The end of the world has been a fertile and profitable theme with pulpit
mountebanks and pious adventurers. Ever since the primitive ages of
Christianity it has served to frighten the credulous and feather the
nests of their deceivers.
In the apostolic days the Second Coming of Christ was generally and
constantly expected. According to the twenty-fourth of Matthew, Jesus
predicted that the end of all things would soon arrive. The sun and moon
were to be darkened; the stars were to fall from heaven; and the Son
of Man was to come through the clouds with great power and glory, and
gather the elect together from every quarter of the earth, According to
the twenty-fifth of Matthew, this wondrous scene was to be followed by
a Great Assize. All the nations were to be judged before the heavenly
throne, and divided into two lots, one destined for heaven and the other
for hell. And Jesus significantly added, "Verily I say unto you, this
generation shall not pass, till all these things be fulfilled."
St. Paul also, in the fourth chapter of the first of Thessalonians, said
that the Lord would "descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of
the archangel, and with the trump of God: and the dead in Christ shall
rise first: Then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up
together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air."
Nothing of the sort has happened. There is no sign of the Lord's
coming, and he is already eighteen centuries behind date. "Behold I come
quickly"--"Surely I come quickly." Such was the announcement. But, like
many other divine promises, it has been falsified. The only orthodox way
out of the difficulty is to say that the Lord does not reckon time as
we do; with him a day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as a
day.
The general public, however, eighteen hundred years ago, did not
know how long the prophecy was to remain unfulfilled, and it had an
extraordinary power over them. Being mostly very ignorant, and therefore
very credulous, they were easily terrified by the notion that the world
was to be burnt up speedily; and they as readily embraced the doctrine
which promised to bring them safely through the catastrophe. From the
way in which the game answers still with the Christian mob, after
nearly two thousand years of exposure, we can understand what a splendid
instrument of proselytising it must have been in the hands of the
fanatical preachers of the early Church. Combine with it the Millennium
promised to the saints after the Second Coming of Christ, in which
they were to enjoy themselves royally, and you will feel the justice of
Gibbon's remark that "it must have contributed in a very considerable
degree to the progress of the Christian faith." It was inculcated by a
succession of Fathers, from Justin Martyr to Lactantius. But when it had
served its purpose it was allowed to drop. As Gibbon says, "it was at
first treated as a profound allegory, was considered by degrees as a
doubtful and useless opinion, and was at length rejected as the absurd
invention of heresy and fanaticism." The Millennium is stigmatised, in
what once stood as the forty-first Article of the English Church, as "a
fable of Jewish dotage." We wonder whether the plain-spoken divines who
drew up that article included Jesus Christ, St. Paul, and St. John
among the Jewish dotards.
At the end of the tenth century the doctrine of the Second Coming was
revived. The people were led to believe that the old serpent's thousand
years of bondage was nearly up, that he would be let loose about the
year 1,000, that Antichrist would then appear, and that the end of the
world would follow. Churches and houses were therefore left to decay,
as they would cease to be wanted. Whenever an eclipse of the sun or moon
took place, the people ran into caverns and caves. Multitudes hurried
off to Palestine, where they supposed Christ would make his descent.
They transferred their property to the priests, who could say with
Iago, "thus do I ever make my fool my purse." Others not only gave their
property to the priests, but actually became their slaves; hoping, says
Mosheim, that "the supreme Judge would be more favorable to them if they
made themselves servants to _his_ servants."
Jortin justly observes that the priests industriously cherished the
delusion for the sake of filthy lucre. They accepted the gifts of their
poor dupes, although earthly possessions would be as useless to them as
to the laity if the last days were at hand. Donations to the Church were
given by fools and received by knaves. The reason assigned for the gift
is generally thus expressed: _Appropinquante mundi termino--The end of
the world being now at hand_.*
When the tenth century ended without a sign of the Second Advent, people
looked at each other and said "He is not come then." And the priests
chuckled, "No, he has not come, but your property is gone." There was no
chance of bringing an action for obtaining money under false pretences,
and Holy Mother Church never gives back a farthing of what she
obtains, for what is once devoted to God can never be alienated without
sacrilege.
Although the delusion has been milder since then, it has always lurked
among the ignorant, and occasionally become acute. Silly Christians
still shake their heads when a comet is visible, and regard it as a
blazing portent. They even hint that one of these wanderers through
space may collide with our globe and cause the final smash; not knowing
that comets are quite harmless, and that hundreds of cubic miles of
their tails would not outweigh a jar-ful of air.
Dr. Cumming foretold the grand collapse several times. His books were
read by thousands of superstitious people. Finally, he was played out,
and he went to his grave a discredited prophet. Had he been wiser he
would have fixed the event some time after he was likely to be buried.
Then the game would have lasted his lifetime, and what does it matter if
you are found out when you are dead?
How far Gumming believed his own prophecies is a moot point. It is said
that he bought the lease of a house, which expired about twenty-five
years after his date for the day of judgment.
Prophet Baxter, of the _Christian Herald_, now runs the business. He
wrote a book to prove that Louis Napoleon was Antichrist. Louis
Napoleon is dead and nearly forgotten. Then he proved that Gambetta
was Antichrist. Gambetta is dead and not forgotten. Then he proved that
Prince Jerome was Antichrist. Prince Jerome is nowhere, and Baxter is
looking out for a fresh Antichrist. Yet his paper is read by hundreds of
thousands. As Heine said, the fool-crop is perennial.
Over in America the Second Adventists are a numerous body. They watch
and pray for the coming of Christ, and keep white robes ready for their
ascension. Some time ago they donned their linen in the expectation
that the Lord was coming that very night. But the Lord did not put in an
appearance, and the robes were laid up in lavender again. A fat matron
trying to fly in that outfit would be a sight worth seeing. It would
take several angels to float some of them. Even the archangel Michael
might shrink from tackling twenty-stone.
Like everything else in Christianity, except the accursed doctrine
of salvation by faith, the idea of the end of the world and a day of
judgment is derived from older sources.
The Hindu _Kalpas_, covering thousands of millions of years, are periods
of creation and destruction, and each is called a day of Brahma. During
this enormous interval the universe begins and ends. Brahma wakes from
his slumbrous solitude, and his thoughts and emotions embody themselves
in worlds and creatures. When he falls to rest again, the whole system
of finite things vanishes like the baseless fabric of a vision.
The Stoics also believed in a periodical destruction and renovation of
all things. They, as Alger says, "conceived of God as a pure artistic
force or seed of universal energy, which exhibits its history in the
evolution of the cosmos, and, on its completion, blossoms into fire and
vanishes. The universal periodical conflagration destroys all evil, and
leaves the indestructible God alone in his pure essence again."
The Persians entertained a similar conception, which more closely
resembles the Christian doctrine. Ahura-Mazda creates all things
good, and the race of men happy and immortal. But Angra-Mainyas, his
adversary, the old serpent, corrupts them, brings upon them misery and
death, and leads their souls to his dark abode. Good and evil spirits
fill all creation with their conflict. But at last Ahura-Mazda subdues
Angra-Mainyas, nullifies all the mischief he has done by means of a
great deliverer, who is sent to instruct and redeem mankind, raises
the dead, purifies the world with fire, and restores all nature to its
paradisiacal condition.
The Scandinavians had their Ragnarok, or Twilight of the Gods, when all
the powers of good and evil join in battle. The horn sounds, the last
day dawns in fire and splendor from the sky, in fog and venom from the
abyss. Flames destroy the earth, the combatants mostly slay each other,
but Gimli, the heaven of the All-Father, is a refuge for the survivors,
and the beginning of a new and fairer world.
Chiefly influenced by the Persian, and partly by other systems, the
later Jewish theology, as represented by the Pharisees, taught that
Jehovah would reappear in the last days; and the Day of the Lord, which
in former ages meant any national calamity, became transformed into the
Day of Judgment. What was to happen on that occasion is described in the
Book of Enoch. This was written about a century before Christ, yet it is
quoted in the Epistle of Jude as the work of old transported Enoch, the
seventh from Adam; a fact which throws a singular light on the critical
acumen of the early Christians. Jesus Christ, Paul, and especially the
author of Revelation, are indebted to the Book of Enoch. It provided
them with nearly all the plot, dialogue and scenery of their judgment
drama.
As judges of the dead, the Greeks had Minos, who presided at the trial
of souls from Europe; Rhada-mauthus, who examined those from Asia; and
Æacus, who tried those from Africa, America and Australia were then
unknown, and souls from those continents were not provided with
inspectors. Of course the dead who held communication with the living,
never told them more than they knew. The same thing continues to this
day. All the messages from the departed given at all the Spiritist
_séances_ have not added a single fragment to the world's stock of
information.
The ancient Egyptians believed in "after death the judgment." Souls were
tried in the Hall of the two-Truths, or the double Justice. They were
weighed in the balance. Thoth noted the result, and Osiris pronounced
sentence. Before burial, also, the Egyptian dead underwent a saner
trial. The friends and relatives, the enemies and accusers of the
deceased, assembled around the sarcophagus before forty-two assessors.
He was put on his trial before them; and if justified, awarded an
honorable burial; but, if condemned, disgraced by the withholding of
funeral rites. Kings, as well as commoners, were apparently subject to
the same ordeal. Does this account for the beneficent character of their
government, and the prosperous-content of the people, which is reflected
in the placid smile of their sphinxes?
Probably the antique notion of a general Day of Judgment arose from the
imposing trials, where the King sat in judgment, throned, jewelled, and
guarded; where all were free to approach and claim justice; and where
the sentences were executed by the soldiers-directly they were passed.
Add to this scene a general _auto da fé_, in which Christ plays the part
of Grand Inquisitor, the saints that of familiars, and the Devil; that
of executioner, and you have a very fair idea of the Christian Day of
Judgment.
"Day," we presume, must not be taken too literally. The Mohammedans
believe the Great Assize will last thousands of years. In that case the
people who are fond of hearing trials will have a fine time, until their
own turn comes. After all, even the Mohammedan computation seems
too slender. To say nothing of the scientific antiquity of man, and
reckoning according to the Bible chronology, about two hundred thousand
million souls have passed into eternity already, and the Lord knows how
many more will join them. Imagination fails in conceiving the time it
would take to try all that multitude, especially if there are a good
number of Tichborne cases. Besides, the whole thing seems unfair. Those
who get a ticket for heaven at the end of the Day will enjoy a few
thousand years less of bliss than the more fortunate ones who came
early; and those who get a ticket for hell in the first hour will suffer
a few thousand years of torture more than those who are sentenced at the
finish.
The criterion at the Day of Judgment will be Faith. That is a difficult
virtue to wise men, and an easy one to fools. The ninnies, therefore,
will have the best chance. This must be very consoling to mankind if
Carlyle's estimate of England's population--"thirty millions, mostly
fools"--may be extended to the rest of the world.
All who have faith enough to secure a seat in heaven are called "sheep,"
and they could not be labelled better. All the others are called
"goats," that is, lusty, strong-legged fellows who despise the game of
follow-my-leader, who object to walking along the road made for them,
and are always leaping the fence to see what is on the other side. There
was war in heaven once, we are told, but that was before Satan and his
crew were kicked out. There will never be war in heaven again. Jesus
Christ will easily be able to manage his sheep. But the Devil will have
a tougher job with his goats. There will always be a kingdom in heaven,
but ten to one there will be a republic in hell.
Christianity says we are to be saved by faith. Our view is different.
Men are saved by thinking and acting. While Christian monks were trying
to degrade men below the level of brutes, some unknown Secularists
invented windmills and glass windows. While the Inquisition was
exterminating heresy and purifying the faith, Galileo was inventing the
telescope. While Church of Englandism and Methodism were fighting over
the faith in England, Watt was discovering the use of steam. Faith never
saved men here, and why should it save them hereafter? God, if he exist,
must be too humane and sensible to judge men according to their belief;
and if he endowed us with reason, he will never damn us for exercising
it.
Wandering in an immense forest during the night, said Diderot, I have
only one little light to guide me. A stranger comes to me and says, "My
friend, blow out your candle to find your way better." That light is
reason, and that stranger is a theologian.
Science, no less than common sense, dispels Christian superstition.
Evolution destroys the idea of a general catastrophe. There was a time
when life could not exist on the earth, and there will probably come
a time when it will cease to exist. Long before then man will have
disappeared. But the aeon of our race may extend to millions of years.
Is not this time practically infinite? And do not those who make it
a cause for lamentation and despair resemble the man that Spinoza
ridicules, who refuses to eat his dinner to-day because he is not sure
of a dinner for ever and ever? Sit down, you fool, and eat.