As a system Christianity has had its day. Long ago it may have served a
good purpose, but after eighteen hundred years it is worn threadbare and
useless. If some of its milder tenets still cling to and fit our vast
mediocrity, it is equally certain that the intellectual giants have
moulted it as the birds moult their plumage in a dying year, and have
taken on the bright new garments of higher thought, the spring plumage
of intellectual liberty.
When I heard that the Bible was going to be revised I felt very glad,
because I thought there was a wide field of usefulness open to somebody
right there; and I concluded to do all I could to help it along. I
understood that they wanted the substance retained as it was, with the
language made more as we use language now.
So I began my revision in this way: "Good morning, Moses, I hear that
you have some gods in this country. Do you know anything about it?"
"Oh, yes, I'm the head god's head man." "You are?"
"Yes, I had a talk with the head god--the top one of the three (we are
down to three here now), and he told me to tell people what a good god
he is, and that they must all praise him up for it."
"He did! Well is that all he said?"
"Oh, no, he told me to tell them that he is the only God, and is the
kind father of all, and loves all alike, and that they must all just
trust in him and he will take good care of them."
"I thought you said a while ago that there were three of these gods; now
this one says he is the only one. Is there trouble in the cabinet?"
"No, there are three, but there is one. See?"
"Well, no, I can't say that I do. But no matter, the rest of that about
the father business was pretty good. That was the best I ever heard. But
do you know that the very last man I talked with said that this god was
partial to some folks and treated some others pretty shabbily."
"Oh, that is not so; my god is no respecter of persons; that's his very
strongest hold. He treats rich and poor just alike, only if anything he
leans a little toward the poor."
"That is pretty clever. But what else did he tell you in that talk?"
"Well, he told me to tell the people, 'Thou shalt not kill;' and
afterwards, at another time, he told me to take a lot of my men, and
go over there to that town just across, and kill all the men and boys I
could find, and if they fought hard for their homes, and I seemed to be
getting the worst of it for a little while, not to be afraid, he'd be
with me, and he'd see that I came out all right. Oh, he's the gayest old
god you ever saw to help in a fight."
"Well, yes, that was pretty clever to you; but isn't he the god of that
village too!"
"Oh, yes; but you see one of the men that lives over there went and
worshipped another god one day, and this one didn't like it."
"I see; but if he treats them all that way, don't you think it is rather
natural that they should go and hunt up another god to admire?"
Well, while I was waiting for Moses to answer this question, I heard
another man say that only a day or two previously this very fellow had
burned up their homes, and murdered a good many people who had never
injured him; and that he had dashed out the brains of the innocent
children, and had actually sold the sweet, pure young girls to his
brutal soldiers. Since I heard that, my mind has been so occupied with
some other little matters that my revision has not gone any farther, and
somebody else has got one out; so I don't know that I shall ever finish
mine. It does not seem to be very encouraging work any way; and I am
afraid that people would find fault with its scholarship if it should be
finished. Theological scholarship and common-sense always did disagree.
A man who is well vaccinated with either will never catch the other.