HAVE WE ANY NEED OF THE BIBLE?
Religion consists of the knowledge of a number of great facts, and of a
course of life suitable to them. We have seen three of these: that God
created the world; that he governs it; and that he is able to conquer
his enemies. There are others of the same sort as needful to be known.
Our knowledge of these facts, or our ignorance of them, makes not the
slightest difference in the facts themselves. God is, and heaven is, and
hell is, and sin leads to it, whether anybody believes these things or
not. It makes no sort of difference in the beetling cliff and swollen
flood that sweeps below it, that the drunken man declares there is no
danger, and, refusing the proffered lantern, gallops on toward it in the
darkness of the night. But when the mangled corpse is washed ashore,
every one sees how foolish this man was, to be so confident in his
ignorance as to refuse the lantern, which would have shown him his
danger, and guided him to the bridge where he might have crossed in
safety. Some of the facts of religion lie at the evening end of life's
journey; the darkness of death's night hides them from mortal eye; and
living men might guide their steps the better by asking counsel of one
who knows the way. If they get along no better by their own counsel in
the next world than most of them do in this, they will have small cause
to bless their teacher. Who can tell that ignorance, and wickedness, and
wretchedness are not as tightly tied together in the world to come, as
we see them here?
Solomon was a knowing man and wise; and better than that, in the esteem
of most people, he made money, and tells you how to make it, and keep
it. You will make a hundred dollars by reading his Proverbs and acting
on them. They would have saved some of you many a thousand. Of course
such a man knew something of the world. He was a wide-awake trader. His
ships coasted the shores of Asia, and Africa, from Madagascar to Japan;
and the overland mail caravans from India and China drew up in the
depots he built for them in the heart of the desert. He knew the
well-doing people with whom trade was profitable, and the savages who
could only send apes and peacocks. He was a philosopher as well as a
trader, and could not help being deeply impressed with _the great fact_,
that there was a wide difference among the nations of the world. Some
were enlightened, enterprising, civilized, and flourishing; others were
naked savages, living in ignorance, poverty, vice, and starvation,
perpetually murdering one another, and dying out of the earth.
Solomon noticed _another great fact_. In his own country, and in
Chaldea, Mesopotamia, Egypt, and some others, God had revealed his will
to certain persons for the benefit of their neighbors. He did so
generally by opening the eyes of these prophets to see future events,
and the great facts of the unseen world, and by giving them messages of
warning and instruction to the nations. From this mode of revelation, by
opening the prophets eyes to see realities invisible to others, they
were called seers, and the revelations they were commissioned to make
were called visions; and revelation from God was called, in general,
vision. Solomon was struck with the fact that some nations were thus
favored by God, and other nations were not. The question would naturally
arise, What difference does it make, or does it make any difference,
whether men have any revelation of God's will or not?
Solomon was led to observe a _third great fact_. The nations which were
favored with these revelations were the civilized, enterprising, and
comparatively prosperous nations. In proportion to the amount of divine
revelation they had, and their obedience to it, they prospered. The
nations that had no revelation from God were the idolatrous savages, who
were sinking down to the level of brutes, and perishing off the face of
the earth. He daguerreotypes these three great facts in the proverb:
"Where there is no vision the people perish; but he that keepeth the
law, happy is he."
Oh, says the Rationalist, the world is wiser now than it was in
Solomon's days. He lived in the old mythological period, when men
attributed everything extraordinary to the gods. But the world is too
wise now to believe in any supernatural revelation. "The Hebrew and
Christian religions like all others have their myths." "The fact is, the
pure historic idea was never developed among the Hebrews during the
whole of their political existence." "When, therefore, we meet with an
account of certain phenomena, or events of which it is expressly stated
or implied that they were produced immediately by God himself (such as
divine apparitions, voices from heaven, and the like), or by human
beings possessed of supernatural powers (miracles, prophecies, etc.),
such an account is so far to be considered not historical." "Indeed, no
just notion of the true nature of history is possible without a
perception of the inviolability of the chain of finite causes, and of
the impossibility of miracles."[38] A narrative is to be deemed
mythical, 1st. "When it proceeds from an age in which there were no
written records, but events were transmitted by tradition; 2d. When it
presents, as historical, accounts of events which were beyond the reach
of experience, as occurrences connected with the spiritual world; or 3d.
When it deals in the marvelous, and is couched in symbolical
language."[39] So also a host of others, who pass for biblical
expositors, lay it down as an axiom, that all records of supernatural
events are mythical, viz: fables, falsehoods, because miracles are
impossible. Of course, from such premises the conclusion is easy. A
revelation from God to man is a supernatural event, and supernatural
events are impossible; therefore, a revelation from God is impossible.
But it would have been much easier, and quite as logical, to have laid
down the axiom in plain words at first, that a revelation from God is
impossible, as to argue it from such premises; for it is just as easy to
_say_, that a revelation from God is impossible, as to _say_ that
miracles are impossible; and as for _proof_ of either one or the other,
we must just take their word for it.
One can not help being amazed at the cool impudence with which these men
take for granted the very point to be proved, and set aside, as unworthy
of serious examination, the most authentic records of history, simply
because they do not coincide with their so-called philosophy; and at the
credulity with which their followers swallow this arrogant dogmatism, as
if it were self-evident truth. Let us look at it for a moment. Other
religions have their myths, or fables, therefore, the Hebrew and
Christian records are fables, says the Rationalist. Profundity of logic!
Counterfeit bank bills are common, therefore none are genuine. "The fact
is, the pure historic idea was never developed among the Hebrews," _i.
e._, Moses and the prophets were all liars. That is the fact, you may
take my word for it. "Indeed, no just notion of the true nature of
history is possible without a perception of the inviolability of the
chain of finite causes, and of the impossibility of miracles" which
translated into plain words is simply this: No man can understand
history who believes in God Almighty. "A narrative is to be deemed
fabulous when it proceeds from an age in which there were no written
records," such, for instance, as any account of the creation of the
first man--for no event could possibly happen unless there was a scribe
there to write it. Or, of the fall of man--we do not know that Adam was
able to write, and no man can tell truth unless he writes a history. "A
narrative is to be deemed fabulous when it presents, as historical,
accounts of events which were beyond the reach of experience, as events
connected with the spiritual world." Is it not self-evident that you and
I have had experience of everything in the whole universe, and whoever
tells us anything which we have never seen is a liar. "When a narrative
deals in the marvelous," such as Xenophon's Retreat of the Ten Thousand,
Herodotus' History, or Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire,
dealing as it does in such marvelous accounts as the death of half the
inhabitants of the empire in the reign of Galerius, or any other history
of wonderful occurrence--it is of course a myth. Does not every one know
that nothing marvelous ever happened, or, if it did, would any historian
trouble himself to record a prodigy? "Or, if it is couched in symbolical
language," as is every eloquent passage in Thucydides, Robertson,
Gibbon, or Guizot, the records of China, and of India, the
picture-writing of the Peruvians, and especially the Egyptian
hieroglyphics, which were fondly expected to do such good service
against the Bible--it must be at once rejected, without further
examination, as mythological and unworthy of any credit whatever. Thus
we are conclusively rid forever of the Bible, for sure enough it is
couched in symbolical language. Blessed deliverance to the world! But
then, alas! this great deliverance is accompanied with several little
inconveniences. All poetry, three-fourths of the world's history, and
the largest part of its philosophy, is couched in symbolical language,
and especially the whole of the science of metaphysics, from which
these very learned writers have deduced such edifying conclusions, is,
from the beginning to the end, nothing but a symbolical application of
the terms which describe material objects, to the phenomena of mind.
Alas! we must forever relinquish "the absolute," and "the infinite," and
"the conditioned," with all their "affinities and potencies," up to
"higher unity," and "the rhythm of universal existence," and all the
rest of those perspicuous German hieroglyphics, whether entombed in
their native pyramids for the amazement of succeeding generations, by
Fichte, Schelling, or Hegel, or "worshiping in the great cathedral of
the immensities," "with their heads uplifted into infinite space," or
"lying on the plane of their own consciousness," in the writings of
Carlyle, Emerson, and Parker. They are myths, the whole of them, for
they "are couched in symbolical language;" and Bauer, De Wette, and
Strauss have pronounced every thing couched in symbolical language to be
mythical. Let us henceforth deliver our minds from all anxiety about
history, philosophy, or religion, and stick to the price current and the
multiplication table, the only accounts that are not "couched in
symbolical language."
Such is the sort of trash that passes for profound philosophy when once
it is made unintelligible, and such are the canons of interpretation
with which men calling themselves philosophers and Christians sit down
to investigate the claims of the Bible as a revelation from God. If they
would speak out their true sentiments, they would say, "There can not be
any revelation from God, because there is no God." But they could not
call themselves professors of Christian colleges, and pastors of
Christian churches, and reap the emoluments of such situations, if they
would honestly avow their Atheism. Besides, the world would see too
plainly the drift of their teaching; therefore it is cloaked under a
profession of belief in God, the Creator, who however is to be
carefully prevented from ever showing himself again in the world he has
made.
No proof is attempted for the declaration that miracles are impossible.
Yet, surely, if it implies a contradiction to say so, that contradiction
could be shown. That it is not self-evident is shown by the general
belief of mankind that miracles have occurred. No man who believes in a
supernatural being can deny the possibility of supernatural actings. The
creation of the world is the most stupendous of all miracles, utterly
beyond the power of any finite causes, and entirely beyond the reach of
our experience, yet some of these men admit that this miracle occurred.
Supernatural events then are not impossible, nor unprecedented.
The vain notion that God, having created the world at first, left it for
ever after to the operation of natural laws, is conclusively demolished
by the discoveries of geology. These discoveries established the fact
recorded in Scripture, that in bringing the world into its present form
there were several distinct and successive interpositions of
supernatural power, in the distinct and successive creations of
different species of vegetable and animal life. In former periods, they
tell us, the earth was so warm that the present races of men and animals
could not have lived on it, and the plants and animals of that age could
not live now. These very men are profuse in proving that the earth
existed for ages before _man_ made his appearance upon it. This being
the case, we are compelled to acknowledge the creating power of God
above the laws of nature, for there is no law of nature which can either
create a new species of plants or animals, nor yet change one kind into
another, make an oak into a larch, or an ox into a sheep, or a goose
into a turkey, or a megatherium into an elephant, much less into a man.
Some men have dreamed of such changes as these, but no instance of such
a change has ever been alleged in proof of the notion. The most
distinguished anatomists and geologists are fully agreed that no such
change of one animal into another ever took place; much less that any
animal ever was changed into a man. Cuvier, from his comprehensive
survey of the fossils of former periods, establishes the fact, "that the
species now living are not mere varieties of the species which are
lost." And Agassiz says, "I have the conviction that species have been
created successively, at distinct intervals."[40] Revelations of God's
special interpositions in the affairs of this world are thus written by
his own finger in the fossils and coal, and engraved on the everlasting
granite of the earth's foundation stones. Dumb beasts and dead reptiles
start forward to give their irrefutable testimony to the repeated
supernatural acts of their Creator in this world which he had made.
Every distinct species of plants and animals is proof of a distinct
supernatural overruling of the present laws of nature. The experience of
man is not the limit of knowledge. His own existence is a proof that the
chain of finite causes is not inviolable. Geology sweeps away the very
foundations of skepticism, by demonstrating that certain phenomena
produced immediately by God himself--the phenomena of the creation of
life--have occurred repeatedly in the history of our globe. Revelation
is not impossible because supernatural. The world is just as full of
supernatural works as of natural. Nor is it incredible because it
records miracles. The miracles recorded in the coal measures are as
astonishing as any recorded in the Bible.
The Rationalist next assures us, however, that any external revelation
from God to man is _useless_, because man is wise enough without it. The
vulgar exposition of this sentiment is familiar to every reader. "You
need not begin to preach Bible to me. I know my duty well enough without
the Bible." The more educated attempt to reason the matter after this
fashion: "Miraculous phenomena will never prove the goodness and
veracity of God, if we do not know these qualities in him without a
miracle."[41] We may remark, in passing, that there are some other
attributes of God besides goodness and veracity--holiness and justice
for instance--which are proved by miracles. "Can thunder from the
thirty-two azimuths, repeated daily for centuries, make God's laws more
godlike to me? Brother, no. Perhaps I am grown to be a man now, and do
not need the thunder and the terror any longer. Perhaps I am above being
frightened. Perhaps it is not fear but reverence that shall now lead me!
Revelation! Inspirations! And thy own god-created soul, dost thou not
call that a revelation?"[42] It is manifest, however, that if Mr.
Carlyle needs not the Sinai thunder to assure him that the law given on
Sinai was from God, there were then, and are now, many who do, and some
of his own sect who doubt in spite of it. If he is above the weakness of
fearing God, all the world is not so.
The claims of a divine teacher are as unceremoniously rejected as those
of a divine revelation. "If it depends on Jesus it is not eternally
true, and if it is not eternally true it is no truth at all," says
Parker. As if eternally true, and sufficiently known, were just the same
thing; or as if because vaccination would always have prevented the
smallpox, the world is under no obligation to Jenner for informing us of
the fact. In the same tone Emerson despises instruction: "It is not
instruction but provocation that I can receive from another soul. What
he announces, I must find true in me, or wholly reject; and on his word,
or as his second, be he who he may, I can accept nothing." Again says
Parker, "Christianity is dependent on no outside authority. We verify
its eternal truth in our soul."[43] His aim is "to separate religion
from whatever is finite--Church, book, person--and let it rest on its
absolute truth."[44] "It bows to no idols, neither the Church, nor the
Bible, nor yet Jesus, but God only; its Redeemer is within; its
salvation within; its heaven and its oracle of God."[45] The whole
strain of this school of writers and their disciples is one of
depreciation of external revelation, and of exaltation of the inner
light which every man is supposed to carry within him. Religion is "no
Morrison's pill from without," but a "clearing of the inner light," a
"reawakening of our own selves from within."[46] So Mr. Newman[47]
abundantly argues that an authoritative book revelation of moral and
spiritual truth is impossible, that God reveals himself within us and
not without us, and that a revelation of all moral and religious truth
necessary for us to know is to be obtained by _insight_, or gazing into
the depths of our own consciousness. The sum of the whole business is,
that neither God nor man can reveal any religious truth to our minds, or
as Parker felicitously expresses it, "on his word, or as his second, be
he who he may, I can accept nothing."
Now, we are tempted to ask, Who are these wonderful prodigies, so
incapable of receiving instruction from anybody? And to our amazement we
learn, that some forty odd years ago they made their appearance among
mankind as little squalling babies, without insight enough to know their
own names, or where they came from, and were actually dependent on an
external revelation, from their nurses, for sense enough to find their
mothers' breasts. And as they grew a little larger, they obtained the
power of speaking articulate sounds by external revelation, hearing and
imitating the sounds made by others. Further, upon a memorable day,
they had a "book revelation" made to them, in the shape of a penny
primer, and were initiated into the mysteries of A, B, C, by "the
instructions of another, be he who he may." There was absolutely not the
least "insight," or "spiritual faculty," or "self-consciousness" in one
of them, by which they then could, or ever to this hour did, "find true
within them" any sort of necessary connection between the signs, c, a,
t--d, o, g--and the sounds _cat_, _dog_, or any other sounds represented
by any other letters of the alphabet. Faith in the word of their
teachers is absolutely the sole foundation and only source of their
ability to read and write. On "the word of another, and as his second,
be he who he may," every one of them has accepted every intelligible
word he speaks or writes.
There is living on Martha's Vineyard an old man who has never been off
the island, and the extent of his knowledge is bounded by the confines
of his home. He has been told of a war between the North and South, but
as he had never heard the din of battle, nor seen any soldiers, he
considered it a hoax. He is utterly unable to read, and is ignorant to
the last degree. A good story is told of his first and only day at
school. He was quite a lad when a lady came to the district, where his
father lived, to teach school. He was sent, and as the teacher was
classifying the school, he was called upon in turn and interrogated as
to his studies. Of course he had to say he had never been to school, and
knew none of his letters. The schoolmistress gave him a seat on one side
until she had finished the preliminary examination of the rest of the
scholars. She then called him to her and drew on the blackboard the
letter A, and told him what it was, and asked him to remember how it
looked. He looked at it a moment, and then inquired:
"H-h-how do you know it's A?"
The teacher replied that when she was a little girl she had been to
school to an old gentleman, who told her so.
The boy eyed the A for a moment and then asked:
"H-h-how do you know but he l-l-lied?"
The teacher could not get over this obstacle, and the poor boy was sent
home as incorrigible.
Mr. Emerson, and the whole school of those who despise instruction, had
better appoint this man their prophet of the inner light, and endow
Martha's Vineyard as the Penikese of skepticism.
But the knowledge of letters is not half of their indebtedness to
external revelation. For they will not deny that a Fiji cannibal has
just the same "insight," "spiritual faculty," "mighty and transcendent
soul," "self-consciousness," or any other name by which they may dignify
our common humanity, which they themselves possess. How does it happen,
then, that these writers are not assembled around the cannibal's oven,
smearing their faces with the blood, and feasting themselves on the
limbs of women and children? The inner nature of the cannibal and of the
Rationalist is the same--whence comes the difference of character and
conduct? And the inner light, too, is the same; for they assure us that
"inspiration, like God's omnipresence, is coextensive with the race." Is
it not, after all, mere external revelation, in the shape of
education--aye, moral and religious teaching that makes the whole
difference between the civilized American and his inspired Fiji brother?
These gentlemen not only acknowledge, but try to repay their obligations
to external revelation. As it is impossible for God to give the world a
book revelation of moral and religious truth, they modestly propose to
come to his assistance, it being quite possible for some men to do what
is impossible for God. Accordingly, we have a book revelation of moral
and religious truth, from one, in his treatise on "The Soul," an
"external revelation" from another, in his "Discourse Concerning
Religion," a "Morrison's pill from the outside," from a third, in his
"Past and Present," and "announcements" from a fourth, which assuredly
the great mass of mankind never "found true within them," else his
orations and publications had not been needed to convert them. It is to
be understood, then, that an "external revelation," or a "book
revelation" of spiritual truth is impossible, only when it comes from
God, but that these gentlemen have proved it quite possible for
themselves to deliver one.
In so doing they have undoubtedly attempted to meet the wishes of the
greater part of mankind, who have in all lands and in all ages longed
for some outward revelation from God, and testified their desire by
running after all sorts of omens, auguries, and oracles, consulting
witches, and treasuring Sibylline leaves, employing writing mediums, and
listening to spirit-rappers. The "inspiration which is limited to no
sect, age, or nation--which is wide as the world, and common as
God,"[48] has never produced a nation of Rationalists; a fact very
unaccountable, if Rationalism be true; and one which might well lead
these writers to acknowledge at least one kind of total depravity,
namely, that inspired men should love the darkness of external
revelations, and even of book revelations, and read Bibles, and Korans,
and Vedas, and "Discourses Concerning Religion," and "Phases of Faith,"
while yet "everything that is of use to man lies in the plane of our own
consciousness." Surely, such a universal craving after an external
revelation testifies to a felt necessity for it, and renders it
probable, or at least desirable, that God would supply the deficiency.
Is the religious appetite the only one for which God has provided no
supply?
The fact is undeniable, that the grand distinction between man and the
brutes presents itself right at this point. God guides animals by direct
revelation--by their instincts; but having given man reason, and free
will, he gives him the whole field of life for their exercise upon the
indirect revelations he makes to us through the mediation of others. For
all that we know of history, geography, politics, mechanics,
agriculture, poetry, philosophy, or any of the common business of life,
from the baking of a loaf of bread, or the sewing of a shirt, to the
following of a funeral, and the digging of a grave, we are indebted to
education, not to inspiration. All analogy then induces the belief that
religion also will be taught to mankind by the ministry of human
teachers, rather than by the direct inspiration of every individual.
But we are instructed, that, "as we have bodily senses to lay hold on
matter, and supply bodily wants, through which we obtain naturally all
needed material things, so we have spiritual faculties to lay hold on
God, and supply spiritual wants; through them we obtain all needed
spiritual things." That we have both bodily senses and spiritual
faculties is doubtless true; but whether either the one or the other
obtain all needed things is somewhat doubtful. I can not tell how it is
with mankind in Boston, for I am not there; and this being a matter in
which religious truth is concerned, Mr. Emerson will not allow me to
receive instruction about it from any other soul; but I see from my
window a poor widow, with five children, who has bodily senses to lay
hold on matter, and supply bodily wants; yet in my opinion she has not
obtained naturally all needed material things; and if there be a truth
which lies emphatically in the plane of her own consciousness, it is,
that she is in great need of a cord of wood, and a barrel of flour, for
her starving children. I know, also, a man, to whom God gave bodily
senses to lay hold on matter, and supply bodily wants, who, by his
drunkenness, has destroyed these bodily senses, and brought his family
to utter destitution of all needed material things. From one cause or
another, I find multitudes here in poverty and destitution,
notwithstanding they have bodily senses. It is reported, also, that
there is a poor-house in Boston, and poverty in Ireland, and starvation
in Madeira, and famine in the inundated provinces of France, and misery
and destitution in London; which, if true, completely overturns this
beautiful theory. For, if, notwithstanding the possession of bodily
senses, men do starve in this world for want of needful food and
clothing, it is very possible that they may have spiritual faculties
also, and yet not obtain through them all needed spiritual things.
The second part of the theory is as baseless as the first. All men have
spiritual faculties, and have not obtained by them all needed spiritual
things. They have not in their own opinion, and surely they are
competent judges of "what lies wholly in the plane of their own
consciousness." In proof of the fact that mankind have not, in their own
opinion, obtained all needed spiritual things by the use of their
spiritual faculties, without the aid of external revelation, we appeal
to all the religions of mankind, Heathen, Mohammedan, and Christian.
Every one of these appeals to revelations from God. Every lawgiver of
note professed to have communication with heaven, Zoroaster, Minos,
Pythagoras, Solon, Lycurgus, Numa, Mohammed, down to the chief of the
recent revolution in China. "Whatever becomes of the real truth of these
relations," says Strabo of those before his day, "_it is certain that
men did believe and think them true_." If mankind has found the supply
of all their spiritual wants within themselves, would they have clung in
this way to the pretense of external revelations? Is not the abundance
of quack doctors conclusive proof of the existence of disease, and of
the need of physicians?
Not only was the need of an external revelation of some sort
acknowledged by all mankind, but the insufficiency of the pretended
oracles which they enjoyed was deplored by the wisest part of them. We
never find men amidst the dim moonlight of tradition, and the light of
nature, vaunting the sufficiency of their inward light; it is only
amidst the full blaze of noonday Christianity that philosophers can
stand up and declare that they have no need of God's teaching. Had such
men lived in Athens of old, they would have found men possessed of
spiritual faculties, and those of no mean order, engaged in erecting an
altar with this inscription, "_To the Unknown God._" One of the wisest
of the heathen (Socrates) acknowledged that he could attain to no
certainty respecting religious truth or moral duty, in these memorable
words, "We must of necessity wait, till some one from him who careth for
us, shall come and instruct us how we ought to behave toward God and
toward man." The chief of the Academy, whose philosophy concerning the
eternity of matter occupies a conspicuous place in the creed of American
heathens, had no such confidence in the sufficiency of his own powers of
discovering religious truth. "We can not know of ourselves what petition
will be pleasing to God, or what worship we should pay to him; but it is
necessary that a lawgiver should be sent from heaven to instruct us."
"Oh how greatly do I long to see that man!" He further declares that
"_this lawgiver must be more than man, that he may teach us the things
man can not know by his own nature_."[49] Whether this want of a
revelation from God was real, or merely imaginary, will appear by a
brief review of the opinions and practices of those who never enjoyed,
and of those who reject the light of God's revelation.
_They knew not God._ If there is any article of religion fundamental,
and indispensable to its very existence, it is the knowledge of God. It
is admitted by Rationalists that the spiritual faculties are designed to
lay hold on God. It has been proved in the previous chapter, and it will
be admitted by all but Atheists, that God is an Intelligent Being. And
further it has been proved that God is not everything and everybody,
but distinct from and supreme over all his works. Besides, in this
country at least, there will not be much difference of opinion as to the
propriety of a rational being adoring a brute, or a log of wood, or a
lump of stone. It will be allowed that such stupidity shows both
ignorance and folly. Now let us inquire into the knowledge of God
possessed by the people who have no vision.
The Chaldeans, the most ancient people of whom we have any account, and
who had among them the immediate descendants of Noah, and whatever
traditions of Noah's prophecies they preserved, were probably the best
instructed of the heathen. Yet we find that they gave up the worship of
God, adored the sun, and moon, and stars of heaven, and in process of
time degenerated still further, and worshiped dumb idols. From this rock
we were hewn; the common names of the days of the week, and especially
of the first day of the week, will forever keep up a testimony to the
necessity of that revelation which delivered our forefathers and us from
burning our children upon the devil's altars on Sun-days.
The Egyptians were reputed the most learned of mankind, and Egypt was
considered the cradle of the arts and sciences. In her existing
monuments, hieroglyphic inscriptions, and tomb paintings, we have
presented to us the materials for forming a more correct opinion of the
religion and life of the Egyptians than of any other ancient people; and
the investigation of these monuments is still adding to our information.
Infidel writers and lecturers have not hesitated to allege that Moses
merely taught the Israelites the religion of Egypt; and some have had
the hardihood to allege that the ten commandments are found written on
the pyramids, as an argument against the necessity of a revelation. If
the statement were true, it would by no means prove the conclusion.
Egypt was favored with divine revelations to several of her kings, and
enjoyed occasional visits from, or the permanent teachings of, such
prophets as Abraham, Jacob, Joseph, and Moses, for four hundred years; a
fact quite sufficient to account for her superiority to other heathen
nations, as well as for the existence of some traces of true religion on
her monuments. But the alleged fact is a falsehood. Some good moral
precepts are found on the Egyptian monuments, but the ten commandments
are not there. It may be charitably supposed that those who allege the
contrary never learned the ten commandments, or have forgotten them,
else they would have remembered that the first commandment is, "Thou
shalt have no other gods before me;" and that Pharaoh indignantly asks,
"Who is Jehovah that I should obey his voice? I know not God:" and that
the second is, "Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image," etc.,
and would have paused before alleging that these commands were engraved
on the very temples of idols, and by the priests of the birds, and
beasts, and images of creeping things which they adored. It is very
doubtful if they believed in the existence of one supreme God, as most
of the heathen did; but if they did, "they did not under any form,
symbol, or hieroglyphic, represent the idea of the unity of God," as is
fully proved by Wilkinson.[50] On the contrary, the monuments confirm
the satirical sketch of the poet,[51] as to the "monsters mad Egypt
worshiped; here a sea-fish, there a river-fish; whole towns adore a dog.
This place fears an ibis saturated with serpents; that adores a
crocodile. It is a sin to violate a leek or onion, or break them with a
bite." Cruel wars were waged between different towns, as Plutarch tells
us, because the people of Cynopolis would eat a fish held sacred by the
citizens of Latopolis. Bulls, and dogs, and cats, and rats, and
reptiles, and dung beetles, were devoutly adored by the learned
Egyptians. A Roman soldier, who had accidentally killed one of their
gods, a cat, was put to death for sacrilege.[52] Whenever a dog died,
every person in the house went into mourning, and fasted till night. So
low had the "great, the mighty and transcendent soul," been degraded
that there is a picture extant of one of the kings of Egypt worshiping
his own coffin! Such is man's knowledge of God without a revelation from
him.
The Greeks, from their early intercourse with Egypt, borrowed from them
most of their religion; but by later connections with the Hebrews, about
the time of Aristotle and Alexander, they gathered a few grains of truth
to throw into the heap of error. After the translation of the Scriptures
into Greek, in the reign of Ptolemy Philadelphus, any of their
philosophers who desired might easily have learned the knowledge of the
true God. But before this period we find little or no sense or truth in
their religion. And the same remarks will apply to the Romans. Their
gods were as detestable as they were numerous. Hesiod tells us they had
thirty thousand. Temples were erected to all the passions, fears, and
diseases to which humanity is subject. Their supreme god, Jupiter, was
an adulterer, Mars a murderer, Mercury a thief, Bacchus a drunkard,
Venus a harlot; and they attributed other crimes to their gods too
horrible to be mentioned. Such gods were worshiped, with appropriate
ceremonies, of lust, drunkenness, and bloodshed. Their most sacred
mysteries, carried on under the patronage of these licentious deities,
were so abominable and infamous, that it was found necessary, for the
preservation of any remnant of good order, to prohibit them.
It may be supposed that the human race is grown wiser now than in the
days of Socrates and Cicero, and that such abominations are no longer
possible. Turn your eyes, then, to India, and behold one hundred and
fifty millions of rational beings, possessed of "spiritual faculties,"
"insight," and "the religious sentiment," worshiping three hundred and
thirty millions of gods, in the forms of hills, and trees, and rivers,
and rocks, elephants, tigers, monkeys, and rats, crocodiles, serpents,
beetles, and ants, and monsters like to nothing in heaven or earth, or
under the earth. Take one specimen of all. There is "the lord of the
world," Juggernath. "When you think of the monster block of the idol,
with its frightfully grim and distorted visage, so justly styled the
Moloch of the East, sitting enthroned amid thousands of massive
sculptures, the representative emblems of that cruelty and vice which
constitute the very essence of his worship; when you think of the
countless multitudes that annually congregate there, from all parts of
India, many of them measuring the whole distance of their weary
pilgrimage with their own bodies; when you think of the merit-earning
assiduities constantly practiced by crowds of devotees and religious
mendicants, around the holy city, some remaining all day with their head
on the ground, and their feet in the air; others with their bodies
entirely covered with earth; some cramming their eyes with mud, and
their mouths with straw, while others lie extended in a puddle of water;
here one man lying with his foot tied to his neck, another with a pot of
fire on his breast, a third enveloped in a network of ropes; when,
besides these self-inflicted torments, you think of the frightful amount
of involuntary suffering and wretchedness arising from the exhaustion of
toilsome pilgrimages, the cravings of famine, and the scourgings of
pestilence; when you think of the day of the high festival--how the
horrid king is dragged forth from his temple, and mounted on his lofty
car, in the presence of hundreds of thousands, that cause the very earth
to shake with shouts of 'Victory to Juggernath, our Lord;' how the
officiating high priest, stationed in front of the elevated idol,
commences the public service by a loathsome pantomimic exhibition,
accompanied with the utterance of filthy, blasphemous songs, to which
the vast multitude at intervals respond, not in the strains of tuneful
melody, but in loud yells of approbation, united with a kind of hissing
applause; when you think of the carnage that ensues, in the name of
sacred offering--how, as the ponderous machine rolls on, grating harsh
thunder, one and another of the more enthusiastic devotees throw
themselves beneath the wheels, and are instantly crushed to pieces, the
infatuated victims of hellish superstition; when you think of the
numerous Golgothas that bestud the neighboring plain, where the dogs,
jackals and vultures seem to live on human prey; and of those bleak and
barren sands that are forever whitened with the skulls and bones of
deluded pilgrims which lie bleaching in the sun,"[53] you will be able
to see an awful force of meaning in the words of our text, and to
realize more fully the necessity of a revelation from God, for the
preservation of animal life to man. Literally, where there is no vision
the people _perish_. Man doth not live by bread only, but by every word
which proceedeth from the mouth of God.
Take one other illustration of ignorance of God in the minds of those
who close their eyes against the light of revelation--the heathen of
Europe and America, possessing that inspiration which is wide as the
world, looking abroad upon all the glorious works of the great Creator,
and declaring there is no God. On the other hand, we have men, possessed
of this same inspiration, deifying everything, and outrunning even the
Hindoos in the multitude of their divinities, declaring that every
stick, and stone, and serpent, and snail that crawls on the earth is
God, and making professions of holding spiritual communings with them
all. To crown the monument of folly, the chief of the Positive
Philosophy comes forth with a revelation from his spiritual faculties,
in which by way of improving on the proverb "both are best," and of
being sure of the truth, he unites Atheism, and Pantheism, and
Idolatry--teaches his child to worship idols, the youth to believe in
one God, and himself and other full-grown men to adore the "resultant of
all the forces capable of voluntarily contributing to the perfectioning
of the universe, _not forgetting his worthy friends, the animals_." To
such darkness are men justly condemned who shut their eyes against the
light of God's revelation. Where there is no vision the people perish
intellectually. He who turns away his ears from the truth must be turned
unto fables. "Hear ye and give ear, be not proud, for the Lord hath
spoken. Give glory to the Lord your God before he cause darkness, and
before your feet stumble upon the dark mountains, and while ye look for
light, he turn it into the shadow of death, and make it gross darkness."
_Without a revelation from God, the mind of man can attain to no
certainty regarding the most important of all his interests, the destiny
of his immortal soul._ He knows well--for every sickness, and sorrow,
and calamity declares it, and quick returning troubles will not allow
him to forget--that the Ruler of the world is offended with him; and
conscience tells him why. The sense of guilt is common to the human
race. This is, indeed, "the inspiration which knows no sect, no country,
no religion, no age; which is as wide as humanity." Reason asks herself,
Will God be always thus angry with me? Shall I always feel these pangs
of remorse for my sins? Will misery follow me forever, as I see and feel
that it does here? Or shall my soul exist under God's frowns, or perish
under his just sentence, even as my body perishes? Does the grave hide
forever all that I loved? Have they ceased to be? Shall we ever meet
again? Or must I say, "Farewell, farewell! An eternal farewell!" And in
a few days myself also cease to be? The only answer Reason gives
is--solemn silence.
The wisest of men could not tell. Who has not dropped a tear over the
dying words of Socrates, "I am going out of the world, and you are to
continue in it, but which of us has the better part is a secret to every
one but God." Cicero contended for the immortality of the soul against
the multitudes of philosophers who denied it in his day; yet, after
recounting their various opinions, he is obliged to say, "Which of these
is true, God alone knows; and which is most probable, a very great
question."[54] And Seneca, on a review of this subject, says:
"Immortality, however desirable, was rather promised than proved by
these great men."[55]
The multitude had but two ideas on the subject. Either their ghosts
would wander eternally in the land of shadows, or else they would pass
into a succession of other bodies, of animals or men. From the nakedness
and desolation of unclothed spirit, and the possibility which this
notion held out of some close contact with a holy and just judge, the
soul shrank back to the hope of the metempsychosis, and hoped rather to
dwell in the body of a brute, than be utterly unclothed and mingle with
spirits. This is the delusion cherished by the people of India and many
other lands to this day. How unsatisfactory to the dying sinner this
uncertainty. "Tell me," said a wealthy Hindoo, who had given all his
wealth to the Brahmins who surrounded his dying bed, that they might
obtain pardon for his sins, "Tell me what will become of my soul when I
die?" "Your soul will go into the body of a holy cow." "And after that?"
"It will pass into the body of the divine peacock." "And after that?"
"It will pass into a flower." "Tell me, oh! tell me," cried the dying
man, "where will it go last of all?" Where will it go last of all? Aye,
that is the question Reason can not answer.
The rejectors of the Bible here are as uncertain on this all-important
subject as the heathen of India. They have every variety of oracles, and
conjectures, and suppositions about the other world; but for their
guesses they offer no proof. When they give us their oracles as if they
were known truths, we are compelled to ask, How do you know? The only
thing in which they are agreed among themselves is in denying the
resurrection of the body; a point which they gathered from their heathen
classics. A poor, empty, naked, shivering, table-rapping spirit, obliged
to fly over the world at the sigh of any silly sewing girl, or the
bidding of some brazen-faced strumpet, is all that ever shall exist of
Washington, or Newton, in the scheme of one class of Bible rejectors. To
obtain rest from such a doom, others fly to the eternal tomb, and inform
us that the soul is simply an acting of the brain, and when the brain
ceases to act, the soul ceases also. Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow
we die. But even this hog philosophy is reasonable, compared with the
dogma of the large majority, that a man may blaspheme, swear, lie,
steal, murder, and commit adultery, and go straight to heaven--that
"many a swarthy Indian who bowed down to wood and stone--many a
grim-faced Calmuck who worshiped the great god of storms--many a Grecian
peasant who did homage to Phoebus Apollo when the sun rose or went
down--many a savage, his hands smeared all over with human
sacrifice--shall sit down with Moses and Jesus in the kingdom of
God."[56] To such wild unreason does the mind of man descend when it
rejects the Bible.
Life and immortality are brought to light by the gospel. Where there is
no vision, hope perishes. The only plausible creed for him who rejects
it is the eternal tomb, and the heart-chilling inscription: "Death is an
eternal sleep!"
_Without a revelation from God, men are as ignorant how to live, as how
to die._ They have no rule of life having either truth or authority to
direct them. Our Anglo-Saxon ancestors, of the purity of whose blood we
are so proud, trusted to their magical incantations for the cure of
diseases, for the success of their tillage, for the discovery of lost
property, for uncharming cattle and the prevention of casualties. One
day was useful for all things; another, though good to tame animals, was
baleful to sow seed. One day was favorable to the commencement of
business, another to let blood, and others wore a forbidding aspect to
these and other things. On this day they were to buy, on a second to
sell, on a third to hunt, on a fourth to do nothing. If a child was born
on such a day, it would live; if on another, its life would be sickly;
if on another, it would perish early.[57] Their descendants who reject
the Bible are fully as superstitious. Astrologers, and Mediums, and
Clairvoyants, in multitudes, find a profitable trade among them; and one
prominent anti-Bible lecturer will cure you of any disease you have, if
you will only inclose, in a letter, a lock of hair from the right
temple, and--a--five dollar bill.
The precepts of even the wisest men, and the laws of the best regulated
States, commanded or approved of vice. In Babylon prostitution was
compulsory on every female. The Carthaginian law required human
sacrifices. When Agathoclas besieged Carthage, two hundred children, of
the most noble families, were murdered by the command of the senate, and
three hundred citizens voluntarily sacrificed themselves to Saturn.[58]
The laws of Sparta required theft, and the murder of unhealthy
children. Those of ancient Rome allowed parents the power of killing
their children, if they pleased. At Athens, the capital of heathen
literature and philosophy, it was enacted "that infants which appeared
to be maimed should either be killed or exposed."[59]
Plato, dissatisfied with the constitution, made a scheme of one much
better, which he has left us in his Republic. In this great advance of
society, this heathen millennium, we find that there was to be a
community of women and of property, just as among our modern heathens.
Women's rights were to be maintained by having the women trained to war.
Children were still to be murdered, if convenience called for it. And
the young children were to be led to battle at a safe distance, "that
the young whelps might early scent carnage, and be inured to slaughter."
The teachings of all these philosophers were immoral. He may lie, says
Plato, who knows how to do it. Pride and the love of popular applause
were esteemed the best motives to virtue. Profane swearing was commanded
by the example of all their best writers and moralists. Oaths are
frequent in the writings of Plato and Seneca. The gratification of the
sensual appetites was openly taught. Aristippus taught that a wise man
might steal and commit adultery when he could. Unnatural crimes were
vindicated. The last dread crime--suicide--was pleaded for by Cicero and
Seneca as the mark of a hero; and Demosthenes, Cato, Brutus, and
Cassius, carried the means of self-destruction about them, that they
might not fall alive into the hands of their enemies.
The daily lives of these wisest of the heathen corresponded to their
teachings, so far at least as vice was concerned. The most notorious
vices, and even unnatural crimes, were practiced by them. The reader of
the classics does not need to be reminded that such vices are lauded in
the poems of Ovid, and Horace, and Virgil; that the poets were rewarded
and honored for songs which would not be tolerated for a moment in the
vilest theater of New York.
Recently some daily papers and broad-church preachers have taken to the
canonization of heathen saints; they denounce vigorously the bigotry of
any who will not open to them the gates of heaven, or who will, in
general, deny salvation to good heathens. But we do not deny salvation
to good heathens, or to good Jews, or to good Mohammedans, or to anybody
who is good. God is no respecter of persons; but in every nation, he
that feareth God and worketh righteousness is accepted of him. Nor are
we about to usurp Peter's keys, and lock anybody out of heaven, or into
it either; we are only acting as jurymen upon the life and conduct of
men held up to our children as noble examples of a good life, in their
classics, by heathens like themselves, and recommended now by Christian
clergymen, as fitter for the kingdom of God, than bad Christians; which
last may be very true, and so much the worse for the bad Christians. But
the question is not to be thus decided by comparisons, or by
generalities; we must have specified individual heathen saints. When,
however, we come to look for them, these saints and heroes prove to be
only fit for the penitentiary, according to the laws of any of our
States; and were they living now, and behaving themselves according to
their accustomed habits, the best of them would be fortunate if they got
there before they were tarred and feathered by an outraged public.
Socrates, Seneca, and the Emperor Marcus Aurelius, form the stock
specimens trotted out of the stables of heathen morality, for the
admiration and reverence of Christians in this nineteenth century. But
it has been well remarked of Socrates, that no American lady would live
with him a year without applying for a divorce, and getting it, too,
upon very sufficient grounds. Seneca, who wrote so beautifully upon
morals, was an adulterer; and, moreover, prostituted his pen to write a
defense of a man who murdered his mother. And Marcus Aurelius directed
the murder of thousands of innocent men and women, causing young ladies
to be stripped naked and torn to pieces by wild beasts, in the public
amphitheater, and others to be roasted alive in red-hot iron chairs, for
no other offense but that they avowed themselves Christians. Such are
these boasted saints and heroes of heathendom.
What, then, must the lives of the vulgar have been? In the very height
of Roman civilization, Trajan caused ten thousand men to hew each other
to pieces for the amusement of the Roman people; and noble ladies
feasted their eyes on the spectacle. In the Augustan age, when the
invincible armies of Rome gave law to half the world, fathers were in
the habit of mutilating their sons rather than see them subjected to the
slavery and terrible despotism of their officers. What, then, must the
state of the people of the vanquished countries have been? Whole
provinces were frequently given over to fire and sword by generals not
reputed inhuman; and such was the progress of war and anarchy, and their
never-failing accompaniments, famine and pestilence, that, in the reign
of Gallienus, large cities were left utterly desolate, the public roads
became unsafe from immense packs of wolves, _and it was computed that
one-half of the human race perished_. This was just before the
toleration of Christianity. God would allow the wisest and bravest of
mankind to try the experiment of neglecting his gospel and living
without his revelation, until all mankind might be convinced that such a
course is suicidal to nations. "Where there is no vision, the people
perish."
A brief reference to the codes of morals which the modern opposers of
the Bible would substitute for it in Christian lands shall conclude our
proof of the necessity of such a revelation of God's law to man, as
shall guide his life to peace and happiness.
The family is the basis of the commonwealth. Destroy family confidence
and family government, and you destroy society, subvert civil
government, and bring destruction on the human race. Mankind are so
generally agreed on this subject, that adultery, even among heathens, is
regarded and punished as a crime. The whole school of Infidel writers
and anti-Bible lecturers, male and female, apologize for, and vindicate
this crime. Lord Herbert, the first of the English Deists, taught that
the indulgence of lust and anger is no more to be blamed than the thirst
occasioned by the dropsy, or the drowsiness produced by lethargy. Mr.
Hobbes asserted that every man has a right to all things, and may
lawfully get them if he can. Bolingbroke taught that man is merely a
superior animal, which is just the modern development theory, and that
his chief end is to gratify the appetites and inclinations of the flesh.
Hume, whose argument against miracles is so frequently in the mouths of
American Infidels, taught that adultery must be practiced, if men would
obtain all the advantages of life, and that if practiced frequently, it
would by degrees come to be thought no crime at all--a prediction as
true as Holy Writ; the fulfillment of which hundreds of the citizens of
Cincinnati can attest, who have heard a lecturer publicly denounce the
Bible as an immoral book, and in the same address declare that if a
woman was married to a man, in her opinion of inferior development, it
was her duty to leave him and live with another. This duty is by no
means neglected, as the numerous divorces, spiritual marriages,
separations, and elopements among this class of persons, testify.
Voltaire held that it was not agreeable to policy to regard it as a vice
in a moral sense. Rousseau, a liar, a thief, and a debauched profligate,
according to his own printed "Confessions," held the same high opinion
of the inner light as our American Spiritualists. "_I have only to
consult myself_," said he, "_concerning what I do. All that I feel to be
right, is right._"[60]
In fact, the purport of this inner light doctrine is exactly as Rousseau
expressed it, and amounts simply to this, _Do what you like._
On this lawless principle these men acted. Take, for example, the chief
saint on the calendar of American Infidelity, whose birthday is annually
celebrated by a festival in this city, and in whose honor hundreds of
men, who would like to be reputed decent citizens, parade the streets of
Cincinnati in solemn procession--Thomas Paine--the author of "The Age of
Reason," as his character is depicted by one who was his helper in the
work of blaspheming God and seducing men, and whose testimony,
therefore, in the eyes of an Infidel, is unimpeachable--William Carver.
"MR. THOMAS PAINE: I received your letter, dated the 25th
ult., in answer to mine, dated November 21, and after minutely
examining its contents, I found that you had taken to the
pitiful subterfuge of _lying_ for your defense. You say that
you paid me four dollars per week for your board and lodging,
during the time you were with me, prior to the first of June
last; which was the day that I went up, by your order, to
bring you to York, from New Rochelle. It is fortunate for me
that I have a living evidence that saw you give me five
guineas, and no more, in my shop, at your departure at that
time; but you said you would have given me more, but that you
had no more with you at present. You say, also, that you found
your own liquors during the time you boarded with me; but you
should have said, 'I found only a small part of the liquor I
drank during my stay with you; this part I purchased of John
Fellows, which was a demi-john of brandy, containing four
gallons,' and this did not serve you three weeks. This can be
proved, and I mean not to say anything I can not prove, for I
hold truth as a precious jewel. It is a well-known fact that
you drank one quart of brandy per day, at my expense, during
the different times you boarded with me; the demi-john above
mentioned excepted, and the last fourteen weeks you were sick.
Is not this a supply of liquor for dinner and supper." * * *
"I have often wondered that a French woman and three children
should leave France and all their connections, to follow
Thomas Paine to America. Suppose I were to go to my native
country, England, and take another man's wife and three
children of his, and leave my wife and children in this
country, what would be the natural conclusion in the minds of
the people, but that there was some criminal connection
between the woman and myself?"[61]
The death of this man was horrible.
The Philadelphia _Presbyterian_ says: "There is now in Philadelphia a
lady who saw Paine on his dying-bed. She informs us that Paine's
physician also attended her father's family in the city of New York,
where in her youth she resided, and that on one occasion whilst at their
house, he proposed to her to accompany him to the Infidel's dwelling,
which she did. It was a miserable hovel in what was then Raisin Street.
She had often seen Paine before, a drunken profligate, wandering about
the streets, from whom the children always fled in terror. On entering
his room she found him stretched on his miserable bed. His visage was
lean and haggard, and wore the expression of great agony. He expressed
himself without reserve as to his fears of death, and repeatedly called
on the name of Jesus, begging for mercy. The scene was appalling, and so
deeply engraven on her mind, that nothing could obliterate
it."--_Philadelphia Presbyterian_, March 17, 1857.
The physician's statement has been common, many years, and corresponds
with the above. So do Grant Thorburn's representations agree with both.
And the piece published by Rev. Jas. Inglis in his "Waymarks in the
Wilderness," which has proved so distasteful to the Paineites here,
substantially agrees with all the others. It is only the truthfulness of
it which is so offensive. It may be of interest to state, that the
facts therein named are the recollections of old Dr. McClay, a Baptist
minister of known power and veracity. The fact of Paine's miserable, and
cowardly, and man-forsaken end is too true. Let no one be foolhardy
enough to follow them, rejecting to do it, a fourfold cord of strong
testimony; nay, we may add, a stronger cord of fivefold testimony, as
Paine's nurse testifies like the rest.
In the East these facts are so notorious that even Infidels disown
allegiance or attachment to Paine, if they wish to be considered
respectable. Some of the severest denunciations against him, which we
ever heard, have been from Infidels. Indeed this is more than plain from
the very fact of all the Infidels having forsaken Paine on his
death-bed. Who was his doctor? A Christian. Who was his nurse? A
Christian? Who were his most constant visitors and sympathizers?
Thorburn, McClay, etc., Christians. They went, for mercy's sake;
Infidels, having no "bowels of mercies," kept away. Carver, Jefferson,
etc., were far from him in his extreme hour.
The testimony of Mons. Tronchin, a Protestant physician from Geneva, who
attended Voltaire on his death-bed, was: That to see all the furies of
Orestes, one only had to be present at the death of Voltaire. ("_Pour
voir toutes les furies d'Oreste, il n'y avait qu'a se trouver a la mort
de Voltaire._") "Such a spectacle," he adds, "would benefit the young,
who are in danger of losing the precious helps of religion." The
Marechal de Richelieu, too, was so terrified at what he saw that he left
the bedside of Voltaire, declaring that "the sight was too horrible for
endurance."[62]
And these are the saints, and apostles, and heroes of Infidelity, to
whose memories Infidels make orations and festivals, and whose writings
are reprinted in scores of editions, not only over Christendom, but
even in India, to teach mankind how to live and how to die!
Such are the lives and deaths of those who denounce the Bible as an
immoral Book, and blaspheme the God of the Bible as too unholy to be
reverenced or adored! "But, beloved, remember ye the words which were
spoken before of the apostles of our Lord Jesus Christ; how that they
told you there should be mockers in the last time, who should walk after
their own ungodly lusts. These be they who separate themselves, sensual,
having not the Spirit." In the Free Love Institute about to be
established in our vicinity, we shall have the full development of these
filthy principles and practices.
Let fathers and husbands look to this matter. Especially let ungodly men
set to work and devise some law of man capable of binding those who
renounce the law of God, and with it all human authority. For there can
be no law of man, unless there is a revealed law of God. "What right,"
says the Pantheist, the Fourierist, the Spiritualist, the Atheist, "what
right have you to command me? Right and wrong are only matters of
feeling, and your feelings are no rule to me. The will of the majority
is only the law of might, and if I can evade it, or overcome it, my will
is as good as theirs. Oaths are only an idle superstition; there is no
judge, no judgment, no punishment for the false swearer." Take away the
moral sanction of law, and the sacredness of oaths, and what basis have
you left for any government, save the point of the bayonet? Take away
the revealed law of God, and you leave not a vestige of any authority to
any human law. "We hold these truths to be self-evident," said the
immortal framers of the basis of the American Confederation, "that all
men are created equal; that they are _endowed by their Creator_ with
certain unalienable rights." It was well said. The rights of God are the
only basis of the rights of man. One of the most sagacious of modern
statesmen has borne his testimony to this fundamental truth--that
religion is the only basis of social order--in words as trenchant as the
guillotine which suggested them. "It is not," says Napoleon, "the
mystery of incarnation which I perceive in religion, but the mystery of
social order. It attaches to heaven an idea of equality which prevents
the rich from being massacred by the poor."[63]
Once in modern times, the rejectors of the Bible had opportunity to try
the experiment of ruling a people on a large scale, and giving the world
a specimen of an Infidel Republic. You have heard one of them here
express his admiration of that government, and declare his intention to
present a public vindication of it. Of course, as soon as practicable,
that which they admire they will imitate, and the scenes of Paris and
Lyons will be re-enacted in Louisville and Cincinnati. Our Bibles will
be collected and burned on a dung-heap. Death will be declared an
eternal sleep. God will be declared a fiction. Religious worship will be
renounced; the Sabbath abolished; and a prostitute, crowned with
garlands, will receive the adorations of the mayors and councilmen of
Cincinnati and Newport. The reign of terror will commence. The
guillotine shall take its place on the Fifth Street Market place.
Proscription will follow proscription. Women will denounce their
husbands, and children their parents, as bad citizens, and lead them to
the ax; and well-dressed ladies, filled with savage ferocity, will seize
the mangled bodies of their murdered countrymen between their teeth. The
Licking will be choked with the bodies of men, and the Ohio dyed with
their blood; and those whose infancy has sheltered them from the fire of
the rabble soldiery will be bayoneted as they cling to the knees of
their destroyers.[64] The common doom of man commuted for the violence
of the sword, the bayonet, the sucking boat, and the guillotine, the
knell of the nation tolled, and the world summoned to its execution and
funeral, will need no preacher to expound the text, _Where there is no
vision, the people perish._
FOOTNOTES:
[38] Strauss' Life of Jesus, 64, 74, 87.
[39] Bauer's Hebrew Mythology.
[40] See Pearson on Infidelity, page 93, 40th edition; and Agassiz's
Penikese lectures.
[41] Newman's Phases of Faith, 157.
[42] Carlyle's Past and Present, 307.
[43] Discourse on Religion, p. 209.
[44] Carlyle's Past and Present, p. 312.
[45] Ib. p. 37.
[46] The Soul, p. 342.
[47] Ib. p. 359.
[48] Parker's Discourses, 171, 33.
[49] Plato. Republic. Books IV. and VI., and Alcibiades II.
[50] Manners and Customs of Ancient Egyptians, Second Series, Vol. II.
page 176, et passim.
[51] Juvenal, Satire XV.
[52] Diodorus Siculus, Book I.
[53] Duff's India, page 222.
[54] Tusc. Quæst. lib. 1.
[55] Seneca, Ep. 102.
[56] Parker's Discourse, 83.
[57] Turner's Anglo-Saxons, b. vii. chap. 13.
[58] Diodorus Siculus, b. xx. chap. 14.
[59] Aristotle, Polit. lib. vii. chap. 17.
[60] Horne's Introduction of the Scriptures, Vol. I. page 25.
[61] Printed repeatedly in New York newspapers, and given entire in the
report of the discussion between Dr. Berg and Mr. Barker. W. S. Young,
Philadelphia, 1854.
[62] _The Occident_, 20th August, 1874, San Francisco.
[63] Ardeches' Life of Napoleon I. 222.
[64] Horne's Introduction to the Scriptures, Vol. I. page 26, where
ample references to contemporary French writers are given.