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SUNDAY HARVESTINC.
To the Editor of the “ Free Sunday Advocate.”
October, 1881.
I am glad to see that in your paper for this month you
have copied the letter of a South Oxfordshire “ Landlord and
Parmer,” inserted in the Times of the 1st Sept., in which he
forcibly points out how much better the Clergy would have
been employed on Sunday, the 28th August, if, instead of
offering up the weak prayer of their well-meaning, amiable
Primate, they had given their parishioners words of en
couragement, bidding them gather in the harvest while yet
it could be saved. To those who like myself believe that
no divine commandment has ever been laid upon man to
abstain from work on any day; that neither Jesus of Nazareth
nor any of his Apostles ever said a word to enforce the Sab
bath which Moses, the lawgiver of the Jews, promulgated as
a command emanating from their God; and more particularly
believing that no God “answers prayer” in the ordinary sense
of these words, and which if they mean anything, mean this,
—that an almighty, all-wise, all-beneficent Being is to be
stirred up by a few of us puny mortals, (a mere handful out
of the teeming millions of the inhabitants of this earth) into
altering at their dictation or persuasion, the fixed laws of this
Universe,—Sunday harvest work in seasons like the present
would be a matter of course. But that this ‘ Christian
liberty’ may be accepted universally we must first break
down that rigid Sabbatarianism so naturally engendered and
kept alive by the reading out in solemn form, in all our
churches Sunday after Sunday, the Fourth Commandment
of the Jewish Decalogue.
It may help to this end if I summarize the grounds upon
which Christians should hold themselves unfettered by that
commandment, as well as the grounds for my assertion that
it was no divine commandment but a mere piece of human
legislation, by Moses or some other J ewish Legislator.
The introduction to the Ten Commandments £ I am
the Lord thy God who brought thee out of the land of Egypt’
__ the reason given to the Jews in the Fourth Command
ment, as written in Deut. V.15,‘ remember that thou wast
a servant in the land of Egypt ’ —and ‘ It is a sign between
�2
me and the people of Israel for ever ’ (Exod. 31, 17) prove
conclusively that it was not designed for observance by
any other people.
Next, note how little respect Jesus had for Moses’ Sab
bath law. He went out of his way on many occasions to
offend the Jews by needlessly “ breaking ” it and never
denied that his acts were breaches. (See Mark II. 23, allow
ing his disciples to pluck corn on the Jewish Sabbath—Mark
III. 5—Luke XIII. 14—LukeXIV. 4—John IX. 16) while
as above stated, not one word is to be found in the New
Testament, attributed to him or to his Apostles, in favor of
or urging its observance. On the contrary, what an oppor
tunity was lost by Jesus of enforcing a Sabbath had he so
intended—when asked (MarkX. 17) what we should do to
inherit the kingdom of God and he repeated only the fifth
and other moral commandments of the Decalogue; and again
St. Paul in well known passages in his Epistles, while unwil
ling to interfere with his disciples’ liberty, as nearly as
possible forbids sabbatizing and the observance of days.
‘One man esteemeth one day above another; another
esteemeth every day. alike. Let each man be fully assured
in his own mind.’ (Romans XIV. 5) ‘Let no man, there
fore, judge you in meat or in drink or in respect of a feast
day or a new moon or a sabbath day ’ (Colos. II. 16) ‘ 0 foolish
Galatians . . Ye observe days and months and seasons and
years. I am afraid of you lest by any means I have bestowed
labour upon you in vain’ (Gal. III., 1 and IV. 10-11)
When Jesus, healing a man of a long standing in
firmity and telling him to take up his bed and walk, was
properly accused of sabbath-breaking, he replied ‘My Father
worketh hitherto and I work,” and thus used words in express
contradiction to the reason assigned in the Fourth Com
mandment for keeping a Sabbath, namely, that God had
‘ rested the seventh day.’ This singular and absurd sugges
tion of a God Almighty taking rest afterthe labor of creating
our little globe, put forward as a ground for human beings
keeping a Sabbath, ought to satisfy both Jews and Christians
that the Sabbath of Moses was a mere human institution.
Some later lawgiver of the Jews, probably seeing this ab
surdity, rewrote the Fourth Commandment and substituted
the other reason for the Jew keeping it, that ‘ thou wast a
servant in the land of Egypt.’ But thus with two varying
�3
versions, it is impossible to say we even know what the
Fourth Commandment was, for both versions cannot be
correct and we know not which to choose.
I conclude with words of St. Augustine’s, 4 Qui labored,
orat.‘ 4 He who works prays.’ Your obedient Servant,
W. Henry Domville.
It is also interesting to note that the Roman Emperor
Constantine, the first recorded lawgiver to the Christians
who ordered any abstinence from ordinary work on the
first day of the week—‘the venerable day of the sun,’
as he terms it—in his Edict (a.d. 321) expressly reserved
to the dwellers in the country the free use of the day
for agriculture, lest haply the crops “ bestowed by
heavenly provision, should perish,” in this respect showing
greater wisdom than those 44 foolish Galatians,” and, let
me add, greater reverence, than those modern Sabbatarians
who would rather see the whole harvest perish than lift
up a hand to save it on a Sunday. The Act of 29 Charles
2nd c. 7 in more general terms excepts 4‘ works of
necessity and charity ” from its penal clauses.
The letter above quoted of 44 A Landlord and Farmer ”
on the subject of Sunday harvesting, is as follows :—
44 Many country congregations who last Sunday on
their way to church passed acres of cut corn, which
through the last three weeks of bad weather has been
ready for carrying, must have thought of the second
lesson (Mark II. 23) they would hear read in their churches,
and have wondered why the saying of Jesus 4 the Sabbath
was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath ’ was not
applicable to the present time. As the precious hours of
sunshine—sunshine for which the Archbishop had
ordered a prayer to be offered up in all congregations—
passed by, how many in the congregations must have
thought of the proverb 4 God helps those who help them
selves,’ and have longed for words of encouragement from
their clergy, bidding them gather in the harvest while it
could yet be saved. No such words of practical religion
came, I fear, from any pulpit in the country; and the
rain, which recommenced on Monday, has injured and
destroyed thousands of quarters of corn which, but for the
�4
bitter observance of the Sabbath, might have been saved.
In the face of the bad seasons we have now had for so
many years, is it not a question for the country to decide
whether or not the superstitious, and I might add
un-Christlike, views entertained with regard to Sunday
labour should be allowed to endanger the capital and
industry of our country? Daring the present season
could the fine Sundays that have come between days of
rain have been utilized, a large portion of our crops
would have been saved, and the harvest thanksgivings,
which have become a general institution in the Church,
would have had more of genuineness in them than they can
have had of late years. In this county finer crops of wheat
and oats have seldom been grown, and the peas and beans
have been fairly good. Of the former crops only a small
part is housed in any condition, the remainder, still lying
in the fields, is day by day becoming less fit for food.
The crops of peas and beans still out will serve only as
food for the pigs, which will be turned into the fields to
pick up the seeds shed abroad through the wet weather.
That landlords, farmers, and labourers must suffer in
consequence of this needless waste of their capital and
labour every one will see at a glance; but all do not
recognize the fact that an insufficient or bad harvest
means depression to every trade and industry in England.
It is for the press to point this out; and if you, Sir, will
use your powerful influence in teaching that it is no more
a sin to save the hay and corn crops from needless
destruction on a Sunday than to lift an ass or an ox from
a pit they may have fallen into, you will confer a
material and moral benefit on this country.”
Copies of the above will be forwarded on receipt
of a ready directed pre-paid wrapper, enclosed to
W. Henry Domville, 15, Gloucester Crescent, Hyde
Park, W.
The Second Volume of the late Sir Wm. Domville's
work on ‘ the Sabbath,' (now out of print) is entitled
i An inquiry into the supposed Obligation of the
Sabbaths of the Old Testament ’ and comprises an
elaborate statement of all the arguments on this subject.
Women’s Printing Society, Limited, 21&. Great College Street, Westminster, S.W.
�
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Sunday harvesting
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Domville, William Henry
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Place of publication: [London]
Collation: 4 p. ; 19 cm.
Notes: Letter to the editor of the Free Sunday Advocate, October 1881. Author's name handwritten in pencil on title page. Part of the NSS pamphlet collection.
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Sunday Observance
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THE PHYSIOLOGICAL UNITY
OF
■ PLANTS AND ANIMALS.
DELIVERED BEFORE THE
SUNDAY LECTURE SOCIETY,
ox
SUNDAY AFTERNOON, 30th JANUARY, 1881,
BY
Q. S. BOULGER, F.L.S., F.G.S.
bonbon:
PUBLISHED BY THE SUNDAY LECTURE SOCIETY.
1881.
PRICE THREEPENCE.
�SUNDAY LECTURE SOCIETY.
To provide for the delivery on Sundays in the Metropolis, and to
encourage the delivery elsewhere, of Lectures on Science,—physical,
intellectual, and moral,—History, Literature, and Art; especially
on their bearing upon the improvement and social well-being of
mankind.
THE SOCIETY’S LECTURES
ARE DELIVERED AT
ST. GEORGE'S HALL, LANGHAM PLACE,
On Sunday Afternoons at FOUR o’clock precisely.
('Annually—from November to May.)
Twenty-four Lectures (in three series) are given in each year.
Members’ annual subscription, £1.
For Tickets and the printed Lectures, and for lists of all the
Lectures published by the Society, apply (by letter) to the Hon.
Treasurer, Wm. Henry Domville, Esq., 15, Gloucester Crescent,
Hyde Park.
SYLLABUS OF THIS LECTURE.
The progress of science consists in the connection of phe
nomena previously considered isolated.
The old Three Kingdoms of Nature now seen to be in many
points one, in most essential characteristics only two: the
Organic and the Inorganic, or Living and Not-Living.
Plants and animals identical in their ultimate chemical con
stituents; Carbon, Hydrogen, Oxygen, Nitrogen, Phosphorus,
Sulphur, Potassium, Iron: in most of their proximate principles;
Water, Carbonic acid, Sugar, Starch, Cellulose, Fibrin, Casein,
Chlorophyll, Protoplasm.
Structural identity of the lower groups—Hackel’s Protista.
Functions of living beings.
Identity in Respiration.
Identity in Nutrition, the presence of ferments, pepsin, diges
tive acid and peptones—The Chlorophyllian property—The
Conversion of starch into sugar.
The functions of Relation; Sensation, Nervous action and
Motion—The nerve-like action of protoplasm in Drosera—Motion
by pseudopodia or cilia.
Reproduction by fission, gemmation and ovulation—Ova and
Spermatozoa.
�THE PHYSIOLOGICAL UNITY OF
PLANTS AND ANIMALS.
NE of the cardinal laws of the modern philosophy
of evolution is that the history of the development
of the race is summarised in that of the individual. This
is exemplified in the growth of human knowledge, es
pecially of accurate knowledge or science: as a child
learns a number of detached words, chiefly nouns, before
it can frame a connected train of thought, and notices
with unreasoning surprise each phenomenon of nature
which it encounters, so in the progress of science the
human race learns to trace the general laws which govern
phenomena that it once looked upon as isolated and
marvellous.
Thus mankind were for ages content to talk of the
“Three Kingdoms of Nature,” and to look upon minerals,
plants, and animals, as three distinct categories having
little or nothing in common. We now know, however,
that in many respects these three are one, and that in
all essential characteristics they can only be considered
as two. They are subject to the same physical and
chemical laws: plants and animals contain no chemical
element not existing in inorganic minerals, even carbon
occurring in meteoric stones; their mode of growth is
not so radically unlike that of a collection of small crys
tals in a nutrient fluid as has been supposed; nor are the
simple geometrical beginnings of organic structure wholly
unlike crystallisation. The words “ inorganic ” or “ un
organised ” are as applicable to the lowest animals as to
the starch manufactured by chemical synthesis from its
elements in the laboratory; for it is a mere contradiction
in terms to term that an organism which is absolutely
destitute of organs. It would be extremely difficult to
show that in life we have more than an assemblage of
forces possessed individually, at least in some degree, by
the inorganic world ; and we still look upon the dead
body of plant or animal as being plant or animal when
not only is the individual dead, but even when no single
O
�4
The Physiological Unity of
tissue evinces lingering vitality by responding to stimu
lation. Thus the distinction between living and notliving is scarcely more precise than that between organic
and inorganic.
Still, however, though the boundary-line be not easily
definable, there are distinctions readily perceptible be
tween nearly all things that either do live or have lived
and those that have not.
Living beings have curved outlines ; they have much
of their structure in a soft condition; if alive, they ex
hibit numerous functions; they consist chiefly of complex
carbon compounds.
Between plants and animals, at first sight, there may
seem to be distinctions equally simple ; but this seeming
only arises from our thinking of types rather than of the
whole groups, and even popular natural history recog
nises the difficulty in detail in terming one group of
animals “ zoophytes,” or animal plants.
Plants and animals are identical in their ultimate
chemical constituents, i.e., in the elements or simple sub
stances, of which they are composed, the chief of which
are carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, phosphorus,
sulphur, potassium, and iron. The proportion in which
these elements occur varies, however, to some extent in
the two groups, carbon being relatively more abundant in
the vegetable, and nitrogen, sulphur, and phosphorus in
the animal kingdom. These elements occur probably,
however, in every plant and in every animal. Oxygen
and hydrogen form water (H2 O), which constitutes from
14 to 94 per cent, of plants, 67 per cent, of the human
body, and far more in some other animals. Carbon and
oxygen form carbonic acid (C O2), and nitrogen and
hydrogen form ammonia (N H3), invariable products of
the disintegration of the bodies of plants and animals.
All vital actions in both plants and animals—growth,
assimilation, reproduction, nervous action, &c.—are con
ducted by the complex substances known as albuminoids,
which have an average pei’ centage composition of 53 of
carbon, 22 of oxygen, 16 of nitrogen, 7 of hydrogen, 1 of
sulphur, and a trace of phosphorus. Iron, the great
colouring matter of nature, necessary alike to the produc
tion of the green chlorophyll of leaves and of red blood, is
probably universally present; and potassium, which seems
�Plants and Animals.
5
in some way essential to the formation of starch and cellu
lose—those carbo-hydrates, so abundant in most plants,
so rare in animals—occurs, though in small quantities,
probably in all animals.
Many of the chief compounds or proximate principles
are also common to the two groups. Not to mention
further such products of decomposition as carbonic acid
and ammonia, or water, in the absence of which vitality is
impossible; starch (C6 H10 O5) has been detected in the
human brain and elsewhere; cellulose (C61I1O O5) occurs
in the “ mantle ” of the Tunicata, or marine Ascidians ;
fibrin, the chief ingredient of blood and meat, is all but
identical with the gluten of cereal grains ; casein, the
curd of milk, it represented most closely in those most
concentrated of vegetable foods, the seeds of peas and
lentils; chlorophyll even, that green colouring matter
which we look upon as so characteristic of the vegetable
world, not only exists in a score of animals belonging to
most varied groups,1 but in them has the same marked
effect upon the atmosphere that it exerts in plants; and
lastly, that protoplasm, or sarcode, which Professor
Huxley has so well termed “ the physical basis of life,”
appears absolutely identical in both divisions of the
organic kingdom. In either case it would seem to be
very probably a combination of a phosphamide and a sulphamide of some highly complex base containing carbon,
hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen.
If we leave composition and pass on to structure,
looking, as rational philosophy teaches us, at the base of
the diverging branches rather than at their summits, we
find the identity so close that the shrewdest naturalists
are baffled in their attempts to draw a boundary line; so
that Professor Hackel has been led to cut the gordian
1 The following list of these chlorophyllian animals has been
drawn up by Professor Ray Lankester:—
Foramimfera.
Ccelentera.
Radiolaria.
Hydra viridis.
Anthea smaragdina.
Rhaphiophrys viridis.
Heterophrys myriapoda.
Vermes.
Mesostomum viride.
Infusoria.
Stentor Mulleri, &c.
Boneilia viridis.
Chsetopterus Valenciennesii.
Spongida.
Crustacea (Isopoda).
Spongilla fluviatilis.
Idotsea viridis.
�6
The Physiological Unity of
knot by establishing the intermediate group of Protista,
neither plants nor animals, thus simply doubling the
difficulty.
I hope to show to-day that, without confining our
attention to these lowly forms, we may see an identity
in function superadded to these identities in composi
tion and structure, each leading physiological function
of the animal being represented among plants, and vice
versa.
Now the functions may be classified into three main
groups : those of nutrition, of primary importance, and
co-extensive in time with life, as being necessary to the
support of the individual; those of relation, useful in
bringing the organism into relation with its environment
(primarily evolved, no doubt, as aids to nutrition and selfdefence) ; and lastly, those of reproduction developed
when a mature size has been reached, or, as it has been
well put, when nutrition becomes discontinuous and
secures the permanence of the race.
Subsidiary to nutrition is the important function of
respiration, by which the body is supplied with atmos
pheric oxygen which is utilised in the breaking up or
waste of effete complex compounds in the body, and by
which also the resulting carbonic acid is exhaled. This
function, which it is convenient to discuss first, is univer
sally identical in plants and animals.
We are not concerned with the mechanism of respira
tion whether it be lungs, as in our own bodies, or gills,
or the general surface, as in many of the lower animals.
In both plants and animals oxygen is taken from the
inhaled air, and carbonic acid is exhaled. This breathing
continues as long as life lasts, by night as well as by
day, and even under the influence of anaesthetics, such as
chloroform. Among plants it is clearly observed in the
case of germinating seeds, as in the evolution of carbonic
acid in the artificially-produced sprouting of corn, known
as “ maltingin the action of fungi (which it would be
absurd to class as other than plants) upon the air, as
seen in the like evolution from brewers’ yeast; in the
effect on the atmosphere of any ordinary green plants
during the night or in the dark; and lastly, as we learn
from the luminous experiments due to the marvellous
acumen of the lamented Claude Bernard, in the effect on
�Plants and Animals.
7
their atmosphere of such ordinary green plants when put
under the influence of anaesthetics.
Green plants in the daylight, not under anaesthetics,
have an effect upon the atmosphere the converse of that
of animals, and have accordingly been said to inhale car
bonic acid, and to exhale oxygen.2 This is, however, to
render the physiological term “respiration” meaningless;
and is moreover conclusively disproved by Claude Ber
nard’s experiments, which show that a true respiration is
continually going on in these plants, and polluting the
air with additional carbonic acid, though the effects on
the atmosphere of this function are masked by the more
powerful chlorophyllian property which has a diametri
cally opposite effect. This remarkable action of the green
colouring-matter of leaves, under the influence of sun
light, in causing the removal of carbonic acid from the
air, is part of the nutritive functions properly so-called,
and, though more general among them, is by no means
confined to plants, as shown by the table of animals
belonging to most distant groups which contain chloro
phyll, as evidenced in several cases by the specific name
of “viridis.” (See note 1 p. 5.) This animal chloro
phyll has, moreover, been recently shown to produce the
same effect upon the air as does that of the plants. Many
plants, too—namely, the whole of the fungi—are without
chlorophyll.
This leads us to the functions of nutrition, to which
respiration is merely subsidiary. Most plants derive
their food from two sources : water, and saline substances
dissolved in it, from the soil, through their roots, and
carbon, from the carbonic acid of the atmosphere, ab
sorbed by their green leaves. Their nitrogen they un
doubtedly derive chiefly from nitrates in the soil; their
phosphorus from phosphates. Most animals, on the other
hand, are unable to build up the complex compounds of
which they consist from inorganic materials, subsisting
entirely on food previously assimilated by plants or other
2 I cannot at all agree with Dr. J. H. Gilbert, when he says
(Presidential Address to the Chemical Section of the British
Association at Swansea): “ It may, I think, be a question
whether there is any advantage in thus attempting to establish
a parallelism between animal and vegetable processes.”
See Mr. Corenwinder’s researches in “Revue Scientifique,” 1874.
�8
The Physiological Unity of
animals. This apparent contrast will not, however, hold
universally. Fungi and all parasitic plants depend, either
wholly or in a great measure, on food already assimilated;
whilst, on the other hand, those animals which contain
chlorophyll appear to be able to assimilate inorganic
matter.
The identity of the nutritive processes can, however, be
shown in much greater detail if we describe that even of
one of the higher animals, such as man, and refer in the
comparison partly to those plants which have been termed
“ carnivorous.”3 The food of a man, consisting of pre
viously elaborated animal and vegetable matter, is first
ingested or taken into the alimentary tract. In the mouth
it is masticated and mixed with saliva, a neutral or alkaline
watery fluid, containing a small quantity of ptyalin, a
nitrogenous substance, which, acting as a zymase, i.e., in
a manner similar to that of yeast and other ferments,
converts the insoluble starch into soluble glucose or grape
sugar (C6 H12 O6). The food than passes into the closed
stomach, the glands of which secrete an acid gastric
3 This term may be applied more or less fully to the following
plants belonging to widely different groups:—
Accidentally.
e.g. Lychnis (Campion). Caryophyllacese.
Saxifraga tridactylites. Saxifragacese.
Saprophagous, i.e., only absorbing the products
of decomposition ’? Dipsacus (.Teazle). Dipsacese.
With pitchers - Sarracenia.
Darlingtonia.
>Sarraceniacese.
.Heliamphora.
J
Utricularia.
1
With utricles Polypompholyx. }• Lentibulariacese.
Genlisea.
J
Digesting.
? Helleborus. Eanunculaceae.
? Parnassia. Saxifragacese.
Coelenterate.
Cephalotus. Saxifragacese.
Nepenthes. Nepenthacese.
Motile.
Pinguicula. Lentibulariacese.
Drosera (Sundew).
)
Drosopliyllum.
|
Dionsea (Venus’ Fly-trap). |
Aldxo vanda.
)
�Plants and Animals.
9
juice, containing pepsin, another nitrogenous ferment or
zymase, which acts upon the albuminoid constituents of
the food, rendering them soluble, or digesting them, when
they are known as peptones—substances that readily ooze
through a membrane. The entrance of food into the
stomach stimulates the nerves in its walls, and the neigh
bouring arteries swell so as to produce a blushing of the
surface. After quitting the stomach the conversion of
starch into sugar is completed by the pancreatin in the
intestinal juice of the small intestine, which is neutralised
by the alkaline bile. At the same time, the fatty portions
of the food are emulsionised, i.e.; separated into fine
particles suspended in the fluid, and to some extent sapo
nified, i.e., rendered more soluble by a conversion into
soap by the alkaline bile, just as animal and vegetable fats
and oils are converted into soap, in the_arts, by treatment
with caustic alkali; whilst any remaining albuminoids are
also digested.
The nutrient matter passes through the membranes of
the alimentary canal into the capillaries, or finest blood
vessels, and by the blood, the vehicle of circulation, it is
conveyed to every part of the body to be assimilated, or
taken up, by any organs requiring repair. Any subse
quent changes it may undergo are comprehended under
the term “ metastasis.”
In making this comparison we must not lose sight of
the fact that in the lowest animals we have no specialised
organs or structures to perform these varied functions.
Now, if we turn to plants in general, we find that the
watery solution taken in by the roots penetrates through
the cell-membranes, as the peptones do through those of
the alimentary canal in the animal, and that it is caused
to ascend to the leaves and growing parts by the evapora
tion from the surface. The air enters the stomata, or
pores, in the epidermis, and penetrates the cell-mem
branes, as it does in the air-cells of the bronchial tubes
in our own lungs. The primary product of the union of
this gaseous with this watery food seems to be the forma
tion of protoplasm, that complex albuminoid containing
not only carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen, but
also sulphur and phosphorus. Only plants that contain
chlorophyll are able to utilise the carbon of the air in
forming protoplasm or assimilation, others must obtain
�10
The Physiological Unity of
it elsewhere. Chlorophyll is formed in the protoplasm,
only in the presence of iron, and generally in daylight;
plants grown in the dark being bleached by its imperfect
formation. The presence of chlorophyll is necessary to
the formation of starch, though the latter is a very simple
substance.
Starch is therefore absent from the fungi.
Recent researches4 point to the conclusion that starch
is formed by the protoplasm under the influence of light
filtered, so to speak, through chlorophyll. Though in
soluble, starch seems to be readily rendered soluble, as,
though chiefly formed in the leaves, it is rapidly trans
ferred to the stem, the seeds and other parts, where it
is stored up as a food-reserve. It is from these stores
that man obtains some of the most important of his
food-stuffs—the flour of wheat, the sago from the stem
of the sago-palm, and the starchy tuber of the potato.
Agricultural chemists have come to the conclusion that
animals derive their fat from the carbo-hydrates of their
food,5* i.e., from cellulose, starch, and sugar—more es
8
pecially from the two lattei’; and it would seem highly
probable that the similar fatty oils in fruits and seeds,
such as the olive and the oil-palm, are due to the
transformation of starch. A more important change is
that into glucose and soluble starch in germination, in the
spring sap, and such cases, which is brought about by a
ferment or zymase, known as diastase, all but identical
with the similarly acting ptyalin of our own saliva.
While starch is formed by day, by night the proto
plasm originates cellulose, the cells divide and the plant
grows.
Assimilation thus proceeds mainly by day;
growth by night. Some new evidence on this part of
the subject has been educed by Dr. Siemens’s experiments
on plants under the electric light.
In germinating seeds the albuminoids are converted
into substances closely resembling the peptones of animal
4 Those of Pringsheim, remarkably confirmed by Mr. George
Murray, of the British Museum, who has shown that lichenine, a
form of starch occurring in lichens, is formed not in the chloro
phyll-containing “ gonidial layer,” but in the subjacent cells.
8 See Dr. J. H. Gilbert’s Presidential Address to the Chemical
Section of the British Association at Swansea.
�Plants and Animals.
11
digestion ; and in the transfer of these, of soluble starch,
dextrine, and sugar, to the growing parts, we have a close
analogy to animal circulation.6
In the various complex processes of change, known as
metastasis, acid-salts and free acids are formed in plants,
with instances of which we are all familiar, such as the
rhubarb, apple, gooseberry, and orange. Now free acids
are nearly always deleterious to organic tissues. These
acids are therefore either metamorphosed or neutralised,
or to some extent excreted by being stored up in glands
near the surface, as in the orange. Such embedded glands
are very common, as are also the thin-skinned glandular
hairs, which often have a viscid secretion, as in the catch
flies or campions of the genus Lychnis in Saxifraga tri
dactylites, in Pinguicula and in most Droseracec/e. Mr.
Darwin has shown7 that these hairs in Saxifrages,
Droseras, Primula, and Pelargonium, will absorb am
monia from a solution; hence they might obtain it from
dew, in which it occurs in small quantities. It is also
probable that they derive some benefit from the nitro
genous matter in the bodies of flies, with which Saxifraga tridactylites is always covered.
Flies are constantly drowned in the pitcher formed by
the two united leaves of the common teazle, into which
Dr. Francis Darwin thinks he has detected delicate pro
toplasmic threads protruded from the cells of the stem,
like the pseudopodia of a Foraminifer.8
Several plants, belonging to widely separated orders,
have their leaves modified into pitchers, or utricles, in
which insects get drowned and decay, the products of
decay being absorbed by glands on the inner surface of6
8
*
6 The presence of a pepsin-like ferment, or peptogene, which
might have been inferred from the transference of albuminoids
from one part of the plant to another, has been shown in the seeds
of Vetch by Gorup-Besanez. A similar substance occurs in the
milky juice of the papaw (Carica Papaya), which, like the gastric
juice of animals and the secretion from the leaves of the sundew
(Drosera), has the two-fold property of acting as an antiseptic by
destroying the microzymes, or organisms that induce putrefaction,
and of acting as a solvent or peptogene on albuminoids.
“Insectivorous Plants.” London, 1875.
8 Quarterly Journal of Microscopical Science, 1878.
�12
The Physiological Unity of
the organ? Such is the case with the Sarracenias and
their allies, an order related to the water-lilies, and with
the Utricularias or bladder worts, which are related to
the butterwort, Pinguicula, and less closely to the prim
rose tribe. In the true pitcher-plants, however, the
Cephdlotus and the Nepenthes, plants in no way related
morphologically, we reach a much higher physiological
grade. The leaves in this case develope pitchers strictly
comparable to the animal stomach. The glands on the
inner surface of these pitchers secrete a watery fluid
which is slightly acid. Albuminoid matter, whether ani
mal or vegetable, immersed in this fluid, even when
removed from the pitcher, is converted into soluble pep
tones, as in the gastric juice, and this change occurs so
rapidly that we naturally infer the presence of some
pepsin-like ferment. Mere acidulated water, without a
ferment, takes several days to digest albuminoid matter ;
though Professor Frankland has shown that, though dif
fering in the intensity of their action, nearly all acids
will effect such a digestion. After absorbing albuminoid
matter the glands of these pitchers become a bright red
colour, strangely reminding us of the blushing of the walls
of the stomach.
In Pinguicula and in the Droseracece, though we have no
stomach-like pitchers, we have a somewhat higher grade
in the introduction of motion to aid in the nutritive
processes.
The simple leaves of the butterwort are
covered with viscid, glandular hairs, the secretion from
which exerts a remarkable effect upon milk, coagulating
it; whence the name butterwort. When flies stick to
the hairs the leaves roll up at their margins, the secretion
becomes acid, and the albuminoid matter is digested and
absorbed. The absorption is shown by the fact that the
protoplasm in the cells of the glands becomes aggregated
or contracted. If milk is left on the leaves it is first
coagulated, and then its casein is absorbed.
We then come to a most interesting group, the Droseraceoe—a group not represented by any considerable
number of forms, but of world-wide distribution.
A
9 See, on the subject generally, Dr. (now Sir Joseph) Hooker’s
Address to the British Association at Belfast, in 1874, in “ Nature,”
vol. X., and Mr. Darwin’s work before referred to; on Cephalo
tus, Dr. Dickson, in the “Journal of Botany ” for 1878.
�• \ *«* * • r>.Y *.’••’• *
Plants and Animals.
’.• ’.':> '*} ’• »"^
,v? ';/<</ F v’A .\
13
large proportion of the species are natives of Australia;
but they occur also in Patagonia, whilst our British
species range throughout Europe, Siberia, to the Hima
layas, in Kamschatka and in America, from the'Arctic
Circle to Florida and Brazils.
So we may safely say
that they have been successful in the struggle for ex
istence. It affords a strong confirmation to our views as
to the source of their main food-supply that Sarracenias,
Utricularias, Pinguiculas, Nepenthes, and the Droseracece
are in all cases either submerged aquatic plants, or in
habitants of marshes, where they are often seen growing
on pure sand which can only yield them pure water.
Their roots are very small; in Aldrovanda they are
altogether absent.
The round-leaved sundew of our own marshes, which
grows under the protection of the Board of Works on
Hampstead Heath, in Epping Forest, and on Keston
Common, whence Mr. Darwin has procured his specimens,
has its leaves prolonged into glandular hairs or tentacles,
each surmounted by a drop of viscid secretion to which
they owe their name of sundew. The stickiness of this
secretion will amply suffice to detain a small fly by the leg.
On doing so, not only does that particular drop become acid,
but all the other glands instantaneously become aware of
the capture of some nitrogenous matter; their secretions
become acid, and they bend forward till the fly is carried
to the centre of the leaf, covered by the glands. Com
plete digestion then ensues, occupying a time which
varies according to the size of the prey, and the peptones
and other soluble results are absorbed by the glands of
the leaf, the protoplasm of which becomes aggregated.
A substance analogous to pepsin has been detected in the
secretion by Dr. Lawson Tait, who terms it droserin, and
the acid has been determined to be either propionic
(C3 H6 O2), or a mixture of acetic (C2 H4 O2), and butyric
(C4 H8 O2). It is noteworthy that the secretion has also
antiseptic properties, herein also resembling gastric juice.
Chlorophyll is but scantily developed in the mature leaves,
suggesting that organised food renders that derived di
rectly from the atmosphere to a large degree unnecessary.
That the plant derives a decided advantage from this
leaf-absorbed nitrogen is conclusively proved by Dr.
Francis Darwin’s comparative experiment, in which he
�14
The Physiological Unity of
grew some hundred meat-fed plants side by side with a
like number of others not so fed, the former proving
the superior in weight, number of off-sets, of flower
stalks, of flowers, and of seeds, and in the weight of their
seeds.
It is, however, in the exotic ally of our sundew, the
Venus’s fly-trap (Dioncea muscipula) of North Carolina,
perhaps, that we have the highest degree of specialisation
for nutrition in the direction we are considering. In this
plant, rapid movement produced by an electro-magnetic
change in the condition of the blade of the leaf on stim
ulation, takes the place of a viscid secretion. The blade
of the leaf is orbicular, divided by a hinge-like midrib,
and surrounded by spinous prolongations corresponding
to the tentacles of Drosera. Its upper surface is covered
with glands, and bears long sensitive hairs, generally three
on each lobe. These, from their action, I think I may
venture to term vibrissce, i.e., rudimentary sense-organs.
These vibrissae are extremely sensitive to the touch, the
two halves of the leaf instantly closing, their spinous
tentacles becoming interlocked like the teeth of a gin.
Dr. Burdon Sanderson has shown 10 the existence in the
leaf of a normal electric current precisely similar to that
of animal muscle; and that, on the vibrissae being touched,
a deflection of this current, which can be observed with
the galvanometer, is produced, precisely as in the con
traction of muscle under nervous stimulation. Though it
is an anticipation of the next division of my subject, I
must here call your attention also to the remarkable
analogy we have here presented with that deflection of a
normal electric current in the optic nerve which has been
recently shown by Professors McKendrick and Dewar to
be produced by the action of light on the eye in most
animals. The motor impulse, both in this plant and in
Prosera, is transmitted not only by the vascular tissue,
but also by the cellular. The glands are both secretive
and absorptive, but do not secrete until stimulated by
absorption. The acid secretion in the temporarily-formed
stomach acts like that of Drosera. In neither case is fat
absorbed, nor — which is rather remarkable — casein,
though cheese produces an abundant flow of the acid
10 Proc. Royal Society, vol. xxi., and. ‘Nature,’ vol. x.
�Plants and Animals.
15
secretion. In digesting this albuminoid, the butterwort
(Pinguicula) is more active; but perhaps we should look
upon the leaf-digestion in plants as a recently-acquired
function—geologically speaking—so their digestive powers
may as yet be weak. Over-feeding seems to have a fatal
effect either on leaves or on whole plants.
In leaving the subject of nutrition, I hope it will not
be supposed that in dwelling thus at length upon these
plants, I look upon their functions as exceptional. They
are well exhibited for purposes of experiment and com
parison in these so-called “ carnivorous ” plants; but
they are represented in the processes of assimilation and
metastasis throughout the plant-world.11
The functions of relation are motion, sensation, and
nervosity. Some few animals lose the power of moving
from place to place, a power possessed only by the very
lowest plants. Higher plants, however, are carried as
winged fruits or seeds to a distance, and in many cases
possess as much power of relative movement, i.e., the
movement of certain of their parts as do many animals,
e.g., the circum-nutation, as Mr. Darwin has termed it, or
revolving motion of tendrils, twining plants and shoots,
and the irritability of stamens, as in the barberry, or of
carpels as in the balsam. Motion is effected
pseudo
podia in the Myxomycetes and some other Thallophytes,
as much as in the lowest animals, and by cilia in some
what higher members of both groups, whilst muscles are,
of course, as absent in the Protozoa as in plants.
The definitions of sensation, given in most manuals of
physiology, presuppose the existence of nerves and nerve
ganglia. These occur in no animals lower than the
Jellyfishes; yet, I think, most naturalists would rather
look upon protoplasm as a diffused nerve-matter, as
suggested by the late Dr. Bowerbank, than deny sensation
altogether to the Protozoa. Leaving out of consideration
the remarkably rapid action of the sensitive-plant (Mimosa
pudica) and the related movements in various compound
leaves, known as “ sleep,” as being still problematical, I
would ask whether the instantaneous reaction of the
secretion in Drosera (its becoming acid) on stimulation, or
11 I endeavoured to elucidate this point in an article on ‘ Plant
Nutrition ’ in the Gardenerd Chronicle for 1878, vol. ix., p. 202.
�16 The Physiological Unity of Plants and Animals.
the electric action of Dioncea, is not entitled to be con
sidered as the same in kind with animal sensation.
The function of reproduction is performed in three
different ways: by fission, by budding or gemmation, or
by ovulation. Each of these processes is represented both
among plants and among animals, though fission and gem
mation are termed vegetative functions—functions, that is,
of mere discontinuous growth as distinguished from ovu
lation or sexual reproduction. Eission, or cell-division,
is the normal method of reproduction among the lowest
cellular plants (Protophyta), and even a sea-anemone,
when cut in half, has healed to form two perfect indi
viduals. Gemmation, or the production of off-sets more
or less distinct, familiar to us in ferns, bulbs, and straw
berry runners, occurs also in the freshwater polyp {Hydra)
and other animals higher in the scale.
In the processes of sexual reproduction we have, how
ever, perhaps the most striking of all the parallelisms
beween plants and animals. In both we have the im
pregnation of a germ-cell or ovum by a sperm-cell, the
male element: in Cryptogamic plants, and in animals,
this male element is a minute body furnished with one or
more cilia, known as a,spermatozoid: in both kingdoms the
ovum is a single cell originated within its parent cell by
what is termed free-cell formation: in both this ovum
subdivides to form the embryo ; and in the egg of the one,
as in the seed of the other, there is often, in addition to
the embryo, a food-supply for its early nourishment. In
fairness it must be noticed that the animal ovum is seg
mented into four, eight, sixteen or more segments, whilst
that of the plant forms in general a filament (hypha or
suspensor), at the end of which the embryo originates;
and secondly, that flowering plants have perhaps advanced
a grade beyond animals in substituting the fovilla of
pollen for the spermatozoid.
I have thus in detail endeavoured to trace a funda
mental identity, in nutrition, in relation, and in repro
duction, in plants and animals. My object in so doing
has been to extend, as far as our knowledge permits us,
the reign of law and uniformity; and to show that the
study of the physiology even of plants may not be with
out its practical lessons to so exalted an animal as Man.
Kenny & CO., Printers, 25, Camden Road, N.W.
�
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The physiological unity of plants and animals: a lecture delivered before the Sunday Lecture Society, on Sunday afternoon, 30th January, 1881
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B 511
■
THE REVISED VERSION: “THE
ORACLES OF GOD.”
SUNDAY LECTURE SOCIETY,
ST. GEORGE’S IIALL, LANGHAM PLACE,
ON
SUNDAY AFTERNOON, 13th NOVEMBER, 1881,
By GEORGE J. WILD, Esq., LL.D.
ilonboit:
PUBLISHED . BY THE SUNDAY LECTURE SOCIETY.
1881.
PRICE THREEPENCE.
�SYLLABUS
1. —A subject embracing so many points of intricate criticism must
necessarily in a single lecture be treated cursorily and as a whole.
The Nature of the Book revised. Always hitherto regarded as a Sacred
book of infallible authority. Theologians of the minimist school,—various
views of inspiration; neither of these invalidate the authority of scripture
as practically used by recognised bodies of Christians, with whose author
ised statements it is alone possible to deal. Practically the whole
Christian world appeals to us to take scripture as our sure guide.
2. —Sympathy with the alarm of devout persons. Versions;—they
frequently vary. Incongruity of the ideas of an infallible revelation and
varying versions thereof. Opinions, in tlieir own words, of several of the
“Revisers,” and other leading divines, on the effect often produced on
Versions and Manuscripts by bias and dogmatic prejudice—rendering with
a view to edification—chance—attempts at harmonising—intentional falsi
fication and interpolation—dubiousness of meaning.
Reliability of a document must be affected by these incidents.
3.—Attempts to extenuate this difficulty by Christian Apologists. The
attempt invalidated by their own arguments from an opposite point of
view, and by the vital nature of the doctrines affected by the alterations:—
the Trinity—Justification by Faith —Communion in both kinds—The Evil
One;—and by the way in which changed views respecting these doctrines
affect persons and property. Professor Maurice:—Prosecution of “The
Essayists and Reviewers.”
The “trepidation and uncertainty” of the Christian public spoken of by
a clergyman are therefore very natural.
4. —Additional llncertainty warranted by the “ Revisers’ ” own statements
about the text. The Three Great Uncials. Destruction of writings in early
centuries. Rough behaviour of primitive divines. A question for sincere
Christians. The Canon—Four Hundred Years—Eusebius—Dr. Westcott on
“ instinct.”
5. —Sacred volumes among other races deemed also “oracles of God.”
The demons testified of Christ. Reliability of oracles suspected, as sound
knowledge increases.
Conclusion. Apology for disturbing popular sentiment; but to destroy
vulgar conceptions of the infallibility of scripture is as religious and
honest a work in those who think such views detrimental, as is the propa
gation of the Bible by those who think otherwise. The Gospel of the
Future.
�THE REVISED VERSION: “ THE ORACLES
OE GOD.”
ADIES and Gentlemen,—A cursory treatment of such a sub
ject as that proposed to me is all that is possible in a single
lecture, so many are the points of view, and so numerous the
publications to which it bas given rise.
My present purpose is simply to lay before you a few such re
flections as might be supposed to occur to any clear-minded and
fairly-educated person who considered the subject as a whole ; and
I shall only introduce a few of the special points raised by critics
and divines as illustrations by the way.
The first question that naturally occurs is “ What is this booh,”
the revision of which arouses such interest in every direction ?
However vaguely we may recall the lessons of youth, and however
much of late years our attention may have been directed to other
studies, we cannot but remember that it is a book, for which mar
vellous claims are made, which has had a most remarkable history,
and which still exerts a very widespread and powerful influence.
It is a book which claims to be a divine gift from God to man: the
very names that are continually applied to it by divines of all
schools and churches are in fact an assertion of these claims. The
“New Testament,” or, as critics now say it should rather be called,
“ The New Covenant—as setting forth the agreement between
God and man on the terms of salvation. Other titles, familiar to
us, are such as these: “ The Word of God” and “The Oracles of
God,” both adopted from the language of Apostles, “ Holy Scrip
tures,” “ Revelation,” and others, all intended to assert for this
book an authority and a position wholly unique and different from
that of all other books in the world.
Every one,-from his own experience, must be so well aware of
the way in which scripture has been hitherto regarded in the Christ
ian communities, that it would be hardly necessary to insist upon
this point but for the fact that of late years there has grown up
a class of expositors who may be called theologians of the minimist
school. Their notion seems to be that the best method of defend
ing their creed is after the fashion of the animal who escapes from
a trap by leaving his limbs behind him. By a process of gradual
evisceration they seek to free the Christian scheme from whatever
difficulties science or history may discover in it. It may be an
artful plan to confound opponents by providing that all their rude
L
�4
The Revised Version:
blows shall fall upon a vacuum, and if it pleases these gentlemen
to retain the name and style and profess the creed of Christians,
emptied of its contents, it is mainly their own concern. Those,
however, who hold the greater part of the gospel narratives to be
myths, scripture inspired in the same sense as Ovid’s metamor
phoses, and Jesus an amiable social- democrat, burning with the
enthusiasm of humanity, and only divine by a figure of speech, are
not Christians in the usual sense of the word, although it may suit
them to call themselves so. I only allude to them here to say that
it is impossible to take note of the nebulous and ever-shifting
theories by which it is sought to fence or shelter their position. In
discussing the bearing of Christian doctrines it is absolutely neces
sary for clearness sake to have regard only to those presentations
of it put forth by leading Christian bodies and divines of responsible
position. If ever the churches in general come to share the views
of the minimists, there will be not much left then of the old Christ
ianity to discuss, one way or the other, at least nothing probably
that we should care to contend against.
Similar remarks apply in some degree to those defenders of the
faith who insist that there is some refined and esoteric meaning of
scripture language and doctrine imperceptible by ordinary per
sons, and who try to baffle their less learned opponents by telling
them either that they are treating “ Biblical imagery as scientific
*
prose,” or that they “ lade Christians with definitions and conclu
sions which they, are nowhere called on to hold,” or that they are
assuming “ that coarse popular religions of the day represent
Christianity, or attacking “transient phases of opinion long re
linquished.” This all sounds very reasonable, and we acknowledge
that it would be unfair to impute to modern Christians old or igno
rant conceptions which have been abandoned. But then they
must have been really abandoned. It is all very well for one of
our more enlightened bishops, or other speaker at a Church Con
gress, to put a pleasant face on matters, and open both his hands
to science as the true handmaid of religion,—and. my well-read
clerical friend over an evening pipe, may tell me that such or such
a thing only belongs to the “ coarse popular religion of the day,”
that no sensible man thus thinks, and that of course he and his
lettered brethren hold nothing of the kind I—but round the corner
of the street I turn into some Sunday School, and I find the curate
in charge, perhaps my learned friend himself, teaching the actual
titeral beliefs he had been explaining away, or I enter an adjacent
church, and I find much the same thing thought good enough for
* See speeches at Newcastle Church Congress, in Guardian October 5
and October 12.
�a The Oracles of God.”
5
the dear simple-minded mammas and daughters who mostly fill the
pews. It is natural, and not unjustifiable, that such doubletongued Christianity should give rise to the suspicion that certain
of the clergy would gladly re-rivet on us the old superstitions if
only people could be brought to accept them, and that it is only
the persistent voice of the free-thinking objector that forces the
clerical order to concede so much as they do to reason.
On the other hand, I of course allow that there is a considerable
distinction of opinion among genuine Christians. I do not ignore
that there are higher and lower views of inspiration. There are
those who hold that every word and every letter of the sacred
volume were dictated by the Holy Spirit, and those who think
there was only such a general providential superintendence as was
sufficient to guard against substantial error of fact or doctrine.
Liberal theologians, when pressed from the outside.with' the diffi
culties of the inspiration theory, have been ready to concede a
great deal, and have drawn a variety of fine distinctions between
“verbal” and “ plenary,” “ matter and manner,” “ substance and
form,” the “ essence and vehicle” of a revelation—“ the conclusion
and the premises” of a scriptural argument, “the doctrine and
the literary apparatus ” by which it is conveyed. But when they
come to the discussion of points of belief, all schools assume a
practical infallibility for the precise statements, and even, as the
way they use them shows, for short texts and single words of
scripture, and especially are they obliged to do so when dealing
with their hearers in general. For few are so dull as not to
perceive that it must be an extremely risky matter to settle the
criterion of distinction and say how much or how little of a
passage is of divine inspiration: if we admit the fallibility of parts
of scriptural statements, where are we to draw the line ? If none
but expert logicians and skilled linguists are supposed to be
capable of this, scripture for all practical purposes still remains
written “ in a tongue not understanded of the people,” as much as
when written in Hebrew, Greek or Latin. Whatever certain
learned persons may think, therefore, if this theory be plainly put
forward, we others, we of the unlettered multitude, cannot but too
clearly perceive that we are completely at the mercy of a small
priestly or lettered class, or, as Lord Shaftesbury put it, subjected
to the tyranny of professors. The Church of Borne, indeed, faces
this difficulty by claiming for herself the sole and absolute right of
exposition; but she nevertheless, like the Protestant Churches, in
combination with her own tradition, holds the Bible as the rule of
faith.
We may conclude, therefore, this seeming digression by again
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affirming that amongst all really recognisable Christians the scrip
tures still retain their high prerogative, and that none of those
paramount claims are abated which entitle them to be properly
styled “ the revealed Word of God,” or as St. Stephen called them
“ the living Oracles.” In hundreds of learned and elaborate as
well as popular discourses, in Cathedral and University pulpits,
no less than myriad chapels, we are continually exhorted to
“ search the scriptures,” told that they “ will make us wise unto
Salvation,” to take them “ as a guide to our feet and a lantern to
our paths,” to beware how we “ corrupt the Word of God, either
by adding thereto or taking therefrom;” while some of the more
enthusiastic preachers have not hesitated to apply to the whole
scriptures those words of its last page : “if any man add unto the
words of this book God shall add unto him the plagues that are
written therein, and if any man shall take away from the words of
this book God shall take away his part out of the book of life.”
Of this remarkable and widely reverenced book, then, we are
now presented with a “ Revised Version.”
I can well understand and sympathise with the alarm and
repugnance of simple believers when they first heard that the
venerable volume, whose every verse they had been taught was
sacred, was to be exposed to the tampering and pruning of critics.
Its beautiful language and identical words were stored in their
hearts, linked with the history of their lives, and pregnant with
associations and deep meanings breathed but to God alone, and it
was agony to think that that language of the soul was to be
broken in upon, and those, as they believed, eternal harmonies
dislocated and jarred.
. For does there not in truth seem something incongruous
between the very idea of “ a Word of God ” and “ a revised
version ” thereof? An inspired Oracle, a divine revelation, which
in some way has got so interpolated and wrongly rendered as
to require freshly translating and purging of unwarranted parts.
Some will be disposed to think that a revelation that can be
involved in such risks fails of the very end for which a revelation
might be conceived as possible; at any rate that it must be lacking
in that definiteness and certainty which the very conception of a
divine message seems to imply. For as a renowned divine once
*
said, “ The Holy Ghost sheds pure light, and the truth he teaches
hath a language that is always uniform.”
To reveal means to unveil, to make manifest or clear, and is
opposed to every notion of obscurity, and dark puzzles and con
undrums. If indeed, as at the conclusion of his famous Bampton
* Bossuet, Histoire des Variations des 6glises Protestantes, Preface.
�“ The Oracles of God.”
7
Lectures was once wittily said of Dean Mansel, the chief thing
that we believe in, in regard to revelation, is the veil, it is of course
possible to conceive of a matter being revealed with the object of
making it darker than before. But this process, in the ordinary
use of language, would generally be described as “ obscuring ” not
revealing'a matter. A message is brought to the world, professing
to give information about the nature and being of its God—the
conditions of acceptance with him, the means by which men are
to approach him, and the prospects of future happiness or misery.
I soon find there are divergent copies of the message. Christians
nevertheless aver that it is a revelation which gives precise infor
mation on these and other like matters. But when to my zealous
enquiries I can get no certain and uniform answer, no answer in
which any two agree, in what respect am I better than I was
*
originally ? I am left in a region of conjecture and opinion ; but
I had conjectures and opinions of my own before; and the declared
object of the revelation was to dispel such, and establish certainty.
If it fails of this has it not failed of its end ? The object of a light
is to illumine; of a chart to show the track, of an envoy to carry a
definite message; if the light only shows “ darkness visible,” if in
the map no sure continuous path can be discovered, if the messen
ger is so incoherent that we cannot tell whether he refers to Borne
or Canterbury, Constantinople or Geneva, what in any case can
result but ambiguity and confusion ? Now St. Paul tells us that
God is not the God of confusion, and his master declares we may
know things by their fruits. Judging the churches then by their
own standards, what can we say ?
How very different a complexion and meaning the mere process
of version-making may give to a book is evident from many curious
passages of the Septuagint, as compared with the Hebrew bible.
Some very suggestive remarks on this subject may be found in the
4th and 5th lectures of Professor Bobertson Smith’s recent volume
on “ The Old Testament in the Jewish church.”
To the English reader this divergence of version is made easily
apparent by comparing the prayer-book and the bible versions of
the Psalms. Take for instance two corresponding verses of the
58th Psalm. The prayer-book has it “ Or ever your pots be made
hot with thorns, so let indignation vex him even as a thing that is
raw ”—the bible however says “ Or ever your pots can feel the
thorns, he shall take them away as with a whirlwind, both living,
and in his wrath.” Many similar instances might be given.
It can be shown, then, that considerable differences exist be
tween versions as a matter of fact. Most persons, I think, will
perceive upon reflection that it must have been so from the nature
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The Revised Version:
of the case. For consider only the natural bias or prepossession
of each translator derived from his education and mode of thought.
Hear, for instance, what the Bishop of St. Andrews, a “ Reviser,”
says on this point. After alluding to the composition of the
*
Revising Company, with the proportion of Episcopalians and
Dissenters, as necessarily influencing in some degree the results,
he continues thus: “ Bias, of course derived from antecedents,
from education, from position in life, and from ecclesiastical
associations, through the constitution of our common nature there
must needs have been more or less in every case. But I have the
fullest conviction that no conscious partiality . . . was allowed in
any instance to exercise any sway throughout our proceedings.”
So again Mr. Moule,t the well-known Biblical scholar, arguing
against the change from “we have peace with God,” to “let us have
peace with God,” in the revised version of the 5th of Romans,
goes on to say : “ Who can hesitate how to explain the early
growth of the reading ‘ let us have ’ ? It was the result of an age
when the . . . certainties of the Pauline teaching were already
exchanged for the mists of a spirit of unauthorised speculation or
of misguided ecclesiasticism, both alike beclouding the directness
of view and of hold on the part of the Christian towards his
Redeemer.”
As the three earliest MSS. all agree in the reading “ let us have,”
we perceive that Mr. Moule’s estimate of the MSS. even of- that
age is not a high one.
Speaking of another rendering he says, again, “ For this ren
dering, every critical nerve on one side—under dogmatic prejudice
—has been strained.” .... “ But for prepossession against the
idea of the Redeemer’s deity, I am perfectly sure that no rendering
but that now retained would have occurred to a translator in the
first instance.”
Similarly the Rev. W. Ewen, B.D.,1 speaks of “ the unconscious
dogmatic bias” of the “ Revision Committee” itself; even venturing
to state that they have given us, not “ what St. Paul wrote, but
what they think he should have written as an orthodox teacher.”
Then, again, we have an Oxford M.A. complaining that Dr.
Brown',§ one of the Revisers, was led “by dogmatic opinion” . . .
“to insist on the use of the pronoun ‘who’ instead of ‘which’”
when referring to the Spirit; though the Greek word is neuter,
and in English we always say “ it” when speaking of a spirit.*
§
* See his address to his Diocesan Synod, Standard, Sept. 23,1881.
t Moule’s Comment on Epis. to the Romans,-PwiZzcOpm/on,July9th,1881.
J In a letter to Public Opinion, 6th August, 1881.
§ Public Opinion, 6th August, 1881.
�il The Oracles of God.”
9
One gentleman expresses his conviction that a new revision
*
ought to be made chiefly with a view to edification. Since views
of what is edifying differ vastly, this may almost be called erecting
prejudice into a principle.
We have more than one intimation of the opinion that in
introducing “the Evil one” into the Lord’s Prayer, the revisers
were actuated by a laudable desire to restore the doctrine of the
personality of the devil, which has been so depreciated of late
years. One Rev. gentlemant even broaches the comical idea that
the strong dislike expressed by so many persons to this re-intro
duction of “ the Evil one,” arises from the same feeling as Satan’s
own rage when he is found out. I know not to what he alludes,
unless to some of the old stories about the devil appearing in
various disguises, such as lovely women, or beautiful boys, to holy
men and being quickly detected; as when St. Dunstan applied
his hot tongs to the devil’s nose and sent him off swearing.
I need not trouble you with any more statements from orthodox
divines, granting our position as to the large share prejudice must
have in the rendering of any version.
This fact alone must of itself very much affect the trustworthi
ness of any transmitted document.
But our estimate of reliability will have, I think, to be rated
still lower, when we consider the element of chance in the trans
mission of documents—chance including all the risks connected
with the stupidity, the laziness, the superstition and misplaced
reverence of myriads of copyists. Even in the case of the “ Re
vision ” before us, Dr. Sanday, a distinguished critic, allows that
chance must have played its part.J “ In a Committee,” he says,
“ composed of heterogenous elements .... results must needs be
obtained in a great measure by compromise, and even in the
compromises adopted from time to time there will naturally be an
element of accident.”
The Bishop of St. Andrews also emphasises§ the fact that the
voting system of rendering risks the result of a frequent majority
of the least sagacious and able over, as he thinks, a more scholarly
minority.
The Dean of Peterborough and others might be cited as wit
nesses to the same effect.
To the thus allowed effects of prejudice and chance no small
addition must be made from the mistaken views taken of the duties*
§
* J. F. S., in Public Opinion, 17th Sept., 1881.
t Rev. Mr. Tyrwhitt, Public Opinion, 17th Sept., 1881.
t Public Opinion, 6th August, 1881.
§ lb., 24th Sept, and 10th Oct., 1881.
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of a redacteur in those early centuries. If even nowadays we
hear reverend theologians insisting that it is the first duty of a
version-maker to translate with a view to edification, irrespective
of the weight of evidence for or against any particular reading,
what must we suppose to have been the case in those days when
the science and duty of historical precision were altogether un
dreamt of, and a desire “to build up the believers,” as they
phrased it, “in their most holy faith” was considered, not merely
to justify, but to render right and necessary any required amount
of perversion.
To this tendency may be traced some of the blundering attempts
which were evidently made at an early period to harmonize one
gospel with another. The learned Master of University College,
Durham, gives us an instance where even the translators of our
*
Authorised Version were led by this tendency to mistranslate a
passage in John in order to reconcile it with the parallel account
in Matthew and Mark.
But far greater effect, than by attempts at harmonizing, would
be produced by the intentional interpolation and falsification of the
text in those first ages of fierce strife.
On this we have the Bev. Mr. Tyrwhitt’st statement respecting
a text in Matthew, which, he says, “is a plain indication that
deliberate falsification of the evangelist’s phrase must necessarily
here be charged against one or other of the two sets of conflicting
Greek authorities.”
Similarly, Dr. Dwight,t one of the American revisers, speaking
of passages which mention fasting in the Authorised Version, and
which are properly excluded from the “ Bevised,” as no part of the
true text, so that fasting is now nowhere inculcated as a Christian
duty in the New Testament; he observes, “ This manipulating of
the text in the places to which we have made especial reference,
shows the tendency of a later time than the apostolic age.”
So Professor Sanday§ speaks of a certain combination of manu
scripts, namely, the combination “ Aleph D,” that is the Sinaitic
and the Codex Bezae, having “ been found to mark a well-defined
strain of corruption.”
And, here perhaps, it is as well to remark that it makes no differ
ence to our argument whether these gentlemen, in discussing
various passages, are right or wrong in the view they take of the
particular point before them. We need commit ourselves to none*
§
* His Letter in Public Opinion, 1st Oct., 1881.
t Public Opinion, 17th September, 1881.
1 lb. 25th June, 1881.
§ lb., 6th August, 1881.
�il The Oracles of GodT
11
of their opinions. It is enough for us that we have a large
number—for statements like the above might be infinitely multi
plied—a large number of orthodox divines and professed defenders
of the faith, agreeing that a great amount of deliberate and
accidental corruption of New Testament documents prevailed
during the early centuries of our era.
But no small element of uncertainty still remains; it will be
found, even in many cases where all parties are agreed as to the
original reading, but where the meaning of the Greek is doubtful.
Bor an instance, take a verse in the 3rd chapter of John; commenting
on which Professor Plummer says, “In v. 34, the probably correct
*
interpretation of the Authorised Version, ‘ God giveth not the spirit
by measure unto him,’ is reduced to the correct translation ‘ He
giveth not the spirit by measure.’ The possible rendering, ‘ The
spirit giveth not by measure,’ is not thought worthy of notice in the
margin.”
Here, then, we have three possible renderings of the same Greek
the difference of which is not small, at any rate considerable enough
to very much alter the bearing of the text in a conceivable doctrinal
controversy.
Several of our theological leaders have endeavoured to lessen the
sense of uncertainty, perturbing many minds, on account of the
omissions and variations of the I Revised Version,” and confessed
corruptions of the old, by using some such language as this :—
“ After all what is the upshot of the whole work ? No doctrine of
any importance is affected by these corrections; they chiefly refer
to small points. Granting that all the errors, and all the corrup
tions, insisted on by the most trenchant critics are well founded,
yet enough remains to establish all the great articles of faith.”
We must take leave, however, to considerably qualify these
reassuring and comforting statements’
Indeed, this method of representing the alterations, as of little
consequence, is refuted by the language of many of these divines
themselves ; when, regarding the question from the opposite side,
they show the absolute necessity that existed for a revision.
As for instance, Archdeacon Palmer,t one of the revisers, among
others, speaking at the Church Congress, argues that, if the defects
of the Authorised Version had been only in small matters the
public would hardly have endured the experiment of a revision.
“But,”he says, “ when it is seen that the received text is condemned
by a consensus of critics in passages which have been used by authors,
like Bishop Pearson, to establish important doctrines, and which
* Public Opinion, 1st October, 1881.
t lb., Oct. 22nd, 1881.
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must continue to invite like use so long as they stand unaltered in
our English bibles, it is impossible to rest satisfied with a version
which represents that received text.”
He then gives as examples the verse in Tim. (1 Tim., iii. 16),
where the words “ He who was manifest in the flesh,” have been
converted, in the Authorised Version, to “ God manifest in the
flesh,” and the text of the Three Witnesses.
No one can have the face to allege that such texts as these refer
only to small points.
The expulsion of the famous text of the Three Heavenly Wit
nesses must be allowed, on all hands, to withdraw no slight support
from the doctrine of the Trinity. This is made plain, if by nothing
else, at least by the pertinacity and determination with which it
was long fought for in the face of overwhelming evidence, and with
which, in -some orthodox quarters, it is still fought for. Eor their
ecclesiastical experience and acumen make them instinctively feel
that, if it is conceded that the Trinitarian party were so resolute
and unscrupulous as to foist in a whole text to back up their be
loved doctrine, it raises no unreasonable suspicion, that many other
texts, originally of lame inference, have been surreptitiously touched
up to meet their argumentative requirements. Those familiar with
early Greek writing well know that, in many cases, it would require
but the insertion of a mere line an -g-th of an inch long, to convert
a sentence, as an authority, from one side of the question to the
other.
When we consider that this last-mentioned text is the only
one which directly, and in so many words, attested the doctrine of
the Trinity in the whole compass of the New Testament, it must
be fairly allowed that the adversaries of that tenet have scored a
point, when at length it is ignominiously ejected from the sacred
text- without one word of excuse, condolence, or record of its for
mer presence: the Revisers not having condescended to notice it,
even in the margin. Shades of Travis and Porson, behold, how
low this once I glorious pillar of unshaken orthodoxy” has fallen !
Once the rallying point of so many famous champions, and the
*
subject of such hard-fought battles, and now, “ None so poor to do
it reverence,” nay even to bow it out with common civility! If
the poor text had language, we can imagine its addressing these
ruthless Revisers in the words of the old song,—“It may have
been wise to dissemble your love, but why need you kick me down
stairs ?”
Another doctrine, held for many generations to be a vital prin* See Dr. Davidson’s Introduction to New Testament, Vol. II. p. 307, and
Blomfield’s Greek Testament, notes in loco.
�“ The Oracles of God.”
13
ciple of Christianity, almost the note of a standing or falling
church, is that of “ justification by faith.” The rendering of an
important text bearing upon this doctrine, which the “ Revisers ”
have thought themselves obliged to adopt, has been strongly con
demned by no less an authority than the Bishop of Llandaff, whose
*
words are that the view of the “Revisers” “is quite subversive of
this essential doctrine of Christianity,” and “ in direct contradic
tion to the teaching of St. Paul upon the subject.”
I offer no opinion upon the matter beyond stating that it can
hardly be supposed our would-be comforters can, as theologians,
call the doctrine of justification a small point, with, the recollec
tion of all the mighty tomes which have been written on it, and
the endless distinctions hammered out between “ causa efiiciens ”
and “ causa instrumentalis,” “ meritum de condigno,” and “ meritum de congruo,” and all the rest of it.
Then, again, it is well known how long and internecine was the
controversy between the Roman and Protestant Churches on the
question of “ Communion in both kinds,” and the withholding of
the cup from the laity. The present Bishop of Winchester in fact
declares,t “ that it is a very serious question whether the sacra
ment is a valid sacrament when there is only administered one
half of what Christ ordained.”
As all the leading churches agree with that of England that the
sacraments are “generally necessary to salvation,” according to
this showing the great mass of Romanists are reduced to what
Touchstone calls “ a parlous state.” So much the greater conse
quently must be the satisfaction of the Roman authorities when
they find that the “ Revisers ” have thought it right so far to
strengthen their view of the question as to translate in accordance
with the Vulgate version, the text of the 27th v. of 11th ch. of 1
Cor.: “ Whoever shall eat the bread on drink the cup of the Lord,”
instead of as in the Authorised Version: “ and the cup of the Lord.”
In several other instances the Vulgate rendering is approved.
The striking change in the Lord’s prayer of “ evil ” into “ the
evil one,” has caused considerable sensation in most Christian
bodies, and has led to a long and learned controversy between the
Bishop of Durham and Canon Cook.J Time precludes further
allusion to this matter, but when such illustrious authorities differ
so considerably on a point like this, common men may certainly
be excused for thinking that the “oracles” cannot be so plain “that
he may run that readeth.”
* Public Opinion, 17th September, 1881.
+ On the Thirty-Nine Articles, Art. XXX., p. 736.
| See Guardians of September 7 to September 28, inclusive.
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These various changes of the “ Revised Version” can hardly also
be deemed small or immaterial if we consider the probable differ
ence they might have made to persons and parties had they been
foreseen and sanctioned earlier. It is now nearly 30 years ago
since Professor Maurice was the centre of a theological disturb
ance in England, and when, after a somewhat acrimonious dis
cussion, chiefly stirred up by Dr. Jelf, he was ejected from his
professorship. It will be remembered that the main contest ranged
round sundry distinctions of the Professor respecting the word
Aubvios. It can scarcely be doubted that if the standard of infor
mation, and the atmosphere of thought which have led the present
“ Revisers,” in every instance, to translate this word by “eternal,”
and not “ everlasting,” had been as prevalent then as now, that
there would have been nothing heard of the persecution of poor
Maurice—the gentlest and most charitable of men. One, who
was totally opposed to him in most respects, still wrote of him at
the time in these words : “ It is a sorrowful thing to see the fine
subtlety, the large and genial culture, the Christian genius and
virtues of the Chaplain of Lincoln’s-Inn, distorting themselves in
vain struggles of ecclesiastical position, and trying, by all sorts of
loving ingenuities, that would be unveracious in any one else, to
relax the marble brow of a relentless Church.”
A few years later a more terrific storm arose in connection with
the attack upon the authors of “ Essays and Reviews,” which
though finally failing in the attempt to expel the Essayists, subjected
two of them, at least, to a wearisome and costly prosecution, which
if it did not break the heart, at any rate utterly broke the health
and spirits of one of them.
It will be remembered that, the proposed “ handling ” of “ scrip
ture as other books,” was one of the main sources of trouble. It
is probable that a large proportion of those ten or eleven thousand
clergy, who signed the remarkable protest against the “ Essayists,”
have gone to their rest; their survivors must by this time, one
would^think, have got pretty well accustomed to the “ free handling”
of sacred records, and the work of the “ Revisers ” must, at least,
have taught them that if any approximation can be made to the
exact language in which the authors of the New Testament wrote,
it can only be by treating the scriptures very much “ like other
books.” The way in which the “ Revision ” itself has been, for the
most part, accepted is a good index of the great change, in the tone
of thought, on the subject between now and then. But this very
change, this acquiescence in the treatment of “ scripture as other
books,” can hardly be deemed a small or trifling point. It is, in
fact, a point which lies at the very root of the whole matter. It
�“ The Oracles of God.”
15
has already pretty well exploded a whole school of theology, in the
eyes of all rational men, and I am very much deceived if we shall
not, before long, see more remarkable effects. The frantic efforts of
late years among many in Protestant Communities, to bolster up,
like the Homan Controversialists, the scriptures by the Church and
the Church by the scriptures, and the attempt in the Boman Church
to prop what is felt to be itself a crumbling buttress, by elevating
the dogma of infallibility into a “ verite du foi,” are tolerably clear
signs that the feeling of insecurity as to the groundwork of the
faith is spreading in all quarters.
In view, then, of so many varying expedients for underpinning
the faith, and such conflicts of opinion among divines, the letter of
a clergyman, complaining that “ many minds at the present time
*
are agitated by a sense of trepidation and uncertainty,” is not
surprising. When, for instance, we hear so eminent a theologian
as the Bishop of Derryt “ declare his profound conviction that St.
John makes no such statement ” as one which the “ Bevisers ” have
put into his mouth; and that it is to be feared the error of the
revisers will lead to “ serious misapplication ” and “ misapprehen
sion,” and find other ecclesiastics of high position giving utterance
to similar fears, we must grant, I think, that the “ trepidation and
uncertainty ” are not unnatural.
We have hitherto said nothing as to the additional dubiousness
attaching to the subject, in regard to the foundation of the Greek
text of the Bevised Version. The text of the Authorised Version
was confessedly very imperfect. The revisers have, in many re
spects, given us a new one. They tell us, in their preface, that
the materials for improving the text have only come to light within
the last two centuries, some of them only within the last few years.
It follows from this, therefore, that the Christian Church, for the
larger part of its existence, that is from the 5th to the 16 th century,
has had no true text of its divine oracles. The “ Bevisers ” have
chiefly leant upon the great Uncial MSS. Some well known
scholars have complained that they have not consistently done so.
To this the “ Bevisers ” may be said to have replied by anticipa
tion,t when they tdll us “ that it was not within their province to
construct a continuous and complete text; ” and that, in “ many
places,” . . . “it would not be safe for the present to accept one read
ing to the absolute exclusion of others.”
In short, their statements come practically to this : that we are
* Rev. Tilney Bassett, Public Opinion, 16th July, 1881.
t lb., 10th September, 1881.
t Preface to Revised Version.
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still without a true text of the original oracles, and have at present
no means of forming one.
And after all what are these three great Uncials that are placed
up above the other authorities like my Lords in banco, in their fullbottomed wigs. Two of them descend, they say, from the fourth cen
tury, the other from the fifth. It is notorious that by that time
corruptions had sprung up in the church in all directions. It was
a period of the greatest rascality, unscrupulousness, lying, and self
seeking, besides dire confusion among both the lay and clerical
orders, as is admitted even by ecclesiastical historians themselves.
Certainly it is not a creditable era to date from, and a pedigree
commencing in such a period is surely not unquestionable.
It appears to me a very suspicious circumstance too, that we
have no MS., at least of some of the separate books, higher than
the date named. The preceding period was one of violent and
cruel controversy, and we know that religious antagonists did not
stick at trifles in those days, as witness one early council where the
stronger party pummelled their adversaries to that extent that they
were obliged to take refuge under the seats ; and at Ephesus one
leading bishop was so knocked about that he died a few days after
ward. Are these, we cannot help asking, are these the calm sages
and the holy fathers on whose authority we are to accept the mys
teries of religion, and to whose sagacity and fidelity we are to trust
for the preservation of its evidence ? Temperate and precise state
ment might as reasonably be looked for in a meeting of howling
dervishes, or rowdies of the New York slums. At any rate, gentle
men so little ceremonious with the persons of their adversaries,
would not be very particular as to their books, and they had apos
tolic precedent for burning reprobated writings. As they would
not scruple to destroy books, so they would not hesitate either to in
terpolate them, or to ascribe them to others than their real authors.
We have positive evidence that this was the case in some instances,
and we have no doubt in many others also if we could only un
earth the facts. It is not likely that the three great Uncials, de
rived to us from this turbulent and unwholesome era, have escaped
the general contamination. Since these remarks were written, I
have had the pleasure, last week, of reading the terrific onslaught
made upon the Uncials by the current “ Quarterly Review.” The
reviewer gives them the very worst of characters. I am happy to
be so far in accord with him. He should, in consistency however,
have told his readers that the character of the MSS. on which the
Authorised Version is founded is even worse. The joke of the
matter is, that he evidently imagines himself to be lending valuable
support to orthodoxy. The more prudent of the orthodox will, I
�“ The Oracles of God.”
17
think, be ready to cry “heaven save us from our friends.” The re
marks which he ascribes to Tischendorf on Codex D, “ Soepe du- .
bites,” &c., “You may often doubt whether you are reading things
written seriously or in jest,” seem appropriate, I think, to the re
viewer himself. These well-abused Uncials are, however, the best
and earliest MSS. that can be obtained, and we have seen, how
greatly their authority has been allowed to amend the version
hitherto in use in this country.
A question here arises which we shquld think of serious import
ance to such Christians as take their religion in earnest. And that
is, “ What guarantee have you that this revision is final ?” The
“ Revisionists ” themselves tell you that they are not in a position
to certify a perfect text, and that they look for improvement to the
course of time and further research. What guarantee have you
that time has not some great surprise in store ? Suppose, for argu
ments’ sake, a MS. of some New Testament books turned up of the
end of the second century, or suppose that even the identical parch
ments left at Troas were unearthed. And further, suppose that as
of late the comparison of the later with the earlier manuscripts has
led to the suppression or alteration of more than one crucial
text, so the comparison with those still earlier showed that sundry
other passages, upon which theologians have raised their elaborate
edifices, had either been greatly corrupted, or had no existence at
all. It cannot justly be said that by scholars this is held an im
possible supposition, seeing that our most eminent critics, Messrs.
Scrivener and Hort, and others, who agree with them, tell us, in so
many words, “ that the worst corruptions to which the New Tes
*
tament has ever been subjected originated within a hundred years
after it was composed.”
This question of the untrustworthiness of the text brings us
naturally to the subject of the Canon itself.
I conclude that all here understand that by “ the Canon ” is
practically meant the list of books that were eventually received
and held for inspired scripture.
When, then, was this canon finally settled ? All competent
scholars agree that it was not settled until the Council of Carthage,
near the end of the fourth century, and even after that there
were differences of opinion as to certain books.
And here it will be as well for us to try and realise, in some de
gree, the significance of the statement, “ the end of the fourth cen
tury.” Por from the way in which it is often referred to by re
* See Scrivener’s Introduction to the Criticism of the New Testament,
chap. vii. p. 453; and see the whole chapter for many facts confirmatory of
the statements of this lecture.
�18
The Revised Version:
ligious writers and speakers, it is evident that many Christians
conceive that when they have got up to the fourth century, they
have got to the very primal fount and origin of Christianity, and
taste the pure celestial spring. Let us rectify this conception a
little by applying as a measure the course of our own national his
tory. Now four centuries deducted from the present year of grace
will take us back, barring fractions, to the year 1480, near the be
ginning of the last quarter of the fifteenth century.
How many events have changed the face of the world since
then ? The world was then still “ orbis veteribus notus ”—“ the
world as known to the ancients,” as the schoolbooks say. Neither
America nor the Cape of Good Hope had been discovered; printing
had only just been brought to England; the Roman Church was
still dominant; exactly fifty years will pass before the protest of
Luther and the German princes at Spires; Loyola and his famous
society are not yet in existence; the Wars of the Roses are not
yet over; for several generations yet to come Scotland and England
will be still two countries; the first and the second English
revolutions are distant, and the French yet far away in the future;
the present English language had hardly yet been formed; we
must wait longer than a century for Shakespear’s immortal pen;
and, what perhaps is more to our present purpose, the English
Bible was not yet extant, Tindal’s not appearing for over another
fifty, and the Authorised not before 130 years.
One of the arguments used by some to deprecate the Revised
Version before us was, as you will remember, that the fine idiom
atic English of the older book had so worked itself into English
literature and speech, that to change • it would be almost like
changing our forms of thought. But the great bulk of that
English literature has itself grown up nearly within the last 300
years, during which period also our religion has been changed,
our liberties have been purchased, and we have grown from a
small kingdom occupying part of an island to the widest spread
and most flourishing race the world has yet seen.
Such great changes, such modifications of institutions, arts, and
manners, such powerful revolutions of thought and belief, have
occurred in the last 400 years. And can we conceive that during
the first four centuries it was otherwise ? that the world was then
standing still, and that notions and beliefs of the year 50 were
stereotyped, and had submitted to no corruption and no change
by the year when Theodosius I. published the Edict of Thessa*
lonica, and established the Catholic Faith with the sword ? On
* A.D. 380. Other edicts and violent persecutions followed between
380 and 394 A.D.
�11 The Oracles of GodT
19
the contrary, there was probably never a period of greater change
and greater fermentation of thought. The Hellespont and the
Eastern Mediterranean were crowded with an incessant traffic,
and East and West were being brought together as never before :
races were intermingling, and a persistent fusion of all kinds of
superstitions and fanaticisms, rituals, religions, and philosophies,
was taking place and daily developing. Is it not perfectly certain
that the Christianity which resulted from all this, and such
Christian literature as was allowed to survive, must be strongly
impregnated with the atmosphere from which it drew its breath ?
It may be difficult to track all the stages of the process, since we
have no direct Ecclesiastical history of those times before Euse
bius, writing in the first third of the fourth century; and he dis
tinctly avows that he holds it the duty of a Christian historian
*
to suppress matters unfavourable to his cause, and to write with a
view to edification. Other information is chiefly incidental in
works, mostly of a rhetorical or hortatory nature. Heretical writings,
which might have given us a little more light, were systematically
extirpated. But the conclusion, I think, must be obvious to every
intelligent mind that whatever resulted from those ages must have
been largely affected by their spirit, and that the Canon no more
than other things escaped.
The canon was practically settled, as we have seen, by the end
of the fourth century, and by the party which remained finally
dominant after many struggles.
We of course do not deny that a gradual agreement as to the
chief books had been growing during the two centuries preceding;
but on the question what modification these books received in the
process darkness rests. Those who influenced the selection were
mostly a very ill-informed and superstitious sort of persons, with
minds, as Canon Westcott says,t “ essentially uncritical.” It
would be easy, did time allow, to give many instances of their
puerile and ridiculous style of argument. In the immediate postapostolic age the early writers, when they speak of scripture, mean
the scriptures of the Old Testament. By degrees certain other
writings, supposed to have been the work of their first leaders,
grew into respect from being read in the Christian assemblies;
but distant and different churches had not always the same, each
gloried in its own special books; much in the same way as in later
times this shrine would be famous for one relic, and that for
another. Amidst incessant conflicts and discussions and the
* Eusebius, Hist. Ecc., viii. 2, and see Preeparatio Evangelica, xii. 31.
t Westcott on the Canon, Introduction, p. 10, and see M. Nicolas’ “ De la
formation du Canon,” in his “Etudes Critiques sur le Nouv.Test.,”passim.
�20
The Revised Version:
assertion of various claims, the dominant party at length came to
a tolerably harmonious settlement; but it is not to be denied that
books long spoken against are now included in the canon, and
books that were once accepted are now cast out. The Muratorian
Canon, for instance, rejects the Catholic Epistles of Peter, John,
and James, and introduces a book called “The Apocalypse of
Peter.” It is a somewhat significant fact that the first known
Canon is that of Marcion, extremely defective according to ortho
dox views. The only accounts we have of Marcion are from his
adversaries, and therefore suspicious. One fact about him, how
ever, is sufficiently certain, and that is that he protested against
the acceptance of many books afterwards received, and that he had
a different gospel. It is probable that the final result somewhat
depended upon the principle of “give and take.” At any rate, as
Dr. Westcott allows the Canon was “ not definitely marked ” out
*
by any special investigation, but “ was fixed practically by the
common use of Christians; it was formed,” says he, “ by an
instinct, not by an argument.” As he and Dr. Hort tell us again,t
in the notes to their recently issued Greek Testament, “instincts”
are extremely various. There were, it cannot be denied, a great
many warring instincts in those early centuries, and it may be
permitted to question how far the one that finally prevailed was
more likely to be trustworthy than the others.
Regarding then the subject from these several points of view—
the unavoidable bias of version-makers, the conflicting views of
meaning, the enigmatical nature of many statements in themselves,
the well-meant attempts at harmonizing, the unavoidable deterior
ation and corruption of the text, added to the wilful interpolation
and falsification of the text, the suspicious destruction of docu
ments by the finally dominant party, and in addition to all this
the extreme haze and precariousness which surround the whole
history of the Canon itself—have we not said enough to justify
the assertion with which we started, that the idea of a revision is
incongruous with that of a divine revelation; that a “revelation”
transmitted by such means and subject to such drawbacks, must
be of necessity involved in such an atmosphere of uncertainty and
doubt as to fail of the purposes for which a conceivable revelation
might be made.
Is it conceivable that the Bright Intelligence that shines through
out the Universe is so wanting in resource, as to make a message
of mercy to a supposed perishing world dependent on “ the ren
dering of a particle,” the blotting of a letter, or the blunder of a scribe?
* Westcott on the Canon, p. 413, and p. 537.
t Westcott and Hort’s Greek Test., p. 542.
�“\The Oracles of God.”
21
As for that poor plea which has been put forward by a northern
Professor, who argues that if Providence has allowed his Word to
be incrusted with errors, Providence has also preserved to our
times the means of correcting them—thus giving us the delightful
opportunity of resorting to “ critical processes,” and exercising our
skill in the solution of difficulties—it seems to me that to impute
such a roundabout and ensnaring plan to Providence is anything
but respectful and complimentary. Moreover, it is not true, as I
have shown the most eminent critics confess, that we have yet the
means of rectifying the mass of corruptions to which the scrip
tures have been subjected. It is a pitiable spectacle to see a man
of intellect driven by the necessities of a baseless theory to adopt
such a miserable evasion.
And let me remind you again, that all the statements and ad
missions I have adduced and pn which my argument is founded,
are not those of opponents and freethinkers, but of stout defenders
of the faith, mostly divines and scholars of eminence. Many
confirmatory facts may be found in Drs. Westcott and Hort’s
recently published introductory volume to their Greek Testament.
St. Luke tells the Excellent Theophilus, that the object of his
writing to him was that he “might know the certainty” of the
things he had been taught. Whatever effect was produced upon
his first reader, assuredly the opposite effect gains ground with the
Theophilusses of later times, who, in every fresh reading and
revision, find some new sources of doubtfulness. Will a hundred
channels of incertitude when combined, bring forth certainty ?
Or not rather, like combinations in general, when taken all
together, produce a total of uncertainty absolutely incalculable.
What wonder then at the histories of thousands of different
opinions, wrangled over by divergent sects and doctors ? If a
system had been specially devised to produce this polychromatous
result, could it have succeeded better ?
Sometimes it is said in mitigation of this statement, that though
certainty is unattainable on many points on which Christians
differ, yet that it is to be found on all essential points. This
fallacy I have already alluded to. I need only further say, how can
those points be declared unessential over which Churches have
lived in eternal conflict, and filled the world with wars, massacres,
and martyrdoms ? If they were, after all, really unessential,
Christianity stands by that very fact, I fear, condemned before
God and man.
In all nations of the world at a certain stage of progress, we
find men weakly anxious to penetrate beyond those things that
can be known, to claim superior Beings for their patrons, and to
�22
The Revised Version:
read the future. This tendency of the human mind has made men
readily credulous of all sort of revelations and scriptures, Zend and
Buddhist, Sibylline books and other oracles, of Jove, Asclepius, or
Apollo, which to their votaries in those days were verily “ Oracles
of God.” In a further stage of progress the more intelligent
classes of a community begin to ask themselves and one another
awkward questions, and find it very difficult to get satisfactory
answers. Then comes the stage of public discussion, and more or
less open literary assault on ancient faiths and observances. As for
*
instance, Oinomaos of Gardara, in disgust, we are told, with the
ambiguous reply of an oracle to himself, put forth a treatise, in
which, among others, he thus ridicules the deity of Delphi,—“ Why
do you make sport of us with your doubtful sayings ; have you not
at least gumption enough to perceive that we are coming to see
that you do not know what to answer (to our questions) and think
by pompous nonsense to cast a mist before our eyes ? What good
are you doing at Delphi, wasting time chanting your trumpery pro
phecies ? What fools we all are to offer you so many sacrifices !”
While the wiser heathen, however, thus 'detected the fraud in
their oracles, some of the early Christians supposed that they were
true, and attributed them to demons, their theory being that the
demons “ stole from the writings of the prophets a knowledge of
things to come.” Some Christians, indeed, seem to have concocted
imaginary oracles in support of their own views. Eusebius pre
tends to an oracle affirming the doctrine of the Trinity; Nicephorust gives an account of one which testified directly of Jesus
Christ. This notion of making the devils testify to Christ, you
will remember has found its way into the New Testament the
writers apparently not perceiving that it somewhat conflicted with
the argument put into Christ’s mouth in another place about
Satan being divided against himself.
However, at last comes the day when oracles are dumb, and one
after another Sibylline books get discredited. A certain amount of
discomfort and social disorganisation is probably unavoidable as
new notions displace old ones. As long as there are influential
classes personally interested in the maintenance of the status quo,
there will never be freedom from the risk of able and ambitious in
dividuals taking advantage of popular ignorance to stir up reaction
*
in favour of the old. And while large masses of a population re
main mentally uncultivated, and in a low condition of material
welfare there is no security that some fresh and worse delusion
may not ground itself upon ancient ones, and spread through a race
* Eusebius Praeparatio Evangelica, v. 21, and seq. and vi. 7.
+ Cited in Vandale’s Treatise on Oracles.
t Mark III. Luke IV.
�4< The Oracles of God.”
23
Eke an epidemic. History shows us more than one instance of this
fact, which philosophers in their studies are sometimes too apt to
forget. It is the part of all wise men, as it seems to me, when old
faiths are crumbling, to hasten on the mental and material improve
ment as rapidly as possible. Nor should it be forgotten that if
they would free mankind from old fond conceptions and prevent
their revival in aggravated forms, they must, as Mr. Frederic
Harrison pointed out in a late able address, find something to fill
the aching void which will give scope for the affections and emo
tions as well as the intellectual part of man.
In conclusion, let me say that it must not be supposed that my
remarks are intended in any spirit of hostility to the bible itself.
As a notable literature, helping largely to the’ study of human
experience and mental progress, and containing much fine poetry
and moral apologue, there are few books more estimable. But when
used, as mainly hitherto, for the manufacture of infallible creeds,
for the armoury of frenzied delusions, and as an excuse for “ dealing
damnation round the land,”—when, in short, it is transformed from
a parable of man, into an “ oracle of God,” instead of a blessing, it
becomes a scourge to the world.
To do what little in one lies to remove this misconception
seems to me a benevolent and religious work. As contributing
thereto I hail the publication of the “ revised version.”
Some people say, “ As the influence of the Scripture is so wide
spread, is it not better to let it remain unchallenged, to take ad
vantage of it as a channel for instruction, and by frequent accom
modation adapt it gradually to the developing knowledge of man
kind ?” Leaving aside for the present the consideration that the
Scripture having been convicted of a mistaken theory of life and
human action cannot be a lasting and safe basis of social welfare
and progress,—it is enough now to answer, that the exorbitant
claims so long asserted for it render it difficult, if not impossible, to
place it in a modified position which shall yet be an authoritative one.
Like Caesar’s wife, a supernatural messenger must be above sus' picion; a supposed infallible guide, once caught tripping, even
when he gives sound information, will hardly gain credit. Sus
picion among the ill-informed quickly becomes exaggerated, and
then arises the danger that those who have based their faith and
duty on a supposed infallible volume, when they “ find out ” their
oracle, will be apt to discard faith and duty altogether.
It may be easier, for the nonce, to rest in some temporary accom
modation of the popular theology, and it may be a long process to
introduce sounder principles, but eventually it will be found the
safer and surer one in a social point of view.
�24
The Revised Version: “ The Oracles of God.”
The Gospel of Science and humanity may not seem at first to
give scope for such fond hopes and afford such marvellous pros
pects as a supernatural revelation, but it has the advantage, that
the lapse of time tends to confirm instead of contradict it, and that
as it never claimed the attributes of an infallible and perfected
scheme, so it'has nothing to dread from any fresh light or manifes
tation. It only opens its record to the patient, slowly and page
by page, as man’s increasing experience enables him to read it, and
if any words are there suggesting error, it not only gives us leave,
but it commands us, by our allegiance to truth, to efface them.
There is no finality about our gospel, and no vain retrospection :
no world and no atom for it is “ lost,” what “ Salvation ” it con
tains embraces the Universe, the immortal mind of man shall never
tire reading its evolving scroll, like the path of the just, ever more
luminous, “ shining more and more unto the perfect day.” Let us
look forward to the time when all men shall learn to read the true
“ living oracles,” the Universe and the mind and heart of man :—
When invitations to sacrifice at inferior shrines shall be met with
the grand words of Cato, advised when in danger, to appeal to the
*
Temple of Ammon:
“ Est ne Dei Sedes, nisi terra, et pontus et aer
Et ccelum, et virtus ? Superos quid qucerimus ultra ?” &c.
Thus versified by Bowe :
“ Is there a place which God would choose to love
Beyond this earth, the seas, yon heaven above,
And virtuous minds,—the noblest throne of Jove ?
Why seek we further, then ?—Behold around
How all thou see’st does with the God abound,
i Jove is alike in all, and always to be foundI”
* Lucan. Pharsal. ix.
SUNDAY LECTURE SOCIETY.
To provide foi' the delivery on Sundays in the Metropolis, and to en
courage the delivery elsewhere, of Lectures on Science,—physical, intellec
tual, and moral,—History, Literature, and Art; especially on their bearing t
upon the improvement and social well-being of mankind.
THE “SOCIETY’S LECTURES
ARE DELIVERED AT
ST. GEORGE’S HALL, LANGHAM PLACE,
On Sunday Afternoons at FOUR o’clock precisely.
(Annually—from November to May.)
Twenty-four Lectures (in three series) are given in each year.
Members’ annual subscription, .£1, becoming due the 1st of October.
For Tickets and the printed Lectures, and for lists of all the Lectures
published by the Society, apply (by letter) to the Hon. Treasurer, War.
Henry Domville, Esq.; 15, Gloucester Crescent, Hyde Park, W.
�
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The Revised Version: "the Oracles of God" : a lecture delivered before the Sunday Lecture Society, St George's Hall, Langham Place, on Sunday afternoon, 13th November, 1881
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Text
VICTORIES OF SCIENCE
IN ITS
WARFARE WITH SUPERSTITION.
•
’ *
DELIVERED BEFORE THE
SUNDAY LECTURE
SOCIETY,
ON
SUNDAY AFTERNOON, 20th FEBRUARY, 1881,
2U■
BY
A. ELLEY
FINCH.
j'lwdu* 1
i-niiHfirhi
-sawi)
PUBLISHED BY THE SUNDAY LECTURE SOCIETY.
1881..
PRICE THREEPENCE.
�SUNDAY LECTURE SOCIETY,
To provide for the delivery on Sundays in the Metropolis, and to
encourage the delivery elsewhere, of Lectures on Science, —physical,
intellectual, and moral,—History, Literature, and Art; especially
in their bearing upon the improvement and social well-being of
mankind.
PRESIDENT.
W. B. Carpenter, Esq., C.B., LL.D., M.D., F.R.S., &c.
VICE-PRESIDENTS.
Professor Alexander
Bain.
Charles
Darwin, Esq.,
F.R.S., F.L.S.
Edward Frankland, Esq.,
D.C.L., Ph.D., F.R.S.
James Heywood, Esq., F.R.S.,
F.S.A.
Ser Arthur
Hobhouse,
K.C.S.I.
Thomas Henry Huxley,
Esq., LL.D., F.R.S., F.L.S.
Benjamin Ward Richard
son, Esq., M.D., F.R.S.
Herbert Spencer, Esq.
W. Spottiswoode,
Esq.,
LL.D., Pres.R.S.
John Tyndall, Esq., LL.D.,
F.R.S.
THE SOCIETY’S LECTURES
ABE DELIVERED AT
ST.. GEORGE’S HALL, LANGHAM PLACE,
On SUNDAY Afternoons, at FOUR o’clock precisely.
(Annually—from November to May.)
Twenty-Four Lectures (in three series) ending 25th April,
1881, will be given.
Members’ £1 subscription entitles them to an annual ticket, trans
ferable (and admitting to the reserved seats), and to eight single
resOrved-seat tickets, available for. any lecture.
Tickets for each series (one for each lecture) as below,—
•
To the Shilling Reserved Seats —5s. 6d.
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�SYLLABUS.
Vast number, variety, and vacillation of Religious Beliefs, pre
sented to us by the history of the Human Race.
Distribution amongst mankind of the eight great Theologies
(book-religions) of the present day, viz., Zoroastrianism—
Brahmanism—Buddhism—Confucianism —Tao-ism—Mosaism—
Christianism—Mahommedanism.
No generally acknowledged standard of Theological truth,
and why.
Theology explained as a human (logical) system, based upon
the blending of Religion with Superstition.
Religion as defined by Herbert Spencer, the late Lord Amberley,
and Dr. James Martineau.
Superstition defined as credulity concerning manifestations
of the Supernatural inconsistent with the experienced order and
veracity of Reason and Nature.
Science explained as generalized human knowledge of Natural
Phenomena.
The criticism of Science purifies Theology by purging it of
Superstitions, thereby compelling it to undergo transmutations
corresponding to the progress of human intelligence.
Illustrations from the conflict of Science with the following
Superstitions:—
1. The relative magnitude, flat form, and immobility of the
Earth. (Conflict with Astronomical Science.)
2. The six days creation of the world 6,000 years ago.
(Conflict with Geological Science.)
3. The government of human life by Special Providence.
(Conflict with Physical Science.)
4. The Theological theory of disease, involving miracle-cure,
relic-cure, prayer-cure, &c. (Cwflict with Sanitary
Science.)
5. Anthropomorphic conceptions of the Nature, Attributes,
and Will of Deity. (Conflict with Mental and Mol'd
Science.)
Probability that popular Theologies are still saturated with
Superstitions (e.g., belief in the objective efficacy of sacerdotal
supplications, humiliations, and asceticisms, supernatural revela
tions, and exclusive salvations) which the expansion of Science
must eventually explode.
Summary of evils of life inflicted by Superstition, and ameli
orations of human well-being achieved by Science, showing that
the increase of Health, Happiness, and the Moral Virtues is
coincident with the decline of Superstition and the advancement
of Science.
The debt Religion owes to Science.
�THE VICTORIES OF SCIENCE
IN ITS
WARFARE WITH SUPERSTITION.
HE modern student 'of Universal History, seeking
T to enlarge and generalize his conception of human
nature by the contemplation of the life of man in almost
every discovered clime, and throughout the ages of
recorded time, finds himself at the confluence of the
greatest number of streams of knowledge that have ever
been found flowing and converging together; greatly
embarrassed therefore, not to say overwhelmed, by the
multiplicity and diversity of his materials. .
Even limiting his research to that emotional and
imaginative yet transcendently interesting aspect of the
human mind presented by religious phenomena, he
quickly discovers that he is surrounded by a vast number,
variety, and almost incessant fluctuation of Beliefs con
cerning the supernatural, that have everywhere been
found more or less prevailing from the earliest dawn of
authentic history.
On the one hand, it is remarkable that no people, or
trace of a people, has hitherto been discovered absolutely
destitute of some of the ultimate elements or sentiments
of Beligion, Travellers and thinkers entertaining diverse
views on historical, political, and social questions, who
have made the early history of man, or his most savage
condition subjects of careful study, are really agreed on
this fundamental point.
On the other hand, the most civilized and polished
nations on the fa,ce of the globe have exhibited, and still
�6
The Victories of Science in its
exhibit almost endless differences, divisions, and distinc
tions in their theological creeds, rites, and ceremonies.
The time now at our disposal would not suffice for
the slightest allusion to the numerous Religions or
Mythologies of even the chief Nations of the ancient
world. Babylonians, Assyrians, Phoenicians, Egyptians,
Arabians (before conversion), Greeks, Romans, various
Teuton, Celtic, and Sclavonic Nations, the Astecs of
Mexico, the Incas of Peru—all having their indigenous
and various ways of regarding and. worshipping the
supernatural—must now be passed by, in order that I
may concentrate some general observations, suggested by
so endless a variety of supernatural beliefs, upon those
great Theologies or book-religions which constitute the
religious faiths of the present inhabitants of our globe—
viz.—(taking them in the order of their antiquity)—
Zoroastrianism, with its sacred Zend-Avesta, the religion
of the Parsees, descendants of the ancient Persians—
Brahmanism and Buddhism, with their sacred Vedas and
Tripitaka, the chief religions of the inhabitants of the
great Indian Peninsula.— Confucianism and Tao-ism
with their sacred books of Kings and Tad-te-King, the
religions of the Chinese — Mosaism with the Hebrew
Scriptures, the religion of the Jews—Christianity with
the New Testament, the religion of modem Europeans
and Americans—and Mahommedanism, with its sacred
volume the Koran, the religion of the Turks and
Arabians, and other considerable peoples in Asia.
The numbers of the respective members of these
several faiths, as given in Johnston’s Physical Atlas,
may be summed up thus—assuming the entire population
of the earth at 1,000 millions, the Christians constitute
340 millions, the Buddhists 300 millions, the Brahmins
130 millions, the Mahommedans 124 millions, the Jews
6 millions, and all other religions 100 millions. A some
�Warfare' with Superstition.
7
what different proportion is cited by Professor Max
Muller from the geography of Berghaus; where the
Buddhists are stated to constitute 31 per cent, of the
entire population of the globe, the Christians 30 per
cent., the Mahommedans 15 per cent., the Brahmins
13 per cent, the Jews a fraction of 3, and all other
religions 8 per cent. These different estimates call of
course be only roughly approximate, but either is
sufficiently near for illustrating our present purpose.
If we looked somewhat closer we should find that
these several religious faiths are mostly subdivided in
ternally into numerous conflicting sects. Christianity,
the religion of the most intellectual and cultured peoples
in existence, is almost infinitely so divided. In Pro
fessor Schaff’s comprehensive and learned work upon
‘ The Creeds of Christendom ’ we are furnished with the
literal texts of nearly 100 distinct creeds, confessions,
articles and formularies of faith of the almost endless
denominations among which dogmatic Christianity has
now become dispersed.
i“
When the mind is thus brought into the simultaneous
presence of the irreconcilable dogmas of the numerous
and conflicting theological faiths, all devoutly believed
in by their respective worshippers, it is difficult to
conceive how any one of them can be considered as
constituting a supernatural universal scheme necessary
for the Salvation of Mankind, seeing th^it it has not,
after upwards of 1,800 years, been believed in, or even
sb much as heard of by more than about a third part
of the great human race.
In view of such manifold differences of theological
belief as a simple comparison of creeds discloses, it is
almost obvious to observe that there can be no generally
acknowledged standard or infallible test of theological
truth. To use the words of a late accomplished historian—-
�8
The Victories of Science in its
Henry Thomas Buckle—“ Theological systems are sub
jects upon which different persons and different nations,
equally honest, equally enlightened, and equally com
petent, have entertained and still entertain the most
different opinions, which they advocate with the greatest
confidence, and support by arguments perfectly satis
factory to themselves, but contemptuously rejected by
their opponents.”
It is so very difficult to place oneself at the point of
view of any religion save our own that we invariably
hear with amazement the arguments or evidence adduced
by the advocates of other religions. Dr. Sprenger, in
the course of a theological discussion, was seriously
asked by a Mussulman how he could possibly disbelieve
the religion of Islam, seeing that Mahomet’s name was
written on the gates of Paradise I and Dr. Morell, in his
thoughtful work on “ The Philosophy of Religion,” relates
the following authentic incident. A distinguished friend
of his in the East had been arguing for some time with
a Mahommedan upon the evidences of Christianity, and
apparently with some success. At length the Mahom
medan, who had been listening attentively, exclaimed—
“ I tell you what it is, Rajah. You Franks are very clever
people; God has given you the power to make ships and
houses and penknives, and to do a great many wonderful
things, but he has granted to us what he has denied to
you—the knowledge of the true Religion.”
The philosopher, though he is confident that all theo
logical systems cannot be wholly true, yet feels that in
the search after truth it must be possible, however
difficult, to arrive at some explanation that may seem
to reconcile the existence of so many divergent faiths;
and if we look a little carefully into the constituents
of theology we may I think discover a clue to the desired
solution. Now we find on examination of any theology
�Warfare with Superstition.
9
or book-religion that it essentially consists of a body of
connected propositions, logically deduced by the human
mind from certain assumed to be inspired writings.
So long then as to err is human, and man remains
short of being infallible, it is clear that such a system of
knowledge must contain some amount of error, and we
may therefore assert with tolerable accuracy, that every
theology the world has seen will be found on analysis to
be compounded of two elements—viz., a germ or sub
stratum of probable truth, and a superstructure or ad
mixture of positive error. The substratum of truth must
ultimately be the same in all theologies, but their several
superstructures of error will be found to vary; partly in
accordance with difference of climate and other geogra
phical circumstances ; partly on account of the differing
race or genius of the peoples, and their stage of civilization,
amongst whom the various theologies have respectively
arisen, or by whom they have since been adopted; and
partly from the dissimilar mental idiosyncracies of their
respective founders or principal expositors.
For the purpose of our argument this afternoon, we
may conveniently designate the substratum of truth as
Religion, and the superstructure of error as Superstition.
Now, keeping this simple distinction clearly in view, we
shall find that notwithstanding the abuse and vituperation
which the Religious World (as it is phrased), have so
incessantly heaped upon Science and its professors, men
of science, whose noble purpose ever is simply to arrive
at truth, and who, for that end, would impress on us the
duty of enquiry, and the folly of credulity, have in reality
never attacked Religion at all, but that in their discoveries
and contentions for the purpose of enabling truth to pre
vail, they have only been attacking or unmasking the
falsehood and error that are ever found lurking in the
guise of Superstition. Superstition—that incubus upon
�IO
The Victories of Science in its
the human mind, whose malediction was so eloquently
pronounced by Buckle, who declared that against the
vitality of that dark and ill-omened principle there was
only one weapon, and that weapon was Science.
I will now define more exactly what we should under
stand by the terms Religion and Superstition, in connection
with the present discourse.
Religion, whatever other quality we claim for it, must
certainly be regarded as true. Its intellectual meaning
then must be strictly limited to assertions that cannot be
contradicted by the discoveries of Science now or hereafter,
or by the truly religious assumption of any theology
whatever; for religious and scientific truth must ever be
one. In reference to this its fundamental requisite, we
find that Religion has been defined by many thoughtful
minds. Thus, our profound philosopher Herbert Spencer
has described it as “ our consciousness of an Inscrutable
Power or Cause manifested to us through all phenomena,
but whose nature transcends intuition, and is beyond
imagination.” The late lamented Lord Amberley, in his
exhaustive “ Analysis of Religious Belief,” describes Re
ligion as ‘ an abstract indefinable pervading sentiment
corresponding to the relation subsisting between the
hyperphysical (or supernatural) power in the Universe,
and the hyperphysical entity in Man.” Dr. James
Martineau, one of the most highly cultured and liberalminded of our theologians, has defined or distinguished
Religion and Science thus—“Science discloses the method
of the World, Religion its cause, and there is no conflict
between them, except when either forgets its ignorance of
what the other alone can know.”
Dr. Martineau however does not leave his definition
there. He boldly ventures into the region of assumptions,
and affirms “that the universe which includes us and folds
us round is the life-dwelling of an Eternal Mind ; that the
�Warfare with Superstition.
•
11
world of our abode is the scene of a moral government
incipient but not yet complete; and that the upper zones
of human affection above the clouds of self and passion
raise us into the sphere of a Divine Communion.” These
three assumptions he considers to be independent of any
possible result of the natural sciences.
Now let us turn to the consideration of what we are
to understand by the term Superstition. Here we have
to deal with something that should be regarded as the
opposite of Religion, for it is something, which taking its
rise from the faculty of fear or dread of the unknown,
imaginatively figures to itself the features of some super
natural or super-human power which is manifested in
ways that are inconsistent with our knowledge of the
established order of nature and the veracity of human
reason; based as such knowledge is on the verified dis
coveries of science and on the uniformity and analogy of
invariable human experience. Superstition then is that
which assumes thus to know and to describe the super
natural. But what, we may ask, is the supernatural ?
It was well argued by the sublime philosopher Spinoza
(whose noble moral life, and subtle thoughts have lately
been so powerfully portrayed by the pen of our good
friend and lecturer Frederick Pollock) that “ we cannot
pretend to determine the boundary between the natural
and the supernatural until the whole of nature shall be
open to our knowledge,” and the late Oxford professor,
Baden Powell, in his striking Essay on the Order of
Nature has remarked, and in approval of this acute
observation of Spinoza, that the supernatural can really
never be a matter of science or knowledge at all, for
the moment it is brought within the cognizance of
reason it ceases to be supernatural; and he affirms that
all assumed knowledge of the supernatural is the off-
�12
.
The Victones of Science in its
spring of ignorance, and the parent of superstition and
idolatry.
Now let us briefly consider what, in connection with
our subject, we should understand by the term Science.
Science you know does not pretend to deal with the
supernatural. Its views and its researches are limited
entirely to Nature. The natural phenomena, matter,
force, and energy are its sources of knowledge, whilst
its organon of induction, or methods of investigation
subordinate the suggestions of the imagination and the
emotions to the dictates of Beason and the evidence
of Nature — Science then simply signifies methodized
or reasoned knowledge of the experienced course of
Nature, i.e. those invariable co-existences and successions
of phenomena — which the human mind discovers by
accurate observation and reflection, and then generalizes
as laws of Nature or unalterable rules constituting the
actual or ultimate government of the course of our
lives. In an abstract sense these laws, being inferences
drawn by the human mind from the observed uniformity
of Nature, may be said to possess in themselves no
governing power ; and that the force we seem to observe
in natural law may in reality be a force behind Nature.
This criticism many of you may remember was most
ably and lucidly submitted to us by our respected Presi
dent Dr. Carpenter in the opening lecture of this year.
But the practical danger of pressing this metaphysical
assumption of some recondite force, of which Science
knows and can know nothing, appears to be this, that it
has a manifest tendency to cause us to retrogade from
Science back to Superstition, for the mystery it involves
inevitably allures the mind to disregard the clearly
observed Law, and to make its appeal to the force or
power assumed to exist behind the law.
�Warfare with Superstition.
13
Now, so far as scientific knowledge extends, the exis
tence of any such force has nowhere been proved.
Natural law is apparently universal and ultimate. “ The
growing belief” observes Herbert Spencer “in the uni
versality of law is so conspicuous to cultivated minds as
scarcely to need illustration, but,” (he shrewdly adds,)
“ Though the fact is sufficiently familiar, the philosophy
of the fact is not so.” “ A natural philosopher,” (says
Professor Jowett) “ capable of seeing creation with a real
scientific insight, would behold the reign of law every
where ; one and continuous in all the different spheres
of knowledge, in all the different realms of Nature,
throughout all time, and over all space.” “ And,” (says
Dr. Carpenter, referring for instance to the law of gravi
tation) “ we feel an assurance of its truth which nothing
save a complete revolution in the world of matter or in
the world of mind can ever shake.”
Although then the inference which the mind draws
from observing the uniformity of Nature is, at the out
set, simply a scientific assumption, similar to the meta
physical assumption of a force existing behind Nature,
yet the substantial difference between the two is really
this—that whilst the metaphysical assumption ever
remains an assumption, the scientific assumption becomes
verified as true through the evidence of universal
experience.
Such undoubtedly are the conclusions of science, and
if they cannot be disproved I submit to you, not specu
latively, but as an important practical matter, that we
should be counselled to regulate our lives in obedience to,
or conformity with the discovered and verified Law of
Nature, and not in reference to some unknown force
assumed to exist behind Nature.
If now we turn and limit our attention to the more
recent history of European Communities we find that
�14
The Victories of Science in its
their advance in civilization, that is in material and
social comfort, and in the conveniences and even neces
saries of civilized life, has progressed in a remarkable
manner parallel with the development of Science. There
is scarcely an improvement in real life that is not strictly
traceable to scientific discovery or invention, and all
such discovery and invention being the result of the
exercise of natural human sagacity is, by its very nature,
antagonistic to Superstition; and the process of continu
ally ascertaining and applying the natural law, by which
the events of life on earth are found to be really regu
lated, has the necessary gradual effect of purifying
theology, so far. as it superstitiously attributes such
events to the immediate action of supernatural causes,
and thereby of compelling theology to undergo interpre
tations and modifications corresponding more or less
closely, to the continual progress of human intelligence.
We shall I think meet with ample evidence of this
progressive change in theological beliefs if we examine,
by way of illustration, some few of the more con
spicuous examples of that ceaseless conflict which Science,
since the establishment of Christianity in Europe, has
ever had to wage with superstition, and where it has
come into collision with the prevailing theological dogmas
of the day.
The first of these memorable contests which I will
mention relates to the supposed magnitude, immobility,
and flat form of the Earth. At the time when this con
flict seriously arose (about the beginning of the 16th
century), the Bible was universally believed to be an
inspired supernatural authority for every matter asserted
or treated of within its various pages, and its true
interpretation in any ambiguous matter to have been
authoritatively declared in the dogmas decreed by suc
cessive Councils of the Church, or in the commentaries
�Warfare with Superstition.
15
of a succession of personages of extraordinary learning
and sanctity termed the Fathers, and it was not only
thought to be utterly fallacious but to be awfully wicked
for anyone to set up an opinion adverse to so revered a
weight of authority as the Bible, Councils, and Fathers
combined was held to be.
Amongst other matters of fact, believed to have been
thereby decided as infallibly true, were the size and
shape of the Earth. It was declared to be the largest
Or chief body in the Universe, and in form or shape to
be a flat plane—and relatively immoveable—and that the
sun, moon, and stars all moved round it; and every
attempt to show, from observation of Nature or calcula
tions of the reason based on such observation, that these
views were physically untrue was met for a long time
with simple scorn and derision : which only became con
verted into the actual persecution of Science and its
professors when so large an amount of evidence to the
contrary had been collected, and marshalled in such a
way as to produce a profound impression upon the lay
intelligence of the age, and when therefore the scientific
views could no longer be safely ignored by ecclesiastical
power.
This evidence I can only glance at, and indeed we are
all now of course more or less familiar with it. For
instance, the voyages of those adventurous navigators
Columbus and Vasco de Gama in the years 1492—97,
and of Magellan in the year 1519, who had amongst them
actually sailed round the earth, proving to demonstration
by this astonishing achievment that it was of definite and
comparatively small size, and not in form a flat plane, but
a circular or globular body. Then the startling astro
nomical researches of Copernicus, Tycho Brahe, and
Kepler, had resulted in demonstrating the Earth’s motion
round the Sun. That it was the Sun that was stationary
�16
The Victories of Science in its
and not the Earth: and then Galileo who, supplementing
previous discoveries by his own, and by the aid of the
telescope, then recently invented, verified, visually as well
as mathematically, the great outline of our Solar System
in a manner that utterly contradicted and indeed outraged
all that men had been taught to believe, and did then
verily believe, on the faith of scriptural and patristic
authority.
The discoveries resulting from the invention of the
telescope were indeed simply astounding, and they exer
cised such a withering influence upon the prevailing
orthodox theories that many of the theologians refused
even to look through the telescope, being afraid to behold
the heavenly phenomena then revealed for the first time
to mortal eyes. A most amusing letter on the subject
from Galileo to Kepler, written in the year 1609 has
been preserved: “Oh, my dear Kepler,” he writes, “how
I wish we could have one hearty laugh together. Here,
at Padua, is the professor of Philosophy, whom I have
repeatedly requested to look at the moon and planets
through my glass, pertinaciously refusing to do so.
Why are you not here ? What laughter we should have
at this glorious folly, and to hear the professor labouring
before the Grand Duke with logical arguments, as with
magical incantations, to charm the new planets out of the
sky! ”
Now Galileo, you remember, was accused of having
attacked Religion; he was prosecuted accordingly, and,
though the consummate audacity of the infallible Roman
Church has since been equal to the denial of its com
plicity in his condemnation—he was summoned before
the tribunal of the Holy Inquisition, the grand ecclesi
astical Court of the time, and he was made, as you know,
to recant all his scientific convictions. We have the
exact words of his recantation, and they sre still worthy
�Warfare with Superstition.
17
of being repeated. Galileo was compelled to declare—
first, bis proposition, “that the Sun is the Centre of the
World and immovable from its place,” is absurd, philo
sophically false, and formally heretical, because it is
expressly contrary to Holy Scripture. Secondly, his
proposition, “ that the Earth is not the Centre of the
World nor immovable, but that it moves, and also with a
diurnal motion,” is absurd, philosophically false, and
theologically considered, erroneous in faith.
Now it should be observed that the Cardinal Inquisi
tors who sentenced Galileo were amongst the most
enlightened ecclesiastics of their age; they were not bad
men, they acted conscientiously according to their light,
and their views were in harmony with the generally
accepted religious knowledge and sentiments of the
time.
The case therefore was one in which it was solemnly
adjudged by theologians that Science had attacked and
was in conflict with Religion. We, living now, know
perfectly well that it was nothing of the sort—that it
was Science in possession of the truth, sapping the
superstitions that formed the superstructure of the theo
logical system of the day; and now every Schoolboy is
taught that Galileo’s recanted propositions are matters of
verified astronomical science, and therefore cannot be
contradictory to, but must be in harmony with, real re
ligious truth. Thus the discoveries and reasoning of these
astronomers and their illustrious successors Newton,
Laplace, Herschel, and divers others, constitute the
first complete victory achieved by Science over Super
stition.
I need not stop to dilate upon the deep importance to
our thoughts and lives of the transcendent truths dis
covered by Astronomers, having given a summary of the
subject in a lecture delivered here four years ago, and
�18
The Victories of Science in its
still in print, “ On the Influence of Astronomical discovery
“ in the development of the human Mind.”
We will now turn to a second illustration of the main
argument of the present lecture. Until quite recently,
almost within the memory of living men, we were sup
posed to possess in the Bible a supernatural revelation of
the Creation of the World, and the time when and the
manner in which it took place. There are ecclesiastical
commentaries on the book of Genesis which undertake to
inform the reader by means of biblical interpretation the
exact month and day of the week when this stupendous
event occurred. Generally however, what is known as
Archbishop Ussher’s chronology was believed as a part of
religious faith, and that system of dates placed the Crea
tion as occurring precisely 4004 years before the birth of
Christ; and the authority of other books of the Penta
teuch is explicit and confirmatory of the Creation having
been accomplished in six days, and according to the
method described in the opening chapters of Genesis.
We read therein, amongst other amazing assertions,
that God rested on the seventh day, and we, or those to
whom these writings are assumed to have been addressed,
are commanded to keep the seventh day holy on that
account, and there can be no doubt of belief in these
narrative and injunction being considered as an essen
tial part of religious faith. Indeed the wearying gloom
and austerity in which the religious world still struggle
to retain our Sunday are strictly traceable to credulity
in the superstition in question.
Now, the science of Geology, which, as most of you
know, consists primarily of an actual examination of the
Earth’s crust or surface and strata beneath for the pur
pose of ascertaining what they may teach concerning the
Earth’s age and history, establishes the existence of a
multiplicity of facts which are utterly contradictory to
�Warfare with Superstition.
19
and subversive of^-first, the alleged creation of the Earth
only some 6,000 years ago, and secondly, of its present
order of inhabitants, vegetable, animal, and human,
having then been brought into existence in the course
of the six days mentioned in the Book of Genesis, and
in the order of succession therein particularised. How
thoroughly irreconcileable with the Biblical account of
the Creation are the scientific conclusions of Geology
will sufficiently appear from the consideration of, amongst
others, the two following well-established geological con
clusions :—Evidence has been obtained in Egypt of the
existence of inhabitants to some extent civilized in that
country 13,000 years ago, and geologists of eminence,
however differing on the details of their science are
agreed that the present condition of the rocks over and
near to which flow the Falls of Niagara evidencing the
recession of the falls from Queenstown to their present
site, has been occasioned by the continuous action of
water throughout a period of 30,000 years—and the
most trustworthy and recent geological authorities, such as
Lyell, Croll, Darwin, Haeckel, Boyd-Dawkins, and Geikie
concur in considering that the antiquity of man is to be
reckoned not by tens of thousands, but by hundreds of
thousands of years !
But I need not occupy your time by considerations
showing how utterly fallacious were the religious notions
on the subject derived simply from the study of the
Scriptures—their fallacy is now on all hands conceded.
I may quote as recent theological authority for our
present scientific views the statement of the Bev. Bobert
Main, Badcliffe observer in the University of Oxford:—
“ Some school books,” he remarks, “ still teach to the
ignorant that the Earth is only 6,000 years old, and that
all things were created in six days—No well educated
person of the present day shares in the delusion. What-
�20
The Victories of Science in its
ever the meaning of the six days, ending with the seventh
day’s mystical and symbolical rest, indisputably we
cannot accept them in their literal meaning, they as
plainly do not denote the order of succession of all the
individual creations.” And Dr. James Martineau has
declared emphatically “ that the whole history of the'
genesis of things Religion must now unconditionally
surrender to Science.”
Well, but there is hardly any class of scientific men
who have been more vehemently denounced for attacking
religion than the geologists. The great argument used
to discredit their researches was the old cry that their
conclusions contradicted Scripture, and accordingly
volumes upon volumes have been published all composed
on the same argumentative basis, viz., That what contra
dicts Scripture cannot be true—an argument as some
of you may have heard, as old at least as the time of
Galileo. “If nature contradicts Scripture” (said the
schoolmen to Galileo), “ Nature must be mistaken, for
we know that the Scriptures are true! ”
And now how does the case stand as regards our
illustration. Geological science being true could not
have been attacking religion, but only those parts of the
theological system which had been constructed from the
superstitions of the day, and thus it has come to pass
that, through the discoveries of the geologists, a second
great victory has been achieved by Science in its warfare
with Superstition.
A third illustration I will refer to relates to the super
stition which I have mentioned in the syllabus of the
Lecture as belief in the government of human life by
special Providence;—the question being whether the
affairs of life are carried on subject to incessant super
natural intervention, or Whether they take place through
the operation of constant invariable natural law.
�Warfare with Superstition.
21
Previously to the rise of the physical Sciences, especially
Astronomy and Geology, the almost universal belief of
Christian Europe was that every significant act #nd
occurrence of life was the direct result of the exercise of
the providence of God, or the power of the Devil. Not
only was this conclusion directly deducible from the
literal interpretation of the language of the Bible, but,
it being the manifest interest of a priesthood, (whose
aim is ever to stand between the prayer of the Votary
and the providential act,) to encourage this belief, books
of devotion are composed by them based upon this idea,
in which instructions are given to enable the worshipper
to beseech the Almighty in a becoming manner for
almost every conceivable thing the circumstances of his
life may for the time being seem to require.
The church of England book of Common Prayer com
piled more than three centuries ago, that is long before
the Physical Sciences had been popularly heard of in this
Country, need only to be opened at random to confirm
what I am now submitting to you. But the progress
of Science has proved beyond rational doubt, that those
circumstances of our lives which were theologically re
ferred to as direct Providential or Satanic interventions,
the inflictions, chastisement, temptations, judgments, or
whatever other sacerdotal phrases are employed to define
supposed manifestations of supernatural Will, are the
result of the operation of natural Law, that is, they are
the direct consequences of the disregard of SQme natural
law which might have been observed and obeyed by the
sagacious use of man’s natural and moral intelligence.
So now, in reference, for example, to the cause and cure
of sickness, our attention is being most usefully drawn
away by Science from miserably moping over manuals
of devotion to the exhilirating study of handy books on
the laws of health—and thus it is, in the words of
�22
The Victories of Science in its
Professor Huxley, that “ Science is teaching the World
that the ultimate Court of Appeal is observation and
experiment, and not theological authority, she is teaching
us to estimate the value of evidence, she is creating a
firm and living faith in the existence of immutable moral
and physical laws, perfect obedience to which is the
highest possible aim of an intelligent being.”
No one then who has impartially watched the course
and improvement of human life, since we have come
to study and to treat its healthy physical and moral exis
tence as immediately dependent upon the observance
of natural law, can doubt that the illustration we are
considering constitutes another most important triumph
of Science over Superstition.
Connected with the last illustration, or rather a con
tinuation of it, is what we may not inaptly term the
theological theory of disease—viz. the notion that diseases,
and epidemics especially, were punishments or judgments
inflicted by the hand of the Almighty for some individual
or national sins, and that they are to be cured sometimes
by a miracle, sometimes by devotion to the shrine or relics
of a Saint, and sometimes by simple prayer addressed to
the Supreme. All these various ways and practices of
appealing for relief to supernatural power were until
quite recent times devoutly believed in throughout almost
the whole of Europe, and were supposed to form essential
parts of religious faith.
Even now in visiting Boman Catholic Churches, espe
cially on the Continent, you cannot fail to observe the
number of Votive offerings that are fixed or suspended
round the shrine and image of a favorite Saint by those
who believe that they have recovered from diseases or
misfortunes through the intervention of the Saint in
answer to the invocations of the patient. This practice,
(like the Ritualistic lighting of candles on the Altars of
�Warfare with Superstition,
23
Churches in the day time,) has been copied from the ser
vice of the Temples of the Pagan religions which prevailed
in Ancient Rome at the time of the establishment of
Christianity in the reign of the Emperor Constantine.
Well therefore asks the astute Middleton, in his instruc
tive “Letter from Rome,”—“ what is all this but a revival
of the old impostures, with no other difference, than what
the Pagan priests ascribed to the imaginary help of their
Deities, the Romish priests as foolishly impute to the
favor of their Saints.” Of course it has been the policy
of the Church to discourage the physician and his science.
He interfered too much with the gifts to and profits of
the shrines.
At one time it was a constant practice on the breaking
out of an epidemic to carry the relics of the Patron Saint
of the locality round the infected districts to drive the
disease away. The superstitious belief we are considering
had become so extravagant, and the practice in connection
with it had obtained a height so ludicrous, that no longer
ago than the end of the last century, the clergy in Spain
induced the people to believe that a pestilence then raging
was caused by their allowing the performance of so un
godly an entertainment as the opera, and it is a fact
that the opera had actually on that account to be put a
stop to 1
Although sanitary science has now in this country com
pletely triumphed over the Superstition in question, yet
owing to our still continued narrow theological teaching
very lamentable occurrences are occasionally seen to
happen. For instance, it is still taught at those strong
holds of sacredotalism, our two great Universities, that
the Bible is in every part of it supernaturally inspired
truth. Mr. Burgon, recently one of the select preachers
at Oxford, in a work addressed to the junior members of
the University, thus expressed himself:—“ The Bible is
�24
The Victories of Science in its
none other than the Voice of Him that sitteth upon the
Throne. Every book of it, every chapter of it, every
verse of it, every word of it, every syllable of it, every
letter of it, is the direct utterance of the Most High.
The Bible is none other than the Word of God—not
some part of it more some part of it less, but all alike the
utterance of Him who sitteth upon the Throne—absolute,
faultlegs, unerring, supreme ! ” We cannot wonder then
that there should be persons who repose faith in its verbal
teaching as applicable at the present time, and who seek
to derive benefit from strictly and literally following its
plainly expressed precepts. One of the apparently plainest
of its injunctions is contained in the general Epistle of
St. James the 5th chap, and the 14th and 15th verses.
“ Is any sick among you ?, Let him call for the elders of
the Church, and let them pray over him anointing him
with oil in the name of the Lord. And the prayer of faith
shall save the sick, and the Lord shall raise him up.”
A religious sect known as the Peculiar People rigidly
follow this injunction in cases of sickness, and it is not so
long since we were scandalized by the spectacle of a cri
minal prosecution, on account of the death of a child
whose parents had treated it biblically and not medically,
and the Magistrate, (Bible and University theological
teaching non obstante,) found the Parents to have been
guilty of culpable neglect for relying on the Bible, with
out calling in medical assistance, and punished them
accordingly.
This case strikingly illustrates the spirit of our age,
showing as it does that secular teaching is in point of
intelligence very far in advance of theological teaching ;
yet it is impossible not to feel commiseration for the
unfortunate people who are so drugged with dognfa that
their religious beliefs actually become conducive to the
deaths of their own offspring, and who are only roused
�Warfare with Superstition.
25
out of their superstitions by finding them thus rudely
shocked by the judgment and penal sentence of the law.
With this exception we in England may be said to
have entirely freed ourselves from the folly of this
branch of superstition, unless it may be thought still to
linger at Guy’s Hospital, where, as we have lately seen,
praying nurses are placed in authority over scientific
physicians !
The only further illustration I will now give you has
reference to those anthropomorphic conceptions of Deity
which have more or less disfigured all the theological
systems of the world,.and until recently characterised
our own conception of the God of Christianity, who is
of course the historical continuation of the Jehovah of
the Hebrew Scriptures ; for, though the Deity of the
New Testament has attributes somewhat different from
those of Jehovah (to which I shall presently refer), He is
evidently the same God throughout.
It might not be easy, it would indeed be impracticable
within the time now at our disposal, to exhibit the
successive steps which have resulted in generally endow
ing the foremost minds of our generation with that
correct and exalted standard of morality or moral sense
by which our social actions, opinions, and beliefs are
righteously judged in the last resort, and whereby the
practice of life has become so mild and humane and
unselfish compared with that of our ancestors, or other
semi-barbarous peoples.
One great effort to improve the morality of Princes
and Rulers stands out conspicuous—I mean the great
work of Hugo Grotius published at Paris in the year
1625 and entitled, “ Three books concerning the Rights
of War and Peacea work whose main objects were,
First—To induce nations to abstain as far as possible
from resorting to the dreadful ordeal of war. and to
�26
The Victories of Science in its
cultivate that noble ideal of the lovers of mankind—a
perpetual peace. To recognise the sovereignty of the
moral or social law, and to submit their quarrels and
conflicting claims to be judged at the bar of conscience.
To this end to establish Courts of Conciliation, and
agree to settle international disputes by arbitration.
Secondly—when that could not be done, or war avoided,
to conduct their warfare with as generous a humanity as
possible. And thirdly—To treat prisoners of war with the
clemency due to them as human beings and brothers, and
not with the relentless cruelties that were then habitu
ally practised towards those unfortunate persons.
The chief contents of Grotius’ grand work consist of
discussions historical and moral enlivened and embel
lished with abundant and interesting citations from the
most celebrated authors of classical and sacred antiquity
—poets, orators, historians, philosophers, and sages of
all times and nations are, with the very splendour of
learning, laid under contributions for the purpose of
supporting, by their conspiring sentiments and reason
ings, the benevolent objects of the good and great
Grotius ; showing in short the unanimity of the higher
order of minds of the whole human race on the great
rules of duty, and the fundamental principles of morals.
If we, studying the lofty argument of Grotius at the
present day,’ can hardly fail to find our views of virtue
and humanity expanded and inspired by so impressive a
display of the principles it expounds, we can easily be
lieve what is related of it when first published—viz. that
it at once fascinated all the sovereigns and ministers and
great men of the time ; that the king of Sweden,
Gustavus Adolphus carried it about with him and kept
it under his pillow ; that a professorship was founded to
teach and diffuse its doctrines ; and that it was translated
(from its original latin) into most modern languages.
�Warfare with Superstition.
27
There has been of course, since the time of the illustri
ous Grrotius, a succession of similar though lesser lights,
whom I will not now stop to name, all exhibiting and
enforcing his humane and philanthropic views.
Another cause operating in the same direction has
been the gradual improvement in the nature and number
of criminal punishments. The penal codes of all Euro
pean nations during the times of theological ascendency
were painfully disfigured by the practice of judicial torture
and arbitrary imprisonments, and the cruel and vindictive
punishments inflicted upon criminals. Bearing in mind
too how large an extent the moral sense or conscience of
a community is a reflection of its legal system, the pre
sent mitigated severity and graduated scale of punish
ments, more or less proportioned to the nature and
gravity of the offence, and to the frailty of and tempta
tion besetting the offender, must have materially assisted
in maturing and refining the public moral sentiment.
A similar effect is also observable as proceeding from
the more civilized character of our popular amusements
—bear baiting, bull baiting, badger baiting, dog fighting,
cock fighting and shying, and other cruel and depraving
sports have now almost ceased amongst us, and if we
desire an example to show the connection between such
barbarous cruelties and the influence of Superstition, we
need only turn our gaze towards Spain, where we see the
most brutalizing of sports—bull-fighting—is still the
principle pastime of the most superstitious people on the
face of Europe.
Now that the cause of our advance in intelligence and
morality, and of our more earnest love of toleration and
truth, has' been scientific or secular, and not theological,
seems plain from the fact that it has resulted in causing
us to view with a sentiment akin to horror, some of the
anthropomorphic attributes and commands of Deity that
�28
The Victories of Science in its
we find recorded in the books of the Bible, and which
previously to the scientific culture and elevation of our
moral sense were generally acquiesced in quite as a matter
of course; were to be believed (suggested an eminent
theologian, the late Dean Mansel,) as God’s temporary
suspensions of the laws of moral obligation, or moral
miracles ! Thus, in the old Testament the Almighty is
represented as walking on the Earth, eating with Abra
ham, wrestling with Jacob, appearing in a visible form to
Moses, .tempting men, and speaking with human speech.
Then the shocking stories related, such as the Divine
sanction of the frightful massacres of the Canaanites and
Levites, with the ruthless slaughter of women and childred, the divine patronage of the odious Jacob—and
numerous instances of extraordinary cruelties ascribed
to Jehovah in the books of the Pentateuch, making him
out to be a man of war, cruel, capricious, revengeful,
and not to be trusted.
In the New Testament indeed we find an improved
character of the Deity, and one in many important aspects
widely different. There is however attributed to the God
of the New Testament what, if rigorously balanced against
the failings ascribed to Jehovah, must be considered to
outweigh them all; viz., the eternity of punishment which
he will inflict in a future life. No efforts of the disci
plined human reason, which is guided by the conscious
ness of right, can discover any justification for the creation
of beings whose lives are to terminate in endless torment.
The enlightened intellectual and moral capacity of civil
ized man rejects the idea of eternal punishment as utterly
revolting to its sense of justice, mercy, and charity,, and
any attempt to realise ‘ in the unpolluted temple of the
mind ’ an enormity so awful causes it to recoil from its
imputed author, who (as is alleged) could create the human
race with the infallible foreknowledge, and therefore
�Warfare with Superstition.
29
with the intention, that the majority, or even some were
eventually to be consigned to the horrible and everlasting
torture of Hell-fire I
From the slight review we have now taken of the influ
ence of Science upon Superstition, and the modifications
that religious creeds have thereby undergone, we may feel
assured that the process is not yet ended, and that popu
lar theologies are still disfigured by superstitions which
expanding science will explode. Such for instance prob
ably, as belief in the objective efficacy of the supplications,
humiliations, fastings, and other asceticisms prescribed by
preistcraft, and not improbably, I venture to think, our
beliefs in supernatural revelations and exclusive salva
tions.
We now know through the Science of Geology, whose
connected sequence of events was so admirably summar
ised by Professor Ramsay, in his Presidential address last
year to the British Association for the advancement of
Science, that in the physical government of the world,
throughout the long ages whose history is embraced by
this marvellous science, all progress has been continuous
and orderly, not varying in kind and intensity from that
of which we now have experience, is indeed the effect of
causes still in full operation, that is, without cataclysms
or catastrophes of any kind. Reasoning by analogy we
should say that if such has been the course of the mate
rial world the course of the spiritual world (the sphere
of religious development) has most probably been similar,
and that if there has been no physical cataclysm in the
one world, neither has there been a spiritual cataclysm
in the other, such as a sudden supernatural revelation
accompanied by miracles would undoubtedly be, but that
throughout the ages all spiritual enlightenment has pro
gressed by the same means and in the same manner as at
the present moment.
�30
The Victories of Science in its
Probably therefore it may come to be generally believed
that the only real revelation is in Science, which, as Herbert
Spencer observes, is a continuous disclosure, through the
intelligence with which we are endowed, of the established
order of the Universe.
If time permitted me now to enter upon a catalogue
of the evil effects wrought by Superstition, that is false
demoralising beliefs relating to the supernatural, we
should find that there is scarcely a single one of the great
miseries of life that is not distinctly traceable to this,
cause. I will only now recall to your mind the horrors
of the Crusades, the numerous religious wars, the Spanish
Inquisition, the persecutions, burnings, martyrdoms,
massacres, and other hideous atrocities that for ages
formed part of the very staple of European history, and
which directly arose out of the superstitious beliefs en
gendered by their dogmatic Theology, which, in its merci
less endeavours to crush freedom of thought and speech,
has impelled man to inflict upon his fellow-man every
species of cruelty and calamity that bigotted and intoler
ant fanaticism could devise.
Now one of the habits engendered by superstitious
belief is of course a tendency to assume that everything
happens through the interposition of providence, and.
must accordingly be right however unscrutable; and,,
however disastrous, yet sent for some good purpose and
to chasten or to benefit us somehow and eventually.
Of course such a tendency operates mischievously by its
withdrawing our minds and energies and precious time
from the search in this world for those natural causes of
misery which when discovered show that it is remediable
by scientific effort, in other words, that it is to be alleviated
by the application of our natural intelligence, and not by
our taking refuge in that sanctuary of Superstition (pro
fanely called) the Will of God.
�Warfare with Superstition*
31
To enumerate the ameliorations of human well-being
that have been achieved through the exercise of man’s
natural intelligence would be a theme almost exhaustless.
In reference to these I will now confine myself to
merely quoting to you the striking summing-up by
Macaulay in his brilliant Essay on Lord Bacon, of the
utilitarian result of the development of scientific method,
so luminously expounded to his contemporaries, and
impressed upon his posterity by the genius of the great
English Philosopher, who enunciated the fruitful axiom
that true philosophy, whatever its theory, is practically
the application of the discoveries and methods of the
sciences to the regulation of the affairs and conduct of
our lives
“ Ask a follower of Bacon what Science has effected for man->
kind and his answer is ready. It has lengthened life; it has
mitigated pain; it has extinguished diseases; it has increased
the fertility of the soil; it has given new securities to the
mariner; it has furnished new arms to the warrior; it has
spanned great rivers with bridges of form unknown to our
fathers; it has guided the thunderbolt innocuously from heaven
•to earth ; it has lighted up the night with the splendour of the
day; it has extended the range of the human vision; it has
multiplied the power of the human muscles; it has accelerated
motion; it has annihilated distance; it has facilitated inter
course, correspondence, all friendly offices, all dispatch of
business; it has enabled man to descend to the depths of the
sea, to soar into the air, to penetrate securely into the noxious
recesses of the earth; to traverse the land in carriages which
whirl along without horses, and the ocean in ships which run
ten knots an hour against the wind. These are but a part of its
fruits, and of its first fruits—for Science never rests, its law is
progress.”
But in truth every page of the history of civilization
shows us that improvement in the health, the happiness,
and the virtue of mankind has taken place entirely
through the intellectual and moral progress resulting
from the teaching of Science. You will find the un
answerable details of this history very clearly exhibited
in Dr. Draper’s remarkable work on “ The intellectual
development of Europe,” and also in its condensed and
�32 Victories of Science in its Warfare with Superstition.
lucid summary, published under the title of ‘ The Con
flict between Religion and Science.’ An unhappy
misnomer this title, however, if the argument of my
lecture be a sound one, viz., That it is not Religion that
Science has attacked or come into conflict with—but
only the superstitions of the hour, that were ignorantly
and erroneously supposed to form parts of Religion, and
that were 1 intent on offering to the Author of Truth
the unclean sacrifice of a lie.’ Now, in exposing and
stamping out Superstition and that old theological spirit
which has brought so much misery upon the world,
Science has actually rendered the most vital service to
Religion; for the true beliefs which Science has thus
compelled Theology to adopt are far more really reli
gious than the superstitious beliefs which Science has
from time to time forced Theology to surrender.
Let us rejoice, in the cause of Humanity, that such
has been the case, and moreover that this purifying
process is yet proceeding, and that Science, whose coura
geous career has hitherto been unstained by cruelty,
oppression, or crime, will, in her warfare with Supersti
tion, still continue marching on to Victories alike
beneficent and bloodless; for
Science is a child as yet,
And her power and scope shall grow,
And her triumphs in the future
Shall diminish toil and woe.
Kenny & Co., Printers, 25, Camden Road, N.W.
�
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Victorian Blogging
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A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
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The victories of science in its warfare with superstitions: a lecture delivered before the Sunday Lecture Society, on Sunday afternoon, 20th February 1881
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Finch, A. Elley
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Place of Publication: London
Collation: 32 p. ; 18 cm
Notes: Part of Morris Miscellaneous Tracts 5. The Society's lectures by the same author on p. [3].
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Sunday Lecture Society
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1881
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G3428
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Science
Superstition
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<img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /><br />This work (The victories of science in its warfare with superstitions: a lecture delivered before the Sunday Lecture Society, on Sunday afternoon, 20th February 1881), identified by Humanist Library and Archives, is free of known copyright restrictions.
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English
Morris Tracts
Science and Religion
Superstition
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Title
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Victorian Blogging
Description
An account of the resource
A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
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Conway Hall Library & Archives
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2018
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Conway Hall Ethical Society
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What must I do to be saved?
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Edition: 3rd ed.
Place of publication: Leek
Collation: 88 p. ; 13 cm.
Series title: Bijou reprints
Series number: No. 1
Notes: Extensively annotated in pencil and ink.
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Ingersoll, Robert Green
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John Barrs
Michael Wright
Philip Wright
W. Larner Sugden
Josiah Gimson
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1881
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Salvation
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national secular society
WHEN WERE OUR GOSPELS
WRITTEN ?
BY
CHARLES BRADLAUG1L
[fourth edition.]
LONDON:
FREETHOUGHT PUBLISHING COMPANY,
28, STONECUTTER STREET E.C.
1881.
�i
�WHEN WERE OUR GOSPELS WRITTEN?
----- .
AN ANSWER TO THE RELIGIOUS TRACT
SOCIETY.
The Religious Tract Society, some time since, issued, pre
faced with their high commendation, a translation of a
pamphlet by Dr. Constantine Tischendorf, entitled “ When
were our Gospels Written ? ” In the introductory preface
we are not unfairly told that “ on the credibility of the four
Gospels the whole of Christianity rests, as a building on its
foundations.” It is proposed in this brief essay to deal
with the character of Dr. Tischendorf’s advocacy, then to
examine the genuineness of the four Gospels, as affirmed by
the Religious Tract Society’s pamphlet, and at the same
time to ascertain, so far as is possible in the space, how far
the Gospel narrative is credible.
The Religious Tract Society state that Dr. Tischendorf’s
brochure is a repetition of “ arguments for the genuineness
and authenticity of the four Gospels,” which the erudite
Doctor had previously published for the learned classes,
“ with explanations ” now given in addition, to render the
arguments “ intelligible ” to meaner capacities ; and as the
“Infidel ” and “ Deist ” are especially referred to as likely
to be overthrown by this pamphlet, we may presume that the
society considers that in the 119 pages—which the trans
lated essay occupies—they have presented the best paper
that can be issued on their behalf for popular reading on
this question. The praise accorded by the society, and
sundry laudations appropriated with much modesty in his
own preface by Dr. Constantine Tischendorf to himself,
compel one at the outset to regard the Christian manifesto
as a most formidable production. The Society’s translator
impressively tells us that the pamphlet has been three times
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WHEN WERE OUR GOSPELS WRITTEN?
printed in Germany and twice in France ; that it has been
issued in Dutch and Russian, and is done into Italian by an
Archbishop with the actual approbation of the Pope. The
author’s preface adds an account of his great journeyings
and heavy travelling expenses incurred out of an original
capital of a “ few unpaid bills,” ending in the discovery of
a basketful of old parchments destined for the flames by the
Christian monks in charge, but which from the hands of
Dr. Tischendorf are used by the Religious Tract Society to
neutralise all doubts, and to “ blow to pieces ” the Ration
alistic criticism of Germany and the coarser Infidelity of
England. Doubtless Dr. Tischendorf and the Society con
sider it some evidence in favor of the genuineness and
authenticity of the four Gospels that the learned Doctor was
enabled to spend 5,000 dollars out of less than nothing, and1
that the Pope regards his pamphlet with favor, or they would
not trouble to print such statements. We frankly accord
them the full advantage of any argument which may fairly
be based on such facts. An autograph letter of endorse
ment by the Pope is certainly a mattei* which a Protestant
Tract Society—who regard “ the scarlet whore at Babylon”
with horror—may well be proud of.
Dr. Tischendorf states that he has since 1839 devoted
himself to the textual study of the New Testament, and it
ought to be interesting to the orthodox to know that, as a
result of twenty-seven years’ labor, he now declares that
“ it has been placed beyond doubt that the original text
. . . . had in many places undergone such serious modi
fications of meaning as to leave us in painful uncertainty
as to what the apostles had actually written,” and that “ the
right course to take” “is to set aside the received text
altogether and to construct a fresh text.”
This is pleasant news for the true believer, promulgated by
authority of the managers of the great Christian depot in
Paternoster Row, from whence many scores of thousands of
copies of this incorrect received text have nevertheless been
issued without comment to the public, even since the society
have published in English Dr. Tischendorf’s declaration of
its unreliable character
With the modesty and honorable reticence peculiar to
great men, Dr. Tischendorf records his successes in reading
hitherto unreadable parchments, and we learn that he has.
�WHEN WERE OUR GOSPELS WRITTEN?
7
received approval from “ several learned bodies, and even
from crowned heads,” for his wonderful performances. As
a consistent Christian, who knows that the “ powers that be
are ordained of God,” our “ critic without rival,” for so he
prints himself, regards the praise of crowned heads as higher
in degree than that of learned bodies.
The Doctor discovered in 1844 the MS. on which he now
relies to confute audacious Infidelity, in the Convent of St.
Catherine at Sinai; he brought away a portion, and handed
that portion, on his return, to the Saxon Government—they
paying all expenses. The Doctor, however, did not then
divulge where he had found the MS. It was for the advan
tage of humankind that the place should be known at once,
for, at least, two reasons. First, because by aid of the re
mainder of this MS.—“ the most precious Bible treasure in
existence ”—the faulty text of the New Testament was to be
reconstructed; and the sooner the work was done the better
for believers in Christianity. And, secondly, the whole
story of the discovery might then have been more easily
confirmed in every particular.
For fifteen years, at least, Dr. Tischendorf hid from the
world the precise locality in which his treasure had been
discovered. Nay, he was even fearful when he knew that
Other Christians were trying to find the true text, and he
experienced “peculiar satisfaction” when he ascertained
that his silence had misled some pious searchers after reliable
copies of God’s message to all humankind; although all this
time he was well aware that our received copies of God’s
revelation had undergone “serious modifications” since the
message had been delivered from the Holy Ghost by means
of the Evangelists.
In 1853, “ nine years after the original discovery,” Dr.
Tischendorf again visited the Sinai convent, but although
he had “enjoined on the monks to take religious care” of
the remains of which they, on the former occasion, would
not yield up possession, he, on this second occasion, and
apparently after careful search, discovered “ eleven short
lines,” which convinced him that the greater part of the
MS. had been destroyed. He still, however, kept the place
secret, although he had no longer any known reason for so
doing; and, having obtained an advance of funds from the
Russian Government, he, in 1859, tried a third time for his
�8
WHEN WERE OUR GOSPELS WRITTEN ?
pearl of St. Catherine,” which, in 1853, he felt convinced
had been destroyed, and as to which he had nevertheless, in
the meantime, been troubled by fears that the good cause
might be aided by some other than Dr. Tischendorf discover
ing and publishing the “priceless treasure,” which, according
to his previous statements, he must have felt convinced did
not longer exist. On this third journey the Doctor dis
covered “ the very fragments which, fifteen years before, he
had taken out of the basket,” “ and also other parts of the
Old Testament, the J\ew Testament complete, and, in addi
tion, Barnabas and part of Hermas.”
With wonderful preciseness, and with great audacity, Dr.
Tischendorf refers the transcription of the discovered Bible
to the first half of the fourth century. Have Dr. Tischen
dorf s patrons here ever read of MSS. discovered in the
same Convent of St. Catherine, at Sinai, of which an
account was published by Dr. Constantine Simonides, and
concerning which the Westminster Review said, “ We share
the suspicions, to use the gentlest word which occurs to us,
entertained, we believe, by all competent critics and anti
quarians.”
In 18b3 Dr. Tischendorf published, at the cost of the
Russian Emperor, a splendid but very costly edition of his
Sinaitic MS. in columns, with a Latin introduction. The
book is an expensive one, and copies of it are not very
plentiful in England. Perhaps the Religious Tract Society
have not contributed to its circulation so liberally as did the
pious Emperor of all the Russias. Surely a text on which
our own is to be re-constructed ought to be in the hands at
least of every English clergyman and Young Men’s Christian
Association.
“ Christianity,” writes Dr. Tischendorf, “ does not, strictly
speaking, rest on the moral teaching of Jesus “it rests on
his person only.” “ If we are in error in believing in the
person of Christ as taught in the Gospels, then the Church
herself is in error, and must be given up as a deception.”
“ All the world knows that our Gospels are nothing else
than biographies of Christ.” “We have no other source of
information with respect to the life of Jesus.” So that,
according to the Religious Tract Society and its advocate, if
the’’ credibility of the Gospel biography be successfully
impugned, then the foundations of Christianity are destroyed.
�WHEN WERE OUR GOSPELS WRITTEN?
9
It becomes, therefore, of the highest importance to show
that the biography of Jesus, as given in the four Gospels, is
absolutely incredible and self-contradictory.
It is alleged in the Society’s preface that all the objections
•of infidelity have been hitherto unavailing. This is, however,
not true. It is rather the fact that the advocates of Chris
tianity when defeated on one point have shuffled to another,
■either quietly passing the topic without further debate, or
loudly declaring that the point abandoned was really so
utterly unimportant that it was extremely foolish in the
assailant to regard it as worthy attack, and that, in any
case, all the arguments had been repeatedly refuted by pre
vious writers.
To the following objections to the Gospel narrative the
writer refuses to accept as answer, that they have been pre
viously discussed and disposed of.
The Gospels which are yet mentioned by the names popu- I
larly associated with each do not tell us the hour, or the
■day, or the month, or—save Luke—the year, in which Jesus
was born. The only point on which the critical divines, who
'have preceded Dr. Tischendorf, generally agree is, that Jesus
was not born on Christmas day. The Oxford Chronology,
collated with a full score of recognised authorities, gives us
a period of more than seven years within which to place the
■date. So confused is the story as to the time of the birth, ?
that while Matthew would make Jesus born in the lifetime
■of Herod, Luke would fix the period of Jesus’s birth as after ■
Herod’s death.
Christmas itself is a day surrounded with curious cere
monies of pagan origin, and in no way serving to fix the
25th December as the natal day. Yet the exact period at
which Almighty God, as a baby boy, entered the world to
redeem long-suffering humanity from the consequences of
Adam’s ancient sin, should be of some importance.
Nor is there any great certainty as to the place of birth of >
Christ. The Jews, apparently in the very presence of Jesus,
reproached him that he ought to have been born at
Bethlehem. Nathaniel regarded him as of Nazareth. Jesus
never appears to have said to either, “I was born at
Bethlehem.” In Matthew ii., 6, we find a quotation
from the prophet: “And thou Bethlehem, in the land of
Judah, art not the least amongst the princes of Juda, for
�10
WHEN WERE OUR GOSPELS WRITTEN?
out of thee shall come a Governor that shall rule my peopleIsrael.” Matthew lays the scene of the birth in Bethlehem,
and Luke adopts the same place, especially bringing the child
to Bethlehem for that purpose, and Matthew tells us it is
done to fulfil a prophecy. Micah v., 2, the only place in
which similar words occur, is not a prophecy referring to
Jesus at all. The words are: “ But thou Beth-lehem
Ephratah, though thou be little among the thousands of
Judah, yet out of thee shall he come forth unto me that isto be ruler in Israel, whose goings forth have been from of
old, from everlasting.” This is not quoted correctly in
Matthew, and can hardly be said by any straining of
language to apply to Jesus. The credibility of a story on
which Christianity rests is bolstered up by prophecy in
default of contemporary corroboration. The difficulties are
not lessened in tracing the parentage. In Matthew i., 17,
it is stated that “ the generations from Abraham to David
are fourteen generations, and from David until the carrying
away into Babylon are fourteen generations, and from the
carrying away into Babylon unto Christ are fourteen genera
tions.” Why has Matthew made such a mistake in his
computation of the genealogies—in the last division we have
only thirteen names instead of fourteen, even including the
name of Jesus? Is this one of the cases of “painful
uncertainty ” which has induced the Religious Tract Society
and Dr. Tischendorf to wish to set aside the textus receptus
altogether ?
From David to Zorobabel there are in the Old Testament
twenty generations ; in Matthew, seventeen generations ;
and in Luke, twenty-three generations. In Matthew from
David to Christ there are twenty-eight generations, and in
Luke from David to Christ forty-three generations. Yet,
according to the Religious Tract Society, it is on the credi
bility of these genealogies as part of the Gospel history
that the foundation of Christianity rests. The genealogy
in the first Gospel arriving at David traces to Jesus through
Solomon; the third Gospel from David traces through
Nathan. In Matthew the names from David are Solomon,
Roboam, Abia, Asa, Josaphat, Joram, Ozias; and in the Old
Testament we trace the same names from David to Ahaziah,
whom I presume to be the same as Ozias. But in 2nd
Chronicles xxii., 11, we find one Joash, who is not men-
�WHEN WERE OUR GOSPELS WRITTEN?
11
tioned in Matthew at all. If the genealogy in Matthew is
correct, why is the name not mentioned ? Amaziah is
mentioned in chap, xxiv., v. 27, and in chap, xxvi., v. 1,
Uzziah, neither of whom are mentioned in Matthew, where
Ozias is named as begetting Jotham, when in fact three
generations of men have come in between. In Matthew
and Luke, Zorobabel is represented as the son of Salathiel,
while in 1 Chronicles iff., 17—19, Zerubbabel is stated to be
the son of Pedaiah, the brother of Salathiel. Matthew
says Abiud was the son of Zorobabel (chap, i., v. 13).
Luke iii., 27, says Zorobabel’s son was Rhesa. The Old
Testament contradicts both, and gives Meshullam, and
Hananiah, and Shelomith, their sister (1 Chronicles iii., 19),
as the names of Zorobabel’s children. Is this another piece
of evidence in favor of Dr. Tischendorf’s admirable
doctrine, that it is necessary to reconstruct the text ?
. three names agreeing after that of David, viz., Salathiel,
Zorobabel, and Joseph—all the rest are utterly different. , |
! 1 The attempts at explanation which have been hitherto
offered, in order to reconcile these genealogies, are scarcely
creditable to the intellects of the Christian apologists. They
allege that “ Joseph, who by nature was the son of Jacob,
in the account of the law was the son of Heli. For Heli
and Jacob were brothers by the same mother, and Heli, who
was the elder, dying without issue, Jacob, as the law
directed, married his widow; in consequence of such mar
riage, his son Joseph was reputed in the law the son of Heli.’^
This is pure invention to get over a difficulty—an invention
not making the matter one whit more clear. For if you
suppose that these two persons were brothers, then unless
you invent a death of the mother’s last husband and the
widow’s remarriage Jacob and Heli would be the sons of the
same father, and the list of the ancestors should be identical
in each genealogy. But to get over the difficulty the pious j
do this. They say, although brothers, they were only half
brothers ; although sons of the same mother, they were not
sons of the same father, but had different fathers. If so,
how is it that Salathiel and Zorobabel occur as father and
son in both genealogies ? Another fashion of accounting
for the contradiction is to give one as the genealogy of
Joseph and the other as the genealogy of Mary. “ Which?
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WHEN WERE OUR GOSPELS WRITTEN?
I “ Luke,” it is said. Why Luke ? what are Luke’s words ?
Luke speaks of Jesus being, “as was supposed, the son of
Joseph, which was the son of Heli.” When Luke says
Joseph, the son of Heli, did he mean Mary, the daughter of
Heli ? Does the Gospel say one thing and mean another ?
because if that argument is worth anything, then in every
case where a man has a theory which disagrees with the
text, he may say the text means something else. If this
argument be permitted we must abandon in Scriptural
criticism the meaning which we should ordinarily intend to
convey by any given word. If you believe Luke meant
daughter, why does the same word mean son in every other
' case all through the remainder of the genealogy ? And if
the genealogy of Matthew be that of Joseph, and the
genealogy of Luke be that of Mary, they ought not to have
any point of agreement at all until brought to David. They,
nevertheless, do agree and contradict each other in several
places, destroying the probability of their being intended as
distinct genealogies. There is some evidence that Luke
does not give the genealogy of Mary in the Gospel itself.
We are told that Joseph went to Bethlehem to be numbered
because he was of the house of David : if it had been Mary
it would have surely said so. As according to the Christian
» theory, Joseph was not the father of Jesus, it is not unfair
to ask how it can be credible that Jesus’s genealogy could
I be traced to David in any fashion through Joseph?
So far from Mary being clearly of the tribe of Judah (to
which the genealogy relates) her cousinship to Elizabeth
would make her rather appear to belong to the tribe of
Levi.
To discuss the credibility of the miraculous conception and
birth would be to insult the human understanding. The
mythologies of Greece, Italy, and India, give many prece
dents of sons of Gods miraculously born. Italy, Greece, and
India, must, however, yield the palm to Judea. The inIcarnate Chrishna must give way to the incarnate Christ.
A miraculous birth would be scouted to- day as monstrous ;
-antedate it 2,000 years and we worship it as miracle.
1
Matt, i., 22, 23, says: “ Now all this was done, that it might
be fulfilled which was spoken of the Lord by the prophet,
saying, Behold, a virgin shall be with child, and shall bring
forth a son, and they shall call his name Emmanuel, which
�WHEN WERE OUR GOSPELS WRITTEN ?
13
being interpreted is, God with us.” This is supposed to be
a quotation from Isaiah vii., 14—16 : “ Therefore the Lord
himself shall give you a sign ; Behold a virgin shall con
ceive, and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel.
Butter and honey shall he eat, that he may know to refuse
the evil, and choose the good. For before the child shall
know to refuse the evil and choose the good, the land that
thou abhorrest shall be forsaken of both her kings.”
But in this, as indeed in most other cases of inaccurate
quotation, the very words are omitted which would show its
utter inapplicability to Jesus. Even in those which are
given, the agreement is not complete. Jesus was not called
Emmanuel. And even if his mother Mary were a virgin,
this does not help the identity, as the word
OLME in i
Isaiah, rendered “virgin” in our version, does not convey
the notion of virginity, for which the proper word is nbUTZl
BeThULE; OLME is used of a youthful spouse recently
married. The allusion to the land being forsaken of both
her kings, omitted in Matthew, shows how little the passage
is prophetic of Jesus.
The story of the annunciation made to Joseph in one
Gospel, to Mary in the other, is hardly credible on any ex
planation. If you assume the annunciations as made by a
God of all-wise purpose, the purpose should, at least, have
been to prevent doubt of Mary’s chastity; but the annun
ciation is made to Joseph only after Mary is suspected by
Joseph. Two annunciations are made, one of them in a
dream to Joseph, when he is suspicious as to the state of
his betrothed wife ; the other made by the angel Gabriel
(whoever that angel may be) to Mary herself, who apparently
conceals the fact, and is content to be married, although
with child not by her intended husband. The statement—
that Mary being found with child by the Holy Ghost, her
husband, not willing to make her a public example, was
minded to put her away privily—is quite incredible. If
Joseph found her with child &?/ the Holy Ghost, how could
he even think of making a public example of her shame
when there was nothing of which she could be ashamed—
nothing, if he believed in the Holy Ghost, of which he need
have been ashamed himself, nothing which need have in
duced him to wish to put her away privily. It is clear—
according to Matthew—that Mary was found with child,
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WHEN WERE OUR GOSPELS WRITTEN?
and that the Holy Ghost parentage was not even imagined
by Joseph until after he had dreamed about the matter.
Although the birth of Jesus was specially announced by
an angel, and although Mary sang a joyful song consequent
on the annunciation, corroborated by her cousin’s greeting,
yet when Simeon speaks of the child, in terms less extra
ordinary, Joseph and Mary are surprised at it and do not
understand it. Why were they surprised ? Is it credible
that so little regard was paid to the miraculous annuncia
tion? Or is this another case of the “painful uncertainty”
alluded to by Dr. Tischendorf ?
Again, when Joseph and Mary found the child Jesus in
the temple, and he says, “ Wist ye not that I must be about
my father’s business ? ” they do not know what he means, so
that either what the angel had said had been of little effect,
or the annunciations did not occur at all. Can any reliance
be placed on a narrative so contradictory ? An angel was
specially sent to acquaint a mother that her son about to be
born is the Son of God, and yet that mother is astonished
when her son says, “ Wist ye not I must be about my
father’s business ? ”
The birth of Jesus was, according to Matthew, made
publicly known by means of certain wise men. These men
saw his star in the East, but it did not tell them much, for
they were obliged to come and ask information from Herod
the King. Is astrology credible ? Herod inquired of the
chief priests and scribes; and it is evident Jeremiah was
right, if he said, “ The prophets prophecy falsely and the
priests bear rule by their means,” for these chief priests
misquoted to suit their purposes, and invented a false pro
phecy by omitting a few words from, and adding a few
words to, a text until it suited their purpose. The star, after
they knew where to go, and no longer required its aid, went
before them, until it came and stood over where the young
child was. The credibility of this will be better understood
if the reader notice some star, and then see how many houses
it will be over. Luke does not seem to have been aware
of the star story, and he relates about an angel who tells
some shepherds the good tidings, but this last-named adven
ture does not appear to have happened in the reign of Herod
at all. Is it credible that Jesus was born twice ? After the
wise men had left Jesus, an angel warned Joseph to flee
�WHEN WERE OUR GOSPELS WRITTEN?
15
with him and Mary into Egypt, and Joseph did fly, and re
mained there with the young child and his mother until the
•death of Herod ; and this, it is alleged, was done to fulfil a
prophecy. On referring to Hosea xi., 1, we find the words
have no reference whatever to Jesus, and that, therefore,
-either the tale of the flight is invented as a fulfilment of the
prophecy, or the prophecy manufactured to support the tale
of the flight. The Jesus of Luke never went into Egypt at
all in his childhood. Directly after the birth of the child
his parents instead of flying away because of persecution
into Egypt, went peacefully up to Jerusalem to fulfil all
things according to the law, returned thence to Nazareth,
and apparently dwelt there, going up to Jerusalem every
year until Jesus was twelve years of age.
In Matthew ii., 15, we are told that Jesus remained in
Egypt, “That it might be fulfilled which was spoken of the
Lord by the prophet saying, Out of Egypt have I called my
sou.” In Hosea ii., 1, we read, “When Israel was a child,
then I loved him, and called my son out of Egypt.” In no
•other prophet is there any similar text.
This not only is
not a prophecy of Jesus, but is, on the contrary, a reference
to the Jewish Exodus from Egypt. Is the prophecy manu
factured to give an air of credibility to the Gospel history,
or how will the Religious Tract Society explain it? The
Gospel writings betray either a want of good faith,
or great incapacity on the part of their authors in the
mode adopted of distorting quotations from the Old Testa
ment ?
When Jesus began to be about thirty years of age
he was baptised by John in the river Jordan. John,
who, according to Matthew, knew him, forbade him
directly he saw him; but, acccording to the writer of
the fourth Gospel, he knew him not, and had, there
fore, no occasion to forbid him. God is an “ invisible ”
“spirit,” whom no man hath seen (John i., 18), or can see
(Exodus xxxiii., 20); but the man John saw the spirit of
God descending like a dove. God is everywhere, but at
that time was in heaven, from whence he said, “This is my
beloved son, in whom I am well pleased.” Although John
heard this from God’s own mouth, he some time after sent
two of his disciples to Jesus to inquire if he were really the
Christ (Matthew xi., 2, 3). Yet it is upon the credibility
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WHEN WERE OUR GOSPELS WRITTEN ?
of this story, says Dr. Tischendorf, that Christianity rests
like a building on its foundations.
It is utterly impossible John could have known and not
have known Jesus at the same time. And if, as the New
Testament states, God is infinite and invisible, it is in
credible that as Jesus stood in the river to be baptised, the
Holy Ghost was seen as it descended on his head as a dove,
and that God from heaven said, “This is my beloved son, in
whom I am well pleased.” Was the indivisible and invisible
spirit of God separated in three distinct and two separately
visible persons ? How do the Religious Tract Society recon
cile this with the Athanasian Creed ?
The baptism narrative is rendered doubtful by the lan
guage used as to John, who baptised Jesus. It is said,
“ This is he that was spoken of by the prophet Esaias,
saying, The voice of one crying in the wilderness, prepare
ye the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.” Isaiah xl.,
1—5? is? “ Comfort ye, comfort ye my people, saith your
God. Speak ye comfortably to Jerusalem, and cry unto
her that her warfare is accomplished, that her iniquity
is pardoned ; for she hath received of the Lord’s hand double
for all her sins. The voice of him that crieth in the wilder
ness, Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make straight in the
desert a highway for our God. Every valley shall be
exalted, and every mountain and hill shall be made low :
and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough
places plain : and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed.”
These verses have not the most remote relation to John ?
And this manufacture of prophecies for the purpose of
bolstering up a tale, serves to prove that the writer of the
Gospel tries by these to impart an air of credibility to an
otherwise incredible story.
Immediately after the baptism, Jesus is led up of the
Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted of the Devil. There
he fasts forty days and forty nights.
John says, in chapter i., 35, “Again, the next day after,
John stood and two of his disciples ; and looking upon
Jesus as he walked, he said, behold the Lamb of God. And
the two disciples heard him speak, and they followed Jesus.”
Then, at the 43rd verse, he says, “ The day following Jesus
would go forth into Galilee, and findeth Philip, and saith
unto him, follow me.” And in chapter ii., 1, he says, “And
�WHEN WERE OUR GOSPELS WRITTEN?
17
the third day there was a marriage in Cana of Galilee, and
the mother of Jesus was there ; and both Jesus was called
and his disciples unto the marriage.” According to Matthew,
there can be no doubt that immediately after the baptism
Jesus went into the wilderness to be tempted of the Devil.
And we are to believe that Jesus was tempted of the Devil
and fasting in the wilderness, and at the same time feasting
at a marriage in Cana of Galilee ? Is it possible to believe
that Jesus actually did fast forty days and forty nights ? If
Jesus did not fast in his capacity as man, in what capacity
did he fast ? And if Jesus fasted, being God, the fast
would be a mockery; and the account that he became a
hungered must be wrong. It is barely possible that in some
very abnormal condition or cataleptic state, or state of
trance, a man might exist, with very slight nourishment or
without food, but that a man could walk about, speak, and
act, and, doing this, live forty days and nights without food
is simply an impossibility.
Is the story that the Devil tempted Jesus credible ? If
Jesus be God, can the Devil tempt God ? A clergyman of
the Church of England writing on this says: “ That the
Devil should appear personally to the Son of God is cer
tainly not more wonderful than that he should, in a more
remote age, have appeared among the sons of God, in the
presence of God himself, to torment the righteous Job. But
that Satan should carry Jesus bodily and literally through
the air, first to the top of a high mountain, and then to the
topmost pinnacle of the temple, is wholly inadmissable,
it is an insult to our understanding, and an affront to
our great creator and redeemer.” Supposing, despite the
monstrosity of such a supposition, an actual Devil—and this
involves the dilemma that the Devil must either be Godcreated, or God’s co-eternal rival; the first supposition
being inconsistent with God’s goodness, and the second
being inconsistent with his power; but supposing such a
Devil, is it credible that the Devil should tempt the
Almighty maker of the universe with “ all these will I
give thee if thou wilt fall down and worship me ? ”
In the very names of the twelve Apostles there is an un
certainty as to one, whose name was either Lebbmus, Thad
daeus, or Judas. It is in Matthew x., 3, alone that the name
of Lebbaeus is mentioned, thus—“Lebbaeus, whose surname
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WHEN WERE OUR GOSPELS WRITTEN?
was Thaddaeus.” We are told, on this point, by certain
Biblicists, that some early MSS. have not the words “ whose
surname was Thaddaeus,” and that these words have pro
bably been inserted to reconcile the Gospel according to
Matthew with that attributed to Mark. In the English
version of the Rheims Testament used in this country by
our Roman Catholic brethren, the reconciliation between
Matthew and Mark is completed by omitting the words
“ Lebbaeus whose surname was,” leaving only the name
“ Thaddaeus ” in Matthew’s text. The revised version of
the New Testament now agrees with the Rheims version,,
and the omission will probably meet with the entire concur
rence of Dr. Tischendorf and the Religious Tract Society,,
now they boast autograph letters of approval from the in
fallible head of the Catholic Church. If Matthew x., 3,.
and Mark iii., 18, be passed as reconciled, although the first
calls the twelfth disciple Lebbeeus, and the second gives him
the name Thaddaeus; there is yet the difficulty that in Luke
vi., 16, corroborated by John xiv., 22, there is a disciple
spoken of as “ Judas, not Iscariot,” “Judas, the brother of
James.” Commentators have endeavored to clear away this
last difficulty by declaring that Thaddams is a Syriac word,
having much the same meaning as Judas. This has been
answered by the objection that if Matthew’s Gospel uses
Thaddaeus in lieu of Judas, then he ought to speak of Thad
daeus Iscariot, which he does not; and it is further objected’
also that while there are some grounds for suggesting a
Hebrew original for the Gospel attributed to Matthew, there
is not the slightest pretence for alleging that Matthew wrote
in Syriac. The Gospels also leave us in some doubt as to.
whether Matthew is Levi, or whether Matthew and Levi are
two different persons.
The account of the calling of Peter is replete with con
tradictions. According to Matthew, when Jesus first saw
Peter, the latter was in a vessel fishing with his brother
Andrew, casting a net into the sea of Galilee. Jesus walk
ing by the sea said to them—“Follow me, and I will make
you fishers of men.” The two brothers did so, and they
became Christ’s disciples. When Jesus called Peter no one
was with him but his brother Andrew. A little further on,
the two sons of Zebedee were in a ship with their father
mending nets, and these latter were separately called. From
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John, we learn that Andrew was originally a disciple of
John the Baptist, and that when Andrew first saw Jesus,
Peter was not present, but Andrew went and found Peter
who, if fishing, must have been angling on land, telling him
!:we have found the Messiah,” and that Andrew then
brought Peter to Jesus, who said, “Thou art Simon, the
son of Jonas ; thou shalt be called Cephas.” There is no
mention in John of the sons of Zebedee being a little further
on, or of any fishing in the sea of Galilee. This call is
clearly on land. Luke’s Gospel states that when the call
took place, Jesus and Peter were both at sea. Jesus had
been preaching to the people, who pressing upon him, he got
into Simon’s ship, from which he preached. After this he
directed Simon to put out into the deep and let down the
nets. Simon answered, “ Master, we have toiled all night
and taken nothing ; nevertheless at thy word I will let down
the net.” No sooner was this done, than the net was filled
to breaking, and Simon’s partners, the two sons of Zebedee,
came to help, when at the call of Jesus, they brought their
ships to land, and followed him.
Is it credible that there were three several calls, or that
the Gospels being inspired, you could have three contradic
tory versions of the same event ? Has the story been here
“ painfully modified,” or how do Dr. Tischendorf and the
Religious Tract Society clear up the matter? Is it credible
that, as stated in Luke, Jesus had visited Simon’s house, and
cured Simon’s wife’s mother, before the call of Simon, but
did not go to Simon’s house for that purpose, until after the
call of Simon, as related in Matthew ? It is useless to reply
that the date of Jesus’s visit is utterly unimportant, when
we are told that it is upon the credibility of the complete
narrative that Christianity must rest. Each stone is im
portant to the building, and it is not competent for the
Christian advocate to regard as useless any word which the
Holy Ghost has considered important enough to reveal.
Are the miracle stories credible ? Every ancient nation
has had its miracle workers, but modern science has relegated
all miracle history to realms of fable, myth, illusion, delusion,
or fraud. Can Christian miracles be made the exceptions ?
Is it likely that the nations amongst whom the dead were
restored to life would have persistently ignored the author
of such miracles? Were the miracles purposeless, or if in
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WHEN WERE OUR GOSPELS WRITTEN?
tended to convince the Jews, was God unable to render his
intentions effective ? That five thousand persons should be
, fed with five loaves and two fishes, and that an apparent
f excess should remain beyond the original stock, is difficult
to believe; but that shortly after this—Jesus having to
again perform a similar miracle for four thousand persons—
his own disciples should ignore his recent feat, and wonder
from whence the food was to be derived, is certainly start
lingly incredible. If this exhibition of incredulity were
pardonable on the part of the twelve apostles, living wit
nesses of greater wonders, how much more pardonable the
unbelief of the sceptic of to-day, which the Religious Tract
Society seek to overcome by a faint echo of asserted events
all contrary to probability, and with nineteen centuries
intervening.
I The casting out the devils presents phenomena requiring
j considerable credulity, especially the story of the devils and
t the swine. To-day insanity is never referable to demoniacal
possession, but eighteen hundred years ago the subject of
lunacy had not been so patiently investigated as it has been
since. That one man could now be tenanted by several
devils is a proposition for which the maintainer would in the
present generation incur almost universal contempt; yet the
repudiation of its present possibility can hardly be consistent
with implicit credence in its ancient history. That the devils
and God should hold converse together, although not with
out parallel in the book of Job, is inconsistent with the
theory of an infinitely good Deity ; that the devils should
address Jesus as son of the most high God, and beg to be
allowed to enter a herd of swine, is at least ludicrous ; yet all
this helps to make up the narrative on which Dr. Tischendorf
relies. That Jesus being God should pray to his Father
4 that “ the cup might pass ” from him is so incredible that
even the faithful ask us to regard it as mystery. That an
angel from heaven could strengthen Jesus, the almighty
God, is equally mysterious. That where Jesus had so pro
minently preached to thousands, the priests should need any
-one like Judas to betray the founder of Christianity with a
kiss, is absurd; his escapade in flogging the dealers, his
wonderful cures, and his raising Lazarus and Jairus’s
daughter should have secured him, if not the nation’s love,
faith, and admiration, at least a national reputation and
�WHEN WERE OUR GOSPELS WRITTEN ?
21
notoriety. It is not credible if Judas betrayed Jesus by a
kiss that the latter should have been arrested upon his own
statement that he was Jesus. That Peter should have had I
a so little faith as to deny his divine leader three times in a <
few hours is only reconcilable with the notion that he had i
remained unconvinced by his personal intercourse with the
; incarnate Deity. The mere blunders in the story of the I
j denial sink into insignificance in face of this major difficulty.
Whether the cock did or did not crow before the third denial,
whether Peter was or was not in the same apartment with
Jesus at the time of the last denial, are comparatively
trifling questions, and the contradictions on which they are
based may be the consequence of the errors which Dr.
Tischendorf says have crept into the sacred writings.
Jesus said, “ as Jonah was three days and three nights in
the belly of the whale, so shall the son of man be three days
and three nights in the heart of the earth.” Jesus was
crucified on Friday, was buried on Friday evening, and yet
the first who went to the grave on the night of Saturday
as it began to dawn towards Sunday, found the body of
Jesus already gone. Did Jesus mean he should be three
days and three nights in the grave ? Is there any proof
that his body remained in the grave for three hours ?
Who went first to'* the grave? was it Mary Magdalene
alone, as in John, or two Maries as in Matthew, or the two
Maries and Salome as in Mark, or the two Maries, Joanna,
and several unnamed women as in Luke ? To whom did
did Jesus first appear? Was it, as in Mark, to Mary
Magdalene, or to two disciples going to Emmaus, as in
Luke, or to the two Maries near the sepulchre, as in
Matthew? Is the eating boiled fish and honeycomb by
a dead God credible ? Did Jesus ascend to heaven the
I very day of his resurrection, or did an interval of nearly
six weeks intervene ?
Is this history credible, contained as it is in four con- '
t tradictory biographies, outside which biographies we have, ■
as UrTTischendorf admits, “no other source of informa- •
tion with respect to the life of Jesus ” ? This history of
III an earth-born Deity, descended through a crime-tainted .
ancestry, and whose genealogical tree is traced through one I
I who was not his father ; this history of an infinite God nursed
G as a baby, growing through childhood to manhood like any
J
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WHEN WERE OUR GOSPELS WRITTEN?
frail specimen of humanity; this history, garnished with
bedevilledjnen, enchanted tig tree, myriads of ghosts, and
scores of miracles, and by such garnishment made more
akin to an oriental romance than to a sober history ; thjs
picture of the infinite invisible spirit incarnate visible as,
man; immutability subject to human passions and infirmi
ties ; the 'creator come to die, yet wishing to escape the
death which shall bring peace to Tris God-tormented crea
tures; God praying to himself and rejecting his own prayer;
God betrayed by a divinely-appointed traitor ; God the
immortal dying, and in the agony of the death-throes—
stronger than the strong man’s will—crying with almost
the last effort of his dying breath, that he being God, is
God forsaken !
* If all this be credible, what story is there any man need
hesitate to believe ?
Dr. Tischendorf asks how it has beeu possible to impugn
the credibility of the four Gospels, and replies that this has
been done by denying that the Gospels were written by the
men whose names they bear. In the preceding pages it has A
, been shown that the credibility of the Gospel narrative is
impugned because it is uncorroborated by contemporary
history, because it is self-contradictory, and because many
of its incidents are prima facie most improbable, and some
of them utterly impossible. Even English Infidels are quite
prepared to admit that the four Gospels may be quite anony
mous ; and yet, that their anonymous character need be of •
no weight as an argument against their truth. All that is |
urged on this head is that the advocates of the Gospel history ■
have sought to endorse and give value to the otherwise un- |
reliable narratives by a pretence that some of the Evange
lists, at least, were eyewitnesses of the events they refer to. ‘
Dr. Tischendorf says: “The credibility of a writer clearlyic*
I' depends on the interval of tifrle which lies between him and |
I the events which he describes. The farther the narrator is ■ i
removed from the facts which heTays before us the more ( y,
his claims to credibility are reduced in value.” Presuming
t truthfulness in intention for any writer, and his ability to
comprehend the facts he is narrating, and his freedom from a
prejudice which may distort the picture he intends to paint
correctly with his pen: we might admit the correctness of
the passage we have quoted; but can these always be pre
�WHEN WERE OUR GOSPELS WRITTEN ?
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sumed in the case of the authors of the Gospels ? On the
contrary, a presumption in an exactly opposite direction may
he fairly raised from the fact that immediately after the
Apostolic age the Christian world was flooded with forged
testimonies in favor of the biography of Jesus, or in favor
of his disciples.
A writer in the Edinburgh Review observes : “ To say
nothing of such acknowledged forgeries as the Apostolic
constitutions and liturgies, and the several spurious Gospels,
the question of the genuineness of the alleged remains of
the Apostolic fathers, though often overlooked, is very
material. Any genuine remains of the ‘ Apostle ’ Barnabas,
of Hermas, the contemporary (Romans xvi., 14), and
Clement, the highly commended and gifted fellow laborer
of St. Paul (Phil, iv., 3), could scarcely be regarded as less
•sacred than those of Mark and Luke, of whom personally
we know less. It is purely a question of criticism. At the
present day, the critics best competent to determine it. have,
agreed in opinion, that the extant writings ascribed to Bar
nabas and Hermas are wholly spurious-—the frauds of a
later age. How much suspicion attaches to the 1st Epistle
of Clement (for the fragment of the second is also generally
rejected) is manifest from the fact, that in modern times
it has never been allowed the place expressly assigned to it
among the canonical books prefixed to the celebrated Alex
andrian MS., in which the only known copy of it is included.
It must not be forgotten that Ignatius expressly lays claim
to inspiration, that Ireneeus quotes Hermas as Scripture,
and Origen speaks of him as inspired, while Polycarp, in
modestly disclaiming to be put on a level with the Apostles,
clearly implies there would have been no essential distinction
in the way of his being ranked in the same order. But the
question is, how are these pretensions substantiated ? ” So
far the Edinburgh Review, certainly not an Infidel publica
tion.
Eusebius, in his “Ecclesiastical History,” admits the4
*’ existence of many spurious gospels and epistles, and some .
writings put forward by him as genuine, such as the corres
pondence between Jesus and Agbaras, have since been rejected as fictitious. It is not an unfair presumption from it
this that many of the most early Christians considered the
then existing testimonies insufficient to prove the history of
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WHEN WERE O'UR GOSPELS WRITTEN?
Jesus, and good reason is certainly afforded for carefully
examining the whole of the evidences they have bequeathed us.
On p. 48, Dr. Tischendorf quotes Irenaeus, whose writings
belong to the extreme end of the second century, as though
that Bishop must be taken as vouching the four Gospels as
we now have them. Yet, if the testimony of Irenaeus be
reliable (“ Against Heresies,” Book III., cap. i.) the Gospel
attributed to Matthew was believed to have been composed
in Hebrew, and Irenaeus says that as the Jews desired a
Messiah of the royal line of David, Matthew having the
same desire to a yet greater degree, strove to give them full
satisfaction. This may account for some of the genealogical
curiosities to which we have drawn attention, but hardly
renders Matthew’s Gospel more reliable ; and how can the /
| suggestion that Matthew wrote in Hebrew prove that Mat- I
ithew penned the first Gospel, which has only existed ini
Greek ? Irenaeus, too, flatly contradicts the Gospels by \
declaring that the ministry of Jesus extended over ten years I
and that Jesus lived to be fifty years of age (“Against £
Heresies,” Book II., cap. 22).
If the statement of Irenaeus (“Against Heresies,” Book’
11“ III., cap. 11) that the fourth Gospel was written to refute the 1
errors of Cerinthus and Nicolaus, have any value, then the
’ actual date of issue of the fourth Gospel will be consider- £.
* ably after the others. Dr. Tischendorf’s statement that
i Polycarp has borne testimony to the Gospel of John is noth,
I even supported by the quotation on which he relies. All w
that is said in the passage quoted (Eusebius, “ Ecc. Hist.(” "
Book V., cap. 20) is that Irenaeus when he was a child
heard Polvea.rn reneat from memorv the dise.onrses of John I?
- in the time of Polycarp it would have been at least as easy jj
to have read them from the MS. as to repeat them from n
memory. Dr. Tischendorf might also have added that
I the letter to Florinus, whence he takes the passage on '
which he relies, exists only in the writings of Eusebius, to ,
whom we are indebted for many pieces of Christian evidence
since abandoned as forgeries. Dr. Tischendorf says : “Any
testimony of Polycarp in favor of the Gospel refers us back
to the Evangelist himself, for Polycarp, in speaking to
Irenaeus of this Gospel as the work of his master, St. John,
must have learned from the lips of the apostle himself,.
�WHEN WERE OUR GOSPELS WRITTEN?
25
evidence
whether he was its author or not.” Now, what evidence^
is there that Polycarp ever saida single word as to the
authorship of the fourth Gospel, of of any Gospel, or that
, he even said that John had penned a single word? In the (\\
[ I Epistle to the Philippians (the only writing attributed to
; Polycarp for which any genuine character is even pre
tended), the Gospel of John is never mentioned, nor is
there even a single passage in the Epistle which can be
identified with any passage in the Gospel of John.
Surely Dr. Tischendorf forgot, in the eager desire to
make his witnesses bear good testimony, that the highest
duty of an advocate is to make the truth clear, not to put
forward a pleasantly colored falsehood to deceive the igno
rant. It is not even true that Irenasus ever pretends1
, that Polycarp in any way vouched our fourth Gospsl as
having been written by John, and yet Dr. Tischendorf had
the cool audacity to say “there is nothing more damaging
to the doubters of the authenticity of St. John’s Gospel *
than this testimony of St. Polycarp.” Do the Religious
Tract Society regard English Infidels as so utterly ignorant
that they thus intentionally seek to suggest a falsehood, or
are the Council of the Religious Tract Society themselves
unable to test the accuracy of the statements put forward
on their behalf by the able decipherer of illegible parch
ments ?
It is too much to suspect the renowned Dr. Con
stantine Tischendorf of ignorance, yet even the coarse
English sceptic regrets that the only other alternative will
be to denounce him as a theological charlatan.
Dr. Mosheim, writing on behalf of Christianity, says that |
the Epistle of Polycarp to the Philippians is by some treated'
. as genuine and by others as spurious, and that it is no easy
matter to decide.
Many critics, of no mean order, class it I
amongst the apostolic Christian forgeries, but whether the
/ Epistle be genuine or spurious, it contains no quotation
I I from, it makes no reference to, the Gospel of John.
M ‘ To what is said of Irenasus, Tertullian, and Clement of
l\ Alexandria, it is enough to note that all these are after
a.d. 150. Irenasus may be put 177 to 200, Tertullian about
193, and Clement of Alexandria as commencing the third' _
century.
One of Dr. Tischendorf’s most audacious flourishes is that
(p. 49) with reference to the Canon of Muratori, which we
�26
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WHEN WERE OUR GOSPELS WRITTEN?
are told “enumerates the books of the New Testament
which, from the first, were considered canonical and sacred,”
and which “ was written a little after the age of Pins I,
about a.d. 170.”
First the anonymous fragment contains books which were
never accepted as canonical; next, it is quite impossible to
say when or by whom it was written or what was its original
language. Muratori, who discovered the fragment in 1740^ 1|
conjectured that it was written about the end of the second i
dr beginning of the third century, but itjg, noteworthy that
neither Eusebius nor any other of the ecclesiastical advocates
ofjhe third, fourth, or fifth centuries, ever refers to it. It
may be the compilation of any monk at any date prior to
1740, and is utterly valueless as evidence.
Dr. Tischendorf’s style is well exemplified by the positive
manner in which he fixes the date a.d. 139 to the first
apology of Justin, although a critic so “ learned ” as the un
rivalled Dr. Tischendorf could not fail to be aware that
more than one writer has supported the view that the date
of the first apology was not earlier than a.d. 145, and others
have contended for a.d. 150. The Benedictine editors of
Justin’s works support the latter date. Dr. Kenn argues
for a.d. 155—160. On page 63, the Religious Tract Society’s
champion appeals to the testimony of Justin Martyr, but in »
order not to shock the devout while convincing the profane,
he omits to mention that more than half the writings once
attributed to Justin Martyr are now abandoned, as either of
doubtful character or actual forgeries, and that Justin’s
value as a witness is considerably weakened by the fact that
he quotes the acts of Pilate and the Sybilline Oracles as
though they were reliable evidence, when in fact they are
both admitted specimens of “ a Christian forgery.” But |
what does Justin testify as to the Gospels ? Does he say
that Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John were their writers ?
On the contrary, not only do the names of Matthew, Mark,
Luke, and John never occur as Evangelists in the writings
of Justin, but he actually mentions facts and sayings as to
Jesus, which are not found in either of the four Gospels.
The very words rendered Gospels only occur where they are
strongly suspected to be interpolated, Justin usually speaking
of some writings which he calls “ memorials ” or “memoirs
of the Apostles.”
»
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�WHEN WERE OUR GOSPELS WRITTEN?
27
Dr. Tischendorf urges that in the writings of Justin the
G-ospels are placed side by side with the prophets, and that
“this undoubtedly places the Gospels in the list of canon
ical books.” If this means that there is any statement in
-Justin capable of being so construed, then Dr. Tischendorf
was untruthful. Justin does quote specifically the Sybilline
oracles, but never Matthew, Mark, Luke, or John. He
‘-quotes statements as to Jesus, which may be found in the
-apocryphal Gospels, and which are not found in ours, so that
if the evidence of Justin Martyr be taken, it certainly does not
tend to prove, even in the smallest degree, that four Gospels
were specially regarded with reverence in his day. The
Rev. W. Sanday thinks that Justin did not assign an ex
clusive authority to our Gospels, and that he made use also
of other documents no longer extant. (“ Gospels in 2nd
Century,” p. 117.)
On p. 94 it is stated that “as early as the time of Justin i»
’ the expression ‘ the Evangel ’ was applied to the four 7
Gospels.” This statement by Dr. Tischendorf and its »
"publication by the Religious Tract Society call for the
I strongest condemnation. Nowhere in the writings of Justin
are the words “the Evangel” applied to the four Gospels.
Gardner only professes to discover two instances in which
the wTord anglicised by Tischendorf as “Evangel,” occurs;
■€.vayyeX.L<i> and evayyeXca, the second being expressly pointed
out by Schleiermacher as an interpolation, and as an in
stance in which a marginal note has been incorporated with
the text; nor would one occurrence of such a word prove
that any book or books were so known by Justin, as the
word is merely a compound of ev good and ayyekta message;
nor is there the slightest foundation for the statement that
in the time of Justin the word Evangel was ever applied to
■designate the four Gospels now attributed to Matthew, Mark,
Luke, and John.
Dr. Tischendorf (p. 46) admits that the “ faith of the I
! Church . . . would be seriously compromised ” if we ;
>do not find references to the Gospels in writings between /
a.d. 100 and a.l>. 150; and—while he does not directly '
.assert—he insinuates that in such writings the Gospels were
“ treated with the greatest respect,” or “ even already
treated as canonical and sacred writings
and he distinctly
affirms that the Gospels “ did see the light ” during the
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WHEN WERE OUR GOSPELS WRITTEN ?
“ Apostolic age,” “ and before the middle of the second’
century our Gospels were held in the highest respect by the
Church,” although for the affirmation, he neither has nor
advances the shadow of evidence.
The phrases, “ Apostolic age ” and ‘‘Apostolic fathers”
denote the first century of the Christian era, and those
fathers who are supposed to have flourished during that
period, and who are supposed to have seen or heard, or had
the opportunity of seeing or hearing, either Jesus or some
one or more of the twelve Apostles., Barnabas, Clement,
Hermas, Ignatius, and Polycarp, are those whose names
figure most familiarly in Christian evidences as Apostolic
fathers. But the evidence from these Apostolic fathers is
of a most unreliable character. Mosheim (“ Ecclesiastical
t History,” cent. 1, cap. 2, sec. 3, 17) says that “ the Apostolic
history is loaded with doubts, fables, and difficulties,” and
that not long after Christ’s ascension several histories were
current of his life and doctrines, full of “ pious frauds and
fabulous wonders.” Amongst these were “The Acts of
Paul,” “ The Revelation of Peter,” “ The Gospel of Peter,”
I “The Gospel of Andrew,” “The Gospel of John,” “The
.Gospel of James,” “The Gospel of the Egyptians,” etc.
The attempts often made to prove from the writings of
Barnabas, Ignatius, etc., the prior existence of the four
Gospels, though specifically unnamed, by similarity of
phraseology in quotations, is a failure, even admitting for
the moment the genuineness of the Apostolic Scriptures, if
the proof is intended to carry the matter higher than that
such and such statements were current in some form or other,
at the date the fathers wrote. As good an argument might
’ be made that some of the Gospel passages were adopted from
* the fathers. The fathers occasionally quote, as from the
4 mouth of Jesus, words which are not found in any of our
four Gospels, and make reference to events not included in
the Gospel narratives, clearly evidencing that even if the
four documents ascribed to Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John,
were in existence, they were not the only sources of infor
mation from which some of the Apostolic fathers derived
their knowledge of Christianity, and evidencing also that the
four Gospels had attained no such specific superiority as to
entitle them to special mention by name.
Of the epistle attributed to Barnabas, which is sup-
�WHEN WERE OUR GOSPELS WRITTEN?
29
<posed by its supporters to have been written in the latter
part of the first century, which, Paley says, is probably
genuine, which is classed by Eusebius as spurious (“Eccle
siastical History,” book iii., cap. 25), and which Dr.
Donaldson does not hesitate for one moment in refusing to
ascribe to Barnabas the Apostle (“ Ante-Nicene Fathers,”
vol. i., p. 100), it is only necessary to say that so far from
speaking of the Gospels with the greatest respect, it does not
mention by name any one of the four Gospels. There are
some passages in Barnabas which are nearly identical in
phraseology with some Gospel passages, and which it has
been argued are quotations from one or other of the four
Gospels, but which may equally be quotations from other
Gospels, or from writings not in the character of Gospels.
There are also passages which are nearly identical with
several of the New Testament epistles, but even the great
framer of Christian evidences, Gardner, declares his convic
tion that none of these last-mentioned passages are quota
tions, or even allusions, to the Pauline or other epistolary
writings. Barnabas makes many quotations which clearly
demonstrate that the four Gospels, if then in existence and
if he had access to them, could not have been his only source
of information as to the teachings of Jesus (E. G., cap. 7).
“ The Lord enjoined that whosoever did not keep the fast
should be put to death.” “ He required the goats to be of
goodly aspect and similar, that when they see him coming
they may be amazed by the likeness to the goat.” Says he,
“ those who wish to behold me and lay hold of my kingdom,
must through tribulation and suffering obtain me” (cap. 12).
And the Lord saith, “When a tree shall be bent down and
again rise, and when blood shall flow out of the wound.”
Will the Religious Tract Society point out from which of
the Gospels these are quoted ?
Barnabas (cap. 10) says that Moses forbade the Jews to
eat weasel flesh, “ because that animal conceives with the
mouth,” and forbad them to eat the hyena because that
animal annually changes its sex. This father seems to have
made a sort of melange of some of the Pentateuchal
ordinances. He says (cap. 8) that the Heifer (mentioned
in Numbers) was a type of Jesus, that the three (?) young
men appointed to sprinkle, denote Abraham, Isaac, and
- -Jacob, that wool was put upon a stick because the
�30
I
.
,
1
WHEN WERE OUR GOSPELS WRITTEN?
kingdom of Jesus was founded upon the cross, and
(cap. 9) that the 318 men circumcised by Abraham
stood for Jesus crucified. Barnabas also declared that
the world was to come to an end in 6,000 years (“Free
thinkers’ Text Book,” part ii., p. 268). In the Sinaitic
Bible, the Epistle of St. Barnabas has now, happily for
misguided Christians, been discovered in the original Greek.
To quote the inimitable style of Dr. Tischendorf, “ while
so much has been lost in the course of centuries by the
tooth of time and the carelessness of ignorant monks, an in
visible eye had watched over this treasure, and when it was
on the point of perishing in the fire, the Lord had decreed itsdeliverance;” “while critics have generally been divided
between assigning it to the first or second decade of the
second century, the Sinaitic Bible, which has for the first
time cleared up this question, has led us to throw its com
position as far back as the last decade of the first century.”
A fine specimen of Christian evidence writing, cool assertion
without a particle of proof and without the slightest reason
given. How does the Siniatic MS., even if it be genuine,
clear up the question of the date of St. Barnabas’s Epistle?
Dr. Tischendorf does not condescend to tell us what has led
the Christian advocate to throw back the date of its com
position ? We are left entirely in the dark: in fact, what
Dr. Tischendorf calls a “throw back,” is if you look at
Lardner just the reverse. What does the epistle of Barnabas
prove, even if it be genuine ? Barnabas quotes, by name,
Moses and Daniel, but never Matthew, Mark, Luke or John.
Barnabas specifically refers to Deuteronomy and the pro
phets, but never to either of the four Gospels.
There is an epistle attributed to Clement of Rome, whichhas been preserved in a single MS. only where it is coupled
with another epistle rejected as spurious. Dr. Donaldson(“ Ante-Nicene Fathers,” vol. i-, p. 3) declares that who the
Clement was to whom these writings are ascribed cannot
with absolute certainty be determined. Both epistles stand
on equal authority; one is rejected by Christians, the other is
received. In this epistle while there is a distinct reference
to an Epistle by Paul to the Corinthians, there is no mention
by name of the four Gospels, nor do any of the words attri
buted by Clement to Jesus agree for any complete quotation
with anyone of the Gospels as we have them. The Rev.
�WHEN WERE OUR GOSPELS WRITTEN?
31
W. Sanday is frank enough to concede “ that Clement is
not quoting directly from our Gospels.”
Is it probable that Clement would have mentioned a
writing by Paul, and yet have entirely ignored the four
Gospels, if he had known that they had then existed ?
And could they have easily existed in the Christian world in
his day without his knowledge ? If anyone takes cap. xxv.
of this epistle and sees the phoenix given as a historic fact,
and as evidence for the reality of the resurrection, he will be
better able to appreciate the value of this so-called epistle
of Clement.
The letters of Ignatius referred to by Dr. Tischendorf
are regarded by Mosheim as laboring under many difficul
ties, and embarrassed with much obscurity. Even Lardner,
doing his best for such evidences, says, that if we find
matters in the Epistles inconsistent with the notion that
Ignatius was the writer, it is better to regard such passages
as interpolations, than to reject the Epistles entirely,
especially in the “ scarcity ” of such testimonies.
There are fifteen epistles of which eight are undisputedly
forgeries. Of the remaining seven there are two versions, a
long and a short version, one of which must be corrupt,
both of which may be. These seven epistles, however, are
in no case to be accepted with certainty as those of Ignatius.
Dr. Cureton contends that only three still shorter epistles are
genuine (“Ante-Nicene Fathers,” vol. i., pp. 137 to 143).
The Rev. W. Sanday treats the three short ones as probably
genuine, waiving the question as to the others (“ Gospels in
Second Century,” p. 77, and see preface to sixth edition
“ Supernatural Religion”), Ignatius, however, even if he be
the writer of the epistles attributed to him, never mentions
either of the four Gospels. In the nineteenth chapter of the
Epistles to the Ephesians, there is a statement made as to
the birth and death of Jesus, not to be found in either
Matthew, Mark, Luke, or John.
If the testimony of the Ignatian Epistles is reliable, then
it vouches that in that early age there were actually Chris
tians who denied the death of Jesus. A statement as to
Mary in cap. nineteen of the Epistle to the Ephesians is
not to be found in any portion of the Gospels. In his
Epistle to the Trallians, Ignatius, attacking those who denied
the real existence of Jesus, would have surely been glad to
�32
WHEN WERE OUR GOSPELS WRITTEN?
quote the evidence of eye witnesses like Matthew and John,
if such evidence had existed in his day. In cap. eight
of the Epistles to the Philadelphians, Ignatius says, “I have
jlr heard of some who say : Unless I find it in the archives I
*' will not believe the Gospel. And when I said it is written,
they answered that remains to be proved.” This is the
most distinct reference to any Christian writings, and how
little does this support Dr. Tischendorf’s position. From
which of our four Gospels could Ignatius have taken the
words, “lam not an incorporeal demon,” which he puts into
the mouth of Jesus in cap. iii., the epistle to the Smyrnasans ?
Dr. Tischendorf does admit that the evidence of the Ignatian Epistles is not of decisive value; might he not go
farther and say, that as proof of the four Gospels it is of no
value at all ?
On page 70, Dr. Tischendorf quotes Hippolytus without
any qualification. Surely the English Religious Tract Society
might have remembered that Dodwell says, that the name
of Hippolytus had been so abused by impostors, that it was
not easy to distinguish any of his writings. That Mill de
clares that, with one exception, the pieces extant under his
name are all spurious. That, except fragments in the writ
ings of opponents, the works of Hippolytus are entirely
lost. Yet the Religious Tract Society permit testimony so
tainted to be put forward under their authority, to prove the
truth of Christian history. The very work which Dr. Tis
chendorf pretends to quote is not even mentioned by Euse
bius, in the list he gives of the writings of Hippolytus.
On page 94, Dr. Tischendorf states that Basilides, before ».
\ a.d. 138, and Valentinus, about a.d. 140, make use of
three out of four Gospels, the first using John and Luke,
the second, Matthew, Luke, and John. What words of
either Basilides or Valentinus exist anywhere to justify this ,
reckless assertion ? Was Dr. Tischendorf again presuming
’ on the utter ignorance of those who are likely to read his
pamphlet ? The Religious Tract Society are responsible
for Dr. Tischendorf’s allegations, which it is impossible to
support with evidence.
The issue raised is not whether the followers of Basilides
or the followers of Valentinus may have used these gospels,
but whether there is a particle of evidence to justify Dr.
'Tischendorf’s declaration, that Basilides and Valentinus
�WHEN WERE OUR GOSPELS WRITTEN?
33
themselves used the above-named gospels. That the four
Gospels were well known during the second half of the first
century is what Dr. Tischendorf undertook to prove, and
statements attributed to Basilides and Valentinus, but which ■*
ought to be attributed to their followers, will go but little
way as such proof (see “ Supernatural Religion,” vol. ii., pp
41 to 63).
It is pleasant to find a grain of wheat in the bushel of
Tischendorf chaff. On page 98, and following pages, the
erudite author applies himself to get rid of the testimony of
Papias, which was falsified and put forward by Paley as of
great importance. Paley says the authority of Papias is com- 1
plete; Tischendorf declares that Papias is in error. Paley
says Papias was a hearer of John, Tischendorf says he was /
not. We leave the champions of the two great Christian
evidence-mongers to settle the matter as best they can. If,
however, we are to accept Dr. Tischendorf’s declaration
that the testimony of Papias is worthless, we get rid of the
chief link between Justin Martyr and the apostolic age. It
pleases Dr. Tischendorf to damage Papias, because that
father is silent as to the gospel of John ; but the Religious
Tract Society must not forget that in thus clearing away
<1 the second-hand evidence of Papias, they have cut away
their only pretence for saying that any of the Gospels are
mentioned byname within 150 years of the date claimed for
the birth of Jesus. In referring to the lost work of Theo
philus of Antioch, which Dr. Tischendorf tells us was a
kind of harmony of the Gospels, in which the four narra
tives are moulded and fused into one, the learned Doctor
forgets to tell us that Jerome, whom he quotes as giving I
some account of Theophilus, actually doubted whether the ;
so-called commentary was really from the pen of that
writer. Lardner says : “ Whether those commentaries which »
> St. Jerome quotes were really composed by Theophilus may |
be doubted, since they were unknown to Eusebius, and were ■
observed by Jerome to differ in style and expression from
his other works. However, if they were not his, they were
the work of some anonymous ancient.” But if they were
the work of an anonymous ancient after Eusebius, what be
comes of Dr. Tischendorf’s “ as early as a.d. 170?”
1
Eusebius, who refers to Theophilus, and who speaks of his
using the Apocalypse, would have certainly gladly quoted
�34
WHEN WERE OUR GOSPELS WRITTEN ?
the Bishop of Antioch’s “ Commentary on the Four Gos
pels,” if it had existed in his day. Nor is it true that the
references we have in Jerome to the work attributed to
Theophilus, justify the description given by Dr. Tischendorf,
or even the phrase of Jerome, “gm quatuor Evangelistarum
in unum opus dicta comping ens. ” Theophilus seems, so far
as it is possible to judge, to have occupied himself not with a
connected history of Jesus, or a continuous discourse as to
his doctrines, but rather with mystical and allegorical eluci
dations of occasional passages, which ended, like many pious
commentaries on the Old or New Testament, in leaving the
point dealt with a little less clear with the Theophillian com
mentary than without it. Dr. Tischendorf says that Theo
doret and Eusebius speak of Tatian in the same way—that
is, as though he had, like his Syrian contemporary, composed
a harmony of the four Gospels. This is also inaccurate.
Eusebius talks of Tatianus “having found a certain body
and collection of Gospels, I know not how,” which collection
Eusebius does not appear even to have ever seen; and so far
from the phrase in Theodoret justifying Dr. Tischendorf’s
explanation, it would appear from Theodoret that Tatian’s
Diatessaron was, in fact, a sort of spurious gospel, “The
Gospel of the Four” differing materially from our four
Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Neither
Irenseus, Clement of Alexandria, or Jerome, who refer to
other works of Tatian, make any mention of this. Dr.
Tischendorf might have added that Diapente, or “the
Gospel of the Five,” has also been a title applied to this
work of Tatian.
, In the third chapter of his essay, Dr. Tischendorf refers
/' to apocryphal writings “which bear on their front the names
of Apostles” “used by obscure writers to palm off” their
forgeries. Dr. Tischendorf says that these spurious books
were composed “partly to embellish” scripture narratives,
and “ partly to support false doctrine ; ” and he states that
in early times, the Church was not so well able to distin
guish true gospels from false ones, and that consequently
some of the apocryphal writings “ were given a place they
did not deserve.” This statement of the inability of the
Church to judge correctly, tells as much against the whole,
\ as against any one or more of the early Christian writings,
and as it may be as fatal to the now received gospels as to
I
�WHEN WERE OUR GOSPELS WRITTEN ?
35
those now rejected, it deserves the most careful conside
ration. According to Dr. Tischendorf, Justin Martyr falls
into the category of those of the Church who were “not so
critical in distinguishing the true from the false; ” for Justin,
says Tischendorf, treats the Gospel of St. James and the
Acts of Pilate, each as a fit source whence to derive mate
rials for the life of Jesus, and therefore must have regarded
the Gospel of St. James and the Acts of Pilate, as genuine
and authentic writings; while Dr. Tischendorf, wiser, and a
greater critic than Justin, condemns the Gospel of St. James
as spurious, and calls the Acts of Pilate “a pious fraud ; ”
but if Dr. Tischendorf be correct in his statement that
* “Justin made use of this Gospel” and quotes the “Acts of
Pontius Pilate,” then, according to his own words, Justin
did not know how to distinguish the true from the false,
and the whole force of his evidence previously used by Dr.
Tischendorf in aid of the four Gospels would have been
seriously diminished, even if it had been true, which it
is not, that Justin Martyr had borne any testimony on the
subj’ect.
Such, then, are the weapons, say the Religious Tract
Society, by their champion, “which we employ against un
believing criticism.” And what are these weapons ? We
have shown in the preceding pages, the suppressio veri and
the suggestio falsi are amongst the weapons used. The
Religious Tract Society directors are parties to fabrication
of evidence, and they permit a learned charlatan to forward
the cause of Christ with craft and chicane. But even this
is not enough ; they need, according to their pamphlet, “ a
new weapon; ” they want “to find out the very words the
Apostles used.”
True believers have been in a state of
delusion ; they were credulous enough to fancy that theft
authorised version of the Scriptures tolerably faithfully 1
represented God’s revelation to humankind. But no, says ‘
Dr. Tischendorf, it has been so seriously modified in the
copying and re-copying that it ought to be set aside alto-i
gether, and a fresh text constructed. Glorious news thisk
for the Bible Society. Listen to it, Exeter Hall 1 Glad tidings
to be issued by the Paternoster Row saints 1 After spending
hundreds of thousands of pounds in giving away Bibles to
soldiers, in placing them in hotels and lodging-houses, and
shipping them off to negroes and savages, it appears that
�36
WHEN WERE OUR GOSPELS WRITTEN?
| the wrong text has been sent through the world, the true
version being all the time in a waste-paper heap at Mount
Sinai, watched over by an “invisible eye.” But, adds Dr.
| Tischendorf, “if you ask me whether any popular version
contains the original text, my answer is Yes and No. I
say Yes as far as concerns your soul’s salvation.” If these
are enough for the soul’s salvation, why try to improve the
matter? If we really need the “full and clear light” of
the Sinaitic Bible to show us “ what is the Word written
by God,” then most certainly our present Bible is not
believed by the Religious Tract Society to be the Word
written by God. The Christian advocates are in this
I dilemma : either the received text is insufficient, or the pro* posed improvement is unnecessary. Dr. Tischendorf says
( that “ The Gospels, like the only begotten of the Father,
will endure as long as human nature itself,” yet he says
“ there is a great diversity among the texts,” and that
the Gospel in use amongst the Ebionites and that used
’^amongst the Nazarenes have been “ disfigured here and
there with certain arbitrary changes.” He admits, more1 over, that “ in early times, when the Church was not so
critical in distinguishing the true from the false,” spurious
Gospels obtained a credit which they did not deserve. And
- while arguing for the enduring character of the Gospel, he
requests you to set aside the received text altogether, and to
try to construct a new revelation by the aid of Dr. Tischendorf’s patent Sinaitic invention.
We congratulate the Religious Tract Society upon their
manifesto, and on the victory it secures them over German
Rationalism and English Infidelity. The Society’s trans
lator, in his introductory remarks, declares that “ circum
stantial evidence when complete, and when every link in
the chain has been thoroughly tested, is as strong as direct
testimony; ” and, adds the Society’s penman, “ This is the
kind of evidence which Dr. Tischendorf brings for the
genuineness of our Gospels.” It would be difficult to
imagine a more inaccurate description of Dr. Tischendorf’s
work. Do we find the circumstantial evidence carefully
tested in the Doctor’s boasting and curious narrative of his
journeys commenced on a pecuniary deficiency and culmi
nating in much cash ? Do we find it in Dr. Tischendorf’s
concealment for fifteen years of the place, watched over by
�WHEN WERE OUR GOSPELS WRITTEN?
37
an invisible eye, in which was hidden the greatest biblical
treasure in the world ? Is the circumstantial evidence
shown in the sneers at Renan ? or is each link in the chain
tested by the strange jumbling together of names and con
jectures in the first chapter ? What tests are used in the
cases of Valentinus and Basilides in the second chapter?
How is the circumstantial testimony aided by the references
in the third chapter to the Apocryphal Gospels? Is there
a pretence even of critical testing in the chapter devoted to
the apostolic fathers ? All that Dr. Tischendorf has done
is in effect to declare that our authorised version of the New
Testament is so unreliable, that it ought to be got rid of
altogether, and a new text constructed. And this declara
tion is circulated by the Religious Tract Society, which
sends the sixpenny edition of the Gospel with one hand,
and in the other the shilling Tischendorf pamphlet, declaring
that many passages of the Religious Tract Society’s New
Testament have undergone such serious modifications of
meaning as to leave us in painful uncertainty as to what
was originally written.
The very latest contribution from orthodox sources to the
study of the Gospels, as contained in the authorised version,
is to be found in the very candid preface to the recentlyissued revised version of the New Testament, where the
ordinary Bible receives a condemnation of the most sweeping
description. Here, on the high authority of the revisers,
we are told that, with regard to the Greek text, the trans
lators of the authorised version had for their guides “manu
scripts of late date, few in number and used with little
critical skill.” The revisers add what Freethinkers have
long maintained, and have been denounced from pulpits for
maintaining, viz., “ that the commonly received text needed
thorough revision,” and, what is even more important,
they candidly avow that “it is but recently that materials
have been acquired for executing such a work with even
approximate completeness.” So that not only “ God’s
Word” has admittedly for generations not been “God’s
Word ” at all, but even now, and with materials not formerly
known, it has only been revised with “ approximate com
pleteness,” whatever those two words may mean. If they
have any significance at all, they must convey the belief of
the new and at present final revisers of the Gospel, that, even
�38
WHEN WERE OUR GOSPELS WRITTEN?
after all their toil, they are not quite sure that god’s reve
lation is quite exactly rendered into English. So far as the
ordinary authorised version of the New Testament goes—
i and it is this, the law-recognised, version which is still used
in administering oaths—we are told that the old translators
“used considerable freedom,” and “ studiously adopted a
variety of expressions which would now be deemed hardly con
sistent with the requirements of faithful translation.” This
I is a pleasant euphemism, but a real and direct charge of dis
honest translation by the authorised translators. The new
revisers add, with sadness, that “ it cannot be doubted that
they (the translators of the authorised version) carried this
liberty too far, and that the studied avoidance of uniformity
in the rendering of the same words, even when occurring in
the same context, is one of the blemishes of their work.”
These blemishes the new revisers think were increased by
the fact that the translation of the authorised version of the
New Testament was assigned to two separate companies, who
never sat together, which “ was beyond doubt the cause of
many inconsistencies,” and, although there was a final super
vision’, the new revisers add, most mournfully : “ When it
is remembered that the supervision was completed in nine
months, we may wonder that the incongruities which remain
are not more numerous.”
Nor are the revisers by any means free from doubt and
misgiving on their own work. They had the “ laborious
task ” of “ deciding between the rival claims of various
readings which might properly affect the translation,” and,
as they tell us, “ Textual criticism, as applied to the Greek
New Testament, forms a special study of much intricacy and’
difficulty, and even now leaves room for considerable variety
of opinion among competent critics.” Next they say: “ the
■ frequent inconsistencies in the authorised version have caused
| us much embarrassment,” and that there are “ numerous
passages in the authorised version in which .... the
studied variety adopted by the Translators of 1611 has pro
duced a degree of inconsistency that cannot be reconciled
with the principle of faithfulness.” So little are the new
revisers always certain as to what god means that they
provide “alternative readings in difficult or debateable
passages,” and say “ the notes of this last group are
numerous and largely in excess of those which were ad
�WHEN WERE OUR GOSPELS WRITTEN?
39
mitted by our predecessors.” And with reference to the
pronouns and other words in italics we are told that “ some
of these cases .... are of singular intricacy, and make
it impossible to maintain rigid uniformity.” The new
revisers conclude by declaring that “ through our manifold
experience of its abounding difficulties we have felt more
and more as we went onward that such a work can never be
accomplished by organised efforts of scholarship and criticism
unless assisted by divine help.” Apparently the new revisers r
are conscious that they did not receive this divine help in
their attempt at revision, for they go on: “We know full H
well that defects must have their place in a work so long and
so arduous as this which has now come to an end. Blemishes
and imperfections there are in the noble translation which 11
we have been called upon to revise ; blemishes and imper- ‘
fections will assuredly be found in our own revision; . .
. . we cannot forget how often we have failed in express- I
ing some finer shade of meaning which we recognised in the
original, how often idiom has stood in the way of a perfect
rendering, and how often the attempt to preserve a familiar
form of words, or even a familiar cadence, has only added ,
I another perplexity to those which have already beset us.”
J
THE END.
��
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Victorian Blogging
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A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
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2018
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Conway Hall Ethical Society
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Title
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When were our gospels written?
Description
An account of the resource
Edition: 4th ed.
Place of publication: London
Collation: 39 p. ; 18 cm.
Notes: Annotations in pencil. Part of the NSS pamphlet collection.
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Bradlaugh, Charles [1833-1891]
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Freethought Publishing Company
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1881
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N105
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Bible
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<a href="http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/"><img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /></a><span> </span><br /><span>This work (When were our gospels written?), identified by </span><a href="https://conwayhallcollections.omeka.net/items/show/www.conwayhall.org.uk"><span>Humanist Library and Archives</span></a><span>, is free of known copyright restrictions.</span>
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application/pdf
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Text
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English
Bible. N.T. Gospels
NSS