God, who is all-wise and all-just, and who is not a man that he should

repent, repented that he had made Saul king because Saul spared one man.

In the reign of David the same good God sent a famine for three years on

the descendants of Abraham, and upon being asked his reason for thus

starving his chosen ones, the reply of the Deity was that he sent the

famine on the subjects of David because Saul slew the Gibeonites.

Satisfactory reason!--because Oliver Cromwell slew the Royalists, God

will punish the subjects of Charles the Second. One reason is, to

profane eyes, equivalent to the other, but a bishop or even a rural dean

would soon show how remarkably God's justice was manifested. David was

not behindhand in justice. He had sworn to Saul that he would not cut

off his seed--i.e., that he would not destroy Saul's family. He

therefore took two of Saul's sons, and five of Saul's grandsons, and

gave them up to the Gibeonites, who hung them. Strangely wonderful are

the ways of the Lord! Saul slew the Gibeonites, therefore years

afterwards God starves Judah. The Gibeonites hang men who have nothing

to do with the crime of Saul, except that they are his descendants, and

then we are told "the Lord was intreated for the land." The anger of the

Lord being kindled against Israel, he, wanting some excuse for punishing

the descendants of Jacob, moved David to number his people. The

Chronicles say that the tempter was Satan, and pious people may thus

learn what there is of distinction between God and Devil. Philosophers

would urge that both personifications are founded in the ignorance of

the masses, and the continuance of the myth will cease with the

credulousness of the people. David caused a census to be taken of the

tribes of Israel and Judah. There is a trival disagreement of about

270,000 soldiers between Samuel and Chronicles, but readers must not

allow so slight an inaccuracy as this to stand between them and heaven.

What are 270,000 men when looked at prayerfully? That any doubt should

arise is to a devout mind at the same time profane and preposterous.

Statisticians suggest that 1,570,000 soldiers form a larger army than

the Jews are likely to have possessed; but if God is omnipotent, there

is no reason to limit his power of miraculously increasing or decreasing

the armament of the Jewish nation. David, it seems, did wrong in

numbering his people, but we are never told that he did wrong in robbing

or murdering their neighbors, or in pillaging peaceful agriculturists.

David said: "I have sinned," and for this an all-merciful God brought a

pestilence on the people, and murdered 70,000 Israelites, for an offence

which their ruler had committed. The angel who was engaged in this

terrible slaughter stood somewhere between heaven and earth, and

stretched forth his hand with a drawn sword to destroy Jerusalem itself;

but even the bloodthirsty Deity of the Bible "repented him of the evil,"

and said to the angel: "It is enough." Many volumes might be written to

answer the enquiries--where did the angel stand, and on what? Of what

metal was the sword, and where was it made? As it was a drawn one, where

was the scabbard? and did the angel wear a sword-belt? Examined in a

pious frame of mind, much holy instruction may be derived from the

attempt to solve these solemn problems.

David now grows old and weak, and at last his death-hour comes. Oh! for

the dying words of the Psalmist! What pious instruction shall we derive

from the death-bed scene of the man after God's own heart! Listen to the

last words of Judah's expiring monarch. You who have been content with

the pious frauds and forgeries perpetrated with reference to the

death-beds and dying words of the great, the generous, the witty

Voltaire; the manly, the self-denying, the incorruptible Thomas Paine;

the humane, simple, child-like man, yet mighty poet, Shelley--you who

have turned away from these with unwarranted horror--come with me to the

death-couch of the special favorite of God. Bathsheba's child stands by

his side. Does any thought of the murdered Uriah rack old David's brain,

or has a tardy repentance effaced the bloody stain from the pages of his

memory? What does the dying David say? Does he talk of cherubs, angels

and heavenly choirs? Nay, none of these things passes his lips. Does he

make a confession of his crime-stained life, and beg his son to be a

better king, a truer man, a more honest citizen, a wiser father? Nay,

not so--no word of sorrow, no sign of regret, no expression of remorse

or repentance escapes his lips. What does the dying David say? This foul

monster whom God has made king; this redhanded robber, whose life has

been guarded by "our Father which art in Heaven;" this perjured king,

whose lying lips have found favor in the sight of God, and who, when he

dies, is safe for Heaven. It is written: "There shall be more joy in

heaven before God over one sinner that repenteth than over ninety and

nine righteous men." Does David repent? Nay, like the ravenous wolf,

which, tasting blood, is made more eager for the prey, he too yearns for

blood; and with his dying breath begs his son to bring the grey hairs of

two old men down to the grave with blood. And this is God's anointed

king, the chief one of God's chosen people.

The learned and pious Puffendorf explains that David having only sworn

not himself to kill Shimei (1 Kings, ii, 8) there was no perjury on the

part of David in persuading Solomon to contrive the killing from which

David had sworn to personally abstain.

David is alleged to have written several Psalms, but of this there is

little evidence beyond pious assertion. In one of these the psalmist

addresses God in pugilistic phraseology, praising Deity that he had

smitten all his enemies on the cheek-bone, and broken the teeth of the

ungodly. In these days when "muscular Christianity" is not without

advocates, the metaphor which presents God as a sort of magnificent

Benicia Boy may find many admirers. In the eighteenth Psalm, David

describes God as with "smoke coming out of his nostrils and fire out of

his mouth," by which "coals were kindled." He represents God as coming

down from heaven, and says: "he rode upon a cherub." The learned

Parkhurst gives a likeness of a one-legged, four-winged, four-faced

animal, part lion, part bull, part eagle, part man, and if a cloven foot

be any criterion, part devil also. This description, if correct, will

give some idea to the faithful of the wonderful character of the

equestrian feats of Deity. In addition to a cherub, God has other means

of conveyance at his disposal, if David be not in error when he says

that the chariots of the Lord are 20,000.

In Psalm xxvi the writer adds hypocrisy in addition to his other vices.

He has the impudence to tell God that he has been a man of integrity and

truth, and that he has avoided evil-doers, although, if we are to

believe Psalm xxxviii, the hypocrite must have already been subject to a

loathsome disease--a penalty consequent on his licentiousness and

criminality. In another Psalm, David the liar tells God that "he that

telleth lies shall not tarry in my sight." To understand David's pious

nature we must study his prayer to God against an enemy (Psalm cix,

6-14): "Set thou a wicked man over him; and let Satan stand at his right

hand. When he shall be judged, let him be condemned: and let his prayer

become sin. Let his days be few: and let another take his office. Let

his children be fatherless, and his wife a widow. Let his children be

continually vagabonds, and beg: let them seek their bread also out of

their desolate places. Let the extortioner catch all that he hath; and

let the strangers spoil his labor. Let there be none to extend mercy

unto him: neither let there be any to favor his fatherless children. Let

his posterity be cut off; and in the generation following let their name

be blotted out. Let the iniquity of his fathers be remembered with the

Lord; and let not the sin of his mother be blotted out."

A full consideration of the life of David must give great help to the

orthodox in promoting and sustaining faith. While spoken of by Deity as

obeying all the statutes and keeping all the commandments, we are

astonished to find that murder, theft, lying, adultery, licentiousness,

and treachery are amongst the crimes which may be laid to his charge.

David was a liar, God is a God of truth; David was merciless, God is

merciful, and of long suffering; David was a thief, God says: "Thou

shalt not steal;" David was a murderer, God says: "Thou shalt do no

murder; "David took the wife of Uriah, and "accepted" the wife of Nabal,

God says: "Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's wife." Yet,

notwithstanding all these things, David was the man after God's own

heart!

Had this Jewish monarch any redeeming traits in his character? Was he a

good citizen? If so, the Bible has carefully concealed every action

which would entitle him to such an appellation. Was he a kind and

constant husband? To whom? To which of his many wives and mistresses?

Was he grateful to those who aided him in his hour of need? Rather, like

the serpent which, half-frozen by the wayside, is warmed into new life

in the traveller's breast, and then treacherously stings his succorer

with his poisoned fangs, so David robbed and murdered the friends and

allies of the King of Gath, who afforded him protection against the

pursuit of Saul. Does his patriotism outshine his many vices? Does his

love of country efface his many misdoings? Not even this. David was a

heartless traitor who volunteered to serve against his own countrymen,

and would have done so had not the Philistines rejected his treacherous

help. Was he a good king? So say the priesthood now; but where is the

evidence of his virtue? His crimes brought plague and pestilence on his

subjects, and his reign is a continued succession of wars, revolts, and

assassinations, plottings and counterplots.

The life of David is a dark blot on the page of human history, fit in

companionship for the biographies of Constantine the Great and Henry

VIII; but it is through David that the genealogies of Jesus are traced,

and without David there would be no Christian faith.

A NEW LIFE OF JONAH

JONAH was the son of Amittai of Gath-hepher, which place divines

identify with Gittah-hepher of the Children of Zebulun. Dr. Inman says

that Gath-hepher means "the village of the Cow's tail," but he also says

it means "the Heifer's trough." Gesenius translates it "the wine-press

of the well." Bible Dictionaries say that Gath-hepher is the same as

el-Meshhad, and affirm that the tomb of Jonah was "long shown on a rocky

hill near the town." The blood of Saint Januarius is shown in Naples to

this day. Nothing is known of the sex or life of Amittai, except that

Jonah was his or her son, and that Gath-hepher was her or his place of

residence; but to a true believer these two facts, even though standing

utterly alone, will be pregnant with instruction. To the sceptic and

railer, Amittai is as an unknown quantity in an algebraic problem. Jonah

was not a very common proper name, [--Hebrew--] means a dove, and some

derive it from the Arabic root--to be weak, gentle:--so that one meaning

of Jonah, according to Gesenius, would be feeble, gentle bird. The

Prophet Jonah was by no means a feeble, gentle bird; he was rather a

bird of pray. Certainly it was his intention to become a bird of

passage. The date of the birth of Jonah is not given; the margin of my

Bible dates the book of Jonah B.C. cir. 862, and my Bible Dictionary

fixes the date of the matter to which the book relates at "about B.C.

830." If from any reason either of these dates should be disagreeable to

the reader, he can choose any other date without fear of anachronism.

Jonah was a prophet; so is Dr. Cumming, so is Brigham Young; there is no

evidence that Jonah followed any other profession. Jonah's profit

probably hardly equalled that realised by the Archbishop of Canterbury,

but he had money enough to pay his fare "from the presence of the Lord"

to Tarshish. The exact distance of this voyage may be easily calculated

by remembering that the Lord is omnipresent, and then measuring from his

boundary to Tarshish. The fare may be worked out by the differential

calculus after evening prayer.

The word of the Lord came to Jonah; when or how the word came the text

does not record, and to any devout mind it is enough to know that it

came. The first time in the world's history that the word of the Lord

ever came to anybody, may be taken to be when Adam and Eve "heard the

voice of the Lord" "walking in the Garden" of Eden "in the cool of the

day." Between the time of Adam and Jonah a long period had elapsed; but

human nature, having had many prophets, was very wicked. The Lord wanted

Jonah to go with a message to Nineveh. Nineveh was apparently a city of

three days' journey in size. Allowing twenty miles for each day, this

would make the city about 60 miles across, or about 180 miles in

circumference. Some faint idea may be formed of this vast city, by

adding together London, Paris, and New York, and then throwing in

Liverpool, Manchester, Glasgow, Edinburgh, Marseilles, Naples, and

Spurgeon's Tabernacle. Jonah knowing that the Lord did not always carry

out his threats or perform his promises, did not wish to go to Nineveh,

and "rose up to flee to Tarshish from the presence of the Lord." The

Tarshish for which Jonah intended his flight was either in Spain or

India or elsewhere. I am inclined, after deep reflection and examination

of the best authorities, to give the preference to the third-named

locality. When Cain went "out of the presence of the Lord," he went into

the Land of Nod, but whether Tarshish is in that or some other country

there is no evidence to determine. To get to Tarshish, Jonah--instead of

going to the port of Tyre, which was the nearest to his reputed

dwelling, and by far the most commodious--went to the more distant and

less convenient port of Joppa, where he found a ship going to Tarshish;

"so he paid the fare thereof, and went down into it, to go with them

into Tarshish, from the presence of the Lord." Jonah was, however, very

shortsighted. Just as in the old Greek mythology, winds and waves are

made warriors for the gods, so the God of the Hebrews "sent out a great

wind into the sea, and there was a mighty tempest in the sea, so that

the ship was like to be broken." Luckily she was not an old leaky

vessel, overladen and heavily insured; one which the sanctimonious

owners desired to see at the bottom, and which the captain did not care

to save. Christianity and civilisation were yet to bring forth that

glorious resultant, a pious English shipowner, with a newly-painted,

but, under the paint, a worn and rusty iron vessel, long abandoned as

unfit, but now fresh-named, and so insured that Davy Jones's locker

becomes the most welcome haven of refuge. "The mariners were afraid...

and cast forth the wares" into the sea to lighten the ship. But where

was Jonah during this noise? Men trampling on deck, hoarse and harsh

words of command, and the fury of the storm troubled not our prophet.

Sea-sickness, which spares not the most pious, had no effect upon him.

"Jonah was gone down into the sides of the ship, and he lay and was fast

asleep." The battering of the waves against the sides disturbed not his

devout slumbers; the creaking of the vessel's timbers spoiled not his

repose. Despite the pitching and rolling of the vessel Jonah "was fast

asleep." Had he been in the comfortable berth of a Cunarder, it would

not have been easy to sleep through such a storm. Had he been in the

hold of a smaller vessel on the Bay of Biscay, finding himself now with

his head lower than his heels, and now with his body playing hide and

seek amongst loose articles of cargo, it would have required great

absence of mind to prevent waking. Had he only been on an Irish steamer

carrying cattle on deck, between Bristol and Cork, with a portion of the

bulwarks washed away, and a squad of recruits "who cried every man to

his God," he would have found the calmness of undisturbed slumber

difficult. But Jonah was on board the Joppa and Tarshish boat, and he

"was fast asleep." As the crew understood the theory of storms, they of

course knew that when there is a tempest at sea it is sent by God,

because he is offended by some one on board the vessel. Modern

scientists scout this notion, and pretend to track storm waves across

the world, and to affix storm signals in order to warn mariners. They

actually profess to predict atmospheric changes, and to explain how such

changes take place. Church clergymen know how futile science is, and how

potent prayers are, for vessels at sea. The men on the Joppa vessel

said, "every one to his fellow, Come, and lets us cast lots, that we may

know for whose cause this evil is upon us. So they cast lots, and the

lot fell upon Jonah." It is always a grave question in sacred

metaphysics as to whether God directed Jonah's lot, and, if yes, whether

the casting of lots is analogous to playing with loaded dice. The Bishop

of Lincoln, who understands how far cremation may render resurrection

awkward, is the only divine capable of thoroughly resolving this

problem. For ordinary Christians it is enough to know that the lot fell

upon Jonah.

Before the crew commenced casting lots to find out Jonah, they had cast

lots of their wares overboard, so that when the lot fell on Jonah it was

much lighter than it would have been had the lot fallen upon him during

his sleep. Still, if not stunned by the lot which fell upon him, he

stood convicted as the cause of the tempest:--and the crew "Then said

they unto him, Tell us, we pray thee, for whose cause this evil is upon

us; What is thine occupation? and whence comest thou? what is thy

country? and of what people art thou? And he said unto them, I am an

Hebrew; and I fear the Lord, the God of heaven, which hath made the sea

and the dry land. Then were the men exceedingly afraid, and said unto

him, Why hast thou done this? For the men knew that he fled from the

presence of the Lord, because he had told them. Then said they unto him,

What shall we do unto thee, that the sea may be calm unto us? for the

sea wrought, and was tempestuous. And he said unto them, Take me up, and

cast me forth into the sea; so shall the sea be calm unto you; for I

know that for my sake this great tempest is upon you. Nevertheless the

men rowed hard to bring it to the land; but they could not; for the sea

wrought, and was tempestuous against them. Wherefore they cried unto the

Lord, and said, We beseech thee, O Lord, we beseech thee, let us not

perish for this man's life, and lay not upon us innocent blood: for

thou, O Lord, hast done as it pleased thee. So they took up Jonah, and

cast him forth into the sea: and the sea ceased from her raging." No pen

can improve this story; it is so simple, so natural, so child-like.

Every one has heard of casting oil on troubled waters. It stands to

reason that a fat prophet would produce the same effect. What a striking

illustration of the power of faith it will be when bishops leave their

own sees in order to be in readiness to calm an ocean storm. Or if not a

bishop, at least a curate; and even a lean curate; for with sea air, a

ravenous appetite, and a White Star Line cabin bill of fare of

breakfast, lunch, dinner, tea, and supper, fatness would soon be arrived

at. In the interests of science I should like to see an episcopal

prophet occasionally thrown overboard during a storm. The experiment

must in any case be advantageous to humanity; should the tempest be

stilled, then the ocean would be indeed the broad way, not leading to

destruction; should the storm not be conquered, there would even then be

promotion in the Church, and happiness to many at the mere cost of one

bishop. "Now the Lord had prepared a great fish to swallow up Jonah."

Jesus says the fish was a whale. A whale would have needed preparation,

and the statement has an air of vraisemblance. The fish did swallow

Jonah. "Jonah was in the belly of the fish three days and three nights."

Poor Jonah! and poor fish! Poor Jonah, for it can scarcely be pleasant,

even if you escape suffocation, to be in a fish's belly with too much to

drink, and no room to swallow, and your solids either raw or too much

done. Poor fish! for even after preparation it must be disagreeable to

have one's poor stomach turned into a sort of prayer meeting. Jonah was

taken in; but the fish found that taking in a parson was a feat neither

easy nor healthy. After Jonah had uttered guttural sounds from inside

the fish's belly for three days and three nights, the Lord spake unto

the fish, and the fish was sick of Jonah, "and it vomited out Jonah upon

the dry land." Some sceptics urged that a whale could not have swallowed

Jonah; but once, at Tod-morden, a Church of England clergyman, who had

been curate to the Reverend Charles Kingsley, got rid of this as an

objection by assuring us that he should have equally believed the story

had it stated that Jonah had swallowed the whale. And then the word of

the Lord came to Jonah once more, and this time Jonah obeyed. He was to

take God's message to the citizens of Nineveh. "And Jonah began to enter

into the city a day's journey, and he cried, and said, Yet forty days,

and Nineveh shall be overthrown." Should Jonah come to London in the

present day with a similar message, he would meet scant courtesy from

our clergy. A foreigner, and using a strange tongue, he would probably

find himself in Colney Hatch or Hanwell. To come to England in the name

of Mahomet or Buddha, or Osiris or Jupiter, would have little effect.

But the Ninevites do not seem even to have raised the question that the

God of the Hebrews was not their God. They listened to Jonah, and "the

people of Nineveh believed God, and proclaimed a fast, and put on

sackcloth, from the greatest of them even to the least of them. For word

came unto the king of Nineveh, and he arose from his throne, and he laid

his robe from him, and covered him with sackcloth, and sat in ashes. And

he caused it to be proclaimed and published through Nineveh by the

decree of the king and his nobles, saying, Let neither man nor beast,

herd nor flock, taste any thing: let them not feed, nor drink water: but

let man and beast be covered with sackcloth, and cry mightily unto God:

yea, let them turn every one from his evil way, and from the violence

that is in their hands." The consumption of sackcloth for covering every

man and beast must have been rather large, and the Nineveh sackcloth

manufacturers must have had enormous stocks on hand to supply the sudden

demand. The city article of the _Nineveh Times_, if such a paper

existed, would probably have described "sackcloth firm, with a tendency

to rise." Man and beast, all dressed in or covered with sackcloth! It

would be sometimes difficult to distinguish a Ninevite man from a

Ninevite beast, the dress being similar for all. This is a difficulty,

however, other nations have shared with the Ninevites. Men and women may

sometimes be seen in London dressed in broadcloth and satins, and,

though their clothing is distinguishable enough, their conduct is

sometimes so beastly that the naked beasts are the more respectable.

Nineveh was frightened, and Nineveh moaned, and Nineveh determined to do

wrong no more. "And God saw their works, that they turned from their

evil way; and God repented of the evil that he had said that he would do

unto them; and he did it not." God, the unchangeable, changed his

purpose, and spared the city, which in his infinite wisdom he had

doomed. "But it displeased Jonah exceedingly, and he was very angry." It

was enough to [vex] a saint to be sent to prophesy the destruction of

the city in six weeks, and then nothing at all to happen. "And he prayed

unto the Lord, and said, I pray thee, O Lord, was not this my saying,

when I was yet in my country? Therefore I fled before unto Tarshish."

Jonah did not like to be a discredited prophet, and cried, "Therefore

now, O Lord, take, I beseech thee, my life from me; for it is better for

me to die than to live. Then said the Lord, Doest thou well to be

angry?" Jonah, knowing the Lord, was still curious and uncertain as well

as angry. He was a prophet and a sceptic. "So Jonah went out of the

city, and sat on the east side of the city, and there made him a

boot[h], and sat under it in the shadow, till he might see what would

become of the city. And the Lord God prepared a gourd, and made it to

come up over Jonah, that it might be a shadow over his head, to deliver

him from his grief. So Jonah was exceeding glad of the gourd. But God

prepared a worm when the morning rose the next day, and it smote the

gourd that it withered. And it came to pass, when the sun did arise,

that God prepared a vehement east wind; and the sun beat upon the head

of Jonah, that he fainted, and wished in himself to die, and said, It is

better for me to die than to live. And God said to Jonah, Doest thou

well to be angry for the gourd? And he said, I do well to be angry, even

unto death. Then said the Lord, Thou hast had pity on the gourd, for the

which thou hast not laboured, neither madest it grow; which came up in a

night, and perished in a night: And should not I spare Nineveh, that

great city, wherein are more than sixscore thousand persons that cannot

discern between their right hand and their left hand; and also much

cattle?" The Lord seems to have overlooked that Jonah had more pity on

himself than the gourd, whose only value to him was as a shade from the

sun. Jonah, too, might have reminded the Lord that there were more than

120,000 persons similarly situated at the deluge and at the slaughter of

the Midianites, and that the "much cattle" had never theretofore been

reckoned in the divine decrees of mercy.

Here ends the new life of Jonah. Of the prophet's childhood we know

nothing; of his middle age no more than we have here related; of his old

age and death we have nothing to say. It is enough for good Christians

to know that "Jonah was three days and three nights in the whale's

belly; so shall the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the

heart of the earth." According to Jesus the story of Jonah is as true as

Gospel.

WHO WAS JESUS CHRIST?

MANY persons will consider the question one to which the Gospels give a

sufficient answer, and that no further inquiry is necessary. But while

the general Christian body affirm that Jesus was God incarnate on earth,

the Unitarian Christians, less in numerical strength, but numbering a

large proportion of the more intelligent and humane, absolutely deny his

divinity; the Jews, of whom he is alleged to have been one, do not

believe in him at all; and the enormous majority of the inhabitants of

the earth have never accepted the Gospels. Even in the earliest ages of

the Christian Church heretics were found, amongst Christians themselves,

who denied that Jesus had ever existed in the flesh. Under these

circumstances the most pious should concede that it is well to prosecute

the inquiry to the uttermost, that their faith may rest on sure

foundations. The history of Jesus Christ is contained in four books or

gospels; outside these it cannot be pretended that there is any reliable

narrative of his life. We know not with any certainty, and have now no

means of knowing, when, where, or by whom these gospels were written.

The name at the head of each gospel affords no clue to the real writer.

Before A.D. 160, no author mentions any Gospels by Matthew, Mark, Luke,

or John, and there is no sufficient evidence to identify the Gospels we

have with even the writings to which Irenaeus refers towards the close

of the second century. The Church has provided us with an author for

each Gospel, and some early Fathers have argued that there ought to be

four Gospels, because there are four seasons, four principal points to

the compass, and four corners to the earth. Bolder speculators affirm

twelve apostles because there are twelve signs of the Zodiac. With

regard to the Gospel first in order, divines disagree as to the language

in which it was written. Some allege that the original was in Hebrew,

others deny that our Greek version has any of the characters of a

translation.

We neither know the hour, nor day, nor month, nor year, of Jesus's

birth; divines generally agree that he was not born on Christmas Day,

and yet on that day the anniversary of his birth is observed. The Oxford

Chronology places the matter in no clearer light, and more than thirty

learned authorities give a period of over seven years' difference in

their reckoning. The place of his birth is also uncertain. The Jews, in

the presence of Jesus, reproached him that he ought to have been born at

Bethlehem, and he never replied, "I was born there." (John vii, 41, 42,

52.)

Jesus was the son of David, the son of Abraham (Matthew i), from whom

his descent is traced through Isaac--born of Sarai (whom the writer of

the epistle to Galatians [iv, 24], says was a covenant and not a

woman)--and ultimately through Joseph, who was not only not his father,

but is not shown to have had any kind of relationship to him, and

through whom therefore the genealogy should not be traced. There are two

genealogies in the Gospels which contradict each other, and these in

part may be collated with the Old Testament genealogy, which differs

from both. The genealogy of Matthew is self-contradictory, counts

thirteen names as fourteen, and omits the names of three kings. Matthew

says Abiud was the son of Zorobabel (i, 13). Luke says Zorobabel's son

Was Rhesa (iii, 27). The Old Testament contradicts both, and gives

Meshullam and Hananiah and Shelomith, their sister (1 Chron. iii, 19),

as the names of Zorobabel's children. The reputed father of Jesus,

Joseph, had two fathers, one named Jacob, the other Heli. The divines

suggest that Heli was the father of Mary, by reading the word "Mary" in

Luke iii, 23, in lieu of "Joseph," and the word "daughter" in lieu of

"son," thus correcting the evident blunder made by inspiration. The

birth of Jesus was miraculously announced to Mary and to Joseph by

visits of an angel, but they so little regarded the miraculous

annunciation that they marvelled soon after at much less wonderful

things spoken by Simeon. Jesus was the son of God, or God manifest in

the flesh, and his birth was first discovered by some wise men or

astrologers, a class described in the Bible as an abomination in God's

sight. These men saw his star in the East, but it did not tell them

much, for they were apparently obliged to ask information from Herod the

King. Herod in turn inquired of the chief priests and scribes; and it is

evident Jeremiah was right if he said, "The prophets prophesy falsely,

and the priests bear rule by their means," for these chief priests

either misread the prophets, or misquoted the scripture which is claimed

to be a revelation from God, and invented a false prophecy (Matthew ii,

5, 6, c.f. (Micah v, 2), by omitting a few words from, and adding a few

words to, a text until it suited their purpose. The star--after the wise

men knew where to go, and no longer required its aid--led and went

before them, until it came and stood over where the young child was.

This story will be better understood if the reader will walk out some

clear night, notice a star, and then try to fix the one house it will be

exactly over. The writer of the Third Gospel, silent on the star story,

speaks of an angel who tells some shepherds of the miraculous; but this

does not appear to have happened in the reign of Herod. After the wise

men had left Jesus, an angel warned Joseph to flee with Jesus and Mary

into Egypt; and Joseph did fly, and remained there with the young child

and his mother until the death of Herod; and this it is alleged was done

to fulfil a prophecy. The words (Hosea xi, 1) are not prophetic and have

no reference whatever to Jesus. The Jesus of the Third Gospel never went

into Egypt at all in his childhood. When Jesus began to be about thirty

years of age, he was baptised by John in the River Jordan. John, who

knew him, according to the First Gospel, forbade him directly he saw

him; but, according to the Fourth Gospel, he knew him not, and had,

therefore, no occasion to forbid him. God is an "invisible spirit," whom

no man hath seen (John i, 18), or can see (Exodus xxxiii, 20); but the

man John saw the spirit of God descending like a dove. God is

everywhere, but at that time was in heaven, from whence he said, "This

is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased." Although John heard this

from God's own mouth, he did not always act as if he believed it, but

some time after sent two of his disciples to Jesus to inquire if he were

really the Christ (Matthew xi, 2, 3). Immediately after the baptism,

Jesus was led up of the spirit into the wilderness to be tempted of the

Devil. Jesus fasted forty days and forty nights, and in those days he

did eat nothing. Moses twice fasted that period. Such fasts are nearly

miraculous. The modern fasting men, and the Hindoo fasters, only show

that under very abnormal conditions, long abstinence from food is

possible. Absolutely miraculous events are events which never happened

in the past, do not take place in the present, and never will occur in

the future. Jesus, it is said, was God, and by his power as God fasted.

On the hypothesis of his divinity, it is difficult to understand how he

became hungry. When hungry the Devil tempted Jesus by offering him

stones, and asking him to make them bread. Stones offered to a hungry

man for bread-making hardly afford a probable temptation. Which

temptation came next is a matter of doubt. Matthew and Luke relate the

story in different order. According to one, the Devil next taketh Jesus

to the pinnacle of the temple and tempts him to throw himself to the

bottom, by quoting Scripture that angels should bear him in their arms.

Jesus either disbelieved this Scripture, or remembered that the Devil,

like other pillars of the Church, grossly misquoted to suit his purpose,

and the temptation failed. The Devil then took Jesus to an exceeding

high mountain, from whence he showeth him all the kingdoms of the world

and the glory thereof, in a moment of time. It is urged that this did

not include a view of the antipodes, but only referred to the kingdoms

then known; even then it must have been a long look from Judea to China.

The mountain must have been very high--much higher than the diameter of

the earth. Origen, a learned and pious holy father, suggests that no man

in his senses will believe this to have really happened. If Origen had

to defend his language before a modern judge of the type of Mr. Justice

North, the Christian father would have sore risk of Holloway Gaol. The

Devil offered Jesus--who it is declared was one with God, and therefore

omnipotent--all the kingdoms of the world, if he, Jesus the omnipotent

God, would fall down and worship his own creature the Devil. Some object

that if God is the creator and omnipotent ruler of the world, then the

Devil would have no control over the kingdoms of the world, and that the

offer could be no temptation, as it was made to Jesus, who was God

omnipotent and all-wise. Such objectors rely on natural reason.

After the temptation Jesus worked many miracles, casting out devils and

otherwise doing marvels amongst the inhabitants of Judea, who seem as a

body to have been very unbelieving. If a second Jesus of Nazareth were

in this heretical age to boast that he possessed the power of casting

out devils, he would stand a fair chance of expiating his offence by a

three months' imprisonment with hard labor. It is true that the 72nd

Canon of the Church of England recognises that ministers can cast out

devils, but forbids them to do this unless licensed by the Bishop "under

pain of the imputation of imposture or cozenage." Now, if sick men have

a little wisdom, the physician is resorted to that he may cure the

disease. If men have much wisdom, they study physiology while they have

health, in order to prevent sickness. In the time of the early

Christians prayer and faith (James v, 14, 15) occupied the position

since usurped by medicine and experience. Men who had lost their senses

in the time of Christ were regarded as attacked not by disease but by

the Devil. In the days of Jesus one spirit would make a man blind, or

deaf, or dumb: occasionally a number of devils would get into a man and

drive him mad. On one occasion Jesus met either one man (Mark v, 2) or

two men (Matt. viii, 28), possessed with devils. The devils knew Jesus,

and addressed him by name. Jesus, not so familiar with the imp or imps,

inquired the name of the particular devil he was addressing. The answer,

given in Latin, would induce a belief, possibly corroborated by the

writings of the monks, that devils communicated in that tongue. Jesus

wanted to cast out the devils from the man; this they did not contest,

but they expressed a decided objection to being cast out of the country.

A compromise was agreed to, and at their own request the devils were

transferred to a herd of swine. The swine ran into the sea and were

drowned. There is no record of any compensation to the owner.

Jesus fed large multitudes of people under circumstances of a most

ultra-thaumaturgic character. To the first book of Euclid is prefixed an

axiom "that the whole is greater than its part." John Wesley was wise if

it be true that he eschewed mathematics lest it should lead him to

infidelity. If any man be irreligious enough to accept Euclid's axiom,

he will be compelled to reject the miraculous feeding of 5,000 people

with five loaves and two small fishes. The original difficulty of the

miracle, though not increased, is made hard to the common mind by the

assertion that after the multitude had been fed, twelve basketsfull of

fragments remained.

Jesus is related to have walked on the sea when it was very stormy, and

when "the sea arose by reason of a great wind that blew." Walking on the

water is a great feat even if the sea be calm, but when the waves run

high it is still more wonderful.

The miracle of turning water into wine at Cana, in Galilee, is worthy

attention, when considering the question, Who was Jesus Christ? Jesus

and his disciples had been called to a marriage feast, and when there

the company fell short of wine. The mother of Jesus, to whom the

Catholics offer worship, and to whom they pay great adoration, informed

Jesus of the deficiency, and was answered, "Woman, what have I to do

with thee? mine hour is not yet come." His mother seemed to have

expected a miracle, yet in the Fourth Gospel the Cana wonder was the

beginning of miracle working by Jesus; the apocryphal gospels assert

that Jesus practised miracle working as a child. Jesus having obtained

six waterpots full of water, turned them into wine. Teetotallers who

cannot believe God would specially provide means of drunkenness, urge

that this wine was not of intoxicating quality, though there is nothing

in the text to justify their hypothesis. The curious connexion between

the phrase "well drunk," and the time at which the miracle was

performed, would rather warrant the supposition that the guests were

already in such a state as to render it difficult for them to critically

appreciate the new vintage. The moral effects of this miracle are not

easily appreciable.

Shortly after this Jesus went to the temple with a scourge of small

cords, and drove thereout the cattle dealers and money changers who had

assembled there in the ordinary course of their business. The writer of

the Fourth Gospel places this event very early in the public life of

Jesus. The writer of the Third Gospel fixes the occurrence much later.

Jesus being hungry went to a fig-tree, to gather figs, though the season

of figs was not yet come. Of course there were no figs upon the tree,

and Jesus then caused the tree to wither away. This is specially

interesting as a problem for a true orthodox trinitarian who will

believe--first, that Jesus was God, who made the tree, and prevented it

from bearing figs; second, that God the all-wise, who is not subject to

human passions, being hungry, went to the fig-tree, on which he knew

there could be no figs, expecting to find some there; third, that God

the all-just then punished the tree, because it did not bear figs in

opposition to God's eternal ordination.

Jesus had a disciple named Peter, who, having much Christian faith, was

a great coward and denied his leader in his hour of need. Jesus though

previously aware that Peter would be a traitor, yet gave him the keys of

the kingdom of Heaven, and told him that whatsoever he bound on earth

should be bound in Heaven. Peter was to have denied Jests three times

before the cock should crow (Matt. xxvi, 34). The cock crowed before

Peter's second denial (Mark xiv, 68). Commentators urge that the words

used do not refer to the crowing of any particular cock, but to a

special hour of the morning called "cock-crow." But if the Gospel be

true, the explanation is false. Peter's denial becomes the more

extraordinary when we remember that he had seen Moses, Jesus, and Elias

talking together, and had heard a voice from a cloud say, "This is my

beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased." As Peter could thus deny Jesus

after having heard God vouch his divinity, and Peter not only escapes

punishment, but gets the office of gatekeeper to Heaven, how much more

should those escape punishment and obtain reward, who only deny because

they cannot help it, and who have been left without any corroborative

evidence of sight or hearing?

The Jesus of the First Gospel promised that, as Jonas was three days and

three nights in the whale's belly, so he (Jesus) would be three days and

three nights in the heart of the earth. Yet he was buried on Friday

evening, and was out of the grave before Saturday night was over. Some

say that the Jews reckoned part of a day as a whole one.

The translators have made Jesus perform a curious equestrian feat on his

entry into Jerusalem. The text (Matt. xxi, 7) says they "brought the ass

and the colt and put on them their clothes and set him thereon." This

does not mean that he rode on both at one time; it only says so. On the

cross the Jesus of the Four Gospels, who was God, cried out, "My God, my

God, why hast thou forsaken me?" God cannot forsake himself. Jesus was

God himself. Yet God forsook Jesus, and the latter cried out to know why

he was forsaken. Any able divine will explain that of course he knew,

and that he was not forsaken. The explanation renders it difficult to

believe the dying cry, and the passage becomes one of the mysteries of

the holy Christian religion, which, unless a man rightly believe,

"without doubt he shall perish everlastingly." At the crucifixion of

Jesus wonderful miracles took place "The graves were opened, and many

bodies of the saints which slept arose and came out of the grave after

his resurrection and appeared unto many." Which saints were these? They

"appeared unto many," but there is not the slightest evidence outside

the Bible that anyone ever saw them. Their "bodies" came out of the

graves. Do not the bodies of the saints decompose like those of ordinary

human beings?

Jesus must have much changed in the grave, for his disciples did not

know him when he stood on the shore (John xxi, 4), and Mary, most

attached to him, knew him not, but supposed that he was the gardener.

According to the First Gospel, Jesus appeared to two women after his

resurrection, and afterwards met eleven of his disciples by appointment

on a mountain in Galilee. When was this appointment made? The text on

which divines rely is Matt. xxvi, 32; this makes no such appointment.

According to the Second Gospel, he appeared first to one woman, and when

she told the disciples they did not believe it. Yet, on pain of

indictment now and damnation hereafter, we are bound to unhesitatingly

accept that which the disciples of Jesus rejected. By the Second Gospel

we learn that instead of the eleven going to Galilee after Jesus, he

came to them as they sat at meat. In the Third Gospel he first appeared

to two of his disciples at Emmaus, and they did not know him until they

had been a long time in his company--it was evening before they

recognised him. Unfortunately, directly they knew him they did not see

him, for as soon as they knew him he vanished out of their sight. He

immediately afterwards appeared to the eleven at Jerusalem, and not at

Galilee, as stated in the First Gospel. Jesus asked for some meat, and

the disciples gave him a portion of a broiled fish and of a honeycomb,

and he did eat. Jesus was afterwards taken up into Heaven, a cloud

received him, and he was missed. God is everywhere, and Heaven no more

above than below, but it is necessary we should believe that Jesus has

ascended into Heaven to sit on the right hand of God, who is infinite

and has no right hand. Was Jesus Christ a man? If limited for our answer

to the mere Gospel Jesus--surely not. His whole career is, on any

literal reading, simply a series of improbabilities or contradictions.

Who was Christ? born of a virgin, and of divine parentage? So too were

many of the mythic Sungods and so was Krishna, whose story, similar in

many respects with that of Jesus, was current long prior to the

Christian era.

Was Jesus Christ man or myth? His story being fable, is the hero a

reality? That a man named Jesus really lived and performed some special

actions attracting popular attention, and thus became the centre for a

hundred myths may well be true, but beyond this what is there of solid

fact?

WHAT DID JESUS TEACH?

THE language in which Jesus taught, has not been preserved to us. Who

recorded his actual words, or if any real record ever existed, is all

matter of guess. Who translated the words of Jesus into the Greek no one

knows. In the compass of four pamphlets, attributed to four persons, of

whose connexion with the Gospels, as we have them, little or nothing

whatever can be ascertained, we have what are, by the orthodox, supposed

to be the words in which Jesus actually taught. What did he teach?

Manly, self-reliant resistance of wrong, and practice of right? No; the

key-stone of his whole teaching may be found in the text: "Blessed are

the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven." (Matthew v, 3)

Is poverty of spirit the chief amongst virtues, that Jesus gives it

prime place in his teachings? Is it even a virtue at all? Surely not.

Manliness of spirit, honesty of spirit, fulness of rightful purpose,

these are virtues; poverty of spirit is a crime. When men are poor in

spirit, then the proud and haughty in spirit oppress them. When men are

true in spirit and determined (as true men should be) to resist, and as

far as possible, prevent wrong, then is there greater opportunity for

present happiness, and, as even Christians ought to admit, no lesser

fitness for the enjoyment of further happiness, in some may-be heaven.

Are you poor in spirit, and are you smitten; in such case what did Jesus

teach?--"Unto him that smiteth thee on the one cheek offer also the

other." (Luke, vi, 29) Surely better to teach that "he who courts

oppression shares the crime;" and, if smitten once to take careful

measure to prevent a future smiting. Jesus teaches actual invitation of

injury. Shelley breathed higher humanity:

"Stand ye calm and resolute,

Like a forest close and mute,

With folded arms and looks, which are

Weapons of an unvanquished war."

There is a wide distinction between passive resistance to wrong, and

courting further injury at the hands of the wrongdoer.

In the teaching of Jesus, poverty of spirit is enforced to the fullest

conceivable extent: "Him that taketh away thy cloak, forbid not to take

thy coat also. Give to every man that asketh of thee, and of him that

taketh away thy goods, ask them not again." (Luke vi, 29, 30) Poverty of

person, is the only possible sequence to this extraordinary

manifestation of poverty of spirit. Poverty of person is attended with

many unpleasantnesses; and Jesus, who knew that poverty would result

from his teaching, says, as if he wished to keep the poor content

through their lives with poverty, "Blessed be ye poor, for yours is the

kingdom of God." (Luke vi, 20) "But woe unto you that are rich, for ye

have received your consolation." (Luke vi, 24) He pictures one in hell,

whose only related vice is that in life he was rich; and another in

heaven, whose only related virtue is that in life he was poor (Luke xvi,

19-31). He affirms it is more difficult for a rich man to get into

heaven, than for a camel to go through the eye of a needle (Luke xvii,

25). The only intent of such teaching could be to induce the poor to

remain content in this life, with the want and misery of their wretched

state in the hope of higher recompense in some future life. Is it good

to be content with poverty? Is it not far better to investigate the

causes of poverty, with a view to its cure and prevention? The doctrine

is most horrid which declares that the poor shall not cease from the

face of the earth. Poor in spirit and poor in pocket, with no courage to

work for food, or money to purchase it, we might well expect to find the

man with empty stomach also who held these doctrines; and what does

Jesus teach? "Blessed are ye that hunger now, for ye shall be filled."

(Luke vi, 21) He does not say when the filling shall take place. The

date is evidently postponed until men will have no stomachs to

replenish? It is not in this life that the hunger is to be sated. "Woe

unto you that are full, for ye shall hunger." (Luke vi, 25) It would but

little advantage the hungry man to bless him by filling him, if a curse

awaited the completion of his repast. Craven in spirit, with an empty

purse and hungry mouth--what next? The man who has not manliness enough

to prevent wrong, will probably bemoan his hard fate, and cry bitterly

that sore are the misfortunes he endures. And what does Jesus teach?

"Blessed are ye that weep now, for ye shall laugh." (Luke vi, 21) Is

this true, and, if true, when shall the laughter come? "Blessed are they

that mourn, for they shall be comforted." (Matthew v, 4) Aye, but when?

Not while they mourn and weep. Weeping for the past is vain: a deluge of

tears will not wash away its history. Weeping for the present is worse

than vain--it obstructs your sight. In each minute of your life the

aforetime future is present born, and you need dry and keen eyes to give

it and yourself a safe and happy deliverance. When shall they that mourn

be comforted? Are slaves that weep salt tear-drops on their chains

comforted in their weeping. Each pearly overflowing as it falls rusts

mind, as well as fetter. Ye who are slaves and weep, will never be

comforted until you dry your eyes, and nerve your arms, and, in the

plenitude of manliness:

"Shake your chains to earth like dew,

Which in sleep hath fallen on you."

Jesus teaches that the poor, the hungry, and the wretched shall be

blessed? But blessing only comes when they cease to be poor, hungry, and

wretched. Contentment under poverty, hunger, and misery is high treason,

not to yourself alone, but to your fellows. Slavery spreads quickly

wherever humanity is stagnant and content with wrong.

What did Jesus teach? "Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself."

(Matthew xix, 19) But how if thy neighbor will not hear thy doctrine

when thou preachest the "glad tidings of great joy" to him? Then

forgetting all your love, and with the bitter hatred that a theological

disputant alone can manifest, you "shall shake off the dust from your

feet," and by so doing make it more tolerable in the day of judgment for

the land of Sodom and Gomorrah, than for your unfortunate neighbor who

has ventured to reject your teaching (Matthew x, 14, 15). It is mockery

to speak as if love could really result from the dehumanising and

isolating faith required from the disciple of Jesus. Ignatius Loyola in

this, at least, was more consistent than his Protestant brethren. "If

any man come unto me, and hate not his father, and mother, and wife, and

children, and brethren, and sisters, yea, and his own life also, he

cannot be my disciple." (Luke xiv, 26) "Think not that I am come to send

peace on earth. I came not to send peace, but a sword. For I come to set

a man at variance against his father, and the daughter against her

mother, and the daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law, and a man's

foes they shall be of his own household." (Matthew x, 34-36) "Every one

that hath forsaken houses, or brethren, or sisters, or father, or

mother, or wife, or children, or lands for my sake, shall receive an

hundred fold, and shall inherit everlasting life." (Matthew xix, 29) The

teaching of Jesus is, in fact, save yourself by yourself. The teaching

of humanity should be, to save yourself save your fellow. The human

family is a vast chain, each man and woman a link. There is no snapping

off one link and preserving for it, isolated from the rest, an entirety

of happiness; our joy depends on our brother's also. Jesus teaches that

"many are called, but few are chosen;" that the majority will inherit an

eternity of misery, while but the minority obtain eternal happiness. And

on what is the eternity of bliss to depend? On a truthful course of

life? Not so. Jesus puts Father Abraham in Heaven, whose reputation for

faith outstrips his character for veracity. The passport through

Heaven's portals is faith. "He that believeth and is baptised shall be

saved, but he that believeth not, shall be damned." (Mark xvi, 16) Are

you married? You love your wife? Both die. You from first to last had

said, "I believe," much as a well-trained parrot might say it. You had

never examined your reasons for your faith; as a true believer should,

you distrusted the efficacy of your carnal reason. You said, "I believe

in God and Jesus Christ," because you had been taught to say it, and you

would have as glibly said, "I believe in Allah, and in Mahomet his

prophet," had your birth-place been a few degrees eastward, and your

parents and instructors Turks. You believed in this life, and after

death awake in Heaven. Your much-loved wife did not think as you

did--she could not. Her organisation, education, and temperament were

all different from your own. She disbelieved because she could not

believe. She was a good wife, but she disbelieved. A good and

affectionate mother, but she disbelieved. A virtuous and kindly woman,

but she disbelieved. And you are to be happy for an eternity in Heaven,

with the knowledge that she is writhing in agony in Hell. If this be

true, Shelley was right in declaring that your Christianity:

"Peoples earth with demons, hell with men,

And heaven with slaves."

It is urged that Jesus is the savior of the world, who brought

redemption without let or stint to the whole human race. But what did

Jesus teach? "Go not into any way of the Gentiles, and into any city of

the Samaritan enter ye not," (Matthew x, 6) were his injunctions to

those whom he first sent out to preach. "I am not sent but unto the lost

sheep of the house of Israel," is his hard answer to the poor

Syrophenician woman who entreated succor for her child. Christianity, as

first taught by Jesus, was for the Jews alone, it was only when rejected

by them, that the world at large had the opportunity of salvation

afforded it. "He came unto his own and his own received him not." (John

i, 11) Why should the Jews be more God's own than the Gentiles? Is God

the creator of all? did he create the descendant of Abraham with greater

right and privilege than all other men? Then, indeed, is grievous

injustice. You had no choice whether to be born Jew or Gentile; yet to

the accident of such a birth is attached the first offer of a salvation

which, if accepted, shuts out all beside.

The Kingdom of Heaven is a prominent feature in the teachings of Jesus.

Examine the picture drawn by God incarnate of his own special domain.

'Tis likened to a wedding feast, (Matthew xxii, 2) to which the invited

guests coming not, servants were sent out into the highways to gather

all they can find--both good and bad. The King, examining his motley

array of guests, and finding one without a wedding garment inquired why

he came in to the feast without one. The man, whose attendance had been

compulsorily enforced, was speechless. And who can wonder? he was a

guest from necessity, not choice, he neither chose the fashion of his

coming, or that of his attiring. Then comes the King's decree, the

command of the all-merciful and loving King of Heaven. "Bind him hand

and foot, and cast him into outer darkness; there shall be weeping and

gnashing of teeth." Commentators urge that it was the custom to provide

wedding garments for all guests, and that this man was punished for his

non-acceptance of the customary and ready robe. The text does not

warrant this explanation, but gives as moral of the parable, that an

invitation to the heavenly feast will not ensure partakal of it, for

that "many are called, but few are chosen." What more of the Kingdom of

Heaven? "Joy shall be in Heaven over one sinner that repenteth, more

than over ninety and nine just persons which need no repentance." (Luke

xv, 7) The greater sinner one has been, the better saint he makes, and

the more he has sinned, so much the more he loves God. "To whom little

is forgiven, the same loveth little." (Luke vii, 47) Thus asserting that

a life of vice, with its stains washed away by a death-bed repentance,

is better than a life of consistent and virtuous conduct? Why should the

fatted calf be killed for the prodigal son? (Luke xv, 27) Why should men

be taught to make to themselves friends of the mammon of

unrighteousness? (Luke xvi, 9) These ambiguities, these assertions of

punishment and forgiveness of crime, instead of directions for its

prevention and cure, are serious blots on a system alleged to have been

inculcated by one for whom his followers claim divinity.

Will you urge the love of Jesus as the redeeming feature of the

teaching? Then read the story of the fig tree (Matthew xxi, 18-22; Mark

xi, 12-24) withered by the hungry Jesus. The fig tree was, if he were

all-powerful God, made by him; he limited its growth and regulated its

development; he prevented it from bearing figs, expected fruit where he

had rendered fruit impossible, and in his _infinite love_ was angry that

the tree had not upon it that it could not have. What love is expressed

in that remarkable speech which follows one of his parables:--"For, I

say unto you, that unto every one which hath shall be given, and from

him that hath not, even that which he hath shall be taken away from him.

_But those, mine enemies, which would not that I should reign over them,

bring them hither, and slay them before me_." (Luke xix, 26, 27) What

love is expressed by that Jesus who, if he were God, represents himself

as saying to the majority of his unfortunate creatures (for it is the

few that are chosen):--"Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting

fire, prepared for the devil and his angels." (Matthew xxv, 41) There is

no love in this horrid doctrine of eternal torment. And yet the popular

preachers of to-day talk first of the love of God and then of:

"Hell, a red gulf of everlasting fire,

Where poisons and undying worms prolong

Eternal misery to those hapless slaves,

Whose life has been a penance for its crimes."

In the sayings attributed to Jesus there is the passage which influenced

so extraordinarily the famous Origen (Matthew xix, 12). If he understood

it aright, its teachings are most terrible. If he understood it wrongly,

what of the wisdom of teaching which expresses itself so vaguely? The

general intent of Christ's teaching seems to be an inculcation of

neglect of this life, in the search for another. "Labor not for the meat

which perisheth, but for that meat which endureth unto everlasting

life." (John vi, 27) "Take no thought for your life, what ye shall eat,

or what ye shall drink; nor yet for your body, what ye shall put on...

take no thought saying, what shall we eat? or what shall we drink? or

wherewithal shall we be clothed?.... But seek ye first the Kingdom of

God and his righteousness, and all these things shall be added unto

you." (Matthew vi, 25-33) These texts, if fully observed, would be most

disastrous; they would stay all scientific discoveries, prevent all

development of man's energies. In the struggle for existence, men are

compelled to become acquainted with the conditions which compel

happiness or misery. It is only in the practical application of that

knowledge, that the wants of society are ascertained, and disease,

poverty, hunger, and wretchedness prevented, or at any rate lessened.

Jesus substitutes "I believe," for "I think," and puts "watch and pray"

instead of "think, then act." Belief is the prominent doctrine which

pervades, and governs all Christianity. It is represented that, at the

judgment, the world will be reproved "Of sin, because they believe not."

This teaching is most disastrous; man should be incited to active

thought: Christian belief would bind him to the teachings of a stagnant

past. Fit companion to blind belief is slave-like prayer. Men pray as

though God needed most abject entreaty ere he would grant justice. What

does Jesus teach on prayer? "After this manner pray ye--Our Father,

which art in heaven." Do you think that God is the Father of all, when

you pray that he will enable you to defeat some others of his children,

with whom your nation is at war? And why "which art in Heaven?" Where is

your Heaven? You look upward, and if you were at the Antipodes, would

look upward still. But that upward would be downward to us. Do you

localize Heaven? Why say "which art in Heaven?" Is God infinite, then he

is also in earth. "Hallowed be thy name." "What is God's name? if you

know it not how can you hallow it? how can God's name be hallowed even

if you know it?" "Thy kingdom come." What is God's kingdom, and will

your praying bring it quicker? Is it the Judgment day, and do you who

say "Love one another," pray for the more speedy arrival of that day, on

which God may say to your fellow "depart ye cursed into everlasting

fire?" "Thy will be done on earth, as it is in heaven." How is God's

will done in heaven? If the Devil be a fallen angel, there must have

been rebellion even there. "Give us this day our daily bread." Will the

prayer get it without work? No. Will work get it without prayer? Yes.

Why pray, then, for bread to God, who says, "Blessed be ye that

hunger... woe unto you that are full?" "And forgive us our debts, as we

forgive our debtors." (Matthew vi, 12) What debts have you to God? Sins?

Coleridge writes, "A sin is an evil which has its ground or origin in

the agent, and not in the compulsion of circumstances. Circumstances are

compulsory, from the absence of a power to resist or control them: and

if the absence likewise be the effect of circumstances... the evil

derives from the circumstances... and such evil is not sin."[36] Do you

say that you are independent of all circumstances, that you can control

them, that you have a free will? Buckle replies that the assertion of a

free will "involves two assumptions, of which the first, though possibly

true, has never been proved, and the second is unquestionably false.

These assumptions are that there is an independent faculty, called

consciousness, and that the dictates of that faculty are

infallible."[37] "And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from

evil." (Matthew vi, 13) Do you think God may lead you into temptation?

if so, you cannot think him all good; if not all-good he is not God. If

God, the prayer is blasphemy.

[36] "Aids to Reflection," 1843, p. 200.

[37] "History of Civilisation," Vol. I, p. 14.

Jesus, according to the general declaration of Christian divines, came

to die, and what does he teach by his death? The Rev. F.D. Maurice well

said, "That he who kills for a faith must be weak, that he who dies for

a faith must be strong." How did Jesus die? Giordano Bruno and Julius

Caesar Vanini were burned, charged with heresy. They died calm, heroic,

defiant of wrong. Jesus, who could not die courted death, that he, as

God, might accept his own atonement, and might pardon man for a sin

which the pardoned man had not committed, and in which he had no share.

The death Jesus courted came, and when it came he could not face it, but

prayed to himself that he might not die. And at last, when on the cross,

if two gospels do him no injustice his last words were a bitter cry of

deep despair. "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" The Rev.

Enoch Mellor writing on the Atonement, says, "I seek not to fathom the

profound mystery of these words. To understand their full import would

require one to experience the agony of desertion they express." Do the

words, "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" express an "agony"

caused by a consciousness of "desertion?" if this be not the meaning

conveyed by the despairing death-cry then there is in it no meaning

whatever. And if those words do express a "bitter agony of desertion"

then they emphatically contradict the teachings of Jesus. "Before

Abraham was, I am." "I and my father are one." "Thou shalt not tempt the

Lord thy God." These were the words of Jesus--words conveying an

impression that divinity was claimed by the one who uttered them. If

Jesus had indeed been God, the words "My God, my God," would have been a

mockery most extreme. God could not have deemed himself forsaken by

himself. The dying Jesus, in that despair, confessed himself either the

dupe of some other teaching, a self-deluded enthusiast, or an

arch-impostor, who in that bitter cry, with the wide-opening of the

flood-gates through which life's stream ran out, confessed aloud that

he, at least, was no deity, and deemed himself a God-forsaken man. The

garden scene of agony is fitting prelude to this most terrible act.

Jesus, who is God, prays to himself: in "agony he prayed most earnestly"

(Luke xxii, 44) He refuses to hear his own prayers, and he, the

omnipotent, is forearmed against his coming trial by an angel from

heaven, who "strengthened" the great Creator. Was Jesus the Son of God?

Praying, he said "Father the hour is come, glorify thy Son, that thy Son

also may glorify thee." (John xvii, 2) And was he glorified? His death

and resurrection most strongly disbelieved in the very city where they

are alleged to have happened. His doctrines rejected by the only people

to whom he preached them. His miracles denied by the only nation amongst

whom they are alleged to have been performed; and he himself thus on the

cross crying out, "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?"

Nor is it true that the teachings of Jesus are generally received. Jesus

taught: "And these signs shall follow them that believe; in my name

shall they cast out devils; they shall speak with new tongues; they

shall take up serpents; and if they drink any deadly thing, it shall not

hurt them; they shall lay hands on the sick, and they shall recover."

(Mark xvi, 17, 18) How many of those who profess to believe in Jesus

would be content to be tested by these signs? Any person claiming that

each sign was to be found manifested in her or his case would be

regarded as mad. Illustrations of faith-healing occasionally arise, but

are not always reliable, nor are such cures limited to those who profess

faith in Jesus. The gift of speaking with new tongues has been the claim

of a very small sect. Serpent charming is more practised amongst Hindus

than amongst Christians.

Peace and love are alleged to be the special characteristics of

Christianity. Yet the whole history of Christian nations has been

blurred by war and hate. Now and for the past thirty years the most

civilized amongst Christian nations have been devoting enormous sums and

huge masses of men to the preparation for war. Torpedoes and explosive

shells, one hundred ton guns and mele-nite, are by Christian rulers

accounted better aids than faith in Jesus.

THE TWELVE APOSTLES

ALL good Christians, indeed all Christians--for are there any who are

not models of goodness?--will desire that their fellow-creatures who are

unbelievers should have the fullest possible information, biographical

or otherwise, as as to the twelve persons specially chosen by Jesus to

be his immediate followers. The believer, of course, would be equally

content with his faith in the absence of all historic vouchers. Indeed a

pious worshipper would cling to his creed not only without testimony in

its favor, but despite direct testimony against it. It is to those not

within the pale of the church that I shall seek to demonstrate the

credibility of the history of the twelve apostles. The short

biographical sketch here presented is extracted from the first five

books of the New Testament, two of which at least are attributed to two

of the twelve. It is objected, by heretical men who go as far in their

criticisms on the Gospels as Colenso does with the Pentateuch, that not

one of the gospels is original or written by any of the apostles; that,

on the contrary, they were preceded by numerous writings, since lost or

rejected, these in their turn having for their basis the oral tradition

which preceded them. It is alleged that the four gospels are utterly

anonymous, and that the fourth gospel is subject to strong suspicions of

spuriousness. To use on this part of the words of the author of

"Supernatural Religion," applied by him to the Acts of the Apostles: "As

a general rule, any documents so full of miraculous episodes and

supernatural occurrences would, without hesitation, be characterized as

fabulous and incredible, and would not, by any sober-minded reader, be

for a moment accepted as historical. There is no other testimony." It

would be useless to combat, and I therefore boldly ignore these attacks

on the authenticity of the text, and proceed with my history. The names

of the twelve are as follows--Simon, surnamed Peter; Andrew, his

brother; James and John, the sons of Zebedee; Andrew, Philip;

Bartholomew; Matthew; James, the son of Alphteus; Simon, the Canaanite;

Judas Iscariot; and a twelfth, as to whose name there is some

uncertainty; it was either Lebbaeus, Thaddaeus, or Judas. It is in

Matthew alone (x, 3) that the name of Lebbaeus is mentioned

thus--"Lebbaeus, whose surname was Thaddaeus." We are told, on this

point, by able Biblicists, that the early MSS have not the words "whose

surname was Thaddaeus," and that these words have probably been inserted

to reconcile the gospel according to Matthew with that attributed to

Mark. How good must have been the old fathers who sought to improve upon

the Holy Ghost by making clear that which inspiration had left doubtful!

In the English version of the Rheims Testament used in this country by

our Roman Catholic brethren, the reconciliation between Matthew and Mark

is completed by omitting the words "Lebbaeus whose surname was," leaving

only the name "Thad-daeus" in Matthew's text. This omission must be

correct, being by the authority of an infallible church, and Dr. Newman

shows us that when the church pronounces all doubt is damnable. If

Matthew x, 3, and Mark iii, 18, be passed as reconciled, although the

first calls the twelfth disciple Lebbaeus, and the second gives him the

name Thaddaeus, there is yet the difficulty that in Luke vi, 16,

corroborated by John xiv, 22, there is a disciple spoken of as "Judas,

not Iscariot." "Judas, _the brother_ of James." Commentators have

endeavored to clear away this last difficulty by declaring that

Thaddaeus is a Syriac word, having much the same meaning as Judas. This

has been answered by the objection that if Matthew's Gospel uses

Thaddaeus in lieu of Judas, then he ought to speak of Thaddaeus

Iscariot, which he does not; and it is further objected also that while

there are some grounds for suggesting a Hebrew original for the gospel

attributed to Matthew, there is not the slightest pretence for alleging

that Matthew wrote in Syriac. It is to be hoped that the unbelieving

reader will not stumble on the threshold of his study because of a

little uncertainty as to a name. What is in a name? The Jewish name

which we read as Jesus is really Joshua, but the name to which we are

most accustomed seems the one we should adhere to.

Simon Peter being the first named amongst the disciples of Jesus,

deserves the first place in this notice. The word "Simon" may be

rendered, if taken as a Greek name, _flat-nose_ or _ugly_. Some of the

ancient Greek and Hebrew names are characteristic of peculiarities in

the individual, but no one now knows whether Peter's nose had anything

to do with his name. Simon is rather a Hebrew name, but Peter is Greek,

signifying a rock or stone. Peter is supposed to have the keys of the

kingdom of heaven, and his second name may express his stony

insensibility to all appeals by infidels for admittance to the celestial

regions. Lord Byron's "Vision of Judgment" is the highest known

authority as to Saint Peter's celestial duties, but this nobleman's

poems are only fit for very pious readers. Peter, ere he became a

parson, was by trade a fisher, and when Jesus first saw Peter, the

latter was in a vessel fishing with his brother Andrew, casting a net

into the sea of Galilee. The calling of Peter and Andrew to the

apostleship was sudden, and apparently unexpected. Jesus walking by the

sea said to them--"Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men."

(Matthew iv, 18-22) The two brothers did so, and they became Christ's

disciples. The successors of Peter have since reversed the apostle's

early practice: instead of now casting their nets into the sea, the

modern representatives of the disciples of Jesus draw the sees into

their nets, and, it is believed, find the result much more profitable.

When Jesus called Peter no one was with him but his brother Andrew; a

little further on the two sons of Zebedee were in a ship with their

father mending nets. This is the account of Peter's call given in the

gospel according to Matthew, and as according to the Church Matthew was

inspired by the Holy Ghost, who is identical with God the Father, who is

one with God the Son, who is Jesus, the account must be free from error.

In the Gospel according to John, which is likewise inspired in the same

manner, from the same source, and with similar infallibility, we learn

that Andrew was originally a disciple of John the Baptist, and that when

Andrew first saw Jesus Peter was not present, but Andrew went and found

Peter who, if fishing, must have been angling on land, telling him "we

have found the Messiah," and that Andrew then brought Peter to Jesus,

who said: "Thou art Simon, the son of Jonas; thou shalt be called

Cephas." There is no mention in this gospel narrative of the sons of

Zebedee being a little further on, or of any fishing in the sea of

Galilee. This call is clearly on land, whether or not near the sea of

Galilee does not appear. In the Gospel according to Luke, which is as

much inspired as either of the two before-mentioned gospels, and,

therefore, equally authentic with each of them, we are told (Luke v,

1-11) that when the call took place Jesus and Peter were both at sea.

Jesus had been preaching to the people, who, pressing upon him, he got

into Simon's ship, from which he preached. After this he directed Simon

to put out into the deep and let down the nets. Simon answered: "Master,

we have toiled all night, and taken nothing; nevertheless, at thy word I

will let down the net." No sooner was this done than the net was filled

to breaking, and Simon's partners, the two sons of Zebedee, came to

help, when, at the call of Jesus, they brought their ships to land, and

followed him. From these accounts the unbeliever may learn that when

Jesus called Peter either both Jesus and Peter were on the land, or one

was on land and the other on the sea, or both of them were at sea. He

may also learn that the sons of Zebedee were present at the time, having

come to help to get in the great catch, and were called with Peter; or

that they were further on, sitting mending nets with their father, and

were called afterwards; or that they were neither present nor near at

hand. He may also be assured that Simon was in his ship when Jesus came

to call him, and that Jesus was on land when Andrew, Simon's brother,

found Simon and brought him to Jesus to be called. The unbeliever must

not hesitate because of any apparent incoherence or contradiction in the

narrative. The greater the difficulty in believing, the more deserved

the reward which only comes to belief. With faith it is easy to

harmonise the three narratives above quoted, especially when you know

that Jesus had visited Simon's house before the call of Simon, (Luke iv,

38) but did not go to Simon's house until after Simon had been called

(Matthew viii, 14). Jesus went to Simon's house and cured his wife's

mother of a fever. Robert Taylor,[38] commenting on the fever-curing

miracle, says--"St. Luke tells us that this fever had taken the woman,

not that the woman had taken the fever, and not that the fever was a

very bad fever, or a yellow fever, or a scarlet fever, but that it was a

great fever--that is, I suppose, a fever six feet high at least; a

personal fever, a rational and intelligent fever, that would yield to

the power of Jesus's argument, but would never have given way to James's

powder. So we are expressly told that Jesus rebuked the fever--that is,

he gave it a good scolding; asked it, I dare say, how it could be so

unreasonable as to plague the poor old woman so cruelly, and whether it

wasn't ashamed of itself; and said, perhaps, _Get out, you naughty

wicked fever, you_; and such like objurgatory language, which the fever,

not being used to be rebuked in such a manner, and being a very sensible

sort of fever, would not stand, but immediately left the old woman in

high dudgeon." This Robert Taylor, although a clergyman of the Church of

England, has been convicted of blasphemy and imprisoned for writing in

such wicked language about the Bible. Simon Peter, as a disciple,

performed many miracles, some when in company with Jesus, and more when

separately by himself. These miracles, though themselves unvouched by

any reliable testimony, and disbelieved by the people amongst whom they

were worked, are strong evidence in favor of the apostolic character

claimed for Peter.

[38] "Devil's Pulpit," vol. i, p. 148.

On one occasion the whole of the disciples were sent away by Jesus in a

ship, the Savior remaining behind to pray. About the fourth watch of the

night, when the ship was in the midst of the sea, Jesus went unto his

disciples, walking on the sea. Though Jesus went unto his disciples,

and, as an expeditious way, I suppose, of arriving with them, he would

have passed by them, but they saw him, and supposing him to be a spirit,

cried out. Jesus bid them be of good cheer, to which Peter answered,

(Matthew xiv, 23) "Lord, if it be thou, bid me come unto thee." Jesus

said, "Come," and Peter walked on the water to go to Jesus. But the sea

being wet and the wind boisterous, Peter became afraid, and instead of

walking on the water began to sink into it, and cried out "Lord save

me," and immediately Jesus stretched out his hand and caught Peter.

Some object that the two gospels according to John and Mark, which both

record the feat of water-walking by Jesus, omit all mention of Peter's

attempt. Probably the Holy Ghost had good reasons for omitting it. A

profane mind might make a jest of an Apostle "half seas over," and

ridicule an apostolic gatekeeper who could not keep his head above

water.

Peter's partial failure in this instance should drive away all unbelief,

as the text will show that it was only for lack of faith that

Peter lost his buoyancy. Simon is called Bar-Jonah, that is, son of

Jonah, but I am not aware that he is any relation to the Jonah who lived

under water in the belly of a fish three days and three nights.

It was Simon Peter who, having told Jesus he was the Son of God, was

answered "Blessed art thou, Simon Bar-Jonah, flesh and blood hath not

revealed it unto thee." (Matthew xvi, 17) We find a number of disciples

shortly before this, and in Peter's presence, telling Jesus that he was

the Son of God, (Matthew xiv, 33) but there is, of course, no real

contradiction between the two texts. It was on this occasion that Jesus

said to Simon, "Thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my

Church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it, and I will

give thee the keys of the kingdom of Heaven, and whatsoever thou shalt

bind on earth shall be bound in Heaven, and whatsoever thou shalt loose

on earth shall be loosed in Heaven." Under these extraordinary

declarations from the mouth of God the Son, the Bishops of Rome have

claimed, as successors of Peter, the same privileges, and their

pretensions have been acceded to by some of the most powerful monarchs

of Europe.

Under this claim the Bishops, or Popes of Rome, have at various times

issued Papal Bulls, by which they have sought to bind the entire world.

Many of these have been very successful; but in 1302, Philip the Fair,

of France, publicly burned the Pope Boniface's Bull after an address in

which the States-General had denounced, in words more expressive than

polite, the right of the Popes of Rome to Saint Peter's keys on earth.

Some deny that the occupiers of the episcopal seat in the seven-hilled

city are really of the Church of Christ, and they point to the bloody

quarrels which have raged between men, contending for the Papal dignity.

They declare that those Vicars of Christ have more than once resorted to

fraud, treachery, and murder, to secure the Papal dignity. They point to

Stephen VII, the son of an unmarried priest, who cut off the head of his

predecessor's corpse; to Sergius III, convicted of assassination; to

John X, who was strangled in the bed of his paramor Theodora; to John

XI, son of Pope Sergius III, famous only for his drunken debauchery; to

John XII, found assassinated in the apartments of his mistress; to

Benedict IX, who both purchased and sold the Pontificate; to Gregory

VII, the pseudo lover of the Countess Matilda, and the author of

centuries of war carried on by his successors. And if these suffice not,

they point to Alexander Borgia, whose name is but the echo of crime, and

whose infamy will be as lasting as history. It is answered: "By the

fruit ye shall judge of the tree." It is useless to deny the vine's

existence because the grapes are sour. Peter, the favored disciple, it

is declared was a rascal, and why not his successors? They have only to

repent, and there is more joy in heaven over one sinner that re-penteth

than over ninety and nine righteous men. Such language is very terrible,

and arises from allowing the carnal reason too much freedom.

All true believers will be familiar with the story of Peter's sudden

readiness to deny his Lord and teacher in the hour of danger, and will

easily draw the right moral from the mysterious lesson here taught; but

unbelievers may be a little inclined to agree with the common infidel

objections on this point. These objections, therefore, shall be first

stated, and then refuted in the most orthodox fashion. It is objected

that all the denials were to take place before the cock should crow,

(Matthew xxvi, 34; Luke xxii, 34; John xiii, 38) but that only one

denial actually took place before the cock crew (Mark xiv, 68). That the

first denial by Peter that he knew Jesus, or was one of his disciples,

was at the door to the damsel, (John xviii, 17) but was inside while

sitting by the fire, (Luke xxii, 57) that the second denial was to a

man, and apparently still sitting by the fire (Luke xvii, 58), but was

to a maid when he was gone out into the porch. That these denials, or at

any rate, the last denial, were all in the presence of Jesus (Luke xvii,

61), who turned and looked at Peter, but that the first denial was at

the door, Jesus being inside the palace, the second denial out in the

porch, Jesus being still inside (Mark xiv, 69), and the third denial

also outside. The refutation of these paltry objections is so simple,

that any little child could give it, and none but an infidel would need

to hear it, we therefore refrain from penning it. None but a disciple of

Paine, or follower of Voltaire, would permit himself to be drawn to the

risk of damnation on the mere question as to when some cock happened to

crow, or as to the particular spot on which a recreant apostle denied

his master. It is the merest justice to Peter to add that his disloyalty

to Jesus was shared by his co-apostles. When Jesus was arrested "all the

disciples forsook him and fled" (Matthew xxvi, 56). The true believer

may sometimes be puzzled that Peter should so deny Jesus after he,

Peter, had seen (Matthew xvii, 3-5) Moses and Elias, who had been dead

many centuries, talking with Jesus, and had heard "a voice out of the

cloud which said, this is my beloved son, in whom I am well pleased."

The unbeliever must not allow himself to be puzzled by this. Two of the

twelve apostles, whose names are not given, saw Jesus after he was dead,

on the road to Emmaus, but they did not know him; towards evening they

knew him, and he vanished out of their sight. In broad daylight they did

not know him, at evening time they knew him. While they did not know him

they could see him, when they did know him they could not see him. Well

may true believers declare that the ways of the Lord are wonderful. One

of the apostles, Thomas, called Didymus, set the world an example of

unbelief. He disbelieved the other disciples when they said to him, "we

have seen the Lord," and required to see Jesus, though dead, alive in

the flesh, and touch the body of his crucified master. Thomas the

apostle had his requirements complied with --he saw, he touched, and he

believed. The great merit is to believe without any evidence--"He that

believeth and is baptized shall be saved, he that believeth not shall be

damned." How it was that Thomas the apostle did not know Jesus when he

saw him shortly after near the sea of Tiberias, is another of the

mysteries of the Holy Christian religion. The acts of the apostles after

the death of Jesus deserve treatment in a separate paper; the present

essay is issued to aid the members of the Church Congress in their

endeavors to stem the rising tide of infidelity.

THE ATONEMENT

"_Quel est donc ce Dieu qui fait mourir Dieu pour apaiser Dieu?_"

THE chief feature of the Christian religion is that Jesus, the Son of

God, "very God of very God," sacrificed himself, or was sacrificed by

God the Father, to atone for Adam's transgression, some 4,000 years

before, against a divine command. It is declared in the New Testament,

in clear and emphatic language, that in consequence of the one man

Adam's sin, death entered into the world, and judgment and condemnation

came upon all men. It is also declared that "Christ died for the

ungodly;" "that he died for our sins," and "was delivered for our

offences." On the one hand it is urged that Adam, the sole source of the

human family, offended deity, and that the consequence of this offence

was the condemnation to death, after a life of sorrow, of the entire

race. On the other side of the picture is portrayed the love of God, who

sent his only beloved son to die--and by his death procuring for all

eternal life--to save the remnant of humanity from the further vengeance

of their all-merciful heavenly father. The religion of Christ finds its

source in the forbidden fruit of the yet undiscovered Garden of Eden.

Adam's sin is the corner-stone of Christianity, the keystone of the

arch. Without the fall there is no redeemer, for there is no fallen one

to be redeemed. It is, then, to the history of Adam that the critical

examinant of the Atonement theory should first direct his attention. But

to try the doctrine of the Atonement by the aid of science would be

fatal to religion. As for the one man Adam,

6,000 years ago the first of the human race, his existence is not only

unvouched for by science, but is actually questioned by the timid, and

repudiated by the bolder, exponents of modern ethnology. The human race

is traced back far beyond the period fixed for Adam's sin. Egypt and

India speak for humanity busy with wars, rival dynasties, and religions,

long prior to the date given for the garden scene in Eden.

The fall of Adam could not have brought sin upon mankind, and death by

sin, if hosts of men and women so lived and died ages before the words

"thou shalt surely die" were spoken by God to man.

Nor could all men inherit Adam's misfortune if it be true that it is not

to one but to many centres of origin that we ought to trace back the

various races of mankind.

The theologian who finds no evidence of death prior to the offence

shared by Adam and Eve is laughed to scorn by the geologist, who points

to the innumerable petrifactions in the earth's strata, which with a

million tongues declare, more potently than loudest speech, that myriads

of myriads of living things ceased their life-struggle incalculable ages

before man's era on our world.

Science has so little to offer in support of any religious doctrine, and

so much to advance against all purely theologic tenets, that we turn to

a point giving the Christian greater vantage ground, and accepting for

the moment his scriptures as our guide, we deny that he can maintain the

possibility of Adam's sin, and yet consistently affirm the existence of

an all-wise, all-powerful, and all-good God. Did Adam sin? We take the

Christian's Bible in our hands to answer the question, first defining

the word sin. What is sin? Samuel Taylor Coleridge says: "A sin is an

evil which has its ground or origin in the agent, and not in the

compulsion of circumstances. Circumstances are compulsory from the

absence of a power to resist or control them, and if this absence be

likewise the effect of circumstances (that is, if it have been neither

directly nor indirectly caused by the agent himself) the evil derived

from the circumstance, and therefore such evil is not sin, and the

person who suffers it, or is the compelled actor or instrument of its

infliction on others, may feel regret, but not remorse. Let us

generalise the word circumstance so as to understand by it all and

everything not connected with the will.... Even though it were the warm

blood circulating in the chambers of the heart or man's most inmost

sensations, we regard them as circumstantial, extrinsic, or from

without.... An act to be sin must be original, and a state or act that

has not its origin in the will may be calamity, deformity, or disease,

but sin it cannot be. It is not enough that the act appears so

voluntary, or that it has the most hateful passions or debasing appetite

for its proximate cause and accompaniment. All these may be found in a

madhouse, where neither law nor humanity permit us to condemn the actor

of sin. The reason of law declared the maniac not a free agent, and the

verdict followed of course, _not guilty_." Did Adam sin?

The Bible story is that a Deity created one man and one woman; that he

placed them in a garden wherein he had also placed a tree, which was

good for food, pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make

one wise. That although he had expressly given the fruit of every tree

bearing seed for food, he, nevertheless, commanded them not to eat of

the fruit of this specially attractive tree under penalty of death.

Supposing Adam to have at once disobeyed this injunction, would it have

been sin? The fact that God had made the tree good for food, pleasant to

the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise, should have surely

been sufficient justification. The God-created inducement to partake of

its fruit was strong and ever operative. The inhibition lost its value

as against the enticement. If the All-wise had intended the tree to be

avoided, would he have made its allurements so overpowering to the

senses? But the case does not rest here. In addition to all the

attractions of the tree, and as though there were not enough, there is a

subtle serpent gifted with suasive speech, who, either wiser or more

truthful than the All-perfect Deity, says that although God has

threatened immediate death as the consequence of disobedience to his

command, yet they "shall not die; for God doth know that in the day ye

eat thereof, your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing

good and evil." The tempter is stronger than the tempted, the witchery

of the serpent is too great for the spell-bound woman, the decoy tree is

too potent in its temptations; overpersuaded herself by the

honey-tongued voice of the seducer, she plucks the fruit and gives to

her husband also. And for this giving way to a God-designed temptation

their offspring are to suffer God's eternal, unforgiving wrath! The yet

unborn children are to be the victims of God's vengeance on their

parents' weakness--though he had made them weak; had created the tempter

sufficiently strong to practise upon this weakness; and had arranged the

causes, predisposing man and woman to commit the offence--if indeed it

be an offence to pluck the fruit of a tree which gives knowledge to the

eater. It is for this fall that Jesus is to atone. He is sacrificed to

redeem the world's inhabitants from the penalties for a weakness (for

sin it was not) they had no share in. It was not sin; for the man was

influenced by circumstances prearranged by Deity, and which man was

powerless to resist or control. But if the man was so influenced by such

circumstances, it was God who influenced the man--the God who punished

the human race for an action to the commission of which he impelled

their progenitor.

Adam did not sin. He ate of the fruit of a tree which God had made good

to be eaten. He was induced to this through the indirect persuasion of a

serpent God had made for the very purpose of persuading him. But even if

Adam did sin, and even if he and Eve, his wife, were the first parents

of the whole human family, what have we to do with their sin? We, unborn

when the act was committed, and without choice as to coming into this

world amongst the myriad worlds which roll in the vast expanse of solar

and astral systems. Why should Jesus atone for Adam's sin? Adam suffered

for his own offence; he, according to the curse, was to eat in sorrow of

the fruit of the earth all his life as punishment for his offence.

Atonement, after punishment, is surely a superfluity. Or was the

atonement only for those who needed no atonement, having no part in the

offence? Did the sacrifice of Jesus serve as atonement for the whole

world, and, if yes, for all sin, or for Adam's sin only? If the

atonement is for the whole world, does it extend to unbelievers as well

as to believers in the efficacy? if it only includes believers, then

what has become of those generations who, according to the Bible, for

4,000 years succeeded each other in the world without faith in Christ

because without knowledge of his mission? Should not Jesus have come

4,000 years earlier, or, at least, should he not have come when the Ark

grounded on Ararat served as monument of God's merciless vengeance,

which had made the whole earth like to a battle field, whereon the

omnipotent had crushed the feeble, and had marked his prowess by the

innumerable myriads of decaying dead? If it be declared that though the

atonement by Jesus only applies to believers in his mission so far as

regards human beings born since his coming, yet that it is wider in its

retrospective redeeming effect; then the answer is that it is unfair to

those born after Jesus to make faith the condition precedent to the

saving efficacy of atonement, especially if belief be required from all

mankind posterior to the Christian era, whether they have heard of Jesus

or not. Japanese, Chinese, Indians, Kaffirs, and others have surely a

right to complain of this atonement scheme, which ensures them eternal

damnation by making it requisite to believe in a Gospel of which they

have no knowledge. If it be contended that belief will only be required

from those to whom the Gospel of Jesus has been preached, and who have

had afforded to them the opportunity of its acceptance, then how great a

cause of complaint against Christian Missionaries have those peoples

who, without such missions, might have escaped damnation for unbelief.

The gates of hell are opened to them by the earnest propagandist, who

professes to show the road to heaven.

But does this atonement serve only to redeem the human family from the

curse inflicted by Deity in Eden's garden for Adam's sin, or does it

operate as satisfaction for all sin? If the salvation is from the

punishment for Adam's sin alone, and if belief and baptism are, as Jesus

himself affirms, to be the conditions precedent to any saving efficacy

in the much-lauded atonement by the son of God, then what becomes of a

child that only lives a few hours, is never baptised, and never having

any mind, consequently never has any belief? Or what becomes of one

idiot-born who, throughout his dreary life, never has mental capacity

for the acceptance or examination of, or credence in any religious

dogmas whatever? Is the idiot saved who cannot believe? Is the infant

saved who cannot believe? I, with some mental faculties tolerably

developed, cannot believe. Must I be damned? If so, fortunate

short-lived babe! lucky idiot! That the atonement should not be

effective until the person to be saved has been baptised, that the

sprinkling of a few drops of water should quench the flames of hell, is

a remarkable feature in the Christian's creed:

"One can't but think it somewhat droll,

Pump-water thus should cleanse a soul."

How many fierce quarrels have raged on the formula of baptism amongst

those loving brothers in Christ who believe he died for them! How

strange an idea that, though God has been crucified to redeem mankind,

it yet needs the font of water to wash away the lingering stain of

Adam's crime.

One minister of the Church of England, occupying the presidential chair

of a well-known training college for Church clergymen in the North of

England, seriously declared, in the presence of a large auditory and of

several church dignitaries, that the sin of Adam was so potent in its

effect, that if a man _had never been born, he would yet have been

damned for sin_. That is, he declared that man existed before birth, and

that he committed sin before he was born; and if never born, would

notwithstanding deserve to suffer eternal torment for that sin.

It is almost impossible to discuss seriously a doctrine so monstrously

absurd, and yet it is not one whit more ridiculous than the ordinary

orthodox and terrible doctrine, that God the undying, in his infinite

love, killed himself under the form of his son to appease the cruel

vengeance of God, the just and merciful, who, without this, would have

been ever vengeful, unjust, and merciless.

The atonement theory, as presented to us by the Bible, is in effect as

follows:--God created man surrounded by such conditions as the divine

mind chose, in the selection of which man had no voice, and the effects

of which on man were all foreknown and predestined by Deity. The result

was man's fall on the very first temptation, so frail the nature with

which he was endowed, or so powerful the temptation to which he was

subjected. For this fall not only did the all-merciful punish Adam, but

also his posterity; and this punishing went on for many centuries, until

God, the immutable, changed his purpose of continual condemnation of men

for sins they had no share in, and was wearied with his long series of

unjust judgments on those whom he created in order that he might judge

them. That, then, God sent his son, who was himself and was also his own

father, and who was immortal, to die upon the cross, and, by this

sacrifice, to atone for the sin which God himself had caused Adam to

commit, and thus to appease the merciless vengeance of the All-merciful,

which would otherwise have been continued against men yet unborn for an

offence they could not have been concerned in or accessory to. Whether

those who had died before Christ's coming are redeemed, the Bible does

not clearly tell us. Those born after are redeemed only on condition of

their faith in the efficacy of the sacrifice offered, and in the truth

of the history of Jesus's life. The doctrine of salvation by sacrifice

of human life is the doctrine of a barbarous and superstitious age: the

outgrowth of a brutal and depraved era. The God who accepts the bloody

offering of an innocent victim in lieu of punishing the guilty culprit

shows no mercy in sparing the offender: he has already satiated his lust

for vengeance on the first object presented to him.

Sacrifice is an early, prominent, and with slight exception an abiding

feature in the Hebrew record--sacrifice of life finds appreciative

acceptance from the Jewish Deity. Cain's offering of fruits is

ineffective, but Abel's altar, bearing the firstlings of his flock and

the fat thereof, finds respect in the sight of the Lord. While the face

of the earth was disfigured by the rotting dead after God in his

infinite mercy had deluged the world, then it was that the ascending

smoke from Noah's burnt sacrifice of bird and beast produced pleasure in

heaven, and God himself smelled a sweet savor from the roasted meats. To

preach atonement for the past by sacrifice is worse than folly--it is

crime. The past can never be recalled, and the only reference to it

should be that, by marking its events, we may avoid its evil deeds and

improve upon its good ones. The Levitical doctrine of the atonement,

with its sin laden scapegoat sent into the wilderness to the evil demon

Azazel, though placed in the Pentateuch, is of much later date, being

one of the myths acquired by the Jews during their captivity. The

general notion of atonement by sacrifice is that of an averting of the

just judgment by an offering which may induce the judge, who in this

case is also the executioner, to delay or remit the punishment he has

awarded. In the gospel atonement story the weird folly of the scapegoat

mystery and the barbarous waste of doves, pigeons, rams, and bulls as

burnt offerings are all outdone. We have in lieu of these the history of

the Man-God subject to human passions and infirmities, who comes to die,

and who prays to his heavenly father--that is, to himself--that he will

spare him the bitter cup of death; who is betrayed, having himself, ere

he laid the foundations of the world, predestined Judas to betray him;

and who dies, being God immortal, crying with his almost dying

breath--"My God! my God! why hast thou forsaken me?"

WHEN WERE OUR GOSPELS WRITTEN?

AN ANSWER TO THE RELIGIOUS TRACT SOCIETY

PREFATORY NOTE TO FOURTH EDITION

SINCE this pamphlet was originally penned in 1867, the author of

"Supernatural Religion" has in his three volumes placed a very

storehouse of information within the easy reach of every student, and

many of Dr. Tischendorf's reckless statements have been effectively

dealt with in that masterly work. In the present brief pamphlet there is

only the very merest index to matters which in "Supernatural Religion"

are exhaustively treated. Part II of "The Freethinkers' Text-Book," by

Mrs Besant, has travelled over the same ground with much care, and has

given exact reference to authorities on each point.

THE Religious Tract Society, some time since, issued, prefaced with

their high commendation, a translation of a pamphlet by Dr. Constantine

Tischendorf, entitled "When were our Gospels Written?" In the

introductory preface we are not unfairly told that "on the credibility

of the four Gospels the whole of Christianity rests, as a building on

its foundations." It is proposed in this brief essay to deal with the

character of Dr. Tischendorf's advocacy, then to examine the genuineness

of the four Gospels, as affirmed by the Religious Tract Society's

pamphlet, and at the same time to ascertain, so far as is possible in

the space, how far the Gospel narrative is credible.

The Religious Tract Society state that Dr. Teschendorf's _brochure_ is a

repetition of "arguments for the genuineness and authenticity of the

four Gospels," which the erudite Doctor had previously published for the

learned classes, "with explanations" now given in addition, to render

the arguments "intelligible" to meaner capacities; and as the "Infidel"

and "Deist" are especially referred to as likely to be overthrown by

this pamphlet, we may presume that the society considers that in the 119

pages--which the translated essay occupies--they have presented the best

paper that can be issued on their behalf for popular reading on this

question. The praise accorded by the society, and sundry laudations

appropriated with much modesty in his own preface by Dr. Constantine

Tischendorf to himself, compel one at the outset to regard the Christian

manifesto as a most formidable production. The Society's translator

impressively tells us that the pamphlet has been three times printed in

Germany and twice in France; that it has been issued in Dutch and

Russian, and is done into Italian by an Archbishop with the actual

approbation of the Pope. The author's preface adds an account of his

great journeyings and heavy travelling expenses incurred out of an

original capital of a "few unpaid bills," ending in the discovery of a

basketful of old parchments destined for the flames by the Christian

monks in charge, but which from the hands of Dr. Tischendorf are used by

the Religious Tract Society to neutralise all doubts, and to "blow to

pieces" the Rationalistic criticism of Germany and the coarser

Infidelity of England. Doubtless Dr. Tischendorf and the Society

consider it some evidence in favor of the genuineness and authenticity

of the four Gospels that the learned Doctor was enabled to spend 5,000

dollars out of less than nothing, and that the Pope regards his pamphlet

with favor, or they would not trouble to print such statements. We

frankly accord them the full advantage of any argument which may fairly

be based on such facts. An autograph letter of endorsement by the Pope

is certainly a matter which a Protestant Tract Society--who regard "the

scarlet whore at Babylon" with horror--may well be proud of.

Dr. Tischendorf states that he has since 1839 devoted himself to the

textual study of the New Testament, and it ought to be interesting to

the orthodox to know that, as a result of twenty-seven years' labor, he

now declares that "it has been placed beyond doubt that the original

text... had in many places undergone such serious modifications of

meaning as to leave us in painful uncertainty as to what the apostles

had actually written," and that "the right course to take" "is to set

aside the received text altogether and to construct a fresh text."

This is pleasant news for the true believer, promulgated by authority of

the managers of the great Christian depot in Paternoster Row, from

whence many scores of thousands of copies of this incorrect received

text have nevertheless been issued without comment to the public, even

since the society have published in English Dr. Tischendorf s

declaration of its unreliable character.

With the modesty and honorable reticence peculiar to great men, Dr.

Tischendorf records his successes in reading hitherto unreadable

parchments, and we learn that he has received approval from "several

learned bodies, and even from crowned heads," for his wonderful

performances. As a consistent Christian, who knows that the "powers that

be are ordained of God," our "critic without rival," for so he prints

himself, regards the praise of crowned heads as higher in degree than

that of learned bodies.

The Doctor discovered in 1844 the MS on which he now relies to confute

audacious Infidelity, in the Convent of St. Catherine at Sinai; he

brought away a portion, and handed that portion, on his return, to the

Saxon Government--they paying all expenses. The Doctor, however, did not

then divulge where he had found the MS. It was for the advantage of

humankind that the place should be known at once, for, at least, two

reasons. First, because by aid of the remainder of this MS--"the most

precious Bible treasure in existence"--the faulty text of the New

Testament was to be reconstructed; and the sooner the work was done the

better for believers in Christianity. And, secondly, the whole story of

the discovery might then have been more easily confirmed in every

particular.

For fifteen years, at least, Dr. Tischendorf hid from the world the

precise locality in which his treasure had been discovered. Nay, he was

even fearful when he knew that other Christians were trying to find the

true text, and he experienced "peculiar satisfaction" when he

ascertained that his silence had misled some pious searchers after

reliable copies of God's message to all humankind; although all this

time he was well aware that our received copies of God's revelation had

undergone "serious modifications" since the message had been delivered

from the Holy Ghost by means of the Evangelists.

In 1853, "nine years after the original discovery," Dr. Tisch-endorf

again visited the Sinai convent, but although he had "enjoined on the

monks to take religious care" of the remains of which they, on the

former occasion, would not yield up possession, he, on this second

occasion, and apparently after careful search, discovered "eleven short

lines," which convinced him that the greater part of the MS had been

destroyed. He still, however, kept the place secret, although he had no

longer any known reason for so doing; and, having obtained an advance of

funds from the Russian Government, he, in 1859, tried a third time for

his "pearl of St. Catherine," which, in 1853, he felt convinced had been

destroyed, and as to which he had nevertheless, in the meantime, been

troubled by fears that the good cause might be aided by some other than

Dr. Tischendorf discovering and publishing the "priceless treasure,"

which, according to his previous statements, he must have felt convinced

did not longer exist. On this third journey the Doctor discovered "the

very fragments which, fifteen years before, he had taken out of the

basket," "and also other parts of the Old Testament, the New Testament

complete, and, in addition, Barnabas and part of Hermas."

With wonderful preciseness, and with great audacity, Dr. Tischendorf

_refers_ the transcription of the discovered Bible to the first half of

the fourth century. Have Dr. Tischendorf's patrons here ever read of MSS

discovered in the same Convent of St. Catherine, at Sinai, of which an

account was published by Dr. Constantine Simonides, and concerning which

the _Westminster Review_ said, "We share the suspicions, to use the

gentlest word which occurs to us, entertained, we believe, by all

competent critics and antiquarians."

In 1863 Dr. Tischendorf published, at the cost of the Russian Emperor, a

splendid but very costly edition of his Sinaitic MS in columns, with a

Latin introduction. The book is an expensive one, and copies of it are

not very plentiful in England. Perhaps the Religious Tract Society have

not contributed to its circulation so liberally as did the pious Emperor

of all the Russias. Surely a text on which our own is to be

re-constructed ought to be in the hands at least of every English

clergyman and Young Men's Christian Association.

"Christianity," writes Dr. Tischendorf, "does not, strictly speaking,

rest on the moral teaching of Jesus;" "it rests on his person only." "If

we are in error in believing in the person of Christ as taught in the

Gospels, then the Church herself is in error, and must be given up as a

deception." "All the world knows that our Gospels are nothing else than

biographies of Christ." "We have no other source of information with

respect to the life of Jesus."

So that, according to the Religious Tract Society and its advocate, if

the credibility of the Gospel biography be successfully impugned, then

the foundations of Christianity are destroyed. It becomes, therefore, of

the highest importance to show that the biography of Jesus, as given in

the four Gospels, is absolutely incredible and self-contradictory.

It is alleged in the Society's preface that all the objections of

infidelity have been hitherto unavailing. This is, however, not true. It

is rather the fact that the advocates of Christianity when defeated on

one point have shuffled to another, either quietly passing the topic

without further debate, or loudly declaring that the point abandoned was

really so utterly unimportant that it was extremely foolish in the

assailant to regard it as worthy attack, and that, in any case, all the

arguments had been repeatedly refuted by previous writers.

To the following objections to the Gospel narrative the writer refuses

to accept as answer, that they have been previously discussed and

disposed of.