UPON passages in the New Testament rests the doctrine of eternal pain.
This doctrine subverts every idea of justice. A finite being can neither
commit an infinite sin, nor a sin against the Infinite. A being of
infinite goodness and wisdom has no right to create any being whose life
is not a blessing. Infinite wisdom has no right to create a failure,
and surely a man destined to everlasting failure is not a conspicuous
success. The doctrine of eternal punishment is the most infamous of
all doctrines--born of ignorance, cruelty and fear. Around the angel of
immortality, Christianity has coiled this serpent.
Upon Love's breast the church has placed the eternal asp. And yet in
the same book in which is taught this most frightful of dogmas, we are
assured that "the Lord is good to all, and his tender mercies are over
all his works."
A few days ago upon the wide sea, was found a barque called "The
Tiger," Captain Kreuger, in command. The vessel had been one hundred and
twenty-six days upon the sea. For days the crew had been without water,
without food, and were starving. For nine days not a drop had passed
their lips. The crew consisted of the captain, a mate, and eleven men.
At the end of one hundred and eighteen days from Liverpool they killed
the captain's Newfoundland dog. This lasted them four days. During the
next five days they had nothing. For weeks they had had no light
and were unable to see the compass at night. On the one hundred and
twenty-fifth day Captain Kreuger, a German, took a revolver in his hand,
stood up before the men, and placing the weapon at his temple said:
"Boys, we can't stand this much longer, and to save you all, I am
willing to die." The mate grasped the revolver and begged the captain to
wait another day. The next day, upon the horizon of their despair, they
saw the smoke of the steamship Nebo. They were rescued.
Suppose that Captain Kreuger was not a Christian, and suppose that he
had sent the ball crashing through his brain, and had done so simply
to keep the crew from starvation, do you tell me that a God of infinite
mercy would forever damn that man?
Do not misunderstand me. I insist that every passage in the Bible
upholding crime was written by savage man. I insist that if there is
a God, he is not, never was, and never will be in favor of slavery,
polygamy, wars of extermination, or religious persecution. Does any
Christian believe that if the real God were to write a book now, he
would uphold the crimes commanded in the Old Testament? Has Jehovah
improved? Has infinite mercy become more merciful? Has infinite wisdom
intellectually advanced?
WILL any one claim that the passages upholding slavery have liberated
mankind? Are we indebted to polygamy for our modern homes? Was religious
liberty born of that infamous verse in which the husband is commanded to
kill his wife for worshiping an unknown God?
The usual answer to these objections is, that no country has ever been
civilized without a Bible. The Jews were the only people to whom Jehovah
made his will directly known. Were they better than other nations? They
read the Old Testament and one of the effects of such reading was, that
they crucified a kind, loving, and perfectly innocent man. Certainly
they could not have done worse, without a Bible. In crucifying Christ
the Jews followed the teachings of his Father. If Jehovah was in fact
God, and if that God took upon himself flesh and came among the Jews,
and preached what the Jews understood to be blasphemy; and if the Jews
in accordance with the laws given by this same Jehovah to Moses,
crucified him, then I say, and I say it with infinite reverence, he
reaped what he had sown. He became the victim of his own injustice.
But I insist that these things are not true. I insist that the real God,
if there is one, never commanded man to enslave his fellow-man, never
told a mother to sell her babe, never established polygamy, never urged
one nation to exterminate another, and never told a husband to kill his
wife because she suggested the worship of another God.
From the aspersions of the pulpit, from the slanders of the church,
I seek to rescue the reputation of the Deity. I insist that the Old
Testament would be a better book with all these passages left out; and
whatever may be said of the rest of the Bible, the passages to which I
have called attention can, with vastly more propriety, be attributed to
a devil than to a god.
Take from the New Testament the idea that belief is necessary to
salvation; that Christ was offered as an atonement for the sins of
mankind; that heaven is the reward of faith, and hell the penalty of
honest investigation, and that the punishment of the human soul will go
on forever; take from it all miracles and foolish stories, and I most
cheerfully admit that the good passages are true. If they are true, it
makes no difference whether they are inspired or not. Inspiration is
only necessary to give authority to that which is repugnant to human
reason. Only that which never happened needs to be substantiated by a
miracle.
The universe is natural.
The church must cease to insist that passages upholding the institutions
of savage men were inspired of God. The dogma of atonement must be
abandoned. Good deeds must take the place of faith. The savagery of
eternal punishment must be renounced. It must be admitted that credulity
is not a virtue, and that investigation is not a crime. It must be
admitted that miracles are the children of mendacity, and that nothing
can be more wonderful than the majestic, unbroken, sublime, and eternal
procession of causes and effects. Reason must be the arbiter. Inspired
books attested by miracles cannot stand against a demonstrated fact. A
religion that does not command the respect of the greatest minds will,
in a little while, excite the mockery of all.
A man who does not believe in intellectual liberty is a barbarian. Is
it possible that God is intolerant? Could there be any progress, even
in heaven, without intellectual liberty? Is the freedom of the future
to exist only in perdition? Is it not, after all, barely possible that
a man acting like Christ can be saved? Is a man to be eternally rewarded
for believing according to evidence, without evidence, or against
evidence? Are we to be saved because we are good, or because another was
virtuous? Is credulity to be winged and crowned, whilst honest doubt is
chained and damned.
If Jehovah, was in fact God, he knew the end from the beginning. He
knew that his Bible would be a breast-work behind which all tyranny
and hypocrisy would crouch. He knew that his Bible would be the
auction-block on which women would stand while their babes were sold
from their arms. He knew that this Bible would be quoted by tyrants;
that it would be the defence of robbers called kings, and of hypocrites
called priests. He knew that he had taught the Jewish people nothing of
importance. He knew that he had found them free and left them slaves. He
knew that he had never fulfilled a single promise made to them. He knew
that while other nations had advanced in art and science his chosen
people were savage still. He promised them the world, and gave them a
desert. He promised them liberty and he made them slaves. He promised
them victory and he gave them defeat. He said they should be kings and
he made them serfs. He promised them universal empire and gave them
exile. When one finishes the Old Testament he is compelled to say:
"Nothing can add to the misery of a nation whose king is Jehovah!"
The Old Testament filled this world with tyranny and injustice, and the
New gives us a future filled with pain for nearly all of the sons of
men.
The Old Testament describes the hell of the past, and the New the hell
of the future.
The Old Testament tells us the frightful things that God has done, the
New the frightful things that he will do.
These two books give us the sufferings of the past and the future--the
injustice, the agony and the tears of both worlds.