"The Bible," Dr. Farrar says, "is inextricably mingled with all that is
greatest in human history." This is a fair specimen of his roystering
style. We presume he has contracted it through long years of preaching
from the coward's castle of the pulpit, where a man can exaggerate as
much as he pleases without the slightest fear of contradiction. Dr.
Farrar does not say that the Bible is mixed up with _much_ of the
greatest in human history; no, it must be mixed up with _all_ the
greatest--which is a transparent falsehood and a no less transparent
absurdity. What did Greece and Rome owe to the Bible? Absolutely
nothing. There is no evidence that they were acquainted with any part
of the Old Testament, and Greece had become a mere name before a line of
the New Testament was written. Some of the greatest things in the world
were done and said by the "heathen." Greek philosophy, Greek literature,
Greek art, are imperishable. Roman jurisprudence and Roman government
are the basis of every civilised polity. Plutarch's heroes are all
Pagans, and let Dr. Farrar match them if he can in the history of
Christendom.
Dr. Farrar calls the Bible "the statesman's manual," but he judiciously
refrains from showing that statesmen ever act upon its teaching; indeed,
he spends a great deal of time in showing that they ought _not_ to act
upon its teaching, unless they carefully avoid the obvious "letter,"
and allow themselves to be influenced by the recondite "spirit." For
instance, it is perfectly clear that the Bible does not contain a single
word against slavery; it is also perfectly clear to all who possess
a tincture of scholarship that many of its references to slavery are
fraudulently translated. "Servants obey your masters" really means
"Slaves obey your owners." Moreover, the Bible contains precise
regulations of slavery. God did not tell the Jews that holding slaves
was infamous, that man could never have honest property in human flesh
and blood. He allowed them to buy and sell Gentiles at their pleasure.
He permitted them to enslave their own countrymen for a period of seven
years, and in certain cases "for ever." Even in the New Testament we
find St Paul sending back a runaway slave to his master. True, he sent
with the slave a touching letter to the slave-owner, but sending him
back at all was giving a sanction to the institution. Dr. Farrar admits
that American pulpits "rang with incessant Scriptural defences of
slavery." He quotes from a Southern bishop, who described slavery as "a
curse and a blight," yet declared it to be "recognised by the Bible,"
so that "every man has a right to his own slaves, provided they are not
treated with unnecessary cruelty." Dr. Farrar asks whether there was
ever "a stranger utterance on the lips of a Christian bishop." He calls
this "distorting the Bible." But he does not prove the distortion. He
calmly assumes it. He cannot deny the existence of all those slavery
texts in the Bible. All he can do is to say that what was "relatively
excusable" among the Jews is at present "execrable," and is now
"absolutely and for ever wrong." Very good; but how was that discovered?
Not by reading the Bible. The Jews read the Bible, the early Christians
read the Bible, just as well as Dr. Farrar, but they did not find that
it condemned slavery. Dr. Farrar lives in a later age, in the light of
a higher civilisation. He therefore _reads into_ the Bible whatever it
_ought to_ contain as the word of God. He does not scruple to override
explicit texts by more or less arbitrary deductions from vague maxims
and ejaculations. He pretends that the "spirit" of the Bible in some
way wrought the abolition of slavery. But every well-informed student is
aware that the abolition of slavery depended upon economical conditions.
We _outgrow_ slavery by advancing beyond it in the process of
industrial development, and when we _have_ outgrown it we regard it with
abhorrence. When the institution is in the way of being supplanted by
a higher form of productive labor, the moral revolt against it begins,
growing in strength and intensity as the economical change approaches
its climax. It was natural that the anti-slavery movement in America
should take place in the Northern States, where the conditions
favourable to slavery did not exist as they did in the Southern States.
We may be pardoned for supposing that if Dr. Farrar's lot had been
cast in a Southern State he would have defended slavery as a Bible
institution. He is preaching now after its abolition, when denunciation
of it is cheap and easy, and is no particular credit to the preacher's
religion. While slavery existed in America, it was at first justified
by the Bible in all parts of the Union. Northern abolitionists at last
found that the Bible did not teach slavery after all; but this did not
alter the view of the Southern slaveholders and the Southern Churches.
Here again we see the force of the Catholic taunt that Protestants can
prove anything, and disprove anything, by appealing to texts in such a
composite book as the Bible. Here again we also see that the Bible never
_instigates_ any step in the march of human improvement.
Dr. Farrar waxes eloquent, after his special fashion, over the glories
of England in the age of Elizabeth. He attributes them all to the "open
Bible," which was then placed in the hands of the people. Of course they
had nothing to do with the new astronomy, the discovery of America, and
the invention of printing! Such paltry causes as these cannot enter
into competition with the might and majesty of the Bible! Still, we may
venture to remind Dr. Farrar that these Englishmen of the Elizabethan
age, with the "open Bible" in their hands, went and started the African
slave trade. Evidently they did not read in it then, as Dr. Farrar does
now, any condemnation of that horrible business. They worked it for all
it was worth. England, with the "open Bible" in its hand, continued to
do so for another two hundred years. One of the chief centres of
the slave trade was the pious city of Bristol. It grew rich on the
abominable traffic. Slavery has been abolished, but the old odor of
piety still clings to the city of Bristol. Its merchants fattened on the
slave trade with the "open Bible" in their hands. They now subscribe to
missionary societies to convert the blacks, and they still stick to the
"open Bible." It was good for upholding black slavery, and it is still
good for upholding white slavery.
All that we have said about slavery applies in its degree to polygamy.
Both institutions are sanctioned by the Bible, and the pleas of the
"Higher Criticism" in relation to the one are just as hollow as they are
in relation to the other. We may go farther and say that the Bible is
very far from being woman's best friend, as it is often represented. It
starts by making her the Devil's first customer, and the introducer of
sin and death; it continues to hold her as inferior and subject to man,
lumping her in the tenth commandment with the house, the ox, and the
ass, as the man's property; and, finally, in the New Testament, it
expressly tells her that her duty is to be silent and submissive, for
the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the Church.
We need not follow Dr. Farrar in his rhapsodical references to the
various achievements of the Bible. We may remark, however, that his
reference to Japan is singularly unhappy. That country _has_ accepted
the leading ideas of Western civilisation, but it has _not_ accepted
Christianity. Nor is Dr. Farrar well advised in laying so much stress on
the Pilgrim Fathers. He says that they had a preference for the "pure,
unadulterated lessons of the Bible." Perhaps they had. But what were
those lessons as illustrated by their actions? Certainly intolerance was
one of them. They had no conception of religious liberty. "The Pilgrim
Fathers," as Sir Walter Besant remarks in his little book on _The Rise
of the Empire_, "believed that everybody should think as they themselves
thought. Had they achieved their own way, they would have sent Laud
himself, and all who thought like him, across the ocean with the
greatest alacrity." They also believed in witchcraft, probably because
Dr. Farrar was not at hand to explain that the Bible did not mean what
it said; and they tortured and burnt witches with remarkable gusto.
It would also be a waste of time to correct all Dr. Farrar's statements
about the influence of the Bible in other directions. We will take a
single illustration of his fantastical method. He tells us that the
Bible "inspired the pictures of Fra Angelico and Raphael, the music of
Handel and Mendelssohn." Perhaps he will tell us whether it inspired
Raphael's picture of the Fornarina, and why it did not inspire the music
of Beethoven and Wagner. Both those great composers, as a matter of
fact, were "infidels."
Nothing could be more absurd than orthodox talk about the Bible
"inspiring" great poets, artists, and musicians. Men of genius are
inspired by nature. Their inspiration is born with them. It cannot be
made; it can only be utilised. All that religions have done is to employ
the genius they could not create. Every religion has done this in turn.
The genius was there always as a natural endowment. It existed before
all the world's religions, and it will outlive them.