According to the Bible, God selected the Jewish people through whom to
make known the great fact, that he was the only true and living God. For
this purpose, he appeared on several occasions to Moses--came down to
Sinai's top clothed in cloud and fire, and wrought a thousand miracles
for the preservation and education of the Jewish people. In their
presence he opened the waters of the sea. For them he caused bread to
rain from heaven. To quench their thirst, water leaped from the dry and
barren rock. Their enemies were miraculously destroyed; and for forty
years, at least, this God took upon himself the government of the Jews.
But, after all this, many of the people had less confidence in him than
in gods of wood and stone. In moments of trouble, in periods of
disaster, in the darkness of doubt, in the hunger and thirst of famine,
instead of asking this God for aid, they turned and sought the help of
senseless things. This God, with all his power and wisdom, could not
even convince a few wandering and wretched savages that he was more
potent than the idols of Egypt. This God was not willing that the Jews
should think and investigate for themselves. For heresy, the penalty was
death. Where this God reigned, intellectual liberty was unknown. He
appealed only to brute force; he collected taxes by threatening plagues;
he demanded worship on pain of sword and fire; acting as spy,
inquisitor, judge and executioner.
In the thirteenth chapter of Deuteronomy, we have the ideas of God as to
mental freedom. "If thy brother, the son of thy mother, or thy son, or
the wife of thy bosom, or thy friend which is as thine own soul, entice
thee secretly, saying, Let us go and serve other gods, which thou hast
not known, thou nor thy fathers; namely of the gods of the people which
are around about you, nigh unto thee, or far off from thee, from the one
end of the earth even unto the other end of the earth, Thou shalt not
consent unto him, nor hearken unto him, neither shall thine eye pity
him, neither shalt thou spare him, neither shalt thou conceal him. But
thou shalt surely kill him; thine hand shall be first upon him to put
him to death, and afterward the hand of all the people. And thou shalt
stone him with stones that he die."
This is the religious liberty of God; the toleration of Jehovah. If
I had lived in Palestine at that time, and my wife, the mother of my
children, had said to me, "I am tired of Jehovah, he is always asking
for blood; he is never weary of killing; he is always telling of his
might and strength; always telling what he has done for the Jews,
always asking for sacrifices; for doves and lambs--blood, nothing
but blood.--Let us worship the sun. Jehovah is too revengeful, too
malignant, too exacting. Let us worship the sun. The sun has clothed the
world in beauty; it has covered the earth with flowers; by its divine
light I first saw your face, and my beautiful babe."--If I had obeyed
the command of God, I would have killed her. My hand would have been
first upon her, and after that the hands of all the people, and she
would have been stoned with stones until she died. For my part, I would
never kill my wife, even if commanded so to do by the real God of this
universe. Think of taking up some ragged rock and hurling it against the
white bosom filled with love for you; and when you saw oozing from
the bruised lips of the death wound, the red current of her sweet
life--think of looking up to heaven and receiving the congratulations of
the infinite fiend whose commandment you had obeyed!
Can we believe that any such command was ever given by a merciful and
intelligent God? Suppose, however, that God did give this law to the
Jews, and did tell them that whenever a man preached a heresy, or
proposed to worship any other God that they should kill him; and suppose
that afterward this same God took upon himself flesh, and came to this
very chosen people and taught a different religion, and that thereupon
the Jews crucified him; I ask you, did he not reap exactly what he
had sown? What right would this God have to complain of a crucifixion
suffered in accordance with his own command?
Nothing can be more infamous than intellectual tyranny. To put chains
upon the body is as nothing compared with putting shackles on the brain.
No god is entitled to the worship or the respect of man who does not
give, even to the meanest of his children, every right that he claims
for himself.
If the Pentateuch be true, religious persecution is a duty. The dungeons
of the Inquisition were temples, and the clank of every chain upon
the limbs of heresy was music in the ear of God. If the Pentateuch was
inspired, every heretic should be destroyed; and every man who advocates
a fact inconsistent with the sacred book, should be consumed by sword
and flame.
In the Old Testament no one is told to reason with a heretic, and not
one word is said about relying upon argument, upon education, nor upon
intellectual development--nothing except simple brute force. Is there
to-day a Christian who will say that four thousand years ago, it was
the duty of a husband to kill his wife if she differed with him upon
the subject of religion? Is there one who will now say that, under such
circumstances, the wife ought to have been killed? Why should God be so
jealous of the wooden idols of the heathen? Could he not compete with
Baal? Was he envious of the success of the Egyptian magicians? Was it
not possible for him to make such a convincing display of his power as
to silence forever the voice of unbelief? Did this God have to resort to
force to make converts? Was he so ignorant of the structure of the human
mind as to believe all honest doubt a crime? If he wished to do away
with the idolatry of the Canaanites, why did he not appear to them? Why
did he not give them the tables of the law? Why did he only make known
his will to a few wandering savages in the desert of Sinai? Will some
theologian have the kindness to answer these questions? Will some
minister, who now believes in religious liberty, and eloquently
denounces the intolerance of Catholicism, explain these things; will he
tell us why he worships an intolerant God? Is a god who will burn a soul
forever in another world, better than a Christian who burns the body for
a few hours in this? Is there no intellectual liberty in heaven? Do the
angels all discuss questions on the same side? Are all the investigators
in perdition? Will the penitent thief, winged and crowned, laugh at the
honest folks in hell? Will the agony of the damned increase or decrease
the happiness of God? Will there be, in the universe, an eternal _auto
da fe?_