I. A Better Bible
|I AM not able to say what makes a book "holy," but I would like to
give my idea of a good book. No book deserves to be called good or great
which does not grapple with the problems of life in such an open and
disinterested way as to challenge the most unsparing tests which may be
applied to its conclusions, or to the methods by which it has arrived at
them. The book that objects to or fears criticism, or is injured by it,
is certainly not a great book. Even as gold outlives the fire, a great
book must outlive criticism.
The works of such men as Copernicus and La Place, and of Galileo and
Herschel, who opened up for us the heavens, are truly great, for the
reason that not only do they not plead for protection against criticism,
but they resist all the strain that the freest and boldest criticism
can bring to bear upon them. The same is true of the works of Darwin,
Haeckel, Herbert Spencer, who need neither the sword of the king nor
the curse of the priest to prove their conclusions true. And men like
Shakespeare, who have circumnavigated the human intellect, and sailed
around the globe of beauty and truth, may justly be proud of their work,
because criticism can no more hurt them than fire the gold. Can the
bible stand the test which proves greatness? To answer this question we
have only to observe how vehemently the bible objects to criticism: "He
that believeth not shall be damned," and "Blessed are they who have not
seen and yet have believed"--that is to say, who believe blindly. And
the defenders of the bible have, alas! committed every conceivable crime
in their effort to prevent criticism of the bible. Does this prove the
greatness of the bible?
Let us make a brief comparison between the Book of God and some of
the books of man. Suppose we wished to teach the splendid truth of the
solidarity of the human race--the oneness of mankind--is there anything,
either in the New or the Old Testament, which in breadth or beauty
approaches the thoughts of the pagan philosophers on this subject?
_I am a citizen of the world.--Socrates.
Nature ordains that a man should wish the good of every man, whoever he
may be, and for this very reason--that he is a man.--Cicero._
Did any Jew, or Christian, ever say anything like that?
_I was not born for one corner; my country is this whole
world.--Seneca._
And it was not a slave, but a citizen of the proudest empire the world
ever saw, who thus opens his sympathies to embrace the whole of
the human family. Where is the bible prophet, or apostle, who could
transcend creed and country with the same _elan?_
_The much admired Republic of Zeno aimed simply at this, that neither in
cities nor towns we should live under distinct laws, one from another,
but should look on all men as our fellow countrymen and citizens...
like a flock feeding together with equal rights in a common
pasture_.--Plutarch. *
* The Fortune of Alexander, 6.
What would not Jews or Christians give for such a passage in their
"holy" book! How proudly the clergy would quote it, to prove the
divinity of their religion, if this beautiful gem sparkled somewhere
within the covers of their bible!
_I am a man, and nothing human can be foreign to me.--Terrence._
A sentiment like that makes the whole page which expresses it of solid
gold. In vain do we look for so big an utterance in "infallible" books.
To the Hebrew there was no world outside Israel, and to Jesus all that
came before him were "thieves and robbers." Not until Christianity
crossed over into Europe did its missionaries discover that "God hath
made of one blood all the nations of the earth," though even then it was
a creed they had to accept or perish.
_In the name of the universal brotherhood which binds together all men
under the common father of nature.
Nature is the only impartial father. The chosen people of this father
are those of whatever race and religion who conquer knowledge and follow
Reason.--Quintillian.
Love mankind.--Antoninus._
Is it not better than the "love one another," of Jesus, which really
meant, "love only your fellow-believer"? Jesus declared that it will be
worse for those who rejected him and his apostles, on the last day, than
for Sodom and Gomorrah, which were consumed by fire from heaven.
_What good man will look on any suffering as foreign to
himself?--Juvenal.
The Universe is but a great city; never, in reply to the question to
what country you belong, say you are an Athenian, or a Corinthian, but
say you are a Cosmopolitan--a citizen of the world.--Epictetus._ *
* Discourses i, 9.
But it was not only in their universalism that the
European writers excelled the Asiatic seers and miracle-workers. It
has been persistently claimed that both love and justice are exclusively
biblical virtues. We regret to say that this is another untruth, the
extensive circulation of which was deemed necessary to protect the bible
against its rivals.
_Love is the foundation of the law.--Cicero.
Sympathy is what distinguishes us from brutes.--Juvenal.
The love of all to all.--Pythagoras.
He who commits injustice is ever made more wretched than he who suffers
it. It is never right to return an injury.
-- Plato.
We should be good to our enemy and make him our friend.
-- Cleobulus.
Ask thyself daily to how many ill-minded persons, thou hast shown a kind
disposition.--Antoninus.
To the very end of life we will be in action, we will not cease to
labor for the common weal, to help individuals, to give aid even to our
enemies.--Seneca._
Moreover, the motives which the philosophers held forth were very much
more creditable to human nature than the rewards, either here or in the
next world, which the bible held out as inducements to action.
_What more dost thou want when thou hast done a man a service than the
fact of having done it? Art thou not content to have done something
conformable to thy nature, and dost thou seek to be paid for it, as
if the eye demanded a recompense for seeing, or the foot for
walking?--Seneca._ *
* De Benef ix, 41.
If so sweet and sane, so large and pure a sentiment could be found in
any part of the Word of God, I shall forever after keep my mouth closed.
The servitude of man, not the service of man, is the theme of the bible;
and if Jesus said that the charities should be done in secret, it was
because that was the best way to secure a public reward. "And your
father which seeth in secret," said Jesus, "will reward you openly."
The secrecy recommended was a matter of policy. "Reward" is the constant
refrain in the bible. Promises of territory, lands, cattle, jewelry,
oil and wine, women and girls, in the Old Testament; and in the new,
thrones, crowns, golden streets, harps, robes, and endless life beyond
the clouds, are the inducements held out to the devotee.
Another equally frequent and equally unfounded assertion of the pulpit
has been that but for the bible there would have been no hospitals in
the world, or any interest in the poor, by the rich. The defenders
of the bible seem to feel that it is only by shutting their eyes and
closing their ears that they can continue to believe that the Jews were
the only "inspired" people in the world. In the first place, hospitals
are more of a necessity in the modern world than they were in olden
times. Science has taught us to apply method and system in the
department of philanthropy as in that of business, while formerly the
care of the needy was largely a private matter. Besides, our cities are
bigger, and our populations more heterogeneous, and the struggle for
existence more intense to-day, than ever before. We have hospitals
to-day, in self-defense, if not for any other reason. Our own peace and
comfort would be disturbed and our doorsteps and business offices,
as well as homes, would be converted into hospitals, if the State, or
public enterprise, did not undertake in some systematic way the housing
and nursing of the sick and the unfortunate. It is not only from charity
that we have hospitals to-day. We support them also from necessity.
To say, however, that the ancients, being deprived of the bible, took
no interest in the care of the sick, or the hungry, is a clear
misrepresentation. If the bible is the hospital builder, how many
hospitals did the Old Testament people build in Palestine under the
reign of David or Solomon? Was there ever a single movement started in
Palestine for the protection of the oppressed or the unfortunate of the
world? In his Paganism and Christianity, J. H. Farrer, speaking of the
practice of charity in the pre-Christian world, cites the examples of
Cimon the Athenian giving of his abundance to feed the poor and clothe
the naked; of the Lacedaemonians supplying the people of Smyrna with
food in time of scarcity, and replying, when thanked for it, that they
only deprived themselves and their cattle of a dinner; of Apollonius
reminding Vespasian that the supply of the needs of the poor was one of
the best uses of a sovereign's wealth; of Arcesilaus visiting Apelles,
and, to relieve him of the indigence to which sickness had reduced him,
placing twenty drachms under his pillow, while pretending to make
him more comfortable; of the Roman nobles, after the accident to the
amphitheater at Fidenæ whereby fifty thousand persons were killed or
wounded, opening their houses and procuring doctors and relief for the
victims; of all the cities of Asia relieving with money or shelter
the victims of the great earthquake in Smyrna in 177 A.D. * Seneca's
description of the wise man offering aid to the shipwrecked, hospitality
to the exile, money to the needy, redeeming prisoners from their chains,
releasing them from the arena, and giving sepulture to the criminal,
** is clearly a picture drawn from nature and daily life, not from his
imagination; and to suppose that such deeds required the impulse of the
church to make them more common is to suppose that human nature itself
changed with the change that came over religion.
* Aristides i, 260.
** De Clementta ii, 6.
The Roman historian, Tacitus, gives the following touching description
of the behavior of the ancient Pagans in the presence of the suffering
and distress caused by the great calamity in Smyrna:
_The grandees of Rome displayed their humanity on this occasion; they
threw open their doors, they ordered medicines to be distributed, and
the physicians attended with assiduity in every quarter. The city of
Rome recalled, in that juncture, an image of ancient manners, when,
after a battle bravely fought, the sick and wounded were received with
open arms, and relieved by the generosity of their country._ *
And let it not be forgotten that it was from the Pagan Greeks we
received the word _philanthropy_, which means the love of man, into our
modern languages.
Mr. Farrer quotes again many authorities to show that both in Athenian
and Roman society there was a constant solicitude for the welfare of the
poor:
_In the best days of Athens none of her citizens were in want for the
necessities of life; for the rich, according to Isocrates, regarding
the poverty of their fellow citizens as a disgrace to themselves and
the city, helped all who were in need, sending some abroad as traders,
letting lands to others to cultivate at fair rents, and enabling
others to engage in different occupations. The Areopagus, too, checked
pauperism by providing public works._ **
* Annals iv, 62, 63.
** Areopagiticus 12, 21, 38.
He also calls attention to the free schools; the exemption of orphans
from the State charges; the maintenance at the public expense of the
children of citizens killed in war; the daily payment of money from
the treasury to the destitute and the wounded, and the public monthly
dinners given by the rich for the benefit of the needy. Under the great
Trajan, the like of whom never sat on Jewish or Christian throne, a
monthly distribution of food was made to the children of the poor
all over Italy, which was paid for by devoting to it a portion of the
interest lent by the State to the owners of farms on mortgage. In Rome,
there were, in every section of the city, medical officers, paid by the
State, who devoted their whole time to the protection of the health
of the citizens. One of the laws of Nerva required every one giving a
banquet first to make a donation for the poor of his district. The sick
and the poor have never failed to provoke sympathy and help in any age
or country of the world, and for any one religion to claim all the 'good
in the world as its own exclusive property, is enough to make all brave
and honest minds recoil therefrom with horror and sorrow. But people
never make such absurd claims except when they are in despair.
The pulpit is constantly lauding what it calls the beatitudes of Jesus,
and challenging the world to parallel them if it can. We have accepted
the challenge.
When asked how a man might best revenge himself, Diogenes replied:
"By becoming himself a good and honest man." * And how much saner is
Seneca's advice: "Some one has struck you, withdraw; by striking
back you will give both an occasion and an excuse for many blows," **
compared with the "Turn also the other cheek," of Jesus! "What is the
best way for a man to hurt his enemy, or to give him the greatest pain?"
Epictetus was asked. "By preparing to lead himself the best life he
can," was his answer.*** But a really European sentiment which perhaps
never swelled the breast of any Asiatic teacher was expressed by Seneca,
when he wrote: "A great mind that truly respects itself does not revenge
an injury, because _it does not feel it_." **** The Sermon on the Mount
is a series of dogmatic utterances, without enlightenment or logic.
Jesus gives no reasons, nor does he try to prove the truth of his
statements, while Seneca's beatitudes are luminous--like a fountain,
crystal clear to its depths.
And where will we find finer examples of men who lived up to these
teachings than in Pagan annals? Pittacus, one of the seven wise men of
Greece, when his enemy had fallen into his hands, instead of avenging
himself on him, let him go with this explanation of his conduct:
"Forgiveness is better than revenge, for while the former is the sign
of a gentle nature, revenge is that of a savage nature." (v) Can
his example be matched in the bible? It is true jesus prayed for his
murderers, but did he really mean to forgive them? Then why did he only
save the thief on the cross that praised him, while he let the other,
who reviled him, go to perdition? And why do not the Sunday-schools,
instead of teaching our children of Joseph and Joshua, who caused famine
and destruction for their own aggrandizement, recite to our boys and
girls the story of Gescon, who, recalled from banishment and exalted to
the rank of chief general, instead of punishing his persecutors, allowed
them to depart in peace, saying: "I will not return evil for evil, but
good for evil."
* Polyoenus v, 2.
** De Ira ii, 34.
*** Fray 130.
**** De Ira iii, 5.
v. Epictetus, Fray 68.
It is in the book of man, not in the book of God, that we must look for
examples of heroism, love, pity, justice, truth, honor, humanity. In his
_History of European Morals_, Mr. Lecky writes: "Amongst the many wise
sayings which antiquity ascribed to Pythagoras, few are more remarkable
than his division of virtue into two branches--to seek truth, and to do
good." ** And is there a finer passage, in any of the "divine" books
of the many sects, than the creed of the tutor of Alexander the
Great--Aristotle:
_Cleanse and purify thy heart, for it is the seat of all sin, not by
worthless ceremonies, prayers and moanings, but by the stern resolve
to sin no more--to uphold right and do right. Sacrifice thyself at the
shrine of duty, forgiving injuries, and acting only toward others as you
would have them behave towards thy self._ ***
Where, again, in Jewish or Christian psalm, or hymnology, is there a
finer ideal than this, from Marcus Aurelius Antoninus, rendered in verse
by the author of Paganism and Christianity:=
```_That pleases me which pleases thee,
```Great Universe: I murmur not,
```If but the evils of my lot
```May serve thy wider harmony._****=
Or this from Seneca:
```_Man's mind, not birth, determines his degree;
```No slave so mean but virtue sets him free.
```What if his body's bound! His soul can rise
```On wings of thought unfettered to the skies.
```What if his body's bought! His soul is free;
````No servitude can mar its liberty._ (v)=
** Vol. I, page 54.
*** Short Texts on Faith and Philosophies, Forlong.
**** Paganism and Christianity, Farrer, page 94.
v. Ibid, 96.
And how much purer the motives recommended in the following, compared
with the fear of hell and the hope of heaven, so conspicuous in
Christian hymns:=
``_Nature made Virtue man's chief aim and goal
``When she made Conscience mistress of his soul,
``His noblest actions taste no sweeter praise
``Than that which conscience to itself conveys;
``Nor on his crimes can punishment be laid
``Worse than inflicts a conscience disobeyed.
``Virtue calls, and, easy of access,
``Spreads smooth the road that leads to happiness;
``Mountains may crumble, Etna fall away,
``True virtue only suffers no decay. *_=
To find out how radically anti-biblical, or how essentially Pagan are
our civil and political institutions, compare the following from the
American Constitution with the Asiatic teaching of the Apostle Paul:
_The Constitution teaches: St. Paul teaches:
That all political power is Let every soul be subject
inherent in the people, and unto the higher powers. For
all free governments are there is no power but of God :
founded on their authority, the powers that be are or-
and instituted for their ben- dained of God. Whosoever
efit; and that they have at therefore resisteth the power,
all times an undeniable and resisteth the ordinance of
indefeasible right to alter God : and they that resist
their form of government in shall receive to themselves
such manner as they may damnation.!
think expedient._
Would it not be more edifying if our preachers or publicists, like
Roosevelt and Bryan, instead of lavishing praises on an Asiatic book,
out of tune with the intellectual and moral ideals of the modern world,
recommended to their countrymen the nobler thoughts of the European
masters? On a Sunday morning, what church could listen to a better
sermon against superstition than is contained in these lines of
Plutarch:
* Paganism and Christianity, Farrer, page 96.
_```Few of the ills we mortals bear
```Excel or equal those we fear;
```But worst his lot of all mankind
```Whom superstitious terrors bind.
```He dreads no storm who stays on shore,
```Nor battle who goes not to war;
```But he who thinks of God with dread
```Hath terror always overhead,
```And draws from land and sea and sky
```One long unending agony.=
```And so, methinks, they wrong God less
```Who doubt or disbelief confess
```Than they who worse of God believe
```Than of a man they could conceive,
```And every vice to Him assign
```To prove Him fickle, false, malign;
```As I would rather men should say
```"There is no Plutarch" than that they
```Should speak of Plutarch as so mean,
```So full of petty spite and spleen,
```That, if you vexed him in the least,
```Into your crops he'd turn his beast. *_=
* Paganism and Christianity, Farrer, pages 98, 99.
We often read in the newspapers of some foolish remark by a clergyman
in his sermon, as, for instance, that the fearful and murderous wave of
heat in the summer is a punishment from God for the sins of this or
that city; or that earthquakes are sent to show the divine displeasure
against this or that heresy in the church; or that God is opposed to
aviation because the air belongs to the birds, as the sea does to the
fishes; or that Christ is coming soon on a white horse: "The Son of God
is coming on a white horse and the armies of heaven will follow him.
Then he will be crowned king of all Israel. The kingdom promised to
David will be resurrected," said the Rev. Dr. Ford C. Ottman, at the
Winona Lake convention. The reverend speaker had in mind the following
exquisite bible text when he was looking for the "white horse":
_I saw heaven opened, and behold a white horse; and he that sat upon
him was called faithful and true.... And he was clothed with a vesture
dipped in blood.... And the armies which were in heaven followed him
upon white horses.... And out of his mouth goeth a sharp sword, that
with it he should smite the nations.... and he treadeth the winepress of
the fierceness and wrath of Almighty God. *_
Is it possible that the American mind has so deteriorated as to hope for
the fulfillment of such a prophecy?
But it is to the credit of the Christian clergy that they do not say
more foolish things or oftener than they do--seeing that their entire
life is spent in reading and teaching from a book full of fables,
gossip, inanities, miracles, and, if I may say so--conundrums. What, for
instance, may be expected from men who have to feed on such meaningless
and even revolting texts as the following:
_I will tread down the people in mine anger, and make them drunk in my
fury._ **
The deity making the people drunk to get even with them! We leave the
text to the clergy.
_Thus saith the Lord God; Speak unto every feathered fowl, every beast
of the field.... Come; gather yourselves on every side to my sacrifice
that I do sacrifice for you, even a great sacrifice upon the mountains
of Israel, that ye may eat flesh, and drink blood. Ye shall eat the
flesh of the mighty, and drink the blood of the princes of the earth.
... Thus ye shall be filled at my table with horses and chariots, with
mighty men, and with all men of war, saith the Lord God._ ***
* Revelation xix, 11-15.
** Isaiah lxiii, 6.
*** Ezekiel xxxix, 17-20.
And again:
_And I saw an angel standing in the sun; and he cried with a loud voice,
saying to all the fowls that fly in the midst of heaven, Come and gather
yourselves together, unto the supper of the great God; that ye may eat
the flesh of kings, and the flesh of captains, and the flesh of mighty
men, and the flesh of horses, and of them that sit on them, and the
flesh of all men [of war], both free and bond, small and great._ *
And what is the sense in the following:
_His glory is like the firstling of his bullock, and his horns are like
the horns of unicorns: with them he shall push the people together to
the ends of the earth._ **
* Revelation xix, 17, 18.
* Deuteronomy xxxiii, 17.
A sensible man would leave such a text severely alone; but the clergy
try to make the bullock stand for Christ, the horns, for the extremities
of the cross, and the "pushing" has reference to the day of judgment,
etc.
Dear me! Who would care to spend the red blood in his veins in such an
occupation? The beauty of the better bible, composed of such words of
Reason as I have culled from only a few of the ancient masters, lies
in the fact that there is not a single passage therein to perplex the
understanding, pervert the moral sense or cause a blush. It can not be
said of the Jew-ish-Christian bible that it is free from passages which
no civilized community would allow in any other than an "inspired"
production. And this is enough to condemn the book. The argument
that the offensive portions of the Word of God should not be taken
separately, but in connection with the better parts of the book, amounts
to a plea of guilty. How can the commandment to bear false witness, or
to plunder, or to outrage women, become "divine" by being printed in the
same book with the Golden Rule?
Compare, once more, the saying of Jesus, that, "If thy right eye offend
thee, pluck it out and cast it from thee... and if thy right hand offend
thee, cut it off and cast it from thee: for it is profitable for thee
that one of thy members should perish, and not that thy whole body shall
be cast into hell," (Matthew v, 29-31); and this other remarkable
advice to make "eunuchs of themselves for the kingdom of heaven's sake"
(Matthew xix, 12), with the gloriously wholesome thought of Seneca on
such absurd religious practices: "One, out of zeal, makes himself an
eunuch, another lances his arms; if this be the way to please their
gods, what should a man do if he had a mind to anger them? or, if this
be the way to please them, they do certainly deserve not to be worshiped
at all... the most barbarous and notorious of tyrants... never went so
far as to command any man to torment himself." *
* Seneca's Morals xvii.
What would not the clergy have given if the above passage had been
in their bible, instead of in the writings of a "heathen"? Jesus
recommended self-torture; Seneca says, even tyrants "never went so
far as to recommend any man to torment himself." Of course, in his
extremity, the Christian will plead for a spiritual interpretation
of Jesus' sayings: But why use such decidedly materialistic terms, as
"plucking out eyes," "cutting off arms," and "making eunuchs of one's
self," to convey ideal meanings? Why could not Jesus talk _plainly_,
like Seneca?
In the selection of these few quotations, I have refrained from culling
also from the pages of modern writers, lest it be said that since these
modern men and women appeared after Christianity, it is to the bible
that the world is indebted for their great thoughts and works. Of
course, this is not true, seeing how the church persecuted these men and
women, and drove them to the stake, or at least, placed the offspring
of their brain upon the _Index_, branding their thought as blasphemy.
Nevertheless, I have denied myself the pleasure of invoking the galaxy
of intellectual leaders, from Bruno and Spinoza, to Goethe and Voltaire,
and, Shakespeare and Shelley, and Ibsen and Emerson, who though they had
their many faults, were morally as well as mentally, as far above Ezra,
Nehemiah, Noah, Solomon, or Peter and Paul, as sense and beauty are
above folly and platitude.
We have really paid the Hebrew-Christian scriptures an unmerited
compliment in comparing them with the noblest teachings of the Pagan
philosophers. Not only is it impossible to find in the bible the high
aspirations of the European mind, its independence and fearlessness of
the gods, so eloquently expressed in Seneca's prayer: "O Neptune, your
ocean is big, and my bark is frail. You may save me if you will; you may
sink me if you will, but whatever happen, I shall keep my rudder true,"
but even when we compare the contents of the bible with the teachings
and practices of the most primitive peoples in the world the result is
far from being favorable to the "inspired" volume.
Was Molock, for instance, who devoured children, as destructive as
Jehovah who consumed whole nations by fire and the sword? Was Baal or
Astaroth as sanguinary as the being who slaughtered in one night all
the first-born of Egypt? Did the idols of savages ever think even of
drowning a world? Is it possible to find in the dictionary of the gods,
one who can compare with the inventor of the Christian hell? When the
missionaries entered Borneo to convert the natives, the Rajah drove
them out of the land, "because the Christian God used people as firewood
after death."
In conclusion, before Mr. Bryan and his colleagues may ask us to produce
a better bible, let them find in the Jewish-Christian scriptures a text
or a passage which will describe a more enviable state of society in
any Jewish or Christian country, of the past or the present, than the
picture presented by the unrivaled Pericles in his Athenian oration,
beginning with the words:
"We are lovers of the beautiful, yet simple in our tastes, and we
cultivate the mind without loss of manliness. Wealth we employ not for
talk and ostentation, but when there is real use for it. We regard a
man who takes no interest in public affairs not as a harmless but as a
useless character."
Conclusion. The Book of God and the Book of Man
|THE former is a _miracle_. The latter is the actual story of man on
earth, and his achievements. God finished his book long ago. Man is
still writing. There is between these two books the same difference that
there is between the rock and the vine. The rock does not grow, neither
can it move. Sun and shower fall upon it in vain. The vine, on the other
hand, responds to the caress of the life-forces. It swings with the
wind, and reaches up with every growing thing, for the sunshine.
The book of God is arrested, like the rock.
The book of Man is alive and increasing, like the vine.
THE END.
_There appears to be need of some bold man who specially honors
plainness of speech, and will say what is best for the city and
citizens, ordaining what is good for the whole state, amid the
corruptions of human souls, opposing the mightiest lusts, and having
no man his helper but himself, standing alone and following reason
only.--Plato._