I may repent, and he may pardon me. Butneither my remorse nor his forgiveness will make the hand grow again. And if the hand could grow again, the wrong I did would still have beendone. 

That is a stern morality, but it is moral. Your doctrine of pardon"for Christ's sake" is not moral. God acts unjustly when He pardons forChrist's sake. Christ acts unjustly when He asks that pardon be grantedfor his sake. If one man injures another, the prerogative of pardonshould belong to the injured man. It is for him who suffers to forgive. 

If your son injure your daughter, the pardon must come from her. Itwould not be just for you to say: "He has wronged you, and has made noatonement, but I forgive him. " Nor would it be just for you to forgivehim because another son of yours was willing to be punished in hisstead. Nor would it be just for that other son to come forward, andsay to you, and not to his injured sister, "Father, forgive him for mysake. "

He who wrongs a fellow-creature wrongs himself as well, and wrongs bothfor all eternity. Let this awful thought keep us just. It is more moraland more corrective than any trust in the vicarious atonement of aSaviour. 

Christ's Atonement, or any other person's atonement, cannot _justly_be accepted. For the fact that Christ is willing to suffer for anotherman's sin only counts to the merit of Christ, and does not in any waydiminish the offence of the sinner. If I am bad, does it make my offencethe less that another man is so much better?

If a just man had two servants, and one of them did wrong, and if theother offered to endure a flogging in expiation of his fault, what wouldthe just man do?

To flog John for the fault of James would be to punish John for beingbetter than James. To forgive James because John had been unjustlyflogged would be to assert that because John was good, and because themaster had acted unjustly, James the guilty deserved to be forgiven. 

This is not only contrary to reason and to justice: it is also a veryfalse sentiment. 

DETERMINISM

CAN MAN SIN AGAINST GOD?

I have said several times that Man could not and cannot sin against God. 

This is the theory of Determinism, and I will now explain it. 

_If God is responsible for Man's existence, God is responsible for Man'sacts. _

The Christian says God is our Maker. God _made_ Man. 

Who is responsible for the quality or powers of a thing that is made?

The thing that is made cannot be responsible, for it did not makeitself. But the maker is responsible, for he _made_ it. 

As Man did not make himself, and had neither act, nor voice, norsuggestion, nor choice in the creation of his own nature, Man cannot beheld answerable for the qualities or powers of his nature, and thereforecannot be held responsible for his acts. 

If God made Man, God is responsible for the qualities and powers ofMan's nature, and therefore God is responsible for Man's acts. 

Christian theology is built upon the sandy foundation of the doctrine ofFree Will. The Christian theory may be thus expressed:

God gave Man a will to choose. Man chose evil, therefore Man is wicked, and deserves punishment. 

The Christian says God _gave_ Man a will. The will, then, came from God, and was not made nor selected by Man. 

And this Will, the Christian says, is the "power to choose. "

Then, this "power to choose" is of God's making and of God's gift. 

Man has only one will, therefore he has only one "power of choice. "Therefore he has no power of choice but the power God gave him. Then, Man can only choose by means of that power which God gave him, and hecannot choose by any other means. 

Then, if Man chooses evil, he chooses evil by means of the power ofchoice God gave him. 

Then, if that power of choice given to him by God makes for evil, it follows that Man must choose evil, since he has no other power ofchoice. 

Then, the only power of choice God gave Man is a power that will chooseevil. 

Then, Man is unable to choose good because his only power of choice willchoose evil. 

Then, as Man did not make nor select his power of choice, Man cannot beblamed if that power chooses evil. 

Then, the blame must be God's, who gave Man a power of choice that wouldchoose evil. 

Then, Man cannot sin against God, for Man can only use the power Godgave him, and can only use that power in the way in which that powerwill work. 

The word "will" is a misleading word. What is will? Will is not afaculty, like the faculty of speech or touch. The word will is a symbol, and means the balance between two motives or desires. 

Will is like the action of balance in a pair of scales. It is theweights in the scales that decide the balance. So it is the motives inthe mind that decide the will. When a man chooses between two actswe say that he "exercises his will"; but the fact is, that one motiveweighs down the other, and causes the balance of the mind to lean to theweightier reason. There is no such thing as an exterior will outside theman's brain, to push one scale down with a finger. Will is abstract, notconcrete. 

A man always "wills" in favour of the weightier motive. If he lovesthe sense of intoxication more than he loves his self-respect, he willdrink. If the reasons in favour of sobriety seem to him to outweigh thereasons in favour of drink, he will keep sober. 

Will, then, is a symbol for the balance of motives. Motives are born ofthe brain. Therefore will depends upon the action of the brain. 

God made the brain; therefore God is responsible for the action of thebrain; therefore God is responsible for the action of the will. 

Therefore Man is not responsible for the action of the will. ThereforeMan cannot sin against God. 

Christians speak of the will as if it were a kind of separate soul, a"little cherub who sits up aloft" and gives the man his course. 

Let us accept this idea of the will. Let us suppose that a separate soulor faculty called the will governs the mind. That means that the "littlecherub" governs the man. 

Can the man be justly blamed for the acts of the cherub?

No. Man did not make the cherub, did not select the cherub, and isobliged to obey the cherub. 

God made the cherub, and gave him command of the man. Therefore Godalone is responsible for the acts the man performs in obedience to thecherub's orders. 

If God put a beggar on horseback, would the horse be blamable forgalloping to Monte Carlo? The horse must obey the rider. The rider wasmade by God. How, then, can God blame the horse?

If God put a "will" on Adam's back, and the will followed the beckoningfinger of Eve, whose fault was that?

The old Christian doctrine was that Adam was made perfect, and that hefell. (How could the "perfect" fall?)

Why did Adam fall? He fell because the woman tempted him. 

Then Adam was not strong enough to resist the woman. Then, the woman hadpower to overcome Adam's will. As the Christian would express it, "Evehad the stronger will. "

Who made Adam? God made him. Who made Eve? God made her. Who made theSerpent? God made the Serpent. 

Then, if God made Adam weak, and Eve seductive, and the Serpent subtle, was that Adam's fault or God's?

Did Adam choose that Eve should have a stronger will than he, or thatthe Serpent should have a stronger will than Eve? No. God fixed allthose things. 

God is all-powerful. He could have made Adam strong enough to resistEve. He could have made Eve strong enough to resist the Serpent. He neednot have made the Serpent at all. 

God is all-knowing. Therefore, when He made Adam and Eve and the SerpentHe knew that Adam and Eve _must_ fall. And if God knew they _must_ fall, how could Adam help falling, and how _could_ he justly be blamed fordoing what he _must_ do?

God made a bridge--built it _Himself_, of His own materials, to His owndesign, and knew what the bearing strain of the bridge was. 

If, then, God put upon the bridge a weight equal to double the bearingstrain, how could God justly blame the bridge for falling?

The doctrine of Free Will implies that God knowingly made the Serpentsubtle, Eve seductive, and Adam weak, and then damned the whole humanrace because a bridge He had built to fall did not succeed in standing. 

Such a theory is ridiculous; but upon it depends the entire fabric ofChristian theology. 

For if Man is not responsible for his acts, and therefore cannot sinagainst God, there is no foundation for the doctrines of the Fall, theSin, the Curse, or the Atonement. 

If Man cannot sin against God, and if God is responsible for all Man'sacts, the Old Testament is not true, the New Testament is not true, theChristian religion is not true. 

And if you consider the numerous crimes and blunders of the ChristianChurch, you will always find that they grew out of the theory ofFree Will, and the doctrines of Man's sin against God, and Man'sresponsibility and "wickedness. "

St. Paul said, "As in Adam all men fell, so in Christ are all madewhole. " If Adam did not fall St. Paul was mistaken. 

Christ is reported to have prayed on the cross, "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do. "

That looks as if Jesus knew that the men were not responsible for theiracts, and did not know any better. But if they knew not what they did, why should God be asked to _forgive_ them?

But let us go over the Determinist theory again, for it is mostimportant. 

_If God is responsible for Man's existence, God is responsible for Man'sacts_. 

The Christians say Man sinned, and they talk about his freedom ofchoice. But they say God made Man, as He made all things. 

Now, if God is all-knowing, He knew before He made Man what Man woulddo. He knew that Man could do nothing but what God had enabled him todo. That he could do nothing but what he was foreordained by God to do. 

If God is all-powerful, He need not have made Man at all. Or He couldhave made a man who would be strong enough to resist temptation. Or Hecould have made a man who was incapable of evil. 

If the All-powerful God made a man, knowing that man would succumb tothe test to which God meant to subject him, surely God could not justlyblame the man for being no better than God had made him. 

If God had never made Man, then Man never could have succumbed totemptation. God made Man of His own divine choice, and made him to Hisown divine desire. 

How, then, could God blame Man for anything Man did?

God was responsible for Man's _existence_, for God made him. If God hadnot made him, Man could never have been, and could never have acted. Therefore all that Man did was the result of God's creation of Man. 

All man's acts were the effects of which his creation was the cause: andGod was responsible for the cause, and therefore God was responsible forthe effects. 

Man did not make himself. Man could not, before he existed, have askedGod to make him. Man could not advise nor control God so as to influencehis own nature. Man could only be what God caused him to be, and do whatGod enabled or compelled him to do. 

Man might justly say to God: "I did not ask to be created. I did not askto be sent into this world. I had no power to select or mould my nature. I am what You made me. I am where You put me. You knew when You mademe how I should act. If You wished me to act otherwise, why did You notmake me differently? If I have displeased You, I was fore-ordained todisplease You. I was fore-ordained by You to be and to do what I amand have done. Is it my fault that You fore-ordained me to be and to dothus?"

Christians say a man has a will to choose. So he has. But that is onlysaying that one human thought will outweigh another. A man thinks withhis brain: his brain was made by God. 

A tall man can reach higher than a short man. It is not the fault of theshort man that he is outreached: he did not fix his own height. 

It is the same with the will. A man has a will to jump. He can jump overa five-barred gate; but he cannot jump over a cathedral. 

So with his will in moral matters. He has a will to resist temptation, but though he may clear a small temptation, he may fall at a large one. 

The actions of a man's will are as mathematically fixed at his birth asare the motions of a planet in its orbit. 

God, who made the man and the planet, is responsible for the actions ofboth. 

As the natural forces created by God regulate the influences of Venusand Mars upon the Earth, so must the natural forces created by God haveregulated the influences of Eve and the Serpent on Adam. 

Adam was no more blameworthy for failing to resist the influence of Evethan the Earth is blameworthy for deviating in its course around theSun, in obedience to the influences of Venus and Mars. 

Without the act of God there could have been no Adam, and therefore noFall. God, whose act is responsible for Adam's existence, is responsiblefor the Fall. 

_If God is responsible for man's existence, God is responsible for allMan's acts. _

If a boy brought a dog into the house and teased it until it bit him, would not his parents ask the boy, "Why did you bring the dog in atall?"

But if the boy had trained the dog to bite, and knew that it would biteif it were teased, and if the boy brought the dog in and teased it untilit bit him, would the parents blame the dog?

And if a magician, like one of those at the court of Pharaoh, deliberately made an adder out of the dust, knowing the adder wouldbite, and then played with the adder until it bit some spectator, wouldthe injured man blame the magician or the adder?

How, then, could God blame Man for the Fall?

But you may ask me, with surprise, as so many have asked me withsurprise, "Do you really mean that no man is, under any circumstances, to be blamed for anything he may say or do?"

And I shall answer you that I do seriously mean that no man can, underany circumstances, be justly blamed for anything he may say or do. Thatis one of my deepest convictions, and I shall try very hard to provethat it is just. 

But you may say, as many have said: "If no man can be justly blamedfor anything he says or does, there is an end of all law and order, andsociety is impossible. "

And I shall answer you: "No, on the contrary, there is a beginning oflaw and order, and a chance that society may become civilised. "

For it does not follow that because we may not blame a man we may notcondemn his acts. Nor that because we do not blame him we are bound toallow him to do all manner of mischief. 

Several critics have indignantly exclaimed that I make no differencebetween good men and bad, that I lump Torquemada, Lucrezia Borgia, Fenelon, and Marcus Aurelius together, and condone the most awfulcrimes. 

That is a mistake. I regard Lucrezia Borgia as a homicidal maniac, andTorquemada as a religious maniac. I do not _blame_ such men and women. But I should not allow them to do harm. 

I believe that nearly all crimes, vices, cruelties, and other evil actsare due to ignorance or to mental disease. I do not hate the man whocalls me an infidel, a liar, a blasphemer, or a quack. I know that he isignorant, or foolish, or ill-bred, or vicious, and I am sorry for him. 

Socrates, as reported by Xenophon, put my case in a nutshell. When afriend complained to Socrates that a man whom he had saluted had notsaluted him in return, the father of philosophy replied: "It is an oddthing that if you had met a man ill-conditioned in body you would nothave been angry; but to have met a man rudely disposed in mind provokesyou. "

This is sound philosophy, I think. If we pity a man with a twist in hisspine, why should we not pity the man with a twist in his brain? If wepity a man with a stiff wrist, why not the man with a stiff pride? If wepity a man with a weak heart, why not the man with the weak will? If wedo not blame a man for one kind of defect, why blame him for another?

But it does not follow that because we neither hate nor blame a criminalwe should allow him to commit crime. 

We do not blame a rattlesnake, nor a shark. These creatures only fulfiltheir natures. The shark who devours a baby is no more sinful than thelady who eats a shrimp. We do not blame the maniac who burns a housedown and brains a policeman, nor the mad dog who bites a minor poet. But, none the less, we take steps to defend ourselves against snakes, sharks, lunatics, and mad dogs. 

The _Clarion_ does not hate a cruel sweater, nor a tyrannous landlord, nor a shuffling Minister of State, nor a hypocritical politician: itpities such poor creatures. Yet the _Clarion_ opposes sweating andtyranny and hypocrisy, and does its best to defeat and to destroy them. 

If a tiger be hungry he naturally seeks food. I do not blame the tiger;but if he endeavoured to make his dinner off our business manager, andif I had a gun, I should shoot the tiger. 

We do not hate nor blame the blight that destroys our roses and ourvines. The blight is doing what we do: he is trying to live. But wedestroy the blight to preserve our roses and our grapes. 

So we do not blame an incendiary. But we are quite justified inprotecting life and property. Dangerous men must be restrained. In caseswhere they attempt to kill and maim innocent and useful citizens, as, for instance, by dynamite outrages, they must, in the last resort, bekilled. 

"But, " you may say, "the dynamiter knows it is wrong to wreck a streetand murder inoffensive strangers, and yet he does it. Is not that freewill? Is he not blameworthy?"

And I answer that when a man does wrong he does it because he knows nobetter, or because he is naturally vicious. 

And I hold that in neither case is he to blame: for he did not makehis nature, nor did he make the influences which have operated on thatnature. 

Man is a creature of Heredity and Environment. He is by Heredity whathis ancestors have made him (or what God has made him). Up to themoment of his birth he has had nothing to do with the formation of hischaracter. As Professor Tyndall says, "that was done _for_ him, and not_by_ him. " From the moment of his birth he is what his inherited nature, and the influences into which he has been sent without his consent, havemade him. 

An omniscient being--like God--who knew exactly what a man's naturewould be at birth, and exactly the nature of the influences to which hewould be exposed after his birth, could predict every act and word ofthat man's life. 

Given a particular nature; given particular influences, the result willbe as mathematically inevitable as the speed and orbit of a planet. 

Man is what heredity (or God) and environment make him. Heredity giveshim his nature. That comes from his ancestors. Environment modifies hisnature: environment consists of the operation of forces external tohis nature. No man can select his ancestors; no man can selecthis environment. His ancestors make his nature; other men, andcircumstances, modify his nature. 

Ask any horse-breeder why he breeds from the best horses, and not fromthe worst. He will tell you, because good horses are not bred from badones. 

Ask any father why he would prefer that his son should mix with goodcompanions rather than with bad companions. He will tell you that evilcommunications corrupt good manners, and pitch defiles. 

Heredity decides how a man shall be bred; environment regulates what heshall learn. 

One man is a critic, another is a poet. Each is what heredity andenvironment have made him. Neither is responsible for his heredity norfor his environment. 

If the critic repents his evil deeds, it is because something hashappened to awake his remorse. Someone has told him of the error of hisways. That adviser is part of his environment. 

If the poet takes to writing musical comedies, it is because someevil influence has corrupted him. That evil influence is part of hisenvironment. 

Neither of these men is culpable for what he has done. With noblerheredity, or happier environment, both might have been journalists; withbaser heredity, or more vicious environment, either might have been amillionaire, a Socialist, or even a Member of Parliament. 

We are all creatures of heredity and environment. It is Fate, and nothis own merit, that has kept George Bernard Shaw out of a shovel hat andgaiters, and condemned some Right Honourable Gentlemen to manage StateDepartments instead of planting cabbages. 

The child born of healthy, moral, and intellectual parents has abetter start in life than the child born of unhealthy, immoral, andunintellectual parents. 

The child who has the misfortune to be born in the vitiated atmosphereof a ducal palace is at a great disadvantage in comparison with thechild happily born amid the innocent and respectable surroundings of asemi-detached villa in Brixton. 

What chance, then, has a drunkard's baby, born in a thieves' den, anddragged up amid the ignorant squalor of the slums?

Environment is very powerful for good or evil. Had Shakespeare been bornin the Cannibal Islands he would never have written _As You LikeIt_; had Torquemada been born a Buddhist he never would have taken toroasting heretics. 

But this, you may say, is sheer Fatalism. Well! It seems to me to be_truth_, and philosophy, and sweet charity. 

And now I will try to show the difference between this Determinism, which some think must prove so maleficent, and the Christian doctrine ofFree Will, which many consider so beneficent. 

Let us take a flagrant instance of wrong-doing. Suppose some personto persist in playing "Dolly Grey" on the euphonium, or to contract abaneful habit of reciting "Curfew shall not Ring" at evening parties, the Christian believer in Free Will would call him a bad man, and wouldsay he ought to be punished. 

The philosophic Determinist would denounce the offender's _conduct_, butwould not denounce the _offender_. 

We Determinists do not denounce _men_; we denounce _acts_. We do notblame men; we try to teach them. If they are not teachable we restrainthem. 

You will admit that our method is different from the accepted method. I shall try to convince you that it is also materially better than theaccepted, or Christian, method. 

Let us suppose two concrete cases: (1) Bill Sikes beats his wife; (2)Lord Rackrent evicts his tenants. 

Let us first think what would be the orthodox method of dealing withthese two cases?

What would be the orthodox method? The parson and the man in the streetwould say Bill Sikes was a bad man, and that he ought to be punished. 

The Determinist would say that Bill Sikes had committed a crime, andthat he ought to be restrained, and taught better. 

You may tell me there seems to be very little difference in thepractical results of the two methods. But that is because we have notfollowed the two methods far enough. 

If you will allow me to follow the two methods further you will, I hope, agree with me that their results will not be identical, but that ourresults will be immeasurably better. 

For the orthodox method is based upon the erroneous dogma that BillSikes had a free will to choose between right and wrong, and, havingchosen to do wrong, he is a bad man, and ought to be punished. 

But the Determinist bases his method upon the philosophical theory thatBill Sikes is what heredity and environment have made him; and that heis not responsible for his heredity, which he did not choose, nor forhis environment, which he did not make. 

Still, you may think the difference is not effectively great. But it is. For the Christian would blame Bill Sikes, and no one but Bill Sikes. But the Determinist would not blame Sikes at all: he would blame hisenvironment. 

Is not that a material difference? But follow it out to its logicalresults. The Christian, blaming only Bill Sikes, because he had a "freewill, " would punish Sikes, and perhaps try to convert Sikes; and therehis effort would logically end. 

The Determinist would say: "If this man Sikes has been reared in a slum, has not been educated, nor morally trained, has been exposed to allkinds of temptation, the fault is that of the social system which hasmade such ignorance, and vice, and degradation possible. "

That is _one_ considerable difference between the results of a goodreligion and a bad one. The Christian condemns the man--who is a victimof evil social conditions. The Determinist condemns the evil conditions. It is the difference between the methods of sending individual sufferersfrom diphtheria to the hospital and the method of condemning the drains. 

But you may cynically remind me that nothing will come of theDeterminists' protest against the evil social conditions. Perhaps not. Let us waive that question for a moment, and consider our second case. 

Lord Rackrent evicts his tenants. The orthodox method is well known. Itgoes no further than the denunciation of the peer, and the raising of asubscription (generally inadequate) for the sufferers. 

The Determinist method is different. The Determinist would say: "Thispeer is what heredity and environment have made him. We cannot blame himfor being what he is. We can only blame his environment. There must besomething wrong with a social system which permits one idle peer to ruinhundreds of industrious producers. This evil social system should beamended, or evictions will continue. "

That Determinist conclusion would be followed by the usual inadequatesubscription. 

And now we will go back to the point we passed. You may say, in the caseof Sikes and the peer, that the logic of the Determinist is sound, butineffective: nothing comes of it. 

I admit that nothing comes of it, and I am now going to tell you _why_nothing comes of it. 

The Determinist cannot put his wisdom into action, because he is in aminority. 

So long as Christians have an overwhelming majority who will not touchthe drains, diphtheria must continue. 

So long as the universal verdict condemns the victim of a bad system, and helps to keep the bad system in full working order, so long willevil flourish and victims suffer. 

If you wish to realise the immense superiority of the Deterministprinciples over the Christian religion, you have only to imagine whatwould happen if the Determinists had a majority as overwhelming as themajority the Christians now hold. 

For whereas the Christian theory of free will and personalresponsibility results in established ignorance and injustice, with novisible remedies beyond personal denunciation, the prison, and a fewcoals and blankets, the Determinist method would result in the abolitionof lords and burglars, of slums and palaces, of caste and snobbery. There would be no ignorance and no poverty left in the world. 

That is because the Determinist understands human nature, and theChristian does not. It is because the Determinist understands morality, and the Christian does not. 

For the Determinist looks for the cause of wrong-doing in theenvironment of the wrong-doer. While the Christian puts all the wrongswhich society perpetrates against the individual, and all the wrongswhich the individual perpetrates against his fellows down to animaginary "free will. "

Some Free-Willers are fond of crying out: "Once admit that men are notto be blamed for their actions, and all morality and all improvementwill cease. " But that is a mistake. As I have indicated above, a goodmany evils now rife would cease, because then we should attack theevils, and not the victims of the evils. But it is absurd to supposethat we do not detest cholera because we do not detest cholera patients, or that we should cease to hate wrong because we ceased to blamewrong-doers. 

Admit the Determinist theory, and all would be taught to do well, andmost would take kindly to the lesson. Because the fact that environmentis so powerful for evil suggests that it is powerful for good. If man iswhat he is made, it behoves a nation which desires and prizes good mento be very earnest and careful in its methods of making them. 

I believe that I am what heredity and environment made me. But I knowthat I can make myself better or worse if I try. I know that because Ihave learnt it, and the learning has been part of my environment. 

My claim, as a Determinist, is that it is not so good to punish anoffender as to improve his environment. It is good of the Christians toopen schools and to found charities. But as a Determinist I am bound tosay that there ought to be no such things in the world as poverty andignorance, and one of the contributory causes to ignorance and povertyis the Christian doctrine of free will. 

Take away from a man all that God gave him, and there will be nothing ofhim left. 

Take away from a man all that heredity and environment have given him, and there will be nothing left. 

Man is what he is by the act of God, or the results of heredity andenvironment. In either case he is not to blame. 

In one case the result is due to the action of his ancestors andsociety, in the other to the act of God. 

Therefore a man is not responsible for his actions, and cannot sinagainst God. 

_If God is responsible for Man's existence, God is responsible for Man'sacts. _

A religion built upon the doctrine of Free Will and human responsibilityto God is built upon a misconception and must fall. 

Christianity is a fabric of impossibilities erected upon a foundation oferror. 

Perhaps, since I find many get confused on the subject of Free Will fromtheir consciousness of continually exercising the "power of choice, " Ihad better say a few words here on that subject. 

You say you have power to choose between two courses. So you have, butthat power is limited and controlled by heredity and environment. 

If you have to choose between a showy costume and a plain one you willchoose the one you like best, and you will like best the one which yournature (heredity) and your training (environment) will lead you to likebest. 

You think your will is free. But it is not. You may think you have powerto drown yourself; but you have not. 

Your love of life and your sense of duty are too strong for you. 

You might think I have power to leave the _Clarion_ and start ananti-Socialist paper. But I know I have not that power. My nature(heredity) and my training and habit (environment) are too strong forme. 

If you knew a lady was going to choose between a red dress and a greyone, and if you knew the lady very well, you could guess her choicebefore she made it. 

If you knew an honourable man was to be offered a bribe to do adishonourable act, you would feel sure he would refuse it. 

If you knew a toper was to be offered as much free whisky as he coulddrink, you would be sure he would not come home sober. 

If you knew the nature and the environment of a man thoroughly well, and the circumstances (_all_ the circumstances) surrounding a choiceof action to be presented to him, and if you were clever enough to worksuch a difficult problem, you could forecast his choice before he madeit, as surely as in the case of the lady, the toper, and the honourableman above mentioned. 

You have power to choose, then, but you can only choose as your heredityand environment _compel_ you to choose. And you do not select your ownheredity nor your own environment. 

CHRISTIAN APOLOGIES CHRISTIAN APOLOGIES

Christian apologists make some daring claims on behalf of theirreligion. The truth of Christianity is proved, they say, by itsendurance and by its power; the beneficence of its results testifies tothe divinity of its origin. 

These claims command wide acceptance, for the simple reason that thosewho deny them cannot get a hearing. 

The Christians have virtual command of all the churches, universities, and schools. They have the countenance and support of the Thrones, Parliaments, Cabinets, and aristocracies of the world, and they have thenominal support of the World's Newspaper Press. They have behind themthe traditions of eighteen centuries. They have formidable allies in theshape of whole schools of philosophy and whole libraries of eloquenceand learning. They have the zealous service and unswerving credence ofmillions of honest and worthy citizens: and they are defended by solidramparts of prejudice, and sentiment, and obstinate old custom. 

The odds against the Rationalists are tremendous. To challenge theclaims of Christianity is easy: to get the challenge accepted is veryhard. Rationalists' books and papers are boycotted. The Christians willnot listen, will not reason, will not, if they can prevent it, allowa hostile voice to be heard. Thus, from sheer lack of knowledge, thepublic accept the Christian apologist's assertions as demonstratedtruth. 

And the Christians claim this immunity from attack as a triumph of theirarms, and a further proof of the truth of their religion. Religion hasbeen attacked before, they cry, and where now are its assailants? Andthe answer must be, that many of its assailants are in their graves, butthat some of them are yet alive, and there are more to follow. But thecombat is very unequal. If the Rationalists could for only a fewyears have the support of the Crowns, Parliaments, Aristocracies, Universities, Schools, and Newspapers of the world; if they could preachScience and Reason twice every Sunday from a hundred thousand pulpits, perhaps the Christians would have less cause for boasting. 

But as things are, we "Infidels" must cease to sigh for whirlwinds, anddo the best we can with the bellows. 

So: the Christians claim that their religion has done wonders for theworld; a claim disputed by the Rationalists. 

Now, when we consider what Christianity has done, we should take accountof the evil as well as the good. But this the Christians are unwillingto allow. 

Christians declare that the divine origin and truth of their religionare proved by its beneficent results. 

But Christianity has done evil as well as good. Mr. G. K. Chesterton, while defending Christianity in the _Daily News_, said:

 Christianity has committed crimes so monstrous that the sun might sicken at them in heaven. 

And no one can refute that statement. 

But Christians evade the dilemma. When the evil works of theirreligion are cited, they reply that those evils were wrought by falseChristianity, that they were contrary to the teachings of Christ, and sowere not the deeds of Christians at all. 

_The Christian Commonwealth_, in advancing the above plea as to realand false Christianity, instances the difference between Astrology andAstronomy, and said:

 We fear Mr. Blatchford, if he has any sense of consistency, must, when he has finished his tirade against Christianity, turn his artillery on Greenwich Observatory, and proclaim the Astronomer Royal a scientific quack, on account of the follies of star-gazers in the past. 

But that parallel is not a true one. Let us suppose that the follies ofastrology and the discoveries of astronomy were bound up in one book, and called the Word of God. Let us suppose we were told that the wholebook--facts, reason, folly, and falsehoods--was divinely inspired andliterally true. Let us suppose that any one who denied the old crudeerrors of astrology was persecuted as a heretic. Let us suppose that anyone denying the theory of Laplace or the theory of Copernicus wouldbe reviled as an "Infidel. " Let us suppose that the Astronomer Royalclaimed infallibility, not only in matters astronomical, but alsoin politics and morals. Let us suppose that for a thousand years theastrological-astronomical holy government had whipped, imprisoned, tortured, burnt, hanged, and damned for everlasting every man, woman, orchild who dared to tell it any new truth, and that some of the noblestmen of genius of all ages had been roasted or impaled alive for beingrude to the equator. Let us suppose that millions of pounds were stillannually spent on casting nativities, and that thousands of expensiveobservatories were still maintained at the public cost for astrologicalrites. Let us suppose all this, and then I should say it would be quiteconsistent and quite logical for me to turn my verbal artillery onGreenwich Observatory. 

Would the Christians listen to such a plea in any other case? HadSocialists been guilty of tyranny, or war, of massacre, or torture, ofblind opposition to the truth of science, of cruel persecution of thefinest human spirits for fifteen centuries, can anyone believe fora moment that Christians would heed the excuse that the founders ofSocialism had not preached the atrocious policy which the establishedSocialist bodies and the recognised Socialist leaders had put in forcepersistently during all those hundreds of cruel years?

Would the Christian hearken to such a defence from a Socialist, orfrom a Mohammedan? Would a Liberal accept it from a Tory? Would a RomanCatholic admit it from a Jew?

Neither is it right to claim credit for the good deeds, and to avoidresponsibility for the evil deeds of the divine religion. 

And the fact must be insisted upon, that _all_ religion, in its verynature, makes for persecution and oppression. It is the assumption thatit is wicked to doubt the accepted faith and the presumption that onereligion ought to revenge or justify its God upon another religion, thatleads to all the pious crimes the world groans and bleeds for. 

This is seen in the Russian outrages on the Jews, and in the Moslemoutrages upon the Macedonians to-day. It is religious fanaticism thatlights and fans and feeds the fire. Were all the people in the worldof one, or of no, religion to-day, there would be no Jews murdered byChristians and no Christians murdered by Moslems in the East. The causeof the atrocities would be gone. The cause is religion. 

Why is religious intolerance so much more fierce and bitter thanpolitical intolerance? Just because it _is_ religious. It is thesupernatural element that breeds the fury. It is the feeling that theirreligion is divine and all other religions wicked: it is the belief thatit is a holy thing to be "jealous for the Lord, " that drives men intoblind rage and ruthless savagery. 

We have to regard two things at once, then: the good influences ofChrist's ethics, and the evil deeds of those who profess to be Hisfollowers. 

As to what some Christians call "the Christianity of Christ, " I suggestthat the teachings of Christ were imperfect and inadequate. That theycontain some moral lessons I admit. But some of the finest and mostgenerally admired of those lessons do not appear to have been spokenby Christ, and for the rest there is nothing in His ethics that hadnot been taught by men before, and little that has not been extended orimproved by men since His era. 

The New Testament, considered as a moral and spiritual guide formankind, is unsatisfactory. For it is based upon an erroneous estimateof human nature and of God. 

I am sure that it would be easy to compile a book more suitable tothe needs of Man. I think it is a gross blunder to assume that all thegenius, all the experience, all the discovery and research; all thepoetry, morality, and science of the entire human race during the pasteighteen hundred years have failed to add to or improve the knowledgeand morality of the first century. 

Mixed with much that is questionable or erroneous, the New Testamentcontains some truth and beauty. Amid the perpetration of much bloodshedand tyranny, Christianity has certainly achieved some good. I should notlike to say of any religion that all its works were evil. But Christ'smessage, as we have it in the Gospels, is neither clear nor sufficing, and has been obscured, and, at times almost obliterated, by the pompsand casuistries of the schools and churches. And just as it is difficultto discover the actual Jesus among the conflicting Gospel stories ofHis works and words, so it is almost impossible to discover the genuineauthentic Christian religion amid the swarm of more or less antagonisticsects who confound the general ear with their discordant testimonies. 

CHRISTIANITY AND CIVILISATION

It is a common mistake of apologists to set down all generalimprovements and signs of improvements to the credit of the particularreligion or political theory they defend. Every good Liberal knows thatbad harvests are due to Tory government. Every good Tory knows thathis Party alone is to thank for the glorious certainties that Britanniarules the waves, that an Englishman's house is his castle, and thatjourneymen tailors earn fourpence an hour more than they were paid inthe thirteenth century. 

Cobdenites ascribe every known or imagined improvement in commerce, andthe condition of the masses, to Free Trade. Things are better thanthey were fifty years ago: Free Trade was adopted fifty years ago. _Ergo_--there you are. 

There is not a word about the development of railways and steamships, about improved machinery, about telegraphs, the cheap post andtelephones; about education and better facilities of travel; about theFactory Acts and Truck Acts; about cheap books and newspapers; and whoso base to whisper of Trade Unions, and Agitators, and County Councils?

So it is with the Christian religion. We are more moral, more civilised, more humane, the Christians tell us, than any human beings ever werebefore us. And we owe this to the Christian religion, and to no otherthing under Heaven. 

But for Christianity we never should have had the House of Peers, the_Times_ newspaper, the Underground Railway, the _Adventures of CaptainKettle_, the Fabian Society, or Sir Thomas Lipton. 

The ancient Greek Philosophers, the Buddhist missionaries, the Northerninvaders, the Roman laws and Roman roads, the inventions of printing, of steam, and of railways, the learning of the Arabs, the discoveriesof Copernicus, Galileo, Newton, Herschel, Hunter, Laplace, Bacon, Descartes, Spencer, Columbus, Karl Marx, Adam Smith; the reformsand heroisms and artistic genius of Wilberforce, Howard, King Asoka, Washington, Stephen Langton, Oliver Cromwell, Sir Thomas More, Rabelais, and Shakespeare; the wars and travels and commerce of eighteen hundredyears, the Dutch Republic, the French Revolution, and the Jameson Raidhave had nothing to do with the growth of civilisation in Europe andAmerica. 

And so to-day: science, invention, education, politics, economicconditions, literature and art, the ancient Greeks and Oriental Wisdom, and the world's Press count for nothing in the moulding of the nations. Everything worth having comes from the pulpit, the British and ForeignBible Society, and the _War Cry_. 

It is not to our scientists, our statesmen, our economists, our authors, inventors, and scholars that we must look for counsel and reform: suchsecular aid is useless, and we shall be wise to rely entirely upon HisHoliness the Pope and His Grace the Archbishop of Canterbury. 

In the England of the Middle Ages, when Christianity was paramount, there was a cruel penal code, there was slavery, there were barbarousforest laws, there were ruthless oppression and insolent robbery of thepoor, there were black ignorance and a terror of superstition, therewere murderous laws against witchcraft, there was savage persecutionof the Jews, there were "trial by wager of battle, " and "question" ofprisoners by torture. 

Many of these horrors endured until quite recent times. Why didChristianity with its spiritual and temporal power, permit such thingsto be?

Did Christianity abolish them? No. Christianity nearly always opposedreform. The Church was the enemy of popular freedom, the enemy ofpopular education; the friend of superstition and tyranny, and therobber baron. 

Those horrors are no more. But Christianity did not abolish them. Theywere abolished by the gradual spread of humane feelings and the lightof knowledge; just as similar iniquities were abolished by the spread ofhumane doctrines in India, centuries before the birth of Christ. 

Organised and authoritative religion the world over makes for ignorance, for poverty and superstition. In Russia, in Italy, in Spain, inTurkey, where the Churches are powerful and the authority is tense, thecondition of the people is lamentable. In America, England, and Germany, where the authority of the Church is less rigid and the religion isnearer Rationalism, the people are more prosperous, more intelligent, and less superstitious. So, again, the rule of the English Church seemsless beneficial than that of the more rational and free Nonconformist. The worst found and worst taught class in England is that of theagricultural labourers, who have been for centuries left entirely in thehands of the Established Church. 

It may be urged that the French, although Catholics, are as intelligentand as prosperous as any nation in the world. But the French are aclever people, and since their Revolution have not taken their religionso seriously. Probably there are more Sceptics and Rationalists inFrance than in any other country. 

My point is that the prosperity and happiness of a nation do not dependupon the form of religion they profess, but upon their native energy andintelligence and the level of freedom and knowledge to which they haveattained. 

It is because organised and authoritative religion opposes education andliberty that we find the most religious peoples the most backward. Andthis is a strange commentary upon the claim of the Christians, that their religion is the root from which the civilisation and therefinement of the world have sprung. 

CHRISTIANITY AND ETHICS

Christianity, we are told, inaugurated the religion of humanity andhuman brotherhood. But the Buddhists taught a religion of humanity anduniversal brotherhood before the Christian era; and not only taught thereligion, but put it into practice, which the Christians never succeededin doing, and cannot do to-day. 

And, moreover, the Buddhists did not spread their religion ofhumanity and brotherhood by means of the sword, and the rack, and thethumb-screw, and the faggot; and the Buddhists liberated the slave, andextended their loving-kindness to the brute creation. 

The Buddhists do not depend for the records of their morality on books. Their testimony is written upon the rocks. No argument can explain awaythe rock edicts of King Asoka. 

King Asoka was one of the greatest Oriental kings. He ruled over a vastand wealthy nation. He was converted to Buddhism, and made it the Statereligion, as Constantine made Christianity the State religion of Rome. In the year 251 B. C. , King Asoka inscribed his earliest rock edict. The other edicts from which I shall quote were all cut more than twocenturies before our era. The inscription of the Rupuath Rock has thewords: "Two hundred and fifty years have elapsed since the departure ofthe teacher. " Now, Buddha died in the fifth century before Christ. 

The Dhauli Edict of King Asoka contains the following:

 Much longing after the things [of this life] is a disobedience, I again declare; not less so is the laborious ambition of dominion by a prince who would be a propitiator of Heaven. Confess and believe in God, who is the worthy object of obedience. 

From the Tenth Rock Edict:

 Earthly glory brings little profit, but, on the contrary, produces a loss of virtue. To toil for heaven is difficult to peasant and to prince, unless by a supreme effort he gives up all. 

This is from the Fourteenth Edict:

 Piyadasi, the friend of the Devas, values alone the harvest of the next world. For this alone has this inscription been chiselled, that our sons and our grandsons should make no new conquests. Let them not think that conquests by the sword merit the name of conquests. Let them see their ruin, confusion, and violence. True conquests alone are the conquests of _Dharma_. 

Rock Edict No. 1 has:

 Formerly in the great refectory and temple of King Piyadasi, the friend of the Devas, many hundred thousand animals were daily sacrificed for the sake of food meat. .. But now the joyful chorus resounds again and again that henceforward not a single animal shall be put to death. 

The Second Edict has:

 In committing the least possible harm, in doing abundance of good, in the practice of pity, love, truth, and likewise purity of life, religion consists. 

The Ninth Edict has:

 Not superstitious rites, but kindness to slaves and servants, reverence towards venerable persons, self-control with respect to living creatures. .. These and similar virtuous actions are the rites which ought indeed to be performed. 

The Eighth Edict has:

 The acts and the practice of religion, to wit, sympathy, charity, truthfulness, purity, gentleness, kindness. 

The Sixth Edict has:

 I consider the welfare of all people as something for which I must work. 

The Dhauli Edict has:

 If a man is subject to slavery and ill-treatment, from this moment he shall be delivered by the king from this and other captivity. Many men in this country suffer in captivity, therefore the stupa containing the commands of the king has been a great want. 

Is it reasonable to suppose that a people possessing so much wisdom, mercy, and purity two centuries before Christ was born could need toborrow from the Christian ethics?

Mr. Lillie says of King Asoka:

 He antedates Wilberforce in the matter of slavery. He antedates Howard in his humanity towards prisoners. He antedates Tolstoy in his desire to turn the sword into a pruning-hook. He antedates Rousseau, St. Martin, Fichte in their wish to make interior religion the all in all. 

King Asoka abolished slavery, denounced war, taught spiritual religionand purity of life, founded hospitals, forbade blood sacrifices, andinculcated religious toleration, two centuries before the birth ofChrist. 

Centuries before King Asoka the Buddhists sent out missionaries all overthe world. 

Which religion was the borrower from the other--Buddhism orChristianity?

Two centuries before Christ, King Asoka had cut upon the rocks thesewords:

 I pray with every variety of prayer for those who differ with me in creed, that they, following after my example, may with me attain unto eternal salvation. And whoso doeth this is blessed of the inhabitants of this world; and in the next world endless moral merit resulteth from such religious charity --_Edict XI_. 

How many centuries did it take the Christians to rise to that level ofwisdom and charity? How many Christians have reached it yet?

But the altruistic idea is very much older than Buddha, for it existedamong forms of life very much earlier and lower than the human, and has, indeed, been a powerful factor in evolution. 

Speaking of "The Golden Rule" in his _Confessions of Faith of a Man ofScience_, Haeckel says:

 In the human family this maxim has always been accepted as self-evident; as ethical instinct it was an inheritance derived from our animal ancestors. It had already found a place among the herds of apes and other social mammals; in a similar manner, but with wider scope, it was already present in the most primitive communities and among the hordes of the least advanced savages. Brotherly love--mutual support, succour, protection, and the like--had already made its appearance among gregarious animals as a social duty; for without it the continued existence of such societies is impossible. Although at a later period, in the case of man, these moral foundations of society came to be much more highly developed, their oldest prehistoric source, as Darwin has shown, is to be sought in the social instincts of animals. Among the higher vertebrates (dogs, horses, elephants, etc. ), as among the higher articulates (ants, bees, termites, etc. ), also, the development of social relations and duties is the indispensable condition of their living together in orderly societies. Such societies have for man also been the most important instrument of intellectual and moral progress. 

It is not to revelation that we owe the ideal of human brotherhood, butto evolution. It is because altruism is better than selfishness that ithas survived. It is because love is stronger and sweeter than greed thatits influence has deepened and spread. From the love of the animal forits mate, from the love of parents for their young, sprang the ties ofkindred and the loyalty of friendship; and these in time developedinto tribal, and thence into national patriotism. And these stages ofaltruistic evolution may be seen among the brutes. It remained for Manto take the grand step of embracing all humanity as one brotherhood andone nation. 

But the root idea of fraternity and mutual loyalty was not planted byany priest or prophet. For countless ages universal brotherhood hasexisted among the bison, the swallow, and the deer, in a perfection towhich humanity has not yet attained. 

For a fuller account of this animal origin of fraternity I recommend thereader to two excellent books, _The Martyrdom of Man_, by Winwood Reade(Kegan Paul), and _Mutual Aid_, by Prince Kropotkin (Heinemann). 

But the Christian claims that Christ taught a new gospel of love, andmercy, and goodwill to men. That is a great mistake. Christ did notoriginate one single new ethic. 

The Golden Rule was old. The Lord's Prayer was old. The Sermon onthe Mount was old. With the latter I will deal briefly. For a fullerstatement, please see the R. P. A. Sixpenny edition of Huxley's _Lecturesand Essays_, and _Christianity and Mythology_, by J. M. Robertson. 

Shortly stated, Huxley's argument was to the following effect:

That Mark's Gospel is the oldest of the Synoptic Gospels, and thatMark's Gospel does not contain, nor even mention, the Sermon on theMount. That Luke gives no Sermon on the Mount, but gives what may becalled a "Sermon on the Plain. " That Luke's sermon differs materiallyfrom the sermon given by Matthew. That the Matthew version contains onehundred and seven verses, and the Luke version twenty-nine verses. 

Huxley's conclusion is as follows:

 "Matthew, " having a _cento_ of sayings attributed--rightly or wrongly it is impossible to say--to Jesus among his materials, thought they were, or might be, records of a continuous discourse and put them in a place he thought likeliest. Ancient historians of the highest character saw no harm in composing long speeches which never were spoken, and putting them into the mouths of statesmen and warriors; and I presume that whoever is represented by "Matthew" would have been grievously astonished to find that any one objected to his following the example of the best models accessible to him. 

But since Huxley wrote those words more evidence has been produced. Fromthe Old Testament, from the Talmud, and from the recently-discovered_Teaching of the Twelve Apostles_ (a pre-Christian work) the origins ofthe Sermon on the Mount have been fully traced. 

Agnostic criticism now takes an attitude towards this sermon which maybe thus expressed:

 1. The sermon never was preached at all. It is a written compilation. 

 2. The story of the mount is a myth. The name of the mount is not given. It is not reasonable to suppose that Jesus would lead a multitude up a mountain to speak to them for a few minutes. The mountain is an old sun-myth of the Sun God on his hill, and the twelve apostles are another sun-myth, and represent the signs of the Zodiac. 

 3. There is nothing in the alleged sermon that was new at the time of its alleged utterance. 

Of course, it may be claimed that the arrangement of old texts in a newform constitutes a kind of originality; as one might say that he whotook flowers from a score of gardens and arranged them into one bouquetproduced a new effect of harmony and beauty. But this credit must begiven to the compilers of the gospels' version of the Sermon on theMount. 

Let us take a few pre-Christian morals. 

Sextus said: "What you wish your neighbours to be to you, such be alsoto them. "

Isocrates said: "Act towards others as you desire others to act towardsyou. "

Lao-tze said: "The good I would meet with goodness, the not-good I wouldalso meet with goodness. "

Buddha said: "Hatred does not cease by hatred at any time: hatred ceasesby love. "

And again: "Let us live happily, not hating those who hate us. "

In the Talmud occur the following Jewish anticipations of Christianmorals:

 Love peace, and seek it at any price. 

 Remember that it is better to be persecuted than persecutor. 

 To whom does God pardon sins?--To him who himself forgives injuries. 

 Those who undergo injuries without returning it, those who hear themselves vilified and do not reply, who have no motive but love, who accept evils with joy; it is of them that the prophet speaks when he says the friends of God shall shine one day as the sun in all his splendour. 

 It is not the wicked we should hate, but wickedness. 

 Be like God, compassionate, merciful. 

 Judge not your neighbour when you have not been in his place. 

 He who charitably judges his neighbour shall be charitably judged by God. 

 Do not unto others that which it would be disagreeable to you to suffer yourself, that is the main part of the law; all the rest is only commentary. 

From the Old Testament come such morals as:

 Let him give his cheek to him that smiteth him (Lam. Iii. 30). 

 Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself (Lev. Xix. 18). 

 He that is of a lowly spirit shall obtain honour (Prov. Xxix. 23)

 The meek shall inherit the land (Ps. Xxxvii 11). 

History and ancient literature prove that Christianity did not bringa new moral code, did not inaugurate peace, nor purity, nor universalbrotherhood, did not originate the ideal human character: but checkedcivilisation, resisted all enlightenment, and deluged the earth withinnocent blood in the endeavour to compel mankind to drink old moralwine out of new theological bottles. 

Three of the greatest blessings men can have are freedom, liberty ofconscience, and knowledge. These blessings Christianity has not given, but has opposed. 

It is largely to the ancient Greeks and Romans, to the Arabs andthe Indians, to patriots, heroes, statesmen, scholars, scientists, travellers, inventors, discoverers, authors, poets, philanthropists, rebels, sceptics, and reformers that the world owes such advance as ithas made towards liberty and happiness and universal loving-kindness. 

This advance has been made in defiance of Christian envy, hatred, andmalice, and in defiance of Christian tyranny and persecution. Afterfighting fiercely to defeat the advance of humanity, after slayingand cursing the noblest sons and daughters of the ages, the defeatedChristians now claim to have conquered the fields they have lost, to have bestowed the benefits they have denied, to have evolved thecivilisation they have maimed and damned. 

As a Democrat, a Humanist, and a Socialist, I join my voice to theindignant chorus which denies those claims. 

THE SUCCESS OF CHRISTIANITY

We are told that the divine origin and truth of Christianity are provedby the marvellous success of that religion. But it seems to me that thereverse is proved by its failure. 

Christianity owed its magnificent opportunities (which it has wasted) toseveral accidental circumstances. Just as the rise of Buddhism was madepossible by the act of King Asoka in adopting it as the State Religionof his vast Indian kingdom, was the rise of Christianity made possibleby the act of the Emperor Constantine in adopting it as the Statereligion of the far-stretched Roman Empire. 

Christianity spread rapidly because the Roman Empire was ripe for anew religion. It conquered because it threw in its lot with the rulingpowers. It throve because it came with the tempting bribe of Heavenin one hand, and the withering threat of Hell in the other. The olderreligions, grey in their senility, had no such bribe or threat toconjure with. 

Christianity overcame opposition by murdering or cursing all whoresisted its advance. It exterminated scepticism by stifling knowledge, and putting a merciless veto on free thought and free speech, and byrewarding philosophers and discoverers with the faggot and the chain. Itheld its power for centuries by force of hell-fire, and ignorance, andthe sword; and the greatest of these was ignorance. 

Nor must it be supposed that the persecution and the slaughter of"Heretics" and "Infidels" was the exception. It was the rule. Motley, the American historian, states that Torquemada, during eighteen years'command of the Inquisition, burnt more than ten thousand people alive, and punished nearly a hundred thousand with infamy, confiscation ofproperty, or perpetual imprisonment. 

To be a Jew, a Moslem, a Lutheran, a "wizard, " a sceptic, a heretic wasto merit death and torture. One order of Philip of Spain condemned todeath as "heretics" _the entire population of the Netherlands_. Whereverthe Christian religion was successful the martyrs' fires burned, and thedevilish instruments of torture were in use. For some twelve centuriesthe Holy Church carried out this inhuman policy. And to this day theterm "free thought" is a term of reproach. The shadow of the fanaticalpriest, that half-demented coward, sneak, and assassin, still blightsus. Although that holy monster, with his lurking spies, his villainouscasuistries, his flames and devils, and red-hot pincers, and whips ofsteel, has been defeated by the humanity he scorned and the knowledgehe feared, yet he has left a taint behind him. It is still held that itought to be an unpleasant thing to be an Infidel. 

And, yes, there were other factors in the "success" of Christianity. Thestory of the herald angels, the wise men from the east, the manger, the child God, the cross, and the gospel of mercy and atonement, andof universal brotherhood and peace amongst the earthly children ofa Heavenly Father, whose attribute was love--this story, possessed acertain homely beauty and sentimental glamour which won the allegianceof many golden-hearted and sweet-souled men and women. These lovelynatures assimilated from the chaotic welter of beauty and ashes calledthe Christian religion all that was pure, and rejected all that wasfoul. It was the light of such sovereign souls as Joan of Arc andFrancis of Assisi that saved Christianity from darkness and the pit; andhow much does that religion owe to the genius of Wyclif and Tyndale, ofMilton and Handel, of Mozart and Thomas a Kempis, of Michael Angelo andRafael, and the compilers of the Book of Common Prayer?

There are good men and good women by millions in the Christian ranksto-day, and it is their virtue, and their zeal, and their illuminationof its better qualities, and charitable and loyal shelter of its folliesand its crimes, that keep the Christian religion still alive. 

Christianity has been for fifteen hundred years the religion of thebrilliant, brave, and strenuous races in the world. And what has itaccomplished? And how does it stand to-day?

Is Christianity the rule of life in America and Europe? Are the massesof people who accept it peaceful, virtuous, chaste, spiritually minded, prosperous, happy? Are their national laws based on its ethics? Aretheir international politics guided by the Sermon on the Mount? Aretheir noblest and most Christlike men and women most revered andhonoured? Is the Christian religion loved and respected by those outsideits pale? Are London and Paris, New York and St. Petersburg, Berlin, Vienna, Brussels, and Rome centres of holiness and of sweetness andlight? From Glasgow to Johannesburg, from Bombay to San Francisco is Godor Mammon king?

If a tree should be known by its fruit, the Christian religion has smallright to boast of its success. 

But the Christian will say, "This is not Christianity, but itscaricature. " Where, then, is the saving grace, the compelling power, of this divine religion, which, planted by God Himself, is found afternineteen centuries to yield nothing but leaves?

After all these sad ages of heroism and crime, of war and massacre, of preaching and praying, of blustering and trimming; after all thisprodigal waste of blood and tears, and labour and treasure, and geniusand sacrifice, we have nothing better to show for Christianity thanEuropean and American Society to-day. 

And this ghastly heart-breaking failure proves the Christian religion tobe the Divine Revelation of God!

THE PROPHECIES

Another alleged proof of the divine verity of the Christian religionis the Prophecies. Hundreds of books--perhaps I might say thousandsof books--have been written upon these prophecies. Wonderful books, wonderful prophecies, wonderful religion, wonderful people. 

If religious folk did not think by moonlight those books on theprophecies would never have been written. There are the prophecies ofChrist's coming which are pointed out in the Old Testament. That theJews had many prophecies of a Jewish Messiah is certain. But these areindefinite. There is not one of them which unmistakably applies to JesusChrist; and the Jews, who should surely understand their own prophetsand their own Scriptures, deny that Christ was the Messiah whose comingthe Scriptures foretold. 

Then, we have the explicit prophecy of Christ Himself as to His secondcoming. That prophecy at least is definite; and that has never beenfulfilled. 

For Christ declared in the plainest and most solemn manner that He wouldreturn from Heaven with power and glory within the lifetime of those towhom He spoke:

 Verily, I say unto you, this generation shall not pass, till all these things be fulfilled. 

These prophecies by Christ of His return to earth may be read in theGospels of Matthew and Luke. They are distinct, and definite, andsolemn, and--untrue. 

I could fill many pages with unfulfilled prophecies from the Old and NewTestaments. I think the one I give is enough. 

Jesus Christ distinctly says that He will come in glory with all Hisangels before "this generation" all have passed away. 

This is the year 1903. Christ uttered His prophecy about the year 31. 

THE UNIVERSALITY OF RELIGIOUS BELIEF

Christians declare the religious sentiment to be universal. Even if itwere so, that would show a universal spiritual hunger; but would notprove the Christian religion to be its only food. 

But the religious sentiment is not universal. I know many young peoplewho have never been taught religion of any kind, who have never readBible nor Gospel, who never attended any place of worship; and they arevirtuous and courteous and compassionate and happy, and feel no moreneed of spiritual comfort or religious consolation than I do. 

They are as gentle, sweet, and merry, and do their duty as faithfully asany Christian, yet to them Heaven and Hell are meaningless abstractions;God and the soul are problems they, with quiet cheerfulness, leave timeto solve. 

If the craving for religion were universal these young folk would notbe free from spiritual hunger. As they are free from spiritual hunger, I conclude that the craving for religion is not born in us, but must beinculcated. 

Many good men and women will look blank at such heresy. "What!" theywill exclaim, "take away the belief in the Bible, and the service ofGod? Why, our lives would be empty. What would you give us in exchange?"

To which I answer, "The belief in yourselves, and the belief in yourfellow-creatures, and the service of Man. "

Such belief and such service will certainly increase the sum ofhappiness on earth. And as for the Hereafter--no man knoweth. _No_ manknoweth. IS CHRISTIANITY THE ONLY HOPE?

Christians tell us that their religion is our only refuge, that Christis our only saviour. From the wild Salvation Army captain, thunderingand beseeching under his banner of blood and fire, to the academicBishop reconciling science and transfiguring crude translations in thedim religious light of a cathedral, all the apostles of the Nazarenecarpenter insist that He is the only way. In this the Christianresembles the Hindu, the Parsee, the Buddhist, and the Mohammedan. Thereis but one true religion, and it is his. 

The Rationalist locks on with a rueful smile, and wonders. Hesees nothing in any one of these religions to justify its claim toinfallibility or pre-eminence. It seems to him unreasonable to assertthat any theology or any saviour is indispensable. He realises thata man may be good and happy in any church, or outside any church. Hecannot admit that only those who follow Jesus, or Buddha, or Mahomet, or Moses can be "saved, " nor that all those who fail to believe in thedivine mission of one, or all of these will be lost. 

Let us consider the Christian claim. If the Christian claim be valid, men cannot be good, nor happy, cannot be saved, except through Christ. Is this position supported by the facts?

One Christian tells me that "It is in the solemn realities of life thatone gets his final evidence that Christianity is true. " Another tells methat "In Christ alone is peace"; another, that "Without Christ there isneither health nor holiness. "

If these statements mean anything, they mean that none but trueChristians can live well, nor die well, nor bear sorrow and pain withfortitude, do their whole duty manfully, nor find happiness here andbliss hereafter. 

But I submit that Christianity does not make men lead better livesthan others lead who are not Christians, and there are none so abjectlyafraid of death as Christians are. The Pagan, the Buddhist, theMohammedan, and the Agnostic do not fear death nearly so much as do theChristians. 

The words of many of the greatest Christians are gloomy with the fearsof death, of Hell, and of the wrath of God. 

The Roman soldier, the Spartan soldier, the Mohammedan soldier did notfear death. The Greek, the Buddhist, the Moslem, the Viking went todeath as to a reward, or as to the arms of a bride. Compare the writingsof Marcus Aurelius and of Jeremy Taylor, of Epictetus and John Bunyan, and then ask yourself whether the Christian religion makes it easier formen to die. 

There are millions of Europeans--not to speak of Buddhists andJews--there are millions of men and women to-day who are not Christians. Do they live worse or die worse, or bear trouble worse, than those whoaccept the Christian faith?

Some of us have come through "the solemn realities of life, " and have_not_ realised that Christianity is true. We do not believe the Bible;we do not believe in the divinity of Christ; we do not pray, nor feelthe need of prayer; we do not fear God, nor Hell, nor death. We are ashappy as our even Christian; we are as good as our even Christian; weare as benevolent as our even Christian: what has Christianity to offerus?

There are in the world some four hundred and fifty millions ofBuddhists. How do they bear themselves in "the solemn realities oflife"?

I suggest that consolation, and fortitude, and cheerfulness, andloving-kindness are not in the exclusive gift of the Christian religion, but may be found by good men in _all_ religions. 

As to the effects of Christianity on life. Did Buddha, and King Asoka, and Socrates, and Aristides lead happy, and pure, and useful lives? Werethere no virtuous, nor happy, nor noble men and women during all themillions of years before the Crucifixion? Was there neither love, norhonour, nor wisdom, nor valour, nor peace in the world until Paul turnedChristian? History tells us no such gloomy story. 

Are there no good, nor happy, nor worthy men and women to-day outsidethe pale of the Christian churches? Amongst the eight hundred millionsof human beings who do not know or do not follow Christ, are there noneas happy and as worthy as any who follow Him?

Are we Rationalists so wicked, so miserable, so useless in the world, so terrified of the shadow of death? I beg to say we are nothing ofthe kind. We are quite easy and contented. There is no despair in ourhearts. We are not afraid of bogeys, nor do we dread the silence and thedark. 

Friend Christian, you are deceived in this matter. When you say thatChrist is the _only_ true teacher, that He is the _only_ hope ofmankind, that He is the _only_ Saviour, I must answer sharply that I donot believe that, and I do not think you believe it deep down in yourheart. For if Christ is the only Saviour, then thousands of millions ofBuddhists have died unsaved, and you know you do not believe that. 

Jeremy Taylor believed that; but you know better. 

Do you not _know_, as a matter of fact, that it is as well in thisworld, and shall be as well hereafter, with a good Buddhist, or Jew, orAgnostic, as with a good Christian?

Do you deny that? If you deny it, tell me what punishment you thinkwill be inflicted, here or hereafter on a good man who does not acceptChristianity. 

If you do not deny it, then on what grounds do you claim that Christis _the_ Saviour of all mankind, and that "only in Christ we are madewhole"?

You speak of the spiritual value of your religion. What can it give youmore than Socrates or Buddha possessed? These men had wisdom, courage, morality, fortitude, love, mercy. Can you find in all the world to-daytwo men as wise, as good, as gentle, as happy? Yet these men diedcenturies before Christ was born. 

If you believe that none but Christians can be happy or good; or if youbelieve that none but Christians can escape extinction or punishment, then there is some logic in your belief that Christ is our only Saviour. But that is to believe that there never was a good man before Christdied, and that Socrates and Buddha, and many thousands of millions ofmen, and women, and children, before Christ and after, have been _lost_. 

Such a belief is monstrous and absurd. 

But I see no escape from the dilemma it places us in. If only Christcan save, about twelve hundred millions of our fellow-creatures will belost. 

If men can be saved without Christ, then Christ is not our only Saviour. 

Christianity seems to be a composite religion, made up of fragments ofreligions of far greater antiquity. It is alleged to have originatedsome two thousand years ago. It has never been the religion of more thanone-third of the human race, and of those professing it only ten percent at any time have thoroughly understood, or sincerely followed, its teachings. It was not indispensable to the human race during thethousands (I say millions) of years before its advent. It is not nowindispensable to some eight hundred millions of human beings. It had noplace in the ancient civilisations of Egypt, Assyria, and Greece. It wasunknown to Socrates, to Epicurus, to Aristides, to Marcus Aurelius, toKing Asoka, and to Buddha. It has opposed science and liberty almostfrom the first. It has committed the most awful crimes and atrocities. It has upheld the grossest errors and the most fiendish theories asthe special revelations of God. It has been defeated in argument andconfounded by facts over and over again, and has been steadily drivenback and back, abandoning one essential position after another, untilthere is hardly anything left of its original pretensions. It is losingmore and more every day its hold upon the obedience and confidenceof the masses, and has only retained the suffrages of a minority ofeducated minds by accepting as truths the very theories which in thepast it punished as deadly sins. Are these the signs of a triumphantand indispensable religion? One would think, to read the Christianapologists, that before the advent of Christianity the world had neithervirtue nor wisdom. But the world very old. Civilisation is very old. TheChristian religion is but a new thing, is a mere episode in the historyof human development, and has passed the zenith of its power. 

SPIRITUAL DISCERNMENT

Christians say that only those who are naturally religious canunderstand religion, or, as Archdeacon Wilson puts it, "Spiritual truthsmust be spiritually discerned. " This seems to amount to a claim thatreligious people possess an extra sense or faculty. 

When a man talks about "spiritual discernment, " he makes a tacitassertion which ought not to be allowed to pass unchallenged. What isthat assertion or implication? It is the implication that there is aspiritual discernment which is distinct from mental discernment. Whatdoes that mean? It means that man has other means of understandingbesides his reason. 

This spiritual discernment is a metaphysical myth. 

Man feels, sees, and reasons with his brain. His brain may be moreemotional or less emotional, more acute or less acute; but to invent afaculty of reason distinct from reason, or to suggest that man can feelor think otherwise than with his brain, is to darken counsel with amultitude of words. 

There is no ground for the assertion that a spiritual faculty existsapart from the reason. But the Christian first invents this faculty, andthen tells us that by this faculty religion is to be judged. 

Spiritual truths are to be spiritually discerned. What is a "spiritualtruth"? It is neither more nor less than a mental idea. It is an ideaoriginating in the brain, and it can only be "discerned, " or judged, orunderstood, by an act of reason performed by the brain. 

The word "spiritual, " as used in this connection, is a mere affectation. It implies that the idea (which Archdeacon Wilson calmly dubs a "truth")is so exalted, or so refined, that the reason is too gross to appreciateit. 

John says: "I know that my Redeemer liveth. " Thomas asks: "How do youknow?" John says: "Because I _feel_ it. " Thomas answers: "But that isonly a rhapsodical expression of a woman's reason: 'I know because I_know_. ' You say your religion is true because you feel it is true. Imight as well say it is not true because I feel that it is not true. "

Then John becomes mystical. He says: "Spiritual truths must bespiritually discerned. " Thomas, who believes that _all_ truths, and allerrors, must be tried by the reason, shrugs his shoulders irreverently, and departs. 

Now, this mystical jargon has always been a favourite weapon oftheologians, and it is a very effective weapon against weak-minded, orignorant, or superstitious, or very emotional men. 

We must deal with this deception sternly. We must deny that thehuman reason, which we know to be a fact, is inferior to a postulated"spiritual" faculty which has no existence. We must insist that tomake the brain the slave of a brain-created idea is as foolish as tosubordinate the substance to the shadow. 

John declares that "God is love. " Thomas asks him how he _knows_. Johnreplies that it is a "spiritual truth, " which must be "spirituallydiscerned. " Thomas says: "It is not spiritual, and it is not true. Itis a mere figment of the brain. " John replies: "You are incapable ofjudging: you are spiritually blind. " Thomas says: "My friend, you areincapable of reasoning: you are mentally halt and lame. " John saysThomas is a "fellow of no delicacy. "

I think there is much to be said in excuse for Thomas. I think it israther cool of John to invent a faculty of "spiritual discernment, " andthen to tell Thomas that he (Thomas) does not possess that faculty. 

That is how Archdeacon Wilson uses me. In a sermon at Rochdale he isreported to have spoken as follows:

 As regards the first axiom, the archdeacon reaffirmed his declaration as to Mr. Blatchford's disqualification for such a controversy. .. Whether Mr. Blatchford recognised the fact or not, it was true that there was a faculty among men which, in its developed state, was as distinct, as unequally distributed, as mysterious in its origin and in its distribution, as was the faculty for pure mathematics, for music, for metaphysics, or for research. They might call it the devotional or religious faculty. Just as there were men whose faculties of insight amounted to genius in other regions of mental activity, so there were spiritual geniuses, geniuses in the region in which man holds communion with God, and from this region these who had never developed the faculty were debarred. One who was not devotional, not humble, not gentle in his treatment of the beliefs of others, one who could lightly ridicule the elementary forms of belief which had corresponded to the lower stages of culture, past and present, was not likely to do good in a religious controversy. 

Here is the tyranny of language, indeed! Here is a farrago of myths andsymbols. "There is a faculty--we may call it the devotional or religiousfaculty--there are geniuses in the region in which man holds communionwith God"!

Why the good archdeacon talks of the "region in which man holdscommunion with God" as if he were talking of the telephone exchange. He talks of God as if he were talking of the Postmaster-General. Hepostulates a God, and he postulates a region, and he postulates acommunication, and then talks about all these postulates as if they werefacts. I protest against this mystical, transcendental rhetoric. It isnot argument. 

Who has seen God? Who has entered that "region"? Who has communicatedwith God?

There is in most men a desire, in some men a passion, for what is good. In some men this desire is weak, in others it is strong. In some ittakes the form of devotion to "God, " in others it takes the form ofdevotion to men. In some it is coloured by imagination, or distortedby a love of the marvellous; in others it is lighted by reason, anddirected by love of truth. But whether a man devotes himself to God andto prayer, or devotes himself to man and to politics or science, he isactuated by the same impulse--by the desire for what is good. 

John says: "I feel that there is a God, and I worship Him. " Thomas says:"I do not know whether or not there is a God, and if there is, He doesnot need my adoration. But I know there are men in darkness and women introuble, and children in pain, and I know they _do_ need my love and myhelp. I therefore will not pray; but I will work. "

To him says John: "You are a fellow of no delicacy. You lack spiritualdiscernment. You are disqualified for the expression of any opinionon spiritual truths. " This is what John calls "humility, " and "gentletreatment of the beliefs of others. " But Thomas calls it unconscioushumour. 

Really, Archdeacon Wilson's claim that only those possessing spiritualdiscernment can discern spiritual truths means no more than that thosewho cannot believe in religion do not believe in religion, or that a manwhose reason tells him religion is not true is incapable of believingreligion is true. But what he means it to mean is that a man whosereason rejects religion is unfit to criticise religion, and that onlythose who accept religion as true are qualified to express an opinion asto its truth. He might as well claim that the only person qualifiedto criticise the Tory Party is the person who has the faculty fordiscerning Tory truth. 

My claim is that ideas relating to spiritual things must be weighed bythe same faculties as ideas relating to material things. That is tosay, man can only judge in religious matters as he judges in all othermatters, by his reason. 

I do not say that all men have the same kind or quantity of reason. What I say is, that a man with a good intellect is a better judge onreligious matters than a man, with an inferior intellect; and that byreason, and by reason alone, can truth of any kind be discerned. 

The archdeacon speaks of spiritual geniuses, "geniuses in the region inwhich man holds communion with God. " The Saints, for example. Well, ifthe Saints were geniuses in matters religious, the Saints ought to havebeen better judges of spiritual truth than other men. But was it so? TheSaints believed in angels, and devils, and witches, and hell-fireand Jonah, and the Flood; in demoniacal possession, in the working ofmiracles by the bones of dead martyrs; the Saints accepted David andAbraham and Moses as men after God's own heart. 

Many of the most spiritually gifted Christians do not believe in thesethings any longer. The Saints, then, were mistaken. They were mistakenabout these spiritual matters in which they are alleged to have beenspecially gifted. 

We do not believe in sorcerers, in witches, in miracle-working relics, in devils, and eternal fire and brimstone. Why? Because science haskilled those errors. What is science? It is reason applied to knowledge. The faculty of reason, then, has excelled this boasted faculty ofspiritual discernment in its own religious sphere. 

It would be easy to multiply examples. 

Jeremy Taylor was one of the most brilliant and spiritual of ourdivines. But his spiritual perception, as evidenced in his works, wasfearfully at fault. He believed in hell-fire, and in hell-fire for alloutside the pale of the Christian Church. And he was afraid of God, andafraid of death. 

Archdeacon Wilson denies to us this faculty of spiritual perception. Very well. But I have enough mental acuteness to see that the religionof Jeremy Taylor was cowardly, and gloomy, and untrue. 

Luther and Wesley were spiritual geniuses. They both believed inwitchcraft. Luther believed in burning heretics. Wesley said if we gaveup belief in witchcraft we must give up belief in the Bible. 

Luther and Wesley were mistaken: their spiritual discernment had ledthem wrong. Their superstition and cruelty were condemned by humanityand common sense. 

To me it appears that these men of "spiritual discernment" are reallymen of abnormally credulous and emotional natures: men too weak to facethe facts. 

We cannot allow the Christians to hold this position unchallenged. Iregard the religious plane as a lower one than our own. I thinkthe Christian idea of God is even now, after two thousand years ofevolution, a very mean and weak one. 

I cannot love nor revere a "Heavenly Father" whose children have to prayto Him for what they need, or for pardon for their sins. My children donot need to pray to me for food or forgiveness; and I am a mere earthlyfather. Yet Christ, who came direct from God--who _was_ God--to teachall men God's will, directed us to pray to God for our daily bread, forforgiveness of our trespasses against Him, and that He would not lead usinto temptation! Imagine a father leading his children into temptation!

What is there so superior or so meritorious in the attitude of areligious man towards God? This good man prays: for what? He prays thatsomething be given to him or forgiven to him. He prays for gain or fear. Is that so lofty and so noble?

But you will say: "It is not all for gain or for fear. He prays forlove: because he loves God. " But is not this like sending flowers andjewels to the king? The king is so rich already: but there are manypoor outside his gates. God is not in need of our love: some of God'schildren are in need. Truly, these high ideals are very curious. 

Mr. Augustine Birrell, in his _Miscellanies_, quotes a passage from "LuxMundi"; and although I cannot find it in that book, it is too good tolose:

 If this be the relation of faith to reason, we see the explanation of what seems at first sight to the philosopher to be the most irritating and hypocritical characteristic of faith. It is always shifting its intellectual defences. It adopts this or that fashion of philosophical apology, and then, when this is shattered by some novel scientific generalisation of faith, probably after a passionate struggle to retain the old position, suddenly and gaily abandons it, and takes up the new formula, just as if nothing had happened. It discovers that the new formula is admirably adapted for its purposes, and is, in fact, what it always meant, only it has unfortunately omitted to mention it. So it goes on again and again; and no wonder that the philosophers growl at those humbugs, the clergy. 

That passage has a rather sinister bearing upon the Christian's claimfor spiritual genius. 

But, indeed, the claim is not admissible. The Churches have taught manyerrors. Those errors have been confuted by scepticism and science. It isno thanks to spiritual discernment that we stand where we do. It is toreason we owe our advance; and what a great advance it is! We havegot rid of Hell, we have got rid of the Devil, we have got rid ofthe Christian championship of slavery, of witch-murder, of martyrdom, persecution, and torture; we have destroyed the claims for theinfallibility of the Scriptures, and have taken the fetters of theChurch from the limbs of Science and Thought, and before long we shallhave demolished the belief in miracles. The Christian religion hasdefended all these dogmas, and has done inhuman murder in defenceof them; and has been wrong in every instance, and has been finallydefeated in every instance. Steadily and continually the Church has beendriven from its positions. It is still retreating, and we are not tobe persuaded to abandon our attack by the cool assurance that we arementally unfit to judge in spiritual matters. Spiritual Discernment hasbeen beaten by reason in the past, and will be beaten by reason inthe future. It is facts and logic we want, not rhetoric. 

SOME OTHER APOLOGIES

Christianity, we are told, vastly improved the relations of rich andpoor. 

How comes it, then, that the treatment of the poor by the rich is betteramongst Jews than amongst Christians? How did it fare with the poor allover Europe in the centuries when Christianity was at the zenith of itspower? How is it we have twelve millions of Christians on the verge ofstarvation in England to-day, with a Church rolling in wealth and anaristocracy decadent from luxury and self-indulgence? How is it thatthe gulf betwixt rich and poor in such Christian capitals as New York, London, and Paris is so wide and deep?

Christianity, we are told, first gave to mankind the gospel of peace. Christianity did not bring peace, but a sword. The Crusades were holywars. The wars in the Netherlands were holy wars. The Spanish Armada wasa holy expedition. Some of these holy wars lasted for centuries andcost millions of human lives. Most of them were remarkable for thebarbarities and cruelties of the Christian priests and soldiers. 

From the beginning of its power Christianity has been warlike, violent, and ruthless. To-day Europe is an armed camp, and it is not long sincethe Christian Kaiser ordered his troops to give no quarter to theChinese. 

There has never been a Christian nation as peaceful as the Indians andBurmese under Buddhism. It was King Asoka, and not Jesus Christ or St. Paul, who first taught and first established a reign of national andinternational peace. 

To-day the peace of the world is menaced, not by the Buddhists, theParsees, the Hindoos, or the Confucians, but by Christian hunger forterritory, Christian lust of conquest, Christian avarice for the openingup of "new markets, " Christian thirst for military glory, and jealousy, and envy amongst the Christian powers one of another. 

Christianity, we are told, originated the Christ-like type of character. The answer stares us in the face. How can we account for King Asoka, howcan we account for Buddha?

Christianity, we are told, originated hospitals. 

Hospitals were founded two centuries before Christ by King Asoka inIndia. 

Christianity, we are told, first broke down the barrier between Jew andGentile. 

How have Christians treated Jews for fifteen centuries? How areChristians treating Jews to-day in Holy Russia? How long is it sinceJews were granted full rights of citizenship in Christian England?

All this, the Christian will say, applies to the false and not to thetrue Christianity. 

Let us look, then, for an instant, at the truest and best form ofChristianity, and ask what it is doing. It is preaching about Sin, Sin, Sin. It is praying to God to do for Man what Man ought to do forhimself, what Man can do for himself, what Man must do for himself; forGod has never done it, and will never do it for him. 

And this fault in the Christian--the highest and truestChristian--attitude towards life does not lie in the Christians: it liesin the truest and best form of their religion. 

It is the belief in Free Will, in Sin, and in a Heavenly Father, anda future recompense that leads the Christian wrong, and causes him tomistake the shadow for the substance. 

COUNSELS OF DESPAIR

"If you take from us our religion, " say the Christians, "what have youto offer but counsels of despair?" This seems to me rather a commercialway of putting the case, and not a very moral one. Because a moral manwould not say: "If I give up my religion, what will you pay me?" Hewould say: "I will never give, up my religion unless I am convincedit is not _true_. " To a moral man the truth would matter, but the costwould not. To ask what one may _gain_ is to show an absence of all realreligious feeling. 

The feeling of a truly religious man is the feeling that, cost what itmay, he must do _right_. A religiously-minded man _could_ not profess areligion which he did not believe to be true. To him the vital questionwould be, not "What will you give me to desert my colours?" but "What isthe _truth_?"

But, besides being immoral, the demand is unreasonable. If I say thata religion is untrue, the believer has a perfect right to ask me forproofs of my assertion; but he has no right to ask me for a new promise. Suppose I say this thing is not true, and to believe anything which isuntrue is useless. Then, the believer may justly demand my reasons. Buthe has no right to ask me for a new dream in place of the old one. I amnot a prophet, with promises of crowns and glories in my gift. 

But yet I will answer this queer question as fully as I can. 

I do not say there is no God. I do not say there is no "Heaven, " northat the soul is not immortal. There is not enough evidence to justifyme in making such assertions. 

I only say, on those subjects, that I do not _know_. 

I do not know about those things. There may be a God, there may be a"Heaven, " there may be an immortal soul. And a man might accept all Isay about religion without giving up any hope his faith may bid him holdas to a future life. 

As to those "counsels of despair" the question puzzles me. Despair ofwhat?

Let me put the matter as I see it. I think sometimes, in a dubiousway, that perhaps there may be a life beyond the grave. And that isinteresting. But I think my stronger, and deeper, and more permanentfeeling is that when we die we die finally, and for us there is no morelife at all. That is, I suppose, my real belief--or supposition. But doI despair? Why should I? The idea of immortality does not elate me verymuch. As I said just now, it is interesting. But I am not excited aboutit. If there is another innings, we will go in and play our best; and wehope we shall be very much better and kinder than we have been. But ifit is sleep: well, sleep is rest, and as I feel that I have had a reallygood time, on the whole, I should consider it greedy to cry because Icould not have it all over again. That is how I feel about it. Despair?I am one of the happiest old fogeys in all London. I have found lifeagreeable and amusing, and I'm glad I came. But I am not so infatuatedwith life that I should care to go back and begin it all again. Andthough a new start, in a new world, would be--yes, interesting--I amnot going to howl because old Daddy Death says it is bed-time. I thinksomebody, or something, has been very good to allow me to come in andsee the fun, and stay so long, especially as I came in, so to speak "onmy face. " But to beg for another invitation would be cheeky. Some of youwant such a lot for nothing. 

"But, " you may say, "the poor, the failures, the wretched--what ofthem?" And I answer: "Ah! that is one of the weak points of _your_religion, not of mine. " Consider these unhappy ones, what do you offerthem? You offer them an everlasting bliss, not because they were starvedor outraged here--not at all. For your religion admits the probabilitythat those who came into this world worst equipped, who have here beenmost unfortunate, and to whom God and man have behaved most unjustly, will stand a far greater chance of a future of woe than of happiness. 

No. According to your religion, those of the poor or the weak who getto Heaven will get there, not because they have been wronged and must berighted, but because they believe that Jesus Christ can save them. 

Now, contrast that awful muddle of unreason and injustice with whatyou call my "counsels of despair. " I say there may be a future life andthere may not be a future life. If there is a future life, a man willdeserve it no less, and enjoy it no less, for having been happy here. If there is no future life, he who has been unhappy here will have lostboth earthly happiness and heavenly hope. 

Therefore, I say, it is our duty to see that all our fellow-creaturesare as happy here as we can make them. 

Therefore I say to my fellow-creatures, "Do not consent to suffer, andto be wronged in this world, for it is immoral and weak so to submit;but hold up your heads, and demand your rights, here and now, and leavethe rest to God, or to Fate. "

You see, I am not trying to rob any man of his hope of Heaven; I am onlytrying to inspire his hope on earth. 

But I have been asked whether I think it right and wise to "shake thefaith of the poor working man--the faith that has helped him so long. "

What has this faith helped him to do? To bear the ills and the wrongsof this life more patiently, in the hope of a future reward? Is that theidea? But I do not want the working man to endure patiently the ills andwrongs of this life. I want him, for his own sake, his wife's sake, his children's sake, and for the sake of right and progress, to demandjustice, and to help in the work of amending the conditions of life onearth. 

No, I do not want to rob the working-man of his faith: I want to awakenhis faith--in himself. 

Religion promises us a future Heaven, where we shall meet once morethose "whom we have loved long since and lost awhile, " and that is themost potent lure that could be offered to poor humanity. 

How much of the so-called "universal instinct of belief" arises fromthat pathetic human yearning for reunion with dear friends, sweet wives, or pretty children "lost awhile"? It is human love and natural longingfor the dead darlings, whose wish is father to the thought of Heaven. Before that passionate sentiment reason itself would almost standabashed: were reason antagonistic to the "larger hope"--which none canprove. 

Few of us can keep our emotions from overflowing the bounds of reason insuch a case. The poor, tearful desire lays a pale hand on reason's lipsand gazes wistfully into the mysterious abyss of the Great Silence. 

So I say of that "larger hope, " cherish it if you can, and if you feelit necessary to your peace of mind. But do not mistake a hope for acertainty. No priest, nor pope, nor prophet can tell you more about thatmystery than you know. It is a riddle, and your guess or mine may be asnear as that of a genius. We can only guess. We do not know. 

Is it wise, then, to sell even a fraction of your liberty of thought ordeed for a paper promise which the Bank of Futurity may fail to honour?Is it wise, is it needful, to abandon a single right, to abate one justdemand, to neglect one possibility of happiness here and now, in orderto fulfil the conditions laid down for the attainment of that promisedHeaven by a crowd of contradictory theologians who know no more aboutGod or about the future than we know ourselves?

Death has dropped a curtain of mystery between us and those we love. Notheologian knows, nor ever did know, what is hidden behind that veil. 

Let us, then, do our duty here, try to be happy here, try to make othershappy here, and when the curtain lifts for us--we shall see. 

CONCLUSION THE PARTING OF THE WAYS

I have been asked why I have "gone out of my way to attack religion, "why I do not "confine myself to my own sphere and work for Socialism, and what good I expect to do by pulling down without building up. "

In reply I beg to say:

 1. That I have not "gone out of my way" to attack religion. It was because I found religion _in_ my way that I attacked it. 

 2. That I am working for Socialism when I attack a religion which is hindering Socialism. 

 3. That we must pull down before we can build up, and that I hope to do a little building, if only on the foundation. 

But these questions arose from a misconception of my position andpurpose. 

I have been called an "Infidel, " a Socialist, and a Fatalist. Now, Iam an Agnostic, or Rationalist, and I am a Determinist, and I am aSocialist. But if I were asked to describe myself in a single word, Ishould call myself a Humanist. 

Socialism, Determinism, and Rationalism are factors in the sum; and thesum is Humanism. 

Briefly, my religion is to do the best I can for humanity. I am aSocialist, a Determinist, and a Rationalist because I believe thatSocialism, Determinism, and Rationalism will be beneficial to mankind. 

I oppose the Christian religion because I do not think the Christianreligion is beneficial to mankind, and because I think it is an obstaclein the way of Humanism. 

I am rather surprised that men to whom my past work is well known shouldsuspect me of making a wanton and purposeless attack upon religion. My attack is not wanton, but deliberate; not purposeless, but verypurposeful and serious. I am not acting irreligiously, but religiously. I do not oppose Christianity because it is good, but because it is notgood enough. 

There are two radical differences between Humanism and Christianity. 

Christianity concerns itself with God and Man, putting God first and Manlast. 

Humanism concerns itself solely with Man, so that Man is its first andlast care. That is one radical difference. 

Then, Christianity accepts the doctrine of Free Will, with itsconsequent rewards and punishments; while Humanism embraces Deterministdoctrines, with their consequent theories of brotherhood and prevention. And that is another radical difference. 

Because the Christian regards the hooligan, the thief, the wanton, andthe drunkard as men and women who have done wrong. But the Humanistregards them as men and women who have been wronged. 

The Christian remedy is to punish crime and to preach repentance andsalvation to "sinners. " The Humanist remedy is to remove the causeswhich lead or drive men into crime, and so to prevent the manufacture of"sinners. "

Let us consider the first difference. Christianity concerns itself withthe relations of Man to God, as well as with the relations between manand man. It concerns itself with the future life as well as with thepresent life. 

Now, he who serves two causes cannot serve each or both of them as wellas he could serve either of them alone. 

He who serves God and Man will not serve Man as effectually as he whogives himself wholly to the service of Man. 

As the religion of Humanism concerns itself solely with the good ofhumanity, I claim that it is more beneficial to humanity than is theChristian religion, which divides its service and love between Man andGod. 

Moreover, this division is unequal. For Christians give a great dealmore attention to God than to Man. 

And on that point I have to object, first, that although they _believe_there is a God, they do not _know_ there is a God, nor what He is like. Whereas they do know very well that there are men, and what they arelike. And, secondly, that if there be a God, that God does not needtheir love nor their service; whereas their fellow-creatures do needtheir love and their service very sorely. 

And, as I remarked before, if there is a Father in Heaven, He is likelyto be better pleased by our loving and serving our fellow-creatures (Hischildren) than by our singing and praying to Him, while our brothersand sisters (His children) are ignorant, or brutalised, or hungry, or introuble. 

I speak as a father myself when I say that I should not like to thinkthat one of my children would be so foolish and so unfeeling as to erecta marble tomb to my memory while the others needed a friend or a meal. And I speak in the same spirit when I add that to build a cathedral, andto spend our tears and pity upon a Saviour who was crucified nearly twothousand years ago, while women and men and little children are beingcrucified in our midst, without pity and without help, is cant, andsentimentality, and a mockery of God. 

Please note the words I use. I have selected them deliberately andcalmly, because I believe that they are true and that they are needed. 

Christians are very eloquent about Our Blessed Lord and Saviour JesusChrist, and Our Father which is in Heaven. I know nothing about gods andheavens. But I know a good deal about Manchester and London, and aboutmen and women; and if I did not feel the real shames and wrongs of theworld more keenly, and if I did not try more earnestly and strenuouslyto rescue my fellow-creatures from ignorance, and sorrow, and injusticethan most Christians do, I should blush to look death in the face orcall myself a man. 

I choose my words deliberately again when I say that to me the mostbesotted and degraded outcast tramp or harlot matters more than all thegods and angels that humanity ever conjured up out of its imagination. 

The Rev. R. F. Horton, in his answer to my question as to the need ofChrist as a Saviour, uttered the following remarkable words:

 But there is a holiness so transcendent that the angels veil their faces in the presence of God. I have known a good many men who have rejected Christ, and men who are living without Him, and, though God forbid that I should judge them, I do not know one of them whom I would venture to take as my example if I wished to appear in the presence of the holy God. They do not tremble for themselves, but I tremble for myself if my holiness is not to exceed that of such Scribes and Pharisees. Oh, my brothers, where Christ is talking of holiness He is talking of such a goodness, such a purity, such a transcendent and miraculous likeness of God in human form, that I believe it is true to say that there is but one name, as there is but one way, by which a man can be holy and come into the presence of God; and I look, therefore, upon this word of Christ not only as the way of salvation, but as the revelation of the holiness which God demands. 

 I close these answers to the questions with a practical word to everyone that is here. It is my belief that you may be good enough to pass through the grave and to wander in the dark spaces of the world which is still earthly and sensual, and you may be good enough to escape, as it were, the torments of the hell which result from a life of debauchery and cruelty and selfishness; but if you are to stand in the presence of God, if you are ever to be pure, complete, and glad, "all rapture through and through in God's most holy sight, " you must believe in the name and in the power of our Lord Jesus Christ, the only begotten son of God, who came into the world to save sinners, and than whose no other name is given in heaven or earth whereby we may be saved. 

Such talk as that makes me feel ill. Here is a cultured, educated, earnest man rhapsodising about holiness and the glory of a God no mortaleye has ever seen, and of whom no word has ever reached us across thegulf of death. And while he rhapsodised, with a congregation of honestbread-and-butter citizens under him, trying hard with their blinkeredeyes and blunted souls, to glimpse that imaginary glamour of ecstatic"holiness, " there surged and rolled around them the stunted, poisoned, and emaciated life of London. 

Holiness!--Holiness in the Strand, in Piccadilly, in Houndsditch, inWhitechapel, in Park Lane, in Somerstown, and the Mint. 

Holiness!--In Westminster, and in Fleet Street, and on 'Change. 

Holiness!--In a world given over to robbery, to conquest, to vanity, toignorance, to humbug, to the worship of the golden calf. 

Holiness!--With twelve millions of our workers on the verge of famine, with rich fools and richer rogues lording it over nations of untaughtand half-fed dupes and drudges. 

Holiness!--With a recognised establishment of manufactured paupers, cripples, criminals, idlers, dunces, and harlots. 

Holiness!--In a garden of weeds, a hotbed of lies, where hypnotisedsaints sing psalms and worship ghosts, while dogs and horses arepampered and groomed, and children are left to rot, to hunger, and tosink into crime, or shame, or the grave. 

Holiness! For shame. The word is obnoxious. It has stood so long forcraven fear, for exotistical inebriation, for selfish retirement fromthe trials and buffets and dirty work of the world. 

What have we to do with such dreamy, self-centred, emotional holiness, here and now in London?

What we want is citizenship, human sympathy, public spirit, daringagitators, stern reformers, drains, houses, schoolmasters, clean water, truth-speaking, soap--and Socialism. 

Holiness! The people are being robbed. The people are being cheated. Thepeople are being lied to. The people are being despised and neglectedand ruined body and soul. 

Yes. And you will find some of the greatest rascals and most impudentliars in the "Synagogues and High Places" of the cities. 

Holiness! Give us common sense, and common honesty, and a "steady supplyof men and women who can be trusted with small sums. "

Your Christians talk of saving sinners. But our duty is not to savesinners; but to prevent their regular manufacture: their systematicmanufacture in the interests of holy and respectable and successful andsuperior persons. 

Holiness! Cant, rant, and fustian! The nations are rotten with dirtypride, and dirty greed, and mean lying, and petty ambitions, andsickly sentimentality. Holiness! I should be ashamed to show my face atHeaven's gates and say I came from such a contemptible planet. 

Holiness! Your religion does not make it--its ethics are too weak, itstheories too unsound, its transcendentalism is too thin. 

Take as an example this much-admired passage from St. James:

 Pure religion and undefiled is this before God and the Father, to visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself unspotted from the world. 

The widows and the fatherless are our brothers and sisters and our fleshand blood, and should be at home in our hearts and on our hearths. Andwho that is a man will work to keep himself unspotted from the world ifthe service of the world needs him to expose his flesh and his soul torisk?

I can fancy a Reverend Gentleman going to Heaven, unspotted from theworld, to face the awful eyes of a Heavenly Father whose gaze has beenon London. 

A good man mixes with the world in the rough-and-tumble, and takes hisshare of the dangers, and the falls, and the temptations. His duty isto work and to help, and not to shirk and keep his hands white. Hisbusiness is not to be holy, but to be useful. 

In such a world as this, friend Christian, a man has no business readingthe Bible, singing hymns, and attending divine worship. He has not_time_. All the strength and pluck and wit he possesses are needed inthe work of real religion, of real salvation. The rest is all "dreamsout of the ivory gate, and visions before midnight. "

There ought to be no such thing as poverty in the world. The earth isbounteous: the ingenuity of man is great. He who defends the claims ofthe individual, or of a class, against the rights of the human race is acriminal. 

A hungry man, an idle man, an ignorant man, a destitute or degradedwoman, a beggar or pauper child is a reproach to Society and a witnessagainst existing religion and civilisation. 

War is a crime and a horror. No man is doing his duty when he is nottrying his best to abolish war. 

I have been asked why I "interfered in things beyond my sphere, " and whyI made "an unprovoked attack" upon religion. I am trying to explain. Myposition is as follows:

Rightly or wrongly, I am a Democrat. Rightly or wrongly, I am for therights of the masses as against the privileges of the classes. Rightlyor wrongly, I am opposed to Godship, Kingship, Lordship, Priestship. Rightly or wrongly, I am opposed to Imperialism, Militarism, andConquest. Rightly or wrongly, I am for universal brotherhood anduniversal freedom. Rightly or wrongly, I am for union against disunion, for collective ownership against private ownership. Rightly or wrongly, I am for reason against dogma, for evolution against revelation; forhumanity always; for earth, not Heaven; for the holiest Trinity ofall--the Trinity of Man, Woman, and Child. 

The greatest curse of humanity is ignorance. The only remedy isknowledge. 

Religion, being based on fixed authority, is naturally opposed toknowledge. 

A man may have a university education and be ignorant. A man may be agenius, like Plato, or Shakespeare, or Darwin, and lack more knowledge. The humblest of unlettered peasants can teach the highest geniussomething useful. The greatest scientific and philosophical achievementsof the most brilliant age are imperfect, and can be added to andimproved by future generations. 

There is no such thing as human infallibility. There is no finalityin human knowledge and human progress. Fixed authority in matters ofknowledge or belief is an insult to humanity. 

Christianity degrades and restrains humanity with the shackles of"original sin. " Man is not born in sin. There is no such thing as sin. Man is innately more prone to good than to evil; and the path of hisdestiny is upward. 

I should be inclined to call him who denies the innate goodness ofmankind an "Infidel. "

Heredity breeds different kinds of men. But all are men whom it breeds. And all men are capable of good, and of yet more good. Environment canmove mountains. There is a limit to its power for good and for evil, butthat power is almost unimaginably great. 

The object of life is to improve ourselves and our fellow-creatures, andto leave the world better and happier than we found it. 

The great cause of crime and failure is ignorance. The great cause ofunhappiness is selfishness. No man can be happy who loves or valueshimself too much. 

As all men are what heredity and environment have made them, no mandeserves punishment nor reward. As the sun shines alike upon the eviland the good, so in the eyes of justice the saint and the sinner are asone. No man has a just excuse for pride, or anger, or scorn. 

Spiritual pride, intellectual pride, pride of pedigree, of caste, ofrace are all contemptible and mean. 

The superior person who wraps himself in a cloak of solemn affectationsshould be laughed at until he learns to be honest. 

The masterful man who puts on airs of command and leadership insults hisfellow-creatures, and should be gently but firmly lifted down many pegs. 

Genius should not be regarded as a weapon, but as a tool. A man ofgenius should not be allowed to command, but only to serve. The humanrace would do well to watch jealously and restrain firmly all superiorpersons. Most kings, jockeys, generals, prize-fighters, priests, ladies'-maids, millionaires, lords, tenor singers, authors, lion-comiques, artists, beauties, statesmen, and actors are spoiledchildren who sadly need to be taught their place. They should be treatedkindly, but not allowed too many toys and sweetmeats, nor too muchflattery. Such superior persons are like the clever minstrels, jesters, clerks, upholsterers, storytellers, horse-breakers, huntsmen, stewards, and officers about a court. They should be fed and praised whenthey deserve it, but they cannot be too often reminded that they areretainers and servants, and that their Sovereign and Master is--

The People. 

In a really humane and civilised nation:

There should be and need be no such thing as poverty. 

There should be and need be no such thing as ignorance. 

There should be and need be no such thing as crime. 

There should be and need be no such thing as idleness. 

There should be and need be no such thing as war. 

There should be and need be no such thing as slavery. 

There should be and need be no such thing as hate. 

There should be and need be no such thing as envy. 

There should be and need be no such thing as pride. 

There should be and need be no such thing as greed. 

There should be and need be no such thing as gluttony. 

There should be and need be no such thing as vice. 

But this is not a humane and civilised nation, and never will be whileit accepts Christianity as its religion. 

These are my reasons for opposing Christianity. If I have said anythingto give pain to any Christian, I am sorry, and ask to be forgiven. I have tried to maintain "towards all creatures a bounteous friendlyfeeling. "

As to what I said about holiness, I cannot take back a word. Dr. Hortonsaid that without that form of holiness which only a belief in Christcan give we shall only be good enough to barely escape Hell, and, "afterpassing through the grave, to wander in the dark spaces of the world, which is still earthly and sensual. "

I say earnestly and deliberately that if I can only attain to Heaven andto holiness as one of a few, if I am to go to Heaven and leave millionsof my brothers and sisters to ignorance and misery and crime, I willhope to be sent instead into those "dark spaces of the world which isstill earthly and sensual" and there to be permitted to fight with allmy strength against pain and error and injustice and human sorrow. Iknow I shall be happier so. I think I was made for that kind of work, and I fervently wish that I may be allowed to do my duty as long as everthere is a wrong in the world that I can help to right, a grief I canhelp to soothe, a truth I can help to tell. 

Let the Holy have their Heaven. I am a man, and an Infidel. And this ismy Apology. 

Besides, gentlemen, Christianity is not _true_.