I often called on my friend Mr. Jasper. One morning he had just laid
down his daily paper as I entered. “Did you see this?” he asked, “that
the Pope and the Romish Church propose to dedicate England to the
blessed Mother of God, and to St. Peter, to consecrate the whole country
to the Holy Mother of God, and to the blessed Prince of the Apostles.”
These are the exact words. Where does God come in? He, the Creator and
Preserver of the universe, and, as we believe, of England, is left out,
ignored altogether. How can one read such blasphemy as this without
being shocked and angry? Such a proposal is not only an insult to all
the Protestants and non-Christians of the British Empire, but is an
outrageous imposition on the common sense of mankind! It is a sin
against God. What must be the cheek and impudence of any men to dare
propose such a thing as giving England over to the protection of a woman
and a man who died nearly two thousand years ago, and taking it out of
the hands of Almighty God?
The world is shocked at the idolatry of the heathen, but what is there
in their systems worse than this deifying a woman and a man, and placing
them above God? It is awful, profane, wicked and insulting! “Most holy!”
No stronger words could be used of God himself, and these applied to a
woman! As if the eternal, infinite God without a beginning, should have
a mother, and she a woman, an ordinary finite being! I had rather be a
heathen, an infidel, or even an atheist, than to be guilty of such
sacrilege and driveling nonsense.
But who is this they set up as the most holy mother of God? A woman, a
Jewess, the wife of Joseph. She was not known except as the mother of
Jesus, no claim that she was more than an ordinary woman, but blessed in
being the mother of an excellent son. Taking the New Testament, which
gives the only account we have of her, it scarcely mentions her, and
then without giving her any prominence. No allusion is made either to
the time or place of her birth, or of her death. Even her son Jesus
scarcely treats her with common respect. When he wandered away from his
parents, and gave them great trouble and anxiety in finding him, he did
not show her any special regard when they found him. At the marriage in
Cana, when she spoke to him, he addressed her in the style of orientals,
not even calling her mother, but “Woman! what have I to do with thee?”
He apparently neglected her, and never mentions her, his own mother, and
at his death he had little to say to her. The apostles seldom refer to
her, and then only as the wife of Joseph, the mother of Jesus. I defy
any one to show a word or line in the Bible to indicate she had any
special regard shown to her by either her own son Jesus, or by his
apostles. It was not until several centuries later that she began to be
reverenced, then prayed to, and finally to be deified and worshiped in
the place of God. Her virginity was of no importance to the evangelists,
as they never refer to it, and the theory was not taught during the
first three centuries. In the fourth century she was first styled the
mother of God. Augustine repeatedly asserts that she was born in
original sin. Anselm declares that the virgin herself when He (Jesus)
was assumed was conceived in iniquity, and in sin did her mother
conceive her, and with original sin was she born, because she, too,
sinned in Adam, in whom all sinned. Others expressed the same views.
The explicit doctrine of the immaculate conception was first taught
about 1140, at which time a festival was established in favor of it.
Bernard of Clairvaux opposed this. “On the same principle,” said he,
“you would be obliged to hold that the conception of her ancestors in
ascending line was also a holy one, since otherwise she could not have
descended from them worthily, and there would be festivals without
number.” The Franciscans favored the feast of the conception without the
immaculation, which the Dominicans under Aquinas opposed, and a severe
and bitter controversy ensued between these rival sects. In 1854 Pope
Pius IX promulgated the bull _ineffabilii deus_, by which the doctrine
of the immaculate conception became an article of the Romish faith, to
disbelieve which is heresy. All history shows that this doctrine is but
a modern invention. There is not a particle of proof that God had
anything to do with it. It is assumed that God could be born of a woman,
then that he must be without a human father, his mother a virgin, and to
improve the situation that she must be immaculate, born without sin. The
frame-work once set up, the fabric has been completed by additions from
century to century, until this obscure Jewish mother of the man Jesus
has become in the Roman church the most holy mother of God. The very
idea is sensuous, born of the flesh and not of the spirit, repulsive to
a refined mind, and degrading to the character of God.
The whole structure reminds one of an English medieval house that has
been added to and patched upon, and so changed that the first occupant,
should he come to the earth, would not recognize his own birthplace.
Without a doubt, if Mary and Jesus should rise from the dead, they would
be astonished at their modern portraits; and Jesus, honest man that he
was, would lash these libellers out of the house of God for making it a
place of lies, deceit and merchandise. Among the heathen or pagan
nations such an apotheosis was not uncommon or strange, but that an
intelligent people, claiming to have exalted views of almighty God,
should invent such wicked, degrading nonsense, is astonishing. It was
customary among the earlier Romans to deify their rulers, and place
their prominent men among the gods, but it was reserved for the modern
Romans to bring God down and make him a man among men.
As to Jesus, he was the son of Joseph, as much as any man is the son of
his father. Leo, the patriarch, published in A. D. 726, an edict
prohibiting the worship of images, declaring that Jesus was but a mere
man, born of his mother in the common way. It is evident that Jesus was
an observant, studious youth, given to devout meditation, and on this
account greatly esteemed by the ignorant people around him, and
stimulated by this admiration, he became somewhat of a fanatic, but a
good one, absorbed in grand and noble thoughts, and fell in with the
Jewish notion of the redemption of their race from the enemy, but he
took a still higher view, the deliverance of his people from their
slavery to rites and ceremonies, from their hypocrisy and wickedness, to
a life of purity and uprightness. A noble effort of a noble man, worthy
of the world’s profoundest respect and admiration. Not a word was said
while he was alive, or until centuries after his death, of his being
God, or equal with God, or anything but a great teacher, a noble man,
worthy to be styled the son of God, as all good men were and are the
sons of God.
John Stuart Mill says of him—and his opinion is worth as much as the
Pope’s—“A man charged with a special, express and unique commission from
God to lead mankind to truth and virtue.”
If Jesus was God he must have been conscious of it, and would have shown
or disclosed the fact in his life, but nowhere did he do this. He was
aware that a prophet is not without honor save in his own country, thus
likening himself to a prophet. When in the course of time he was
deified, and as they could not do away with God, they made Jesus a part
of God, or one of three Gods in one, a medley the most absurd ever
attempted by the human mind, and tried to explain it in the Athanasian
creed, the most nonsensical puzzle of the world. If the greatest of
modern lawyers or scholars should now go into any court on the globe and
try to make a statement of a fact in such a jugglery of words and
nonsense, he would at once be sent out of court or be committed to a
lunatic asylum.
I cannot understand how religious people, believing in one God and
accepting the Ten Commandments, can accept this doctrine. I cannot
comprehend how, obeying the first and second commandments, any one can
take the likeness of a man born of woman and put him before God, and
worship him as God. How can they, believing in one God, the Eternal one,
the Creator of all things, take this, as they say, part man and part
God, created only a few centuries ago, deify him and worship him as the
Creator, and place the eternal destiny of all the souls in the world in
his hands! It is awful, the extent of human credulity! It is a monstrous
assumption and a fearful sin, contrary to common sense and abhorrent to
the moral and enlightened sense of mankind. How is it possible for
Christian people to tolerate such a degradation of God! Yet Christian
people wonder that men of intelligence and judgment do not accept
without a murmur this heathenish jargon as truth, or bow down along with
them in their idolatry.
The Romish Church very likely will soon drop God altogether, and put in
His place the Jewish woman. One of its most prominent priests, in a
sermon not long ago, said, “He prepared her virginal and celestial
purity, for a mother defiled could not become the mother of the Most
High. The Holy Virgin, even in her childhood, was more pleasing than all
the cherubim and seraphim, and from infancy to the maturing maidenhood
and womanhood, she grew more and more pure. By her sanctity she reigned
over the heart of God. When the hour came the whole court of heaven was
hushed, and the trinity listened for the answer of Mary, for without her
consent the world could not have been redeemed.” What could possibly be
more impudent and blasphemous than the statement that the Almighty maker
of the Universe could not save mankind, whom he created, unless he got
the consent of a woman!
I put it as a question of good taste, leaving out religion altogether,
would not the feelings of a refined man be shocked at the suggestion
that the Infinite God had a human mother?
It is assumed that Mary conceived by the Holy Ghost. Such stories are
common in the world. Buddha is said to have been born of a virgin. It
was a common occurrence when people wanted to set up a new god or hero
to assert that they were born of a virgin by the help of a god. It was
claimed for all of them that there were wondrous signs, portents and
occurrences about them, and that these beings to be exalted were not,
like ordinary men, born of a human father.
The virgin mother of Egypt, Isis, was represented holding her infant son
Horus in her arms. She is also shown as the Queen of Heaven, holding in
her hand a cross. On one of the tombs of the Pharaohs, Champolion found
a picture, the most ancient of a woman ever found, bedecked with stars,
with the form of a child issuing from her bosom. The Hindu virgin is
shown as nursing Krishna, a golden aureole around the head of each.
In the caves of Ellora is a figure of Indruna seated on a lounge, with
her infant son god pointing toward heaven, with the same gestures as of
the Italian Madonna and her child.
Horus, Ishter, Venus, Juno, and a host of Pagan goddesses, have been
called Queen of Heaven, Queen of the Universe, Mother of God, Spouse of
God, the Celestial Virgin.
The Buddhists believe that Maha Maya, the mother of Gotama, was an
immaculate virgin, and conceived him through a divine influence.
Perictione, a virgin, immaculately conceived Plato through the influence
of the god Apollo.
The ancient Mexicans, though they believed in one Almighty Invisible
God, had minor deities, the chief among them being the god, born of a
virgin, conceived by a ball of light colored feathers floating in the
air.
Says a writer, “Hundreds of Christs and virgins are being continually
born into the world in Russia, and find thousands of worshipers and
disciples.”
So great is the resemblance of these virgins and goddesses to the
alleged character and adoration of Mary, that the Romish Church should
be indicted for its false claims to a patent to which it has no right or
title. Bishop Newton, of the English Church, asks, “Is not the worship
of saints and angels now in all respects the same that the worship of
demons was in former times? The name only different, the thing is
identically the same ... the very same temples, the very same images,
which were once consecrated to Jupiter, and the other demons, are now
consecrated to the Virgin Mary and other saints ... the whole of
Paganism is consecrated and applied to Popery.”
The testimony of Abbe Huc, a Romish priest, of what he saw in Tibet, is
not to be doubted. “One cannot fail being struck with their great
resemblance with the Catholicism. The Bishop’s crosier, the mitre, the
dalmatic, the round hat that the great lamas wear in travel ... the
mass, the double chair, the psalmody, the exorcisms, the censer with
five chains to it, opening and shutting at will, the blessings of the
lamas, who extend their right hands over the heads of the faithful ones,
the rosary, the celibacy of the clergy, the penances and retreats, the
cultus of the saints, the fasting, the processions, the litanies, and
holy water, similarities of the Buddhists with ourselves. Besides, they
have the tonsure, relics, and the confessional.” The Catholics, to
account for these things, attribute them to the devil.
“Bad as he is, the devil may be abused,
Be falsely charged and causelessly accused,
When men, unwilling to be blamed alone,
Shift off their crimes on him, which are their own.”
Instead of the thousands of imaginary gods and semi-gods of the
ancients, the Christian Church has its calendars of saints. In place of
the oracles of mythology, the church has its priests, who presume to
know all the purposes of the Almighty and to speak for Him. The old
system in new clothes.
The Romish notion of purgatory and the use of the rosary is evidently
derived from Tibet. Every Tibetan prays with his string of beads. The
fear of a Buddhist is the six-fold existence after death. The long
purgatory is his dread. Believing that he can pray off much of it in
this life he keeps his whirligig praying machine going continually. In
that country they have little grinding mills that are turned by the
mountain streams and common to all the community. When a man goes with
his grist to mill, he takes along a roll of paper prayers, yards in
length. Having put his grain into the hopper, he winds the prayer around
the mill shaft and turns on the water. He then smokes his pipe while his
grain is being ground and his prayers repeated by water-power. Is not
this much easier and as beneficial, as much of the church religious
praying?
In Ladak there are long lines of walls on which prayers are inscribed.
Walking back and forth along the walls each works off so much of the
dreaded hereafter.
Do I believe that Jesus was conceived of the Holy Ghost? Not at all, any
more than any other child. He was the son of Joseph and Mary, just as I
am the son of my father and mother. My reason, my common sense, my sense
of honor, and my deep reverence for Almighty God will not allow me to
think otherwise. I cannot think of the Infinite God being born of a
woman. Such a thought is most degrading, it degrades the character and
being of God, and it degrades men to have such a thought about Him. If
Jesus could be conceived in that way, why not others? This has actually
been claimed again and again.
I read not long ago of a man and a number of women in a harem, not far
from Chicago, in America. The women had children whom they claimed were
all conceived by the Holy Ghost, and why not, if Mary could have a child
in that way? The account says that some Christian people assembled in a
church, made angry speeches, passed resolutions to bring the man and
women into court, and some proposed to mob them and burn down the
premises. The only charge against them was the claim of the supernatural
conception of the women, as in every other respect they were
irreproachable. These Christian people, whose very fundamental dogma of
their faith is the unnatural conception of Jesus, attacking this first
principle of their belief, is like thieves berating a thief for
stealing.
Who was this Peter, under whose protection it is assumed to place
England? An ordinary man, unstable in character, impulsive, blowing hot
and cold at a breath, declaring he would never leave Jesus, and then
swearing that he never knew him, as much a betrayer at heart as Judas,
but not as manly, for Judas showed his consciousness of the wrong he had
done by killing himself, while Peter, shrewd as a modern Jesuit,
shuffled out of his brazen falsehood around to the winning side. In
mental ability he was inferior to any of his fellows, a bigot in his
belief and in his character, far less to be admired than any of the
others. Supposing him to have been transcendent in virtue, wisdom and
goodness above all other men who have ever lived, and to have been
absolutely perfect, yet he was only a man. Then why should he be made a
saint, or be invested with divine power and made protector of anything,
in the place of God? In respect to mankind, the veneration of Peter and
attributing to him power or authority above all other men is absurd, but
when considered in respect to God, it is outrageous blasphemy and
idolatry. It is placing a creature, and a very insignificant one in the
place of the Creator.