I HAVE before ventured my opinion on the political history of the
Israelites and their wars, and I wish I could not believe in them; but I
fear that portion of their history is too true. The example thus set has
been followed since by other nations, to wage the horrid wars in which
they have embarked on the most trivial pretences, whenever their rulers
found it convenient to give vent to their bad passions, wantonly to
engage in them. There are many other matters related in the Bible which
operate as stumbling-blocks to those who otherwise revere it for the
clear truths set forth in its texts. These consist in one part
contradicting, or apparently contradicting, another part, and, in some
cases, of making assertions which appear to be derogatory to the Majesty
of Omnipotence. There may, indeed, be two causes assigned as reasons for
these. The first is, in reading many portions of the Scriptures
literally which must have been intended to be understood allegorically.
It surely could never be meant to be literally understood that the sun
and moon stood still by the command of Joshua, till he was “avenged of
his enemies,” and that the regular order of nature and the universe was
set aside to please Joshua in his man-killing pursuits. That this was
the way by which Omnipotence willed the destruction of whole nations of
people, does not seem to accord with the reverence with which man ought
to view his Maker, when, had it been His will that such nations should
no longer inhabit the earth, the whole of such a people thus devoted
might have been annihilated by a puff of pestilential wind, if
Omnipotence had pleased to do so. Although it does not become us to scan
what was, or what was not, His will, as we can only judge of all such
matters according to our crude and weak conceptions.
The next cause for suspecting the accuracy of several parts of the
Sacred Book arises from the supposition that these may not have been
correctly translated.[40] All these seemingly contradictory passages,
not being clearly understood, have been a most fertile source of
employment for self-interested and bigoted men, who have attempted
giving their explanations and contradictory comments and annotations
upon them, and twisted them into meanings, often to bewilder the common
sense of mankind, to suit certain selfish purposes subservient to their
own ends. It would, I think, have been much better to have left people
to judge upon these texts as well as they could themselves, rather than
trust to such explanations, or to pin their faith on the sleeve of such
men. I fear they have done more harm than good.
Footnote 40:
The Rev. James Murray (before mentioned) showed me a chapter of the
Book of Job which he had translated. It was in poetry as near the
original as he was able to make it. The sense and meaning was clear
and easily to be understood, but not so that of the chapter from which
he took it.
But all these and such like doubts seem trivial and light in the balance
when weighed against the solid, sublime truths and valuable instructions
contained in the ancient, venerable book. The mind of man thus prepared
by the sacred texts laid open to him by the Bible, as well as by the
help of other systems of morality, which all lend their help to lead him
in the paths of rectitude—in this state he sees himself surrounded by
the wonders of creation, and furnished with passions given him for the
wisest purposes, to spur him on to exertions without which the affairs
of this beautiful world would soon be at a stand-still, and he would
then soon revert to unintellectual apathy or savage barbarity, and would
cease to adore God, and seek His providential care and protection. But,
when the passions are not fully kept under by the reasoning guide, man
feels himself to be a strange compound—a heterogeneous mixture of pure
metal and base alloy, and placed in the infancy of an endless, and
therefore an infinitely important and mysterious, but conscious
existence. “Wonderfully and fearfully made,” he views with amazement
“this pleasing, anxious being”—this spirit confined in mortality with
Heaven’s own pilot placed within as its guide, and a soul, fed like the
flame of a lamp, to enlighten his path to eternity. Thus prepared by the
hand of Omnipotence, his reasoning powers commence their operations; his
mind is then his kingdom, and his will his law as to his deeds in this
life, but for which he must render an account before the justice of his
Maker, in another state of existence—in another world; otherwise he has
lived in vain in this. If he avails himself of the reasoning power,—the
choicest gift of his Maker, and by which He has revealed himself to
man,—then will he feel something of a foretaste of the future happiness
he is preparing for himself in eternity. But if he will perversely cease
to commune with his own soul, or reject its admonitions, and turn away
from them, he thus puts himself under another guide, and must then
become debased, degraded, and associated with sin; for he then suffers
his bad passions and gross appetites to overpower his reason, and thus
creates for himself an evil spirit, or a devil and a hell in his own
breast, that consumes or annihilates his good spiritual guide, and
disfigures the image of God within him, before it returns to whence it
came. Thus to appear before his Maker must be a hell of itself of
fearful import—not to be endured—and the greatest possible punishment
the debased and polluted soul can undergo; and it may be well for us all
to keep in remembrance that a year of pleasure can be outbalanced by a
day of pain. To judge simply of all this, it may be concluded that those
who, from pure motives, have shed abroad the greatest _quantum_ of
happiness to mankind, and to all God’s creatures, while they sojourned
here, will, according to our notions of justice (beside the pleasure
derived from self-approbation in this life), be rewarded, and entitled
to such like but more exalted happiness to all eternity.
Whatever weight these opinions of mine may have upon others, I know not;
they are given with the best intentions, and they concern all men. They
are on a subject which, in its own nature, forms a more sublime and
important object of enquiry than any to which our intellectual powers
can be applied. It is on them that religion, the life of the soul, is
built. Religion is both natural and necessary to man. Those who reject
this primary sentiment of veneration for the Supreme Being, only show
their inferiority to other men: like those born blind, they cannot
perfectly understand the nature of vision, and thence conclude there is
no such thing as light in existence.
Religion is of a pure and spotless nature; it is uniform, consistent,
and of the same complexion and character in all nations. Languages and
customs may greatly differ, but the language of the pure devotion of the
heart to its Maker is the same over the face of the whole earth.
Religion, therefore, demands our utmost reverence; and, as such, that
which was taught by Jesus of Nazareth. I revere the sublime, and yet
simple, plain doctrines and truly charitable principles which Christ
laid down, and enforced by his own example. His life was a continued
scene of active benevolence: no fatigue was too hard to be borne, no
inconvenience too great to be submitted to, provided he could instruct
the ignorant, reclaim the vicious, relieve the destitute, and comfort
the mournful. Such was the religion of Jesus Christ, “who went about
doing good!” He spoke only of one God, and of Him with the utmost
reverence, as his Heavenly Father and the Father of all mankind.
Christianity, in its purity, is the most liberal and best religion in
the world. Its inspired Author preached up the cheerful doctrine of
man’s reviving again after death, and of the certainty of his afterwards
living to eternity, and did his utmost to persuade all mankind to live
godly lives, that their souls might thereby be prepared to return to
God, the Author and the Giver of all Good, as unblemished as possible;
and thus, so far as his influence reached, and his commands were acted
upon, he may truly be said to be the Saviour of Mankind. But, there are
questions connected with this subject which none but the Almighty God
can solve. It was by the divine will, and by the providence of God, that
he appeared on earth. Gifted with inspired powers, his immaculate mind
thus made him the instrument befitting the mission he held, to teach
mankind, then lost and grovelling in wickedness and corruption, the
important lessons of religion and morality, and to reclaim such of the
lost flock, high and low, as had grown up and established themselves in
iniquity.
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