The Christian Bible, as now accepted by Protestants (for it must be
borne in mind that it has been altered and amended on various occasions,
thus altering the canonical Word of God), is composed of thirty-nine
books in the Old-Testament department, and twenty-seven in the New; the
whole constituting a multifarious collection of old oracles, obsolete
dogmas, Oriental legends, ancient myths, religious reveries, beautiful
precepts, poetry, heart-touching pathos, wild fancies, preceptive
admonitions, martial exploits, domestic regulations, broken, disjointed
narratives, ritual rules, and spiritual ideas; including also cosmogony,
history, theocracy, theology, annals, romance, prophecy, rhapsody,
psalmody, mythology, allegory, dreams, tradition, legislation, ethics,
politics, and religion, all jumbled together without arrangement,
division, classification, or order; committed to writing in various
ages and nations and countries, and by various writers, extending over
a period of several thousand years, including nearly every form of
composition known to human ingenuity,--gay, grave, tragical, logical,
philosophical, religious, and romantic,--emanating from Gods, angels,
men, and devils; recorded, some of it in mountains, some of it in caves,
some of it on the banks of rivers, some of it in forests, some of it in
deserts, and some of it under the shadow of the Pyramids. It commenced
on Mount Horeb, and ended in the isle of Patmos.
From such circumstances we are not surprised to learn that its
chronology is unreliable, chimerical, and incorrect; its history
contradictory and incredible; its philosophy fallacious; its logic
unsound; its cosmogony foolish and absurd; its astronomy fragmentary and
childish; its religion pagan-derived; its morals defective, sometimes
selfish, often extravagant, and in some cases pernicious. Its
government, both temporal and spiritual, is, to some extent, both
barbarous and tyrannical; while its theocracy is mere brute force.
It presents us with narratives without authorities, facts and figures
without dates, and records without names. We find no order in its
arrangement, no system in its subjects or the manner of presenting
them, and no connection in its paragraphs, and often no agreement in its
statements, and no sense in its logic. It seems to teach nearly
every thing upon nearly every question of morals which it touches. It
apparently both sanctions and condemns nearly every species of crime to
which it refers, and pours fulsome laudations upon the heads of some
of the most bloody-minded and licentious men,--such as David, Solomon,
&c.,--and holds them up as examples of true practical morality. It is
often dark, ambiguous, and mysterious, as well as contradictory, not
only in its lessons of morality, but in its account of the simplest
occurrences, thus rendering it comparatively worthless as a moral guide;
inasmuch as it is much easier to find out what is right and what is
not without going to the Bible, than it is to find out what the Bible
teaches upon the subject, or what it intends to teach in any given case.
With respect to war, slavery, polygamy, and the use of intoxicating
liquors, for example, it is much easier to determine whether they are
right or wrong by the moral fitness of things than whether they are
scriptural or anti-scriptural; while it is silent upon many crimes which
now infest society. If we are compelled to determine the character of
some actions without going to the Bible, why not that of all other moral
actions and duties? Edmund Burke says of the Bible, "It is necessary to
sort out what is intended as example, and what only as narrative; what
is to be understood literally, and what figuratively, where one precept
is to be controlled and modified by another; what is temporary, and what
of perpetual obligation; what is appropriate to one state or set of men,
and what is the general duty of men in all ages." Now, who can not see
that all this must require a quality of mind capable of determining or
learning moral principles and moral duties without recurrence to the
Bible? And it must require a vast amount of time to accomplish this
task, all of which is lost, inasmuch as it is consuming time in making
the Bible conform to what you have already learned of right outside
its pages,--time that might be much better employed. Such are the moral
aspects of the Bible. But it also has its beauties, which we need not
occupy much space in depicting, as we have fifty thousand clergymen in
this country who attend faithfully to that matter. Suffice it to say,
that portions of it are characterized by a high-toned spirituality,
other portions by a deep, heart-stirring pathos. And then we have
manifested in other parts the most devout piety, while the books of the
prophets often breathe forth a spirit of the most elevating poetry. And
there is scarcely a book, or even a chapter, in the whole Bible, that
does not evince a spirit of religious devotion, and an effort for the
right, though often misdirected. Taken as a whole, the Bible may be
regarded as an exposition of the condition of science, morals, religion,
government, and domestic polity of the era in which it was written, and
suited to the temporal and spiritual wants of the people of that age,
for whom it was written, _but not for this age_. When regarded in this
light, and as simply a human production of the best minds of the age
and times in which it was written, many portions of it can be read with
interest and instruction. But when read, as it has been for centuries,
as a perfect, divine composition, designed for all time and as a
finality in faith and practice and moral progress, it becomes a
stumbling-block in the path of progress, an embargo upon free thought,
a fetter upon the soul, a fog of bewilderment to the mind, and a
drag-chain to the moral and intellectual reformation of the world.