GOD’S PROPAGANDA
We have before us another literary criticism, clipped from the “Roman
Times Weekly Review of Books” during the year 300, under the Emperor
Diocletian. It is word for word the same as that from the “American
Times” of 1944--the only difference being that one deals with an outlaw
party known as Bolsheviks, while the other deals with an outlaw sect
known as Christians. The Founder of this latter sect is described by the
“Roman Times” as a proletarian criminal, who was crucified for
disturbing the public peace under the Emperor Augustus Cæsar. His
followers have been hiding in catacombs and tombs, carrying on incessant
propaganda in defiance of the Roman law. In place of John Reed, the
“Roman Times” refers to a certain Paul, a renegade Roman gentleman and
former official of the empire. The good old days to which the “Roman
Times” looks back with longing, are the days of Nero, when these
incendiary fanatics were boiled in oil or fed to the lions. Under the
prodding of this most respectable “Times,” the Emperor Diocletian
undertook a new and ferocious persecution of the sect; but twenty-four
years afterwards the successor of Diocletian became converted to
Christianity, and adopted it as the official religion of the state,
entitled to persecute other religions.
The reader who is a Christian will remind me that Jesus was a pacifist,
he was meek and gentle. To this I answer, the early social
revolutionists were likewise Utopians, appealing to love and
brotherhood. At the time the New Testament became fixed in its present
form, the Christians had never held power in any part of the world. When
they took power under the Emperor Constantine, they behaved like every
government in history--that is, they kept their power, using as much
force as necessary for the purpose. If the reader is shocked by the fact
that the Soviet government of Russia fought for two years a defensive
war on twenty-six fronts against its enemies, I invite him to consider
the Christian crusades, two centuries of offensive propaganda warfare.
If he is shocked by stories he has read about the Tcheka and its
torturing of prisoners, I invite him to consult Lea’s “History of the
Spanish Inquisition.” Considering the series of religious wars which
made of Europe a shambles for more than a thousand years, it is safe to
assert that for every human life sacrificed by the Soviet revolution in
Russia, a hundred thousand lives have been taken in the name of the
gentle and lowly Jesus.
But these are questions which will not be settled in a generation, nor
in a century; therefore we pass on, and take up the question of the New
Testament as literature. It has been generally so recognized, and we may
doubt if any writing ever collected in one volume has exercised as great
an influence upon the human race. And let it be noted that this
literature is propaganda, pure and simple; we may defy anyone to find a
single line in the Gospels, the Acts, the Epistles, or the Book of
Revelations which was not produced as conscious and deliberate
propaganda.
A critic highly regarded by the academic authorities when I was a
student in college was George Henry Lewes. I read his “Life of Goethe,”
and made note of his argument on behalf of “realist” as opposed to
“idealist” art. Goethe and Shakespeare are his examples of the former
type; and how obvious is their superiority to those “subjective”
artists, who “seek in realities only visible illustrations of a deeper
existence!” The critic takes as his test the production of “the grandest
generalizations and the most elevated types”; but it was evident to me,
even in my student days, that he reached his conclusion by the simple
device of overlooking the evidence on the other side. I introduce to you
four “idealist” artists who bear the names--perhaps pen-names--of
Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. Will anyone maintain that the works of
Shakespeare and Goethe contain “grander generalizations” or “more
elevated types” than the Four Gospels? We set Jesus against Shakespeare,
and Buddha against Goethe, and leave it for the common sense of mankind
to decide.