To the study of the Bible he has given the best years of his life. When
he commenced this study he was probably a devout believer in the plenary
inspiration of the Scripture--thought that the Bible was without an
error; that all the so-called contradictions could be easily explained.
He had been educated by Presbyterians and had confidence in his
teachers.
In spite of his early training, in spite of his prejudices, he was led,
in some mysterious way, to rely a little on his own reason. This was
a dangerous thing to do. The moment a man talks about reason he is on
dangerous ground. He is liable to contradict the "Word of God." Then he
loses spirituality and begins to think more of truth than creed. This is
a step toward heresy--toward Infidelity.
Professor Briggs began to have doubts about some of the miracles.
These doubts, like rats, began to gnaw the foundations of his faith. He
examined these wonderful stories in the light of what is known to have
happened, and in the light of like miracles found in the other sacred
books of the world. And he concluded that they were not quite true. He
was not ready to say that they were actually false; that would be too
brutally candid.
I once read of an English lord who had a very polite gamekeeper. The
lord wishing to show his skill with the rifle fired at a target. He and
the gamekeeper went to see where the bullet had struck. The gamekeeper
was first at the target, and the lord cried out: "Did I miss it?"
"I would not," said the gamekeeper, "go so far as to say that your
lordship missed it, but--but--you didn't hit it."
Professor Briggs saw clearly that the Bible was the product, the growth
of many centuries; that legends and facts, mistakes, contradictions,
miracles, myths and history, interpolations, prophecies and dreams,
wisdom, foolishness, justice, cruelty, poetry and bathos were mixed,
mingled and interwoven. In other words, that the gold of truth was
surrounded by meaner metals and worthless stones.
He saw that it was necessary to construct what might be called a sacred
smelter to divide the true from the false.
Undoubtedly he reached this conclusion in the interest of what he
believed to be the truth. He had the mistaken but honest idea that a
Christian should really think. Of course, we know that all heresy
has been the result of thought. It has always been dangerous to grow.
Shrinking is safe.
Studying the Bible was the first mistake that Professor Briggs made,
reasoning was the second, and publishing his conclusions was the third.
If he had read without studying, if he had believed without reasoning,
he would have remained a good, orthodox Presbyterian. He probably read
the works of Humboldt, Darwin and Haeckel, and found that the author
of Genesis was not a geologist, not a scientist. He seems to have his
doubts about the truth of the story of the deluge. Should he be blamed
for this? Is there a sensible man in the wide world who really believes
in the flood?
This flood business puts Jehovah in such an idiotic light.
Of course, he must have known, after the "fall" of Adam and Eve, that he
would have to drown their descendants. Certainly it would have been
more merciful to have killed Adam and Eve, made a new pair and kept the
serpent out of the Garden of Eden. If Jehovah had been an intelligent
God he never would have created the serpent. Then there would have been
no fall, no flood, no atonement, no hell.
Think of a God who drowned a world! What a merciless monster! The
cruelty of the flood is exceeded only by its stupidity.
Thousands of little theologians have tried to explain this miracle. This
is the very top of absurdity. To explain a miracle is to destroy it.
Some have said that the flood was local. How could water that rose over
the mountains remain local?
Why should we expect mercy from a God who drowned millions of men, women
and babes? I would no more think of softening the heart of such a God
by prayer than of protecting myself from a hungry tiger by repeating
poetry.
Professor Briggs has sense enough to see that the story of the flood
is but an ignorant legend. He is trying to rescue Jehovah from the
frightful slander. After all, why should we believe the unreasonable?
Must we be foolish to be virtuous? The rain fell for forty days; this
caused the flood. The water was at least thirty thousand feet in depth.
Seven hundred and fifty feet a day--more than thirty feet an hour, six
inches a minute; the rain fell for forty days. Does any man with sense
enough to eat and breathe believe this idiotic lie?
Professor Briggs knows that the Jews got the story of the flood from the
Babylonians, and that it is no more inspired than the history of "Peter
Wilkins and His Flying Wife." The destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah is
another legend.
If those cities were destroyed sensible people believe the phenomenon
was as natural as the destruction of Herculaneum and Pompeii. They do
not believe that in either case it was the result of the wickedness of
the people.
Neither does any thinking man believe that the wife of Lot was changed
or turned into a pillar of salt as a punishment for having looked back
at her burning home. How could flesh, bones and blood be changed to
salt? This presupposes two miracles. First, the annihilation
of the woman, and second, the creation of salt. A God cannot
annihilate or create matter. Annihilation and creation are both
impossible--unthinkable. A grain of sand can defy all the gods. What was
Mrs. Lot turned to salt for? What good was achieved? What useful lesson
taught? What man with a head fertile enough to raise one hair can
believe a story like this?
Does a man who denies the truth of this childish absurdity weaken the
foundation of virtue? Does he discourage truth-telling by denouncing
lies? Should a man be true to himself? If reason is not the standard,
what is? Can a man think one way and believe another? Of course he can
talk one way and think another. If a man should be honest with himself
he should be honest with others. A man who conceals his doubts lives a
dishonest life. He defiles his own soul.
When a truth-loving man reads about the plagues of Egypt, should he
reason as he reads? Should he take into consideration the fact that like
stories have been told and believed by savages for thousands of years?
Should he ask himself whether Jehovah in his efforts to induce the
Egyptian King to free the Hebrews acted like a sensible God? Should he
ask himself whether a good God would kill the babes of the people on
account of the sins of the king? Whether he would torture, mangle and
kill innocent cattle to get even with a monarch?
Is it better to believe without thinking than to think without
believing? If there be a God can we please him by believing that he
acted like a fiend?
Probably Professor Briggs has a higher conception of God than the author
of Exodus. The writer of that book was a barbarian--an honest barbarian,
and he wrote what he supposed was the truth. I do not blame him for
having written falsehoods. Neither do I blame Professor Briggs for
having detected these falsehoods. In our day no man capable of reasoning
believes the miracles wrought for the Hebrews in their flight through
the wilderness. The opening of the sea, the cloud and pillar, the
quails, the manna, the serpents and hornets are no more believed than
the miracles of the Mormons when they crossed the plains.
The probability is that the Hebrews never were in Egypt. In the Hebrew
language there are no Egyptian words, and in the Egyptian no Hebrew.
This proves that the Hebrews could not have mingled with the Egyptians
for four hundred and thirty years. As a matter of fact, Moses is a myth.
The enslavement of the Hebrews, the flight, the journey through the
wilderness existed only in the imagination of ignorance.
So Professor Briggs has his doubts about the sun and moon having been
stopped for a day in order that Gen. Joshua might kill more heathen.
Theologians have gathered around this miracle like moths around a flame.
They have done their best to make it reasonable. They have talked about
refraction and reflection, about the nature of the air having been
changed so that the sun was visible all night. They have even gone
so far as to say that Joshua and his soldiers killed so many that
afterward, when thinking about it, they concluded that it must have
taken them at least two days.
This miracle can be accounted for only in one way. Jehovah must have
stopped the earth. The earth, turning over at about one thousand miles
an hour--weighing trillions of tons--had to be stopped. Now we know that
all arrested motion changes instantly to heat. It has been calculated
that to stop the earth would cause as much heat as could be produced by
burning three lumps of coal, each lump as large as this world.
Now, is it possible that a God in his right mind would waste all that
force? The Bible also tells us that at the same time God cast hailstones
from heaven on the poor heathen. If the writer had known something of
astronomy he would have had more hailstones and said nothing about the
sun and moon.
Is it wise for ministers to ask their congregations to believe this
story? Is it wise for congregations to ask their ministers to believe
this story? If Jehovah performed this miracle he must have been insane.
There should be some relation, some proportion, between means and ends.
No sane general would call into the field a million soldiers and a
hundred batteries to kill one insect. And yet the disproportion of means
to the end sought would be reasonable when compared with what Jehovah is
claimed to have done.
If Jehovah existed let us admit that he had some sense.
If it should be demonstrated that the book of Joshua is all false, what
harm could follow? There would remain the same reasons for living a
useful and virtuous life; the same reasons against theft and murder.
Virtue would lose no prop and vice would gain no crutch. Take all the
miracles from the Old Testament and the book would be improved. Throw
away all its cruelties and absurdities and its influence would be far
better.
Professor Briggs seems to have doubts about the inspiration of Ruth. Is
there any harm in that? What difference does it make whether the story
of Ruth is fact or fiction; history or poetry? Its value is just the
same. Who cares whether Hamlet or Lear lived? Who cares whether
Imogen and Perdita were real women or the creation of Shakespeare's
imagination?
The book of Esther is absurd and cruel. It has no ethical value. There
is not a line, a word in it calculated to make a human being better. The
king issued a decree to kill the Jews. Esther succeeded in getting this
decree set aside, and induced the king to issue another decree that
the Jews should kill the other folks, and so the Jews killed some
seventy-five thousand of the king's subjects. Is it really important to
believe that the book of Esther is inspired? Is it possible that Jehovah
is proud of having written this book? Does he guard his copyright with
the fires of hell? Why should the facts be kept from the people? Every
intelligent minister knows that Moses did not write the Pentateuch; that
David did not write the Psalms, and that Solomon was not the author of
the song or the book of Ecclesiastes. Why not say so?
No intelligent minister believes the story of Daniel in the Lion's den,
or of the three men who were cast into the furnace, or the story of
Jonah. These miracles seem to have done no good--seem to have convinced
nobody and to have had no consequences. Daniel w'as miraculously saved
from the lions, and then the king sent for the men who had accused
Daniel, for their wives and their children, and threw them all into
the den of lions and they were devoured by beasts almost as cruel as
Jehovah. What a beautiful story! How can any man be wicked enough to
doubt its truth?
God told Jonah to go to Nineveh. Jonah ran away, took a boat for another
place. God raised a storm, the sailors became frightened, threw Jonah
overboard, and the poor wretch was swallowed and carried ashore by a
fish that God had prepared. Then he made his proclamation in Nineveh.
Then the people repented and Jonah was disappointed. Then he became
malicious and found fault with God. Then comes the story of the gourd,
the worm and the east wind, and the effect of the sun on a bald-headed
prophet. Would not this story be just as beautiful with the storm and
fish left out? Could we not dispense with the gourd, the worm and the
east wind?
Professor Briggs does not believe this story. He does not reject it
because he is wicked or because he wishes to destroy religion, but
because, in his judgment, it is not true. This may not be religious, but
it is honest. It may not become a minister, but it certainly becomes a
man.
Professor Briggs wishes to free the Old Testament from interpolations,
from excrescences, from fungus growths, from mistakes and falsehoods.