The one great differential mark between man and the brutes is
his higher development of brain power, by which he is enabled to
discriminate between right and wrong, or good and evil, and thus to
improve his bodily and social condition. The individual who obstinately
refuses to avail himself of the great mental power within him not only
deprives himself of the greatest pleasure in life, but also allows
himself to sink to the level of the brutes from which he evolved,
exhibiting at the same time a gross want of gratitude to the being
who endowed him with so lofty an attribute. On the other hand, he who
cultivates his mental faculties, and uses them for his own improvement
and advancement, and also that of his fellows, fulfils the highest
mission of man, and continually shows his deep gratitude to his
mysterious benefactor.
To think is the grandest faculty of man. To think logically and
well ought to be his noblest aspiration. To prevent, by any means
whatever, the individual from exercising his right to think, and from
giving expression to his thoughts, is a direct outrage upon the great
author of us all, upon the individual himself, and also upon the
whole human race. The greatest thinker of modern times, John Stuart
Mill, says, “The peculiar evil of silencing the expression of an
opinion is that it is robbing the human race, posterity as well as the
existing generation; those who dissent from the opinion still more
than those who hold it. If the opinion is right they are deprived of
the opportunity of exchanging error for truth; if wrong, they lose
what is almost as great a benefit, the clearer perception and livelier
impression of truth, produced by its collision with error. No one can
be a great thinker who does not recognise that, as a thinker, it is
his first duty to follow his intellect to whatever conclusions it may
lead. Truth gains more even by the errors of one who with due study
and preparation thinks for himself, than by the true opinions of those
who only hold them because they do not suffer themselves to think ...
complete liberty of contradicting and disproving our opinion is the
very condition which justifies us in assuming its truth for purposes of
action; and on no other terms can a being with human faculties have any
rational assurance of being right.”
We claim the right to think upon any and every subject, and also to
express our thoughts before the world, in spite of the menace held out
to us by those whose interests conflict with any honest expression of
opinion. There is no tribunal but that of reason to which we possibly
can submit any theory or proposition. To talk of faith as opposed to
reason is to speak without seriously thinking. Such faith is but a
weird phantom that haunts the irresolute and credulous unthinker, but
which really has no existence at all. A man may say that he believes
something entirely opposed to reason, but he deceives himself, for it
is quite impossible to believe what does not appear to the mind to be
in accordance with reason. Such a man accepts, but does not believe.
We have faith in the existence of the island of Otaheite, although
we have never been there ourselves. Geographers tell us that such an
island exists on the other side of the world; and we have full faith
in such an existence, because it is in accordance with reason. But if
we were told that the king of Otaheite had never been born, but had,
like Topsy, ‘grow’d,’ or that he and his subjects, instead of talking,
crowed like cocks, or brayed like donkeys, we should not believe it,
because it would be contrary to reason. Sensible and thoughtful people
will, therefore, not accept anything as truth that does not accord with
reason and I ask you tonight to follow me in my endeavour to submit the
two important dogmas of my lecture to the test of reason, in the full
belief that you are as anxious as myself to arrive at a reasonable and
true conclusion regarding them.
The doctrines of the creation and fall are, as it were, the foundations
upon which the huge superstructure of Christianity has been founded.
Take away these fundamental doctrines, and the whole fabric totters
to the ground; for without a fall there can be no possible need for a
redemption, and the etceteras of the religion, such as the miraculous
conception and ascension, baptism, and the eucharistic feast, vanish
into thin air as vain imaginations and things of naught.
It cannot be too clearly and forcibly insisted upon that no fall
necessitates no redemption, for the proposition is self-evident, and
thus incapable of contradiction. If, therefore, we find the story of
the creation and fall, as given to us in the first three chapters
of Genesis, to be credible and reasonable, then our duty, upon
another occasion, will be to examine the evidence for and against the
subsequent theories of the religion, in order to discover whether they
also are credible and reasonable. If, on the other hand, we find the
story to be incredible and absurd, it will be our duty to reject the
whole Christian scheme that has emanated from it. Our business at the
present time is with these fundamental doctrines of creation and the
fall, and our sole object is the elucidation of the truth, no matter
whether it should be palatable or not to our minds. No sensible man
can desire to retain that which is not true, for no system that is not
founded on truth can be of any permanent service to the human race, but
must on the contrary produce most pernicious results.
Having thus clearly explained my premisses, I shall now proceed to the
examination of the first three chapters of Genesis, and shall divide
my text into the two natural divisions suggested in the authorised
version. The first chapter and first three verses of the second chapter
contain what is known as the Elohistic narrative, so called on account
of the deity being throughout designated Elohim—אלהים, the plural of
Eloh (אלוה), or Elyah (אליה), a compound word made up of El (אל), a
ram, and Yah (יה), an abbreviation of Yahouh (יהוה), the future tense
of the verb Hahouh (הוה), to be. Eloh literally means ‘the ram will
be,’ and is used to signify the ram-sun, the sun-god, or the sun in
the zodiacal sign _Aries_, at the vernal equinox; the plural form,
Elohim, being used to signify the ram-suns, or the six summer months of
the year, in which the ram and the sun are together, from equinox to
equinox. El signifies ram, or god, alone, or without the sun, in the
winter period, and is always used to designate the evil principle, the
wicked god, or the winter period, in contradistinction to Eloh, the
ram-sun of the vernal equinox, and Elohim, the ram-suns of the summer
months, the good principle, or the good gods. In this first narrative
of the creation Elohim is rendered ‘God’ in the authorised version,
though in other parts of the Bible it is rendered ‘gods,’ ‘men,’ or
‘angels.’ The remainder of the second and the third chapters contain
the second, or Jehovistic narrative, so called on account of the deity
being designated throughout, Yahouh, or Jehovah (so pronounced by
Christians) Elohim (יהוה אלהים), rendered in the authorised version
‘the Lord God.’ That these two accounts were not written by one person
will become clear enough as we proceed in our examination, in which the
rendering of the authorised version will be strictly adhered to.
According to the first narrative, god (Elohim) created the heavens and
the earth and all they contain in six ordinary days, and rested from
his work on the seventh day. It has been asserted by some zealous but
not over scrupulous Christians that days of twenty four hours’ duration
were not meant by the writer, but that the word יום (day) signifies an
enormous lapse of time; but it is quite clear to anyone with average
intelligence that an ordinary day was meant, or else there would have
been no use in saying that the evening and the morning were the first
day. Moreover, we are distinctly told in Exodus XX. 10, 11, that we
are to keep the seventh day as a holiday, “for in six days the Lord
made heaven and earth, the sea and all that is in them, and rested the
seventh day.” We therefore have here the creation of the world, with
day and night, but no sun, in one day, which we must admit at once is
an absurdity, for it is beyond all doubt scientifically proved that
this world could never have existed for one moment without the sun
round which it revolves, and our common sense tells us plainly that
without a sun there could never have been days and nights, or evenings
and mornings.
On the second day we are told that god created the firmament, and
called it heaven, and that this firmament separated the waters above
from those below, which clearly proves that the writer had no other
conception of the universe than that it was limited above to the height
of the clouds, and bounded below by the earth itself. The third day
was set apart for the gathering together of the waters into seas and
rivers, and for the creation of the vegetable kingdom, which again is
contradictory of all known scientific facts, for there was still no
sun in existence. At last, on the fourth day, the sun was created, as
also the moon and stars, all being placed in the firmament, between
the clouds and the earth, for the sole purpose of acting as lamps and
marking time for this world. The writer evidently imagined that the
only object of the heavenly orbs is to light up this world, to divide
our day from our night, and to limit our seasons, being, apparently,
ignorant of the fact that our days and seasons are regulated by the
motions of the earth itself, quite irrespective of the movements of the
celestial bodies. He was also clearly under the impression that the sun
was, after our earth, the largest body in the universe, the moon being
next, and the stars the smallest; whereas the sun is five hundred times
larger than the earth and all the planets and their moons put together;
while the earth is about forty nine times larger in bulk than the moon;
and some of the stars are immensely larger than our sun, and all of
them, moreover, suns themselves.
It is sufficiently evident from this account that the world had been in
existence for three days and three nights before the sun was made, and
that vegetation had in the meantime been produced, which is, we know,
an absurdity. There are some ingenious individuals who have declared
that this is quite possible, for there are, they say, lights that are
unconnected with the sun, and that the writer evidently alluded to
these faint glimmerings; but I assert confidently that, leaving out of
the question the light derived from the stars, so far as we know from
science, there is no light known which is not either directly produced
from the sun, or a reflection of the sun’s light from some other object.
On the fifth day were created fishes, birds, and mammals in the form
of whales. Now there has been so far no creation of land animals
except birds, and yet the writer declares that whales were made, being
clearly quite ignorant of the fact that whales are not true fishes, but
mammals, belonging to the sub-kingdom Mammalia, to which belong also
horses, cows, apes and men. Whales were not evolved until long after
creeping animals, such as lizards, serpents, etc., and took to the
water again after having been, in the parent form, long accustomed to
dry land, just in the same manner as did the walrus, porpoise, sea-cow,
dolphin and seal, all of which are mammals. It was not until the next
(sixth) day that creeping animals were created, according to Genesis,
and yet we know well enough that they slowly evolved from molluscs, or
soft-bodied animals, at a very early period, ages before such species
as whales and cattle existed. On the very same day, according to the
narrative, god formed an androgynous, or hermaphrodite man, having two
sexes, and being the fac-simile of himself. Many ancient races believed
that their god was androgynous, and no doubt the writer of this account
held the same opinion, regarding the good principle of the summer
months, or Elohim, as a bi-sexual and reproductive deity. If this be
not the correct view of the matter, it would be interesting to know
which of the two sexes the god of Genesis partakes of.
On the seventh day god rested from his work; but we do not find any
record of his having done anything to cause fatigue, except giving
utterance to his fiat day by day.
This story is so palpably absurd as to need no argument to prove it so,
were it not for the fact that certain crafty persons, seeing the utter
impossibility of reconciling it with science and reason, have seen fit
to invent new interpretations of the original, in order to give it an
appearance of truth. One sect maintains that the days were epochs, and
not ordinary days, which, if it were true, would merely augment the
difficulty by making the earth to have existed, with vegetation, for
ages instead of days, without the sun; but we have already seen that
this theory will not hold ground for a moment.
Another more cunning class of religionists have propounded the
hypothesis that the whole story is meant to be an epitome of what
occurred at the origin of the universe and life, and that ordinary days
were really meant, and purposely utilised to epitomise long periods of
time, as was customary with ancient writers, who frequently availed
themselves of poets’ licence in this manner. This theory is _primâ
facie_ a plausible one, and has, no doubt, satisfied many restless and
thoughtless spirits amongst us; but in reality it differs but little,
if at all, from the preceding hypothesis, both leaving us in much the
same position. They declare that the very same order is maintained in
the narrative as that adopted by scientists; that both agree that the
earth was formed first, and then, in the following order, vegetation,
fishes, birds, beasts of the field, and man. We know well enough,
however, that the sun is absolutely necessary for the existence of the
vegetable kingdom; that birds did not appear before reptiles and worms,
but long after them; and that placental mammals made their appearance,
not before creeping animals, and kangaroos, opossums and others of the
marsupial species, but many ages after them.
In direct contradiction of this fable in Genesis, we learn from science
that our solar system once existed in a condition of highly attenuated
nebulous vapour; and that in the course of millions of years this huge
chaotic mass of matter, with its sum of force or energy, subject alike
to the laws of gravitation and transformation, gradually condensed, and
became moulded into cosmic order, forming in process of time a number
of rotating spherical nebular masses, in a state of intense heat, owing
to the shock of their recently united atoms. These spheres gradually
cooled by radiation, consequently contracting and becoming possessed
of a more rapid rotary movement, throwing off from their equatorial
regions large rings of vapour, which in their turn also condensed, and,
under the influence of the same two laws, formed separate spheres for
themselves. Thus gradually came into existence our sun, planets and
moons.
In the course of time, as our earth cooled down, large volumes of
water were precipitated on the surface, causing an enormous wear and
tear of the now solid rock of the earth’s crust, which eventually gave
rise to depositions of various kinds of earth grits, in layers, one
above the other; which strata have been divided by geologists into
periods, according to various peculiarities observed in the course
of their deposition. In the earliest of these periods, owing to the
gradual change that took place in the relative proportions of the
atmospheric gases, and to the great decrease in temperature, a peculiar
combination of the molecular atoms of the earth’s substance took place,
which resulted in the formation of an albuminous substance, called
protoplasm, possessing the power of absorption, assimilation, and
reproduction by fission, or, in other words, developing the property
called life. Under the influence of the laws of heredity and selection
this primordial germ of life gradually developed into higher and
still higher organic forms of existence, from Amœbæ to Gastrœada, or
molluscs with mouths; next to Vermes, or worm life; then to Vertebrata,
or back-boned animals; through fishes; amphibians, living both in
and out of water; reptiles, from which eventually evolved birds; and
marsupials; up to placental mammals, such as whales, quadrupeds, apes
and men. The gradual evolution of these species occupied many millions
of years before the date of the creation in Genesis (B.C. 4004),
during which period the face of the earth underwent manifold and great
changes.
Now, in the name of common sense and reason, does this hypothesis
agree with and corroborate, as it is said to do by some divines, the
1st Bible story of creation, in any manner at all? I maintain that the
man who replies in the affirmative does an injustice to his reasoning
faculties and outrages the common sense of his fellows. The theory of
creation is absolutely opposed to that of evolution on every point.
Now let us examine the second narrative, as given in the second and
third chapters of Genesis. Here we have a direct contradiction of the
story in the first chapter; for we are told that god created the earth,
the heavens, vegetation and man, but not woman, all in one day. We are
also told that there had been no rain upon the earth, and yet that
“there went up a mist from the earth,” which we know is impossible.
“But,” say the orthodox, “everything is possible with god.” The reply
of the evolutionist is, “Can god, then, make a stick with one end
only?” God next planted a garden, in which he placed his newly made
man, after giving him instructions to eat of every tree within it,
except the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, the fruit of which
was not to be touched, and the penalty of disobedience being instant
death. Then, in fresh contradiction of the first narrative, beasts of
the field and birds were created, after man; after which Adam, the
man, named them all; but how he acquired the power of speech necessary
for such a feat is not recorded. For absurdity the next part of the
narrative exceeds all that has preceded it. God created cattle and
birds in abundance, but yet could not manufacture a suitable partner
for the man; so he adopted the strange device of taking from Adam’s
body, while he slept, one of his ribs, with which he made a woman. Now
it must strike every thoughtful man and woman that this act was the
very acme of stupidity, for surely it would have been far easier to
have created the woman at once by another fiat, or to have created a
spare rib with which to make the woman. To attribute such conduct to
the great author is surely the height of irreverence.
It is quite evident that both these stories were not written by one
author, and that both cannot be true, for they totally contradict each
other, and are written in quite different styles, the deity himself
being differently designated in each. We are told by certain parties
that if we do not believe these stories we shall most certainly be
roasted for all eternity; and indeed the New Testament distinctly bears
out this fearful fiat. According to this, every man in the whole world
who has been unfortunate enough to hear these two accounts read, and
who is endowed with sufficient intelligence to discriminate between a
pop-gun and an elephant, will inevitably perish; for it is impossible
for any sane man to believe two such contradictory statements. It is
not within the power of any man to do so. You might just as well demand
of a man that he must believe that a brick and a pan-cake are identical
articles. He could not do so, no matter how hard he tried.
Compared with these fables, how ennobling, grand and sublime is the
theory of evolution. We behold the great and mysterious energy of
universe operating in a manner calculated to inspire our minds with
wonder, awe and admiration. The truly marvellous development of
ourselves from a chaotic nebula of attenuated matter, through all the
varied and manifold stages of existence, with their beautiful and
useful properties, is indeed an overwhelmingly convincing evidence of
the existence of an omniscient and omnipotent, although absolutely
inscrutable author; and I doubt much whether anyone ever approached
this subject with an honest desire to be guided by reason in his search
for truth, who did not experience this profound reverence for the
unknown author. Can we believe that these two narratives in Genesis are
also calculated to inspire such a sentiment in the minds of those who
are fairly well educated and amenable to reason? What kind of a deity,
think you, is this god of Genesis? The concluding portion of the 2nd
narrative will at once inform us.
This story is well known to all of us, and is a very remarkable one,
for we learn from it the startling fact that the serpent, or devil, was
the greatest benefactor to the human race, and, moreover, truthful;
while god was the greatest enemy the race ever had, and was guilty of
falsehood and treachery. God placed this man and woman in the garden,
in front of a very strong temptation, pointed out the temptation to
them, and threatened them with instant death if they yielded to it.
This god is supposed to be omniscient, and therefore knew well enough
before he placed them there that the poor creatures would fall on the
very first temptation. Can we conceive more glaring injustice and
diabolical cruelty than this? Now the serpent knew very well that they
would not die if they ate the fruit, but that, instead, they would
become wise; and eventually he persuaded them to eat. Who spoke the
truth, god or the devil? Did the man and woman die on the day they ate
the fruit? Far from it. That day, were there any truth at all in the
narrative, would have been the grandest day ever known to man; for by
the eating of that fruit was made known to him the difference between
good and evil, that he might be able to seek the one and avoid the
other; his benefactor being the serpent, or devil, the circumventor and
conqueror of god.
But notice further on how impotent this so-called almighty deity really
was. He exclaimed in fear, “Behold, the man is become as one of us
[which was precisely what the devil predicted] to know good and evil,
and now, lest he put forth his hand and take also of the tree of life
and live for ever, therefore the Lord God sent him forth from the
garden.” Now how easy it would have been for an omnipotent creator to
have annihilated his own work, and thus cleared the way for a fresh
start. It would be interesting to know who the “we” were that the
writer refers to, if not an androgynous deity or a multitude of gods or
goddesses.
What was the consequence of this sin of Adam and Eve? Every man and
every woman ever born upon this earth is guilty of this sin, and will
eternally burn in hell fire, says the Christian church, unless they
believe that this circumvented god became a man, lived on this earth,
and died the death of a criminal, in order to give satisfaction to
himself for the outrage committed on his divine majesty by three
of his creatures. The countless myriads of human beings who have
inhabited this earth during the six thousand years (according to Bible
chronology) that the world has existed, are all and each under this
fearful curse, although they had no more to do with Adam’s sin than the
man in the moon, and had no power to prevent it. These people have been
brought into the world, whether they liked it or not, and are subject
to this penalty, the enormous majority of them being inevitably doomed
to eternal torment; for there have lived many millions of people who
never even heard of the Bible, its gods or its scheme of redemption.
We may go farther and declare that all are inevitably doomed, for
we cannot conceive that anyone can believe such a story as that of
the fall. No one will venture to assert that infants and idiots can
believe anything, therefore there is no hope for these unfortunates,
whatever chances there may be for others.
As the expression of the infantile imagination of primitive man, after
emerging from his brute ancestry, and commencing to exercise more fully
his reasoning faculties, these fables are easily understood; but as
the writings of men who had been inspired by the almighty power to
record a true account of the origin of nature and man for the use of
others, they must be at once rejected by all reasonable and thoughtful
people as gross absurdities. We can easily understand how the mind
of primitive man pondered over the strange mixture of good and evil
in the world, just as the awakening mind of a child would do to day;
how the mystery would be explained by the analogy of the celestial
movements; and how, as the result of the infantile reasoning, the good
principle became associated with the mental conception of a venerable
old gentleman, who planted a garden, and performed the principle part
in the drama just described from the third chapter of Genesis.
Tho whole story bears the strongest marks of being the production of
an infantile intellect. The simple manner in which the writer tells us
that the man and woman sewed fig leaves together and made aprons for
themselves is sufficient evidence of this. We cannot believe that Adam
and Eve went through the many processes necessary for the production
of the needles and thread, with which to sew their leaves together.
Then the conversation between god, as he took his stroll in the garden
in the cool of the evening, and Adam and Eve, is just what we should
expect from the crude imaginations of our early ancestors; as also is
the manner in which the man placed the blame on the woman, and she in
her turn upon the serpent. The curse, too, is precisely in the same
style; first the serpent, then the woman, afterwards the man, and
lastly the earth itself being brought under the divine anathema. No
less apparent is the absurdity of the writer stating that Adam called
his wife Eve “because she was the mother of all living,” when there
were then no other human beings in existence; and declaring that god
made coats and breeches (see “Breeches Bible”) of skins, when as yet
death had not entered into the world. Such fables cannot be accepted as
true history by the intellect of the nineteenth century.
That we suffer for the sins of our fathers is unfortunately too true;
but that we shall eternally frizzle for them I declare, without
the least hesitation, to be a vile falsehood and an insult to our
intellects. The vices and diseases of our ancestors are undoubtedly
reproduced in ourselves, as are their good deeds and lofty sentiments;
and we again transmit these properties to our offspring. We have, in
fact, the power of rendering happy or miserable those who follow us,
and making the general state of society somewhat better or worse.
Our great mental attributes were not surely evolved within us for no
purpose, and to lie dormant, but that we should exercise them and use
them for the moral and social improvement of ourselves and our fellows.
But to imagine that we shall suffer again in some other condition of
existence, because of our fathers’ sins, is the height of insanity.
Respecting the authorship of these fables, we are told that the book
which contains them, as well as the other four books of the Pentateuch,
were written by Moses, under the inspiration of what is called the holy
ghost; but when we examine these books we find that this is without
doubt false, for it is not possible for any man to record his own death
and burial, and the lives of a succession of prophets who lived after
him, as is done in the last chapter of Deuteronomy. Then, again, in the
seventh chapter of Genesis clean and unclean beasts are mentioned in
connexion with the ark fable, whereas, according to the Bible, clean
and unclean beasts were not declared such until 600 years after Moses
is said to have died; which proves that Genesis was not written before
that late period. The town of Dan is also mentioned in the fourteenth
chapter, which town had no existence until 331 years after the recorded
death of Moses. In chap. XXXVI. a list is given of all the kings that
reigned over Edom “before there reigned any king over the children of
Israel,” proving once more that this book was not written until long
after kings had reigned over Israel. Numerous other passages might be
quoted to show that Moses could not have written the books that are
ascribed to him. To cut the matter short, however, we are told in the
2nd apocryphal book of Ezra that he and his clerks wrote all the books
of Moses; and in Chronicles and Kings that Shaphan discovered the
writings in an old chest.
We find, therefore, not only that these fables of the creation and
fall are not true records, but that it is not known who wrote them,
although suspicion attaches to one Ezra; and yet we are expected to
hang our chances of salvation upon them. We are handed these books
and told by a priest that they were originally derived from god. Now
instead of believing the man, and taking no pains to find out what the
volume really contains, as is unfortunately the habit of most people,
our duty is clearly to investigate the matter, and try to find out
whether that priest speaks the truth or not, whether he has any sort
of interest in making us believe the volume to be the word of god, or,
assuming that he himself honestly believes it to be so, whether he is
a sufficient authority on the point. Let us, for instance, take the
case of a stranger to the Christian faith, one who never heard of the
Bible or its gods, and who meets a Christian priest in the backwoods
of America. The holy one informs the stranger that he possesses a book
which has been written by god, through the medium of the inspired
minds of a number of holy men. Would you consider the stranger to be a
man of sound mental faculties if he at once accepted the word of the
parasite, and shaped his whole career according to the teaching of that
book? Most assuredly not. The most natural thing for the stranger to
do would be to stare in amazement at the saint, and wonder whether he
was quite right in his mind. Observing that the priest was really in
earnest, and apparently of sane mind, he would parley with him, asking
where he procured his book from; who were the very holy parties who
had been inspired to write it; when and where they lived; and who knew
anything about them: in short he would demand from the unctions one his
credentials before believing such an astounding assertion as that god
wrote a book. The replies would be after this fashion. The book was
derived in the first instance from a publisher’s shop, where it had
been printed with lead type and black ink, from another printed copy,
which had been printed from another copy, and so on back to the first
printed edition, which was copied from a translation of various Hebrew
and Greek ‘originals.’ It was about two thousand years, he would say,
since some of these ‘originals’ were written, and the remainder were
supposed to be of much earlier date; but who the actual writers were
he could not tell, although it was beyond doubt they were guided by
god’s inspiration, for it was so declared in the writings themselves,
which had never yet been doubted, except by a few naughty men who were
now in hell. Do you think this would be good enough for the stranger?
Of course not. Then, in the name of common sense, why should we accept
these Bible books without enquiry? To accept any anonymous writings in
blind faith as being the production of particular individuals, without
corroborative evidence, is the act of a fool, not of a wise man. A
sensible person will make some enquiry about them before accepting them.
Unfortunately for ourselves it is only lately that people have been
wise or bold enough to use their reasoning faculties in these matters,
the consequence being that the ordinary mind is now almost unequal to
the task of unravelling the net which has been so cunningly spun around
society by the Christian church. A careful investigation of the matter,
however, leads to the inference that about B.C. 250 or 300 the Jewish
chief priest Ezra, assisted by a number of clerks, commenced to form
a national history out of the various legends they had picked up in
their long wanderings, soon producing what are now known as the books
of Judges (from the 3rd chap.), Samuel, Kings and Chronicles, which,
together with the poems and incantations of various men of the tribes,
they set forth as the divinely inspired history of their people. Not
long afterwards the Persian system of creation, and story of the fall
of man were committed to manuscript, and adapted to the requirements
of the Jewish people by the substitution of their race in place of the
Chaldeans as the chosen people of god; and thus were produced the books
of the Pentateuch, with Joshua, and the two first chapters of Judges.
This explains why the stories of the creation, fall, flood, tower of
Babel, etc., are never mentioned in any of the books of the Bible after
Genesis for the space of about a thousand years; why in all the books
from Joshua as far as II. Kings the name of Moses is never met with,
the most remarkable man in the whole Jewish history; and why such
names as Adam, Eve, Seth, Cain, Abel, Enoch, Noah, Shem, Ham, Japhet,
Abraham, Isaac and Jacob never occur again after Genesis till the time
of the so-called return from Babylon.
The real meaning of the Chaldean and Jewish stories of the creation and
fall, which were derived originally from the constellations above, it
would take too long here to unfold, but the riddle has been explained
in my “Popular Faith Unveiled,” to which those who desire to further
pursue the subject are referred.
For nearly two thousand years Christianity, based on these fables of
the creation and fall, has had an unfettered career throughout Europe,
its avowed object being to bring salvation to men in the next world,
and to teach the doctrines of love, forbearance, humility and charity
while in this world. Respecting the bringing of salvation to men in
the next world, we cannot well determine to what extent the religion
has been successful; but with regard to its earthly mission it has
signally and utterly failed. The two thousand years have passed away
and still the evils surrounding us continue, and are even intensified;
poverty, misery, immorality and tyranny exist as of old, in spite
of the promise to the church that she should be helped, even to the
end, by the divine power. So far from love, charity, forbearance
and humility being inculcated by the church, we find the followers
of the meek and lowly one occupying high and lucrative offices, one
declaring himself the vice-regent of god on earth, and others, in our
own country, being in receipt of salaries ranging from fifteen and
ten thousand pounds annually to two or three hundred, driving their
carriages, sporting livery servants and cockades, stiling themselves
as Reverend, Very Reverend, Venerable, Most Reverend Father in God,
Right Honorable and other titles expressive of superior quality of
make; and all in a constant state of warfare amongst themselves. One
cannot take up a daily paper without seeing an instance of clerical
intolerance, hatred, envy or malice. The Romanist damns the Protestant;
the churchman rides the high horse over the dissenter, and would like
to deprive him of what is vulgarly considered to be decent burial; the
evangelicals denounce the high church party; the nonconformist bodies
are all at constant war with each other on points of doctrine; and
while all are eaten up with pride, egotism, selfishness, greed and
mutual hatred, each sect declares itself to be the genuine teacher of
love, forbearance, humility and charity.
As a body the church has from the first opposed all progress. As early
as the year 414 Bishop Cyril’s mob brained the learned Hypatia in a
Christian church, for the heinous crime of teaching mathematics. The
Pope and his pious court attempted to prevent the art of printing
becoming known in Europe. Copernicus was excommunicated for the sin
of announcing the grand truth that the earth revolves round the sun.
Galileo rotted in the prison of the Inquisition for daring to say
that the earth rotates on its axis. Bruno was burnt at the stake for
declaring his belief in the Copernican philosophy. Newton’s theory of
gravitation was denounced by the church. Descartes, Kepler, Locke,
Laplace and Darwin all were abused and insulted by the holy ones for
their heretical writings, which have brought us such blessings. The
church opposed the abolition of slavery, both here and in America, the
bishops in the House of Lords applauding king George when he said that
slavery was a useful institution because it was taught in the holy
Bible, and the southern States of the Union appealing to the ‘word of
god’ in justification of their cruelty. The burning of witches, taught
in the Bible, was vigorously encouraged by the church; and the cruel
horrors of the Inquisition are too well known to need description. All
measures of reform in our own country have been opposed by bishops and
nobles together; the church and the state having aided each other in
trampling on the people’s rights, and enslaving both their minds and
bodies. In spite of the present very apparent poverty and misery, the
people are exhorted by the church to increase and multiply, being told
that it is a blessed thing to have one’s quiver full, and that it is
wicked to listen to those who preach conjugal prudence, small families,
and social thrift. In short the Christian religion has entirely failed
in its mission, being a standing menace to all progress, and a cause of
unceasing animosity all over Europe.
Do we imagine that all the priests and ministers of the Christian
church believe the fables of the creation and fall? I would stake my
existence on it that if we were to cut off their salaries there would
be barely half a dozen parsons in each denomination who would stick to
their soul-saving business. Their trinity is supposed to consist of god
the father, god the son, and god the holy ghost; but if we represent
the first by the letter l, the second by s, and the third by d, we
should be much nearer the mark. £. s. d. is the Christian trinity, and
pew rents, tithes, etc., the means by which the one thing needful is
kept up. Ten million pounds sterling are annually spent in supporting
the clergy of the established church alone, while poverty, wretchedness
and crime confront us at every turn. The struggling workers of this
country, not content with having to contribute towards the payment of
£29,000,000 annually, as interest on the national debt resulting from
accumulated religious war charges, are foolish enough to spend more
than a third of this amount in keeping a host of state-made drones,
who oppose all progress, drain the hard earnings from the workers,
and assume haughty airs towards their poor dupes. In the face of the
depressed state of our trade, and the poverty and misery around us, it
is appalling to think of the enormous quantity of money that annually
drifts into the pockets of these human parasites, both episcopalian and
nonconformist alike.
We know well enough that the large majority of those laymen who profess
to believe the fall and redemption scheme do not really believe it at
all, but play the part of the believer in order to serve their own
private interests. The laity may be divided into four classes:—1st,
those few honest and sincere men who deceive themselves by imagining
that they can really believe such unreasonable doctrines, and who
attempt by their means to do what could be done so very much better
without them. 2nd, those who are deficient in education and mental
power, and who will accept anything the priest tells them, no matter
how absurd. 3rd, those who have some little education but very little
brain power, and who consider themselves very important members of
society, when in reality the world does not know them even by name.
They resent in their little minds the silent affront offered to them
by their fellows, who, they think, ought to know their superior worth;
and they look around for a little church or chapel, where the stream of
intellect is sufficiently thin to allow of their feeble mental power
being perceived. They join, take a leading part in the performances,
carry the collecting box, open pew doors, hand hymn-books to strangers,
and are happy in the consciousness of their importance, being gazed
at Sunday after Sunday by an admiring congregation. Were these folk
obliged to do their religious work under cover of masks, their names
being at the same time studiously concealed from the congregation,
the race of pew openers, box carriers, etc., would soon die out; but
as it is, vanity, egotism and pomposity yet keep the race alive. The
fourth class consists of sharp business men, with plenty of brains and
fair average education, who join a church with a large congregation,
and adopt the particular creed in vogue there, as a means of pushing
their business, by assuming a mien of pious “respectability.” These
are the men, devoid of all honour, who forfeit their manhood at the
shrine of hypocrisy, and who ought more particularly to be shewn up
in their true colors. Without these four classes the religion of the
fall and redemption scheme would soon become a thing of the past. No
mention has been made of the ladies, who, according to some rude and
ungallant people, look forward to the lord’s day as one on which they
can display their new bonnets, procure food for another week’s gossip,
or hold sweet communion with the unmarried curate—all for Jesus. It is
unnecessary to say that this may not be true, and that a higher and
nobler motive may prompt the ardent zeal of the fair sex.
Do not believe the parsons when they tell you that your souls are in
jeopardy for rejecting the Christian doctrines; the truth is that
their incomes are in danger, not your souls. Take care not to follow
their evil advice that it is a blessed thing to have your quiver full,
and that the lord loves a cheerful giver. Have small families, being
careful to bring into the world only as many as you can decently
provide for, so as to give them a fair chance in the world; and let
your creditors and your saving-banks, and not your lord, have your
spare cash—your lord being but another name for your parson. When they
tell you that you must take no thought for the morrow, and must not lay
up treasure on earth, where moths and rust corrupt, and where thieves
break through and steal, give them the cold shoulder, insure your life
in some sound office, and leave the laws of the country in which you
live to take care of the thieves, and their reverences to look after
the moths and rust.
It will, no doubt, be urged that Christianity has done, and is doing
a great good in the world. This I emphatically deny. I readily admit
that some good has been effected in the name of Christianity, but deny
that the fall and redemption religion has been the cause. The same
amount of good would have resulted with any other religion, and much
more with no religion at all. All the good that has ever been effected
in the world has emanated from lofty individual minds; but as chance
has had it, the majority of these men in the past have been Christians,
simply because that religion has prevailed in Europe for nearly two
thousand years. In the present day this is not the case; and it is a
fact beyond contradiction that all the leaders of thought of our time
are men who have rejected the fables of the creation and fall as given
in Genesis, together with the consequent redemption scheme, as false
and vain. John Stuart Mill, Herbert Spencer, Charles Darwin, Tyndal,
Carpenter, Huxley, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Rénan,
Victor Hugo, Schopenhauer, Haeckel, and in fact every other modern
leader of thought, have rejected the orthodox faith; and yet we look
forward to the future with bright hope, expecting a steady progress
in man’s general welfare. Even when Christians themselves in days
long gone by, attempted to introduce any useful reform, their church
invariably persecuted them, as for instance Copernicus, Galileo,
Bruno, Luther, etc.; and the only Christian priest who ever propounded
any theory which was calculated to be a lasting boon to society was
Malthus, who declared that over population was the great cause of all
misery, and that until people were taught conjugal prudence it was
useless to attempt to ameliorate their social condition. This friend
of humanity was bitterly denounced by the church, and to this day his
followers are held in contempt, notwithstanding that the Malthusian
principles are now endorsed by the leading social scientists, and that
it is as clear as the sun at noon day that within the short space of 45
years the present population of this country—now about 36,000,000—will
have doubled itself. The people now cannot support themselves, so how
they will manage when the population is 72,000,000 it is hard to say.
What with over population and land monopoly the future has indeed some
terrible social evils in store for us.
Individual Christians undoubtedly have done something towards
making their fellows happy, but not so Christianity, as witness the
Inquisition and other enormities of the middle ages. But do the Jews,
Unitarians and Infidels of to day do nothing for their fellows? What
about Sir Moses Montefiore, who rejects the atonement? Have not the
Agnostics just founded the Whitminster College for purely secular
education? And what do we not owe to those heterodox scientists just
mentioned? It is the fashion with some people to give the name of
Christianity to the morality of this century; but this very ingenuous
attempt to clothe one of the most immoral of the world’s religions with
the garment of righteousness carries no weight for the scholar and the
historian. There is as much difference between the morality of to day
and the genuine Christian religion as there is between the north and
south poles. The two are the exact antitheses of each other. The real
reason that the human race has in the last hundred years so rapidly
advanced in intellectual qualities and moral progress is not because it
has become more Christian in its character but because it has gradually
shaken off the yoke of Christianity piece by piece. The whole Mosaic
cosmogony, with its flat earth theory, creation of man, etc., as taught
in Genesis, has been destroyed by Copernicus, Newton, Laplace and
Darwin; slavery has been abolished; witches are no longer burnt at
the stake; polygamy is discountenanced; and human sacrifice, murder,
rapine, theft and personal assaults are no longer justified. All these
immoralities are distinctly and prominently taught in the Christian
Bible, but have been expunged from the moral code of this century.
Were Christianity now dead instead of dying the same amount of good
would accrue to the race as before; and, judging from past history,
there would be a very vast decrease in the opposition that has for two
thousand years been offered to progress.
The question after all is not what Christianity has done, but whether
or not its story is a true one. As already stated, if the creation and
fall stories are not true the whole scheme of Christianity, with its
god-man and its sacraments, is a fraud and a delusion. No religion that
cannot bear the test of reason, and be maintained on a public platform
can be founded on truth. If the Christian story be true there is no
need for the holy ones to secure themselves behind the fortifications
of ’coward’s castle’ every Sunday to preach their doctrines; the open
platform being a more suitable place from which to propagate the truth.
But what are the facts? The man who dares to submit the religion to the
test of reason, or even to discourse publicly upon evolution or any
other scientific theory that is likely to interfere with the steady
flow of bullion into the collection box, is denounced from the pulpit,
the holy ones branding him as a dangerous infidel, and using all the
means in their power to blacken his character and to insidiously
undermine his business. The challenge to debate is never accepted.
The question before us is a momentous one. Creation or Evolution? Moses
or Darwin? We cannot follow both.