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W88
NATIONAL SECULAR SOCIETY
TWO ADDRESSES
DELIVERED BY
Mrs. Ernestine L. Rose,
AT THE
BIBLE CONVENTION,
HELD IN HARTFORD, (CONN.,) IN JUNE, 1854.
Being Her Replies to tiie Rev. Mr. Turner
Accompanied with Comments on the Un
reasonable Character of the Bible.
[Published by request.]
BOSTON:
PUBLISHED BY J. P. MENDUM, INVESTIGATOR OFFICE.
1888.
��MRS. ERNESTINE L. ROSE
ON
THE BIBLE.
FIRST ADDRESS.
J/y Friends:—I rise under peculiar disadvan
tages : one is, that it is so late, and another that
the ground has been most ably, eloquently, and
masterly occupied by the various speakers who
preceded me. Under these circumstances I would
prefer not to speak at all, were it not for the fact
that this movement seems to be one of the highest
and greatest importance that has taken place in
our age — (Applause)—of more importance even
than the one that has so long lain at my heart,
the rights of woman—(Applause)—for it is closely
connected with it; and as woman has not been
represented here, I feel it my duty to raise my
voice and protest against the Bible, or, as it is
called, the Word of God; for if a line of demarkation could be drawn of the injurious effects pro
duced by the errors of that book on man or wo
man, I would say most emphatically, that on
account of the inferior education and experience of
�4
MRS. E. L. ROSE ON THE BIBLE.
woman, the errors of the Bible which have been
palmed off upon society as emanations from some
superior wisdom and power, have had a far more
pernicious effect on the mind of woman than of
man, for knowledge and experience are the only
safeguards against superstition ; and as woman has
received less of the light of knowledge, supersti
tion has had a stronger hold on her mind, and has
enslaved her far more than man. (Applause,
hisses, and cries of “ Shame! shame! ”)
Mrs. Rose, on looking around at the confusion,
said—My conviction is, that man always acts as
well as he can; and if I see my poor unfortunate
fellow-being act as it appears to me inconsistent
and irrational, I can but pity him for it. (Ap
plause.)
The question under consideration, I believe, is
the origin, influence, and authority of the Bible, or,
Ts the Bible an emanation from, or inspiration of,
God ? It seems to me that it would have been
more in order had we commenced by inquiring
what is meant by the term God, or Divine; but
here again a difficulty presents itself, Where shall
we commence to make the inquiry? If we go
back to past ages, to the very infancy of the race,
and from thence come up to the present time and
hour, and ask the definition of God, the answer
would be that, just what any age or people con
sidered their beau-ideal of greatness, of wisdom, of
virtue, and of perfection, they embodied in one
grand idea, and called it God. (Renewed and
long-continued disturbance in the gallery.) I will
�MRS. E. L. ROSE ON THE BIBLE.
5
wait till I can be heard. (Renewed confusion.)
This confusion is an evidence of the influence of
the Bible. (Hissing.) The Bible tells them that
woman “ should not speak in public.” Oh! no, she
must not raise her voice in behalf of truth and
humanity, and if she does, she is met with con
fusion and riot by the believers in that doctrine;
but after all, that is the best argument that can be
brought m support of the Bible. With the sword
it has been promulgated, with riot and confusion it
must be supported. (Applause and hisses.) Yes !
if we go back to the past, we find that men in all
ages, all countries, conditions, and states, have
always embodied what to them appeared the acme
of perfection, and worshipped it. In those ages
wherein the warrior, the conqueror, the hunter has
been considered the most perfect and noble beings
m the conception of men, they have cut out images
of stone, wood, silver, and gold, to embody the
various attributes, and knelt down and worshipped
them; and as we came up from the long past,
through all ages, without mentioning the various
gradations, for time is short, to the present time,
we still behold the same. The opinions only as to
what constitutes greatness, goodness, and perfec
tion, have changed; the tastes have become more
refined, the feelings more humanized, the minds
more enlightened and consistent.
Man, in fact, lias become more civilized; there
fore the beau-ideal of his conception, or the idol of
his imagination, is so too. Thus, instead of cutting
out an image of the grosser materials, or painting
�6
MRS. E. L. ROSE ON THE BIBLE.
it on the canvas, ancl then kneeling clown to wor
ship it, he shuts his eyes and beholds the embodi
ment of what appears to him to be the greatest,
best, and noblest of human attributes, on the
retina of his imagination, and bows down his head
and pays homage to it; but however gross or re
fined, it is ever a likeness of himself, or what he
would wish to be. It has been a great mistake to
say that God has made man in his image, for man
in all ages and times has made his God in his
image, and hence we have as great a variety of
religions and gods as we have stages and grada
tions of man’s perception of the true, the beautiful,
and the noble, from the darkest ignorance and
barbarity to the present comparative state of know
ledge and civilization. (Prolonged applause, hiss
ing, and hooting.) Hiss on, if it does you any
good. I give utterance to these convictions to aid
in man’s emancipation from the superstition and
ignorance from which he has so long suffered. I
know but too well what it is to go against the
long-cherished and time-honored prejudices and
superstitions. It is no pleasant task to go against
the current, but there is a sense of duty that
balances all unpleasantness, even hissing and hoot
ing, and all, that is more potent than all persecu
tions, that brings a peace of mind, content, and
happiness that none can feel but the mentally free.
(Applause.) But to the subject. The Rev. Mr.
Turner denied the objections brought against the
Bible, saying that objections were not arguments ;
but I would respectfully remind him, that denials
�MRS. E. L. IiOSE ON THE BIBLE.
/
are no arguments, and it would have been better to
confute the arguments that were brought against
the Bible, than to do nothing but constantly deny
them. (Applause.)
To judge of the inspiration of the Bible we
must examine the Bible itself, and as its contents
will appear consistent or inconsistent, so we must
pronounce it based upon truth or error, for truth is
always consistent with itself, and with every other
truth, while error is always inconsistent. Now,
when we examine the Bible hi its commencement,
we find its account of creation is perfectly incon
sistent with, and contrary to, the sciences of ge
ology, astronomy, physiology, and all well-ascer
tained facts based upon science and truth; and
therefore we are justified in saying that whosoever
wrote or inspired that part of the book must have
been utterly ignorant of all these sciences; and as
we proceed, we find so many inconsistencies, vices,
and cruelties, that it is impossible to ascribe them
to a wise or kind and benevolent power or being.
(Hissing, stamping of feet, and whistling in the
gallery, and cries of “ Go on, go on.”) My friends,
there was once a time when I had a voice strong
enough to speak against all opposition, and be
heard, but that time is past. My constitution has
been somewhat broken, and mainly broken in the
great conflict against error. I had hoped that
whatever our opponents might think of my opin
ions, they would behave like gentlemen, though
believers and defenders of the Bible. (Cries of
■x‘ Hear, hear.”) [A lady said—“ If you have a
�8
MRS. E. L. ROSE OX THE BIBLE.
heart to speak, speak on.”] (Great applause.) I
thank my sister for saying so. I have a heart to
speak, and I will speak. (Tremendous applause.)
My friends, you who do not know how long and
how ardently I have wished for such a movement,
can have no idea how I rejoice in this Convention,
even hissing and all. (Applause.) The time was,
some twenty-five years ago, when I stood alone on
a platform—(Voice, “Where?”)—for precisely the
same noble cause, to defend the rights of humanity
against the assumptions, superstitions, and errors
of the Bible, without knowing that there was
another human being in the wide world who
thought as I did, and there and then I bore testi
mony against the same errors that I do now.
(Applause and hissing.)
[The Rev. Mr. Turner expressed his hopes that
Mrs. Rose would not be interrupted.]
As we proceed in our investigation of the Bible
we find it inculcates war, slavery, incest, rapine,
murder, and all the vices and crimes that blind
selfishness and corruption could suggest; many
have been enumerated here to-day, but it is utterly
impossible to enumerate all. That book has been
a two-edged sword to men; it has united them in
nothing but persecution; to woman it has been
like a millstone tied to her neck to keep her down;
it has subjected her to the entire control and arbi
trary will of man. It has libelled human nature,
and libelled the very God of whom it speaks—it
represents him as having created man in utter
ignorance of consequences, as having created one-
�AIRS. E. L. ROSE ON THE BIBLE.
9
sex, ancl pronounced it all to be very good, but
foiuid out that “it was not good for man to be
alone,” therefore he created woman—not for the
same aims and objects of life that he created man
—Oh! no; but because he found, contrary to his
expectation, that it was not well for him to be
alone. So, after he had finished his work, and
rested, he had to go to work again and make
woman. This might be sublime if it were not
ridiculous. And yet, do you know, my sisters, that
most of the subjugation of woman, the tyranny
and insult heaped upon her, sprung directly or in
directly from that absurd and false assumption. It
is an insult to the suposed Creator to say he
created one-half of the race for the mere purpose
of subjectmg it to the other, as well as a libel on
the nature and powers of woman, to say that there
is no other aim nor destiny in her existence except
to be a mere plaything or a drudge to man, as the
circumstances may require. The writers of all
such parts of the Bible, where it libels her nature
and powers, and therefore restricts her rights more
than man’s, were alike devoid of a knowledge of
her nature and destiny, as of wisdom, justice, and
humanity.
Yes, in reading that book understandingly, and
judging it by its own contents, it tells us in lan
guage not to be misunderstood, that instead of
being an emanation from some exalted wisdom and
goodness, it is simply the work of different minds,
existing in different ages, possessing different de
grees of knowledge and principle; and in accord
�10
MRS. E. L. ROSE OX THE BIBLE.
ance with their state of progress, their knowledge,
and feelings, so did they write—they could do no
better. I have charity and forbearance for the
writers of the Bible. Had they had loftier concep
tions, juster ideas, kinder feelings, and a more
accurate knowledge of Nature in general, and
human nature in particular, they would have writ
ten quite a different Bible. As it is, it seems to
me to be a concoction of incongruities, absurdities,
and falsehoods almost impossible to conceive. It
is true we find some excellent sentiments in it,
such as “ love thy neighbor as thyself,” “ do unto
others as you would others should do unto you,”
and some others equally good; and though they
are not original with the Bible, they are still beau
tiful sentiments; but as arbitrary commands they
never can be carried out, for man is a being that
requires a reason and a motive for his actions.
Give him the reason and motive to love his neigh
bor as himself, in the knowledge of human nature
and the relation he sustains to his fellow-man;
convince him that he can find happiness only in
proportion as he endeavors to promote the happi
ness of others—not only of those immediately con
nected with him, but of the race, for the race is
but the great family of man, of which every indi
vidual is a member; and depend upon it, there will
be no necessity for arbitrary commands with prom
ised bribes and artificial rewards for the observ
ance, and threats of penalties and artificial punish
ments for the non-observance of the great moral
law Nature has implanted in man for his rule of
�MRS. E. L. ROSE OX THE BIBLE.
11
action, but which ignorance and error, called re
ligion, has stifled by making mere belief of more
consequence than works. A blind faith in things
unseen and unknown is upheld as the greatest
virtue in man.
The idea that “ he that believeth shall be saved,
and he that believeth not shall be damned,” has
caused more mischief to man than all the rest of
the Bible could ever have benefited him, for it has
produced all the persecution and ill-will on account
of belief; and it is evident to my mind that the
writer of this passage was utterly ignorant of the
nature and formation of belief, or he would have
known that there can be no merit in belief, nor de
merit in disbelief, for it is not in our power to
believe or disbelieve by a mere effort of the will.
In childhood, belief is given to us the same as our
food; we can make a child believe that what we
call black is white; and if we tell it that it is of
the highest importance, that its happiness here and
hereafter depends upon its being called white in
stead of black, and any one who dares to call it by
any other name is a bad man, an enemy to the
power who wished it to be called white, and an
enemy to man, whose safety here and hereafter
depends upon its being called white, that child, if
grown up, and possessed of an ardent, sincere, and
conscientious temperament, would lay down his
life, or sacrifice the lives of others, in support of
black being white; and yet it would be black for
all that. Thus we can make a child believe error
to be truth, and it may die or sacrifice the lives of
�12
MRS. E. L. ROSE ON THE BIBLE.
others in maintenance of it, ancl yet the error is
not truth, but error.
[Here Mrs. Rose was interrupted by hissing,
hooting, and stamping. Some gentleman asked if
such disturbances were the kind of arguments by
which they expected to sustain the Bible? He
hoped not. Mr. Barker said, “ As we cannot do
the Bible justice without their assistance, they, the
disturbers, are willing to assist us.” At this point,
some one having gained access to the gas-meter,
turned off the gas, and for some minutes a con
tinual hissing, shrieking, stamping, drumming of
canes, and whistling was kept up by the rioters,
mainly occupying the gallery, the body of the
church having been occupied almost entirely during
the Convention by peaceable and well-disposed
auditors, who during the enactment of this scene
mostly sat in silence. The utter confusion made it
impossible to hear any voice that might have ap
pealed to any sense of decency and propriety per
haps yet existing in the minds of the rioters. The
lights being restored, Mrs. Rose proceeded with her
remarks, and said :]—
When the lights were extinguished, it reminded
me of one of the true things we find in the Bible,
that some there are “who love darkness better
than light.” (Laughter and applause.) Just before
that demonstration I endeavored to impress upon
your minds how easily a child may be made to
believe a falsehood and die hr support of it, and
therefore there can be no merit in a belief. We
find in the various sects in Christendom, among the
�MRS. E. L. ROSE OX THE BIBLE.
13
Jews, Mohammedans, Hindoos, in fact, throughout
the entire world, that children are made to believe
m the creed in which they are brought up. The
children of the sect called the Thugs are made
to believe in their creed, their Bible—for they,
too, have a Bible, and priests to interpret it,
and Bibles are always written so obscure as to
require priestly interpreters—which tells them they
are governed by a goddess ; they seem to favor the
rights of woman. (Applause.) Their means of
salvation is to strangle every one they come in con
tact with who does not believe as they do; and the
more Infidels and heretics they strangle the surer
their reward in heaven, and the most pious and
conscientious among them try to bring the most
human sacrifices; and as humanity is not quite
dead even among them, so they have quite a re
fined way to dispatch their victims: they have a
silken cord made into a lasso, and when they come
in contact with an unbeliever, they throw it adroit
ly over his head, and by a quick pull strangle him
without the shedding of blood, and almost without
a struggle. So strongly is humanity engrafted in
man, that in spite of all the errors and supersti
tions called religion, it has not entirely been de
stroyed. (Applause.)
Referring to some loafer in the gallery, with his
boots hanging over the railing, Mrs. Rose said:
—I do not know but exhibiting the boots over the
railing may be a part of the defence of the Bible,
but whether it is so or not, we live in an enlight
ened age, in the free United States of America,
�14
MRS. E. L. ROSE ON THE BIBLE.
where every one may do as he pleases, so long as
he does not interfere with the rights of others,
even to exhibit his boots or discourse in favor of
the Bible. (Applause and hissing.)
Thus we see that children acquire their belief as
they acquire any other habit. In after life, when
we are more capable of reasoning, comparing, and
reflecting, belief depends on the amount of evi
dence. If the evidence is strong enough to con
vince the mind,an assent is elicited; if the evidence
is not strong enough to convince the mind, we can
not believe; and the amount of evidence sufficient
to convince one mind may not be enough to con
vince another; but whether the evidence is con
vincing or not, there can be no particle of merit in
belief, or demerit in disbelief. No one within the
reach of my voice can persuade himself that he
hears me not, nor any one out of it that he hears
me, any more than he can believe that two and
two make five, after he has been made to know that
they make four. Yet in spite of this truth in con
nection with the formation of belief, all religions
have been based on the false supposition that we
can believe as we please, or as the priest wishes
us to, and therefore we were promised rewards for
believing, and punishment for disbelieving, the
fashionable superstitions called religion.
Christianity is based on this error, my friends. I
say it not in anger, but in sadness of heart, that
all cruelties, persecutions, and uncharitableness,
from the time of the Inquisition to the present
hissing, have been in consequence of that irrational
�MRS. E. L. ROSE ON THE BIBLE.
15
ancl pernicious sentence, “ He that believeth shall
be saved, and he that believeth not shall be
damned.” (Hissing.) That is perfectly consistent
with your belief. But convinced as I am of the
truth of the formation of human character, and of
the inconsistencies, errors, and falsehoods of the
Bible, in teaching a doctrine contrary to truth and
to Nature, I must come to the conclusion, that no
very good, wise, exalted power or being could have
been the author of it.
Now a few words as to its influence. As the
Bible is based on error, what can its influence be
but pernicious ? For as truth is always beneficial,
so is error always injurious. If we examine the
history of Christianity, we will find that every
step of its progress has been made in blood, and
every atrocity committed has found authority in
the Bible. When the tyrant of Russia and his
despotic coadjutor of Austria subjugated poor,
bleeding Hungary, they brought authority from
the Bible. They told them that all power was of
God—kings, priests, and emperors reign by the
grace of God. “ Oppose not those in authority;
submit to the powers that be, for they are of God,”
has been the motto of every tyrant and every
usurper; and when the burden has become too
heavy to bear, the yoke too severe, and man could
bear the oppression no longer, and tried to cast it
off, he has ever been met with the cry of Babel to
God’s authority, which must be enforced with the
point of the bayonet. The Pope has oppressed
and all but destroyed poor Italy with the authority
�16
MRS. E. L. ROSE OX THE BIBLE.
of the Bible. When the tyrant of Russia held his
iron heel on the neck of my own poor, prostrate
native land, Poland, he brought the same authority.
When with the iron rod, that terrible thing called
a sceptre, said to have been given from heaven, the
usurper sways the liberties and lives of millions, he
brings good authority from the Bible. (Loud hiss
ing.) Do you hiss the Bible, or Russia? (Ap
plause.) My friends, a most terrible outrage has
been perpetrated on poor humanity; there never
has been a heart broken, a tear drawn from the
eye, a drop of blood from the human heart, nor a
sigli of agony from the expiring victim, but the
perpetrators of these horrid inhumanities have
found authorities for it in the Bible. It is a sad
reflection on man, that he could be so enslaved by
the authority of a book. No one knows its origin,
in itself the most unintelligible, unreasonable, and
inconsistent that could ever have been concocted
by the mind of man. (Disturbance.)
It is to be regretted that disorder takes the place
of order; but this confusion of acts proceeds from
the confusion of mind, in consequence of the con
fusion of ideas taught by the Bible; here is its
source and its influence. The disorder of this
book has filled man’s mind with disorder, and when
the mind is a chaos, how can his actions be order ?
What do we claim in this Protestant republic ?
Why, only what it professes to guarantee to every
one, namely, freedom of speech; and look at the
conduct of the believers and defenders of the
Bible ; but their disorder and riot is the best argu
�MRS. E. L. ROSE ON THE BIBLE.
17
ment they can bring in support of it. Martin
Luther once received the same argument from the
Church of Rome. (Hisses.) Do you hiss Luther,
or the Pope ? (Applause.) Luther protested agamst
the Church of Rome and her Bible; he called her
a harlot, a falsehood, a libel upon human nature,
religion, and God; he claimed the right of con
science and of private judgment; we, too, claim it
here. Since his time, Protestantism has gone on
constantly protesting; we, too, protest against the
right to shackle the mind and prevent private
judgment and freedom of speech; our protest here
is in consequence of the protest of Luther; do you
dislike it ? Throw your minds back to that time
and hiss him to your hearts’ content. (Applause
and hissing, and drumming of feet and canes.)
According to the Bible in the hands of the Pope,
there is no freedom of opinion, no variety of sects,
no private judgment; his Bible tells him only to
subject human rights, reason, and judgment to his
despotic rule. (Applause and hisses.) Protestant
ism professes to give freedom of conscience and of
speech. Make your choice between the Church of
Rome and Protestantism, and abide by it. (Tre
mendous applause and hissing.) And yet the
Bible, as a history of the past—as reminiscences
of other times and people—would be interesting
enough, provided it was not palmed upon us as a
guide for our age and time; as well might you
force a man, at forty, to wear his swaddling clothes,
because they were once fit for him. The time I
trust will come—is already at hand—when the
�.18
MRS. E. L. ROSE ON THE BIBLE.
Bible, like any other book, will be subjected to the
test of reason, the light of knowledge and of truth,
and by that test either stand or fall, and every man
will adopt what appears to him good, and reject
what appears to him bad and inconsistent. But on
account of its having been forced on man as an in
fallible rule of life, it has been more instrumental
to keep him in ignorance, degradation, and vice, to
prevent his elevation and development, to produce
war, slavery, intemperance, and all the evils that
afflict the race, than any and all the books that
have ever been concocted by man. (Renewed his
sing, indecent expressions, and disturbance.) All
this does not disturb me nor ruffle my temper; it is
only an additional evidence to me of the pernicious
influence of the Bible. This is a practical illustra
tion of it. I have stood more than this in opposing
error, and I can stand this. It inspires me with no
other feeling than pity and commiseration for such
irrationality; but it is late, and I had better save
my voice; it may be wanted to be raised hi the
same holy cause at some other time. (Applause
and hissing in the gallery.) To you, my sisters, I
would but say, that the defenders of the Bible have
given you a most practical evidence of the rights
and liberties Christianity has conferred upon you.
The Bible has enslaved you, the churches have
been built upon your subjugated necks; do you
wish to be free ? Then you must trample the Bible,
the church, and the priests under your feet.
Mrs. Rose took her place amidst deafening ap
plause, hisses, and confusion.
�MRS. E. L. ROSE OX THE BIBLE.
19
SECOND ADDRESS.
It seems to me to be a pitiable condition in the
way of argument, when, instead of testing a sub
ject on its own intrinsic value, by its own worth
and its own truth, we have to resort to a compari
son of it with something else that may be quite as
bad. Now to this process our friends, the sup
porters of the Bible, have to resort. The first
speaker, Mr. Storrs, this afternoon, instead of try
ing to defend the origin, authority, and influence of
the Bible by its own intrinsic value and merits,
went to comparing it, or the God of the Bible, with
what he imagines to be the God of Nature; and
therefore, thus comparing the two, they exclaim,
“You will say that the God of the Bible is cruel
and inhuman,—the God of Nature is as cruel; you
will say the God of the Bible allowed many evils to
exist—,we retaliate and say the God of Nature did
the same.” But what does all that amount to ? To
any defence of the God of the Bible? Not in the
least. It simply amounts to this, that if there is
any such thing as a God behind Nature who sends
earthquakes, whirlwinds, tempests, and destruc
tion for the purpose of destroying men, he is quite
as inconsistent as the God of the Bible. It means
no more. But it did not prove it right, nor dis
�20
MRS. E. L. ROSE ON THE BIBLE.
prove any of tlie charges I made against the Bible
or the Bible God. (Cries of hear, hear, and ap
plause.) Mr. Turner, after he had thus compared
the charges laid to the God of the Bible with the
charges he laid against the God of Nature, went to
some of my remarks of last evening. He thought
it was a most outrageous thing to lay the evils that
woman suffers to the Bible. It may appear out
rageous to him, I do not doubt; it appears far more
outrageous to me to find that such is the case; and
as owing to the confusion last evening he may not
have been able to hear what I said on the subject,
I will repeat some of it.
I mentioned last evening the passage of Scrip
ture, that after God had created man, and pro
nounced all to be very good, he found out his mis
take, namely, “It was not good for man to be
alone,” and therefore he created woman. I said,
and do say, that it is a libel alike to the power they
call God, or Creator, as well as to the nature of wo
man, to say that he created one half of his children—
one-half of the whole human race—not for the same
great aim and end in life as man, but because it
was not well for man to be alone; so he was under
the painful necessity to create her as a pastime, a
plaything, or a drudge, as the circumstances and
the position may require. Upon this irrational
foundation has the subjugation of woman in Chris
tendom been based. (Applause.) But Mr. Turner
asked, is it such a hardship to obey a husband?
and brought Sarabias an example, that she, too,
obeyed her husband. I asked him whether, if
�MRS. E. L. ROSE ON THE BIBLE.
21
there was no hardship in obeying, he would
like to have been in the position of Sarah, and
obey his wife as she had to obey her husband ? His
answer was, that he was not a woman, and there
fore could not say how he would have felt hi her
position. Yes, so say I, that as he is not a woman, he
is utterly incapaple of judging for her. How incon
sistent then—what an assumption and a farce—for
him to stand here and talk about woman’s position
and woman’s sphere, when he is incapable of plac
ing himself for one moment in her position, to judge
how she would feel under certain circumstances!
The Bible writers were not women, hence they so
cruelly libelled her nature; and as they were men
as utterly ignorant of her nature and feelings as he
is, how could they know what was her proper
sphere ? and how does Mr. Turner know that the
sphere the Bible prescribes to woman is the right
and proper sphere for her, when he cannot give the
simplest answer to the simplest question, how he
would feel were he a woman ? (Applause.) Con
sistency is a jewel which I fear can not be found in
his possession. (Applause.)
How can she ever be in her proper position and
her proper sphere when man prescribes both for
her ? How can she ever be understood when man
defines and interprets for her ? How can she ever
be rightly governed when man enacts the laws to
govern the being whose nature he can not under
stand, whose feelings he can not realize, whose mo
tives he can not appreciate ? How can justice be
done to her when he most ignorantly judges and con
�22
MRS. E. L. ROSE ON THE BIBLE.
demns her? Never! No! woman must speak for
herself, she must help to enact the laws by which
she shall be governed, she must plead her cause,
she must judge for woman. (Pointing to Mr. T.,
Mrs. Rose said, with much feeling and vehemence :)
Yonder sits a man who bears testimony that man
is incapable of judging for woman. (Great ap
plause.) But we are told Christianity has done a
great deal for woman, “for the Bible commands the
husband to love his wife.” Indeed! Husbands
before me, can you love your wives by an arbitrary
command ? [A Voice—Yes, hi some cases.] Wives,
can you love your husbands because somebody,
somewhere, commanded you to do it? No. [A
Voice—As true as eternity.] ■ (Laughter.) If we
are not able to love by an arbitrary command, how
irrational then—.what a wonderful ignorance in the
writers of that command—I care not whether they
were from above or below, that gave it! Husbands,
love your wives from a painful sense of duty, be
cause the Bible commands you to do so. (Laugh
ter.) Painful, indeed, must such a duty be, both to
the giver and receiver. (Applause.) What a pros
titution of the very term love, by affixing a com
mand to it! But suppose it could be done, but
some husbands will not do it,—at any rate we find
not all husbands do it—then would the commander
force him to love his wife ? For if it is true that
husbands can love their wives by an arbitrary com
mand, then they ought to be made to obey. When
any of our laws are violated, the person is held to
account for it, unless a law is so bad and incon
�MRS. E. L. ROSE ON THE BIBLE.
23
sistent that no one can or ought to obey it; then
we call that law or lawgiver to account to abolish it.
Let the supporters of the Bible command force
husbands to do their duty, or abolish all such ir
rational laws, or at any rate, whatever the laws are
—good, bad, or indifferent—let them be alike for
both, or not at all. I wish we had fair laws, and
we would be much better, wiser, and happier. We
have far too much legislation here, and I am sure
we require no Bible legislation in addition. (Ap
plause.)
Mr. Turner spoke about the happy condition wo
man was hi. Yes, we have a very gratifying pic
ture before us—to my mind more gratifying than
any other in Nature—to see an assembly of human
beings met with a desire to inquire into the nature
of a book forced upon mankind as a truth; and the
condition of my sisters before me, if compared, as
Mr. Turner compares the God of the Bible, with
something worse, I doubt not is very flattering and
happy; but if we compare her present position
with what she ought, what she might, and would
be, had she her full rights, as a human being, to
education and position, then we find a difference
almost too great to realize it, but of which Mr.
Turner, not being a woman, can know nothing
whatever. (Laughter.) But it is asked, what does
woman want ? Our friend there (pointing to Mr.
Turner) insinuated that we wanted to become ipen.
Do you, my sisters, wish to become men? [A
Voice—“No.”] (Laughter.) In the general sense
of the term, as applying to human beings, we are
�24
MRS. E. L. ROSE ON THE BIBLE.
men. (Hear, hear.) As applying to sex, it requires
no answer, and I will give it none. (Applause.)
But whether man or woman, are we not entitled to
the rights of humanity because we are your mothers
instead of your fathers? We claim our rights
irrespective of sex. We claim them, not only in
accordance with the laws of humanity, but also in
accordance with the Declaration of Independence.
Are we not entitled to life, liberty and the pursuit
of happiness ? (Hear, hear.) And what is life
without liberty ? (Applause.) Who of you would
desire to preserve it an hour without it ? and what
is liberty without equality of rights ? A mockery.
And what can be our pursuit of happiness when
man has prescribed our sphere of thought and
action within the narrowest possible limits—when
the needle and the wash-tub are nearly the only
avocations he has assigned her for her independence,
except getting married.
(Hear, hear, and ap
plause.)
Tell me we complain, and that we ought to be
thankful to Christianity for our condition! Yes,
we owe to Christianity our degraded, enslaved
position, and let all be thankful for it who can. I
ask for woman what you ask for man—the same
rights, privileges, and opportunities to educate and
develop our beings physically, mentally, and moral
ly, to the fullest extent of her being; throw open to
her all the avenues of emolument of honor, and
greatness, and she will find her true sphere, for
who can find it for her ? “Why do I ask for it ?”
Because it is our right, and because the withholding
�MRS. E. L. ROSE OX THE BIBLE.
25
of our rights has produced incalcuable evil and suf
fering. I suffer, not only individually, but as belong
ing to niy sex—as belonging to the race—for man
suffers as grievously by it as woman does. We ask
to give woman her inalienable rights, and to enable
her to become a real and true woman, and not a
man ; but if by the term, man, is meant the capacity
to think and reason more, reflect deeper, judge
wiser, and act better, then the sooner all of us are
men, Mr. Turner included, the better. (Applause.)
We ask for knowledge, for knowledge is power.
After mother Eve partook of and gave her husband
of the tree of knowledge, the gods even became
afraid of them, so it must be worth something, and
it is worth to woman just as much as to man. The
great misfortune was, that poor mother Eve did not
eat enough of the tree of knowledge, for we have
been hungry after it ever since. She did not know
that
“A little knowledge is a dangerous thing;
Drink deep, or touch not the Pierian spring.”
(Applause.) The slave ought to be in utter ignor
ance ; the moment you give him any knowledge he
will cast off his slavery. We know now too much
to be satisfied with our condition; we want more,
we want all that can be given; for as knowledge is
power, it promotes independence, and we want to
be independent, for dependence is degrading, for
woman ought to be as independent of man as he is
of her. The dependence ought to be mutual and
reciprocal—not as master and slave — joined by
unjust and mercenary ties, but the dependence on
�26
MRS. E. L. ROSE ON THE BIBLE.
each other’s kindness and services ; affection ought
to be the only bond between man and woman.
(Applause.)
And would she be any less woman if capable of
insuring, if necessary, her own independence?
Some wiseacres may tell you so. They will tell
you that if she has her rights she will cease to be
a woman, forsake her children, and turn recreant
to her nature. Common sense will tell you that
only then will she be a woman, capable, if needs
be, to take care of herself, her children, aye, and
her husband too. And why should she not. If it
gives you pleasure, and, I doubt not, elevates you
and fills your minds with unspeakable gratification
when you strive for and succeed in promoting the
happiness of those you love, it would be as gratifying
to her; the same generous emotions would fill the
mind of woman, were she able, if necessity called
for it, to show her affection to her husband, not
only in letting him maintain her, but when she had
to maintain him, by her knowledge and well-directed
industry; and there would be just as little degrada
tion in the one case as in the other. (Applause.)
Mr. Turner proclaims himself a friend to woman’s
rights. I don’t doubt, according to his understand
ing of human rights, and according to his knowl
edge of the nature of woman, he goes for her rights;
but as he derives his knowledge from the Bible,
ought we to wonder that it falls so deplorably
short? Not in the least. I should wonder if, with
his belief in the Bible, he went for woman’s perfect
equality with man, or for human rights, without
�MRS. E. L. ROSE OX THE BIBLE.
27
distinction of sex, country or color. Oh! but he told
us that in comparison to other countries and ages,
woman is treated very kindly! The Mohammedan
has been instanced; and we were told that woman
was found there holding the plow. Dreadful! I
can point you to Christian countries where the hus
band smokes his pipe while the wife plows the
land.
[Mr. Turner said, in Mohammedan countries the
woman has to draw the plow, not hold it.]
Well, I can point you to Christian countries for
the same. Go to Christian Germany, and you will
find many a wife plow the ground; and where they
have no horses she has to do it without, and reap
the harvest, and carry it home on her broken back,
while her husband sits and smokes his pipe. But
where he is not too lazy to work, I don’t see any
great hardship that the wife should help him, even
at the plow, if she can do it, only he ought to be
with her if he can. I should prefer to have my
husband with me. (Laughter.) But if a husband
is not able to do his work, or attend to his business,
Oh! what delight it would give a true woman,
how it would rouse her generous feelings, and fill
her with tender emotions, were she able to do the
work for him, or to attend to their busmess, and
take the corroding care and anxiety about the busi
ness going to wreck and rum off his mind, and by
her own exertion provide the necessaries and com
forts for him she loved! Yes, loved, not by arbitrary
command, but by the force of the law of attraction
and affinity. (Great applause.) Love her husband!
�28
MRS. E. L. ROSE OX THE BIBLE.
I don’t think that the wife has any right or any
business to love her husband. The Bible does not
command the wife to love her husband at all; this
command was only given to the husband to love his
wife; the wife has only to obey, that is all. Well,
though we cannot be made to love by force, it is
quite clear we may be made to obey by force; any
slave can tell you that, and so can a wife, according
to the Bible—Sarah for instance. (Laughter.
The Bible husbands Mr. Turner spoke of framed
the laws for woman; hence she is so well protected.
Blackstone tells us—and he must have taken his
ideas of right from the Bible—that the husband
and the wife are one, and that one is the husband.
(Laughter.) That is according to the common law
of England, and common enough it is, mercy
knows ; but from these common laws we have our
laws regulating marriage; and yet it must be right,
for it is according to the Bible; the husband and
wife become one, and that one is the husband, and,
therefore, whatever the wife possesses becomes the
husband’s, for they are one, says the Bible and
Blackstone, except when the wife violates a law of
the land, then they become two again, for instead
of hanging the husband, they hang the wife.
(Laughter.) But Mr. Turner will tell us that even
that is better than something worse. (Laughter.) Is
it not so? (Laughter.) Well, I suppose it is. (Ap
plause.) That in more barbarous ages and countries
woman was treated more barbarously; and who lias
a desire to deuy it ? Not I. But what does it prove ?
Anything ? Oh! yes, it proves that man is always a
�MRS. E. L. ROSE ON THE BIBLE.
29
child before he is grown to be a man; not only is that
true with the individual man, but with the race; that
the race was not born civilized any more than indi
vidual man is ever born in the full maturity of
strength and mind, and that in more barbarous
ages we acted more barbarously than in more civil
ized ages (applause), which proves the truth of my
position, that man always acts according to the
knowledge and civilization he possesses. Last
evening we had a full illustration of it (laughter
and applause) ; for it is an unmistakable fact, that
just according as man is civilized does he treat wo
man. (Applause.)
And would you know the
amount of civilization in a country, look at the
position woman occupies, and you will find that in
proportion as she has her rights equal with man, so
is the nation civilized, and in proportion as they are
denied her, so are they yet in a state of barbarity,
no matter by what name they may exist. The
position of woman is a living index of the state of
civilization; they go hand in hand. And as man
becomes more civilized, through the cultivation of
the art and sciences, and has his taste more refined,
his sentiments more elevated, is more capable to
appreciate the beautiful, better to understand the
nature and laws that govern man, the relation he
sustains to his fellow-man, human rights and happi
ness, the aim and end of human existence, so does
he act more rational and more consistent, and wo
man, of course, occupies a more rational and consist
ent position in the scale of society.
But what have we to thank for it ? Christianity
�30
MRS. E. L. ROSE ON THE BIBLE.
or the Bible’? Then let us see how much Christi
anity has done to promote civilization, how much it
has done for the arts and sciences. Go to the Bible,
and you will find it opposed to all the arts, sciences,
happiness, and life itself. Worldly wisdom, knowl
edge, and happiness are called, in Bible language,
“ the enemies of man.” “ Life is only a vale of
tears,” only a gloomy passage to stumble through,
fight with the devil, die, and go up to sing halle
lujah, or down to roast, for the gratification of
those in heaven. What need, then, for arts and
sciences’? They would not be required there.
(Cries of hear, hear.) That is the whole Bible esti
mate of human life, and hence Christianity has ever
opposed every art and science, as the light of knowl
edge and progress forced it upon society. (Cries of
hear, hear.) These facts are too well known to
require any illustration to confirm the truth of
the statement. Astronomy, geology, physiology,
chemistry, the art of printing, education, even, all
has been opposed by the priests, and they found
their authority in the Bible to warn the people
against innovations, against worldly wisdom, to
attach them to this life, and lead them away from
heaven, as emanations from the devil. (Cries of
hear, hear, and applause.) Reason is held up by the
Bible as An enemy to man, a false guide, that will
lead him to perdition; human virtues are called
“filthy ragsfaith, only faith in things unseen and
unknown will save him. Yet we have to thank the
Bible and Christianity for the little civilization,
rights, and happiness we enjoy, when every step
�MRS. E. L. ROSE OX THE BIBLE.
31
we have taken, every inch of ground we have
gained, was hi direct opposition to it. My very
standing here is in opposition to it. (Applause.)
But I will leave this subject, though my heart and
head are full with it, and go to some other evi
dence that the Bible must be by divine inspiration;
and, as a proof we are told in the Bible that after
God created the world and had pronounced it to be
good, he found out he had made a mistake, for not
only was it not good, but he found it so bad that it
repented the Lord that he had made man on the
earth, and it grieved him at his heart, and he swore
he would destroy it again.
“ And God saw that the wickedness of man was
great in the earth, and that every imagination of
the thoughts of his heart was only evil continu
ally,” and, consequently, he brought the flood to
destroy all flesh; but as if afraid lest he might not
succeed hi making the animal portion over again, he
adopted the very prudent plan of preserving a pair
of each kind as stock in hand to commence the
world anew with. I think the construction of the
ark, with its numberless compartments to accomo
date the vast number and variety of animals that
have existed, from the polar bear, the giraffe, the
elephant, through all gradations, down to the musquito, the flea, and the fly, must be a proof of
divine inspiration! As for how they were all
brought together, I can see no other way than the
angel Gabriel must have called them together with
his trumpet. (Laughter.) However, after the
flood was all over, and Father Noah built an altar,
�32
MRS. E. L. ROSE ON THE BIBLE.
and brought a nice fat little lamb as a sacrifice,
then the Lord smelled the sweet savor, and it
repented him that he destroyed the world, and
he said in his heart that he would not curse the
ground any more for man’s sake, “ for the imagina
tion of his heart is evil from his youth.” Thus the
same reason that made him repent that he had
made man, and induced him to destroy the world,
namely, that the “ imagination of the thoughts of
the heart of man being evil continually,” induced
him, after the flood, to promise Noah that he would
never destroy it again, namely, “for the imagination
of his heart is evil from his youth.” But we must
remember that the sweet savor of the freshlyburned offerings of the fowls, and the beasts, and
the creeping things was so irresistible to God’s
nostrils, that it put him in such a good humor, that
in spite of the wickedness of man’s heart, he resolved
not to destroy him agam.
(Laughter and ap
plause.)
Let no one say that we ridicule the Bible, for it
is utterly impossible to ridicule a thing so sublimely
ridiculous as the whole account of the flood in the
Bible. Just see the position the Bible places its
God in. He created man, pronounced him good,
found him bad, repented for having created him,
resolved to destroy, not only him, but the whole
animal and vegetable creation, then repented again
of having done it, and resolved never to do it again.
Would any of you like to be placed hi so ridiculous
a position? (Cries of no, and laughter.) Yet this
God, the same book tells us, possesses all wisdom,
�MRS. E. L. BOSE ON THE BIBLE.
33
all knowledge, and all goodness. It is almost an in
sult to common sense to talk about believing in such
stuff and nonsense. (Applause.) The head and
the heart, or reason and affection, have always been
libelled by the Bible; for the writers and priestly
interpreters knew but too well if reason and affec
tion were consulted, the Bible would be left alone,
for in it there is food neither for head nor heart;
it has nearly famished and destroyed both. The
wars, the slavery, the intolerance, the vices and
crimes it inculcated, are so many plague-spots on
human society, and will never be entirely effaced
as long as that book is consulted as authority and
guide for man. But Mr. Turner said, it was not at
all inconsistent that the Lord commanded war, for
have not we, as a nation, had war? Yes, we had
war, and all the more shame for it; but does our
having war make it right ? But suppose it were
right for one nation to make war upon another
nation, can that be an excuse for God to make war
upon his children ? For are not all men his chil
dren? We are told he created all men ; if so, all
must be his children. Oh! yes ; but then the impar
tial Father had chosen a few as his favorites, and
commanded them to extirpate all other nations—the
Midianites, Canaanites, and all the other ites that
existed around them, and take their lands as their
possessions. Were these ites, then, not his children ? Had not the Lord created the Midianites,
Canaanites, and all the rest of the ites the Bible tells
us of? And yet the Bible says, “Thus saith the
Lord; go and slay and extirpate, and spare not
�34
MRS. E. L. ROSE OX THE BIBLE.
man or woman, old or young,” except such as they
could make useful to gratify their brutal passions
and appetites. This is said to be the word of God!
Well, I care not whose word it is; most em
phatically do I protest against it as an outrage on
humanity, for my whole heart, mind, and soul
revolts against such barbarity. (Applause.) [A
Voice — Amen.]
[Another Voice — When the
Egyptian power became corrupt, and oppressed the
Israelites, did not God command them to refuse
obedience ?] Oh! yes ; he told his chosen children
to refuse obedience to Pharaoh, another child of his.
And what did this kind and impartial Father (for
God, we are told, is impartial) do to induce his dis
obedient child Pharaoh to set his favorites free ?
Why, he sent Moses to tell him to let them go, and
at the same time he hardened Pharaoh’s heart, so
that he might not send them out, so that he might
have the pleasure to punish him, and send him the
plagues for not doing what he would not allow
him to do. And yet Pharaoh, I believe, was made
of flesh, bone, and muscles, the same as all other
men, and therefore the Lord must have made him,
for we are told that he created all flesh. Yes, the
Father hardened the heart of one child to enslave
some of his other children, and they again in turn,
to massacre and extirpate some others again.
(Laughter.) Is this not a beautiful characteristic
of the God of the Bible ? He created all men as
his children, but could not manage them, so he
chose a few as his favorites—I am sure no one can
tell for what particular merits—and set them at
�MRS. E. L. ROSE ON THE BIBLE.
85
loggerheads, to fight and destroy each other. I
should be sorry if an earthly parent could not man
age his children better than that. Again, the Bible
says God created man and woman, and placed them
m the garden of Eden, in the midst of which he
placed a tree with tempting fruit on it, of which he
forbade the man to eat; and he also created a ser
pent, which he permitted to go and tempt the
woman to partake of this very forbidden fruit.
Well, did he not know when he placed them there,
and placed the tree there, and sent the serpent to
tempt them—for the Bible tells us that nothing is
done without his permission—that poor mother Eve
would partake of it, and as a faithful wife, finding
the fruit was so good, that she would induce her
husband to partake of it too ? If he knew all this
—and he must have known, for the Bible tells us
that God is omniscient—and he did not wish them
to eat of the tree of knowledge, then why did he
place it there? or placing it there, why did he
allow the serpent to tempt them?
Or why
create them so weak, and with such a taste for fruit,
or rather for knowledge, so as to be unable to with
stand the temptation? If the Bible could only
speak, it might give some satisfactory answer to all
these important questions, for I am sure no one
else can. (Applause.) [A Voice—Woman is so
weak now as to be tempted.]
Mrs. Rose—Very likely; I am sorry he made her
so weak, and created a tempter to tempt her.
(Laughter.) Yes, she is weak enough, or she
would not be so deluded by the Bible and its inter
�36
MRS. E. L. ROSE ON THE BIBLE.
prefers the priests. (Applause.) Well, then, poor
Adam and Eve did eat the forbidden fruit, as they
could do no otherwise under the circumstances.
What then ? Did their heavenly Father correct
them for their first disobedience, the same as any
earthly parent would, and induce them to do better
after that ? Oh! no! curses and heavy penalties
were pronounced against them, and not only against
them for life, but on the whole unborn race to come
after them. (Cries of hear, hear.) This is Bible
justice and Bible mercy. [A Voice from the gallery
—Hear, blasphemy.] Blasphemy! Oh! yes, blas
phemy has ever been the cry against progress, and
opposition to superstition. This was the cry of the
old Pope against the ancient Luther, and this is the
cry of the modern Popes against the modern
Luthers. (Applause.) But it has lost its power
now, and has become harmless. (Applause.) Yes,
only the God of the Bible, mercy and justice, could
have pronounced an eternal curse on an unborn race
for the first fault committed by the first two chil
dren. Is there an imagination black enough to
conceive of a more inhuman and atrocious spirit
than that *? If there were any meaning in the term
blasphemy, then it would be the greatest blasphemy
to ascribe such revolting deeds to any power or
being deserving the name of the most ordinary
goodness. (Applause.) But what was the nature
of the curse ? Why, Adam should have to plow
the ground and cultivate the earth. Well, I don’t
know how it might have been had they remained
in their blissful paradisaic ignorance, but I doubt
�MRS. E. L. ROSE ON TIIE BIBLE.
37
very much if corn, potatoes, and all the other good
things, would have grown without cultivation.
(Laughter.) But perhaps the two inhabitants of
Eden might not have required such gross, material
food. But it always puzzled me to know, that if
Adam and Eve had not sinned by tasting that nnfortunate apple, what would have become of the
rest of creation ? We are told that every thing was
created for man; God gave man dominion over
every thing; but if they had not tasted of knowl
edge they could not have had dominion over any
thing, nor made use of any thing; they were too
ignorant even to use a fig-leaf, (laughter), so that
the whole object of creation would have been lost,
were it not for mother Eve’s desire for knowledge.
(Applause.) For knowledge is power, of which
even God seemed to be afraid; for as soon as he
found that they had tasted of the tree of knowledge,
he drove them out of the garden, lest they should
partake of the tree of life, too, “ and become like
one of us”—us, who?
Why, Gods! So there must have been more
than one of them. And so jealous was he even of
the little knowledge they possessed—knowing that
after man once tastes of knowledge he will not be
satisfied till he has more—so he placed angels with
fiery swords at all the gates to fight poor man off
from the tree of knowledge and of life. Thus poor
man has ever since had to fight, step by step, and
inch by inch, for the little knowledge, happiness,
and life he enjoyed; for everywhere he encountered
the sworn enemy of knowledge and of life—the God
�38
MRS. E. L. ROSE ON THE BIBLE.
Of the Bible—with his fiery swords. (Applause.)
Some of those heavenly guardians must have been
here last evening, hence I had to fight pretty hard
for my right to utter my convictions; for by free
dom of speech only do we arrive at knowledge and
truth. (Applause.) Yet Mr. Turner told us that
we have to thank the Bible for the rights and
privileges we enjoy. Indeed! Had your fathers,
before they cast off the British yoke, consulted the
Bible on the subject, they would never have revolted
at all. The Bible does not allow revolt. Revolu
tionists have always been considered as unbelievers
and Infidels by Bible interpreters, whose interest it
is to keep man in subjection and ignorance; for the
Bible injunction is, “Oppose not those in author
ity,” “ Submit to the powers that be, for they are of
God.” Had the people of Boston, when they con
verted their harbor into a tea-pot, because the tax
ation imposed on them was too heavy, gone to the
Bible for advice, they would have paid on and
groaned on to all eternity, for the Bible would have
told them, “ Give unto Caesar the things that be
long to Caesar.”
What a fallacy, then, to talk about the freedom
that comes from the Bible! The little knowledge
and freedom we possess we have in opposition to
and in spite of the Bible, and particularly we, my
sisters.
The Bible and the priests have done
enough to keep us down; it is high time to rise
above both of them. My very appearing here to
raise my voice in behalf of freedom and humanity
is contrary to the Bible; but the desire Nature has
�MRS. E. L. ROSE ON THE BIBLE.
39
implanted in me for knowledge and freedom is mor e
powerful than the injunctions of a superstitious
book. Humanity is older than the Bible, and
human rights are as old as humanity. (Applause.)
And therefore I claim for woman equal rights with
man. I claim them, not as a grant, or charity, bu
as our birthright. (Applause.) Humanity has
not come into existence with chains and shackles
but free as the breath of heaven (applause), to
develop human nature as it ought to be—free to
think, feel, and act, always keeping in mind not to
interfere with the same rights in others. Human
rights in elude the rights of all, not only man, bu
woman, not only white, but black; wherever there
is a being called human, his rights are as full and
expansive as his existence, and ought to be without
limits or distinction of sex, country, or color. (Ap
plause.) And only ignorance, superstition, and
tyranny—both the basis and influence of the Bible
—deprive him of it. Mr. Turner, in alluding to my
remark of belief, said I found fault with the Bible
because it said, “ He that believeth shall be saved,
and he that believeth not shall be damned,” and
that I said the writer of that sentiment was utterly
ignorant of the nature of man and the formation of
belief. Yes, I did; and I illustrated my position
by showing how easy it is to make a child believe
that what we call black is white, or any other false
hood as truth, and that he could die in support of
it; and black would not be white, nor falsehood truth.
“ But” said Mr. Turner, “ you could not make a
child believe that black was white, if you had told
�40
MRS, E. L. ROSE ON THE BIBLE.
him first that it was black?’ No, certainly not,
because you have already made him believe it is
black, which just proves my position. The child
being ignorant of it, will believe whatever you call it
first, and if you teach it a falsehood before it had a
chance to know any thing about the truth, it will
call that falsehood truth. Thus Mohammedans do
not teach their children Christianity before Moham
medanism, nor do Christians teach their children
Mohammedanism, or any other ism, before Christi
anity, so as to give them a chance to judge for
themselves. Oh! no! each of them teaches his
children to believe in his ism only, as truth, and in
every other other ism only, as truth, and in every
other ism as false; and if they never have a chance
to examine, compare notes, and judge for them
selves, each may die in support of the truth of his
ism. And yet one of these isms must be false, or
both may be false, and both sincerely defended as
truth. And therefore there can be no merit in a
belief, nor demerit in disbelief; and he who wrote
that irrational sentence, “He that believeth shall
be saved, and he that believeth not shall be
damned,” was utterly ignorant of the formation of
the human mind. Mr. Turner agreed with me that
in after-life, when we are able to compare and
judge, belief depends on evidence. “ But,” said he,
“evidence of Christianity was given to every one,
for Christ told his disciples to go and preach the
gospel to every creature.” But suppose Moses, Mo
hammed, Christ, and the nine thousand nine hun
dred and ninety-nine other Christs that have existed,
�MRS. E. L. ROSE ON THE BIBLE.
41
each had said the same to his disciples, Go and preach
my gospel, and he that believeth in it shall be saved,
and he that believeth not shall be damned, and yet
the evidence can at best be in favor only of one, and
most probably of none. What, then, must they
damn each other all around?
(Laughter.) As
rational beings they ought to say, If the evidence
brought to bear on any subject is strong enough to
convince the mind, it elicits an assent or belief; if it
is not strong enough to convince the mind, it elicits
no assent, and we cannot believe; and the evidence
that is strong enough to convince one mind may not
be strong enough to convince another, and every
one has a right to judge for himself whether an
evidence is strong enough or not, and no one has
a right to judge for him. (Cries of hear, hear.)
How irrational and unjust it is to punish for
belief at all, and still more so to punish eternally for
a fault of a moment! For what is life to eternity ?
Who of you, for the disobedience of a child, who
would not believe in something you told him, even
if you thought he could believe, but would not,
would have the inhumanity to punish it, not only
for life, but (had you the power) for all eternity ?
No, not the lowest and the meanest in the scale of
humanity. (Applause.) Yet this is the Bible ac
count of the justice and mercy of its God. (Cries
of hear, hear.)
In Revelation we have some glorious accounts
of the happiness the saints will enjoy in singing
hymns of praise while the smoke of those in hell
will rise up to their nostrils. (A little disturbance in
�42
MBS. E. L. ROSE ON TIIE BIBLE.
the gallery and—A Voice—That is correct.) Mak
ing some little mistake in pronouncing a word, Mrs.
Rose, in correcting herself, said—I hope you will
have charity for any little mistake I may make in
the language, remembering that I am speaking in a
foreign language. (Hissing, and a Voice called out,
“I hope Mrs. Rose will assume the name of Man,
for she will be an honor to our sex.”)
My friends, no one can fathom the depths of the
pernicious effect, the incalculable mischief of this
false, this horrid doctrine, that man can be happy
while he sees another man in misery. Nature has
indelibly written it on the heart of man, in language
not to be misunderstood, “that no man can be
happy while he sees another man in misery.”
(Applause.) This is a truism that changes not
with age, climate, or condition; the idea that man
could be happy in heaven while he would be con
scious of the torments and miseries his fellow-man
was suffering, is a libel on human nature, for man
cannot be happy while he sees another in misery.
The little comparative happiness we enjoy is owing
to the fact that we can, hi a great measure, shut
out the miseries of others by shutting our doors
and sitting down by our own comfortable firesides,
and for the time being forget every thing connected
with others. But place man in a condition here or
hereafter where he shall not be able to close his
doors and shut misery out—where he shall have
constant consciousness of every thing that exists,
and see his brother man—Ah! “ the flesh of his
flesh, and the bone of his bone”—suffering unspeak
�MRS. E. L. ROSE ON THE BIBLE.
43
able torments, and he, with his human feelings and
sympathies, unable to help him, and think you he
could enjoy happiness ? Would he feel like sing
ing hymns of praise ? No! it is as false as it is
obnoxious to every better feeling—(applause)—and
the writer of this sentence, I care not who he was,
from above or below, was utterly ignorant of the
nature of man, and the principles of humanity. (A
V oice—“ True.”)
Upon such a principle is based the system of iso
lation, and all the evils that man has inflicted on
man, and he will have to come back from that false
idea—for if happiness is ever to be enjoyed by man,
he must endeavor to form a state of society where
misery, sin, and suffering shall be done away,
where all shall enjoy happiness or none will; for it
is the nature of man, that as long as misery comes
within his sight or his hearing so long must he feel
it. (Applause.) Could you listen to the recital of
the sufferings in Rome and in Hungary—the in
justice, and cruelties, and tyranny perpetrated on
your fellow-man, in far distant lands, without feel
ing every nerve stirred within you with indigna
tion against the perpetrators, and a strong desire to
assist the poor sufferers ? And,for the time being
could you be happy ? No! for the sympathy that
unites man to man would not permit it. (Ap
plause.) It did not last long, it is true, for in our
isolated state we can shut all these things out,
because they are painful to us, and this very fact
proves my assertion. But if we had the miseries
and sufferings of others ever before our eyes, life
�44
MRS. E. L. ROSE ON THE BIBLE.
would become a burden, and we would not wish to
live. And yet the Bible doctrine is, that the spirit
of man—the refined, the purified, the divine part of
his nature—can enjoy happiness, while those near
est and dearest to him in life, perhaps his friend,
brother, sister, father, mother, husband, wife, or
child, will suffer endless torments, and he know it
and unable to help them, and yet enjoy happiness.
Every principle of humanity proclaims it a false
hood. In such a position he would be a thousand
times more miserable than he is here, unless his
nature should be changed, and then he would no
longer be man. (Great applause.)
There is that horrible parable of Lazarus and
Dives.
I don’t know any particular fault of
Dives, for we are told he had not committed any
great sin; it is true, he was rich, but all riches, we
are told, come from God. (Laughter.) Nor are we
told of any great virtues in Lazarus, except that he
was poor and sick, and I am sure he would not
have been so, if he could have helped it. (Laugh
ter.) Yet Lazarus was in Abraham’s bosom—what
a bosom Abraham must have, to accommodate all the
poor and sick!—while poor Dives was in torments
and agony, and when he asked for one drop of
water to cool his parched tongue, it was refused
him. Nay, he begged to send a message to his
brother to induce him to be a better man, so as to
avoid a similar fate; but this, too, was refused to
him. Oh! what glad tidings the Bible doctrine is
to man ! (Applause.)
To a sensitive human
nature such a heaven would be worse than any hell
�MRS. E. L. ROSE ON THE BIBLE.
45
that has ever been described—(applause)-and as long
as man is deluded into the belief of such a heaven,
will we be prevented from forming a real heaven
here, for it has all but stifled every kindly feeling
and sensation within us.
It has cramped and
crippled us, mentally and morally; it has prevented
us from inquiring into the laws best adapted for the
well-training and well-governing of man. The
eternal law of kindness should be the only law,
sympathy the only bond, the great seal of humanity
the only compact, between man and man. No
other gospel is required to bind man to his brother.
This simple law is deduced directly from the in
herent laws of human nature, which some call God.
The Friends call it the light within; I call it the
principle, or law of humanity, which, if man were
not perverted by false creeds and doctrines, would
teach every man that natural golden rule, Do unto
others as you would they should do unto you.
(Applause.) This is my faith! Is that not broad
enough ? Give me a broader, and I will accept it.
(Applause.) Humanity! Oh! that I had words to
express my feelings at the contemplation of it! I
feel a gushing of love within me beyond the power
of utterance, not only for mankind, but for all that
are capable of feeling pleasure and pain. Human
ity’s laws only can ever make man a high and noble
being—higher, more elevated, and nobler far than we
have ever yet conceived the gods to be. (Great
applause.)
The President moved a vote of thanks to Mrs.
Rose for her address, when she said,
I thank you for the attention you have paid to
�46
MRS. E. L. ROSE ON THE BIBLE.
my views and feelings, and without a vote of
thanks I deem myself richly paid for my coining
here, and my efforts in the cause of humanity. In
the pleasure I received in being able to speak the
thoughts that have pressed upon me for utterance,
I am richly paid in being able to do what I deem
my highest duty to do. (Applause.)
The President repeated the motion, and a vote of
thanks was given to Mrs. Rose.
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Two addresses delivered by Mrs Ernestine L. Rose at the Bible Convention, held in Hartford (Conn.) in June 1854 : being her replies to the Rev. Mr. Turner accompanied with comments on the unreasonable character of the Bible
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Text
ON THE
DEITY OF JESUS OF NAZARETH.
AN ENQUIRY
INTO THE NATURE OF JESUS
BY AN EXAMINATION OF THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS.
BY
THE WIFE OF A BENEFICED CLERGYMAN.
EDITED AND PREFACED BY
REV. CHARLES VOrSEY, R.A.
PUBLISHED
BY THOMAS
SCOTT,
NO. 11 THE TERRACE, FARQUHAR ROAD, UPPER NORWOOD,
LONDON, S.E.
1873.
�LO N DO N :
PRINTED BY C.
W. REYNELL, LITTLE PULTENEY
HAYMARKET,
W.
STREET,
�EDITOR’S PREFACE.
HE following pages were put into my hands
—
beneficed clergyman.
T by a ladyto the wife of a her husband, she has
Not wishing
compromise
withheld hei' name from publication, and deserves
all honour for the concession. But the fact led me
to write a few words as a Preface, in which I
would remind the Bishops and dignitaries of our
Church that this is no uncommon case. Ortho
doxy is riddled through and through with heresy.
Every family has its heretic. And although but
few clergymen or their wives could be found to
write such an Essay as the following with equally
felicitous logic and simplicity, there are many
quite capable of relishing arguments so lucidly
stated and so ably drawn. If most of Mr Scott’s
regular readers are familiar with the line of argu
ment, there are many outside the circle whom this
pamphlet may reach to whom it will be new,
and whom it may powerfully affect.
The position which the person of Jesus occu
pies in modern Christendom is the very citadel
of Christianity, and on the settlement of his
claims will turn the future of the Churches.
We, who have been all our lives sceptics, are
growing weary of the very name ; but we must
not forget that we have a great duty to perform
towards those who are yet orthodox, or are
clinging, like some Unitarians, to the skirts of a
fading system.
�iv
Editor's Preface.
When I first knew this lady, she had given up
all points of disputed orthodoxy except this one
of the nature of Jesus, whom she still regarded
as perfect and divine. Careful and independent
study of the whole question, however, led her at
length to see the facts clearly—to own them to
herself in spite of strong predilections the other
way—and to write them down here for the
benefit of others.
In the course of this change I was appealed to
for an authoritative opinion. I absolutely refused
to give one. I refused to be made the means of
shovelling second-hand opinions into any one’s
mind. All I said was— “ If you believe Christ to
be God, stick to it: you are not obliged to
believe as I do. Only make up your mind for
yourself.” This was no case of converting or
proselytising. It was one of independent growth
and natural conviction.
There are hundreds of clergymen, and clergy
men’s wives too, who are fast treading the same
road, if they have not yet reached the same goal.
The alarmists are quite right. Christianity is in
terrible danger. We wish we could add—in ex
tremis ; but when the break up of a faith has
begun with its teachers, with those most in
terested in its being maintained, the days of that
faith are numbered.
Such little works as this Essay, if well placed
and well digested, will do more to open people’s
eyes than many a more pretentious and elaborate
treatise.
CHARLES VOYSEY.
Camden House, Dulwich, S.E., March, 1873.
�ON THE
DEITY OF JESUS OF NAZARETH.
----- *----64
think ye of Christ, whose son is
he ? ” Human child of human parents, or
divine Son of the Almighty God ? When we con
sider his purity, his faith in the Father, his forgiving
patience, his devoted work among the offscourings of
society, his brotherly love to sinners and outcasts—
when our minds dwell on these alone, we all feel the
marvellous fascination which has drawn millions to
the feet of this “ son of man,” and the needle of our
faith begins to tremble towards the Christian pole.
If we would keep unsullied the purity of our faith in
God alone, we are obliged to turn our eyes some
times—however unwillingly—towards the other side
of the picture and to mark the human weaknesses
which remind us that he is but one of our race. His
harshness to his mother, his bitterness towards some
of his opponents, the marked failure of one or two of
his rare prophecies, the palpable limitation of his
knowledge—little enough, indeed, when all are told,
—are more than enough to show us that, however
great as man, he is not the A11-righteous, the Allseeing, the All-knowing, God.
No one, however, whom Christian exaggeration has
not goaded into unfair detraction, or who is not
blinded by theological hostility, can fail to revere
portions of the character sketched out in the three
synoptic gospels. I shall not dwell here on the Christ
of the fourth Evangelist: we can scarcely trace in
that figure the lineaments of the Jesus of Nazareth
whom we have learnt to love.
VV
�6
On the Deity of
I propose, in this essay, to examine the claims of
Jesus to be more than the man he appeared to be
during his life-time : claims—be it noted—which are
put forward on his behalf by others rather than by
himself. His own assertions of his divinity are to be
found only in the unreliable fourth gospel, and in it
they are destroyed by the sentence there put into his
mouth with strange inconsistency : “ If I bear witness
of myself, my witness is not true.”
It is evident that by his contemporaries Jesus was
not regarded as God incarnate. The people in general
appear to have looked upon him as a great prophet,
and to have often debated among themselves whether
he were their expected Messiah or not. The band of
men who accepted him as their teacher were as far
from worshipping him as God as were their fellowcountrymen : their prompt desertion of him when
attacked by his enemies, their complete hopelessness
when they saw him overcome and put to death, are
sufficient proofs that though they regarded him—to
quote their own words—as “ a prophet mighty in
word and deed,” they never guessed that the teacher
they followed, and the friend they lived with in the inti
macy of social life, was Almighty God Himself. As
has been well pointed out, if they believed their Master
to be God, surely when they were attacked they would
have fled to him for protection, instead of endeavour
ing to save themselves by deserting him : we may
add that this would have been their natural instinct,
since they could never have imagined beforehand that
the Creator Himself could really be taken captive by
His creatures and suffer death at their hands. The
third class of his contemporaries, the learned Pha
risees and Scribes, were as far from regarding him as
divine as were the people or his disciples. They seem
to have viewed the new teacher somewhat con
temptuously at first, as one who unwisely persisted in
expounding the highest doctrines to the many, instead
�Jesus of Nazareth.
7
of—a second Hillel—adding to the stores of their own
learned circle. As his influence spread and appeared
to be undermining their own,—still more, when he
placed himself in direct opposition, warning the
people against them,—they were roused to a course of
active hostility, and at length determined to save
themselves by destroying him. But all through their
passive contempt and direct antagonism, there, is
never a trace of their dreaming him to be anything
more than a religious enthusiast who finally became
dangerous : we never for a moment see them assuming
the manifestly absurd position, of men knowingly
measuring their strength against God, and endea
vouring to silence and destroy their Maker. So much
for the opinions of those who had the best oppor
tunities of observing his ordinary life. A “ good man,
a “deceiver,” a “mighty prophet,” such are the
recorded opinions of his contemporaries: not one is
found to step forward and proclaim him to be
Jehovah, the God of Israel.
One of the most trusted strongholds of Christians,
in defending their Lord’s Divinity, is the evidence of
prophecy. They gather’ from the sacred books of
the Jewish nation the predictions of the longed-for
Messiah, and claim them as prophecies fulfilled in
Jesus of Nazareth. But there is one stubborn fact
which destroys the force of this argument: the Jews,
to whom these writings belong, and who from tradi
tion and national peculiarities, may reasonably be
supposed to be the best exponents of their own
prophets, emphatically deny that these prophecies are
fulfilled in Jesus at all. Indeed, one main reason for
their rejection of Jesus is precisely this, that he does
not resemble in any way the predicted Messiah. There
is no doubt that the Jewish nation were eagerly
looking for their Deliverer when Jesus was born;
these very longings produced several pseudo-Messiahs,
who each gained in turn a considerable following,
�8
On the Deity of
because each bore some resemblance to the expected
Prince. Much of the popular rage which swept
Jesus to bis death was the re-action of disappoint
ment after the hopes raised by the position of autho
rity he assumed. The sudden burst of anger against
one so benevolent and inoffensive can only be ex
plained by the intense hopes excited by his regal
entry into Jerusalem, and the utter destruction of
those hopes by his failing to ascend the throne of
David. Proclaimed as David’s son, he came riding
on an ass as king of Zion, and allowed himself to be
welcomed as the king of Israel : there his short
fulfilling of the prophecies ended, and the people,
furious at his failing them, rose and clamoured for his
death. Because he did not fulfil the ancient Jewish
oracles, he died: he was too noble for the role laid
down in them for the Messiah, his ideal was far other
than that of a conqueror, with “ garments rolled in
blood.” But even if, against all evidence, Jesus was
one with the Messiah of the prophets, this would
destroy, instead of implying, his Divine claims. For
the Jews were pure monotheists; their Messiah was
a prince of David’s line, the favoured servant, the
anointed of Jehovah, the king who should rule in
His name : a Jew would shrink with horror from the
blasphemy of seating Messiah on Jehovah’s throne,
remembering how their prophets had taught them
that their God “ would not give His honour to
another.” So that, as to prophecy, the case stands
thus : If Jesus be the Messiah prophesied of in the
old Jewish books, then he is not God: if he be not
the Messiah, Jewish prophecy is silent as regards
him altogether, and an appeal to prophecy is abso
lutely useless.
After the evidence of prophecy Christians generally
rely on that furnished by miracles. It is remarkable
that Jesus himself laid but little stress on his mira
cles; in fact, he refused to appeal to them as credentials
�Jesus of Nazareth.
9
of his authority, and either could not or would not
work them when met with determined unbelief. We
must notice also that the people, while “ glorifying
God, who had given such power unto men,” were not
inclined to admit his miracles as proofs of his right to
claim absolute obedience: his miracles did not even
invest him with such sacredness as to protect him
from arrest and death. Herod, on his trial, was
simply anxious to see him work a miracle, as a matter
of curiosity. This stolid indifference to marvels as
attestations of authority, is natural enough, when we
remember that Jewish history was crowded with
miracles, wrought for and against the favoured people,
and also that they had been specially warned against
being misled by signs and wonders. Without entering
into the question whether miracles are possible, let us,
for argument’s sake, take them for granted, and see
what they are worth as proofs of Divinity. If Jesus
fed a multitude with a few loaves, so did Elisha:
if he raised the dead, so did Elijah and Elisha; if
he healed lepers, so did Moses and Elisha; if he
opened the eyes of the blind, Elisha smote a whole
army with blindness and afterward restored their
sight: if he cast out devils, his contemporaries, by
his own testimony, did the same. If miracles prove
Deity, what miracle of Jesus can stand comparison
with the divided Red Sea of Moses, the stoppage of
the earth’s motion by Joshua, the check of the rushing
waters of the Jordan by Elijah’s cloak ? If we are
told that these men worked by conferred power and
Jesus by inherent, we can only answer that this is a
gratuitous assumption and begs the whole question.
The Bible records the miracles in equivalent terms :
no difference is drawn between the manner of working
of Elisha or Jesus ; of each it is sometimes said they
prayed; of each it is sometimes said they spake.
Miracles indeed must not be relied on as proofs of
divinity, unless believers in them are prepared to pay
�IO
On the Deity of
divine honours not to Jesus only, but also to a crowd
of others, and to build a Christian Pantheon to the
new found gods.
So far we. have only seen the insufficiency of the
usual Christian arguments to establish a doctrine so
stupendous and so prima facie improbable, as the in
carnation of the Divine Being: this kind of negative
testimony, this insufficient evidence, is not however
the principal reason which compels Theists to protest
against the central dogma of Christianity. The
stronger proofs of the simple manhood of Jesus re
main, and we now proceed to positive evidence of his
not being God. I propose to draw attention to the
traces of human infirmity in his noble character, to
his absolute mistakes in prophecy, and to his evidently
limited knowledge. In accepting as substantially true
the account of Jesus given by the evangelists, we are
taking his character as it appeared to his devoted
followers. We have not to do with slight blemishes,
inserted by envious detractors of his greatness ; the
history of Jesus was written when his disciples wor
shipped him as God, and his manhood, in their eyes,
reached ideal perfection. We are then forced to
believe that, in the Gospels, the life of Jesus is given
at its highest, and that he was, at least, not more
spotless than he appears in these records of his friends.
But here again, in order not to do a gross injustice,
we must put aside the fourth Gospel: to study his
character “ according to S. John ” would need a
separate essay, so different is it from that drawn by
the three ; and by all rules of history we should judge
him by the earlier records, more especially as they
corroborate each other in the main.
The first thing which jars upon an attentive reader
of the Gospels is the want of affection and respect
shown by Jesus to his mother. When only a child
of twelve he lets his parents leave Jerusalem to return
home, while he repairs alone to the temple. The
�Jesus of Nazareth.
11
fascination of the ancient city and the gorgeous temple
services was doubtless almost overpowering to a
thoughtful Jewish boy, more especially on his first
visit: but the careless forgetfulness of his parents’
anxiety must be considered as a grave childish fault,
the more so as its character is darkened by the in
difference shown by his answer to his mother’s
grieved reproof. That no high, though mistaken,
sense of duty kept him in Jerusalem is evident from
his return home with his parents ; for had he felt that
“his Father’s business ” detained him in Jerusalem
at all, it is evident that this sense of duty would
not have been satisfied by a three days’ delay. But
the Christian advocate would bar criticism by an
appeal to the Deity of Jesus: he asks us therefore
to believe, that Jesus, being God, saw with indiffer
ence his parents’ anguish at discovering his absence ;
knew all about that three-days’ agonised search (for
they, ignorant of his divinity, felt the terrible anxiety
as to his safety, natural to country people losing a
child in a crowded city) ; did not, in spite of the
tremendous powers at his command, take any steps
to re-assure them ; and, finally, met them again with
no words of sympathy, only with a mysterious allu
sion, incomprehensible to them, to some higher claim
than theirs, which, however, he promptly set aside to
obey them. If God was incarnate in a boy, we may
trust that example as a model of childhood: yet, are
Christians prepared to set this “ early piety and desire
for religious instruction ” before their young children
as an example they are to follow ? Are boys and
girls of twelve to be free to absent themselves for
days from their parents’ guardianship under the plea
that a higher business claims their attention ? This
episode of the childhood of Jesus should be relegated
to those “gospels of the infancy ” full of most un
childlike acts, which the wise discretion of Christendom
has stamped with disapproval. The same want of
�I2
On the Deity of
filial reverence appears later in his life : on one occa
sion he was teaching, and his mother sent in, desiring
to speak to him : the sole reply recorded to the
message is the harsh remark : “Who is my mother?”
The most practical proof that Christian morality has,
on this head, outstripped the example of Jesus, is
the prompt disapproval which similar conduct would
meet with in the present day. By the strange warping
of morality often caused by controversial exigencies,
this want of filial reverence has been triumphantly
pointed out by Christian divines; the indifference shown
by Jesus to family ties is accepted as a proof that he was
more than man! Thus, conduct which they implicitly
acknowledge to be unseemly in a son to his mother,
they claim as natural and right in the Son of God, to
His! In the present day if a person is driven by
conscience to a course painful to those who have
claims on his respect, his recognised duty, as well as
his natural instinct, is to try and make up by added
affection and more courteous deference for the pain he
is forced to inflict: above all, he would not wantonly
add to that pain by public and uncalled-for disrespect.
The attitude of Jesus towards his opponents in
high places was marked with unwarrantable bitterness.
Here also the lofty and gentle spirit of his whole life
has moulded Christian opinion in favour of a course
different on this head to his own, so that abuse of an
opponent is now commonly called m- Christian.
Wearied with three years’ calumny and contempt,
sore at the little apparent success which rewarded his
labour, full of a sad foreboding that his enemies would
shortly crush him, Jesus was goaded into passionate
denunciations: “Woe unto you, Scribes and Pha
risees, hypocrites ... ye fools and blind ... ye make
a proselyte twofold more the child of hell than your
selves ... ye serpents, ye generation of vipers, how
can ye escape the damnation of hell! ” Surely this is
not the spirit which breathed in, “If ye love them
�Jesus of Nazareth.
13
which love you, what thanks have ye ? . . . Love your
enemies, bless them that curse you, pray for them
that persecute you.” Had he not even specially for
bidden the very expression, “Thou fool!” Was not
this rendering “ evil for evil, railing for railing ? ”
It is painful to point out these blemishes : reverence
for the great leaders of humanity is a duty deal’ to all
human hearts ; but when homage turns into idolatry,
then men must rise up to point out faults which
otherwise they would pass over in respectful silence,
mindful only of the work so nobly done.
I turn then, with a sense of glad relief, to the
evidence of the limited knowledge of Jesus, for
here no blame attaches to him, although one proved
mistake is fatal to belief in his Godhead. First
as to prophecy: “ The Son of man shall come
in the glory of his Father with his angels : and then
shall he reward every man according to his works.
Verily I say unto you, There be some standing here
which shall not taste of death till they see the Son of
man coming in his kingdom.” Later, he amplifies
the same idea: he speaks of a coming tribulation,
succeeded by his own return, and then adds the
emphatic declaration : “ Verily I say unto you, This
generation shall not pass till all these things be done.”
The non-fulfilment of these prophecies is simply a
question of fact: let men explain away the words
now as they may, yet, if the record is true, Jesus did
believe in his own speedy return, and impressed the
same belief on his followers. It is plain, indeed, that
he succeeded in impressing it on them, from the
references to his return scattered through the epistles.
The latest writings show an anxiety to remove the
doubts which were disturbing the converts consequent
on the non-appearance of Jesus, and the fourth
Gospel omits any reference to his coming. It is
worth remarking in the latter, the spiritual sense
which is hinted at—either purposely or unintention
�14-
0# the Deity of
ally—in the words, “ The hour . . . now is when the
dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God, they
that hear shall live.” These words may be the popular
feeling on the advent and resurrection, forced on the
Christians by the failure of their Lord’s prophecies
in any literal sense. He could not be mistaken, ergo
they must spiritualise his words. The limited know
ledge of Jesus is further evident from his confusing
Zacharias the son of Jehoiada with Zacharias the
son of Barachias : the former, a priest, was slain in
the temple court, as Jesus states; but the son of
Barachias was Zacharias, or Zechariah, the prophet.*
He himself owned a limitation of his knowledge, when
he confessed his ignorance of the day of his own
return, and said it was known to the “ Father only.”
Of the same class of sayings is his answer to the
mother of James and John, that the high seats of the
coming kingdom “are not mine to give.” That Jesus
believed in the fearful doctrine of eternal punishment
is evident, in spite of the ingenious attempts to prove
that the doctrine is not scriptural: that he, in common
with his countrymen, ascribed many diseases to the
immediate power of Satan, which we should now
probably refer to natural causes, as epilepsy, mania,
and the like, is also self-evident. But on such points
as these it is useless to dwell, for the Christian believes
them on the authority of Jesus, and the subjects,
from their nature, cannot be brought to the test of
ascertained facts. Of the same character are some
of his sayings : his discouraging “ Strive to enter in
at the strait gate,/or many,” etc.; his using in defence
of partiality Isaiah’s awful prophecy, “ that seeing
theymaysee and not perceive,” etc.; his using Scripture
at one time as binding, while he, at another, depre
ciates it; his fondness for silencing an opponent by
an ingenious retort: all these things are blameworthy
to those who regard him as man, while they are
* See Appendix, page 20.
�Jesus of Nazareth.
i5
shielded from criticism by his divinity to those who
worship him as God. Their morality is a question of
opinion, and it is wasted time to dwell on them when
arguing with Christians, whose moral sense is for the
time held in check by their mental prostration at his
feet. But the truth of the quoted prophecies, and
the historical fact of the parentage of Zachariah, can
be tested, and on these Jesus made palpable mistakes.
The obvious corollary is, that being mistaken—as he
was—his knowledge was limited, and was therefore
human, not divine.
In turning to the teaching of Jesus (I still confine
myself to the three Gospels), we find no support of
the Christian theory. If we take his didactic teaching,
we can discover no trace of his offering himself as an
object of either faith or worship. His life’s work, as
teacher, was to speak of the Father. In the sermon
on the Mount he is always striking the keynote,
“your heavenly Father; ” in teaching his disciples
to pray, it is to “ Our Father,” and the Christian idea
of ending a prayer “through Jesus Christ” is quite
foreign to the simple filial spirit of their master.
Indeed, when we think of the position Jesus holds in
Christian theology, it seems strange to notice the
utter absence of any suggestion of duty to himself
throughout this whole code of so-called Christian
morality. In strict accordance with his more formal
teaching is his treatment of inquirers : when a young
man comes kneeling, and, addressing him as “ Good
Master,” asks what he shall do to inherit eternal life,
the loyal heart of Jesus first rejects the homage,
before he proceeds to answer the all-important ques
tion : “ Why callest thou me good : there is none good
but one, that is, God.” He then directs the youth on
the way to eternal life, and he sends that young
man home without one word of the doctrine on which,
according to Christians, his salvation rested. If the
“ Gospel ” came to that man later, he would
�16
On the Deity of
reject it on the authority of Jesus who had told
him a different “ way of salvation
and if Chris
tianity is true, the perdition of that young man’s
soul is owing to the defective teaching of Jesus him
self. Another time, he tells a Scribe that the first
commandment is that God is one, and that all a man’s
love is due to Him; then adding the duty of neigh
bourly love, he says; “ There is none other command
ment greater than these:” so that belief in Jesus,
if incumbent at all, must come after love to God and
man, and is not necessary, by his own testimony, to
“ entering into life.” On Jesus himself then rests the
primary responsibility of affirming that belief in him
is a matter of secondary importance, at most, letting
alone the fact that he never inculcated belief in his
Deity as an article of faith at all. In the same spirit
of frank loyalty to God, are his words on the unpar
donable sin : in answer to a gross personal affront, he
tells his insuiters that they shall be forgiven for
speaking against him, a simple son of man, but warns
them of the danger of confounding the work of God’s
Spirit with that of Satan, “because they said” that
works done by God, using Jesus as His instrument,
were done by Beelzebub.
There remains yet one argument of tremendous
force, which can only be appreciated by personal
meditation. We find Jesus praying to God, relying
on God, in his greatest need crying in agony to God
for deliverance, in his last struggle, deserted by his
friends, asking why God, his God, had also forsaken
him. We feel how natural, how true to life, this
whole account is : in our heart’s reverence for that
noble life, that “ faithfulness unto death,” we can
scarcely bear to think of the insult offered to it by
Christian lips : they take every beauty out of it by
telling us that through all that struggle Jesus was the
Eternal, the Almighty, God: it is all apparent, not
real: in his temptation he could not fall: in his
�Jesus of Nazareth.
\"j
prayers lie needed no support: in his cry that the cup
might pass away he foresaw it was inevitable : in his
agony of desertion and loneliness he was present
everywhere with God. In all that life, then, there is
no hope for man, no pledge of man’s victory, no
promise for humanity. This is no man's life at all, it
is only a wonderful drama enacted on earth. What
God could do is no measure of man’s powers : what
have we in common with this “ God-man ?” This
Jesus, whom we had thought our brother, is, after all,
removed from us by the immeasurable distance which
separates the feebleness of man from the omnipotence
of God. Nothing can compensate us for such a loss
as this. We had rejoiced in that many-sided noble
ness, and its very blemishes were dear, because they
assured us of his brotherhood to ourselves : we are
given an ideal picture where we had studied a history,
another Deity where we had hoped to emulate a life.
Instead of the encouragement we had found, what
does Christianity offer us ?—a perfect life ? But we
knew before that God was perfect: an example ? it
starts from a different level: a Saviour ? we cannot
be safer than we are with God: an Advocate ? we
need none with our Father: a Substitute to endure
God’s wrath for us ? we had rather trust God’s
justice to punish us as we deserve, and His wisdom to
do what is best for us. As God, Jesus can give us
nothing that we have not already in his Father and
ours : as man, he gives us all the encouragement and
support which we derive from every noble soul which
God sends into this world, “ a burning and a shining
light ” :
“ Through such souls alone
God stooping shows sufficient of His light
For us in the dark to rise by.”
As God, he confuses our perceptions of God’s unity,
bewilders our reason with endless contradictions, and
turns away from the Supreme all those emotions of
�i8
On the Deity of
love and adoration which can only flow towards a
single object, and which are the due of our Creator
alone : as man, he gives us an example to strive after,
a beacon to steer by; he is one more leader for
humanity, one more star in our darkness. As God,
all his words would be truth, and but few would enter
into heaven, while hell would overflow with victims:
as man, we may refuse to believe such a slander on
our Father, and take all the comfort pledged to us by
that name. Thank God, then, that Jesus is only man,
human child of human parents : that we need not
dwarf our conceptions of God to fit human faculties,
or envelope the illimitable spirit in a baby’s feeble
frame. But though only man, he has reached a
standard of human greatness which no other man, so
far as we know, has touched: the very height of his
character is almost a pledge of the truthfulness of
the records in the main: his life had to be lived
before its conception became possible, at that period
and among such a people. They could recognise his
greatness when it was before their eyes : they would
scarcely have imagined it for themselves, more espe
cially that, as we have seen, he was so different from
the Jewish ideal. His code of morality stands un
rivalled, and he was the first who taught the universal
Fatherhood of God publicly and to the common
people. Many of his loftiest precepts may be found
in the books of the Rabbis, but it is the glorious
prerogative of Jesus that he spread abroad among
the many the wise and holy maxims that had hitherto
been the sacred treasures of the few. With him none
were too degraded to be called the children of the
Father: none too simple to be worthy of the highest
teaching. By example, as well as by precept, he
taught that all men were brothers, and all the good
he had he showered at their feet. “ Pure in heart,”
he saw God, and what he saw he called all to see : he
longed that all might share in his own joyous trust in
�Jesus of Nazareth.
19
the Father, and seemed to be always seeking for
fresh images to describe the freedom and fulness of
the universal love of God. In his unwavering love of
truth, but his patience with doubters—in his personal
purity, but his tenderness to the fallen—in his hatred
of evil, but his friendliness to the sinner—we see
splendid virtues rarely met in combination. His
brotherliness, his yearning to raise the degraded, his
lofty piety, his unswerving morality, his perfect self
sacrifice, are his indefeasible titles to human love and
reverence. Of the world’s benefactors he is the chief,
not only by his own life, but by the enthusiasm he
has known to inspire in others : “ Our plummet has
not sounded his depth
words fail to tell what
humanity owes to the Prophet of Nazareth. On his
example the great Christian heroes have based their
lives: from the foundation laid by his teaching the
world is slowly rising to a purer faith in God. We
need now such a leader as he was, one who would
dare to follow the Father’s will as he did, casting a
long-prized revelation aside when it conflicts with the
higher voice of conscience. It is the teaching of
Jesus that Theism gladly makes its own, purifying
it from the inconsistencies which mar its perfection.
It is the example of Jesus which Theists are following,
though they correct that example in some points by
his loftiest sayings. It is the work of Jesus which
Theists are carrying on, by worshipping, as he did,
the Father, and the Father alone, and by endeavour
ing to turn all men’s love, all men’s hopes, and all
men’s adoration, to that “ God and Father of all,
who is above all, and through all, and,” not in Jesus
only, but “ in us all.”
�20
On the Deity of Jesus of Nazareth.
APPENDIX.
“Josephus mentions a Zacharias, son of Baruch
(‘Wars of the Jews,’ Book iv., sec. 4), who was
slain under the circumstances described by Jesus.
His name would be more suitable at the close of the
long list of Jewish crimes, as it occurred just before
the destruction of Jerusalem. But, as it took place
about thirty-four years after the death of Jesus, it is
clear that he could not have referred to it; therefore,
if we admit that he made no mistake, we strike
a serious blow at the credibility of his historian, who
then puts into his mouth a remark he never uttered.”
�
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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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On the deity of Jesus of Nazareth: an enquiry into the nature of Jesus by an examination of the synoptic gospels
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Besant, Annie Wood
Voysey, Charles [1828-1912] (ed)
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Place of publication: London
Collation: 20 p. ; 18 cm.
Notes: Appendix on the last page. "by the Wife of a Beneficed Clergyman edited and prefaced by Rev. Charles Voysey". [Title page]. The author is Annie Besant, an attribution from Dr Williams Library Catalogue and Besant's biographer G.M. Williams. Williams believes this to be her 'literary debut'. Printed by C.W. Reynell, London. From the library of Dr Moncure Conway.
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Thomas Scott
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1873
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CT121
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Bible
Jesus Christ
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Text
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English
Bible-Criticism
Conway Tracts
Jesus Christ
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R. FORDER, 28 STONECUTTER STREET, E.C.
1891
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NATIONAL SECULAR SOCIETY
EXAMINATION
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BY
VOLTAI RE.
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LONDON :
GEORGE STANDRING, 7 & 9 FINSBURY STREET, E.C.
1890
��Introduction.
The ambition of domineering over the mind is one of the strong
est passions. A theologian, a missionary, or a partisan of any
description is always for conquering like a prince, and there are
many more sects than there are sovereigns in the world. To
whose guidance shall I submit my mind ? Must I be a Christian
because I happened to be born in London or in Madrid ? . Must
I be a Mussulman because I was born in Turkey ? As it is my
self alone that I ought to consult, the choice of a religion is my
greatest interest. One man adores God by Mahomet, another
by the Grand Lama, and another by the Pope. Weak and foolish
men! adore God by your own reason.
The stupid indolence which takes possession of the generality
of men, and sets aside this most important of all concerns, seems
to intimate to us that they are nothing but stupid machines,
endowed with animal functions, whose instinct never occupies
itself beyond the present moment. We make use of our under
standings in the same way as we use our bodies ; both are fre
quently abandoned to quacks, whose chief concern is to get
possession of our money.
The prodigious multitude of Christian sects already forms a
great presumption that they are all founded on erroneous systems.
The wise man says to himself : “ If God had intended us to ren
der him any particular worship, this worship would have been
necessary to our species. If this worship were necessary, he
himself would have communicated it to each of us, as invariably
as he has given us two eyes and one mouth.” This worship
would likewise have been uniform, since we have not been able
to discover anything necessary to the human race that does not
possess this uniformity. The universal principles of reason are
common to all civilised nations; all acknowledge a Deity; and
they may thence infer that this belief is founded in truth. But
each nation has a different religion ; they ought therefore to
conclude that reason tells them to adore a God, but that they
have uniformly fallen into errors by wishing to overstep the
bounds prescribed them.
The principle, then, in which the whole universe is in agree- .
ment, appears to be true ; other principles whose consequences
are diametrically opposite must appear to be false, and it is
natural for us to mistrust them. We have a still greater diffi
dence when we find that the sole aim of those at the head of each
�V.
Introduction.
sect is to domineer and enrich themselves as much as they can ;
and that from the Dairis of Japan to the Bishop of Rome they
are occupied in raising to the pontiff a throne founded on the
misery of the people and often cemented with their blood.
Let the Japanese, then, examine how long the Dairis have held
them in subjection ; let the Tartars make use of their reason in
order to judge whether the Grand Lama be immortal; give the
Turks permission to judge their Alcoran ; and let us, as Chris
tians, examine our Gospels.
I have learnt that a French vicar, of the name of John Meslier,
who died a short time since, prayed on his death-bed that God
would forgive him for having taught Christianity. I have seen
a vicar in Dorsetshire relinquish a living of £200 a year, and con
fess to his parishioners that his conscience would not permit him
to preach the shocking absurdities of the Christians. But neither
the will and testament of John Meslier nor the declaration of this
worthy vicar are what I consider decisive proofs. Uriel Acosta,
a Jew, publicly renounced the Old Testament in Amsterdam ;
however, I pay no more attention to the Jew Acosta than to
Parson Meslier. I will read the arguments on both sides of the
trial with careful attention, not suffering the lawyers to tamper
with me ; but will weigh before God the reasons of both parties,
and decide according to my conscience. I commence by being
my own instructor.
NOTE TO NEW EDITION.
This pamphlet is reprinted from an edition published over forty
years ago by James Watson. It is necessary to explain that in
reproducing it I have omitted a few passages which, in my
opinion, could be discarded without in the slightest degree
affecting the validity of .the arguments
G. S.
�CHAP. I.
Of the books of Moses.
Christianity is founded on Judaism ; let us, then, ex
amine if Judaism be the work of God. The books of
Moses are handed to me, and the first point I have to
ascertain is, whether or not these books were actually
written by Moses.
In the first place—Is it possible that Moses could have
graven the Pentateuch, or the books of the law, on
stone, and that he found gravers and stone-cutters in a
frightful wilderness, where it is said that his people had
neither tailors, shoemakers, raiment, nor bread, and
where God was compelled to work a continued miracle,
for the space of forty years, in order to clothe and feed
them ?
Secondly.—The book of Joshua tells us that Deuter
onomy was written on an altar of rough stone,1 covered
over with plaster. How could a whole book be written
on plaster? Would not the letters soon be effaced by
the blood which continually flowed on this altar ? And
how could this altar, this monument of Deuteronomy,
subsist so long in a country that had been such a length of
time reduced to a state of slavery, which their plunders
had so fully justified ?
Thirdly.—The innumerable geographical and chrono
logical errors and contradictions which we find in the
Pentateuch have compelled many, both Jews and Chris
tians, to declare that the Pentateuch could not have
been written by Moses. The learned Le Clerc, a number
1 Joshua viii., 31, 32.
�6
Examination of the Holy Scriptures.
of divines, even the great Newton, have embraced this
opinion, which appears at least very probable.
I likewise ask any reasonable man if it be at all likely
that Moses, when he was in the wilderness, would have
given precepts for Jewish kings who did not exist for
several centuries after him ; and if it be possible that,
when in the same wilderness, he could have allotted
forty-eight cities and their suburbs to the tribe of the
Levites alone, independent of the tenths which the other
tribes ought to pay them ? It is, doubtless, very natural
to suppose that the priests would lay hold of everything,
but we cannot imagine that they had forty-eight cities
given them in a little canton where at that time two
villages scarcely existed: as many cities would, at least,
have been necessary for the other Jewish tribes, and the
whole would have amounted to four hundred and eighty
cities with their suburbs. The Jews have not written
their history in any other manner. Each trait is a
ridiculous hyperbole, a stupid falsehood, or an absurd
fable.
CHAP. II.
Of the person of Moses.
Was there ever such a person as Moses ? There is so
much of prodigy in him from his cradle to his death that
he appears to be an imaginary personage like the magi
cian Merlin. If he had really existed, if he had per
formed the dreadful miracles attributed to him in Egypt,
would it have been possible that no Egyptian author
should have spoken of these miracles, and that the
Greeks, the lovers of the marvellous, had not recorded a
single word respecting him ? Flavius Josephus, who, to
extol his despicable nation, seeks after the testimony of
the Egyptian authors who have spoken of the Jews, has
not the face to quote one that makes mention of the pro
digies of Moses. Is not this universal silence a proof
that Moses is only a fabulous personage ?
�The. Person of Moses.
7
Those who have paid any attention to antiquity know
that the ancient Arabs invented many fables which suc
ceeding ages made known to other nations. They had
imagined the history of ancient Bacchus, whom they
supposed to have lived long anterior to the time when
the Jews tell us their Moses made his appearance. This
Bacchus, or Back, who was born in Arabia, had written
bis laws on two tables of stone; he was called Misem, a
name which has some resemblance to that of Moses ; he
was picked up in a box on the waters, and the significa
tion of his name is “ saved from the waters ” ; he had a
rod with which he performed miracles, and he could
change his rod into a serpent at his own pleasure. This
same Misem passed the Red Sea dry-shod at the head of
his army; he divided the waters of Orontes and Hydaspus, and suspended them to the right and left, and a
fiery column lighted his army during the night. . The
ancient Orphic verses which were sung in the orgies of
Bacchus, celebrated a part of these extravagances. This
fable was so ancient that the fathers of the church be
lieved Misem or Bacchus to have been Noah.1 Is it not
highly probable that the Jews adopted this fable, and
that it was written as soon as they had obtained some
knowledge of literature under their kings ? They must
have a little of the marvellous as well as other people,
but they were not the inventors; never was there a petty
nation more stupid; all their falsehoods were plagiarisms,
and all their ceremonies were visibly performed in imita1 We must observe that Bacchus was known in Egypt, Syria,
Asia Minor, and Greece a long time before any nation had heard
the name of Moses, or even of Noah and the whole of his gene
alogy. Everything that belonged exclusively to the Jewish
writings was absolutely unknown to both Eastern and Western
nations, from the name of Adam to that of David.
The wretched Jews had their own chronology and fables apart,
which bore only a slight resemblance to those of other nations.
Their writers, who were very tardy in commencing their labors,
ransacked everything they could find among their neighbors, and
disguised their thefts very badly; witness the fable of Moses,
borrowed from that of Bacchus; their ridiculous Samson, from
that of Hercules ; Jephthah’s daughter, from Iphigenia; Lot’s
wife, imitated from Eurydice, &c.
�8
Examination of the Holy Scrintums.
tion of those of the Phoenicians, Assyrians and Egyptians.
What they themselves have added appear to be such
disgusting stupidities and absurdities that they excite
both our indignation and pity. In what ridiculous
romance could we bear to hear of a man changing all
the waters into blood by a flourish of his rod, in the
name of a God unknown, while the magicians can do the
same thing in the name of their local deities ? The only
superiority that Moses obtains over the king s magicians
is in creating lice, which they were unable to perform.
This made a great prince say that as far as lice, were
concerned, the Jews could do more than all the magicians
in the world.
How did an angel of the Lord come and kill all the
cattle in Egypt ? How did it happen that the king of
Egypt had afterwards an army of cavalry ? And how
did the cavalry proceed to cross the muddy bottom of
the Red Sea? How did the same angel of the Lord slay
all the first-born of the Egyptians in a single night ? It
was then that the pretended Moses ought to have taken
possession of this beautiful country, instead of running
away like a coward and a vagabond, with two or three
millions of men, among whom it is said that there were
six hundred and thirty thousand combatants. It was
tbis prodigious multitude that he took with him to wan
der and die in the wilderness, where they could not even
find water to drink. To facilitate this grand expedition
his God divides the waters of the sea, which he raises
like two mountains to the right and left, in order that his
favorite people may perish with hunger and thirst.
All the rest of the history of Moses is equally absurd
and barbarous. His quails; his manna ; his conversa
tions with God ; twenty-three thousand of the people
killed by order of the priest; twenty-four thousand mas
sacred at another time; and six hundred and thirty
thousand combatants in a wilderness where they could
never find two thousand men ! Assuredly the whole of
this appears to be the height of extravagance; and it has
been said that Orlando Eurioso and Don Quixote are geo
metrical books in comparison with those of the Hebrews.
If- we could find only a few rational and honest actions
in the fable of Moses, we might then in reality believe
that such a person had existed.
�The Person of Moses.
9
They have the face to tell us that the feast of the
Passover among the Jews is a proof of the passage of the
Red Sea. At this feast they thanked the Jewish God
for his goodness in killing all the first-born of Egypt; and
they tell us that nothing could be more true than this
holy and divine butchery.
“ Can we conceive,” says that declaimer and trifling
reasoner, Abbadie, “ that it was possible for Moses to
institute sensible memorials of an event recognized to be
false by more than six hundred thousand witnesses?”
Poor man ! thou shouldst have said by more than two
millions of witnesses, for six hundred and thirty thousand
combatants, whether they were fugitives or not, assuredly
lead us to suppose that there were more than two mil
lions of inhabitants. Thou sayest, then, that Moses read
his Pentateuch to two or three millions of Jews, Thou
believest, likewise, that these two or three millions would
have written against Moses if they had discovered any
errors in his Pentateuch, and that they would have had
their remarks inserted in the journals of the country.
Thou hast forgot nothing, except telling us that these
three millions have signed as witnesses and that thou
hast seen their signatures.
Thou believest, then, that the temples and rites in
stituted in honor of Bacchus, Hercules, and Perseus,
evidently prove that Perseus, Hercules, and Bacchus
were the sons of Jupiter ; and that among the Romans,
the temple of Castor and Pollux was a demonstration
that Castor and Pollux had fought for the Romans. Thus
they always beg the question ; and in matters of the
greatest importance to the human race these controversial
traffickers make use of arguments that Lady Blackacre
durst not hazard on the stage.
We se£ that these tales have been written by fools,
commented upon by simpletons, taught' by knaves, and
given to children to be learned by heart; yet the sage
is called a blasphemer because he becomes indignant
and is irritated at the most abominable fooleries that
ever disgraced human nature.
�10
Examination of the Holy Scriptures.
CHAP. III.
Of the inspiration attributed to the Jewish Books.
How can we suppose that God would choose a horde of
Arabs to be his favorite people, and that he would arm
this horde against all other nations ? And why, when
fighting at the head of them, did he so frequently suffer
his people to be vanquished and to become slaves ?
In giving them laws, why did he forget to inculcate
among this little troop of thieves the belief of the immor
tality of the soul, and the rewards and punishments after
death,1 while all the great neighboring nations, such as
the Chaldeans, Egyptians, Assyrians and Phoenicians,
had so long embraced this salutary belief ?
Herodotus tells us that the famous temple of Tyre was
built two thousand three hundred years before his time ;
and they say that Moses conducted his troop in the de
sert about sixteen hundred years before our era. Herod
otus wrote five hundred years before the vulgar era, so
that the temple of the Phoenicians subsisted twelve hun
dred years before Moses, and the Phoenician religion was
established long before that time.
1 This is the strongest argument against the Jewish law, and
one which the great Bolingbroke did not sufficiently insist upon.
What! The legislators of the Indians, Egyptians, Babylonians,
Greeks, and Romans all taught the immortality of the soul,
which we find in twenty places even in Homer, and yet the pre
tended Moses does not speak of it. Not a single word is said of
it, either in the Jewish Decalogue or in the Pentateuch. It be
came necessary for commentators, who were either very ignorant,
or more inclined to knavery than folly, to twist some passages of
Job, who was not a Jew, in order to make it believed by men
more ignorant than themselves, that Job had spoken of a future
life, because he said, “ For I know that my Redeemer liveth, and
though after my skin worms destroy this body, yet in my flesh
shall 1 see God ” (Job xix. 25). What connection is there, I
pray you, between a sick man who is suffering but hopes to be
cured, and the immortality of the soul, hell, and paradise ? If
Warburton had contented himself with proving that the Jewish
law did not mention a future life, he would have rendered a very
great service. But by the most incomprehensible madness, he
wished to have it believed that the stupidity of the Pentateuch
was a proof of its divinity, and his excessive pride supported this
chimera with the most intolerant insolence.
�Who wrote the Pentateuch ?
11
This religion, as well as that of the Chaldeans and the
Egyptians, announced the immortality of the soul, which
was never a fundamental dogma with the Jews. We are
told that they were a rude people, and that God put
himself upon a level with them. With whom ? Jewish
robbers ! God more stupid than his people ! Is not this
blasphemy ?
CHAP. IV.
Who is the author of the Pentateuch ?
I am asked who is the author of the Pentateuch. I would
as soon be asked who wrote “The Four Sons of Aimon,”
“Robert the Devil,” and “ The History of Merlin the
Magician.”
Sir Isaac Newton, who so far degraded himself as to
examine this question seriously, pretends that Samuel
wrote these reveries, apparently to render the name of
king odious to the Jewish horde, whom this detestable
priest wished to govern by himself. I am of opinion,
myself, that the Jews could neither read nor write until
the time of their captivity under the Chaldeans, because
their letters were first Chaldaic and afterwards Syriac.
We have never had an alphabet purely Hebraic.
I fancy that Esdras forged all these tales of a tub after
the captivity. He wrote them in Chaldean characters in
the jargon of the country, in the same way as the peas
antry of the north of Ireland make use of the English
alphabet.
The Cuteans who inhabited Samaria wrote the same
Pentateuch in Phoenician characters, which they made
use of in that country, and this Pentateuch is still extant.
I believe Jeremiah may have contributed a good deal
to the composition of this romance. We know that he
had a strong attachment to the Babylonish kings ; it is
evident from his rhapsodies that he was paid by the
Babylonians, and that he betrayed his own country ;
he wishes everything to yield to the king of Babylon.
The Egyptians were at that time enemies of the Babylon
ians, and it was to make their court to the great king who
was master of Hershalaim Kedusha (called by us Jerusa
�12
Examination of the Holy Scriptures.
lem) that Jeremiah and Esdras conspired to instil into the
Jews such a horror of the Egyptians. They took care to
say nothing about the people of the Euphrates. They are
slaves that keep upon good terms with their masters.
They confess, indeed, that the Jewish horde has almost
always been enslaved, but they respect those to whom
they were then in subjection.
Whether or not any other Jews have recorded the feats
and tricks of their kings is a matter as unimportant to me
as the “ History of the Knights of the Round Table,” or
the “ Twelve Peers of Charlemagne”; and I fancy the
most useless of all researches must be that of finding out
the name of the author of a ridiculous book.
Who first wrote the histories of Jupiter, Neptune and
Pluto ? I do not know ; nor do I care about knowing it.
CHAP.. V.
That the -Jews have borrowed from all other nations.
It has frequently been said that petty enslaved states al
ways endeavor to imitate their masters ; that a weak and
uncivilized people rudely conform to the customs of great
nations. Cornwall apes London ; London does not ape
Cornwall. Can anything be more natural than the sup
position that the Jews have borrowed what they could of
the religious worship, laws and customs of their neighbors?
It is now quite certain that their God, whom we call
Jehovah, pronounced by them Yaho, was the ineffable
name of the God of the Phoenicians and the Egyptians,
and was known to be so by the ancients.
Clemens Alexandrinus, in the first book of his Strom ates, relates that those who entered the Egyptian temples
were compelled to carry a species of talisman about them,
which was composed of this word Yaho; and when they
had acquired a certain method of pronouncing this word,
he who heard it fell down dead, or at least in a swoon.
This is what the jugglers of the temple endeavored to
persuade the superstitious.
It is well known that the form of the serpent, the
cherubim, the ceremony of the red cow, ablutions (since
�Jewish Borrowings.
13
called baptism), linen robes reserved for the priests, fast
ings, abstinence from pork and other meats, and circumsision, were all imitations of the Egyptians.
The Jews confess that they were a long time without a
temple, and that they had none for more than five hund
red years after Moses, according to their own chronology,
which is always erroneous. At length they invaded a
small city, in which they built a temple in imitation of
great nations. What had they before? A box. This
was customary among the Nomades, and the Canaanites
of the interior, who were very poor. There was an an
cient tradition among the Jews that, when they were
Nomades (that is to say, wanderers in the deserts of
Arabia Petrea), they carried a box containing a rude
image of a god named Remphan, or a species of star cut
in wood. You will find traces of this worship' in some of
the prophets, and particularly in the pretended discourse
which in the Acts of the Apostles is put into the mouth
of Stephen.1
Even according to the accounts of the Jews themselves
the Phoenicians (whom they call Philistines) had the
temple of Dagon before the Jewish troop had a house.
If this were the case, if all their worship in the wilder
ness consisted in having a box to the honor of the god
Remphan, who was nothing more than a star revered by
the Arabs, it is clear that the Jews in their origin were
only a band of wandering Arabs, whose pillaging enabled
them to establish themselves in Palestine, who afterwards
formed a religion to their own taste, and who composed
a history containing nothing but fables. They took a
part of the fable of the ancient Back or Bacchus, and
gave their hero the name of Moses ; but that we should
revere these fables, that we should have made them the
basis of our religion, and that these fables should still be
credited in a philosophical age, is what raises the indig
nation of all wise men. The Christian church sings
Jewish prayers, and burns those that adhere to the Jew
ish law ! How pitiful, how contradictory, how horrible!
1 Acts vii. 43.
�14
Examination of the Holy Scriptures.
CHAP. VI.
Of Genesis.
All the nations by whom the Jews were encompassed
had a Genesis, a Theogony, a Cosmogony long before the
Jews existed. Is it not evident that the Genesis of the
Jews was taken from the ancient fables of their neighbors?
Yaho, the ancient god of the Phoenicians, unravelled the
chaos, the Khautereb ; he arranged matter, Muth; he
formed man with his breath, Calpi; he gave a garden for
his habitation, Aden or Eden; he forbade him to meddle
with the great serpent Ophioneus, as we are told in the
ancient fragment of Pherecidus. What a conformity with
the Genesis of the Jews ! Is it not natural to suppose
that a petty, ignorant people would, in the course of time,
borrow the fables of the great people who invented the
arts ?
It was likewise a received opinion in Asia that God
had formed the world in six periods of time, which the
Chaldeans, who were so long anterior to the Jews, called
six gahambars. This was also an opinion of the ancient
Indians. The Jews, then, who wrote Genesis, are merely
imitators ; they mixed their own absurdities with these
fables, and we must confess that it is difficult for us to
abstain from laughter when we hear of a serpent talking
familiarly with Eve; of God speaking to the serpent;
of God’s promenade in the garden of Eden at noonday ;
of God making small-clothes for Adam, and an apron for
his wife Eve. All the rest appears equally senseless.
Many Jews themselves are ashamed of these tales, and
they have been considered by them as allegorical fables.
How can we interpret literally what the Jews have re
garded as allegories ?
Neither the histories of Judges, Kings, nor any of the
Prophets quote a single passage of Genesis. None of
them speaks of Adam’s rib being taken from his side to
make a woman of; nor of th® tree of knowledge of good
and evil; nor of the serpent that tempted Eve ; nor, in
short, of any of these imaginations. Once more : have
we any rational motives for believing them ?
�Of Genesis.
15
Their rhapsodies demonstrate that they have pilfered
all their notions from the Phoenicians, Chaldeans, and
Egyptians, in the same way as they pilfered their goods,
when they had it in their power. Even the name of
Israel was borrowed from the Chaldeans, as Philo con
fesses in the first page of the narrative of his deputation
to Caligula. These are his words : “ The Chaldeans give
to the righteous the name of Israel, seeing God.” Yet we
are such simpletons in the West as to fancy that every
thing which these Eastern barbarians had stolen belonged
exclusively to themselves.
CHAP. VII.
Of the manners of the Jews.
If we pass from Jewish fables to Jewish manners, do we
not find them as abominable as their tales are absurd ?
According to their own confession, they are a troop of
brigands, who carry into the wilderness all that they stole
from the Egyptians. Joshua, their chief, passes the Jor
dan by a miracle similar to that of the Red Sea ; and for
what purpose ? To put to fire and the sword a city to
which he was an entire stranger, and the walls of which
God caused to fall by the sound of trumpets.
The fables of the Greeks had more of humanity in them.
Amphion built cities by the sound of his flute ; Joshua
destroys them, and gives up to fire and sword old men,
women, children, and cattle. Was there ever a more
senseless brutality ? He pardons only a prostitute who
had betrayed her country. What occasion had he for the
perfidy of this miserable woman, since the walls fell at
the sound of his trumpet, which may be compared to the
trumpet of Astolphus, that made everybody run away from
him. We may remark, by the bye, that this woman
called Rahab, the prostitute, was an ancestor of the Jew
whom we have since transformed into a God, who like
wise reckons himself a descendant of the incestuousTamar, the impudent Ruth, and the adulterous Bath
sheba.
�16
Examination of the Holy Scriptures,
We are then told that this same Joshua smote thirty one kings of the country, that is to say, thirty-one village
chiefs, who had defended their firesides against this troop
of assassins. If the author of this history had formed a
design of rendering the Jews execrable among other
nations, could he have adopted a surer method? To add
blasphemy to robbery and barbarity, the author dares to
say that all these abominations were committed in the
name and by the express command of God, to whom they
were offered up as so many human sacrifices.
These are God’s people! Certainly the Hurons, Cana
dians, and Iroquois were philosophers of humanity com
pared to the children of Israel; and yet it was to favor
these monsters that the sun and moon stood still at noon
day !
And why ? To give them time to pursue
and slay the miserable Ammorites, who were already
crushed to death by a shower of great stones, covering a
space of five leagues, which God had thrown upon them
from the sky. Is this the history of Gargantua ? Is
this the history of God’s people ? And which do we find
the more insupportable, the excess of horror or the ex
cess of foolery contained therein ? Is it not increasing
this stupidity, to amuse ourselves by combatting this
detestable collection of fables, which are equally disgrace
ful to common sense, to virtue, to nature, and to the
Deity ? If a single adventure related of this people had
unfortunately been true, all nations would have united
to exterminate them; and if they be false it is not pos
sible to tell lies in a more stupid manner.
What shall we say of Jephthah, who immolates his own
daughter to his imaginary God; of the left-handed Ehud,
who assassinates Eglon his king in the name of the Lord;
of the divine Jael, who assassinates General Sisera by
driving a nail into his head; and of the drunken Samson
whom God favors with so many miracles ?
This last is a gross imitation of the fable of Hercules.
The eleven tribes arm four hundred thousand soldiers,
against the tribe of Benjamin. Four hundred thousand
soldiers, good God! in a territory which did not measure
fifteen leagues in length by five or six in breadth! The
Grand Seignior never had half such an army. These
Israelites exterminate the tribe of Benjamin, both old
�The. Manners of the Jezvs.
17
and young, women and girls, according to their laudable
custom. Six hundred boys escape. It would not be
proper to let one tribe perish, therefore six hundred girls
at least must be given to these six hundred boys.
What do the Israelites do ? There was in the neigh
borhood a small city named J abez ; they take it by sur
prise, kill all, massacre every thing, even the cattle,
reserving only four hundred girls for four hundred Benjamites !
Two hundred boys remain to be provided for, and it is
agreed that they shall ravish two hundred of the daugh
ters of Shiloh, when they go to dance at the gates of the
city J1
Come on, Tillotson, Sherlock, Clarke, and the rest of
your tribe; say something to justify these cannibal fables;
prove to us that these a^e all types and figures announc
ing Jesus Christ!
CHAP. VIII.
Of the Jewish manners under their Kings and Pontiffs, to
the destruction of Jerusalem by the Bomans.
The Jews obtain a king in spite of the priest Samuel,
who does all he can to preserve his usurped authority,
and he has the hardihood to say that “ to choose a king
is to reject God.”2
At length a herdsman, who sought his father’s asses,
is elected king by lot. The Jews were then under the
yoke of the Canaanites ; they had never had a temple ;
their sanctuary was an ark that could be put into a cart.3
The Canaanites had taken their ark from them, at
which God was much displeased; yet he, nevertheless,
suffered them to take it, but to be revenged he gave the
piles to the conquerors and sent mice into their fields.
The victors appeased God by returning him his ark,
accompanied with five golden mice.4
1 Judges xxi., 21.
S1 Sam. vi. 11.
2 1 Sam. viii. 7.
41 Sami vi. 4.
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Examination of the Holy Scriptures.
No vengeance or sacrifice could be more worthy of
the Jewish God. He pardons the Canaanites, but kills
fifty thousand and seventy of his own people for having
looked into the ark.1
It is under these propitious circumstances that Saul is
elected king of the Jews. In their miserable country
there was neither sword nor spear ; the Canaanites or
Philistines did not permit their Jewish slaves even to
sharpen their plough-shares and axes; they were forced
to apply to the Philistine laborers for this assistance ;2
and yet we are told that king Saul had, at first, an army
of three hundred thousand men with whom he won a
great battle.8 Gulliver has similar fables, but not such
contradictions.
In another battle Saul comes to terms with the pre
tended king Agag. The prophet Samuel arrives, and
asks, in the name of the Lord, “ Wherefore didst thou
not obey the voice of the Lord, to slay both man and
infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and ass?”* and
4
he takes a hatchet and hews king Agag in pieces.5 If
such an action were true, what kind of people and priests
were the Jews?
Saul, who was reproved by the Lord because he had
not himself slain king Agag his prisoner, goes at length
to fight against the Philistines, after the death of the
meek prophet Samuel. He consults a witch respecting
the success of the battle. It is known that witches can
raise ghosts. This witch brings out of the ground the
ghost of Samuel; but this merely regards the fine philo
sophy of the Jews. Now for their morality.
A player of the harp, for whom the Deity had caught
a tender affection, causes himself to be anointed king
during Samuel’s life-time : he revolts against his sove
reign, and, as the Scripture tells us, collects four hundred
wretches. “ Every one that was in distress, and every
one that was in debt, and every one that was discon
tented, gathered themselves unto him.”G
This was a man after God’s own heart; so the first
thing he does is to assassinate a farmer, named Nabal,
1 1 Sam. vi. 19.
4 1 Sam. xv. 8.
21 Sam. xiii. 19, 20.
5 1 Sam. xv. 33.
3 1 Sam. xi. 8.
6 1 Sam. xxii. 2.
�The Manners of the Jews.
19
because he refused to pay contributions. He marries
Nabal’s widow, and eighteen other women, without
reckoning concubines. He goes to an enemy of his own
country, king Achish, who receives him well; and as a
recompense for this kind reception, he sacks the villages
of the allies of Achish, whom he persuades that he has
not meddled with any towns except such as belonged to
the Hebrews. We must confess, that highwaymen are
less culpable in the eyes of men; but the ways of the
Jewish God are not as our ways.
The good king David robs Saul’s son, Ishbosheth, of
his crown. He causes Mephibosheth, son of his protec
tor, Jonathan, to be assassinated. He delivers up to the
Gibeonites two sons of Saul, and five of his grandsons to
be put to death. He assassinates Uriah, to screen his
adultery with Bathsheba; and yet this abominable Bath
sheba was the mother of Solomon, who was an ancestor
of Jesus Christ.
The remainder of the Jewish history is nothing but a
tissue of consecrated crimes. Solomon begins by killing
his brother Adonijah.
If God granted to this Solomon the gift of wisdom, he
appears to have refused him the gifts of humanity, justice;
continence, and honor. He has seven hundred wives
and three hundred concubines. The song imputed to
him is written in the style of those indecent books which
are calculated to put modesty to the blush.
Such were the manners of the wisest man among the
Jews, or, at least, the manners imputed to him out of
respect by miserable rabbins and Christian divines, whose
notions are still more absurd.
At length, to unite an excess of ridicule with this ex
cess of immodesty, the priests have decided that the
rhapsodies of Solomon’s Song are an emblem and a type
of the marriage of Jesus Christ with his church.
Of all the kings of Judah and of Samaria, there were
very few of them who were not either assassins or assas
sinated, until this den of robbers, who massacred one
another in the public places and the temple during the
time that Titus besieged them, fell under the iron chains
of the Romans with the fest of this miserable people of
G®d, of whom five-sixths had long been dispersed' over
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Examination of the Holy Scriptures.
Asia, and sold in the markets of the Roman cities, each
Jew being valued at the price of a pig, an animal which
was certainly less impure than this nation, if it weresuch as its historians and prophets represent it.
No one can deny that the Jews have written these
abominations ; and when we thus assemble them before
our eyes, our hearts revolt at them. These, then, are
the heralds of Providence, the forerunners of the reign of
Jesus. Sayest thou, 0 Abbadie, that all the Jewish
history is a prediction of the Church ; that all the pro
phets have foretold Jesus? Let us, then, examine theprophets.
CHAP. IX.
Of the Prophets.
Prophet, Nabim, Roheim—speaking, seeing, guessing, isall the same thing. All ancient authors agree that the
Egyptians, the Chaldeans, and all the Asiatic nations had
their prophets and conjurers. These nations were longanterior to the little people called the Jews, which, when
it formed a horde in a corner of land, had no languagebut that of its neighbors, and which, as we have before
shown, borrowed from the Phoenicians even the namesof its God, Eloha, Jehovah, Adonai, Sadai; which, in
short, took all its rites and ceremonies from its surround
ing neighbors, though it continually declaimed against,
them.
It was said by some writer, that the first seer, or pro
phet, was the first knave who met with a simpleton;
thus is prophecy established from the most remote anti
quity. But to fraud, let us add fanaticism; these twomonsters dwell together very peaceably in human skulls.
We have witnessed the arrival in London of hordes from,
the heart of Languedoc and Vivarais, who were as much
prophets as those of the Jews, and joined the most hor
rible enthusiasm to the most disgusting falsehoods. We.
have witnessed Jurieu prophesying in Holland. There
were always such impostors, and not only wretches who
predicted/but other wretches who imagined prophecies
spoken by ancient personages.
�The, Prophets.
21
The world has been filled with Sybils and Nostra•damuses. The Alcoran reckons two hundred and twentyfour thousand prophets. Bishop Epiphanius, in his notes
■on the pretended Canon of the Apostles, reckons seventythree Jewish prophets and ten prophetesses. The trade
•of prophet among the Jews was neither a dignity nor a
degree, nor a profession in the state; they were not ad
mitted prophets as doctors are admitted at Oxford and
■Cambridge. Let those prophesy that would; it was
■sufficient to have, or to believe they had, or to feign they
had, the calling of the spirit of God. Futurity was an
nounced by dancing and playing on the psaltery. Saul,
¿although he was rebuked, took it into his head to be a pro
phet. During civil wars each party had its prophet, as we
have our Grub Street writers. The parties treated each
■other reciprocally as fools, visionaries, liars and knaves,
and in this alone they spoke truth. “ The prophet is a
fool, the spiritual man is mad,” says Hosea, chap. ix. ver. 7.
The prophets of Jerusalem are fanciful and deceitful
men, said Saphoniah, a Jerusalem prophet. They are all
¿something like our apothecary, Moore, who inserts in the
newspapers, “ Take my pills and beware of counterfeits.”
When the prophet Micaiah is predicting misfortunes
to the kings of Samaria and Judah, the prophet Zedekiah
.gives him a box on the cheek, saying, “ Which way went
the spirit of the Lord from me to speak unto thee?”]
Jeremiah, who prophesied in favor of Nebuchad
nezzar, a Jewish tyrant, put cords round his neck, and a
yoke on his back, which was a type, and he was to send
this type to the neighboring petty kings, to invite them
to submission to Nebuchadnezzar. The prophet Ananias,
who looked upon Jeremiah as a traitor, took his cords
from him, and threw his yoke on the ground.
Prophecies are seldom read; it is difficult to go through
these lengthy and enormous rhapsodies. Fashionable
men who have read Gulliver and Atlantis, know neither
Hosea nor Ezekiel.
When we point out to sensible people, these execrable
passages, buried in the rubbish of prophecy, they cannot
recover from their astonishment.
1 2 Chron. xviii. 23.
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Examination of the Holy Scriptures.
They cannot conceive, that an Isaiah1 should walk
stark naked in the middle of Jerusalem ; that an Ezekiel
should cut his beard into three portions; that a Jonah
should be three days in a whale’s belly, &c. Were they
to read these shameless indecencies in a profane book,,
they would throw it away in disgust. It is the Bible ;
they remain confounded ; they hesitate ; they condemn
the abominations, and dare not condemn the book that
contains them. It requires time, before they dare to
make use of common sense, but, in the end, they detest
what knaves and simpletons have taught them to adore.
When were these irrational and immodest books writ
ten? Nobody knows. The most probable opinion is
that the greater part of the books attributed to Solomon,
Daniel, and others, were written in Alexandria ; but
what matters it as to time and place ? Is it not sufficient
to witness in them the most outrageous folly, and the.
most infamous debauchery ?
How is it, then, that the Jews have held them in
veneration ? Because they were Jews. We must like
wise consider, that all these extravagant monuments
were preserved only by priests and scribes. We know
how scarce books were in all countries, where the art of
printing (which the Chinese invented) reached us so late.
We shall be still more astonished when we see fathers of
the Church adopt these disgusting reveries, or allege
them in support of their sins.
We come, at length, from the old covenant to the new
one. Let us proceed to Jesus, and to the establishment
of Christianity.
CHAP. X.
Of the person of Jesus.
Jesus was born at a time when fanaticism was still
dominant, but when decency began to show itself a little.
The long commerce of the Jews with the Greeks and
Romans had given to the respectable part of the nation
manners less vulgar and irrational; but the populace, who.
are always incorrigible, preserved the same spirit of folly.
1 Isaiah, xx. 8.
�The Person of Jesus.
23
Some Jews, who were oppressed under the kings of
Syria, and under the Romans, had then imagined that
God would at some time send them a liberator, a Messiah.
This expectation ought naturally to be fulfilled in the
person of Herod. He was their king, and an ally of the
Bomans; he had rebuilt their temple, the architecture
of which greatly surpassed that of Solomon, since he had
filled up a precipice on which that edifice was erected. The
people no longer groaned under a foreign yoke; they paid
no imposts but to their own monarch; the Jewish worship
flourished, and the ancient laws were respected; Jerusa
lem, we must confess, was then in its greatest splendor.
Idleness and superstition brought forth many factions
or religious societies : Sadducees, Pharisees, Essenians,
Judaites, Therapeutaa, and Johnists, or disciples of John,
in the same way as the Papists have their Molinists,
Jansenists, Jacobins, and Cordeliers. However, at that
time no one spoke of the expectation of a Messiah.
Neither Josephus nor Philo, who have entered into such
minute details of the Jewish history, say that there was
any expectation of the coming of a Christ, an Anointed,
a Liberator, a Redeemer, of whom they had then less
need than ever. And if there had been one, it must have
been Herod. There was, in reality, a party or sect
called Herodians, who acknowledged Herod to be the
messenger of God.
At all times this people had given the names of An
ointed, of Messiah, of Christ, to any one that had been
serviceable to them ; sometimes it was given to their
own pontiffs, and sometimes to foreign princes. The Jew
who compiled the reveries of Isaiah, makes him employ
a vile flattery, very worthy of a Jewish slave: “Thus
saith the Lord to his Anointed, to Cyrus, whose right
hand I have holden to subdue nations before him,”1 &c.
The first book of Kings2 call the wicked Jehu, Anointed.
A prophet announces to Hazael, king of Damascus, that
he is the Messiah and the Anointed of the Most High.
Ezekiel says to the king of Tyrus, “ Thou sealeth up
the sum, full of wisdom, and perfect in beauty—thou art
the Anointed Cherub.”3 If this prince of Tyrus had
1 Isaiah xlv. 1.
2 2 Kings ix. 6.
3 Ezek. xxviii. 12, 14.
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Examination of the Holy Scriptures.
known that these titles were given to him in Judea, it
rested only with himself to have been a kind of demi-god.
He had an apparent right to such a title, supposing
Ezekiel to have been inspired. The Evangelists have
not said so much for Jesus.
However, it is quite certain that no Jew either hoped,
desired, or announced an Anointed, a Messiah, in the
time of Herod the Great, under whom, it is said, Jesus
was born. After the death of Herod, when Judea was
governed as a Roman province, and another Herod was
established, by the Romans, tetrarch of the little bar
barous district of Galilee, many fanatics took upon them
selves to preach among the ignorant people, particularly
in this Galilee, where the Jews were more ignorant than
elsewhere. It is thus, that Fox, a poor cobbler, estab
lished in our own times the sect of the Quakers, among
the peasantry in one of our counties. The first that
founded a Calvinist church in France, was a woollen
carder, named John Le Clerc. It is thus, that Muncer,
John of Leyden, and others, founded Anabaptism among
the poor people in some of the canons of Germany.
I have seen the Convulsionists, in France, institute a
small sect among the mob in one of the Fauxbourgs of
Paris. Sectarians began in this way all the world over.
They are generally beggars who rail against the govern
ment, and finish either by becoming chiefs of a party, or
by being hanged. Jesus was put to death at Jerusalem,
without having been anointed; John the Baptist had
already been put to death. Each of them left some
followers among the dregs of the people. Those of John
established themselves towards Arabia, where they still
exist. Those of Jesus were at first very obscure, but as
soon as they became associated with some of the Greeks,
they began to be known.
The Jews, under Tiberius, having carried their accus
tomed knaveries to a higher pitch than ever, and having
likewise seduced and robbed Fulvia, wife of Saturnius,
were driven from Rome, and could not be re-established
there, except by giving much money. They were like
wise severely punished under Caligula and Claudius.
Their disasters served in some measure to embolden
the Galileans, who comprised the new sect, to separate
�The Person of Jesus.
25
themselves from the Jewish communion. At length, they
found some who were a little acquainted with letters,
who put themselves at their head, and who wrote in their
favor against the Jews. This was what produced such
an immense number of Gospels, a Greek word, signifying
“ Good-news.” Each gave a life of Jesus ; none of them
agreed with the rest, but all of them had resemblance by
the number of incredible prodigies which, to vie with
each other, they attributed to their founder.
The Synagogue, on its part, seeing that a new sect had
sprung up in its bosom, and that it was vending a life of
Jesus, very injurious to the Sanhedrim, began to make
enquiries respecting this man, to whom it had not hitherto
paid any attention.
We have still a stupid work of that time, entitled
■“ Sepher Toldos Jeschut.” It appears to have been
written many years after the death of Jesus, during the
time when the Gospels were compiled. This book, like
all others of the Jews and Christians, is full of prodigies,
but, extravagant as it is, we must confess that many
■statements contained in it are much more probable than
those related in our Gospels.
It is said in the “ Toldos Jeschut ” that Jesus was the
son of a woman named Mirja, who was married in
Bethlehem to a poor man of the name of Jocanam. There
was in the neighborhood a soldier of the name of Joseph
Pander, a well-shaped, good-looking young man, who fell
in love with Mirja or Maria. As the Hebrews do not
■express their vowels, they frequently take a for j.
Mirja became with child by Pander. Jocanam, who
was seized with confusion and despondency, quitted
Bethlehem, and went to secrete himself in Babylon,
where there were still many Jews. The conduct of Mirja
disgraced her, and her son Jesus or Jeschut, was declared
a bastard by the judges of the city. When he became
old enough to be admitted into the public school, he
placed himself among the legitimate children ; however,
he was compelled to leave this class.
Hence arose the animosity against priests, which he
manifested when he had attained manhood ; he lavished
on them the most opprobrious epithets, calling them “ a
race of vipers and whitened sepulchres.”
�26
Examination of the Holy Scriptures.
Having, at length, quarrelled with Judas, a Jew, re
garding a question of interest, as well as concerning some
religious points, Judas denounced him to the Sanhedrim.
He was arrested, began to cry, and begged pardon, but
in vain; he was flogged, stoned, and afterwards put to
death.
Such is the substance of this history. Insipid fables
and impertinent miracles have since been added, which
injured it much, but the book was known in the second
century. Celsus quotes it; Origen refutes it, and it has
reached us quite disfigured.
The chief part of what I have just stated is certainly
more probable, more natural, and more comfortable, to
what passes in the world in our own days, than any of
the fifty gospels of the Christians. It was much more
likely that Joseph Pander was the father of Mirja’s child,
than that an angel came from heaven, with God’s com
pliments to a carpenter’s wife, in the same way as Jupiter
sent Mercury to visit Alcmena.
Every thing that they tell us about Jesus is worthy of
the Old Testament, and of Bedlam. They bring I know
not what kind of Agion pneumo,, a Holy Ghost, that had
hitherto never been spoken of, and which they have since
told us is the third part of God.
Jesus then becomes the Son of God, and of a Jewess ;
he is not yet God himself, but he is a superior Being.
He works miracles. The first he performs is, to have
himself conveyed by the devil to the top of one of the
mountains of Judea, where he could discover all the
kingdoms of the earth. His raiment appeared white ;
what a miracle ! He changes water into wine at a repast,
where the guests were already drunk.1 He dries a fig
tree, because it does not furnish him with figs to his
1 It is difficult to say which of those pretended prodigies is the
more ridiculous. Many people give a preference to that of the
wine at the marriage of Cana. That God should say to his
mother, the Jewess, “ Woman, what have I to do with thee ? ” is
a strange thing; but that he should feast with drunkards, and
should change six pitchers of water into wine for men that had
already drunk too much, is a blasphemy as execrable as it is im
pertinent. The Hebrew text uses a word which answers to>
“tipsy ” or half drunk; the Vulgate says “inebriate.”
�The Person of Jesus.
27
breakfast in the month of February. Yet the author of
this tale has at least the honesty to tell us that it was
not the season for figs. He goes to sup with women,,
and then with publicans, and yet it is pretended, in his
history, that he looked upon these publicans as bad
characters. He goes into the temple, that is to say, into
the large inclosure where the priests resided, in the court
where retail dealers were authorised by law to sell fowls,
pigeons, sheep, and oxen, and strews their money on theground. Yet he is suffered to proceed without interrup
tion ! And if we believe the book attributed to John,
they content themselves with asking him to work a
miracle, in order to show his authority, to play pranks
like these in a place so respected.
It was a very great miracle, for thirty or forty trades
men to suffer themselves to be kicked, and to lose their
money, by one man, without saying anything to him.
There is nothing in Don Quixote which approaches such
extravagances as this. But instead of performing the
miracle they demand of him, he contents himself with
saying, “ Destroy this temple, and in three days I will
raise it up.”1 The Jews reply, according to John, “ Forty
and six years was this temple building, and wilt thou
rear it up in three days ? ”
It was asserting a great falsehood to say that Herod
had been employed forty-six years in building the temple
of Jerusalem. The Jews in their reply, could not make
use of such a falsehood. By the bye, this alone shows
us that the Gospels have been written by men who were
scarcely acquainted with anything.
After this foolish enterprise, Jesus is said to have
preached in the villages. What kind of discourses do
they make him hold forth ? He compares the kingdom
of heaven to a grain of mustard seed; to a morsel of
leaven, mixed in three measures of meal; to a net, that
catches both good and bad fish ; to a king, who kills his
chickens to make a feast at his son’s wedding, and sends
his servants to invite the neighbors to it. The neighbors
kill the servants that request them to dine, and the king
kills the people who killed his servants, and bums their
1 John ii. 19.
�28
Examination of the Holy Scriptures.
■city. He then sends to compel the beggars on the high
way to come and dine with him, and seeing a poor guest
who had no garment, instead of giving him one, he causes
him to be thrown into a dungeon. This is the kingdom
■of heaven according to Matthew.
In the other discourses, the kingdom of heaven is
■always compared to a usurer, who will absolutely have
cent, per cent, profit. They confess that our Archbishop
'Tillotson preaches in a different style.
How did the history of Jesus finish ? By events which
have happened both in. our own country and in the rest
■of the world, to many people who wished to stir up the
populace, without being sufficiently capable either of
arming that population, or of gaining to themselves
powerful protectors. They most commonly finish by
being hanged. Jesus was put to death, for having
■called his superiors, “a race of vipers, and whited
sepulchres.”1 He was executed publicly, but he rose
from the grave privately. At length he ascended into
heaven, in the presence of eighty of his disciples, without
any other person in Judea seeing his ascension in the
clouds, which was, however, easy to be seen, and ought
to have made a great noise in the world.
Our Creed, called by the Papists Credo, which was
attributed to the apostles, though evidently fabricated
more than four hundred years after these apostles,
acquaints us, that before Jesus ascended into heaven, he
went on a tour into hell. You will remark, that not a
single word is said about this journey in the Gospels, and
yet it is one of the principal articles of the Christian
faith. We cannot be Christians, if we do not believe that
Jesus descended into hell.
Who was, then, the first that imagined this journey ?
It was Athanasius, about three hundred and fifty years
after the event. It is in his treatise against Apollinarus,
on the incarnation of the Lord, where he mentions that
the soul of Jesus descended into hell, while his body
remained in the sepulchre.
His words are worthy of attention, and show us with
what sagacity and wisdom Athanasius reasoned.
xMatt. xxiii. 27.
�The Establishment of Christianity.
29
Here follow his own words : “ It was necessary after
his death, that his divers essential parts should perform
divers functions ; that his body should remain in the
sepulchre to destroy corruption, and that his soul should
go into hell to vanquish death.”
The African St. Augustin, in a letter that he wrote to
Evodus, seems to agree with him, Qicis ergo nisi infidelis
negaverit fuisse apud inferos Christum ?
Jerome, his contemporary, was nearly of the same
opinion; and it was during the time of Augustine and
Jerome that this Credo was composed, which, among
ignorant people, passed for the Apostles’ Creed.
Thus were opinions, creeds, and sects established.
But how could these detestable fooleries be credited ?’
How did they overturn the other absurdities of theGreeks and Romans, and, at last, the empire itself ? How
have they caused so many evils, so many civil wars,
lighted so many faggots, and spilled so much blood? We.
are going to account for it.
CHAP. XI.
Of the establishment of Christianity, and particularly
of Paul.
When the first Galileans spread themselves among the
populace of the Greeks and Romans, they found this
populace infected with all the absurd traditions that can
take possession of ignorant minds enamored with fables.
They had gods disguised in the shape of bulls, horses,
swans, and serpents, to seduce women and girls. Magis
trates, and respectable citizens, did not admit of these
extravagances, but the populace fed on them, and these
constituted the pagan mob. I fancy I see the followers
of Fox dispute with those of Brown. It was not difficult
for Jews, possessed with devils, to make their reveries
believed by the ignorant, who believed other reveries
equally impertinent.
Novelty attracted weak minds, who grew tired of their
old follies, and ran to hear new tales, just like the mob
at Bartholomew fair, demanding a new farce, and be
�30
Examination of the Holy Scriptures.
coming disgusted with the old one, which they have so
often seen repeated.
If we believe the books of the Christians, we are told
that Peter, son of Jonas,1 dwelt with Simon the tanner,
in a garret at Joppa, where he brought to life again the
mantua-maker, Dorcas.
In the chapter of Lucian, entitled Philcpatris, he
speaks of a Galilean “ with a bald forehead, and large
nose, who was carried to the third heaven.”
See how he speaks of an assembly of Christians, whom
he fell in with: “Tatterdemalions almost naked, with
fierce looks and the walk of madmen, who moan and
make contortions; swearing by the Son who was be
gotten by the Father, predicting a thousand misfortunes
to the empire, and cursing the emperor.” Such were the
first Christians.
He who had given the greatest notoriety to this sect
was this Paul with the large nose and bald forehead,
whom Lucian ridicules. The writings of Paul, it appears,
are sufficient to show how far Lucian was right. What
nonsense he writes to the society of Christians, forming
at Rome the Jewish rabble ! “ Circumcision verily profiteth if thou keep the law, but if thou be a breaker of
the law, thy circumcision is made uncircumcision.”2—
“ Do we then make void the law through faith ? God for
bid; yea, we establish the law.”3 “If Abraham were justified
by works, he hath whereof to glory, but not before God.”4
In thus expressing himself, Paul spoke evidently as a
Jew, and not as a Christian.
What a discourse to the Corinthians, “ Our fathers
were all baptised unto Moses, in the cloud and in the
sea.”5 Was not Cardinal Bembo right in calling these
epistles Epistolacia, and advising people not to read them?
What shall we think of a man who says to the Thessa
lonians, “Let your women keep silence in the churches,
for it is not permitted unto them to speak,”0 and who in
the same epistle announces that they ought to pray and
prophesy with their heads covered ?7
1 Acts ix. 39.
4 Rom. iv. 2.
2 Rom. ii. 25.
s 1 Cor. x. 1,2.
7 1 Cor. xi. 5
3 Rom. iii. 31.
6 1 Cor. xiv. 34.
�The Establishment of Christianity.
31
Is his quarrel with the other apostles that of a wise
and moderate man ? Does not every thing show him
to be a party man ? He is a Christian; he teaches
Christianity, and goes seven days to sacrifice in the
temple of Jerusalem, by the advice of James. He writes
to the Galatians, “Behold, I Paul say unto you, that if
ye be circumcised, Christ shall profit you nothing.”1
And he afterwards circumcises his disciple Timothy, who,
as the Jews pretend, was the son of a Greek and a
prostitute. He obtrudes himself among the apostles, and
boasts of being as much an apostle as the rest of them :
“ Am I not an apostle? Have I not seen Jesus Christ,
our Lord ? Are not ye my work in the Lord ? If I be
not an apostle to others, yet doubtless I am to you.
Have we not a power to eat and to drink ? Have we not
a power to lead about a sister, a wife, as well as other
apostles, and as the brethren of the Lord ? Who goeth
a warfare any time at his own charges ?” What frightful
things in this passage ! The right of living at the expense
of those he has subjugated ; the right of making them
pay the expenses of his wife or his sister ; and, at last,
the proof that Jesus had brethren, and the presumption
that Mary, or Mirja, was brought to bed more than
once.
I should be glad to know of whom he is speaking again
in his 2nd Epistle to the Corinthians, chap. xi.: “ For
such are false apostles. Howbeit, wherein soever any is
bold, I am bold also. Are they Hebrews ? So am I. Are
they the seed of Abraham ? So am I. Are they the
ministers of Christ ? I am more; in labors more abun
dant, in stripes above measure, in prisons more frequent,
in deaths oft. Five times received I forty stripes, save
one ; thrice was I beaten with rods ; once was I stoned ;
a night and a day I have been in the deep.”
Behold this Paul, who was twenty-four hours in the
deep without being drowned ! It is a third of the adven
ture of Jonah. But does he not here clearly manifest
his base jealousy of Peter and the other apostles, by
thinking to carry the palm from them, because he has
received more stripes and floggings than they have done ?
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Examination of the Holy Scriptures.
Does not his fury for domineering appear in all its in
solence, when he says to the same Corinthians, “ This is.
the third time I am coming to you. In the mouth of two
or three witnesses shall every word be established. Being
now absent, I write to them which heretofore have sinned,
and to all other, that, if I come again, I will not spare.”1
To what simple fools, to what kind of besotted creatures,
did he thus address himself like a tyrannical master ?
Those to whom he had the hardihood to assert that he
was carried to the third heaven. Impudent and dastardly
impostor ! Where is this third heaven in which thou
hast travelled? Is it in Venus or in Mars ?
We laugh at Mahomet, when his commentators pretend
that he visited seven heavens in succession, in a singlenight; but Mahomet, in the Alcoran at least, does not
speak of such an extravagance as that which is-imputed
to him; yet Paul dares to assert that he has performed
half of this journey.
Who was this Paul, then, who still makes so much
noise, and who is every day quoted at random ? He says
he was a Boman citizen, which I dare affirm to be an
impudent falsehood. No Jew was a Boman citizen, ex
cept under the Decii and Philips. If he were of Tarsus,
it was neither a Boman city nor a Boman colony for more
than a hundred years after Paul. If he were a native of
Giscalus, as St. Jerome states, this village was in Galilee,
and, assuredly, the Galileans had never the honor of'
being Boman citizens.
He was brought up at the feet of Gamaliel; that is to
say, he was one of Gamaliel’s domestics. Indeed, it is
remarked that he took care of the clothes of those whostoned Stephen, which is the work of a valet. The Jews
pretend that he wished to marry Gamaliel’s daughter.
We see some traces of this adventure in the ancient book
which contains the history of Thecla.
It is not astonishing that the daughter of Gamaliel
should reject a little bald-headed valet, whose eyebrows
hung over a deformed nose, and who was bandy-legged.
It is thus that the “Acts of Thecla” describe him.
Disdained, as he deserved to be, by Gamaliel and his
T2 Cor. xiii. 1, 2.
�The Gospels.
33
daughter, he joined himself with the infant sect of
Cephas, James, Matthew, and Barnabas, in order to
annoy the Jews.
Any one, who has the least spark of reason, would
judge that this cause which has been assigned for the
apostacy of this miserable Jew, is more natural than that
attributed to him. How can we persuade ourselves that
a celestial light knocked him off horseback at noon-day;
that a heavenly voice addressed him ; that God said to
him, “ Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me?” Ought
we not to blush at such stupidity ?
If God had wished to prevent the disciples of Jesus
from being persecuted, would he not have addressed him
self to the princes of the nation, rather than to Gamaliel’s
valet? Have they met with less chastisement since Saul
fell from his horse? Was not Saul (or Paul) himself chas
tised ? What was the utility of this ridiculous miracle ?
I call heaven and. earth to witness (if I may be permitted
to make use of these improper words, heaven and earth),
that there never was a legend more stupid, more fanatical,
more disgusting, nor more deserving of our horror and
contempt.
CHAP. XII.
Of the Gospels.
As soon as the societies of half Jews, half Christians,
had by degrees established themselves among the ignorant
people at Jerusalem, Antioch, Ephesus, Corinth, and
Alexandria, some time after Vespasian, each of these
little societies wished to make its own gospel. Fifty of
them had been reckoned, and there were many more. It
is known that they all contradict one another; this could
not be otherwise, since they were all composed in different
places. All of them agree only that their Jesus was the
son of Mary, or Mirja, and that he was put to death; all
of them likewise ascribe to him as many prodigies as are
to be found in Ovid’s Metamorphoses.
Luke dresses up a genealogy for him quite different to
that planned by Matthew; and neither of them dreams
about giving us the genealogy of Mary, who was his only
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Examination of the Holy Scriptures.
parent. The enthusiastic Pascal cries out, “ This is not
acting in concert.” Undoubtedly not. Each has written
extravagances for his little society, according to his own
fancy. This accounts for one Evangelist pretending that
the little Jesus was brought up in Egypt, and another
saying that he was brought up at Bethlehem. One of
them makes him go only once to Jerusalem, while the
others say that he went three times. One of them causes
three wise men, whom we call three kings, to be conducted
by a new star, and causes all the little children of the
country to be put to death by the first Herod, who was
then near the end of his days. The others are silent
about the star, and the wise men, and the massacre.1
At length, to explain these contradictions, we have been
compelled to make a concordance, and this concordance
is less concordant than the matters they wished to re
concile.
Almost all the Gospels, which the Christians never
made known but to their own little flocks, were visibly
forged after the taking of Jerusalem. We have a very
evident proof of it in that attributed to Matthew. This
book puts into the mouth of Jesus these words to the
Jews: "That upon you may come all the righteous
blood shed upon the earth, from the blood of righteous
Abel, unto the blood of Zacharias, son of Barachias,
killed between the temple and the altar.” A forger is
always discovered in some part of his work. During the
siege of Jerusalem, there was a Zacharias, son of Bara
chias, killed between the temple and the altar, by the
faction of the zealots. This enables us easily to detect
the imposition, otherwise we might have read over the
1 The massacre of the innocents is certainly the height of folly,
as well as the tale of the three wise men conducted by a star.
How could Herod, who was then almost on his death-bed, fear
being dethroned by the son of a village carpenter, who was just
born? Herod died only two or three years after, at the age of
seventy. It would have been necessary for this child to make
war against the empire. Could such a fear take possession of any
man who was not an absolute fool ? Is it possible that they have
proposed to human credulity such stupid fooleries, which outdo
Robert the Devil and John of Paris ? Man is a very contemptible
being when he suffers himself to be governed in such a way !
�k
The, Gospels.
35
whole Bible to enable us to clo so. The Greeks and
Romans read but little, and the Gospels were entirely
unknown to them. Lies were told with impunity.
An evident proof that the Gospel attributed to Matthew
was not written till long after him by some miserable
half Jew, half Christian Hellenist, is the famous passage :
■“ If he neglect to hear the church, let him be unto thee
as an heathen man and a publican.”1
There was no church in the time of Jesus and of
Alatthew. Church is a Greek word. The assembly of
the people of Athens styled itself Ecclesia. This ex
pression was only adopted by the Christians in process
of time, when they had obtained a kind of government.
It is clear, then, that an impostor took the name of
Matthew, and wrote his Gospel in very bad Greek. I
confess it would be comical enough for Matthew, who
had himself been a publican, to compare the heathens
with publicans. But whoever might have been the author
of this ridiculous comparison, none but a mad-cap among
the most illiterate of the people would have looked upon
a Roman knight, who was authorised to receive the im
posts established by government, as a man that ought to
be despised. The idea alone is destructive of all adminis
tration, and not only unworthy of a man whom God had
inspired, but unworthy the lackey of an honest citizen.
There are two Gospels of the infancy. The first relates
that a young beggar patted the little Jesus, his comrade,
behind, and that the little Jesus immediately killed him.
Kai para kremei peson apeidonen. At another time he
made birds of clay, which flew away. His method of
learning the alphabet was quite divine. Those tales are
not more ridiculous than that of his being carried off by
the devil, that of his transfiguration on Mount Tabor,
that of the water changed into wine, and that of the
devil’s being sent into a herd of swine. Thus this Gospel
of this infancy was long held in veneration.
The second Gospel of the infancy is not less curious.
Mary, who was conducting her son into Egypt, met with
some girls that were deploring the loss of their brother,
who had been transformed into a mule. Mary and her
1 Matt, xviii. 17.
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Examination of the, Holy Scriptures.
little one did not fail to change the mule into its former
shape of a man, but we do not know whether or not the
miserable animal was any better for the change. As they
proceeded on the road, the wandering family met with
two robbers, one named Dumachus, the other Titus.
Dumachus was for robbing the Virgin, and doing some
thing still more scandalous, but Titus took Mary’s part,
and gave forty drachmas to persuade him to let the family
go by, without doing them any injury. Jesus declared tothe Holy Virgin, that Dumachus should be the wicked
thief, and Titus the good thief; that they would one day
be executed with him ; that Titus should go into paradise,
and Dumachus to the devil.
The Gospel according to St. James, elder brother of
Jesus, or that of Peter Barjonas, a Gospel known and
boasted of by Tertullian, and by Origen, was in still
greater repute. It was called Proto-Evangelion, or First
Gospel. It was perhaps the first which spoke of the.
new star, of the arrival of the wise men, and of the
little children whom the first Herod ordered to be
massacred.
There is still a kind of Gospel or Acts of John in which
Jesus is said to have danced with his apostles the evening
before he died; and the circumstance is rendered
probable, as the Therapeutae were really accustomed to
dance in a ring, a ceremony that must be very pleasing
to our heavenly Father.
Why does the most scrupulous Christian now laugh
without remorse at all these gospels and acts which are
no longer in the canon; and why does he not dare to
laugh at those adopted by the church ? They are nearly
the same tales; but fanaticism adores in one name what
appears the height of ridicule in another.
At length, four Gospels are chosen; and the great
reason for having that number, as stated by St. Irenaeus,
is, that there are only four cardinal points ; that God is
seated on cherubim, and that cherubim have four
different shapes. St. Jerome, in his preface to Mark’s
Gospel, adds to the four winds and four-shaped animals,
the four rings of the poles, on which the box called the:
ark was carried.
�The Gospels.
37
Theophilus, of Antioch, proves that as Lazarus was
dead only four days, we can consequently admit only
four Gospels ; St. Cyprian proves the same thing by the
four rivers that watered Paradise. We must be very
impious not to yield to such reasons as these.
However, previous to any preference being given to
these four Gospels, the fathers of the two first centuries
scarcely ever quoted any except the gospels which are
mow styled apocryphal. This is an incontestible proof
that our four Gospels were not written by those to whom
they are attributed. I wish they were so. I wish, for
•example, Luke had written that which goes under his
name. I would say to Luke, “ How darest thou main
tain that Jesus was born under the governorship of
Cyreneus, or Quirinus, when it is attested that Quirinus
was not governor of Syria till more than ten years after
wards ? How hast thou the face to say, that Augustus
•ordered all the world to be taxed, and that Mary went to
Bethlehem for that purpose ? A tax on all the world !
What an expression ! Thou hast heard that Augustus
had a book which contained a detail of the forces of the
empire, and its finances; but a tax on all the subjects of
the empire is what he never could have thought of, still
less could he think of a tax all over the world. No
writer, either Greek, Roman, or barbarian, has mentioned
such an extravagance. Behold thee, then, convicted of
a most enormous falsehood, and yet thy book must be
respected! ”
But who fabricated these four Gospels ? Is it not
probable that they were written by Christian Hellenists,
■since the Old Testament is scarcely ever quoted, except
from the Septant version, which was unknown in Judea?
The apostles knew no more about the Greek language
than Jesus did. How could they have quoted the Septant ?
Nothing but the miracle of Pentecost could teach Greek
to ignorant Jews.
What a collection of contrarieties and falsehoods re
main in these four Gospels ! Were there only one, it
would suffice to shew them to be works of ignorance.
Did we find only the single tale given by Luke, that
Jesus was born under the governorship of Cyreneus, when
Augustus ordered all the world to be taxed ; would not
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Examination of the Holy Scriptures.
this falsehood alone cause us to throw away the book
with contempt ? In the first place, there never was such
a taxation, and no author speaks of it. , Secondly,
Cyreneus was not governor of Syria till ten years after
the epoch a of the birth of Jesus. In the Gospels there
are almost as many errors as words, and thus it is they
succeed with the people.
CHAP. XIII.
How the first Christians conducted themselves among the
Romans, and how tile'll forged verses attributed to the
Sibyls, de.
People of common sense ask how this tissue of fables so«
stupidly offensive to reason, these blasphemies, which
impute so many horrid crimes to the Deity, could obtain
any credit. They might, indeed, have been astonished
if the first Christians had converted the emperor’s court,
or the Eoman senate ; but an abject mob addressed itself
to a populace not less despicable. This is so true, that
the Emperor Julian said in a Discourse to the Christians,
“ It was enough for you at first to seduce a few servants,
a few beggars, such as Cornelius and Sergius. But let
me be regarded as the most impudent of impostors, if
among those who embraced your sect under Tiberius and
Claudius there was a single man of birth or merit.”
The first reasoning Christians, then, exclaimed in the
public places and victualling-houses, to the Pagans who
attempted to reason with them : “ Be not startled with
our mysteries ; you have recourse to expiations to purge
yourselves of your crimes, but we have an expiation far
more salutary. Youi- oracles are inferior to ours; and
what we offer as a proof to convince you that our sect is
the only true one is, that your own oracles have predicted
all that we teach, and all that was done by our Lord
Jesus Christ. Have you not heard of the Sibyls?”—
“ Yes,” replied the Pagan disputants to those of Galilee,
“ all the Sibyls were inspired by Jupiter himself; their
predictions are all true.” “Very well,” replied the
Galileans, “ we will shew you Sibyline verses which
clearly announce Jesus Christ, and then you must ac
knowledge we are right.”
�Christians and Romans.
39
Behold them immediately forging the most stupid
Greek verses that were ever composed : verses similar to
those of Blackmore and Gibson, of Grub Street. They
ascribe them to the Sibyls, and for the space of more
than four hundred years they did not cease to establish
Christianity on this proof, which was on a levSl with the
understandings of both the deceivers and the deceived.
This first attempt having succeeded, we find these
puerile impostors attributing to the Sibyls acrostic verses,
all of which commenced by the letters composing the
name of Jesus Christ.
Lactantius has preserved, as authentic pieces, a great
portion of these rhapsodies. To these fables they added
miracles, which they sometimes performed in public. It
is true, that they did not raise the dead like Elisha
they did not arrest the sun on its course like Joshua;
they did not cross the sea dry-shod, like Moses; they did
not, like Jesus, cause themselves to be transported to the
top of a little mountain in Galilee, where they could
discover all the kingdoms of earth : but they cured the
fever when on its decline, and even the itch as soon as the
patient had been bathed, blooded, purged, and rubbed.
They likewise cast out devils, which was the principal
object of the apostles’ mission. It is said, in more than
one Gospel, that Jesus sent them purposely to cast out
devils. This was an ancient prerogative of God’s people.
We know that there were exorcists at Jerusalem, who
cured the possessed by putting into their noses a little of
the root called Baruth, and by muttering a few words taken
from Solomon’s Song. Jesus himself confesses that the
Jews had this power ;1 yet no devils durst take possession
2
of the governor of a province, of a senator, nor even a cen
turion. None but the poor were ever possessed by them.
If the devil ought to have seized hold of any particular
individual, it should have been Pilate, yet he never
durst approach him. Although the Christian sect was in
reality established by this custom, yet it is almost every
where abolished, except in States obedient to the Pope,
and in some of the German cantons, where the ignorant
people are unfortunately in subjection to bishops and monks.
1 2 Kings iv. 32.
2 Matt. xii. 27.
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Examination of the Holy Scriptures.
Thus the Christians gained credit among the ignorant
people during a whole century. The government let them
alone, regarding them as a Jewish sect, and the Jews
were tolerated. They persecuted neither Pharisees, nor
Sadducees», nor the Therapeutae, nor Essenians, nor
Judaites; and they had a still greater reason to permit
the Christians to creep in on their ignorance, that of
their being unknown. They were so little thought of,
that neither Josephus, nor Philo, nor Plutarch deigns to
speak of them ; and if Tacitus says a few words respect
ing them, it is by confounding them with the Jews, and
stigmatizing them in the most contemptible manner.
They possessed, therefore, the greatest facility for extend
ing their sect.
They were a little enquired after under Domitian;
some of them were punished under Trajan, and it was
then that they began to unite a thousand false accounts
of martyrs, to some others that were but too true.
CHAP. XIV.
How the Christians conducted themselves toivards the Jews.
Their ridiculous explanation of the prophecies.
The Christians could never succeed so well among the
Jews as they did among the populace of the Gentiles.
So long as they continued to live according to the
Mosaic law, which Jesus had observed all his lifetime;
so long as they abstained from meats pretended to be
impure, and did not proscribe circumcision, they were
regarded as only a particular society of the Jews, such as
the Sadducees, Essenians, and Therapeutaa. They said
that it was wrong to put Jesus to death, that he was a
holy man sent by God, and that he had risen again from
the dead.
These discoveries, it is true, were punished at Jerusa
lem ; it is said they cost Stephen his life, but otherwise
this division produced only altercations between the
rigid Jews and half Christians. They disputed ; and the
Christians fancied that they had found in the Scriptures
some passages that might be twisted in favor of their
cause.
�Christians and Jews.
41
They pretended that the Jewish prophets had predicted
Jesus Christ, and quoted Isaiah, who said to to king
Ahaz,1 “ Behold, a virgin (or a young woman, alma)2
shall conceive 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. And it shall come to pass in that day,
that the Lord shall hiss for the fly that is in the utter
most part of the rivers of Egypt, and for the bee that is
in the land of Assyria. In the same day shall the Lord
shave with a razor that is hired, namely, by them beyond
the river, by the king of Assyria, the head and the hair
of the feet; and it shall also consume the beard.”
Chap. viii. “ Moreover, the Lord said unto me, Take
thee a great roll, and write in it with a man’s pen, con
cerning Maher-shalal-hash-baz. And I went unto the
prophetess, and she conceived, and bare a son. Then
said the Lord to me, Call his name Maher-shalal-hashbaz,” which signifies, “Divide quickly the spoils.”
“You see clearly,” said the Christians, “that the
whole of this evidently signifies the coming of Jesus
Christ. The young woman who has a child is the Virgin
Mary. ‘ Immanuel ’ and ‘ divide quickly the spoils,’
signify our Lord Jesus Christ. As for the razor, ‘that is
hired to shave the hair of the king of Assyria,’ that is
another matter.” All these explanations perfectly re
semble those of Lord Peter, in Swift’s Tale of a Tub.
The Jews answered, “ We do not see so clearly as you
do, that ‘Divide quickly the spoils,’ and ‘Immanuel’
signify Jesus ; that Isaiah’s young woman is a virgin;
nor that alma, which is equally expressive both of girl
and young woman, signifies Mary.” And they laughed
in the faces of the Christians.
1 Isaiah vii.
2 By what fraudulent impudence have the Christians maintained
that alma always signifies a virgin ? There are in the Old Testa
ment twenty passages where alma is taken for a woman, and even
fora concubine, as in Solomon's Song vi. and Joel i. Till the time
of Abbé Tutheme none of the doctors knew Hebrew, except Ori
gen, Jerome and Ephraim, who were brought up in the country.
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Examination of the Holy Scriptures,
When the Christians said that Jesus is predicted by
the patriarch Judah, who was to “ bind his foal unto the
vine, and wash his garments in wine,”1 and Jesus having
entered Jerusalem on an ass, then Judah is a type of
Jesus. This made the Jews to laugh still more.
If they pretended that Jesus was the Shiloh who was
to come before the sceptre had departed from Judah,2
the Jews confounded them by saying, that, since the
Babylonish captivity, the sceptre had never been in
Judah, and that even during the time of Saul, the rod
was not in Judah. Thus the Christians, far from being
able to convert the Jews, were despised and detested by
them, and are so still. They were looked upon as bas
tards, who, under false titles, wished to strip the heir of
his possession. They then renounced the hope of con
verting the Jews to their cause, and addressed themselves
wholly to the Gentiles.
CHAP. XV.
Of false quotations and predictions in the Gospels.
To encourage the first they had to instruct previous to
baptism, it was thought good to quote old prophecies,
and to make new ones. In the Gospels they quoted old
prophecies at random. Matthew, or he who took the
name, says that Joseph “ dwelt in a city called Nazareth;
that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the
prophet: He shall be called a Nazarene.” No prophet
had made use of these words; Matthew wrote therefore
at random.
Luke dares to say, chap, xxi., “And there shall be
signs in the sun, and in the moon, and in the stars; the
sea and the waves roaring. Men’s hearts failing them
for fear, and for looking after those things which are
coming on the earth. For the powers of heaven shall be
shaken. And then shall they see the Son of Man coming
in a cloud with power and great glory. Verily, I say
unto you, this generation shall not pass away till all be
fulfilled.” The generation passed away, and if nothing of
1 Gen. xlix. 11.
2 Gen. xlix. 10.
�The End of the World.
43
this kind happened, it is not my fault. Paul says nearly
as much about it, in his Epistle to the Thessalonians :
“ Then we, which are alive and remain, shall be caught
up with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air.”1
Let any one here interrogate himself, whether or not
he considers it possible to carry imposture and the
stupidity of fanaticism to a higher pitch ? When it was
seen that such gross falsehoods had been asserted, the
fathers of the church did not fail to say that Luke and
Paul had understood by these predictions the destruction
of Jerusalem. But, I pray you, what has the destruction
of Jerusalem to do with Jesus coming in the clouds, in
great power and majesty?
There is, in the Gospel attributed to John, a passage
which shews clearly that this book was not composed by
a Jew. Jesus said, “ A new commandment I give unto
you, that ye love one another.” This commandment, so
far from being a new one, is enjoined in a much more
forcible manner in Leviticus, “ Thou shalt love thy
neighbor as thyself.”2
In short, whoever will give himself the trouble of read
ing, with attention, the passages where the Old Testa
ment is quoted, will find only a manifest abuse of words,
and the seal of falsehood almost in every page.
CHAP. XVI.
Of the end of the world, and the new Jerusalem.
Not only have they introduced Jesus on the scene pre
dicting the end of the world, even during his own life
time, but this was also the fanaticism of all those called
apostles and disciples.
Peter Barjonas says, in the first epistle attributed to
him, “ For this cause was the Gospel preached also to
them that are dead; but the end of all things is at
hand.”8 In his second Epistle, “ We look for new
heavens and a new earth.”4
1 Levit. xix. 18.
3 1 Peter iv. 6, 7.
2 1 Thess. iv. 17.
4 Peter iii. 18.
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Examination of the Holy Scriptures.
The first Epistle attributed to John says, formally,
“Even now there are many anti-christs, whereby we
know that it is the last time.”1
The Epistle put to the account of this Thaddeus, surnamed Jude, announces the same folly : “ Behold, the
Lord cometh with ten thousand of his saints, to execute
judgment upon all.”2
In short, it was this kind of madness which served as
a foundation for the other respecting the new Jerusalem
which was to descend from heaven. The Apocalypse
announced this approaching adventure ; all the Christians
believed it. New Sibyline verses were written, in which
this Jerusalem was predicted; this new city even made
its appearance, and the Christians were to dwell in it
for a thousand years after the conflagration of the world.
It descended from heaven forty nights successively.
Tertullian saw it himself.
The day will come when every honest man will say,
Is it possible that men have spent their time in refuting
this tale of a tub?
Behold the opinions that caused half the earth to be rav
aged ! Behold what has given principalities and kingdoms
to hypocritical priests, and which, in all Catholic countries,
still precipitates simpletons into the dungeons of a cloister !
It is by means of these spider-webs that they have
twisted the cords that bind us, and they have found out
the secret of transforming them into chains of iron !
Great God ! Is it for such fooleries that Europe has
weltered in blood, and that Charles I. died on the scaffold !
O destiny ! When a parcel of half Jews wrote their dull
impertinences in barns, did they perceive that they were
preparing thrones for the abominable Pope Alexander VI.
and for this brave villain of a Cromwell?
CHAP. XVII.
Of Allegories.
Those whom we call Fathers of the Church adopted a
trick singular enough, to those who were preparing to
to be baptised in their new belief. In the course of
11 John ii. 18.
2 Jude 14.
�Falsifications and Supposititious Books.
45
time they found disciples who reasoned a little, and
adopted the plan of teaching them that all the Old
Testament is only a type of the New. The piece of
scarlet cloth which the prostitute Rahab hung out at her
window to avert the spies of Joshua, signifies the blood
of Jesus Christ shed for our sins.
Sarah, and her servant Hagar, blear-eyed Leah and
beautiful Rachel, are the synagogue and the church.
Moses lifting up his hands when he gave battle to the
Amalekites, is evidently the sign of the cross, for we are
exactly in the shape of a cross when we stretch out our*
arms to the right and to the left. Joseph sold by his
brethren is Jesus Christ. The kisses given on the mouth
of the Shulamite, &c., in Solomon’s Song, are visibly the
marriage of Jesus Christ with his church. The bride had
then no dowry, at that time she was not well established.
The people did not know what to believe; no dogma
was yet precisely agreed upon. Jesus had written
nothing. What a strange legislator must that man have
been whose hand did not trace a single line ! This made
it necessary to write; they then abandon themselves to
this good news : to these gospels, to these acts of which
we have already spoken, and all the Old Testament is
turned into allegories of the New. It is not surprising
that catechumens, fascinated by those who wished to
form a party, suffered themselves to be seduced by those
fancies that are always pleasing to the people.
This plan contributed more than anything else to the
propagation of Christianity, which spread itself secretly
from one end of the empire to the other, without the
magistrates at that time deigning to take any notice of it.
What a ridiculous and foolish notion to make the his
tory of a horde of beggars, a type and a prophecy of
everything that should happen in the world in all suc
ceeding ages !
CHAP. XVIII.
Of falsifications and supposititious books.
The better to enable them to seduce the uninitiated
during the first centuries, they did not fail to state that
the sect had been respected by the Romans, and even by
�46
Examination of ths Holy Scriptures.
the emperors themselves. It was not enough to forge
af number of writings which they attributed to Jesus ;
they also made Pilate write. Justin and Tertullian
quote the “ Acts of Pilate,” and they are inserted in the
Gospel of Nicodemus.
Here follow some passages of the first letter of Pilate
to Tiberius, which are curious :
“ It has lately happened, and I have witnessed it, that
the envy of the Jews has drawn upon them a cruel
judgment. Their God having promised to send them his
saint from heaven, to be their true king, and having
promised that he should be the son of a virgin, the God
of the Hebrews did really send him while I presided in
Judea. The principal Jews denounced him to be a
magician; I believed it, ordered him to be flogged, and
then abandoned him to them. They crucified him, put
guards round his sepulchre ; and he rose again the third
day.” This ancient letter is very important, as it shews
us that, at that time, the Christians had not yet dared to
suppose that Jesus was God. They merely say he was
sent from God. If he had then been a God, Pilate, whom
they cause to speak, would not have failed to say so.
In the second letter he says that if he had not feared
a sedition, perhaps this noble Jew would still have lived.
Fortasse vir ills nobilis viceret. They likewise forged a
more detailed account which was attributed to Pilate.
Eusebius of Caesarea, book vii. of his Ecclesiastical
History, assures us that the woman troubled with the
flux, who was cured by Jesus Christ, was a citizeness of
Caesarea; he has seen her statue at the foot of that of
Jesus. Round the base there are herbs which cure all
kinds of diseases.
They likewise gave out a pretended edict of Tiberius
to rank Jesus among the gods. They invented letters
from Paul to Seneca and from Seneca to Paul. Emperors,
philosophers and apostles were all put to contrU>ution; it
was an uninterrupted course of frauds ; somO of them
merely fanatical, the others political.
A fanatical lie, for example, is that of writing the
Revelation and attributing it to John, which is only an
absurdity; a political lie is that of writing the book of
Constitutions and attributing it to the apostles.
�Impositions of the First Christians.
F!
All these supposititious books, all these falsehoods,
which have been denominated pious, were put only into
the hands of the faithful. It was an enormous offence to
communicate them to the Romans, who had scarcely any
knowledge of them during the space of two hundred
years. Thus the flock increased daily.
CHAP. XIX.
Of the principal impositions of the first Christians.
IV
One of the oldest impositions of these new demoniacs
was the “ Testament of the Twelve Patriarchs,” and we
still have entire the Greek translation of it by John,
surnamed St. Chrysostom.
This ancient book, which was written in the first
century of our era, is visibly the production of a Christian
because it makes Levi say, in the eighth article of his
Testament, “ The third shall have a new name, because
he shall be a king of Judah.” This signifies Jesus Christ,
who has never been designated but by such like impostures.
They invented the Testaments of Moses, Enoch, and
Joseph; their ascension or assumption into heaven; that
of Moses, Abraham, Elda, Moda, Elias, Sophonia, Zachariah, and Habakkuk. At the same time they forged
the famous book of Enoch, which is the only foundation
for all the mystery of Christianity, since it is in this book
alone that we find the history of the rebellious angels
who had sinned. It is certain that the writings attributed to the apostles were not composed till after the
fable of Enoch, which was written in Greek by some
Christian of Alexandria. Jude, in his Epistle, quotes
this Enoch more than once ;' he reports his own words,
and is so destitute of common sense as to assert that
Enoch, who was the seventh man after Adam, had written
prophecies.
Here, then, we have two vile impositions well attested:
that of thl Christian who invented the book of Enoch,
and that of the Christian who invented the Epistle of
Jude, in which the words of Enoch are related. There
was never a more stupid falsehood.
1 Jude 14.
�48
Examination of the Holy Scriptures.
It is useless to enquire who was the principal author
of these frauds, which insensibly gained credit, but there
is some probability that it was Hegessipus, whose fables
had a great run, and who was quoted by Tertullian and
afterwards copied by Eusebius.
The supposititious letter of Jesus Christ to a pretended
king of the city of Edessa, which had not then a king,
and the journey of Thaddeus (or Jude) to this king, were
four hundred years in vogue among the first Christians.
Whoever wrote a gospel, or undertook to teach his
little rising flock, imputed to Jesus discourses and actions
which are not mentioned in our four gospels. It is thus
that in the twentieth chapter of the Acts of the Apostles,
Paul quotes these words of Jesus: “It is more blessed
to give than to receive.”1 These words are not to be
found in Matthew, Mark, Luke, or John. The travels of
Peter, the revelation of Peter, the acts of Paul and of
Thecle, the letters from Paul to Seneca, and from Seneca
to Paul, the acts of Pilate and the letters of Pilate, are
sufficiently known among the learned, and it is useless to
rummage among these archives of falsehood and absurdity.
They carried their nonsense to such a pitch as to write
the history of Claudia Procula, who was Pilate’s wife.
CONCLUSION.
I conclude that every sensible man, every honest man,
ought to hold Christianity in abhorrence. “ The great
name of Theist, which we can never sufficiently revere,”2
is the only name we ought to adopt.
The only gospel we should read is the grand book of
nature, written with God’s own hand, and stamped with
his own seal. The only religion we ought to profess is,
“to adore God and act like honest men.” It would be
as impossible for this simple and eternal religion to pro
duce evil as it would be impossible for Christian fanatic
ism not to produce it.
Natural religion can never be made to say, “Think not
that I am come to send peace on earth; I came not to
send peace but a sword.”3 Yet this is the first confession
they put into the mouth of a Jew whom they call Christ.
1 Acts xx. 35.
2 Shaftesbury.
3 Matt. x. 34.
�Conclusion.
49
Men are very blind and wretched to prefer an absurd
and sanginary sect maintained by hangmen and sur
rounded by funeral piles ; a sect which could find no
admirers but among those to whom it communicated
wealth and power; a particular sect received only in a
small portion of the globe, in preference to a simple and
universal religion which, even by the confession of Chris
tians, was the religion of the human race during the ages
of Seth, Enoch, and Noah. If the religion of the first
patriarchs were true, certainly the religion of Jesus must
be false.
Sovereigns have submitted themselves to this sect,
thinking they would be more respected by their own sub
jects by loading themselves with the yoke which was
imposed upon the people. They did not perceive that
they made themselves the first slaves of the priests, and
in one half of Europe they have not yet been enabled to
render themselves independent. And pray what king,
what magistrate, what father of a family would not rather
be the master of his own house than be the slave of a
priest ?
What! the innumerable number of citizens that have
been injured, excommunicated, reduced to beggary, killed
and their bodies cast on the highway; the number of
princes dethroned and assassinated, has not yet opened
men’s eyes ! And when we do open them, we perceive
that this fatal idol is not yet demolished !
But what shall we substitute in its place, say you ?
What ? A ferocious animal has sucked the blood of my
relatives. I tell you to rid yourselves of this beast, and
you ask me what you shall put in its place ! Is it you
that put this question to me? Then you are a hundred
times more odious than the pagan pontiffs, who permit
ted themselves to enjoy tranquility among their cere
monies and sacrifices, who did not attempt to enslave
the mind by dogmas, who never disputed the powers of
the magistrates, and who introduced no discord among
mankind. You have the face to ask what you must sub
stitute in the place of your fables? I answer you, “God,
truth, virtue, laws, rewards and punishments.” Preach
probity, and do not preach dogmas ; be the priests of
God, and not the priests of a man.
�J
���
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Examination of the holy scriptures : a critical inquiry into the Old and New Testaments
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Voltaire [1694-1778]
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Place of publication: London
Collation: v. [i.e. iv.], [5]-49 p. ; 18 cm.
Notes: Translation of Examen important de Milord Bolingbroke. First published in French 1736. Reprint of 1841 edition (London: James Watson) with a few passages omitted (see note at end of Introduction). Imprint taken from t.p.: front cover has additional imprint: London: R. Forder, 1891. Part of the NSS pamphlet collection.
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Bible
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Bible-Criticism
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BIBLE MORALITY.
'Secularists have no desire to extol the Bible above its
merits, nor to depreciate it below its deserts. We gladly
admit that it contains some useful precepts; but these, as
a rule, are intermixed with so many teachings of an in
jurious character that their beauty is often overshadowed
and their utility annulled. Its coarse language in many
places renders it unfit for general perusal, and destroys its
value as a standard for every-day life. The true worth of
literature should be its moral tone. Novels are appreciated
by the intelligent reader in proportion to their being
“ adorned ” with a moral. And dramas fail to gain the
approval of the thoughtful public unless virtue is inculcated
in a chaste form. So with the Bible : if in its ethical tone
it is defective, or if it is questionable in its injunctions or
indelicate in its records, it cannot with advantage be accepted
as an absolute monitor in human conduct.
All correct codes of morals should be clear in their
authority and practical in their application. This is the
more necessary when severe penalties—as in the case of
Christian ethics—are threatened for non-acceptance and dis
obedience. Now, the ethics of the Bible are both contradic
tory and impracticable. The same line of conduct is enjoined
in one passage, and just as explicitly prohibited in another.
One man is blamed because he is not cruel enough, and
will not go on slaying the Lord’s enemies; another man’s
chief glory consists in being a mighty man of war and a
great destroyer of men, women, and children; while other
passages proclaim, “Thou shalt not kill,” and enjoin mercy
and “loving-kindness.” The most absolute rest is enjoined
on the Sabbath, and the fiercest denunciations are hurled
at the most vigorous Sabbatarian. Retaliation for wrong is
counselled, and forgiveness is enjoined. We are told to
“ love one another,” and we are commanded to hate our
�2
BIBLE MORALITY.
own flesh and blood. Industry is advised and also dis
couraged; lustful pursuits are condemned and also permitted.
Thus Biblical morality is destitute of the first fundamental
condition of all just ethics.
Among the general principles taught in the Bible and ex
pounded by orthodoxy in this country is that belief, not
conduct, is the foundation of virtue, and that uncharitable
ness towards opponents is justifiable. One of the first in
structions which a parent should enforce upon a child is
never to impute bad motives in matters of belief or non
belief. No lesson is more valuable than this, none more
calculated to render the child’s life happy and unsuspicious,
and to make its influence in the world more useful and
beneficial. The Bible permits just the opposite. Accord
ing to Christian teachings, if a man does an act of kindness,
we are not to accept it with gratitude simply as an act of
kindness, but we are to judge from the motives of his con
duct. Did he perform the act from love to God, or did he
do it only from respect for his fellow man ? If the former,
his services will go up as a sweet smelling offering to Deity;
if the latter, he merely performed a “ splendid vice.” The
motive, not the act, is the thing to be considered. If men
slay, ravish, and destroy for the glory of God, the motive
not only condones, but consecrates, the act. Hence, in the
early history of Christianity, the practice of lying for the
good of the Church was not only allowed, but considered
praiseworthy. To require universal belief in one particular
faith, and to condemn to eternal perdition those who are
unable to comply therewith, is not the most moral doctrine.
Truly, a book that teaches that “many are called but few
are chosen,” or, in other words, that the majority of our
fellow creatures are to be cast into a burning lake, cannot
assist to promote the happiness and good of mankind. The
tendency of such teaching as this cannot have a beneficial
effect, inasmuch as it often produces mutual hatred between
man and man. Artificial and unjust distinctions of govern
ment and of classes have often produced ill-feeling between
man and man; but that evil has been increased by the
religious distinctions based upon Biblical teaching. The
natural law of love is simple and clear. It is a duty to love
all men until we have reason to believe that the trust is mis
placed or abused. It then becomes necessary to slightly
�BIBLE MORALITY.
3
modify our conduct as an act of self-defence; hence the
enactment of laws for the repression of crime and the curtail
ment of injury. If a man’s belief teaches him that he can
persecute, we have a right to be upon our guard, for we
know from bitter experience that such belief has frequently
shaped itself into conduct. But whatever man believes
about matters that do not affect his conduct should produce
in us neither love nor hatred towards him. His belief may
be ever so curious, absurd, unreal, and fantastic, ever so
ridiculous and self-contradictory, and in proportion of its
partaking of those qualities it may excite and amuse us; but
it ought not to make us respect or dislike him one whit
more. With the Bible it is quite different: its defect con
sists in its teaching us to love and respect certain people
who believe certain things which have no direct beneficial
bearing on their conduct; while we are to avoid those whose
lives may be a model of purity and benevolence, but who
cannot subscribe to a certain faith.
The great principle of Bible morality is supposed to be
contained in the Ten Commandments. The Decalogue, we
are assured, enunciates moral lessons, against which no sub
stantial objections can be brought. There are two versions
of the Decalogue given in the Old Testament, varying in
certain not unimportant particulars. Moses brought down,
we are informed, the Ten Commandments from Mount
Sinai, where he had been having a tete-d-tete with the Lord.
They were written on stone, and were copied off for future
generations in Exodus xx. They are also given in Deuter
onomy v.; but that was merely from memory, when Moses
had become somewhat advanced in age. It is not surpris
ing, therefore, that he should insert certain interpolations in
the second giving of the law which are absent from the
first. How this incongruity can be reconciled with the doc
trine of the Divine inspiration of the Bible may be left for
Christians to decide among themselves. The Decalogue is
divided into two parts : that which relates to man’s duty to
God, and that which relates to the mutual duties of man to
man. It is worthy of notice that, although the second half
contains six commands, and the former half only four,
nevertheless the first half is a great deal longer than the
second. Most of the commands of the second half are con
tained in the most condensed form. The second, third,
�4
bible morality.
and fourth Commandments are all developments of the first.
7 he first really contains or assumes the three which succeed
it. The first? which is, “ Thou shalt have no other gods
before me,” of course involves the second against idolatry,
the third against blasphemous swearing, and the fourth en
joining restful remembrance of the creation of the world by
God. It is curious, while God in these Commandments
had so much to say in giving a complete code of conduct
to his creatures, and confining himself as he did within the
limits of a certain number of Hebrew characters, written on
a stone small enough for a man to carry down the side of a
steep mountain, that he should have wasted so much time
in telling them how to behave to him, and have left so little
space to contain what was far more important—viz., the
rules to regulate our conduct to each other. The whole
prescribed duty of man to man is contained in seventy
seven words. The second Commandment brings out that
particular character of the Christian God which is so con
spicuous in other parts of the Bible. We are not to make
and bow down to images. Very good advice, we readily
admit. But why are we not to do so ? Is there any appeal
to the generous and reverential sentiments of the human
heart ? Surely a noble and good God would have said
something similar to this : “ Thou shalt not bow down thy
self to them, nor serve them; for I, the Lord thy God, am
a great, beneficent, and generous God, with a wide, allembracing love. Thou shalt not degrade thy soul nor debase
thy being by worshipping the gods of the heathen. I am
your only father, who made and cares for you, and your
place of reverence and trust is in the all-sustaining hollow
of my hand.” Had the Deity said this, and proved his
sincerity by appropriate actions subsequently towards his
subjects, it would have done more to have won the affec
tions of his children to him than the whole of his present
recorded sayings contained from Genesis to Revelation.
But no; we find that a sordid appeal is made partly to the
mean fears, and partly to the paternal affections, of the Jews.
They are forbidden to worship other gods: “ For I, the
ILord thy God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of
rthe fathers upon the children, unto the third and fourth
generation of them that hate me.” Fancy a great, Almighty
(God, creator of the earth, being jealous of the estranged
�BIBLE MORALITY.
5
affection of an unfortunate Jew! But this is in keeping
with the general character of the Christian Deity, and most
of his particular and immediate acquaintances. The part
of the Decalogue which has reference to us, as members of
society, is so brief, in comparison to that which has been
occupied by theology and the requirements of God, that
little room is left for the introduction of rewards and punish
ments which are to follow the fulfilment or non-fulfilment
of so important a behest as “ Thou shalt not kill.” But the
punishment of idolatry, a most cruel, unjust, and revengeful
one, is given at full length. The fifth Commandment,
“ Honour thy father and mother,” is certainly, as far as it
goes, an excellent one. It comes home to the heart of
everyone who has the feelings of love and duty within him.
We can take no possible exception to its request. But the
reason given for its fulfilment is as selfish as it is untrue.
Yielding to no one in the belief that filial affection and re
verence are not only duties, but carry with them (as all
virtues do to some extent) their own reward in the satisfac
tion of an approving sense of right, it has yet to be shown
that the keeping of the first part of this command will secure
the accomplishment of the second. Honouring parents
does not invariably carry with it the fulfilment of the pro
mise, “ Thy days shall be long in the land which the Lord
thy God giveth thee.” The best of sons have frequently
been called upon to pay the last debt of nature when still
in the bloom and vigour of their manhood, while some of
the worst of characters live to a comparatively old age, a
grief to their parents and a disgrace to themselves. Though,
therefore, we would echo the command, “ Children, obey
your parents,” we would also say : Do so, not from any selfish
hope of personal gain or long life, but for the love you
should have for those who have toiled for and protected you
through years of infancy and helplessness. Duty, gratitude,
and affection should be the inspiration to obedience, not
the grovelling incentive given by the Bible. But may not
this be taken as a fair sample of Bible teaching ? When
ever we discover a noble thought, a just precept, or a gener
ous sentiment, we generally find it surrounded by much
that is impracticable, misleading, and fallacious. The sixth,
seventh, and eighth Commandments call for no special
remark, save that, when they point out the extremes of
�6
BIBLE MORALITY.
certain vices, and forbid their indulgence, they fail to state
how far persons may go in their direction without commit
ting fatal errors; and this difficulty is all the greater when we
reflect that these were the very Commandments which most
of God’s favourites had the greatest predilection for break
ing- The chief object of the ninth Commandment is its
limitation. Why should the word “ neighbour ” be intro
duced in the prohibition of false swearing? It is equally a
wrong to swear falsely against a stranger as against a neigh
bour. The tenth Commandment is the only one of the
second part of the Decalogue which errs by excess of Puri
tanism. There can be no harm, for instance, in coveting a
neighbour’s house if sufficient compensation is offered to in
duce him to give up the lease; and, if we did not occasionally
covet our neighbour’s oxen, beefsteaks and surloins would
be even more scarce among the working classes than they
are at present. Speaking broadly, the one great objection
to the Decalogue is the absence of any noble, inspiring
principle of conduct. It teaches no real love, no true
charity; it is a penal code, not a rule of life.
Orthodox believers are continually proclaiming that love
is the foundation of Biblical ethics; the fact is, however,
that, if human actions were regulated by some teachings of
the Bible, there would be but few manifestations of love.
To kill the inhabitants of a conquered city, and to save none
alive (Deut. xx. io-i6),is a peculiar mode of exhibiting love to
our fellow men. The conduct of Christ was not calculated
to inspire us with a superabundance of love when he said:
“Whosoever shall deny me before men, him will I also
deny before my father which is in heaven ” (Matt. x. 33);
or when he stated : “ But those mine enemies which would
not that I should reign over them, bring them hither and
slay them before me” (Luke xix. 27). Here we have an
indication of that unforgiving and revengeful spirit which
destroys true affection. If there be any truth in the popular
notions of sin and forgiveness, it was not moral for Christ
to act as he did when speaking in a parable to his disciples.
They, not being able to understand him, asked him for an
explanation of what he then said. His reply was : “ Unto
you is given to know the mystery of the kingdom of God;
but, unto them that are without, all these things are done
in parables; that seeing, they may see and not perceive,
�BIBLE MORALITY.
7
and hearing, they may hear and not understand, lest at any
time they should be converted, and their sins be forgiven
them ” (Mark iv.). This is not only partial and unjust, but
a planned determination to teach so mysteriously that people
should not learn the truth, in case they should thereby be
saved. Such a mode of advocacy would be deemed in
jurious, indeed, in these days, and is only equalled by the
following “ inspired ” information to certain persons : “ And
for this cause God shall send them strong delusion, that
they should believe a lie; that they all might be damned
who believed not the truth, but had pleasure in unrighteous
ness ” (2 Thess. ii. n, 12). We are advised to be holy, even
as God is holy; but what is holiness according to Bible
morality? If a “Divine” sanction to a thing constitutes it
holy, then deceit, murder, lying, and the deepest kind of
cruelty are allied with Scriptural holiness. In 2 Kings x.
God is represented as rewarding the following crimes, and
thereby giving the Bible sanction to the worst kind of im
morality. Jehu, having become King of Israel, commences
his reign with a series of murders. Having resolved upon
the destruction of the house of Ahab, Jehu commences his
task in a manner possible only to those who fight with the
“ zeal of the Lord.” Killing all who were likely to obstruct
him in the carrying out of his base object, he arrived at
Samaria, his purpose being to slay all the worshippers of
Baal. In order, therefore, that he might entrap them all
into one slaughter house, he announced that he was a great
worshipper of Baal, and that he had come to offer a mighty
sacrifice to this idol. By this craft he succeeded in drawing
all the worshippers of Baal together. When the unfortunate
victims were assembled, tendering their sacrifices, Jehu
ordered his captains to go in and slay them, allowing none
to escape. Accordingly, they were all sacrificed to the
treachery of this “ servant of the Lord.” And this conduct
is approved by God; for in verse 30 is recorded : “ And
the Lord said unto Jehu, Because thou hast done well in
executing that which is right in mine eyes, and hast done
unto the house of Ahab according to all that was in mine
heart, thy children of the fourth generation shall sit on the
throne of Israel.” Bible morality is further illustrated in
the case of Samuel (1 Samuel xvi. 1-4). This prophet is
commanded by God to go on a certain mission under false
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BIBLE MORALITY.
pretences, and with a direct falsehood upon his lips. Now,
is it moral to deceive and murder ? If not, why did God
command and encourage such vices ? And why should
men be invited to imitate the example of one who practised
such immoralities ? Biblical ethics are alleged to be based
upon the “holiness of God.” In order to ascertain what
that “holiness ” really is, it is only necessary to read Genesisxxx. and xxxi., where immorality, ingratitude, deceit, and
theft are found to be ascribed to Jacob, who was encouraged
and beloved by God; Exodus ix. 13-16, where people are'
seen to have been raised up by God for the very pur
pose of being “cut off from the earth;” Exodus xxxii.,
for an account of the anger, injustice, and cruelty of Moses,
culminating in the slaughter of thousands of human beings
at the command of God ; Joshua vi., viii., and x., for a
record of his reckless murder of thousands of human beings,
among whom were men, women, and children, at the special
command of God; 2 Samuel xii. n-31, for adultery and
cruelty in connection with David; and then peruse Psalms
xxxviii. and cix. for a confession of a life of deceit, lying,
and licentiousness. Yet we are told that David “ was a
man after God’s own heart,” and that he “kept God’s com
mandments, and did that only which was right in his eyes ”
(1 Kings xiv. 8). Such maybe Biblical morality; but it is
certainly opposed to Secular ideas of ethical philosophy.
The teachings of the Bible in reference to slavery are
barbarously unjust. According to its permit, men and
women can be bought and sold like cattle, the weak being
compelled to serve the strong. In Exodus xxi. 2-6 we have
a most cruel law for regulating this “ Bible institution,”
the cruelty and injustice of which law are two-fold. First,
if the slave when he is bought be single, and if, during his
seven years of slavery, he marries and becomes a father,
then, at the expiration of his time, his wife and children are
his master’s, and the slave goes out free. Is this moral ?
What becomes of the poor man’s paternal affections ? Isthe love for his wife nothing ? Is he to be separated from
that he holds dear, and to see the object of his affectionsgiven to the man who for seven years had robbed him of his
independence and his manhood? If, however, the poor
victim’s love for his wife and children be stronger than his
desire for liberty, what is his fate? He is to be brought
�BIBLE MORALITY.
9
to the door, have his ear bored with an awl, and doomed to
serve his master forever. Thus Bible morality makes per
petual slavery and physical pain the punishments of the
exercise of the purest and best feelings of human nature.
Where is the moral lesson in the statement: “ And thou
shalt bestow that money for whatsoever thy soul lusteth after;
for oxen or for sheep, or for wine or for strong drink, or for
whatsoever thy soul desireth ; and thou shalt eat there before
the Lord thy God, and thou shalt rejoice, thou and thine
household ” ? If this is not giving a license to the worst of
passions, words have no meaning. But Bible morality strikes
at the manhood and happiness of man. It stifles our
tenderest affections, and urges the exercise of the cruellest
passions by teaching that a man may kill the wife of his
bosom if she dare to entice him secretly from his God
(Deut. xiii. 6-9). Where is the man who will so far belie
his nature as to accept such morality as this ? Unfortunately,
Bible teachings have frequently caused a complete severance
and breaking up of the ties of affection in families. The
Bible commands its believers to leave father, mother, sister,
and brother to follow Christ. According to its teachings, it
is justifiable to break up a certain and a human bond that
we may get a problematical chance of a problematical
blessedness in a problematical future. There are few, doubt
less, who have not learned in their own sad experience how
the family tie has been often disunited by Christian teach
ings. Brothers and sisters have been separated for years
from the home of their childhood because they dared to
emancipate themselves from the shackles of the prevailing
faith.
Accepting the term “ moral ” as expressing whatever is
calculated to promote general progress and happiness, what
morality is contained in the following passages from the
Bible : “ Take no thought for your life “ Resist not evil
“ Blessed be ye poor“ Labour not for the bread which
perisheth “ Servants, be subject to your masters with all
fear, not only to the good and gentle, but also to the froward “ Let every man abide in the same calling wherein
he was called“ Submit yourself to every ordinance of man
for the Lord’s sake “ Let every soul be subject unto the
higher powers, for there is no power but of God............
Whosoever, therefore, resisteth the power, resisteth the
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BIBLE MORALITY.
ordinance of God, and they that resist shall receive to them
selves damnation”? Were these injunctions obeyed, health,
independence of character, and political progress would be
ignored. For the reforms we have hitherto secured we are
indebted to men and women who practically disregarded the
Bible, and based their conduct upon the principle of utility.
To teach, as the Bible does, that wives are to be subject to
their husbands in everything (Eph. v.); to “set your affections
on things above, not on things on the earth ” (Colos. iii.);
to “ love not the world, neither the things that are in the
world ’* (i John ii.); to “ lay not up for yourselves treasures
upon earth” (Matt, vi.), is not to inculcate the principle of
equality, or to inspire man with a desire to take an interest
in “the things of time.” Whatever service the Bible may
render in gratifying the tastes of the superstitious, it cannot,
to men of thought and energy, be of any great moral worth.
To persecute for non-belief of any teaching, but more
particularly of speculative questions, is not in accordance
with ethical justice. Is it true that the Bible encourages
persecution for the non-belief in, or the rejection of, its
teachings ? If yes, so far at least is its moral worth lessened.
For belief in the truth of a doctrine, or the wisdom of a
precept, is, to the honest inquirer, the result of the recogni
tion on his part of sufficient evidence in their favour. When
ever that evidence is absent, disbelief will be found, except
among the indifferent or the hypocritical. Now, in the
Bible there are many things that the sincere thinker is com
pelled, through lack of evidence, to reject. What does the
New Testament inculcate towards such persons? When
Christ sent his disciples upon a preaching expedition he said
(Matt, x.) : “Whosoever shall not receive you, nor hear
your words, when ye depart out of that house or city shake
off the dust of your feet.” This, we are informed by
Oriental writers, was a mode in the East of showing hatred
towards those against whom the dust was shaken. The
punishment threatened those who refused the administra
tions of the disciples is most severe, for “ it shall be more
tolerable for the land of Sodom and Gomorrah in the day
of judgment than for that city.” In St. John xv. we read :
“If a man abideth not in me, he is cast forth as a branch,
and is withered; and men gather them, and cast them into
the fire, and they are burned.” This accords with the gloomy
�BIBLE MORALITY.
II
announcement (2 Thess. i.): “ The Lord Jesus shall be re
vealed from heaven, with his mighty angels in flaming fire,
taking vengeance on them that know not God, and that obey
not the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ, who shall be
punished with everlasting destruction from the presence of
the Lord, and from the glory of his power, when he shall
come to be glorified in his saints, and to be admired in all
them that believe.” Again (Mark xvi.) : “ He that believeth
not shall be damned.” St. Paul exclaims (Gal. i.): “If any
man preach any other gospel unto you than that ye have
received, let him be accursed.” He also says (1 Tim. vi.
3-5): “ If any man teach otherwise, and consent not to the
wholesome words, even the words of our Lord Jesus Christ
....... he is proud, knowing nothing......... From such withdraw
thyself.” “ Of whom is Hymenseus and Alexander ; whom
I have delivered unto Satan, that they may learn not to
blaspheme” (1 Tim. i. 20). In these passages persecution
and punishment are clearly taught for disbelief. And that
such teaching has had an immoral tendency the excommu
nications, the imprisonments, and sacrifice of the lives of
heretics in connection with the history of Christianity abun
dantly prove.
Orthodox Christians contend that the Bible is a necessary
factor in the educational system of all nations. While
admitting the necessity of instruction in the affairs of daily
life, they allege that a question of far greater importance is
the preparation for existence “beyond the grave.” They
profess to be impressed with the notion that there is a city
of refuge in store for them when they arrive at the end of
life’s journey; and, having to encounter many storms and
difficulties ere they reach this supposed haven of rest, they
feel assured that the Bible is a sufficient guide to carry
them safely over the sea of time, and land them securely in
the harbour of eternity. They therefore rely on this book
as if it were unerring in its directions and infallible in its
commands.
Now, there is ample reason to doubt the capability of this
Christian guide. Its inability, however, as an instructor and
guide does not arise from any lack of variety of contents.
The Bible contains a history of the cosmogony of the earth,
and the story of man’s fall from what is termed his first
estate of perfection and happiness. Then we have the
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BIBLE MORALITY.
history of God’s chosen people, from their uprise to their
national extinction, with a record of the Jewish laws, speci
fying those acts most calculated to propitiate the favour and
secure the rew’ard of heaven, and those which are con
demned, with their appropriate and stipulated punishments.
We have also glimpses of the histories of other nations, the
causes of their fall, and the account of their national sins,
which drew down upon them that wrath of heaven which
extinguished or sorely punished them. Following this, there
is the story of Job—the lessons to be derived from the sudden
collapse of his worldly greatness, and his soliloquies upon
the mysteries of nature and of providence. Next come the
Psalms—a copious manual of praise, prayer, cursing, and
penitence, followed by the woes, lamentations, and mis
fortunes of a host of prophets—some practical, some
mystical, and some evangelical—together with the four
different versions of the life, actions, and death of Christ;
a short account of the early doings of the Church, recorded
in several epistles written by sundry apostles, culminating
in the strange and extraordinary nightmare of St. John the
Divine. Now, any man who fails to discover in so large a
field materials by which to regulate his life must do so, not
from the scarcity, but the valuelessness, of the article
supplied.
In estimating the real value of the Bible as a moral guide
it must be taken as a whole, by which is meant those books
of the Old and New Testaments which are bound together
and commonly called the Word of God. And here a ques
tion arises that, if the knowledge of the whole Bible be
necessary to our future happiness, which according to St.
John it is, why is it that so many of the books that originally
constituted the Bible are lost ? If the testimony of the
book itself can be accepted, we have only a portion of what
at one time composed the Bible. In Numbers a quotation
is given from a book called “ The Book of the Wars of the
Lord;” in Judges and Samuel we read of “The Book of
Jasher;” in Kings mention is made of “The Book of the
Acts of Solomon
and in Chronicles of “ The Account of
the Chronicles of King David.” We further read of “The
Book of the Chronicles of the Kings of Judah ” and “ The
Book of the Chronicles of the Kings of Israel.” Allusion
is also made to “ The Book of Nathan the Prophet ” and to
�BIBLE MORALITY.
13
“The Book of Gad the Seer.” Notwithstanding the loss
of these books, Christians exclaim, How wonderfully their
book has been preserved ! Even the portions that are re
tained are so full of mistakes, errors, and corruptions that
its intelligent supporters are compelled to give the greater
part of it up as incapable of defence, while those who still
contend for its “ divinity ” hesitate to come forward and
support it in public debate.
Another question suggests itself: Are we to consider the
Old. Testament as the Word of God ? If so, upon the
Christian hypothesis, its teachings are equally as deserving
of our respect as are those of the New Testament. If, on
the other hand, the Old Testament is not intended for our
acceptance, why is it preached and enforced as God’s Word ?
True, it is sometimes stated that the Hebrew writings are
useful for instruction, although they are not of the same
authority with Christians as the New Testament. But here
it is overlooked that the New Testament is founded upon
the Old, and often appeals to it to corroborate its statements.
Furthermore, the New Testament distinctly says that the
Old was written by good and holy men for our instruction,
etc. Besides, does not Christ emphatically state that he did
not come to destroy its authority ? “ Think not,” says he,
“ that I am come to destroy the law or the prophets : I am
not come to destroy, but to fulfil. For verily I say unto
you, till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in
nowise pass from the law till all be fulfilled. Whosoever,
therefore, shall break one of these least commandments, and
shall teach men so, he shall be called the least in the kingdom
of heaven ; but whosoever shall do and teach them, the same
shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven.” Here is
a command not to break even one of the least of the com
mandments. Again, Christ says: “The Scribes and the
Pharisees sit in Moses’ seat; whatsoever they bid you ob
serve, that observe and do.” Among a collection of Chris
tian stories occurs the following anecdote :—A person once
asked a poor, illiterate old woman what she deemed to be
the difference between the Old and New Testaments, to
which she replied : “ The Old Testament is the New Testa
ment concealed, and the New Testament is the Old Testa
ment revealed.” This has been triumphantly quoted by
Christian writers to show the harmony existing between the
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BIBLE MORALITY.
two books. But it is absurd and contradicts facts. The
assumption is, that the Old Testament is the partial statement
of a body of truths, from which the New Testament differs
not in kind, but only in degree. It is supposed that nothing
in the New Testament contradicts what is stated in the Old,
but only reveals and amplifies with a clearer light what had
already been stated partially and under allegorical semblance
in the Old. Now, so far is this from being correct that it
would be difficult to find any two alleged bodies of sacred
truths which differ from and contradict each other more than
the divine revelation made through Moses and the prophets,
and the revelation made through Christ and his Apostles.
For instance, Moses taught that retaliation was a duty, while
Christ strictly prohibits it. With Moses persecutors were
put to the edge of the sword; with Christ, however, they
were to be blessed. Under the old system, good works
and a virtuous life were the conditions of Divine favour and
reward, and bad works and a vicious life were to incur Divine
disfavour and punishment. Under the new system, faith is
the all-in-all, the essential condition of salvation.
A proof of the inadequacy of the Bible as a guide and
instructor is furnished by what are termed the “ liberal
Christians.” Here we have men of the best intentions and
of high intellectual acquirements refusing to accept the Bible
as an absolute guide, or as an infallible instructor. With
such persons the Bible has no value as “ infallible revela
tion.” If, however, the Bible is not an infallible record, it
is simply a human production, and has no more claim upon
us, except what its merits inspire, than any other book. Is
it not rather inconsistent to contend, as these liberal Chris
tians do, that certain portions of the Bible are “ divine,”
while the other parts are simply human ? If every Chris
tian sect put forward similar contentions, there would be
but few parts of the “ Holy Scriptures ” that would not be
divine and human at the same time, according to the respec
tive opinions of different classes of believers. But how are
we to decide what is “ divine ” and what is human ? To
what standard shall we appeal ? What criterion have we by
which to test its genuineness ? Shall we accept the authority
of the Protestant or the Catholic Church ? Shall we judge
from the standpoint of the Trinitarians or the Unitarians?
For the Bible to be trustworthy as a guide it should be
�BIBLE MORALITY.
15
reliable in its statements and harmonious in its doctrines.
That it is not so will be evident from the following reference
to its pages. The Bible teaches that God is omniscient and
omnipresent; yet in Gen. xi. 5 we read that the Lord came
down to see the city and the tower which the children of
menbuilded; and in Gen. xviii. 20, 21: “And the Lord
said, Because the cry of Sodom and Gomorrah is great, and
because their sin is very grievous, I will go down now, and
see whether they have done altogether according to the cry
of it, which is come unto me ; and, if not, I will know.” It
teaches that God is immutable ; yet, on several occasions,
we find him changing his mind, repenting, and sometimes
turning back from his repentance; as in the great instance
(Gen. vi. 6) : “ And it repented the Lord that he had made
man on the earth, and it grieved him at the heart ” (also
1 Sam. xv. 10, 11). God told Balaam to go with the men
(Num. xxii., 20), and was angry with him because he went
(Num. xxii. 21, 22). It teaches that God is invisible, yet we
read (Gen. xxxii. 30) : “And Jacob called the name of the
place Peniel; for I have seen God face to face, and my life is
preserved and (Ex. xxiv. 9, 10): “Then up went Moses,
and Aaron, and Nadab, and Abihu, and seventy of the elders
of Israel; and they saw the God of Israeland, again (Ex.
xxxiii. 11,23): “ And the Lord spake unto Moses face to
face, as a man speaketh unto his friend....... And I will take
away mine hand, and thou shalt see my back parts; but
my face shall not be seen and, finally (Gen. xviii.), we have
the remarkable though perplexed account of the Lord paying
a visit to Abraham in the plains of Mamre, and eating with
him of cakes, butter, milk, and veal. It teaches that God
is all good ■, yet we read (Isa. xlv. 7): “I form the light and
create darkness : I make peace and create evil: I the Lord
do all these things and (Lam. iii. 38): “ Out of the mouth
of the Most High proceedeth not evil and good ?” and
(Ezekiel xx. 25): “ Wherefore I gave them also statutes that
were not good, and judgments whereby they should not
live.” It teaches that God is no respecter of persons ; yet
we read (Gen. iv. 4, 5): “And the Lord had respect unto
Abel and to his offering ; but unto Cain and his offering he
had no respect;” and (Ex. ii. 25) : “ And God looked upon
the children of Israel, and God had respect unto them;”
and (Rom. ix. 11-13) : “For the children being not yet
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BIBLE MORALITY,
born, neither having done any good or evil, that the purpose
of God, according to election, might stand, not of works,
but of him that calleth ; it was said unto her, The elder shall
serve the younger. As it is written, Jacob have I loved, but
Esau have I hated.” And, in fact, nearly the whole Bible
story is that of a chosen people, preferred above all other
nations, surely for no superior goodness on their part! It
teaches (Ex. xx. 5) that God is a jealous God, “ visiting the
iniquity of the fathers upon the third and fourth generation
of them that hate me;” yet we read (Ezekiel xviii. 20):
“ The son shall not bear the iniquity of the father, neither
shall the father bear the iniquity of the son.” It teaches
that Christ is God (John i. 1, 14; Heb. i. 8); yet we read
(John viii. 40) : “ But now ye seek to kill me, a man that has
told you the truth, which I have heard of God;” also (1
Tim. ii. 5): “ One mediator between God and man, the man
Christ Jesus.” It teaches (John x. 30) that Christ and his
father are one ; yet we read (John xiv. 28): “For my father
is greater than I.” It teaches (John xvi. 30; Col. ii. 3)
that Jesus knew all things ; yet we read (Mark xi. 13): “And
seeing a fig-tree afar off having leaves, he came, if haply he
might find anything thereon; and, when he came to it, he
found nothing but leaves; for the time of figs was not yet■”
and, far more significant (Mark xiii. 32) : “ But of that day
and that hour knoweth no man ; no, not the angels which
are in heaven, neither the Son, but the Father.” It teaches
of Jesus (John viii. 14): “ Though I bear record of myself,
yet my record is true; for I know whence I came, and
whither I go ;” yet we read (John v. 31): “ If I bear witness
of myself, my witness is not true.” It teaches further (1
Tim. ii. 6) that he gave himself a ransom for all; yet we
read (Matt. xv. 24): “ I am not sent but to the lost sheep
of the house of Israel;” and (Mark vii. 26, 27): “The
woman was a Greek, a Syrophoenician by nation; and she
besought him that he would cast forth the devil out of her
daughter. But Jesus said unto her, Let the children first
be filled; for it is not meet to take the children’s bread and
cast it unto the dogs.” It teaches that miracles are proofs
of a divine mission (Matt. ix. 6; John v. 36 ; Heb. ii. 4);
yet (Deut. xiii. 1-3; Matt. xxiv. 24; 2 Thess. ii. 9) warns
against false prophets and anti-Christs, who shall show great
signsand wonders. It teaches in many passages of the New
�BIBLE MORALITY.
17
Testament that the end of the world is at hand, as in
Matt, xxiv., 1 Cor. xv. 51, 52; 1 Thess. iv. 15; 1 Peter
iv. 7; yet we read (2 Thess. ii. 2, 3): “ That ye be not
soon shaken in mind, or be troubled, neither by spirit, nor
by word, nor by letter as from us, as that the day of Christ
is at hand. Let no man deceive you by any means.”
Further, on this subject, we read (Matt. x. 23), in which
Jesus is addressing the Apostles he sent forth : “Ye shall
not have gone over the cities of Israel till the Son of Man
be comeyet we read (Matt. xxiv. 14) : “ And this gospel
of the kingdom shall be preached in all the world for a
witness unto all nations; and then shall the end come
and, similarly (Mark xiii. 10): “And the gospel must first
be published among all nations.” It teaches (Luke i. 33 ;
Heb. i. 8) that the kingdom of Christ shall endure forever;
yet we read, in one of the most remarkable passages of the
New Testament (1 Cor. xv. 24, 25, 28) : “Then cometh the
end, when he shall have delivered up the kingdom to God,
even the Father; when he shall have put down all rule and
all authority and power. For he must reign till he hath put
all enemies under his feet........ And when all things shall be
subdued unto him, then shall the Son also himself be subject
unto him that put all things under him, that God may
be all-in-all.” It teaches that the Holy Ghost is God (Acts
v. 3, 4); yet we read (John xv. 26): “ But when the Com
forter is come, whom shall I send unto you from the Father,
even the Spirit of truth, which proceedeth from the Father
and, again (John xiv. 16): “I will pray the Father, and he
shall give you another Comforter and, again (Acts x. 38);
“God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Ghost and
with power.” Finally, it teaches that “ all Scripture is given
by inspiration of God, and is profitable” (2 Tim. iii. 16);
yet we read (1 Cor. vii. 6, 12): “ But I speak this by per
mission, and not of commandment....... But to the rest speak
I, not the Lord and similarly (2 Cor. xi. 17) : “ That which
I speak, I speak it not after the Lord, but as it were fool
ishly, in this confidence of boasting.”
The foregoing are but a few of “ apparent discrepancies,”
or, as we call them, direct self-contradictions; and, be it
remembered, they concern the essentials of Christianity—
the three persons of the God, the inspiration of the Holy
Scriptures, and the end of the world. The Bibliolater may
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BIBLE MORALITY.
be encouraged in the endeavour to reconcile them by the
assurance that an indefinite further number, just as perplex
ing, await solution.
Those Christians who are too enlightened to accept the
Bible, as it has chanced to come down to us, as in every
word the very Word of God, and too free-minded to
submit to the authority of a tradition which has varied
with all climes and ages, or a Church whose history is a
record of blunders, compromises, falsifications, self-contra
dictions, probably unequalled in the annals of any merely
secular institution whatever, manage to remain, in their own
estimation, Christians, by believing that God’s saving revela
tion to mankind is made in the Bible, and that everyone
may read it for himself if he studies the volume in a re
verent and prayerful spirit. They admit many errors of
copyists, reject many passages, and even books, as decidedly
spurious, and regard many others as doubtful; yet maintain
that, all deductions made, there is left a clear and sufficient
Divine message, whose essential character is untouched by
.any of the errors or defects, and unchanged by any of the
various readings.
Now, this theory is certainly the most illogical which a
Christian can hold ; for that of the thorough Bibliolater is
consistent in its blind submission of reason to faith ; and
the Roman and Church views are equally consistent in their
blind submission to faith and tradition and ecclesiastical
authority; while this new theory seeks and pretends to
•conciliate things which are essentially irreconcilable—reason
and faith, freethought and revelation, liberty and servitude,
the natural and the supernatural. But, as it is the theory of
some of the best and ablest of our religious fellow-citizens,
and of those who are most heartily with us in much sound
Secular work, it practically claims a fuller consideration here
than it intrinsically merits.
In the first place, it is evidently open to the fatal objec
tion that it makes man the measure and standard of his
God, setting up certain Scriptures as supernatural and
Divine, then subjecting them to the arbitrament of human
nature, the reason and conscience of the creature. Each
of those who hold it says in effect: “ Here are books pur
porting to contain the Word of God, and I believe they
do contain it, but mixed with many vain words of men;
�BIBLE MORALITY.
19
therefore, what suits me I shall consider Divine, and what
does not suit me I shall reject.” Numerous clever attempts
■have been made to smooth away this sharp self-contradic
tion ; but, so far as we are aware, and as was to be expected,
not one that can be deemed even plausible by any candid
outsider. There is but one mode of getting rid of it—a
mode swift and effectual, obvious, and facile in theory; but,
as long experience proves, very hard to put into practice—
.and this is to surrender the initial claim of Divine inspira
tion of the books, when, of course, it would be quite natural
and consistent to sit in judgment on them, as on any other
human writing, welcoming what in them we find good and
true, rejecting what we find bad and false.
It is indeed alleged that the special grace of the Holy
Spirit always illumines and guides every one who studies
these books in the proper frame of mind; but, as we find,
in fact, that no two serious students read quite alike—each
.reading in accordance with his peculiar temperament, intel
lect, training, and circumstances, precisely as he would read
were there no Holy Spirit in question—the said special
grace, having no perceptible effect, may be safely left out of
the calculation. Innumerable sectaries, all alike devout
and sincere, all alike drawing their inspiration from the
Bible, have differed widely on the very fundamental doc
trines of Christianity; and we never heard of the Holy
Spirit doing anything towards bringing these brethren into
unity. A Christian eclectic submits the Bible to the test of
his own reason and conscience, which have been educated
and purified, not by the book itself, nor by any supernatural
grace, but by the results of a long and gradual progress in
secular enlightenment and civilisation ; which progress has
been at nearly every step opposed on the authority of the
book, and in the name of the religion founded on it. Doc
trines that now revolt the common conscience did not in
former centuries revolt the consciences of men who were
taught by the book and purified by the Holy Spirit. It is
not by special grace, nor revelation of the Holy Scriptures,
but by critical scholarship, that men have come now to
decide as to the genuineness and authenticity, the date and
authority, of the various portions. Until free learning was
revived at the classical or heathenish Renaissance, the Holy
Spirit was content to leave all the most pious Biblical
�20
BIBLE MORALITY.
students in very deep darkness as to nearly all the points ott
which our eclectic Christians are now so clearly enlightened.
The family ideal set forth in the Bible is certainly not one
of a high ethical nature. The domestic relationship of
Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, David, and Solomon could
not be emulated to-day without practising gross injustice,and submitting to utter moral degradation. The IndoEuropean race has developed in morals as in knowledge,
and two thousand years ago, when Germanicus led the
Roman legions, he beheld with wonder the respect with
which the ignorant, rude, and warlike Germans treated their
wives and daughters. It is an insult to civilised women for
any one to commend the family ideal of those who made
woman a slave. Even Christ is represented as treating
women as if they were necessarily inferior to men ; while
his conduct to his mother, his commendation and personal
practice of celibacy, and his encouraging others to renounce
their own obligations to their families, are not calculated to
shed a halo of peace and happiness within the home circle.
Moreover, St. Paul’s doctrine of the absolute submission of
wives to their husbands can hardly be offered us to admire
as an ideal.
The Secularist family ideal is far superior to that of the
Bible, inasmuch as it is on a level with the ethics of our
societarian development. It teaches that marriage should
be the result of mutual affection, and that such a union
creates the responsibility of undivided allegiance, mutual
fidelity, and mutual consideration. It affirms that in the
domestic circle there should be no one-sided, absolute
authority; that husband and wife should be partners in
deed, not only in theory, animated alike by the desire to
promote each other’s happiness.
The basis of Bible morality, being God’s will, is very
delusive, for the simple reason that, if such a will has been
recorded, it is not known to us; and the conjectured repre
sentations of it given to us by theologians of all ages are
impracticable and conflicting. In the Bible there is not to
be found only one will ascribed to its Deity, but many;
and those are as contradictory as they are various. For
instance, murder, adultery, theft, deceit, and other crimes
can be proved from the Bible to be opposed to the expressed
desire of God, as given in the Scriptures; while upon the
�BIBLE MORALITY.
21
same authority these crimes can be shown to accord with
God’s will. The result is, it is impossible to regulate human
conduct upon the sanctions of either the “ inspired ” records.
It is this peculiar nature of Bible teachings which was, prob
ably, the cause of the early Christians lying for the glory of
the Church (see Mosheim’s “ Ecclesiastical History ”), and
of Christians at a more modern period robbing and murder
ing those whom they termed heretics. In doing what they
did in this persecuting business, the Bible believers, no
doubt, thought that they were acting in accordance with
•“God’s will,” as set forth in the “ Divine revelation.” The
founders and promoters of those body-and-mind-destroying
institutions, the Inquisition and the Star Chamber, were in
all probability sincere, and many of them in the affairs of
every-day life, apart from theology, good men. In religious
matters, however, they were cruel and inhuman in the
extreme. Why was this ? Because, no doubt, in punishing
even to death those who opposed the true faith, they thought
they were following the Bible as a guide (see Deuteronomy
xiii. 6-9).
The acceptance of the Bible as a standard of morality
involves also the recognition of teachings and doctrines that
are conflicting and impracticable. In one place we are told
that faith alone will save us (Romans iii. 27, 28); while in
another portion of this same “ authority ” we are assured
that works are necessary to secure salvation (James ii. 24).
In St. John we read, “No man cometh unto the Father but
by me ” [Christ] (xiv. 6); and in the same gospel it is
recorded, “ No man can come to me [Christ] except the
Father draw him ” (vi. 44). This makes salvation depend,
not upon man, but upon God. In John it is written, “ For
there are three that bear record in Heaven, the Father, the
Word, and the Holy Ghost; and these three are one
while Timothy states distinctly that “ there is one God, and
one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus.”
The New Testament teaches that Christ brought glad tidings
for all men ; yet we are assured that he came but to the
lost sheep of the house of Israel—that many are called, but
few are chosen. In one chapter we learn that all sin can
be forgiven, while in another part of the same book it is
said that the sin against the Holy Ghost is never to be for
given. In Timothy we read : “ For this is good and accept
�22
BIBLE MORALITY.
able in the sight of God our Saviour, who will have all mento be saved, and to come unto the knowledge of the truth.’7'
But this cannot be if it is true that “ for this cause God
shall send them strong delusions, that they should believe a
lie.” If the delusions are sent by God, and if in conse
quence mankind believe a lie, and get punished hereafter
for such belief, it is only fair to suppose that God’s will was
that they should not come to a knowledge of the truth;
which contradicts what is stated in Timothy. John assuresus that “ whosoever hateth his brother is a murderer; and
ye know that no murderer hath eternal life abiding in him.”
This is very consoling when we read the following : “ If any
man come to me, and hate not his father, and mother, and
wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters—yea, and his
own life also, he cannot be my disciple.” To be a disciple
of Christ you must hate your brother ; you are thus a mur
derer, and “no murderer hath eternal life.” If you wish,
therefore, to have eternal life, you must not become a dis
ciple of Christ. Martyrdom by death may not always be
the best way to advance a principle, inasmuch as more
good can generally be done by living for a cause than by
dying for it. But Christians say the martyrdom of the
early Christians proves the truth of their doctrines, and in
support of their contention they quote the words of Jesus :
“ And I [Jesus] say unto you, My friends, be not afraid of
them that kill the body, and after that have no more that
they can do.” These words, it is thought, prove that Jesus
taught and held life cheaply, in order to advance more
readily his doctrines. It appears, however, from John that
Christ did what many of his followers now do—taught one
thing and practised another; for on one occasion John says,
“ Jesus walked in Galilee; for he would not walk in Jewry,
because the Jews sought to kill him.” What are we to do
in this case—follow Christ’s teaching, or his example ? To
follow both is impossible. Some persons condemn all war
upon the ground that it is anti-Scriptural, and in their justi
fication they quote Matthew, where he says : “ Then said
Jesus unto them, Put up again thy sword into its place; for
all they that take the sword shall perish with the sword.”
The soldier, on the other hand, tells the peace man that we
ought to possess swords ; for in Luke it is said : “ He that
hath no sword let him sell his garments and buy one.”
�BIBLE MORALITY.
23
Both would be equally justified, and both would be equally
condemned, by the New Testament—a very perplexing
position to be in. But the man fond of fighting would
keep his sword, believing that the more Christianity became
spread the more use there would be for the sword, as Christ
declared: “ Think not that I am come to send peace on
earth : I came not to send peace, but a sword. For I am
come to set a man at variance against his father, and the
daughter against her mother, and the daughter-in-law against
her mother-in-law.” If Christ had succeeded in his object
-—and he has partially—the advocate of the sword would
have had good grounds for justification.
St. Paul considers charity the highest of virtues, without
which all other acquirements are as nothing. But then he
immediately destroys the efficacy of such teaching by the
following command : “ As we said before, so say I now
again, if any man preach any other gospel unto you than
that ye have received, let him be accursed.” We are told
that “ wisdom is the principal thing, therefore get wisdom.”
But we are also assured that in much wisdom there is much
grief, and that he that increaseth knowledge increaseth
sorrow. It is folly to guide man to wisdom, telling him
that it is better than riches, while he is taught that “ the
wisdom of the world is foolishness with God.” Where is
the incentive for a youth to acquire knowledge when St.
Paul says, “It is written, I will destroy the wisdom of the
wise, and bring to nothing the understanding of the pru
dent ” ?
From these samples of the incoherent nature of Bible
statements and teachings, it will be seen how impossible it
is to rely implicitly on such a book as a guide in human
conduct. True, Christians may urge that there is no con
tradiction in the cases cited; that the Bible is God’s Word,
and must therefore be all true. It is in vain that the
student points out that this revelation abounds with impos
sibilities and absurdities, for he is reminded that with God
all things are possible, therefore let “ God be true, and
every man a liar.” It is further urged that the mistakes
occur through our lack of comprehension ; that the Scrip
tures would be plain enough if we could only “ see our way
clear ” to accept them as gospel; and that the depravity of
our nature prevents us viewing revealed truth in a spiritual
�24
BIBLE MORALITY.
light. These are the sentiments of many who profess to
accept the Bible as a guide. Truly, we must become as
little children if we endorse the doctrine of Scriptural infalli
bility.
The conduct of those who, in the face of such incon
sistency, contend for Bible infallibility is something more
than foolish; it is criminal. To shelter all that the Bible
contains under the halo of “ divinity ” is to pay homage to
the worst of human weaknesses. If a man is to pursue an
intellectual career; if he is to foster a manly independence;
if he is to live a life of integrity, he must not be bound
either by ancient folly or modern orthodoxy; but, unfettered,
he should learn the lessons afforded by a knowledge of the
facts of nature, and from the discoveries of science acquire
those rules which through life will be a surer counsellor than
the Bible, and a safer guide than theology.
�
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Text
THOUGHTS
ON THE
INSPIRATION OF THE SCRIPTURES.
r
- ft. d
By THOMAS
3 .
k O'f-i L
HODGKIN, Jun.
-to h
A
Newc astle-upon-Tyne.
fe’'”
few 1
LONDON:
ALFRED W. BENNETT, 5, BISHOPSGATE STREET, WITHOUT.
1865.
Printed for private distribution.
�PREFATORY
NOTE.
The Author of this little Essay has supposed himself to be
addressing those who are either themselves troubled with doubts
on the subject in question, or are frequently brought in contact
with the doubts of others.
He does not desire to be read by
the perfectly untroubled Believer in the Inspiration of the
Bible, to whom any discussion of the subject will probably
bring more pain than profit.
�I
CONTENTS.
PAGE.
I.—Introduction
......
II.—Objections to Divine Origin
Scripture
.
.
III. —Degree
of
and
.
Authority of
.
. .
Accuracy of Definition which
we
1
2
5
HAVE A RIGHT TO EXPECT ....
IV. —Theory of Verbal Inspiration .
.
.
.
9
V.—Existence of Human as well as Divine Element
in the Bible
.....
10
VI.—Analogy of Two-fold Nature of Man .
VII. —Scientific Difficulties
VIII. —Practical Conclusions
14
....
.
20
.
37
.
.
.
��THOUGHTS
ON THE
INSPIRATION OF THE SCRIPTURES.
I. “ The judgment,”—says Dr. Newman intr0(juc„
in his famous Autobiographical Polemic, tion.
—“ which experience passes on establishments or
education as a means of maintaining religious truth
in this anarchical world, must be extended even to
Scripture though Scripture be divine. ... A
book after all cannot make a stand against the wild
living intellect of man, and in this day it begins to
testify as regards its own structure and contents to
the power of that universal solvent which is so suc
cessfully acting upon religious establishments.”—•
Apologia pro Vitd Sud, 381-2.
Differing as I do by nearly the whole horizon of
Christian thought from almost every argument and
inference of the Apologia, I feel nevertheless that
there is a truth in these words, and I think that no
attentive observer of the signs of the times would
dare wholly to deny them. It is, and true men are
bound to confess it, a day in which questions as to
n
�2
THOUGHTS ON THE
the authority of Scripture are, not indeed pushed
further, but more widely prevalent than has probably
been the case in any preceding epoch of Christianity.
But if we believe that 11 there has no temptation
taken us but such as is common to man,” that this
difficulty has been not without Christ’s own permis
sion suffered to beset the present generation of His
Church, whose strength to resist it He alone could
measure, and that “ God is faithful who will with the
temptation also make a way to escape that we may be
able to bear it,” it is surely the wisest course, and
that most truly honouring to Him, to go boldly for
ward in such strength as He may give us, to meet the
difficulty, rather than ostrich-like to hide our heads
in the bush of Ecclesiastical Tradition, declaring
that we cannot see the difficulty and therefore no
such difficulty exists. Of course I am not going to
attempt within these narrow limits any regular and
systematic discussion of a subject so vast as well as
so momentous. All that I hope to do is to gather
up a few scattered fragments of thought which
reflection has sometimes found remaining on the
field of Controversy.
II. Let me state as briefly as may be
what appears to me to be the kernel of the
modern objections to the Divine origin
and Divine authority of the Scriptures.
Objections
Originand
Authority
ture.CUP'
“ They are not one book,” it is argued, “ but
�INSPIRATION OF THE SCRIPTURES.
3
many, written at far distant epochs of time, under
widely differing circumstances, only collected into
one volume, or rather into two, by Jewish Scribes
and Christian Fathers.”
“ Do you mean,” it is asked, “ to claim a sort of
a Papal infallibility for these compilers of the Sacred
Volumes, to assert that they could distinguish with
unerring wisdom between the writings inspired of
God, and those penned without supernatural assist
ance by merely devout but uninspired men ?”
“ And to come to the test of facts, are all the
books included in the Canon superior to all the
books excluded from it ? Can you frame any theory
of Inspiration which shall account for the books of
Esther, and Canticles, and the genealogies at the
beginning of Chronicles being admitted into ‘ an in
spired volume,’ from which Ecclesiasticus and
Wisdom are shut out ? Are the greetings in St.
Paul’s epistles and the message about the forgotten
cloak at Troas, the direct utterance of the Holy
Spirit, while the Epistle to Diognetus, the Dies Irae,
and the ‘ Rock of Ages,’ are the work of man’s un
aided intellect ?”
“ Then, again, as to errors of transcription and
translation. In the face of the vast variety of Texts
both of the Hebrew and Greek Scriptures, you can
not maintain that the miracle of a constant succes
sion of infallible transcribers has been exhibited to
the world; and the merest beginner in the study of
b 2
�4
THOUGHTS ON THE
the Originals at once discovers evidences of imper
fection in the English version, and probably in other
versions besides. Does not this prove that until
our palaeographers are all agreed upon a Text of the
whole Bible (which is not likely to come to pass for
centuries) and our scholars upon a translation of
that Text (for which our country may wait some
centuries longer) we shall not have a book, if the
Church ever had one, which can claim to speak to
us authoritatively as the written word of the Most
High ?”
Then besides all these a priori objections, it is
said, “ Have we not in the want of scientific accuracy
exhibited by the writers of the Scriptures, as to
points astronomical, geological, and physiological,
sufficient evidence that they were not infallibly
guided by the Omniscient Creator of the Universe ?
And as the strength of a fortress in war is equivalent
only to the strength of its weakest point, even so
here does not one admitted error in the Scriptures
bring the whole fabric of their Divine authority to
the ground ?”
“ To sum up all these arguments in one; there is
evidence of man’s handiwork in their original com
position, there is necessity for man’s handiwork in
their transmission to us, and it is only that wThich is
unmixedly Divine, or in which the Divine can be
marked off from the human element with mathe
matical precision, that can command our obedience
or escape our criticism.”
�INSPIRATION OF THE SCRIPTURES.
5
III. Before replying in detail to any of Degree of
the objections thus urged, I wish to notice accuracy
of definione error from which I think most of them tionwhich
we have a
derive their chief strength and nourish right to
ment. I call it an error; and such I fully expect.
believe it to be, yet I admit that it is one extremely
natural to the human intellect. It is the tendency to
over estimate our powers of definition and to demand a
degree of accuracy in it greater than the subject matter
in hand admits of. The fact is, that all reasoners are
more or less influenced by the triumphs achieved by
Definition in the science of Mathematics. In that
one science, as we all know, the conceptions with
which it deals having been first rigorously defined,
or marked off, from all others—so that there can
never be any confusion, mathematically speaking,
between a circle and the most circular ellipse, or
between the sine of an angle and its tangent—every
conclusion follows from the premisses with such
undeviating certainty that “ mathematical exacti
tude ” has passed into a proverb. But, however
great the desire of the intellect may be to see equal
certainty attained in the moral sciences, we all of
us know that it never has been, and most of us
believe that it never will be arrived at in our present
state of being. Moral certainty is that upon which
*
* Compare Aristotle’s prelude to the Nicomachean Ethics,
where he says, “ Our argument will have been sufficiently suc
cessful if it shall have been treated with as much accuracy as
�6
THOUGHTS ON THE
we are compelled to act, and this, though abundantly
sufficient for our needs, is not as absolutely irresist
ible by the human mind as mathematical certainty.
I may feel, for instance, fully persuaded that some
one whom I have known and honoured and closely
watched through a long course of years, could not
be induced to commit a dishonest or dishonourable
action, and on the strength of that assurance, I may
cheerfully risk every shilling of my substance: yet
I cannot say that the possibility of his so transgress
ing is as absolutely inconceivable to my mind as the
possibility of 6 and 5 making 12, or of two right
lines enclosing a space.
This is of course a very old though necessary dis
tinction between the pure and the mixed sciences—
between Geometry, for instance, on the one hand
and History on the other; but what I wish at
present especially to insist upon is, the absolute and
inherent difference between all the definitions with
which the moral sciences are conversant, and the
definitions of mathematics. Try to frame a definition
which shall include with mathematical accuracy, all
honest men, and shall exclude with equal rigidity
all dishonest ones, and you at once feel the difficulty.
Mark off the Sane from the Insane as Euclid sepa
rates Right Angles from Oblique, and test your defithe subject matter admits of: for the same degree of accuracy
is not to be expected in all arguments any more than in all
handicrafts?’
�INSPIRATION OF THE SCRIPTURES.
7
nition as he does his through several hundred propo
sitions of unquestionable truth, one( following irresis
tibly from another, and you will have a right to claim
the very highest place among -the monarchs of the
mind. Again, has any one really ever framed a per
fectly satisfactory definition, after the mathematical
model,—including everything that is essential, ex
cluding everything that is extraneous,—of Man him
self. Even as to his bodily organization, does not
Science confess some difficulty in so describing it as
to shut out the highest anthropoid apes, while em
bracing the most degraded races of Australia, of Lap
land, of Ceylon. It will no doubt be replied, that the
Divine endowment of reason is his proudest and most
distinguishing characteristic. But how shall this
endowment be so defined as to separate it from the
marvellous instincts of the Ant, the Elephant, the
Shepherd’s Dog, on the one hand, and yet not to shut
out the Cretin, and the Idiot on the other, from the
privileges of that manhood, which degraded as they
are, we do not deny them to possess ?
If the difference lie in the Faculty of Speech, the
Parrot is included and the Deaf Mute excluded ; if
in constructiveness, the Beaver is the rival of Man,
if in political organization, the Bee is his superior.
Progress and the power of discovery might serve
well enough to mark off the civilized races of the
world from the brute creation; but even among.
these there are individuals for whom they would not
�8
THOUGHTS ON THE
avail, while to many of the more degraded races of
the world, to the Australian, the Esquimaux, and the
Hottentot, they would be as inapplicable as to the
lowrer animals themselves.
I will not multiply instances: the every day
experience of my readers will at once suggest num
bers of cases in which our intellects are confessedly
unable to define with any approach to mathematical
accuracy, existences and ideas, which, nevertheless,
we are obliged to accept undefined in the course of
our daily lives. For this is after all the great point.
The distinctions between Honesty and Dishonesty,
between Sane men and Lunatics, between Man and
the Lower Animals, are distinctions, which, however,
impossible to express in perfect scientific definitions,
we must accept and act upon now, if we would not
bring ourselves into evident, perhaps, fatal collision
with the laws by which this world of ours is governed.
Imagine a man accused of murder pleading before a
jury that the deed was done in revenge for the death
of a favourite dog, bringing forward proofs of its
sagacity, contrasting its intellect favourably with
that of his victim, and so arguing that the death of
the brute justified the murder of the man, “because
no satisfactory definition of the distinction between
man and the lower animals had yet been given.”
We know what the fate of such a man would be :
but is not his conduct similar to that of the Ration
alist who refuses attention and obedience to the re
�INSPIRATION OF THE SCRIPTURES.
9
vealed will of God, because he has yet met with no
thoroughly satisfactory Definition of Inspiration ?
IV. The error of which I complain may Theory of
be traced in the reasonings of some of Ration"
the defenders of the Divine Authority of
the Bible, as well as in those of its opponents. In the
former, it has produced theories of Literal, or of
Verbal Inspiration, and statements which appear to
amount to this, that every word and every letter in
the original Hebrew and Greek Manuscripts of theBible, was as directly the work of God as the Ten
Commandments written by the Divine finger on the
tables of stone. If the authority for such very
rigidly enunciated propositions be demanded, we are
generally met not so much by references to Scripture
itself, as by a priori arguments as to what a Divine
Revelation ought to consist of, and still more often
by the favourite counter-question, “ Where will you
draw the line ?” “ If any human element be admitted
to exist in the Scriptures, one man may reject one
portion pnd another may disbelieve another: the
door is opened to endless questionings and to bound
less infidelity.
Unless every letter be equally from
God where will you draw the line ?”
To this I would reply in all sincerity, “ I do not
know. Our business as men is not to draw lines nor
to frame mathematically exact definitions of spiritual
existences, nor, especially in the matter of Divine
�10
THOUGHTS ON THE
Revelation, to be wise above that which is revealed.
But our business is to accept the great facts of this
world in which God has placed us, as we find them,
to conform ourselves to his laws as far as he has
explained them to us, though we may feel that we
understand them very imperfectly, and to receive
humbly the dispensations of his Providence, though
the chief of them, such as Life and Death, Health
and Disease, the Increase of the Ground, and the
Workings of the Brain, be matters dimly compre
hended by us, and which the wisest men feel it the
most hopeless to define. Far more then in the
Kingdom of his Grace should we sit as little children
in our Father’s presence, content to learn what he
is disposed to teach us of himself, just as he teaches
it to us, and not on any other plan or out of any
other lesson-book, which we in our ignorance may
fancy more worthy of his Omniscience.”
V. And thus looking at the subject, Existence
and endeavouring to sav concerning the
Human
°
°
as well as
Bible no more (and no less) than it says .Divine
concerning itself, we shall find ourselves
constrained to admit the presence of a Bible.
Human as well as of a Divine element; even in the
primary copies, the absolutely pure and unmodified
text of the Holy Scriptures. God might have writ
ten his message in characters of fire upon the mid
night sky, or graven it like the story of the conquests
�INSPIRATION OF THE SCRIPTURES.
11
of an Assyrian King upon rock-tablets in a Syrian
desert: though even then some human element would
have existed in the construction of the language
whose shackles the Divine message must still have
worn. But there is infinitely more of condescension
and of loving-kindness shown to us in the actual Bible
than would thus have been manifested. That book is
emphatically God’s message to man conveyed through
men. The one great subject with which the whole
of it is concerned, the one miracle of miracles to
which the Old Testament points prospectively, of
which the New Testament tells triumphantly, is the
Incarnation of the Lord Jesus Christ, and hence
arises an especial fitness in the fact that the message
telling of him has also a human vesture, so to speak,
with which it is arrayed. If I may be permitted
to use the words, I would say that as “ the Word
took flesh and dwelt among men,” even so, the
written word, the message of God, became a book
and was written by men, and has been subjected to
all the misunderstandings, and scoffs, and cavilling
criticism of an unbelieving world, even as He
was exposed to the questionings of Jewish High
Priests and the insults of the Roman soldiery.
*
Throughout its course the history of Revelation as
of Redemption is one of infinite condescension in
* This similitude between Christ and the Scriptures is beauti
fully illustrated by Adolphe Monod in two of his death-bed
discourses. See Adieux d’Adolphe Monod Discours 20
*
�12
THOUGHTS ON THE
the Creator towards his creature: and I repeat it
is God’s message to man through his fellow-men.
As examples of this human vesture in which the
Divine message has clothed itself, I may refer to
the differences of style between different Prophets
and Apostles.
The stately march of Isaiah’s
prophecies, the plaintive flow of Jeremiah’s life-long
grief, the daring flights of the ecstatic spirit of
Ezekiel,—we all admit that here are diversities of
natural character, and most of us will agree that
these diversities in the instruments are human,
though the one Spirit which breathes through them
all is Divine. So too with the contrast between the
logical acuteness and Rabbinical learning of St.
Paul, the simple earnestness of St. Peter, and the
wonderfully varied melody drawn from one word
“ Love,” by “ the disciple whom Jesus loved.”
So too in even greater degree with the trifling
discrepancies in matters of detail between the four
Evangelists. It is an old but true remark, that these
little divergencies, by removing all suspicion of
conspiracy between them, render the general con
vergence of their testimony all the more valuable.
But in so saying, we at once admit that the
Evangelists are in part at least to be listened to as
men, truthful but finite men recording the wonder
ful works which they had seen, not as mere
amanuenses of the Omniscient Spirit.
These varieties of character, these little diver-
�INSPIRATION OF THE SCRIPTURES.
13
gencies of detail, may probably belong to what I
have called the human garment of the truth. So
may the strong Oriental hyperboles which we at times
meet with, the artificial construction of the Psalms,
the omission of a few links from a genealogy, or here
and there the possible misstatement of a number or
misquotation of a date. But I feel persuaded that
that human element does not include any the slight
est trace of conscious inaccuracy or
*exaggeration,
that it has not introduced into the Scriptures one
atom of that pious fraud which in majorem Dei
gloriam would chronicle events that never happened,
nor leavened it with one grain of the spirit of
mediaeval miracle-mongers. The God from whom
that message comes to us is a God of Truth, and I
am persuaded that his servants the Prophets were
kept by Him ever in remembrance of this fact, and
that “ no lie is of the truth.” I feel bound therefore
to yield entire and substantial belief to the miracles
recorded in the Bible,---------------------------------------To-every miracle therefore recordod-b^H-homywe
yield entire-and -subotantial-bekef, however little in
accordance wfith the technicalities of our modern
Science be its manner of describing them. In the
“hard sayings,” both of the Old Testament and of the
New, I am content to recognise difficulties arising
from the imperfections of human language, or the
conditioned character of all our knowledge, diffi
culties which shall all vanish away in the light of
�14
THOUGHTS ON THE
Eternity. And above all, when they tell me anything
concerning the nature of God, the ruin wrought in
our hearts by Sin, the plan of our salvation through
Christ, the power and malice of our soul’s great
Spirit-Enemy, there is no limit to the unquestioning
reverence and submission with which I rejoice to
listen to that which is, I am persuaded, not the word
of men but the written word of God.
VI. To some doubting minds, I am
Analogy
well aware, this recognition of a twofold of twofold
element in the Holy Scriptures will appear Nature of
Man.
an unsatisfactory conclusion. They will
say, “ Either claim Divine authority for every word
or else admit that it is purely human. If it be as
you say, a Divine message in a human clothing, it
is the external part, the mantle of humanity, alone,
which we can apprehend: the spirit within—suppos
ing it to' exist—must remain incapable of being
understood by us, and therefore as far as we are
concerned, might as well be non-existent. And
besides all this, is the old and ever recurring diffi
culty, where will you draw the line? ”
I must crave permission to answer this objection
by a similar one drawn from the affairs of every-day
life. It is not merely or chiefly as a disciple of
Butler that I venture to recur so frequently to this
argument of Analogy. Far rather is it, because I
believe—and am fortified in this belief by the
�INSPIRATION OF THE SCRIPTURES.
15
Parables of Christ—that the facts of this outward
physical Universe are God’s own chosen method of
teaching us the mysteries of his spiritual Kingdom,
and that we are like little children slow to learn
and awkward at remembering abstract truths, whom
he accordingly deigns to instruct out of the great
picture lesson-book of his visible Creation.
I say then in answer to such objections as
these last described. “ How do you deal with the
nature of Man himself ?” Here is a being, part of
whose organisation plainly and undoubtedly belongs
to the material world. The analytical chemist can
tell us how many ounces of phosphorus there are in
his bones, and what quantity of nitrogen in his flesh.
Administer certain drugs, and certain results will
follow, with the same unerring accuracy with which
chemical equivalents combine. The laws of Statics
and Dynamics govern this part of Man’s being as
absolutely as the veriest clod of the fields : he may
strive to neutralise, but he cannot escape them. In
short, on this view of the case, Man is a certain
amount—varying generally from one to two hundred
weight—of solid, liquid and gaseous particles of
matter, combined in certain proportions, and sharing
the power common to all animals of taking up fresh
atoms out of the material world around and giving
off others in their stead.
Is this all the nature of Man ? We know that it
is not. I am not writing for Materialists, for men
�16
THOUGHTS ON THE
who have persuaded themselves that Thought is a
mere incidental function of Animal Life, and that the
imagination of Shakespere, and the will of Napoleon
are simply the results of particular arrangements of
molecules of matter, which, a little differently dis
posed, would have culminated in a Jelly-fish, or a
Zoophyte. That in me and in thee, which reasons,
which fore-casts, which wills, that by virtue of
which we love, and hate, and desire, and worship,
all the Intellectual, Moral, and Spiritual part of
Man’s Nature (whatever divisions and classifications
we may make of it in itself,) constitutes another
something utterly distinct from his Corporeal Nature,
and from the Material Universe of which it forms
part. Utterly distinct, and yet for the present inex
tricably intertwined: encompassing the globe, and
weighing the planets, and yet for the present com
pelled to work through these few poor pounds of
cerebrum and cerebellum : free itself from all the
laws of matter and motion, and yet through its
humble instrument constantly brought back again
into the most abject bondage to them, so that a few
grains of opium will quiet the most restless spirit,
some drops of alcohol will kindle the most sluggish
the great Dictator laid low with ague,
-------- -— “ cries, Give me some drink Titinius,
“ Like a sick girl”------------- ;
after a few hours of fasting or of fatigue the need
of nourishment and of sleep lays its equalising hand
�INSPIRATION OF THE SCRIPTURES.
17
on the Poet and the Prize- fighter; and the most
brilliant and far reaching intellect of Europe may as
the result of a fever or a blow, find itself to-morrow
the inmate of a Lunatic Asylum.
Here have we then a two-fold element even nearer
home than in the Holy Scriptures. And yet we
cannot deny the existence of either the one or the
other element of our being. There is the material
nature without to be seen and handled, here is the
*
thinking nature within ^asserting its own existence by
its one unsilenceable argument “ cogito ergo sum.”
Nor is it the outward material part alone which
we can know and apprehend. All the charm of the
highest kinds of literature, the greater part alike
of the difficulty and the interest of Human Life, the
strongest and most abiding threads in the tissue of
Family Love, are derived ultimately from one origin,
the knowledge of character. And what do those
words, “ knowledge of character,” mean but this,
the Soul of Man penetrating through the veil of
material things and making itself acquainted with the
Souls of his fellows.
So much for the impossibility—the alleged impos
sibility—of apprehending the Divine element of the
Scriptures through their Human envelope. I say
that even amongst us men i( the invisible things ” of
Man “ are clearly seen, being understood ” through
his visible and material nature, so that the Sadducee
�18
THOUGHTS ON THE
“ is without excuse.” And as for the difficulty of
“ drawing the line,” if what I have before said,
on the subject of definitions generally be not deemed
sufficient, I would still hold fast to this analogy
presented by the human body and soul, and assert
that the same difficulty there prevails. That depen
dence of the Intellect on its instrument to which
I have already alluded, makes it impossible to
draw with mathematical accuracy a line which shall
separate between them. Aryl historically, who can
tell the hour or the day when the little helpless
infant, which certainly in the origin of its being has
appeared to lead a purely animal existence, is first
informed with a new intellectual life. True it is,
that there is one great Definer who with perfect
success draws the line between the Body and the
Soul of man, but that Definer’s name is Death.
Before finally quitting this subject of the Analogy
between Scripture and the compound Being of Man,
let me mention one minor lesson which I draw
from it as to the comparative value of different
portions of the Bible. I have known sincere-hearted
Christians who have held themselves in duty bound
to regard all parts of Holy Scripture with equal
reverence, and to read them all with equal interest.
I do not believe they have ever succeeded in fully
realising their ideal, but they have striven to work
themselves up to this point, and if they did not find
themselves reading the 7th chapter of Numbers,
�INSPIRATION OF THE SCRIPTURES.
,
19
verse by verse, with the same interest and attention
which they delighted to bestow on the 7th of Acts,
they have imagined that the fault must be in them
selves, and have grieved over their own imagined
shortcoming. I do not believe that this absolute
equality of value for the different parts of Scripture
is required of us. There are passages in both the Old
and New Testament, in the writings both of Prophets,
Evangelists, and Apostles, where Jesus Christ is
so manifestly set before us, the interpreter of God’s
love to a ruined race, that we feel ourselves in reading
them, like a man looking with earnest gaze into the
answering eyes of One whom he loves, at those times
when the intervening veil of matter is felt to be the
thinnest, and Spirit all but communes with Spirit,
none intervening between them. Then there are
many other narrative passages wffiich do not indeed
bring us so close to the mysteries of Christ’s King
dom, but which display the general bearings of his
character and office. So the very lines of the face
of a friend speak to us of his disposition, and often
tell to the eye. of love, a tale of self-mastery or of
patient endurance which the world, unsympathising,
knows little of. And yet again, there are many
other portions, especially those describing the history
of the Chosen People, which while full of interest as
revealing to us the general outline of God’s Provi
dential Government of the world, and his preparation
of one peculiar soil to receive the seed of the
c2
�20
THOUGHTS ON THE
Kingdom, do not, I at once admit, in themselves
speak to us so clearly of our Father’s love as either
of the classes which we have before named. These
I would liken to the “ less honourable members” of
the human body. But are they therefore to be left
unstudied ? No, by no means. These too display
something of the character and purposes of Him
whom we desire to know, and Art herself will tell us,
that no member of the body is unimportant in her
view, that the very shape of the fingers and the
outline of the instep are faithfully reproduced by the
truly great Artist, since these too have to bear their
part in revealing to us the inner nature of the man
pourtrayed.
Scientific
difficul-
ties'
It remains for me to make a few
remarks,—very few they must be, in proportion to the countless avenues of Thought
opened up by the subject—concerning the relation
of the Scriptures to Science.
In the history of this question, three main periods
may be traced. When the intellect of Europe first
began to awake from the sleep of mediaeval bar
barism, its tendency, as represented by the school
men, was to look upon the Bible, or rather upon the
Bible’s Guardian and Interpreter, the Church, as the
one infallible Expounder of all Truth both Human
and Divine. And thus Science was, or professed to
be bounded in all her investigations into the nature
•
�INSPIRATION OF THE SCRIPTURES.
21
of things by Revelation. The Scriptures were the
quarry from whence the Subtle, or the Seraphic, or
the Irrefragable Doctor using Aristotelian Logic as
his pickaxe, was to hew out all Truth, Physical,
Intellectual, or Spiritual.
The protest against this monstrous perversion of
God’s choicest gifts to man culminated in Bacon,
and in the Novum Organon it found both voice and
victory. Roughly speaking, for the two following
centuries, the 17th and 18th, Physical Science and
the Christian Revelation lived side by side in reason
ably harmonious neighbourhood. Of course there
were doubters in abundance, especially towards the
end of this period; but Metaphysics rather than
Physics, and Literature rather than Science were the
weapons of their warfare; and I think we shall not
err in saying, that the majority of enquirers into the
nature of the Material Universe were also professed
believers in the Authority of the Scriptures.
The upheaval of Europe at the end of last cen
tury, and the enormous additions made to the
domain of human knowledge during the last sixty
years have changed all this. Literature and Philo
sophy, at any rate as represented by their highest
names, are for the most part friendly to the Christian
Revelation: Physical Science is for the most part
(we know there are some memorable exceptions)
either hostile or coldly neutral. Yet, let me not
state this antagonism more strongly than it actually
�22
THOUGHTS ON THE
exists. In England, at any rate, it very seldom
assumes the form of deliberate rejection of Christ,
or denial of the assertion that he is the heaven-sent
Saviour of Mankind : rather is it an entire negation
of the claim of the Bible to be in any sense
“ the word ” or message “ of God,” and a scarce
concealed pleasure in proving its statements one
after another to be scientifically inaccurate, yet
withal a conviction that somehow or other the
essentials of Christianity will remain after the Divine
Authority of the Bible is overthrown. But I think
it is hardly too much to say, that in the present
temper of men’s minds, the fact of a particular
theory squaring with the testimony of Scripture on
the point in question, would actually militate against
its reception by the- greater part of the Scientific
world.
In short, in the first period Science was supposed
to be the sworn vassal of Revelation, in the second,
she was her friendly Ally, in the third, she is (too
often) her bitter antagonist,
I have spoken—it is difficult in these matters
to avoid speaking—of Science and Revelation, as if
they were two complete and independent Per
sonalities, and as if it were possible that there could
be hostility or antagonism between them. Yet,
whenever this idea is present to the mind, we are
really thinking not of Science but of some of the
Scientific men of one particular generation, not of
�INSPIRATION OF THE SCRIPTURES.
23
Revelation, but of some of the Advocates of Revela
tion at one especial time. These may be advancing
claims which their brief never warranted ; those may
be smarting under the pain of long oppression, dazed
with the light of some new truth just won, or mis
taking the dim outlines of some truth, as yet but
half risen above the horizon.
To say that I
believe that Science and Revelation essentially and
per se can never be at variance, is but to say, that
“ I believe in one God, Maker of Heaven and
Earth,” who has revealed himself to mankind ; for
successful Science is but the observation of the
working of his hands, and true Revelation but the
echo of his voice.
Without doubt Scientific Men, in their earnest
and simple search after Truth, have oftentimes
suffered great injustice at the hands of Theologians.
A sad instance of the arrogance of well-meaning
ignorance is afforded by no less illustrious a name
than Luther’s. “ Mention was made in his presence
of a new Astronomer (Copernicus), who sought to
prove that it was the Earth which turned round,
and not the Firmament, the Sun, and the Moon;
and who said that the inhabitants of the world
generally, were in the same position with the person
who, being in a chariot, or in a ship, imagines he
sees the coast or the trees of the roadside flying
away behind him. ‘ Ah !’ observed Luther, ‘ this
is quite the way of the world now-a-days. . . ♦
�24
THOUGHTS ON THE
This silly fellow, for instance, wants to upset the old
established Astronomy ; but, according to the Scrip
ture, Joshua commanded the Sun to stand still, and
not the earth? ”—(Michelet’s Life of Luther, Ed.
Bohn, p. 289J. This surely ought to be a lasting
caution to us against arguing in scientific discussions,
“ The Bible says so and so, therefore, this asserted
discovery of Science must be wrong”—against fol
lowing the example of that most unwise, though, no
doubt, excellently intentioned disputant, who at a
meeting of the British Association, triumphantly
held up his Bible as the only but conclusive answer
to a purely scientific statement, made by one of
the members.
Let us, therefore, entirely dismissing from our
minds the old scholastic claim, unwarranted by
Scripture, unwarranted by Reason, to find in Scrip
ture a Cyclopaedia of all Sciences, Human and
Divine, let us inquire, what are in fact the points
of variance, real or supposed, between the Bible
and Modern Science. I believe I shall not err in
asserting, that they may all be reduced to three
(though I fully admit that for some purposes three
might be as effective as three hundred).
1. Astronomical.—It is evident enough that
none of the writers of Scripture had any idea of the
truth of the Copernican theory. The Earth was to
them, probably, a flat disc, bordered by the Ocean,
the Sun and Moon and Heavenly Bodies all revolving
•
*
�INSPIRATION OF THE SCRIPTURES.
25
around it. Whereas we know that God has made
the Earth a sphere revolving on its own axis, and
also round its far-off solar centre, and that again,
possibly, round some immeasurably distant point
in the universe.
2. Geological.—The First Chapter of Genesis
appears, on first reading, to assert that the Earth
and Heaven were all made in -seven periods of 24
hours each, at a time which, as subsequent Chapters
inform us, was only separated from the present day
by about 6,000 years. More attentive study shows
us that this is not really stated so sharply and defi
nitely as we had at first supposed ; yet the general
impression remains of a recent origin, at least, of
organic life. Geology seems to have proved, as far
as any fact in physical science can be considered
proved, that ages of incalculable vastness must have
passed before the Earth alone (to say nothing of the
other heavenly bodies) Was prepared for the abode
of its present inhabitants; and that, through many
of these ages, the land and the waters teemed with
animal and vegetable existences. The account
given in Genesis of the Deluge also, appears at first
sight to suggest an universal deluge over the whole
surface of our planet, which Science refuses to
acquiesce in, though willing to accept, all that
the narrative, with its strong Oriental forms of
speech, is probably intended to convey—a local
inundation sufficient to destroy the whole of the
�26
THOUGHTS ON THE
then existing family of man, and the creatures
dependent on him.
3. * Ethnological or Anthropological. The
Bible seems to assert the derivation of all mankind
* I do not wish, to enter here into any detailed examination
of any of these points of variance; but as this question is still
sub judice, I may be permitted to notice one or two considera
tions which, to a non-scientific mind, seem to throw some doubt
and obscurity over the conclusion to which Science appears
likely to commit herself. If the human race have really lasted
even 100,000 years, it seems strange that its conscious history
should reach back so little way, strange that in the annals of the
most ancient nations with which we are acquainted, Egypt,
Babylon, China, we should find no firm footing further back
than, at earliest, B.C. 5,000, strange that we should have no
Time-defying structures like the Egyptian Pyramids, or the
Roman Aqueducts, of a vastly greater antiquity than any of these ;
stranger still (if we are told that during those preceding 95,000
years the Human Race was slowly raising itself into civilization)
. that we so very rarely see this process repeated by any tribe of
savages now without assistance from some more highly civilized
race outside of them, though we do see abundant traces of the
contrary process, Civilization sinking down into Barbarism.
As for the argument derived from the present variety of
national types, I venture to suggest, with much diffidence,
whether those who accept in any sense the doctrine of the
Creation as distinct from the cfeveZopmeni of Man, may not also
acquiesce in the possibility that by a fresh act of the Creative
"Will, differences of type may have been at some distant period
impressed upon particular individuals, the chosen progenitors of
the varying races of mankind. A new force, “ an attraction of
repulsion,” so to speak, would thus have been imported into the
Dynamics of Humanity, the object being to counterwork that too
�INSPIRATION OF THE SCRIPTURES.
27
from a single pair of ancestors, that pair having
been created not more than ,4,000 or 5,000 years
before the Christian era. Scientific men, while
pretty evenly divided on the question of the unity of
strong tendency of the atoms to gravitate into one mass which
had hitherto prevented the “ replenishing of the Earth ” from
going on with sufficient rapidity and extensiveness.
And upon the whole matter, looking to the singularly close
accordance which exists between that part of the Scripture
history which ,we can compare with human annals, and these
annals themselves—an accordance which the investigations of
the last twenty years has strengthened rather than weakened—
my inclination is to believe, putting the question of their Divine
authority aside for the time, that they will also be found a safe
guide to follow in the dimmer twilight, where we are unable to
apply any such test to prove their veracity. Yet I am withal
desirous to bear well in mind, that many sincere believers in the
truth of Scripture, hold and have long held the idea that the
early chapters of Genesis have an allegorical character which is
not shared by the later chapters of the same book and the other
books of the Pentateuch; and that the same canons of interpreta
tion are not to be applied to all alike. That this notion, be it true
or false, is no mere device for evading a present difficulty, but
springs from a consideration of the text of Scripture itself, take
Sir T. Browne’s Religio Medici (page 82), published in 1642, as
proof:—
“And truely for the first chapters of Genesis, I must confess a
great deal of obscurity; though Divines have to the power of
humane reason endeavoured to make all go in a literal meaning,
yet those allegorical interpretations are also probable, and
perhaps the mystical method of Moses bred up in the Hierogly
phical Schools of the Egyptians.’* •
�28
THOUGHTS ON THE
origin of the human race, seem, on the whole,
disposed to agree in claiming for it a much greater
antiquity—say hundreds of thousands of years
instead of thousands. Some of the strongest advo
cates for Unity of Origin (who are willing so far to
agree with Scripture), appear to consider themselves
bound to claim the most enormously extended
period of duration, in order to allow room for the
gradual introduction of the now existing varieties of
type. Upon the whole question Science cannot be
said to have yet delivered her verdict; but it is not
difficult to see in which direction the minds of the
Jury lean. And, if it be finally given in that direc
tion and maintained by irrefragable argument, we
must, of course, accept it, as we have already
accepted the utterances of Astronomy and Geology,
and readjust our previous opinions in accordance
therewith.
1. Now, with reference to all these divergencies,
I have to remark at the outset, that the bitterest
opponent of Scripture would not class them with,
the ludicrous errors of those cosmogonies which
form the bases of so many other religions.
We have here no such stories as that Indian one,
of the world being supported by a gigantic elephant,
who stands on a still more gigantic tortoise : we
have no laying of world-eggs, or manufacture of
mountain ridges out of giants’ bones as in Greek
mythology. We may say, in fact, that everything
�INSPIRATION OF THE SCRIPTURES.
29
here described really is or has been, but that it is
described from Man’s point of view, and, possibly,
with an imperfect reproduction of the aerial per
spective of the picture. If we accept Hugh Miller’s
suggestion that the history of the Creation was
conveyed to the inspired narrator in a series of
visions, somewhat like those which were at a later
period vouchsafed to the Prophets, then our very
experience of these Prophetic writings themselves
will lead us to look for these characteristics in the
description—faithfulness as to the general outline of
the objects revealed, vagueness and perhaps no little
ignorance as to the intervals of time by which those
objects were separated one from another. I can well
believe that Moses, with reference to Time Past,
even as the Prophets and Apostles with reference to
Time Future, was not permitted “ to know the times
and the seasons ” in which the Father worked out
his own far-reaching counsels : and this limitation
of the knowledge of the scribe I can at once and
without difficulty refer to the human element with
which the Divine Message has garmented itself.
Limitation of knowledge, be it observed, not un
faithfulness in its utterance. An Artist, let us say,
sits down to sketch a wide expanse of sea, with dis
tant headlands far away in the horizon ; he knows
that those three minute specks of black on the left
of his picture are rocks ; but he is very likely
ignorant that each one is a group of rocks, thickly
�30
THOUGHTS ON THE
encrusted with organic life, a little World of interest
and delight to the scientific explorer, and that the
sea, upon whose bosom they seem so calmly resting,
is at this very moment swirling in impetuous eddies
through their hundred channels, and by its heavings
up and down forbidding any boat to lie there in
safety; he knows not that the thin scarcely dis
cernible line in the cliff to the right of these, stands
for a chasm in the rocks more than seventy yards
wide, and though he sees and strives to reproduce
in his picture some marked difference of shade, and,
consequently, of nearness in the two succeeding
headlands, he knows not nor would ever have con
jectured that the bay thus guarded, narrows into a
gulf, and the gulf widens out again into a lake,
which runs up for miles inland, and well nigh insu
lates him, the artist, from the coast which he has
been depicting. Still, he has honestly and success
fully laboured to reproduce that which the sense of
sight did reveal to him, though his picture, could it
be cross-examined like a witness in a Court of
Justice, wTould very likely betray his ignorance on
some of these points as to which he remained in
darkness.
Even so, as it seems to me, would Moses pro
bably describe what was revealed to him in vision
of the far distant Past, or Isaiah, of the fore
shadowed Future, faithfully describing events, but
often ignorant by what intervals these events were
�INSPIRATION OF THE SCRIPTURES.
31
separated one from another. Furthermore, could
we imagine a blind man setting himself to study the
Natural History and configuration of that very Coast
line, he would probably in the course of time make
out for himself all these facts of which the Artist
was ignorant: yet surely more of the real glory of
God’s handiwork in the scene is revealed to the
Painter in one flash of sight, than years of patient
labour can unfold to the blind Student. Something
like this is perhaps the relation borne by such Vision
of the Creation as may have been vouchsafed to
Moses, to such knowledge of it as the Geologist
conquers for himself.
2. Still there is no doubt that the non-scientific
character of these descriptions is a stone of stum
bling to many of the present generation. Miracles
they do not desire, indeed, many of them say that
the existence of alleged miracles is a positive hin
drance to their belief in a Revelation ; but the
presence in the Scriptures of any discovery of
modern Science, the enunciation, for instance, of
Kepler’s Laws, or Dalton’s Theory, or some hint of
the marvels of Spectral Analysis would have greatly
gratified that craving after “ a sign,” which our age
also feels, though it loves not to avow it.
Yet, on reflection, we must see that such
thoughts, while reviving the old and exploded
fallacy of the schoolmen, do also claim of the Most
High that which, without “ respect of persons,”
�32
THOUGHTS ON THE
could not have been granted to this generation.
How infinitely small a proportion in space and time
do the scientific investigators of our day bear to the
millions in past centuries or still living in humble
homes, for whom as much as for these Christ died,
to whom as much as to these God meant the know
ledge of his will to come. To all these millions
the presence in the Scriptures of the sublime para
doxes of Science would have constituted a positive
barrier against their acceptance of the Truth. It is
not too much to say, that one good clear statement
by Moses, of the Copernican Theory alone, would
have made the path of the Hebrew incalculably
more difficult to tread, would probably have seemed
to thousands a sufficient reason for adopting the
always alluring worship of Baal or Astarte, and
renouncing the hard covenant with Jehovah, who,
it would be said, “ not only requires of his wor
shippers this severe and almost unattainable aus
terity of morals, but bids us believe, in plain
contradiction to all the evidence of our senses, and
all the wisdom of the learned, that this flat earth
fixed immovably beneath us, is a round ball, rolling
with the rapidity of a whirlwind through the
heavens.”
3. And who can tell, even now, that a full and
complete revelation of the nature of the Physical
Universe, interwoven with the Scriptures, would
not, even to the men of this generation, prove
�INSPIRATION OF THE SCRIPTURES.
33
hindering rather than helpful. The foremost men
in the ranks of Science, those who have done the
most themselves to add to her domains, are they
who realise the most vividly how much yet remains
to be done, how far we still are from penetrating
into the mysteries of Life and Being. And if we
could imagine a Prophet now commissioned to come
forth and declare these to us, and at the same time
to inform us what it was the will of God that we
should do, how much was comprehended in our
duty towards him and towards our fellow-men, it is
likely that the practical part of his message would
suffer from its union with the theoretic, that the
Scientific Truths which the men of Science are not
yet prepared to assimilate, would prove a positive
hindrance to their being nourished by the Spiritual
Verities which accompanied them.
*
* It is possible even that some of the Propositions which
Science has already established, would not a little bewilder
many of her disciples, if stripped of the technical language in
which they are usually clothed. It must be confessed that
Physical Science is apt to talk a strange artificial dialect,
curiously compounded of derivatives from the Greek, (which
would move one of the old Hellenes to most sincere astonishment,
if he were told that they belonged to his language,) and barbarous
surnames of modern discoverers fitted with a classical ending.
Yet these very names, once mastered by the memory, are the
catchwords, so to speak, by which many of the rank and file of
Science apprehend’ and retain Scientific Truth ; and were this
enunciated simply, and in language fitting more closely to the
D
�34
THOUGHTS ON THE
4. But the best summing up of the whole question
is contained in the now trite maxim, “ The Bible
was not meant to teach us Science.” Whatever the
reason may be, whether any of those here hinted
at, or that other more commonly put forward,—that
God would not enervate man’s intellectual faculties
by giving him that truth ready to his hand which
he had provided him with the means of thinking
out for himself—here is the fact, and Theologians
and Men of Science, as they have really agreed in
accepting this conclusion, should consider what
practical consequences flow from it to each of them.
My belief is, that the Bible is—to state the
matter as simply as possible—God’s Message to
Man. These two beings, God and Man, are the
two all-important terms of every proposition with
which it has to deal. Thus in those early chapters
of Genesis, where there appears to be the nearest
approach to Scientific teaching, the true Predicate of
the main proposition is not Scientific but Religious,
and the Science is introduced as part of the defini
tion of the Subject. The object of these chapters is,
not to teach us with scientific accuracy one parti
cular cosmogony, but to say—
God—who made the Heavens, and the Earth, and
the Sea, and all that is therein,
Nature of Things, it would be perhaps only the minds of the
real Discoverers that would be able to follow it step by step, and
recognize its identity with that which they at present hold.
�INSPIRATION OF THE SCRIPTURES.
35
Made Man also;
Made him sinless, but free to choose between
good and evil;
Saw his fall with sorrow, and
Pledged himself to provide a means of redemption.
Now the question is, considering all the countless
attestations to the truth of the Bible-message,—
attestations which we cannot here even hint at,
except collectively—Miracles, Prophecy, the very
existence of the Jewish Nation and the Christian
Church, the character of Christ, the adaptation of
his Gospel to the Individual Man and to the Human
Race, the testimony of the Martyrs, the lives of
Christians, and still more their deaths, the answer
which Scripture gives to the deepest yearnings of
the Soul of Man, the harmony which it brings back
into that otherwise wild and bitter discord which
we call Human Life, considering all these things,
will you reject the message, and say that it comes
not from God, because the message-bearers were
men ignorant of modern Science ? I hardly know
how to convey my sense of the disproportion be
tween the negative and the positive quantities in
this case, between the objection taken and the evi
dences ignored. Yet, if we could imagine an officer
in the thickest of the fight on the day of Waterloo,
refusing to advance his troops to cover an important
movement on his flank, and thereby imperilling the
whole fortune of the day, simply because the aide-
�36
THOUGHTS ON THE
de-camp, who brought the message, in some way
mispronounced one of the words in it, “ You sound
the ou in Hougoumont as if it was u. I am sure
that His Grace is too good a French scholar to have
made such a mistake, and I shall not obey an order
which for this reason cannot come from him”—that
would in some measure express our notion of the
absurdity of disbelief on such grounds as these with
which we are now concerned. Or again, in a case
of shipwreck which actually occurred a few months
ago in the North of England, the lives of half the
passengers and crew were lost, owing to a mistake
in fixing the rocket apparatus too low down on the
mast of the ship, which caused the tackle to “ foul.”
Imagine that before this was done, one of the lands
men standing by had swum out at the peril of his
life to bring the captain word from the sailors on
shore, how the apparatus should be placed, but in
doing so, had failed to pronounce in true sailor
fashion the name of the fore-top-gallant yards to
which it ought to be affixed; that the captain for
this reason refused to believe that his message came
from sailors, and that all those lives were lost in
consequence. This, also, would seem to me a not
more insane procedure than the rejection of Scrip
ture, because the revelations made to Moses antici
pated not the discoveries of Copernicus or of Lyell.
*
* Sec Note in page 43.
�INSPIRATION OF THE SCRIPTURES.
37
VIII. For this is after all the main ques- practicaj
tion for each man to answer for himself. Conclu“If it be reasonably probable that this &lons‘
book is a message to Man from his Creator, what
must I do to share the deliverance and to escape the
dangers of which it speaks ? ”
The first question for us is the moral and practical
one. The speculative and theoretical one—as to the
nature and extent of Inspiration, comes far later in
the true order of enquiry : and no honest hearted
seeker after truth should reverse this order. Many,
of course, there are in our day, wThose objections to
the Christian Revelation are not free from the taint
of self-interest, who are at heart anxious that it
should be proved untrue, who weary of its high and
holy teaching and would fain ostracise the Lawgiver,
whom, with an unanimity which begins to be tedious
to them, eighteen centuries have agreed in recog
nising as emphatically The Just One. It is not to
these men, who for the sake of obtaining a wilder
license are saying, “ Let us break their bands
asunder and cast away their cords from usthat
I address myself. To them, one seems to hear the
Lord saying, “If any man hear my words and believe
not, I judge him not: for I came not to judge the
world, but to save the world. He that rejectethme
and receiveth not my words, hath one that judgeth
him: the word that I have spoken, the same shall
judge him in the last day.” But there are men,
�38
THOUGHTS ON THE
and to them I speak, who long to believe, if they
could, firmly and heartily, that God has revealed
himself to Man by Jesus Christ, and who would, if
they could accept the Christian Scriptures as the
written record of his will: but the voices of doubt
which are in the air trouble them, the apparent
opposition of Science fills them with dismay, and
they are like the ranks of an army just beginning to
waver in its position when whispers, “ The day is
lost ” begin to pass from one to another, and even the
brave man looking on the face of his fellow sees his
own unuttered fear written there. To such men I
would say : You stake your faith on far too narrow
an issue. The point towards which you are looking
—and whose danger I believe you exaggerate—is
not, is far indeed from being, “the key of the
position.”
I desire not to under-estimate the
importance to the Believer, of a right faith in the
Inspiration of the Holy Scriptures, but I hold that
faith in certain great facts therein recorded comes,
far before it in the history of the human soul.
I
utterly dissent from and renounce the doctrine in
sinuated in the cry, “.Christianity without Judaism
yet I am fully persuaded that to us, not Jewish
born, but “sinners of the Gentiles,” the New
Testament, last of the two volumes in the order of
composition, is first in the order of belief. Could
the Apostle Paul revisit the earth to prove the des
cendants of his Gentile converts as to the faith that
�INSPIRATION OF THE SCRIPTURES.
39
was in them, I am sure that his first question
would not be, “ Dost thou accept the theory of
literal Inspiration ?” or, “In what sense dost thou
interpret the Mosaic record of Creation ? ” but
rather, “Dost thou believe in Jesus and the Resur
rection?” and then, “Hastthou received the Holy
Ghost ? ” Thus, it is with events which happened
in the full blaze of historic light, the Life, Death,
Resurrection and Ascension of Jesus Christ that we
are primarily concerned, and no amount of groping
enquiry into “ the origins of Earth and Man” can
really unsettle these. It is true that later on, and
after we have accepted him as our Saviour, the
question, “ In what relation did this Saviour stand
to the Old Covenant ? ” will probably force itself
upon our attention. We find his coming in the
flesh continually spoken of both by himself and his
Apostles as the fulfilment of that Covenant: he
answers the Tempter by three quotations from
Deuteronomy, and the Sadducees by a verse from
Exodus : he commands or accepts the examination
*
of “ the Scriptures,” as bearing witness to himself;
his chosen Evangelists everywhere quote the Old
Testament prophecies as divinely-inspired predic
tions of him ; he says that “ the Scripture cannot be
broken,” and that “ not one jot or one tittle of the
Law shall pass till all be fulfilled,” and the Apostle
of the Gentiles says, “Well spoke the Holy Spirit
* EpEvvare Imperative or Indicative.
�40
THOUGHTS ON THE
by Isaiah, the Prophet.” My own feeling is, that all
this could not have been unless the Old Testament
had been substantially, what it professed to be, the
Divinely-inspired record of God’s covenant with his
people. Without being thereby bound to accept
all the minutiae of the Masoretic annotators, I feel
that the attestation of him who was himself The
Truth, is hereby given to the broad outline of the
message of that Covenant. And even in giving this
attestation, he and his Apostles have given us a key
to unlock its really hardest passages—those of moral
and spiritual difficulty—by such expressions as these,
“ Moses, because of the hardness of your hearts
suffered you to put away your wives.” “ The Law
was added because of transgressions.” “The Law
was our schoolmaster to bring us unto Christ,” all
of which entitle us to speak of the Old Dispensation
as but an imperfect reflection of the attributes of
our Heavenly Father—a compromise, may we ven
ture to say, between his Light and the thick Dark
ness which was covering the Nations.
I must repeat it once more, at the risk of
iteration even to weariness ; the true question in
volved is not a theoretical, but a practical one.
This man, Jesus Christ of Nazareth, “ declared to
be the Son of God with power by the resurrection
from the dead,” is set forth as our present Saviour,
as our future Judge. Shall we accept and confess
him now, that he may confess us then, and place
�INSPIRATION OF THE SCRIPTURES.
41
us at his right hand; or shall we on some slight
pretence evade confession of him now, to hear from
his reluctant lips, in that day, the word “ Depart.”
There is no middle course possible. We must
accept him or reject him : “he that is not with me
is against me, and he that gathereth not with me
scattereth abroad.” Even silence may be hostile,
and much more may the slightly veiled sarcasm,
the shrug of the shoulders, the sneering innuendo,
“ Nous avons change tout cela”—do the work of
the enemy. Yes, of the common enemy ; it is not
“ Divines” or “Theologians” alone, whose position
Infidelity endangers; thy hopes and mine are
equally at stake in the question, “ Has God spoken
to us by Jesus Christ?” and, reverently let me say
it, neither thy life nor mine would be worth living
if he had not. But to as many as do receive this
Saviour, he gives power to become the sons of God,
and is willing to give a share of that Holy Spirit
which, though not revealing to them new truths as to
the mysteries of redemption, brings the old ones with
a new force home to their hearts, while adding no
chapters to the books containing the message, does
help them to understand under what inspiration
they were first composed.
For every one of these Sons of God, not for one
caste or order or sect alone, there is a work to do,
and in doing it, the spiritual muscles grow firm and
the spiritual eye grows bright and clear. The diffi
»
�42
THOUGHTS ON THE
culties which, to the mere Student seem infinite, the
soldier of Christ feels to be infinitesimal. In actual
conflict with Sin and Sorrow, he perceives how
helpless he would be without God’s message in his
hand, as well as God’s grace in his heart ; and
without rigorously defining the exact measure in
which the Holy Spirit has co-operated in every
word, we believe he will generally accept the oldfashioned doctrine that the Bible is God’s Book, as
expressing with the instinctive truthfulness of
popular conviction, and more nearly than any mere
speculative refinement, the truth as to the weapons
of his warfare. And if sometimes, when he is out
of sight and hearing of the great tide of Human
Life, in the solitude of his study, the intellectual
and especially the scientific Difficulty comes back
to him in exaggerated proportions, he will do wisely
to accept the advice of a modern poet—
“Wait, nor against the half-learned lesson fret;
Nor chide at old belief as if it erred,
Because thou canst not reconcile as yet
The Worker and his Word.”
He who thus patiently, yet not idly, waits, shall
have, I doubt not, one day, his part in the promise
of Christ, “ Because thou hast kept the word of my
patience, I also will keep thee from the hour of
temptation, which shall come upon all the world to
try them that dwell upon the earth.”
�INSPIRATION OF THE SCRIPTURES.
43
Note (to p. 36.)—The Author does not mean to imply, by
the comparisons here made, that the Scientific difficulties to be
met with in the Bible are of no more importance than the trifling
inaccuracies there imagined. The point upon which he wishes to
insist is this: a man may be a good and trusty messenger, and
may faithfully convey the whole message entrusted to him, yet if
cross-questioned he may display even gross ignorance upon points
as to which his principal must have been well-informed. There
fore the fact that the writers of the Old and New Testaments
were imperfectly acquainted with matters of Science does not
prove that we do wrong in listening to them on Religious
subjects as the spokesmen of the Omniscient One.
The Author admits that it is to some extent a question of
degree : but, while utterly unable to prove, he can easily believe,
that when viewed in the light of Eternity, the Scientific diffi
culties in question will be found to bear no larger proportion to
the truths revealed than the mispronunciations he has imagined,
to the orders conveyed.
Alexb. Skeen, Printer, 10, Great St. Helens, Bishopsgate.
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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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Thoughts on the inspiration of the scriptures
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Hodgkin, Thomas
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Place of publication: London
Collation: 43 p. ; 22 cm.
Notes: Printed by Alexe Green, Bishopsgate, for private distribution. From the library of Dr Moncure Conway. Inscription on front page: M.D. Conway Esq with the author's kind regards. A small number of annotations in ink - line of text crossed through and marginal corrections.
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Bible
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Bible-Criticism
Conway Tracts
Scriptures
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Text
“WHICH
THINGS ARE AN
ALLEGORY,”
—Galatians iv. 24.
PUBLISHED BY THOMAS SCOTT,
I I THE TERRACE, FARQUHAR ROAD, UPPER NORWOOD,
LONDON, S.E.
1875.
Price' Threep.ence.
•
�LORHON:
PBIKTEB BY C. W. REYNELL, LITTLE PBLTEKEY STREET
HAYMARKET.
�“WHICH THINGS ARE AN ALLEGORY.”
Galatians iv. 24.
ICH things are an allegory,” said St.
Paul, but who believes him ? If modern
expounders of Holy Writ would say so too, what a
blessed change would come o’er the spirit of our
Bible ! but no, everything must be taken literally.
Abraham, “ the friend of God,” listens to his spiteful
wife and turns his own child out of doors tn perish,
for aught he knew, in the wilderness with poor
Hagar, while we are called upon to admire this pat
tern of believers and to thank God that his edifying
sayings and doings have been transmitted to pos
terity. Ask any Sunday-school scholar who Hagar
and Ishmael were, and you will soon see that St. Paul
has spoken in vain and that every child in the king
dom is taught to look upon Hagar and Ishmael as
real people. Three hundred foxes all stood still “ so
nice and pretty ” to have their tails set on fire (the
Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals is
of later date) and full-grown men are required to hear
the “inspired” narrative with holy awe, for Samson
was a type of Christ, and though St. Paul might
consider such things “an allegory,” they were a
dread reality to the foxes and the Philistines. . God
took such a lively interest in Ezekiel’s culinary
�4
“ Which things are an Allegory?
arrangements that He desired him to bake his cakes
with human excrement, and we are required to read
the filthy statement with becoming gravity and to
exclaim “ How unsearchable are his judgments and
his ways past finding out ! ”
Christians fail to see how wofully they are dis
honouring God by their acceptance of a series of
puerile fables alike unworthy of God and man ; they
have less light than St. Paul, who saw in these things
“an allegory.” Jews are supposed to have as much
reverence for the Bible as Christians; but those on
terms of intimacy with Jews—good strict Jews—
who see them in the family circle and have frequent
opportunities of studying them, are surprised and
sometimes shocked at the very familiar use they make
of Biblical expressions in ordinary conversation.
“ Here I am, for thou calledst me,” as Samuel said to
Eli; “I am not eloquent,” as Moses said to Adonai;
“ Why eatest thou not? ” as Elkanah said to Hannah,
etc. At first these constant allusions to a book
Christians generally reserve for private perusal, and
from which they rarely quote save on solemn occa
sions, seem rather irreverent; but to many Jews the
Scriptures are literally household words; whether
in their case familiarity has bred contempt they are
too cautious to discover. They certainly make very
free and easy use of them, and are very fond of
Bible riddles :—Which was the straightest man in
the Bible ? Joseph, so they made him a ruler; which
was the rudest girl in the Bible ? Ruth, because she
uncovered Boaz’s feet and trod on his corn, etc. But
strict, devout Christians take a very solemn view of
the Bible ; poor Samson, with his pretty game of
foxes’ tails, cannot win a smile from them. True,
Sarah laughed at God himself and was not punished,
but Christians dare not laugh at Ezekiel and his in
viting repast lest God should be angry; for though
�“ Which things are an Allegory A
5
David tells them that “ His anger endureth but a
moment,” even they know better ; an unchangeable
being cannot be serene one minute and furious the
next; once angry always angry, so we had better not
laugh; for though Sarah got off, poor Michal was
severely punished for what we should call commend
able ridicule of an indecent young man whose latter
days were in perfect harmony with the indecorous
scene which excited Michal’s contempt and derision
and which cost her the joys of maternity. Christians
never permit themselves to realise the scenes they
read so often with such imperturbable gravity, and
extremely interesting would it be to study the effect
produced upon both Jew and Gentile by a modern
Rabbi or Bishop who should conduct himself like
Saul, David, or Ezekiel. When the Jews of old saw
Saul quite naked they at once concluded that the
Spirit of the Lord had. come upon him and that he
was “among the prophets.” Would the modern
Jews come to the same favourable conclusion if the
Chief Rabbi at St. Helen’s were to act in the. same
manner F
No wonder there are infidels and atheists. Chris
tians are unwittingly fighting against themselves,
their Bible, and their God. By their ignorance,
bigotry, and superstition, they are alienating more
and more ’gentle and devotional souls who have no
innate tendency towards infidelity, but who find in
the current theology nothing elevating, edifying, or
encouraging. Good well-meaning Christians are
daily driving earnest inquirers into the boundless and
attractive realms of free-thought, whereas, if their
very rational questions could be sensibly, if not
altogether satisfactorily answered, many of them
might retain the main tenets- of a faith from which
they have reluctantly drifted away never again to
return.
�6
“ Which things are an Allegory
We may ask or guess Bible riddles, which, though
not approved, may be endured, but we may not ask
Bible questions in which there is no facetious element
without being suspected or even positively accused of
having “ got a twist.” Ask in a spirit of earnest
inquiry where Mrs. Cain came from ; how God ful
filled His promise to Ahab of bringing him back a
glorious conqueror ; whether the command given to
Hosea really came from God;—-you will be told that
“ it is not for us to pry into God’s mysteries,” and
that, “ if you go on like that you will soon be an
infidel.” In all probability you wiZZ “go on like
that,” and you will be an infidel, but who is to blame ?
Surely not those who wish to “ prove all things and
to hold fast that which is good,” rather those who
would gloss over everything and hold fast much that
is bad. The chief spoke in the religious wheel is
indisputably the Bible, and how it is that the religious
world is blind to a fact so obvious is wholly incredible.
Holy and zealous people might so easily and so grace
fully .avail themselves of the loop-hole afforded by
St. Paul, “ Which things are an allegory; ” but no !
Jacob really came to fisty-cuffs with Almighty God,
and would have done for him had not God hit upon
a tender part of his body to grip hold of, and thus
got free! Moses really was favoured with a private
view of what the unscrupulous writer of the Penta
teuch irreverently alludes to as God’s “ back parts,”
—words which ^inspired writers hesitate to quote,
which they would willingly soften down, but which
students are forced to admit are correctly translated
from the supposed original. Some of the language
made use of in the Bible is so offensive to occidental
ears that it would be an immense relief to discover
a mis-translation or an interpolation which might
save the reputation of the writers and screen the
volume from the attacks of the enemy ; however it is of
no use to talk in this strain to the orthodox, to whom
�“ Which things are an Allegory.”
7
the whole volume is the “Word of God,” and con
sequently must not be tampered with. It is of no
use to tell them that Moses could not have seen what
God has not got to show, “ parts” and that no whale
could possibly swallow even a boy. They will tell
you that “with God all things are possible,”
and that child-like faith is all that is required
of us. If the blessed day should ever dawn (as
God grant it may) when the so-called Word of
God shall be sifted as wheat and purged of its
dross, what a tiny volume will remain ! But that
they did it in ignorance, a heavy load of guilt lies at
the Christians’ door. They have well-nigh smothered
their God with Bibles, and have so effectually concealed
his parental attributes, that they have succeeded in
literally stamping out the idea of him in many a
gentle and noble mind. A coarse, vulgar, revengeful
God will not do for a refined, susceptible, and for
giving man. Cultivated people must have a cultivated
God. The Old Testament God may have done well
enough for people in ancient times, but in .these
days we cannot respect a God who “hisses,” swears
in his wrath, curses, “ is furious,” enjoys the “ sweet
savour ” of burning bullocks, shows his “ back parts ”
to his favourites, and commands the wholesale
slaughter of women and children. We want a God
less like a devil than the bogy of the Old Testament.
“ Better,” as Bacon says, “to have no opinion of God
at all than one that is unworthy of him.” But, unfortu
nately, people do not agree with Bacon any more than
they do with St. Paul, and they strenuously resist any
attempt to set a more dignified deity before their eyes,
quite satisfied to adore what, by a happy inconsistency,
they would shrink from imitating. However, there
is a ray of hope gently glimmering from Natal. In
the sixty-fifth Report of the Swedenborg Society
recently published we read that Bishop Colenso “ has
intimated his willingness to accept copies of such
�8
“ Which things are an Allegory
works as the Society might be pleased to grant him,”
and the Rev. Thomas L. Marsden trusts that the one
entitled “ Conjugal Love ” will be included in those
selected ; the Report adds “ It is to be hoped that the
Bishop will be led by the light shed on the letter of
the Word in these works to see his way out of the
difficulties which a literal interpretation has presented
to his mind, and also to realise the truth that the
letter killeth, but the spirit givethlife.” These things
we sincerely hope are not “ an allegory,” we should be
unaffectedly sorry if by any oversight “ Conjugial*
Love ” should be omitted in the list prepared for
Colenso. We hope it and all the seer’s lucid works
already grace his book-shelves, for with such a man
as Swedenborg for a master what may we not expect
from such a pupil as Colenso !
* So spelt in Swedenborg’s book.
I' 4
X
‘, U
li,
i
’
?» •
PRINTED BY C. W. REYNELL, LITTLE PULTENEY STREET, HAYMARKET.
�
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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
Date
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2018
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Conway Hall Ethical Society
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Pamphlet
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Title
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"Which things are an allegory."
Description
An account of the resource
Place of publication: London
Collation: 8 p. ; 18 cm.
Notes: From the library of Dr Moncure Conway. Title from Galatians iv, 24 and a plea for a more liberal interpretation of the Bible.
Publisher
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Thomas Scott
Date
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1875
Identifier
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CT135
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Bible
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[Unknown]
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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 ("Which things are an allegory."), 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-Criticism
Conway Tracts
-
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eb860b1eedaddc34de43d425f3efa21a
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Text
three letters
ON
THE VOISEY JUDGMENT
AND
THE CHRISTIAN EVIDENCE SOCIETY’S LECTURES.
REV. GEORGE WHEELWRIGHT,
MEET. COLL., OXON.,
VICAR OF CROWHURST.
PUBLISHED BY THOMAS SCOTT,
MOUNT PLEASANT, RAMSGATE.
Price Sixpence.
�THREE LETTERS, &c.
-------- ♦---------
IR, —Many doubtless have read with pleasure the
article upon Mr Voysey’s trial, which appeared
in the Examiner of February 25th 1871. Many, too,
will echo the ominous words with which it closes :
“ Every such judgment tells more against the Church
than against the individual condemned: it puts
another nail into its coffin,”—and in truth the last
charge against Mr Voysey (derogation and depraving
of Holy Scripture) leaves the clergy in a most per
plexing situation. All knew them to be muzzled
slaves, and yet hardly thought that the muzzle fitted
as closely as the Lord Chancellor is determined to
make it. One result I venture to predict from the
Voysey judgment—the opening of people’s eyes to
the immense gulf that now separates the two
antagonists, Orthodoxy and Free-thought. Hitherto
it has been the object of many well-meaning persons
to make this appear less than it really is—as not so
very serious after all. However much many have
tried to patch up an unreal agreement between them,
it is from this moment impossible—henceforth it is
“ guerra a cuchillo,” and there is no discharge in that
war, one or other must yield. How many amiable
but weak attempts have been made to reconcile
Scripture with science, as the phrase is; to shew
that the two can go arm in arm without dispute or
jostling! Good-bye to all such pleasant dreams!
We are now told plainly that the Church’s living
S
�and Christian Evidence Society's Lectures.
5
to. Can anything be more characteristic of the per
versity of our ecclesiastical rulers than the way in
which the Ritual Commission has dealt with the
Athanasian Creed ? Has it granted any relief to the
laity who are still compelled to listen and be damned?
So far from it, that a dispute has actually been carried
on in the Times between certain members of the said
Commission as to what its real opinion upon the sub
ject was. The same mulish obstinacy meets us at
every turn. Not a jot nor a tittle will our rulers
surrender. We laugh at the Papal “ non possumus
it is just the same here. Relief and concession have
to be forced from them. Surely the events that have
lately passed before their eyes should act as a warning.
Let them think of the French statesman and his vain
boast, “ Pas unpouce de notre territoire, pas une pierre
de nos forteresses.”
It is of no use to be for ever beating about the
bush—lip salve never yet cured heart-disease; and
religious belief in England (as our forefathers under
stood the words) is paralyzed at the core. The
whole question of miracles will have to be faced
sooner or later, and the more our minds get accus
tomed to this fact the better. The present is an era
of rapid changes. Events that appeared at one time
impossible, now take place in the natural order of
things, and the only cause for wonder is that they have
been so long in coming. And thus it is that the
present is called an infidel age, wanting in reverence
and respect for religion. Is it so ? Let the great
debate upon education bear witness. Did the people
ask for education without religion—were they satis
fied with merely secular teaching ? The immense
majority for religious instruction proves to me that
we are just as our forefathers—a stubborn generation,
not a faithless one : our hold upon religion is as
firm as ever. We cling to it with the grasp of death.
We are quite as God-fearing as they; but, and here
�and Christian Evidence Society’s Lectures,
y
minds are becoming awakened, their judgments un
fettered, their eyes opened, their ears unstopped, and
the first use they make of their liberty is to turn upon
their spiritual pastors and masters with the direct
question, “ Are these things so 1—we have heard these
words for many a long year—from our childhood the
same story has been in our ears. We enquire of our
fathers—of the years that are past, and all tell the
same tale—they have known none other. Is it then
all true, ‘ are these things so ? ’ ”
All over the land is this query pricking and
stirring men’s hearts—diverse in form and mode.
One puts it in this shape, another in that. One can
stomach this—his fellow stickles at that. The Bible
is torn piecemeal. Brave is the man who can
swallow the whole at a gulp, and feel none the worse
for it—but alas ! for this degenerate age—ofo/ vuv
(Bpotoi sl<ri—such hearty digestions are rare indeed.
I remember once sitting upon a fallen log in the
backwoods of America, and discussing Bible matters
with an old Buckeye (as the Ohio men were then
styled) and the only thing that troubled his primitive
imagination was the tale of Samson and the foxes—
“ the darn’d skunks ” as he called them—it was
impossible—he was sure he himself could never have
done it, and he had trapped and hunted ever since he
could draw a trigger.
Caricature you will say—no rude image neverthe
less of men’s thoughts in this present age. Each one
has his Samson and the Foxes—his own particular ob
jection, doubt and difficulty, and be sure the day is not
far distant when the long pent up murmurs will swell
into one loud chorus of dissent, which the clergy and
ministers of every denomination will find impossible
to stifle, and very hard to answer.
These thoughts passed across my mind upon
reading a paragraph in the Times of last April 26th,
headed “ Christianity versus Scepticism,” and giving
�and Christian Evidence Society’s Lectures.
9
time for the authorized teachers and expounders of
Holy Writ to come down from their lofty pedestals
and stem the torrent which is bursting in upon us
from so many and such different quarters. Sooth to
say—it is none too soon. For the temper of the pre
sent age is not to be played with, pooh-poohed, or put
aside with the cold remark, “ we have heard this
before, the Church and the World never did agree,
nor ever will." So much the worse for the Church
then—if she cannot lead men, she must give up all
thoughts of driving them. If she can return a
satisfactory answer to all that is implied in those
words, “ are these things "so,” well and good, if not,
she must give place to those that can. Let her look
well to her armour and the joints of her harness, for
new times bring new weapons, and unless she can
forge something very different from aught that her
armoury has yet supplied, I fear that perilous days
are in store for her. Theologians can no longer
shelter themselves behind the ample shield of Bishop
Butler, or fly for refuge to Paley and Lardner. Arch
bishop Thomson himself confesses in the notes to his
“ Bampton Lectures on the Atonement," that “ the
Analogy of Bishop Butler by no means covers all the
ground contested at present,’’ and yet he finds a
sufficient defence in the works of the two writers
above mentioned. Truly this is going down to
Egypt for help, a staff no better than a broken reed.
I look upon this fact of Divines turning Lecturers as
the greatest compliment that could be paid to the
spirit of Free Enquiry which is now abroad. That
the missiles with which modern Criticism has for the
last thirty years been fighting the great battle of Free
Thought should have at last pierced the pachy
dermatous hide of slumbering orthodoxy; and so
stung Prelates and Preachers that for very shame
they can no longer keep silence, is indeed a thing to
make a note of. And moreover that they should
�and Christian Evidence Society's Lectures, n
Since last I wrote to you, Sir, the oracle has de
livered its response—Bos loculus est—eleven doughty
champions of orthodoxy have shown us with what
vigour they can repel the assaults and stem the tide
of infidelity, which, as they assert, is rushing in upon
this devoted land; and after a careful perusal of their
several lucubrations, I am bound to confess that the
great doings of Dame Partington and her mop have
received in them a fresh illustration. Every one
knows the story of the starving peasants in France
previous to the First Revolution, when their bitter
cry for bread reached at last the gilded halls of the
Tuileries, and the Queen, amazed at the importunity
of the “wordy peoples,” asked naively, why, if they
were without bread, did they not eat those dear little
buns which her Majesty, and the other grandes dames
du Palais found so palatable. Now it seems to me
that our hierarchy are pretty much of the Queen’s
way of thinking, as I shall show further on. For
years past a storm has been brewing in fitful, violent
gusts, striking upon the Church’s venerated fabric
from every quarter of the compass—doctrine after doc
trine challenged—time-honoured traditions assailed
and overthrown—old landmarks obliterated—the.
veil torn ruthlessly from so called mysteries—prac
tices hallowed by the superstitious reverence of past
ages stripped of their tinsel covering, brought forth
and exposed to the garish light of day—“ what was
once rejected as heresy now all but recognised as
Dogma,” and become the common talk of men, until
at last the culminating point is reached in the Voysey
case, and our spiritual guides and leaders are forced,
per fas aut nefas, to confess that silence on their part
is no longer becoming; in fact, impossible.
How many vexed questions, how many perplexed
and anxious thoughts have the last ten years awak
ened in the breasts of men—a restless uneasiness,
one knows not why or wherefore, has grown up in
�and Christian Evidence Society’s Lectures. 13
the so-called facts which we have been taught to
believe in about the Christian religion, facts indeed,
or ecclesiastical fictions ? Are we to look upon what
we find recorded in the Bible as true in its history,
true in all its details as our teachers have always told
us ? Is the old saying, ‘ Gospel true,’ to pass any
longer current amongst men ?”
What is the reply ? The querists, serious and
earnest men (sceptics though they be), are seeking for
some solid, wholesome mental food to strengthen and
nourish both their hearts and intellects, and, as I said
at the beginning of this letter, the Archbishop and
his coadjutors when asked for bread, deal out buns
instead, and moreover stale buns, of a somewhat
puffy and indigestible kind. Let an unprejudiced
reader go through these eleven lectures (they should
have made up the baker’s dozen) and point, if he
can, to any doubts dispelled by them, to honest
difficulties openly and manfully faced.
A few words shall substantiate this. The lectures
are broken up into three groups, the first treats
of three subjects—Materialism, Pantheism, Positiv
ism ; the second of science and revelation, and the
nature and place of the miraculous testimony to
Christianity; group the third embraces the following
subjects—the gradual development of revelation, the
alleged historical difficulties of the Old and New
Testament, the mythical theories of Christianity, the
evidential value of St Paul’s Epistles, Christ’s teaching
and influence on the world, the completeness and
adequacy of the evidences of Christianity. Such is
the Bishops’ answer, such their mode of dealing with
the religious problems of the present day, and I
maintain that as controversial writings (it is in this
light only that I am viewing them) they are valueless,
and worse, they are damaging to the sacred cause
which they have been put forth to defend. With one
or two exceptions, hardly any of the real difficulties
�and Christian Evidence Society's Lectures. 15
fathers after the sober fashion of by-gone days,
but who can no longer believe all that their ancestors
did, or follow them in their blind unquestioning
faith, their docile submission to their spiritual pas
tors and masters. Sad will it be if ever the thought
and intelligence of this land revolt from the Church’s
teaching, as no longer answering to their spiritual needs
and aspirations, to that yearning for greater breadth
and freedom, that passionate desire for the Truth, the
whole Truth, and nothing but the Truth, which
has seized upon so many hearts at the present day,
making itself heard in the oft-repeated question, “are
these things so 1 ”
Two much mooted points are especially prominent
in the controversy we are now engaged in, viz.,—■
The moral difficulties that are felt in reference to
some parts of the Old Testament, and. secondly,
the authenticity of St John’s Gospel, and it is truly
ominous to find them both omitted from these Lec
tures. W^e are told indeed in the Preface that a
Lecturer could not be got for the first, and with
regard to the latter, Professor Lightfoot,. who had
undertaken it, expressed a desire that his Lecture
should not be published. Bishop Ellicott speaks of
this as most unfortunate and regretable—hiatus
vcdde deflendus—and well he may, for after the great
question of miracles there is none of such grave
import as this of the Fourth Gospel. Considering
how much depends upon it, one is struck with
wonder at the cool audacity which professes to meet
its adversaries in fair and open combat, and then
shrinks from the very trial that would most have
put its manhood to the test. What must the outside
world think of such a proceeding 1 What is this,
but giving great occasion to the enemies of the
Truth to blaspheme ? Of the whole eleven Lec
tures, there are only three that can be said to deal
with the special difficulties of our day, viz
The
�and Christian Evidence Society’s Lectures.
words •, but the Professor has no such fear, and he
certainly manages to make a very small argument
go a long way. How far this dialectical skill would
avail against an unbeliever in the fact of the
Resurrection appears somewhat doubtful. I would
ask any impartial reader of this Lecture whether he
has got out of it all that the writer thinks he has
put therein. The most that can be said is that
St Paul believed in the Resurrection, and fortifies
that belief by recounting the other traditionary
appearances of our Lord, which were current in
the church at his day. We now come to the Lecture
which has the most direct bearing upon the chief
stumbling block of our age, viz :—the question of
miracles. Years ago M. Guizot maintained it as
a special difficulty of Religion, to get people to
believe in the supernatural. And this spirit of
incredulity, like an avalanche set in motion, gathers
force and intensity with each succeeding year. A
singular instance of this has just presented itself
in the case of Dr Kalisch, the well known Biblical
expositor.
In his elaborate Commentary upon the Pentateuch
(of which the first volume, containing the Book of
Exodus, appeared in 1855) he describes the Plagues
of Egypt as based upon natural circumstances, adding
that “ their miraculous character is unmistakeably
observable in the following points,” which he then
proceeds to enumerate. Whereas, in the first part of
his Commentary on Leviticus (lately published) in
the chapter on “ The Theology of the Past and the
Future,” he says plainly, “ Miracles are both 'impossible and incredible—impossible because against the
established laws of the universe, and incredible be
cause those set forth by tradition, are palpable inven
tions of unhistoric times.” Which now is Philip
drunk, and which Philip sober here ? But to proceed
with Dr Stoughton’s Lecture on. the Nature, and
�and Christian Evidence Society’s Lectures. 19
Testament subserve a moral end or purpose; or he
knew how impossible it now is to get people to be
lieve in the ark’s capability for holding a pair of all
living creatures, the standing still of the sun, or its
going backward on the dial—in Balaam’s ass or
Jonah’s whale—in the death of twenty-seven thousand
people at once by the sudden fall of a wall—or in
that most stupendous miracle of the Old Testament,
the recovery to life of the dead Moabite when his
body touched the bones of Elisha.
Whatever be his reason, the love of simplicity or
what not, this shirking of the most difficult part of
his argument tells strongly against him; it is no
proof of faith in a cause, to keep half of it in the
dark, and every one feels that the whole Book must
stand or fall together. But as Dr Stoughton well
knows, one thing and one thing only, could make
men accept the whole of the Bible as strictly and per
fectly true, viz., the belief in its Infallible Inspiration.
So long were its pages beyond the breath of cavil,
none dared to raise his voice or stretch forth his
hand against the sacred ark of God’s truth. But this
incubus once removed, this bugbear of literal inter
pretation taken out of the way, and henceforth men
were free to make diligent and honest inquiry into
the truth of what they read in the Bible, and the
first fruits of this freedom we are now reaping in
England.
One thing we may thank the Bishops for, the
generous and kindly spirit in which they regard the
scepticism of the present day; neither is this as easy
a matter as one might think it. Call to mind the
flood of abuse which theologians have been too prone
to heap upon an opponent; their ferocious hatred of
everything that bore the name of Free-thought; the
determination to find therein* “ a set and system of
opinions, the most slavish, the most abject and base,
* Bentley’s Phileleutherus Lipsiensis, p. 4.
���
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
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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Three letters on the Voysey judgment and the Christian Evidence Society's Lectures
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Wheelwright, G.
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Place of publication: Ramsgate
Collation: 20 p. ; 18 cm.
Notes: From the library of Dr Moncure Conway. Printed by Turnbull and Spears, Edinburgh. The letters, written to Thomas Scott, centre around Voysey's trial, reported in the 'Examiner' of February 25th, 1871. Voysey's major work The Sling and the Stone was condemned by the conservative wing of the Anglican Church and William Thomson, Archbishop of York, began proceedings against him in 1869. He was summoned before the Chancery Court of York for heterodox teaching, where he defended his case for two years. He appealed to the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council which gave its judgement on 11 February 1871. The pamphlet contains three letters; the full lectures to the Christian Evidence Society are not printed. Date of publication from KVK.
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Thomas Scott
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[1871]
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G5517
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Bible
Heresy
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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 (Three letters on the Voysey judgment and the Christian Evidence Society's Lectures), 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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Text
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English
Bible-Criticism
Charles Voysey
Christian Evidence Society
Conway Tracts
Trials
-
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Text
NATIONAL SECULAR SOCIETY
THE
CREED OF CHRISTENDOM:
ITS FOUNDATIONS CONTRASTED WITH ITS
SUPERSTRUCTURE
BY
WILLIAM RATHBONE GREG
“The Prayer of Ajax was for Light.”
With a Preface by W. R. Washington Sullivan, Author of
“Morality as a Religionf “Ethical Interpretationsf etc>
[issued for
the rationalist press association, limited]
WATTS & CO.,
17, JOHNSON’S COURT, FLEET STREET, LONDON, E.C.
1905
�“ I should, perhaps, be a happier, at all events a more useful, man, if my mind
were otherwise constituted. But so it is : and even with regard to Christianity itself,
like certain plants, I creep towards the light, even though it draw me away from the
more nourishing warmth. Yea, I should do so, even if the light made its way
through a rent in the wall of the Temple.”—Coleridge.
“ Perplex’d in faith, but pure in deeds,
At last he beat his music out;
There lives more faith in honest doubt,
Believe me, than in half the creeds.
“ He fought his doubts and gather’d strength ;
He would not make his judgment blind ;
He faced the spectres of the mind,
And laid them : thus he came at length
“ To find a stronger faith his own ;
And Power was with him in the night,
Which makes the darkness and the light,
And dwells not in the light alone,
“ But in the darkness and the cloud.”
—Tennyson.
“ No inquirer can fix a direct and clear-sighted gaze towards Truth who is
casting side glances all the while on the prospects of his soul.”—Martineau.
“ What hope of answer or redress?
Behind the veil, behind the veil.”
—Tennyson.
�PREFACE
A few explanatory words may be deemed necessary to a new and
revised edition of a work which aroused so much interest, and earned
the generous approval of all competent to offer an unbiassed opinion,
when it appeared over half a century ago. The Creed of Christendom,
in spite of the damaging character of its analysis of the historic
documents and of the ethos of popular Christianity; in spite, too, of the
comparatively expensive price at which it was issued, has passed through
nine editions—no mean tribute to its excellence. Its success was not
due to the novelty of the method or the arguments of its author: as he
himself candidly admits, it is the work of a man with the ordinary
education of an English gentleman, deeply interested in the religious
problem, and perplexed by the difficulties besetting the traditional
Belief. Nothing he advances was new to the serious student of Religion,
even in the fifties ; his masters are, in the main, such well-known Con
tinental authorities as De Wette and Baur; but he presents the results
of their labours with a freshness and a force; in a spirit at once so
manly and modest, so sincere, high-minded and devout, as to compel
the attention of unprejudiced, truth-loving men. In the half-century that
has elapsed the critical positions, both as regards the Old and the New
Testament, have been very notably advanced, but the author has nothing
to disavow. No conclusion of his has been invalidated by subsequent
inquiry; the progress of research has but confirmed his judgment where
it has not enlarged its scope and extended his criticisms beyond his
original purview. It has, therefore, been thought advisable to allow the
text to stand as he left it in his ninth edition, and merely to add an
occasional note, within parentheses, indicating the main advances
in Critical Knowledge tending to modify his conclusions on such
matters as the date of the Gospels and some of the Epistles. Space,
however, has made it necessary to compress the ample material of his
two volumes, and even to omit some entire chapters, such as that on
the modern refinements of the doctrine of inspiration; on miracles;
on the limits of reliance to be placed on Apostolic authority, and the
�PREFACE
4
problem of the Future Life, which, it may be mentioned, he confesses his
inability to solve. Mr. Greg is interesting and suggestive as usual in
handling these subjects, but their omission does not, it is believed,,
impair the general effectiveness of his argument. Nothing wttlly
necessary to it is sacrificed, and more than enough is retained to
substantiate his main conclusion, that the Scriptures of the Old and the
New Testament are inadequate to the controversial burden, placed on
them by the Reformers, of guaranteeing the credibility of the
incomprehensible tenets of orthodoxy.
The increased interest now generally felt in Biblical studies in England,
coupled with the growing consciousness of the unsettled and thoroughly
unsatisfactory condition of the religious problem, seems to promise a
still wider popularity for so admirably lucid, temperate, and reverent a
statement of the case against the popular Creed. Such a book should
prove for many a valuable introduction to the rational study of Religion,
and notably contribute to the cause of genuine reformation by the
exposure of the untenable nature of the traditional teaching. The path
of enlightenment is most effectually barred by the common assumption
of the inerrancy of the Scripture record in all matters of belief and
conduct. This work is designedly re published as a compendious
refutation of the claims of Religion built on authority, Biblical or
ecclesiastical; as an incentive to the study of the religious question, and
an encouragement to the cultivation of habits of thought and selfreliance in matters of belief. The moral of the book is that a man
should learn to think for himself. “ He,” says Zschokke, “ who does
not like living in the furnished lodgings of tradition must build his own
house, his own system of thought and faith, for himself.”
W. R. Washington Sullivan.
January, iQOg.
�CONTENTS
Preface to the Present Edition
PAce
3
.....
....
7
.....
13
Author’s Preface to the First Edition
Introduction to Third Edition
CHAPTER I.
Inspiration of the Scriptures
35
.....
CHAPTER II.
Authorship and Authority
of the
Pentateuch and the Old
Testament Canon Generally.
•
•
'
46
•
CHAPTER III.
53
The Prophecies ........
CHAPTER IV.
Theism
of the
Jews Impure and Progressive
.
.
60
.
CHAPTER V.
Origin of the Gospels
......
64
CHAPTER VI.
Fidelity of the Gospel History—Nature
and
Limits
71
CHAPTER VII.
.
Fidelity of the Gospel History Continued—Matthew .
80
CHAPTER VIII.
Same Subject Continued—Mark
and
Luke
.
.
.
87
.
.
.
91
CHAPTER IX.
Same Subject Continued—Gospel of John.
�CONTENTS
6
CHAPTER X.
Results of
the
Foregoing Criticism
CHAPTER XI.
Resurrection of Jesus.
.....
103
CHAPTER XII.
Is Christianity
a
Revealed Religion?
112
CHAPTER XIII.
Christian Eclecticism .
.
119
�PREFACE
THIS work was commenced in the year 1845,
and was finished in 1848. Thus much it is
necessary to state, that I may not be sup
posed to have borrowed without acknow
ledgment from works which have preceded
mine in order of publication.
It is now given to the world after long
hesitation, with much diffidence, and with
some misgiving. For some time I was in
doubt as to the propriety of publishing a
work which, if it might correct and elevate
the views of some, might also unsettle and
destroy the faith of many. But three con
siderations have finally decided me.
First. I reflected that, if I were right in
believing that I had discerned some frag
ments or gleams of truth which had been
missed by others, I should be acting a
criminal and selfish part if I allowed
personal considerations to withhold me
from promulgating them ; that I was not
entitled to take upon myself the privilege
Of judging what amount of new light the
world could bear, nor what would be the
effect of that light upon individual minds ;
that sound views are formed and estab
lished by the contribution, generation after
generation, of widows’ mites ; that, if my
small quota were of any value, it would
spread and fructify, and, if worthless, would
come to naught.
Secondly. Much observation of the con
versation and controversy of the religious
world had wrought the conviction that the
evil resulting from the received notions as
to Scriptural authority has been immensely
under-estimated. I was compelled to see
that there is scarcely a low and dishonour
ing conception of God current among men,
scarcely a narrow and malignant passion of
the human heart, scarcely a moral obliquity,
scarcely a political error or misdeed, which
Biblical texts are not, and may not be,
without any violence to their obvious signi
fication, adduced to countenance and
justify. On the other hand, I was com
pelled to see how many clear, honest, and
aspiring minds have been hampered and
baffled in their struggles after truth and
light, how many tender, pure, and loving
hearts have been hardened, perverted, and
forced to a denial of their nobler nature
and their better instincts, by the ruthless
influence of some passages of Scripture
which seemed in the clearest language to
condemn the good and to denounce the
true. No work contributed more than Mr.
Newman’s Phases of Faith to force upon
me the conviction that little progress can
be hoped for, either for religious science or
charitable feeling, till the question of Bibli
cal authority shall have been placed upon a
sounder footing, and viewed in a very dif
ferent light.
Thirdly. I called to mind the probability
that there were many other minds like my
own pursuing the same inquiries, and grop
ing towards the same light; and that to all
such the knowledge that they have fellow
labourers where they least expected it
must be a cheering and sustaining in
fluence.
It was also clear to me that this work
must be performed by laymen. Clergymen
of all denominations are, from the very
nature of their position, incapacitated from
pursuing this subject with a perfect freedom
from all ulterior considerations. They are
restrained and shackled at once by their
previous confession of Faith, and by the
�8
PREFACE
consequences to them of possible conclu
sions. It remained, therefore, too see what
could be done by an unfettered layman,
endowed with no learning, but bringing to
the investigation the ordinary education of
an English gentleman, and a logical
faculty exercised in other walks.
The three conclusions which I have
chiefly endeavoured to make clear are
these : that the tenet of the Inspiration
of the Scriptures is baseless and un
tenable under any form or modification
which leaves to it a dogmatic value ;
that the Gospels are not textually faithful
records of the sayings and actions of Jesus,
but, occasionally at least, ascribe to Him
words which He never uttered and deeds
which He never did ; and that the Apostles
only partially comprehended, and imper
fectly transmitted, the teaching of their
Great Master. The establishment of these
points is the contribution to the progress of
religious science which I have attempted
to render.
I trust it will not be supposed that I
regard this work in any other light than as
a pioneering one. A treatise on religion
that is chiefly negative and critical can
never be other than incomplete, partial,
and preparatory. But the clearing of the
ground is a necessary preliminary to the
growing of the seed ; the removal of super
incumbent rubbish is indispensable to the
discovery and extraction of the buried and
mtermingled ore ; and the liberation of the
mind from forestalling misconceptions,
misguiding prejudices, and hampering and
distracting fears must precede its setting
forth, with any chance of success, in the
pursuit of Truth.
Nor, I earnestly hope, will the book be
regarded as antagonistic to the Faith of
Christ. It is with a strong conviction that
popular Christianity is not the religion of
Jesus that I have resolved to publish my
views. What Jesus really did and taught,
and whether his doctrines were perfect or
superhuman, are questions which afford
ample matter for an independent work.
There is probably no position more safe
and certain than that our religious views
must, of necessity, be essentially imperfect
and incorrect ; that at best they can only
form a remote approximation to the truth,
while the amount of error they contain
must be large and varying, and niay be
almost unlimited. And this must be alike,
though not equally, the case, whether these
views are taught us by reason or by revela
tion—that is, whether we arrive at them by
the diligent and honest use of those facul
ties with which God has endowed us, or by
listening to those prophets whom he may
have ordained to teach us. The difference
cannot be more than this: that in the latter
case our views will contain that fragment,
or that human disguise, of positive truth
which God knows our minds are alone cap
able of receiving, or which he sees to be
fitted for their guidance ; while in the
former case they will contain that form or
fragment of the same positive truth which
he framed our minds with the capability of
achieving. In the one case they will con
tain as much truth as we can take in, in the
other as much as we can discover ; but in
both cases this truth must necessarily not
only be greatly limited, but greatly alloyed,
to bring it within the competence of finite
human intelligences. Being finite, we can
form no correct or adequate idea of the
Infinite ; being material, we can form no
clear conception of the Spiritual. The
question of a Revelation can in no way
affect this conclusion, since even the omni
potence of God cannot infuse infinite con
ceptions into finite minds—cannot, with
out an entire change of the conditions of
our being, pour a just and full knowledge
of his nature into the bounded capacity of
a mortal’s soul. Human intelligence could
not grasp it; human language could not
express it.
“The consciousness of the individual
[says Fichte] reveals itself alone; his know
ledge cannot pass beyond the limits of his
own being. His conceptions of other
things and other beings are only his con
ceptions; they are not those things or beings
themselves. The living principle of a living
Universe must be infinite, while all our
ideas and conceptions are finite, and
�PREFACE
^applicable only to finite beings. The Deity
is thus not an object of knowledge, but of
faith, not to be approached by the under
standing, but by the moral sense ; not to
be conceived, but to be felt. All attempts
to embrace the infinite in the conception of
the finite are, and must be, only accom
modations to the frailty of man........
“Atheism is a charge which the common
understanding has repeatedly brought
against the finer speculations of philosophy,
when, in endeavouring to solve the riddle of
existence, they have approached, albeit with
reverence and humility, the source from
which all existence proceeds. Shrouded
from human comprehension in an obscurity
from which chastened imagination is awed
back, and thought retreats in conscious
weakness, the Divine nature is surely a
theme on which man is little entitled to
dogmatise. Accordingly, it is here that the
philosophic intellect becomes most painfully
aware of its own insufficiency........But the
common understanding has no such
humility; its God is an Incarnate Divinity;
imperfection imposes its own limitations on
the Illimitable, and clothes the inconceiv
able Spirit of the Universe in sensuous and
intelligible forms derived from finite
nature 1”
This conviction once gained, the whole
rational basis for intolerance is cut away.
We are all of us, though not equally, mis
taken, and the cherished dogmas of each of
us are not, as we had fondly supposed, the
pure truth of God, but simply our own
special form of error—the fragmentary and
refracted ray of light which has fallen on
our own minds.1
But are we, therefore, to relax in our
pursuit of truth, or to acquiesce contentedly
in error ? By no means. The obligation
still lies upon us as much as ever to press
forward in the search; for, though absolute
truth is unattainable, yet the amount of
error in our views is capable of progressive
* “ Our little systems have their day ;
They have their day, and cease to be ;
They are but broken lights of Thee,
And Thou, O Lord, art more than they.”
—In Memoriam.
9
and perpetual diminution, and it is not to
be supposed that all errors are equally in
nocuous. To rest satisfied with a lower
degree of truth than our faculties are cap
able of attaining, to acquiesce in errors
which we might eliminate, to lie down con
sciously and contentedly in unworthy con
ceptions of the Nature and Providence of
God, is treason alike to him and to our
own soul. It is true that all our ideas con
cerning the Eternal Spirit must, considered
objectively, be erroneous, and that no
revelation can make them otherwise ; all,
therefore, that we require, or can obtain, is
such an image or idea of him as shall
satisfy our souls and meet our needs, as
shall (we may say) be to us subjectively
true. But this conception, in order to
become to us such satisfying and subjective
truth, must, of course, be the highest and
noblest that our minds are capable of form
ing;1 every man’s conception of God must
consequently vary with his mental cultiva
tion and mental powers. If he content
himself with any lower image than his intel
lect can grasp, he contents himself with
that which is false to him, as well as false
in fact—one which, being lower than he
could reach, he must ipso facto feel to be
false. The peasant’s idea of God—true to
him—would be false to me, because I should
feel it to be unworthy and inadequate. If
the nineteenth century after Christ adopts
the conceptions of the nineteenth century
before him, if cultivated and chastened
Christians adopt the conceptions of the
ignorant, narrow, and vindictive Israelite,
they are guilty of thinking worse of God, of
taking a lower, meaner, more limited view
of his nature, than the faculties he has
bestowed are capable of inspiring ; and, as
the highest view we are capable of forming
must necessarily be the nearest to the truth,
they are wilfully acquiescing in a lie—they
are guilty of what Bacon calls “ the apothe
osis of error,” stereotyping and canonising
one particular stage of the blunders through
which thought passes on its way to truth.
1 Religious truth is therefore necessarily pro
gressive, because our powers are progressive—a
position fatal to positive dogma.
�IO
PREFACE
Now, to think (or speak) ill of God is to
incur the guilt of blasphemy. It is surpris
ing that this view of the matter should so
rarely have struck the orthodox ; but they
are so intently occupied with the peril on
one side that they have become blind or
careless to the, at least, equal peril that lies
on the other. If, as they deem, erroneous
belief be dangerous and criminal, it must
be so whether it err on the side of deficiency
or of excess. They are sensitively and
morbidly alive to the peril and the sin of
not believing everything which Revelation
has announced, yet they are utterly blind
to what should be regarded as the deeper
peril and the darker guilt of believing that
Revelation has announced doctrines dis
honouring to the pure majesty of God. If
it be wrong and dangerous to doubt what
God has told us of Himself, it must surely
be equally so, or more so, to believe, on
inadequate evidence, or on no evidence at
all, that He ever taught doctrines so
derogatory to His attributes as many which
orthodox theology ascribes to Him. To
believe that he is cruel, short-sighted,
capricious, and unjust is an affront, an in
dignity, which (on the orthodox supposition
that God takes judicial cognisance of such
errors) must be immeasurably more guilty
and more perilous than to believe that the
Jews were mistaken in imagining that He
spoke through Moses, or the Christians in
imagining he spoke through Paul. He is
affirmed to be a jealous God, an angry God,
a capricious God, punishing the innocent for
the sins of the guilty, punishing with infinite
and endless torture men whom He had
created weak, finite, and ephemeral—nay,
whom He had fore-ordained to sin—a God
who came down from heaven, walked among
men, feasted at their tables, endured their
insults, died by their hands. Is there no
peril in all this, no sin in believing all these
unworthy puerilities of a Creator who has
given us Reason and Nature to teach us
better things ? Yet countless Christians
accept them all with hasty and trembling
dismay as if afraid that God will punish
them for being slow to believe evil of
Him.
I
We have seen that the highest views of
religion which we can attain here must,
from the imperfection of our faculties, be
necessarily inaccurate and impure; but we
may go further than this. It is more than
probable that religion, in order to obtain
currency and influence with the great mass
of mankind, must be alloyed with an
amount of error which places it far below
the standard attainable by human capa
cities. A pure religion—by which we mean
one as pure as the loftiest and most culti
vated earthly reason can discern—would
probably not be comprehended by, or
effective over, the less-educated portion of
mankind. What is truth to the philosopher
would not be truth, nor have the effect of
truth, to the peasant. The religion of the
many must necessarily be more incorrect
than that of the refined and reflective few,
not so much in its essence as in its forms,
not so much in the spiritual idea which lies
latent at the bottom of it as in the symbols
and dogmas in which that idea is embodied.
In many points true religion would not be
comprehensible by the ignorant, nor con
solatory to them, nor guiding and support
ing for them. Nay, true religion would
not be true to them—that is, the effect it
would produce on their mind would not be
the right one, would not be the same it
would produce on the mind of one fitted to
receive it and competent to grasp it. To
undisciplined minds, as to children, it is
probable that coarser images and broader
views are necessary to excite and sustain
the efforts of virtue. The belief in an zz®*
mediate heaven of sensible delight and
glory will enable an uneducated man to
dare the stake in the cause of faith or free
dom ; the idea of Heaven as a distant
scene of slow, patient, and perpetual pro
gress in intellectual and spiritual being
would be inadequate to fire his imagination
or to steel his nerves. Again, to be grasped
by, and suitable to, such minds, the views
presented them of God must be anthropo
morphic, not spiritual, and in proportion as
they are so they are false; the views of His
government must be special, not universal,
and in proportion as they are so they will
�PREFACE
il
livered it, where would it now have been ?
Would it have reached our times as a sub
amid clouds and thunder, and attested by stantive religion ? Would truth have
physical prodigies, are of a nature to attract floated down to us without borrowing the
and impress the rudest and most ignorant wings of error ? These are interesting,
minds, perhaps in proportion to their rude though purely speculative, questions.
ness and their ignorance. The sanctions
One word in conclusion. Let it not be
derived from accordance with the breath
ings of Nature and the dictates of the soul supposed that the conclusions sought to be
are appreciable in their full strength by the established in this book have been arrived
at eagerly, or without pain and reluctance.
trained and nurtured intelligence alone.1
The rapid spread and general reception The pursuit of truth is easy to a man who
of any religion may unquestionably be has no human sympathies, whose vision is
accepted as proof that it contains some vital impaired by no fond partialities, whose
truth; it may be regarded also as an equally heart is torn by no divided allegiance. To
certain proof that it contains a large ad him the renunciation of error presents few
mixture of error—of error, that is, cognis difficulties; for the moment it is recognised
able and detectable by the higher human as error its charm ceases. But the case is
minds of the age. A perfectly pure faith very different with the searcher whose
would find too little preparation for it in affections are strong, whose associations
the common mind and heart to admit of are quick, whose hold upon the past is
prompt reception. The Christian religion clinging and tenacious. He may love truth
would hardly have spread as rapidly as it with an earnest and paramount devotion,
did had it remained as pure as it came but he loves much else also. He loves
from the lips of Jesus. It owes its success errors which were once the cherished con
probably at least as much to the corrup victions of his soul. He loves dogmas
tions which speedily encrusted it, and to which were once full of strength and beauty
the errors which were early incorporated to his thoughts, though now perceived to
with it, as to the ingredient of pure and be baseless or fallacious. He loves the
sublime truth which it contained. Its pro church where he worshipped in his happy
gress among the Jews was owing to the childhood, where his friends and his family
doctrine of the Messiahship, which they worship still, where his grey-haired parents
erroneously believed to be fulfilled in Jesus. await the resurrection of the just, but where
Its rapid progress among the Pagans was he can worship and await no more. He
greatly attributable to its metaphysical loves the simple old creed which was the
accretions and its heathen corruptions. creed of his earlier and brighter days,
Had it retained its original purity and which is the creed of his wife and children
simplicity, had it been kept free from all still, but which inquiry has compelled him
extraneous admixtures, a system of noble to abandon. The past and the familiar
Theism and lofty morality, as Christ de- have chains and talismans which hold him
back in his career, till every fresh step for
* All who have come much into contact with ward becomes an effort and an agony,
the minds of children or of the uneducated every fresh error discovered is a fresh bond
doses are fully aware how unfitted to their snapped asunder, every new glimpse of
mental condition are the more wide, catholic, light is like a fresh flood of pain poured in
and comprehensive views of religion, which yet
We hold to be the true ones, and how essential upon the soul. To such a man the pursuit
tt is to them to have a well-defined, positive, of truth is a daily martyrdom—how hard
Somewhat dogmatic, and, above all, a divinely- and bitter let the martyr tell. Shame
altested and authoritative creed, deriving its
Sanctions from without. Such are best dealt to those who make it doubly so; honour to
with by rather narrow, decided, and undoubting those who encounter it saddened, weeping,
minds.
trembling, but unflinching still.
be false. The sanctions which a faith
derives from being announced from Heaven
�12
PREFACE
To this martyrdom, however, we believe
there is an end ; for this unswerving in
tegrity there is a rich and sure reward.
Those who flinch from inquiry because
they dread the possible conclusion ; who
turn aside from the path as soon as they
catch a glimpse of art unwelcome goal ;
who hold their dearest hopes only on the
tenure of a closed eye and a repudiating
mind—will, sooner or later, have to en
counter that inevitable hour when doubt
will not be silenced, and inquiry can no
longer be put by ; when the spectres of
old misgivings which have been rudely
repulsed, and of questionings which have
been sent empty away, will return “ to
haunt, to startle, to waylay”; and will then
find their faith crumbling away at the
moment of greatest need, not because it is
false, but because they, half-wilfully, half
fearfully, grounded it on false foundations.
But the man whose faith in God and
futurity has survived an inquiry pursued
with that “ single eye ” to which alone light
is promised has attained a serenity of soul
possible only to the fearless and the just.
For him the progress of science is fraught
with no dark possibilities of ruin ; no
dreaded discoveries lie in wait for him
round the corner ; since he is indebted for
his short and simple creed, not to shelter
ing darkness, but to conquered light.
�INTRODUCTION TO THE THIRD EDITION
This book was originally published nearly
a quarter of a century ago. Its sale, since
then, though by no means large, has been
singularly continuous and regular—the
number of copies taken by the public
having scarcely varied from year to year ;
and the second edition was disposed of
somewhat more rapidly than the first. It
is, therefore, fair to conclude that the work
met a permanent want felt by many of my
countrymen which no other writings at the
time accessible to them could furnish, and
at least temporarily filled a gap in our
literature which, so far as I am aware, has
not since been otherwise supplied. During
the period that has elapsed since its publi
cation, moreover, I have received many
gratifying and even touching testimonies
both from friends and strangers as to the
assistance which it rendered them and the
comfort which it suggested to them, when
their minds were perplexed and agitated by
the doubts and the questions which had
disturbed my own. Under these circum
stances I have acceded without demur to
the wish of my publisher to issue a new and
revised edition.
I have re-perused every chapter with
great care, but I have added little and
altered less. Here and there I have modified
a phrase where I thought I had expressed
myself too confidently or too harshly, or
where I appeared to have fallen into incor
rectness or exaggeration; but the changes
introduced have been few and slight. On
the whole, I thought it wisest and fairest to
leave the text as it originally stood, bearing
distinct marks of the date at which it was
written, when the topics discussed were
comparatively new to English readers, and
when the several authors who have since
handled them, and thrown so much light
upon them, had not yet put their views
before the world. But I have re-considered
every point with caution, and I am sure
with candour ; I have read with attention
and respect, and with a real desire to profit,
the various criticisms and replies which the
book on its first publication called forth ;
and I am bound to say that I see no reason
to believe that I was in error as to any
essential point. The progress made in
Biblical criticism and historical science
during the last five-and-twenty years has
furnished abundant confirmation, but I
think refutation in no single instance. It
is in no spirit of elation or self-applause
that I say this—even if with some unfeigned
surprise ; for I know better than most with
how little learning the book was written,
and how much learning—to say nothing of
genius and insight—has since been brought
to bear on the subject. Strauss’s great work
had, indeed, been published and translated
into English before my work appeared ;
but Bishop Colenso’s Inquiry into the
Pentateuch, Ecce Homo, Renan’s Vie de
Jésus and his Apostolic volumes, The Jesus
oj History, by Sir H. D. Hanson, Chief
Justice of South Australia—à work well
worth perusal, as having in some degree a
special standpoint of its own, and showing
the impression made by the evidence
adducible on a trained legal mind—and
Arnold’s Literature and Dogma, are all of
much later date.
*****
It was remarked by a friendly critic of
my first edition that, in approaching the
question of the resurrection of Christ from
�14
INTRODUCTION TO THE THIRD EDITION
the side of the Gospels instead of from
that of the Epistles, I had thrown away the
main strength of the case. The criticism
is just, and in deference to it I have since
reconsidered the subject from the point of
view suggested. The Epistles were of
prior date to the Gospels;1 the earliest
statement, therefore, that we possess of the
fact of the resurrection, as well as the only
one whose author we know for certain, is
that contained in Paul’s first Epistle to the
Corinthians xv. 3-8. Leaving out of view
the Gospels, then, the evidence of the great
foundation doctrine of the Christian creed
consists in these two indisputable points—
that all the Apostles and disciples believed
it, had no doubt about it, held it with a con
viction so absolute that it inspired them
with zeal and courage to live as missionaries,
and to die as martyrs ; and that Paul, fiveand-twenty years after the event, wrote of
it thus : “For I delivered unto you first
of all that which I also received, how that
Christ died for our sins, according to the
Scriptures, and that he was buried, and that
he rose again the third day according to
the Scriptures,1 and that he was seen of
2
Cephas, then of the Twelve ; after that he
was seen of above five hundred brethren at
1 The date of the Gospels is at best conjec
tural. No authority, however, we believe, would
place even the earliest of them before a.d. 60
or 65, many much later. Now, the Epistle to
the Corinthians was written almost certainly
about a.d. 57, and the other Pauline writings
between 52 and 68. (See Conybeare and Howson. )
[This note reflects the judgment of the author’s
time. For a compendious statement of the
latest views on the date of the Gospels, and of
the Epistles bearing the name of Paul, see the
Encyclopaedia Bíblica under “Gospels” and
“ Paul,” and the several epistles. See also Mr.
Whittaker’s Origins of Christianity (Watts)].
2 Our readers will not fail to notice the shadow
of doubt which the expression “according to
the Scriptures” throws over even this direct
testimony. “According to the Scriptures”
simply means, whenever it occurs, “in supposed
fulfilment of the erroneous interpretation of the
Old Testament Psalms and Prophecies then cur
rent.” Paul, moreover, it should be observed,
here merely speaks at second-hand, and declares
what he had been told by others, “ that which I
also received.”
I
once, of whom the greater part remain unto
this present, but some are fallen asleep.
After that he was seen of James, then of all
the Apostles. And, last of all, he was seen
of me also, as of one born out of due
season.”
Now, if this were all, if we had no further
testimony to the resurrection of Jesus from
the dead than that it was believed by the
whole original Christian Church, that the
Apostles and personal followers of Christ,
who must be supposed to have had the best
means of knowing it, clung to the convic
tion enthusiastically, and witnessed to it by
their preaching and their death ; and that
Paul, not a personal follower, but in con
stant communication with those who were,
made the above assertions in a letter
addressed to one of the principal Churches,
and published while most of the eye
witnesses to whom he appeals were still
alive to confirm or to contradict his state
ments ; if the case rested on this only, and
terminated here, every one, I think, would
feel that our grounds for accepting the re
surrection as an historical fact in its naked
simplicity would be far stronger than they
actually are. In truth, they would appear
to be nearly unassailable and irresistible,
except by those who can imagine some
probable mode in which such a positive and
vivifying conviction could have grown up
without the actual occurrence having taken
place to create it. Such explanation has
been offered by many writers—by Strauss,
by Renan, by Arnold, by Hanson, and
others. I have considered them all, I think,
dispassionately ; and, ingenious as they are
(especially the detailed one of M. Renan), I
am bound to say they do not satisfy my
mind— they do not convince me, I mean,
that the belief arose as they suggest. They
are very skilful, they are even probable
enough; but they do not make me feel that
the true solution of the mystery has been
reached. Nor can I, with any confidence,
offer one of my own, though I can conceive
one more simple and inherently likely than
those propounded.
But the real difficulty lies in the Gospel
narratives. The evangelists contradict the
�INTRODUCTION TO THE THIRD EDITION
apostle.
Nay, more ; they show that the
i5
received him out of their sight, fl his view
belief of the Christian Church was not may be said, moreover, to be countenanced
simple, uniform, and self-consistent, as
Paul’s statement would lead us to suppose,
but that it was singularly v^gue, various,
and self-contradictory. Nay, worse still;
they not only show in how many fluctuating
shapes it existed, but they suggest how the
belief may have formed itself by specifying
a number of the circumstantial details
around which it grew and solidified so
rapidly. In the Epistles and the Acts we
find simply the assertion of the fact, and
evidence to the universal conviction. In
the Gospels we read the several traditions
accepted in the Christian community, thirty
Of more years after the event, as to the
nature and surrounding context of that
©vent. Now, here commences our serious
embarrassment ; and the embarrassment
consists in this, that the new witnesses called
—possibly very incompetent ones—make it
impossible to arrive at any clear or definite
Conclusion as to the what or the how.
That is to say, we cannot frame any theory
whatever as to the resurrection, which is not
distinctly negatived by one or the other of
the evangelical accounts. If the occurrence
were to rest only on the Gospel narratives,
rational belief would be almost out of the
question. If the belief in the early Church
had been based upon these' narratives
(which it was not), that belief could carry
with it only the faintest authority. Let us
follow out this view a little in detail.
Some have imagined that the reappear
ance of the risen Jesus to his disciples was
©f the nature of those apparitions of departed
friends as to the occurrence of which there
exists such a mass of overwhelming testi
mony ; and the related mode of his appear
ances and disappearances give some primcl
facie colouring to the idea. He vanished
out of the sight of the companions at
Emmaus ; he ceased to be seen of them.
When the disciples were assembled at
Jerusalem, Jesus himself stood in the midst
of them (John adds in two passages, that
the doors were shut?) “While he blessed
them he was parted from them, and carried
Up into heaven.” In the Acts, a cloud
by the language of Paul himself, who classes
the appearance of Jesus to himself, along
with his appearances to others; yet his, we
know, was an apparition (rather an audition,
for he speaks of hearing him, not of seeing
him). But, then, this theory is distinctly
negatived by the assertions that Jesus
assured the affrighted disciples (who had
imagined him to be an apparition) that he
was actually thus present inflesh and bones,
his real old self, with hands and feet, and
bodily organs, and able and desirous to eat.
In fact, Jesus seems positively to have
refused to be considered in the light of the
supernatural being his startled followers
would at once have made of him, and did
make of him shortly after.
Others, again, adopt the supposition that
Jesus did not actually die on the cross, but
merely swooned and revived naturally, or
by the aid of Joseph of Arimathea, when
taken down and laid in a temporary
sepulchre. And this theory has many con
siderations in its favour, all of which are dis
cussed by Strauss and Renan. It appears,
though the several accounts do not tally
very closely, that he was not more than six
hours, or perhaps not more than_/hzzr, upon
the cross (how long in the grave we do not
know—perhaps not an hour); and that,
though so highly-wrought and delicate an
organisation as that of Jesus must have
been might well have succumbed to even
that brief period of agony, yet that such
speedy death from crucifixion was most
unusual, and excited the surprise of Pilate.
On this supposition, the subsequent appear
ances narrated in Luke and Matthew are
simple and natural enough, nor need we
trouble ourselves to speculate on his after
history and final disappearance from the
scene ; but, then, this theory neutralises
entirely the religious value of the occurrence,
besides being irreconcilable with the “non
recognition ” feature of the narratives, to
which I now proceed.
This feature is, in truth, the terrible em
barrassment which the Gospel narratives
present to those who hold the common
�r6
INTRODUCTION TO THE THIRD EDITION
creed on the subject of the resurrection.
Those narratives relate that many of the■ it is m the fourth Gospel that the non-recogi nition feature becomes most marked. Mary
disciples who saw him after he rose from
Magdalene, after Jesus had spoken to her
the dead did not recognise him. They
and she had turned to look at him, still
1 elate this of three or four of his most
supposed him to be the gardener.” His
remarkable appearances. Those who had
most intimate disciples, when they saw him
lived with him for years, and who had
m Galilee, “knew not that it was Jesus”
parted from him on the Friday, did not
even though he spoke to them ; and eve’n
know him again on the Sunday. If, then,
he was so changed, so entirely not his John himself only inferred the presence of
his master in consequence of the miraculous
foimer self, that they could not recognise
diaught of fishes, and Peter only accepted
him, how could they know, or how can we
the inference on John’s authority. “There
know, that the person assumed to be Jesus
fore, that disciple whom Jesus loved saith
was actually their risen Lord? Does not
this non-recognition almost irresistibly sug unto Peter, ‘It is the Lord.’ Now, when
Simon Peter heard that it was the Lord, he
gest the inferences, that the excited imagi
girt on his fisher’s coat and did cast himself
nations of his more susceptible disciples mto the sea.”
assumed some stranger to be Jesus, when
One more difficulty—a very grave one_
they learned that his body had disappeared
raised by the traditional accounts trans
from the sepulchre, and that angels had
affirmed that he was risen, and that those mitted to us in the Gospels, must be indi
“ whose eyes were holden,” who “doubted,” cated, but needs nothing beyond indication.
or “did not believe for joy and wonder,” These accounts all insist, in the strongest
were the more prosaic and less impressible 1manner, upon the detailed demonstration
that it was Jesus in bodily shape, in the same
of the beholders ? The difficulty is obvi
ously tremendous : let us look at the par actual form, with the same hands and feet
and the same digestive organs and human
ticulars.
needs, whom they had known three days
Matthew relates two appearances, in
before, and had seen nailed to the cross,
very general terms. Of the second he
who now again came among them and
says, “ but some doubted.” Mark — the
conversed with them. Jesus himself is
genuine Gospel of Mark, which, as we
know, terminates with the Sth verse of the made to assure them that he was not a
16th chapter-says nothing of any appear spirit, but flesh and bones that could be
handled. In this well-known presence,
ances ; but, in the spurious addition,
with these bodily organs and this earthly
repeats twice that those who asserted that
they had seen him were disbelieved, and frame, he is said to have been seen to ascend
that Christ, when he appeared himself to into heaven. Can flesh and blood inherit
the eleven, “upbraided them with their un the spiritual kingdom, or where was the
belief.” Luke narrates two appearances, body dropped, and when was the transmuta
tion carried out ?
and incidentally mentions that “the eleven”
But, now, instead of taking the Gospel
reported a third “to Simon.” With refer
ence to the first, he says of the two dis narratives as they stand promiscuously and
ciples, Cleophas and a friend, who walked as a whole, let us discard those portions
talked, and ate with Jesus at Emmaus for which are certainly or most probably unseveral hours, “their eyes were holden that genuine or spurious,and take into considera
they should not know him.” With refer tion only that residue which may be fairly
ence to the second appearance (“ to the assumed to embody the earliest traditions
eleven
it is said, first, “ that they were of the Christian community, and we shall
affrighted, thinking they had seen a spirit” find most of the difficulties we have just men
and, shortly afterwards, that “they yet tioned either vastly mitigated or quite dis
believed not for joy, and wondered.” But persed. In fact—and I would draw par
ticular attention to this conclusion—we who
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INTRODUCTION TO THE THIRD EDITION
show that tibe Gospels are rather traditional
than strictly historical narratives, absolutely
authoritative and correct, are the persons
who do special service to the doctrine of the
resurrection by removing obstacles to its
credibility. The whole of the accounts in
the fourth Gospel then fall away and cease
to embarrass us at all. At most, they only
serve to indicate how tradition had been at
work, and grown between the first and the
second century—at least one generation,
possibly two. Mark, probably the earliest
writer of all, never presented any embarrass
ment at all—unless, indeed, a negative one
—for he says not a word of post-sepulchral
appearances, and merely mentions the
appearance of “ a young man ” at the
tomb, who tells the disciples simply, and as
a message, that Jesus is no longer there,
but has gone before them into Galilee.1
Matthew, again, deals in general terms, and
gives an account almost identical with that
of Paul, though even less full and particular.3
Luke, alone, remains to trouble us ; Luke,
who probably wrote when apparitional
accounts had begun to multiply and
magnify ; whose perplexing narrative about
Emmaus is not even alluded to by any of
the other evangelists, and must almost
certainly have been unknown to them; and
who directly contradicts Matthew as to the
alleged command of Jesus that they should
go into Galilee to meet him. Matthew says,
“go into Galilee.” Luke says, “tarry in
Jerusalem.” Looking, then, at the matter
in this light, we may not unfairly accept
Paul’s statement as embodying the whole
of the recognised and authorised tradition
of the early Church on the subject of the
'appearances of the crucified and risen
Jesus. This assertion, and the general and
absolute conviction of the apostolic com
munity, remain as our warrant for believing
17
in the miraculous resurrection of our
Lord. Are they adequate? This is prac
tically the residual question calling for
decision.
It is perhaps far less important than is
commonly fancied. I have already (Chapter
XIII.) given my reasons for holding that,
except it be regarded as establishing, and
as needed to establish, the authority of the
teaching of Christ, his resurrection has no
bearing—certainly no favourable or con
firmatory bearing—on the question of our
future life.
Just as the confident conviction of the
earliest Christians, and the mighty influ
ence that conviction exercised over their
character and actions, constitute the chief
evidence of the resurrection of Christ, so
the existence of the Christian faith, its vast
mark in history, and its establishment over
the most powerful, progressive, and intel
lectual races of mankind, constitute the
strongest testimony we possess to its value
and its truth. This may, or may not, be
sufficient to prove its divine origin and its
absolute correctness, but it is the best we
have, and is more cogent by far than any
documentary evidence could be. Chris
tianity, as it prevails over all Europe and
America, constituting the cherished creed,
and at least the professed and reverenced
moral guide of probably two hundred
millions of the foremost nations upon earth,
is a marvellous fact which requires account
ing for, a mighty effect indicating a cause
or causes of corresponding efficacy. What
ever we may conclude as to its origin, that
origin must, in one way or other, have been
adequate to the subsequent growth. In
some sense, in some form, the victory of the
Christian religion must be due to some
inherent energy, excellence, vitality, suit
ability to the wants and character of man.
F * The word he uses, moreover, is significant : Mere circumstances could not explain this
he says,
“he is risen,” not draoratrei, victory. We may safely go a step further,
he is risen from the dead.
and say that this vital force, this inherent
3 Moreover, it is the opinion of some very com excellence, this appropriateness, must have
petent critics that the concluding portion of the
last chapter of Matthew is not entitled to the been somethingstrange,subtle,unexampled.
same character of indisputable genuineness as Those who conclude it, in consequence, to
the rest of the Gospel.
have been a special divine revelation offer
0
�18
INTRODUCTION TO THE THIRD EDITION
what we must admit to be -prime), facie the
simplest and easiest solution.
But the argument, as just stated, must
not be pushed too far. Three considerations
serve to indicate with how much caution,
with what a large survey of history, with
what a wide grasp and deep analysis of the
phenomena of mind in various times and
among various races, the problem must be
approached. Christianity is not the most
widely spread of the religions of mankind.
Buddhism is of earlier date, and counts
more millions among its votaries. Islam
ism took its rise later, was diffused more
rapidly, and rules over a larger area of the
earth’s surface. At one time it seemed as
if Christianity would go down before its
triumphant career. Some readers of his
tory may even be disposed to argue that
but for two men and two battles—possibly
but for a special charge of cavalry, or it
may be a sudden inspiration of the leading
generals—it might have done so. The
spread of Buddhism, the spread of Islam
ism, must have had an adequate cause, as
well as the spread of Christianity.
Again, the enthroned position and com
manding influence of our religion testify,
with power which we make no pretence of
resisting, to its truth and its surpassing
excellences. So much no sceptic, we fancy,
would wish, or would venture, to deny.
But this testimony is borne to Chris
tianity, not any dogma of the creed care
lessly called by that name ; to something
inherent and essential in the religion—not
to any particular thing which this or that
sect chooses to specify as its essence. It
does not testify at all—at least, the orthodox
are not entitled to assume that it does—to
the divinity of our Lord, to his miraculous
resurrection, to his atoning blood, to the
Trinitarian mystery, or to any one of the
scholastic problems into which the Athanasian Creed has endeavoured to condense
the faith of Christendom ; it may testify
only, we believe it does, to that apocalypse
and exemplification of the possibilities of
holiness and lovableness latent in humanity,
which was embodied in the unique life and
character of Jesus,
And, thirdly, it must be admitted without
recalcitration, though the admission carries
with it some vague and startling alarm of
danger, that Christianity, with all its un
approached truth and beauty, owes its rapid
progress, and, in some vast degree, its wide
and firm dominion, at least as distinctly, if
not as much, to the errors which were early
mingled with it as to the central and fault
less ideas those errors overlaid. On one
point, at least, all—even the thinking minds
among thé most orthodox—will agree :
that the mightiest and most inspiring con
viction among the earliest Christians, that
which vivified their zeal, warmed their elo
quence, made death easy, and fear impos
sible—that which, in fact, more than any
other influence, caused their victories—was
their unhesitating belief in the approaching
end of the world and the speedy coming of
their Lord in glory. That this was an
entire delusion we now all acknowledge.
Many of us go much further. Few will
doubt that the doctrine of the Messiahship
of Jesus aided most powerfully the triumph
of his religion among the Jews, and that of
his proper deity among the Gentiles (not
to mention other scholastic and pagan
accretions) ; and many now hold that these
are as indisputable delusions as the other.
In a word, truth has floated down to us
upon the wings of error, treasured up and
borne along in an ark built of perishable
materials, and by human hands ; some
devotees, therefore, still cling to the ark
and the error as sacred agencies worthy of
all reverence and worship, confounding
what they have done with what they are.
But we do not read that Noah thought it
incumbent upon him to continue out of
gratitude living in the ark when the water®
had subsided. On the contrary, as soon as
there was dry firm ground for the sole of
his feet, he came forth from his preserving
prison-house, and gave thanks and offered
sacrifices to the Lord.
“Are we yet Christians?” is the momen
tous question of the day, which is being
asked everywhere in a variety of forms.
It is the question asked, and answered in
�INTRODUCTION TO THE THIRD EDITION
19
the negative, in the last remarkable and less conventional, but assuredly a more
unsatisfactory volume of Strauss. “ Der correct and etymological, signification. 1
alte und der neue Glaube.” It is the ques
tion asked, but not answered, in a striking
monograph so entitled, which appeared in
a recent number of the Fortnightly Review.1
It is the question which is forcing itself
Upon the minds of all students of the tone
and temper of the times, who cannot fail to
recognise, with anxious speculation as to
the results, that a vast proportion of the
higher and stronger intellect of the age in
nearly all branches of science and thought,
as well as large bodies, if not the mass, of
the most energetic section of the working
Classes, is, day by day, more and more
decidedly and avowedly shaking itself free
from every form and variety of established
Creeds. It is the question, finally, which is
implied, rather than openly asked, in the
various uneasy and spasmodic, perhaps
somewhat blind, attempts on the part of
the clergy, in the shape of “Speaker’s Com
mentaries,” new churches, open-air preach
ings, Pan-Anglican Synods, and the like, to
meet a danger which they perceive through
the mist, but of which they have scarcely
yet measured the full significance and bear-
ingAre we, then, ceasing to be Christians ?
Is Christianity as a religion in very truth
dying out from among us amid the con
flicting or converging influences of this
fermenting age ? Most observers, seeing
Christianity only in the popular shape, and
the recognised formularies, feel that there
Ctth be little doubt about the matter.
Strauss, accepting the “ Apostles’ Creed ”
as the received and correct representation
of the Christian faith, is just as distinct in
his reply :
“ If, then, we are to seek no subterfuges,
if we are not to halt between two opinions,
if our yea is to be yea, and our nay, nay, if
we are to speak as honourable and straight
forward men, then we must recognise the
fact that we are no longer Christians ?”
I should give a different reply, but only
because I attach to the principal word a
1 March, 1873.
entirely refuse to recognise the Apostles’
Creed, or the Nicene Creed, or the West
minster Confession, or the Longer or Shorter
Catechism, or the formularies of any Church,
whether Catholic, Lutheran, Calvinistic,
or United, as faithful embodiments or
authoritative representations of Chris
tianity. Rightly regarded, the very shape,
character, purport, and title of these several
documents negative their claims to be
accepted as such. Christianity was not, in
its origin, a series of sententious propo
sitions, nor a code of laws, nor a system of
doctrine, nor a “ scheme” of salvation,1 but
1 The very phrase, “scheme of salvation,” as
applied to Christianity (like a somewhat analo
gous one often employed, “ making our peace
with God”), strikes us as offensive, and, when
considered in relation to the details of the
imagined scheme, almost monstrous. To those
who have been brought up to this scheme from
infancy of course it is not so (to such nothing
would be); but as describing the impression
made upon those who come to it later in life, and
who look at it from the outside, the word is not
too strong. A scheme is a “contrivance”—a
contrivance for attaining an object, or getting
out of a difficulty; and in the popular orthodox
view the Christian dispensation is in plain
words—and putting it in plain words will per
haps be found its best and sufficient refutation
and dissolvent—a “contrivance” concocted
between God and his Son, between the first and
second persons of the Trinity (or, as we should
say, between the Creator of all worlds and Jesus
of Nazareth, “ a man of sorrows and acquainted
with grief”), for enabling the human race to
escape from a doom and a curse which certain
scholastic theologians fancy (as an inference from
particular texts of Scripture) to have been in
some way incurred, either from the offences of
each individual or from the offence of a remote
ancestor. The “scheme” first assumes that the
original sin of our first parents (to say nothing
of our own) cannot be forgiven, nor the taint
inherited by their innocent descendants wiped
out, without the rigid exaction of a penalty
(“damnation,” eternal fire, and the like),
altogether disproportioned to the offence—that
the attributes of the Deity imply and involve this
‘ ‘ cannot. ” Then, since this doom is too horrible
and the doctrine laid down in the above assump
tion too repellent, alike in its basis and its con
sequences, to be endured or accepted, the
“scheme” then imagines the only Son of God
(one hour’s pain of whom, as a partaker of the
divine nature, is an equivalent to the eternal
�20
INTRODUCTION TO THE THIRD EDITION
the outcome and combination of a holy
life, a noble death, a wonderfully pure and
perfect character and nature, a teaching at
once self-proving and sublime—the whole
absolutely unique in their impressive love
ableness. I cannot but remember—what
is so strangely though so habitually for
gotten by all Christian sects—that this life
was lived, this death consummated, this
character displayed, this devotion exem
plified and inspired, this righteousness
preached and embodied, and this impression
made, years before any convert or disciple
conceived the fatal idea of formalising it all
into a “creed.” Nay, more, I cannot but
remember that it was not till long after the
elevating,spiritualising, restraininginfluence
of the actual presence and the daily example
of Jesus was withdrawn, that anything fairly
to be called “dogma” began to grow up
among that apostolic society, whose best
leaders even, as is obvious from the Gospel
narrative, stood on a moral and intellectual
level so far below their Master’s.1 I recognise
more and more—what I believe will be
generally admitted now—that the articles
of faith, the sententious dogmas, the
“scheme ” of salvation, which have usurped
the name of “Christianity” and “the
Christian religion,” originated almost wholly
with Paul and that not only did they not
form the substance of the teaching of Jesus,
but that they are not to be found in, nor
can obtain anythingbeyond the most casual,
apparent, and questionable countenance
from, his genuine and authentic words.
And, finally, I remember and wish to recall
to the reflection of my readers that this
Paul, who thus transformed the pure, grand
religion of his crucified Master, was dis
tinguished by a character of intellect,
subtle, metaphysical, and cultured, and
therefore singularly discrepant, from that of
Jesus ; that, moreover, he never knew Jesus
upon earth, had never come under his
influence, or been sobered by his saintly
spirit and his clear, practical conceptions ;
had never seen him in the flesh, nor heard
sufferings of all human beings) agreeing to bear
this doom instead of the myriads of the offending
race. An impossible debt is first invented,
necessitating the invention of an inconceivable
coin in which to pay it. A God is imagined bent
on a design and entertaining sentiments which
it seems simple blasphemy and contradiction to
ascribe to the father in heaven, whom Jesus of
Nazareth came to reveal to us—and then he is
represented as abandoning that design in con
sideration of a sacrifice, in which it is impossible
to recognise one gleam of appropriateness or of
human equity. What looks very like a legal
fiction, purely gratuitous, is got rid of by what
looks very like a legal chicanery, purely fanciful.
To use a terse simile of Macaulay, the scheme
“resembles nothing so much as a forged bond,
with a forged release endorsed on the back of it.”
But the essential point to bear in mind is that
not only do none of the genuine, authentic,
indisputable words of Christ contain or counte
nance this “scheme,” but the entire tone and
context of his teaching distinctly ignore it, and
are at variance with its fundamental concep
tions.
everything that was formal and therefore unessen
tial in religion and morality, and preached the
fulfilment of the moral element of the law and
the prophets, and who, instead of laying down
rules for the moral life of man, insisted upon
principles and change of heart—was he, who, of
all that Israel considered holy in the Scriptures,
retained as essential no more than love to God
and to one’s neighbour, and preached as the rule
of life, ‘ Whatsoever ye would that men should
do unto you, do ye even so unto them, for this is
the law and the prophets ’—was he a dogmatist,
a propounder of articles ? Was he, who made
the true moral life of love as independent of
Jewish doctrines as of the forms of the Jewish
theocracy, who gave its tone to genuine humanity
everywhere, even in the Samaritan and the
heathen—nay, even placed the humane Samaritan
above the orthodox priest and Levite—was he,
who, without appealing to any ecclesiastical
authority of tradition or of Scripture, found his
witnesses in the common sense and in the con
science of mankind, and recognised the true
prophet by the moral power he displayed—was
he a dogmatist ? Surely Christianity in its original
form was not a confession nor a symbol; and to
pass judgment on it as such is logically inadmis
sible.”—Dr. Scholten, Theol. Review, April,
1 “ Is the Apostles’ Creed the original Chris
tianity? we ask. Was it the mission of Jesus to
draw up a confession and to give currency to a
formulated doctrine, rather than to wake up fresh
religious life and to lay down principles which
must always hold good in matters of religion for
every doctrinal system ? Was he, who dropped
1873.
1 [Or rather with Paulinism, it not being
possible to ascribe the elaborated dogmatism of
the longer epistles to the Apostle himself. See
note above.]
�INTRODUCTION TO THE THIRD EDITION
¡his voice save m trance, in noonday visions,
and ecstatic desert communings.
It was the sincere and earnest, if some
what ambitious, purpose of this book to dis
entangle and disencumber the religion
taught and lived by Jesus from the miscon
ceptionsand accretions which have gathered
round it, obscured it, overlaid it, often actu
ally transmuted it, and which began to
gather round it almost as soon as its founder
had disappeared from the scene of his
ministry. I shall have failed if I have not
vindicated our right, and shown it to be our
duty, to seek that pure original of devotional
spirit and righteous life in the authentic
words and deeds of Christ, and in these
alone; and, in the prosecution of this
search, to put aside respectfully but courage
ously, whenever we see warrant for it, what
ever, whether in the Gospels or the Epistles,
confuses, obscures, blots, or conflicts with
this spirit and this life. I conceive that I
have vindicated this right, and established
this obligation by showing that even the
immediate personal disciples of our Lord
misconceived him ; that the chief of the
Apostles never was a companion or follower
of Jesus in any sense, but claimed and
gloried in what he declared to be a special,
separate, and post-mortem revelation ; and
that even the Gospels contain some things
certainly, and several things probably,
which did not emanate from Christ.
I am disposed, therefore, to give an
entirely opposite answer to Strauss’s ques
tion to that which Strauss himself has given,
and to believe that when we have really
penetrated to the actual teaching of Christ,
and fairly disinterred that religion of Jesus
which preceded all creeds and schemes and
formulas, and which we trust will survive
them all, we shall find that, so far from this,
the true essence of Christianity, being re
nounced or outgrown by the progressive
intelligence of the age, its rescue, re
discovery, purification, and re-enthronement
as a guide of life, a fountain of truth, an
Object of faith, a law written on the heart,
will be recognised as the grandest and most
beneficent achievement of that intelligence.
It may well prove its slowest as its hardest
2Î
achievement, for it is proverbially more
difficult to restore than to build up afresh.
To renovate without destroying is of all
functions that which requires the most
delicate perceptions, the finest intuition,
the most reverent and subtle penetration
into the spirit of the original structure, as
well as manipulation at once the most skilful
and the most courageous. And the task
imposed upon the thought and piety of the
coming time is to perform this function on
the faith and creed of centuries and nations
—and to perform it amid the bewildering
cries of interests and orders whom you will
have rooted out of their comfortable and
venerable nests ; of age, which you will
have disturbed in its most cherished pre
judices ; of affections, which you will have
wounded in their tenderest points ; of
massive multitudes whom you will have
disturbed in what they fancied were con
victions and ideas ; of worshippers whose
idol only you will have overthrown, but
who will cry out that you have desecrated
and unshrined their God ; of craftsmen of
the Ephesian type, who “know that by this
craft they have their wealth and of cynical
and faithless statesmen whose unpaid
policemen and detectives (the more efficient
and more feared because unseen), and whose
self-supporting penal settlement elsewhere
(the more dreaded by malefactors because
remotely placed, invisible, and undefined),
you will be supposed to have abolished.
Another cognate question has been much
discussed of late, and maybe answered, we
think, nearly in the same way. It is asked,
not only, “ Are we Christians ?” but “ Can
a Christian life be lived out in modern
days ?” “ Can we, and ought we to, regulate
our personal and social life according to
the precepts of Christ ?” “ Is Christianity,
in very deed and as nakedly preached and
ordinarily taught, applicable to modern
society and extant civilisation ?” “ Is it
possible, would it be permitted, can it be
wise or right, to obey and act out the
Christian rule of life in the British Isles
and in 1873?” — No question can be
more vital, none more urgent, none more
�22
INTRODUCTION TO THE TH1RD EDITION
essential to our peace of conscience.
None, we may add, is more sedulously and
scandalously shirked. There is no courage
and no sincerity or downrightness among
us in this natter. We half say one thing
and half believe another. We preach and
profess what we do not think of practising;
what we should be scouted and probably
punished if we did practise; what in our
hearts and our dim, fled-from thoughts
we suspect it would be wrong to practise.
Wherein lies the explanation of this de
moralising and disreputable untruthfulness
of spirit? Are the principles we profess
mistaken ? Is the rule of life we hold up
as a guide erroneous, impracticable, or in
applicable to the altered conditions of the
age; or is it our conduct that is cowardly,
feeble, self-indulgent, and disloyal? Is it
our standard that is wrong, or merely our
actions that are culpable and rebellious ?
Is Christianity a code to b^,lived up to, or
is it a delusion, a mockery, and a snare?
The specialities for the conduct of life
prescribed by Christ’s precepts and ex
ample, as gathered from the Gospels and
the proceedings of his first disciples, which
current civilisation does trammel and
oppose, and which current thought does
question and controvert, are five in number:
non-resistance to violence, the duty of
almsgiving, the impropriety of providence
and forethought, the condemnation of
riches, and the communism which was sup
posed to be inculcated, and which certainly
was practised, by the earliest Christians.
How far and under what modifications were
these special precepts wise and sound at
that time, and are they obligatory, permis
sible, or noxious now ?
I. The precepts commanding non-resist
ance and submission to violence are too
distinct and specific to allow us to pare
them away to anything at all reconcilable
with modern sentiments and practice, even
by the most extreme use of the plea of
oriental and hyperbolic language.1 They
1 “ I say unto you, that ye resist not evil; but
whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek,
go far beyond a prohibition of mere retalia
tion or blame of hasty resentment or vindic
tive memory. They distinctly command
unresisting endurance of violence and
wrong, whether directed against person or
property. Now, can this precept be carried
out, and would it be well that it should be?
The first consideration that occurs to us
is that obedience to it has never been
seriously attempted. The common sense
or the common instinct of Christians, in all
ages and in all lands, has quietly but per
emptorily put it aside as not meant for use.
Indeed, Christians have habitually fought
from the earliest times just as savagely as
Pagans. They have seldom dreamed even
of confining themselves to self-defence—
self-defence, indeed, being condemned just
as decidedly as aggression. Nay, they
have habitually fought in the name, and, as
they firmly believed, in the cause of Christ,
have gloried in the title of “good soldiers
of Christ,” have died with priestly blessing
and absolution amid the rage of conflict,
confident that their reward was sure, and
that angels would bear them straightway to
the bosom of the beloved Master whose
orders they had so strangely set at naught.
One sect, indeed, among Christians have
professed to take this precept of Jesus
literally—and what precept is to be so
taken if this is not ?—and have professed to
obey it to the letter. But, in the first place,
the Society of Friends never pretended to
carry out more than one-half of it. They
never went the length commanded in the
turn to him the other also. And if any man.......
take away thy coat, let him have thy cloak also.
And whomsoever shall compel thee to go a mile,
go with him twain.” “Put up thy sword, for all
they that take the sword shall perish by the
sword.” “ Blessed are the Meek, for they shall
inherit the Earth.”
It is true that in one of the Evangelists, just
before his arrest, Jesus is reported to have said
to the twelve : “ He that hath no sword, let him
sell his garment and buy one.” But the passage
is so unintelligible, and so entirely out of keeping
with the context, that it is almost certainly a
case of misreporting, or misconception, or wholly
unwarranted tradition. A few hours later Jesus
said: “ My kingdom is not of this world ; else
would my servants fight.”
�introduction to the third edition
23
act, must restrain and retribute. Who
They »ever, we believe, denied themselves among us would for a moment advocate
the luxury of passive resistance in its most their abolition? Who that deems it right
tesolute and ingenious devices. They did to maintain them can pretend that the
not return a blow ; but they did not make Christian precept of non-resistance is obey
the first so easy or so pleasant as to invite able in these days, or that he is endeavour
a second. And they have nearly died out. ing to obey it? His mind may be penetrated
In the next place, they tried the experiment with the spirit of patience, humanity, and
under circumstances which practically made consideration for his fellow-men which led
non-resistance comparatively safe and easy Jesus to utter that command ; but the com
•—namely, under the aegis of police and mand itself he simplyrepudiates and evades.
There is still another view of the subject
law. It is but seldom that any of us now
have actually to ward off a blow, or by force to be taken. The worst ill-service you can
to resist an attempt at robbery, because, do to the violent is to show them that they
theoretically and potentially at least, the may work their wicked will unpunished and
assailant knows and we know that the unchecked by the natural instincts of
accredited guardians of order are there to humanity. It is to make them “ masters
do it for us. In fact, the daily routine of of the situation,” to encourage them by
Civilised life is organised on the assumption success and impunity, to enthrone them as
that the necessity for self-defence and re mon archs of the world. It is to put good
sistance to evil is taken off our hands. ness under the foot of evil, and so to drive
Obedience to Christ’s precept becomes back the progress of Humanity, to retard
wonderfully simplified — or rather it is the coming of “ the Kingdom of Heaven.”
dexterously evaded—when we have only to It is, too, to harden the sinner in his wrong,
hand over our enemy to the nearest con the criminal in his crime, the brute in his
stable. We, in fact, do resist, and resist brutality ; to teach him to proceed in out
like the merest Pagan—only we resist by rages and iniquities that pay so well; to
deputy — disobeying vicariously, that we make him heap up wrath against the day
of wrath. Hundreds, who would have been
may be in a condition to obey in person.
The truth is, that the whole of our crimi stopped at the outset of their criminal
nal law and our police arrangements are career by prompt and timely'resistance,
based upon a systematic repudiation of the are led on by the impunity which sub
precepts in question; and the order of mission secures, till habits of crime are
modern society and the security of modern formed and recovery becomes hopeless.
life could not otherwise exist. In savage Non-resistance, then, becomes connivance
Communities and in disordered times every and complicity in wrong.
The orthodox reply to these common
man must succumb to violence or must
sense representations is well known, but
defend himself. In such times obedience
to the Christian precept would simply has never been convincing. The wrong-,
mean the extermination or enslavement of doer, it is said, will be so amazed and
all Christians, the supremacy of the violent melted by the calm acquiescence of his
by the self-suppression of the gentle. In victim that his heart will be touched and
our days division of labour is in the his conscience awakened by the unexpected
- ascendant; and we delegate the duties of issue. He will be taken unawares, as it
resisting violence and evil to a professional were—approached on an unguarded side ;
Class. If bad men abound — and where and thus be disarmed in place of being
would be the meaning of Christian precepts baffled, and converted instead of being
and exhortations to a Christian life if they defeated. But, we apprehend, this antici
did not?—then, if the criminal class are pation assumes one or two postulates fatal
not to prosper and to reign, police and the to its realisation, and somewhat contradic
repressive and punitive law must exist and tory. It assumes that resistance and
text, of facilitating assault and coercion.
�24
INTRODUCTION TO THE THIRD EDITION
retaliation are the rule—else there would
be nothing in the attitude of meek endur
ance to surprise the violent man into reflec
tion and repentance. It implies, moreover,
a susceptibility on the part of the violent
which the habit of violence soon destroys.
It seems, too, to pre-suppose a moral
atmosphere that could only be created by
a community of non-resisting Christians,
or a world at least in which the wrong-doers
were so comparatively few that they did
not suffice to form a public opinion and
class-sympathies of their own. It imagines
the criminal, the oppressor, and the selfseeker, recoiling from the very facility and
completeness of their success, and at the
very moment when the prospect of its joys
most radiantly dawns upon them. It
expects them to be “ touched by grace ”
just when the career of wrong looks most
inviting and most full of promise. Such
things may be—such things have been in
isolated instances; but can they ever
become normal? Can they be counted
upon so as to form a safe or rational guide
for conduct ?
There is, however, one case in which the
non-resistance doctrine is so obviously in
applicable that no one, we believe, has ever
dreamed of practising it—namely, in the
case of quarrels between nations. For one
country to submit to outrage and wrong at
the hands of another, wffien the means of
resistance lay in its power, has never
been held right or obligatory. The ques
tion has never seriously been brought under
discussion ; it being perfectly clear that
the relative position of different nations
from the earliest times even to our own
having always been that of jealous rivalry,
ceaseless controversy either smouldering
or flagrant, and hostility latent or avowed,
any people that habitually and notoriously
submitted to violence would simply be
over-run, enslaved, or trampled out. The
doctrine of non-resistance would mean
nothing but the destruction of the gentler
and finer races, and the rampant tyranny
of the stronger ; the reign of violence, not
of peace ; the triumph of Satan, not of
Christ ; in a word, the suicide of all meek
and truly Christian peoples.
It is plain, then, that we have here one
of three or four instances in which true
Christianity must be held to require a dis
regard of its own precepts in favour of its
own principles, in which Christ’s exhorta
tions are a guide to the spirit we must
cherish, not to the conduct we must pursue.
We must cultivate the temper which will
effectually prevent us from being quick to
resent or prone to retaliate, or severe to
punish ; but without abnegating those
natural instincts which are sometimes our
safest guides, or ceasing to maintain that
firm attitude of self-protection which, under
the governance of good feeling and good
sense, is the best antagonist to the preva
lence of violence upon earth.
II. Alms-giving.1—Scarcely any precept
in the Gospel is more distinct or reiterated
than this. No duty has been more peremp
torily insisted upon by the Church in all
times and in all countries. It was one of
the chief functions of the monastic institu
tions in the Middle Ages. It was made a
legal obligation in the days which suc
ceeded them. It is periodically inculcated
from Protestant pulpits, and the Catholics
are still more positive in enforcing it on
all the faithful. Our own country swarms
with proofs how literally and widely, genera
tion after generation, the obligation has
been acknowledged and fulfilled. The
Reports of the Charity Commission, in
countless volumes, bear testimony to the
innumerable charities that exist, and explain
a little what they have done. The recog
nition of the obligation of alms-giving is, to
this day, nearly as prevalent and as influ
ential as ever. It is of all Christian pre
cepts that which is most strictly obeyed—
1 “ Give to him that asketh of thee, and from
him that would borrow of thee turn not thou
away.” “Sell that thou hast and give alms.”
“ Let thine alms be in secret, and thy Father,
who seeth thee in secret, himself shall reward
thee openly.” “He that hath two coats, let
him impart to him that hath none.” “Give
alms of such things as ye have ; and behold all
things are clean unto you.
�INTRODUCTION TO THE THIRD EDITION
obedience to it being easier than to any
other. A pious man and a tender-hearted
woman do not feel comfortable or good
unless they habitually give to beggars, or
Spend a given portion of their income in
succouring the poor, or those who seem
such.
Yet nothing can be more certain than
that all this is very wrong and does infinite
mischief. The more literally the precept
[“give to him that asketh of thee”] is
obeyed, the more harm does it do. No
conclusion has been more distinctly or
definitely proved than that nearly all
charity, popularly so called—-more espe
cially all indiscriminate alms-giving—is
simply and singularly noxious. It is
noxious, most of all, to the objects of it—
whom it fosters in all mean and unchristian
vices, in idleness, self-indulgence, and
falsehood. It is noxious, in the next place,
to the deserving and industrious poor,
from whom it diverts sympathy. It is
noxious, also, to the entire community,
among whom it creates and cherishes a
class of most pernicious citizens. The form
which charity has a tendency to assume in
societies so complicated as all civilised
societies are growing now, is such as to
drain the practice of nearly all its inciden
tal good, and aggravate its peculiar mis
chiefs. The alms-giver has not his kindly
feelings called forth by personal intercourse
with the poor.; he subscribes, he does not
give; and charitable endowments and
bequests are ingenious contrivances for
diffusing the most widespread pauperism.
Paupers become sneaks and vagrants; and
vagrants soon grow into criminals. It is
needless to dwell on this; the consentaneous
voice of modern benevolence and states
manship alike is crying out against alms
giving as a mischief and a sin—as anything
but philanthropy or charity—as a senti
mental self-indulgence, and the very reverse
of a Christian virtue, a distinct, and now
nearly always a conscious, complicity in
imposture, fraud, laziness, and sensuality.
Everyone conversant with the question, all
true lovers of their fellow-men, all earnest
and practical labourers in the field of social
25
improvement, in the precise measure of
their experience agree that, in all schemes
and efforts for rectifying the terrible evils
of our crowded civilisation, the most
ubiquitous and insurmountable impedi
ments arise out of the practice of indis
criminate alms-giving and systematic
charity. One of the most pernicious and
objectionable of our daily habits is in strict
obedience to one of the clearest and most
positive of Christian precepts.
Nor is it in England only that alms-giving
is bad. It is bad everywhere; it is bad even
in the East; it is very bad in Italy; it is
worst of all perhaps in Spain. Everywhere
it creates a special class of the worthless
and the vicious, who soon become the
criminal. It is of its essence to do this. The
antagonism between the Christian precept
and what ought to be the conduct of really
Christian men is direct, complete, undeni
able, and all but universal.
The mischief has arisen out of the timehonoured practice—a practice which surely
now-a-days would be more honoured in the
breach than the observance—of looking
into the Gospel as a code of conduct instead
of a well-spring of spiritual influence, and
picking out texts to act by and to judge by,
as a French judge opens chapter and verse
of the Code Napoleon, instead of imbuing
ourselves with “the same mind that was in
Christ,” and letting our behaviour after
wards flow freely therefrom. Christ directed
us “to do good” to our fellow-men, especially
to the poor and helpless among them. In
our stupid literalism we have taken this as
a command to do them all the harm we can.
“ He that hath two coats, let him impart to
him that hath none ”—read as an exhorta
tion to use our abundance and our advan
tages to succour the needy and assist the
less fortunate, is conceived in a beautiful
and righteous spirit. But how, when the
second coat has been provided to meet next
year’s exigencies at the cost of much diffi
cult self-denial, and when the coat of the
coatless man has been pawned for drink,
and when the one which I give him is sure
to follow its predecessor up the spout ? Is
thrift to be discouraged and sodden
�26
INTRODUCTION TO THE THIRD EDITION
sensuality to be fostered, in the name of a discharge of which more vitally concerns
Christian duty ? The solution of the diffi their future welfare and their present peace.
culty is very plain. Jesus put the abstract It is their improvidence that condemns
principle in a parable or a concrete shape— them to squalor, to indigence, to depen
as he always did: He commanded a dence, to wretched habitations, to unwhole
benevolent frame of mind in the form of a some surroundings, and to all those moral
precept to the simplest action to which that evils and dangers which follow in the wake
frame of mind would instinctively lead in x)f these things. Few things can be more' b
circumstances when reflection would sug i certain than that, if our working classes are [
gest nothing to control the impulse. Pro lever to emerge from their present most 1
bably he never reflected on the danger of Unsatisfactory condition, if they are to
creating a whole tribe of begging impostors.. ^become respectable citizens and true Chris
Perhaps the danger did not exist in that tians, they must learn to save for to-morrow’s ,
day. In any case, what he really designed (’needs, and to regard it as something very
and desired was to produce a spirit of like a sin to leave to-morrow to take care
boundless compassion and love which of itself. To spend all their gains when >
should inspire his disciples with anxiety to those gains are ample, as they so habitually
do all the good possible, to render all do, is obviously not only a folly, but some
the aid possible to those who were in thing very like a fraud, inasmuch as it is
distress or want; his aim was to elevate, wasting their own substance, in reliance
not to degrade, to foster the Christian that when it fails they will be fed out of the
virtues, not the selfish vices ; and the very substance of others. It is the conduct so
texts that we read as enjoining alms-giving distinctly condemned in the case of the
are really those which, interpreted aright, foolish virgins—with an aggravation. They
most distinctly prohibit it. Here it is not do not forget to bring their oil; they de
that a Christian life is not feasible in our liberately waste it, knowing that they may
days ; it is only that it has become more say to their wiser neighbours, “ Give
difficult because less simple ; and that in us of your oil, for our lamps are gone
order to disentangle its dictates from its out.” The workman who, in receipt of
dicta, and to pierce to its inner significance, good wages, saves nothing out of those
demands more intellectual effort and more wages is wilfully improvident, relying on
intellectual freedom than we are prone to the providence of others; for what is the
exercise. Here, if anywhere, it is “ the property from which charitable funds are
letter that killeth, and the spirit that giveth derived and on which poor rates are levied
life.” What we have to ask ourselves is, but the accumulated savings of the provi
“What would Christ, with all the circum dent and thoughtful ? What is all invested
stances before him, have directed in these wealth, indeed, but the steadily augmented
times ?”
economies of those who, generation after
generation, have taken thought for the
III. Improvidence.—There is scarcely morrow? It is not too much to say that, i/
any exhortation in the line of social morality our artisan classes would for two genera
more incessantly or more unanimously tions—perhaps even for one—be as frugal
addressed to the people of this country than and as hoarding as the French peasant is,
that which urges them to provide for the and as the better portion of the Scotch and
future, “ to lay by for a rainy day”; to store Swiss once were, the whole face of the
up something of their daily earnings against country would be changed ; they would be
the time when those earnings may fail or menof property instead of being Proletaires;
be interrupted. Assuredly there is no ex they could live in comfortable dwellings in
hortation of which they stand more in need, place of wretched hovels and crowded
nor one which they more habitually neglect. alleys ; they might be men of comparative
Manifestly there is no duty the sedulous leisure instead of mere toilers all day and
�INTRODUCTION TO THE THIRD EDITION
every day, from childhood to old age;
education would be as much within their
teach as it is within the reach of their
betters now ; and the soil would be pre
pared in which all the Christian virtues
a»d most civilised enjoyments could easily
take root and flourish. With providence
‘would come sobriety, with property would
come independence, and all the facilities
for a worthy and a happy life would grow
up around them. In a word, providence,
if not the very first duty of the social man,
ranks very high among his duties, and is
the sine qua non of any decided and perma
nent improvement in either his social or
his moral state. About this there can be
no doubt. As to this there is no difference
Of opinion.
Yet it is not to be denied that this prime
duty, this imperative obligation, this indis
pensable condition of human advancement,
JS not only deprecated, but actually de
nounced and prohibited, in that Sermon on
the Mount which we are accustomed to
look to as the embodiment of the Christian
r rule of life.1
I
The words of Christ, and the exhorta’ tions of Christians, statesmen, economists,
\ and moralists, are, then, directly at variance
I —-and the latter are undeniably in the right.
rlow is the difficulty to be met ? How
must the discrepancy be reconciled ? Why
HOt meet the question honestly and boldly,
1 Take no thought for your life, what ye shall
eat, or what ye shall drink, nor yet for your
body, what ye shall put on........ Behold the
fowls of the air, for they sow not, neither do
they reap, nor gather into barns; yet your
heavenly Father feedeth them. Are ye not
better than they ?...... And why take ye thought
for raiment? Consider the lilies of the field,
how they grow; they toil not, neither do they
Spin ; and yet I say unto you, that Solomon in
all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.
Wherefore if God so clothe the grass of the
field...... shall he not much more clothe you,
O ye of little faith ?...... Take, therefore, no
thought, saying what shall we eat ? or what
shall we drink ? or wherewithal shall we be
clothed? But seek first the kingdom of God
and his righteousness, and all these things shall
be added unto you........ Take, therefore, no
thought for the morrow : for the morrow shall
take thought for the things of itself.
27
and avow that Jesus was addressing hearers
in a very different position and state of
mind from the labourers and artisans of
England—hearers who were wont to be not
too careless, but too anxious, about the
morrow; whose climate rendered com
paratively little necessary, and yielded that
little to very moderate toil; the conditions
of whose civilisation were incomparably
simpler than ours, and the obligations of_
whose labour less onerous.1 It may well
' be, then, that the exhortations which were
* sound and appropriate to them are inapplic
able to us. But we may probably, with
perfect safety and with no irreverence, go a
step further, and observe that Jesus, as was
natural and customary, not only spoke with
that Oriental picturesqueness of style which
is almost inevitably exaggeration, but fixed
his own thought and directed that of his
hearers upon the one side and phase of
truth with which he was at the moment
dealing, to the exclusion of all qualifying
considerations which must be taken into
account as soon as we begin to frame a
code of conduct or a system of action out
of one isolated discourse addressed to one
fraction of a great problem.2 Here, as
elsewhere, the idea which lies at the root
of the teaching is undeniably correct, for
that idea deprecates and assails the inor
dinate worldliness which constituted one of
the most insurmountable obstacles to the
reception of Christ’s doctrine. The error
is ours, not Christ’s—and consists in per
versely applying an exhortation addressed
to a congregation among whom a particular
quality of mind and temper was in excess
to a congregation with whom it is most
lamentably deficient. Had Jesus preached
to English artizans, we may feel certain that
1 See Renan, Vie de Jesus, ch. x., for a vivid
delineation of the entirely different surroundings
and features of the life of the Galilean fishermen
and peasants to whom these exhortations were
originally addressed.
2 It must be remembered, too, that all these
exhortations to lay up treasures in heaven, and
not on earth, were delivered under the prevail
ing impression that the Kingdom of Heaven,
where all things would be differently ordered,
was close at hand.
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INTRODUCTION TO THE THIRD EDITION
he would have chosen a different theme, and
used far other language. But that is by no
means all that needs to be said. Not a word
of Christ’s rebuke to those who were eaten up
by excessive care for the good things of the
world, and were led thereby to neglect
treasures immeasurably more precious,
can be pleaded in justification of those who
are so far from undervaluing these good
things that they insist upon their instan
taneous enjoyment and their immediate ex
haustion ; who lay by nothing for to-morrow
only because, like the brutes that perish,
they choose to eat up everything to-day;
who, if they follow the letter of the law in
laying up no treasure upon earth, utterly
flout its spirit, inasmuch as they certainly
lay up no treasure in heaven either. To
eschew over-anxiety for future comfort and
well-being, in order that we may be the
freer for the work of righteousness, is the
part of all true followers of Jesus; to “take
no thought for the morrow ” that we may
indulge the more unrestrainedly in the indo
lence and sensualities of to-day, and toplead
Gospel warrant for the sin, is to “wrest
Scripture to our own destruction.” It would
be well that divines should make this more
clear. The form which Christ’s teaching
would take were he to come on earth now,
without the least real change in its essential
spirit, would probably be : Take thought
for to-morrow, and provide for its neces
sities, in order that, when to-morrow comes,
you may be free enough from sordid wants
and gnawing cares to have some moments
to spare for the things that belong unto your
peace.
do further to secure eternal life, is told to
despoil himself of all his great possessions
and give them to the poor. He is reluctant
to do so, and Jesus thereupon observes
that “ a rich man shall hardly enter into
the Kingdom of Heaven.” According to
Luke, he said : “ Blessed are the poor, for
yours is the Kingdom of God. Woe unto
you that are rich, for you have received
your consolation.” “ Lay not up for your
selves treasures upon earth.” In the parable
of Dives and Lazarus, the rich man, with
out the faintest intimation that he had any
other fault than wealth, is relegated to the
place of torment ; while the beggar, without
the faintest intimation that he had any
other merit but his indigence and his sores,
is carried by angels into Abraham’s bosom ;
and the startling and sole reason assigned
for the award is that now it is the turn of
Lazarus to be made comfortable. It is true
that in one passage the harshness of Christ’s
denunciation is modified into the phrase,
“ How hard it is for them that trust in
uncertain riches to enter into the Kingdom
of Heaven”; and when his disciples are
horrified at hearing that hard sentence about
the needle’s eye, and exclaim, “ Who, then,
can be saved?” he holds out a mysterious
hope that in the infinite resources of the
Most High some way of escape from the
sweeping condemnation may be found.
Still the prevailing tone and teaching of the
Gospel cannot be gainsaid or veiled. It is
to the effect that the poor are the more
especial favourites of God; that wealth is a
thing to be shunned, not to be sought ;
that it distinctly stands in the way of salva
tion, and will probably have to be atoned
IV. Denunciation of Wealth.—There is for hereafter by terrific compensation.
>
no line of conduct so emphatically con
Yet in spite of this emphatic warning,
demned by Christ, and so eagerly pursued riches have been the most general pursuit
by Christians, as the pursuit of riches. of Christians in all ages and among all,
There is no mistake about either fact. classes, with rare exceptions in the monkish
Throughout the Gospels riches are spoken ages; among real and earnest, as well as
of not only as a peril and temptation to the among merely professing Christians ; among
soul, but as something evil in themselves, the accredited teachers of the Gospel (to a
something to be atoned for, something to be considerable extent), as well as among the
singled out for condemnation. The young mere following flock of lay disciples. Nay
man who has kept all the Commandments more, the most really Christian nations
from his youth up, and asks what he must I have been, and still are, the most devoted
�INTRODUCTION TO THE THIRD EDITION
to the pursuit of gain ; the most rigidly and
ostentatiously Christian sections of those
nations—shall we say the Quakers and
the Scotch?—have been among the steadiest
and most quietly successful in the search.
•Nor do they even affect to fancy that they
are wrong or disobedient in thus eagerly
striving for that wealth which their Master
so distinctly ordered them to eschew and
dread ; they put aside or pass by his teach
ing with a sort of staring unconsciousness,
as if it in no way concerned them ; with a
curious unanimity they vote his exhorta
tions obsolete,. abstract, or inapplicable ;
the most respectable of the religious world
give one day to their Saviour and six days
to their ledger ; the most pious banker, the
purest liver, the most benevolent nobleman,
never dreams of “despising riches,” or of
casting from him his superfluous possessions
as a snare to his feet and a peril to his soul.
On the contrary, he is grateful to God for
them ; he returns thanks for the favour
which has so blessed his poor efforts to
grow affluent; he resolves that he will use
his wealth for the glory of God.
Now, which is wrong—Christ in denoun
cing riches, or Christians in cherishing
them? Our Master in exhorting us to shun
them, or his disciples .in seeking them so
eagerly? Will modern society permit us
to despise them ? And would it be well
for modern society that we should ? The
answer, if we dare to state it plainly, does
not seem to be doubtful, or very recondite.
We must imbue ourselves with the spirit
of Christ’s teaching as enduring and sur
viving, ever extant through all forms and
all times ; and then we may safely ignore
the letter as simply the accidental and
temporary garment in which he clothed
his meaning. This is probably the unper
verted impulse of every true man, if he be
a reflective man as well. Perhaps, indeed,
the discrepancy between what Jesus
preached, and that which every good and
wise man would echo now, lies rather in
the phraseology than in the essence of the
doctrine. Jesus—living among the poor,
cognisant of their “ sacred patience ” and
their humble virtues, bent upon startling
29
his world out of the self-indulgent ease
into which it had sunk, and profoundly
impressed with the terrible influence which
the abundance and the love of earthly
possessions exercise in enervating the soul,
incapacitating it for all high enterprise, all
self-denying effort, all difficult achievement,
seeing with a clearness which excluded for
the moment all modifying considerations,
the benumbing power of that fatal torpor
and apathy which creeps over even nobler
natures when this life is too luxurious and
too joyful—-saw that absolute renunciation
would be easier and safer than the righteous
use of wealth. We, on the other hand,
who know—what was invisible in those
simpler days—how necessary is the
accumulation of capital to those great
undertakings which carry on the progress
and the civilisation of our complex modern
communities—naturally and rightly regard
the employment of affluence, and not its
pursuit or its possession, as the fit subject of
our moral judgments. It was in the grave
of a rich disciple that Jesus was laid after
the crucifixion ; and in the parable of the
talents he praised and recompensed the
men who had doubled their capital by
honest trading, while condemning and
despoiling the feckless and unprofitable
idler. And the wise and right-minded of
our day would denounce as unmercifully as
Christ himself the rich man whose riches
blind him to the far higher value of spiritual
aims and intellectual enjoyments ; whose
luxury and lavish expenditure make life
difficult for all around him ; whose ostenta
tion is an evil and a temptation to those
who take him as their model ; to whom
opulence is not a grand means, a solemn
trust, and a grave responsibility, but merely
a source of sensual indulgence and of
vacant worthlessness ; or who passes his
youth and manhood in adding house to
house and field to field, wasting life without
what alone renders life worth having. We
see, too, perhaps more clearly than could
be seen in earlier times, that poverty has
its own special and terrible temptations
and obstacles to virtue, as well as wealth ;
and that with us, at least, not affluence
�30
INTRODUCTION TO THE THIRD EDITION
indeed, but assuredly competence, smooths
the way, for the weaker brethren, to a
crowd of Christian excellences. And
finally, we recognise now, what was not
known—perhaps was not the case—then,
that though a rich man may use his wealth
righteously and well, it is scarcely possible
for him to get rid of it without doing
mischief, and therefore doing wrong.
V. Communism.—It cannot be said that
the Gospel anywhere distinctly preaches a
community of goods, though it may be felt
that the general tone of Christ’s exhortations
tends in that direction, But there can be
no doubt that the earliest body of disciples,
those who constituted what is termed the
Church of Jerusalem,” did so interpret
-the teaching of their Master, and “had all
things in common,andsold their possessions
and goods, and parted them to all, as every
man had need.” The same statement is
repeated still more fully and distinctly in
the fourth chapter of the Acts : “ There
was no one among them that lacked”;
“ lands and houses were sold, and the
produce laid at the Apostles’ feet for distri
bution”; “neither said any man that aught
of the things which he possessed was his
own, but they had all things common.” It
is difficult to describe the sinking of all
private property in a common fund in
plainer language ; and the strange story of
Ananias and Sapphira, though the words
are peculiar, can scarcely be held to invali
date the conclusion.
We can scarcely deny, then, that Com
munism is in some sort a corollary of
Christ’s teaching, though not a positively
commanded part of Christianity. It has
been held to be such by reforming sects
and theorists in many ages, and various
are the attempts recorded in history to
reduce it to practice. The notion has been
constantly reappearing during the last
century, now in France, now in America.
Many minds of no ordinary power have
spoken in favour of the conception. Even
Mr. J. S. Mill—who would have been a
great Christian if he had not been a great
thinker—has said that the idea at the root
of it was irrefragably sound, “that every
man should 'work according to his capaci
ties, and should receive according to his
wants.” Yet nothing is more certain than
that every endeavour to carry out the
scheme in practice has always failed, and,
as the eminent man just named has admit
ted, must always fail, being constantly ship
wrecked on the same rock. The character
istics of human nature forbid success. As
men are constituted, if they receive accord
ing to their wants, they never will work
according to their capacities. If they are
fed and provided with all they need, they
will, as a rule, work as little as they
can. As regards masses of men, it is
only their regard for self that will compel
them to do their duty by the community.
The institution of private property, the
conviction that “ if any man will not work,
neither shall he eat,” alone calls forth
adequate exertions, alone controls indefinite
multiplications, alone counteracts inveterate
laziness, alone raises nations out of squalor
and barbarism, alone lifts man above the
condition of the beasts that perish. Where
communism prevails, nine men out of every
ten try to get as much and to do as little
as they can ; and the system, therefore, is
found to be simply suicidal. It encounters,
too, whenever attempted, another fatal
difficulty. It is impossible for any external
authority to determine what are each man’s
capacities,or each man’s needs. Practically,
therefore, communism is fatal to civilisation,
fatal to order, fatal to freedom, fatal to
progress ; and if Christianity commands,
favours, or indicates communism, Chris
tianity is fatal to all these good things. But
the dim idea, the sound nucleus, which lies
latent in the communistic creed—-the con
ception, namely, that all our possessions,
as well as all our gifts, are to be held in
trust for the general good of all—is
eminently aud distinctively Christian.
It will be answered that Christianity
aims, and professes, so to remould men’s
natures, and to eliminate their vices, and
to neutralise their selfishness, as to make a
community of goods feasible, and not only
compatible with, but conducive to, the
�INTRODUCTION TO THE THIRD EDITION
highest and surest advance of the species.
But we are dealing with the practical
question: “ Is a Christian life liveable in
our day?” And if communism be only
possible and safe when all men are moulded
in Christ’s image and permeated by his
spirit, and is noxious and fatal to the best
interests of humanity under all other con[ditions, then, if a community of goods be
[Implied in a Christian life, that life indis
putably is not practicable now. It is found
in actual fact, and has been found in all
lands and in all times, that the institution
of private property, with all the selfishness
it involves and all the selfishness it fosters,
is alor.e capable of drawing forth from our
imperfect natures that strenuous and en
during exertion from which all progress
springs. And this experience is the one
sufficing, and perhaps the only unanswer
able, justification of that often-assailed and
.questioned institution.
To sum up the results of our inquiry. It
may be safely pronounced that non-resist
ance, almsgiving, improvidence, and comImunism are not practicable in these days,
and would be decidedly noxious, and there
fore obviously wrong ; while contempt of
Inches, if stopping short of that naked
condemnation of them conveyed in the
bald letter of the Gospel teaching, would
be feasible enough. But the spirit and
temper which Oriental imagination, hasty
generalisation, unreflecting intelligence,
unacquainted with the requirements of
Complex civilisation, and habitually hyper
bolic phraseology, would naturally embody
in those four exhortations, are as obligatory
and as feasible as ever. The thought—the
nucleus of the inner meaning—is sacred
Still and of enduring truth. It is only the
casual and separable shell of words in
which that thought was once conveyed that
Wft must regard as having passed away, or
possibly as never having been more than
figuratively or exceptionally appropriate.
And we may use our freedom of pene
trating to the true spirit and meaning of
¡Christ’s teaching through its casual or dis
guising letter, with the more boldness that
3i
it is only this spirit as to which we can feel
absolutely certain. Jesus spoke in Aramaic,
while his sayings are recorded for us in
Greek; and they must, therefore, have
passed through the process of translation
from one language into another; and,
moreover, from one language into another
whose genius is as singularly distinct as
that of the German from that of the French.
The record, too, it is pretty certain, did not
take shape till at least half a century, or
about a generation and a half, after the date
of the events recorded—ample time for
those events (whether facts or words) to
have been moulded and modified, by the
invariable practice of tradition, into the
conceptions of the human intermediaries
by whose agency they were handed down
—a time so ample that this process of
modification could not fail to have operated
largely. And, finally, the Gospels them
selves abound in indications that both the
disciples who heard and repeated Christ’s
sayings, and the evangelists who recorded
them in a foreign language, did not always
conceive them rightly or comprehend them
fully. Thus, what our English Testament
practically contains is simply the form
which the precepts of a great prophet and
Master, orally delivered, have definitely
assumed after having passed for a space of
fifty years or more, by the process of oral
tradition, through a succession of uncritical
and imaginative minds, none of which
grasped or understood them in their fulness
or their pure simplicity; and after being
subsequently exposed to the double risk of
transfusion, first from a Semitic into an
Aryan, and then from a classic into a
Teutonic, tongue. It would seem, there
fore, self-evident that this is a case in which
reliance on special phrases and expressions,
as well as on particular narrative details,
must be singularly unsafe and unwise;
and, as a fact, we find that even theologians
who most loudly deprecate and repudiate
this conclusion, when formalised in words,
do practically recognise its truth, by putting
their own gloss and interpretation on the
bare language of Scripture wherever they
find it necessary to do so; and that the
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INTRODUCTION TO THE THIRD EDITION
extent to which they use this liberty is
merely a question of degree. Only then,
we may fairly conclude—indeed, are forced
to conclude—only that “ mind which was
in Christ,” that spirit, temper, enduring and
inspiring character ; that life, in fine, which
shone through all his actions and permeated
all his sayings, and which was so vital, so
essential, so omnipresent, and so unmistakeable, as to have survived through all
the channels and processes of transmission
we have described, and defied their perils,
can safely be taken or followed as his real
teaching. Doubts and disputes among
Christians have been infinite as ’to the
“doctrine” of Christ—as to the “par
ticulars ” of what he said and did. None,
we believe, ever truly differed as to the
tone and temper of his mind or of his
teaching, as to the essential features of his
character, as to what he meant by “ Me”
when he said “ Follow me,” “ Learn of me,
for I am meek and lowly of heart, and ye
shall find rest to your souls.”
We may see now, too, how shallow and
how groundless are the fallacies of those
who jump to the conclusion that, in order to
realise and carry out a truly Christian life,
it is necessary to upset society, to abolish
the hierarchy of ranks, and introduce a
forced equality of position and possessions.
The Gospel, rightly read, gives no counte
nance to those wild theories of ignorance,
thoughtlessness, and envy. The New
Testament contains many precepts as to
our behaviour in those relations which
spring out of that very inequality of con
ditions which Christianity, in the view of
Communists, is supposed to discountenance.
Some of the more distinctively Christian
virtues, such as obedience and humility,
would seem to be especially appropriate to
a social organisation where rank, if not
“ caste,” holds sway. Certainly, as we
have learned by experience, some of the
most un-Christian vices, such as envy, lie
deep at the root of the passion for equality,
and have been seen to flourish with
malignant strength where that passion has
been most clamorous. Assuredly, too, we
should say that a system of civilisation in |
which masters and servants, rulers and
subjects, rich and poor, the humble and
the great, are recognised and established,
appears to offer field and scope for a wider
range and a greater variety of Christian
excellencies than a community in which a
dead level of uniformity should prevail.
Nor can we conceive any single form or
manifestation of “the mind which was in
Christ ” that may not thrive in fullest
vitality in society as now constituted, and
find ample work in purging its evils and
developing its capabilities, without seeking
to disturb its foundations. If Christianity
cannot flourish under any phase of social
and political organisation, if the seed of its
more peculiar qualities can only germinate
and fructify in soil enriched with the ruins
of ancient orders and ancestral institutions,
and flattened down by the hard grinding
steam-roller of democracy, it can scarcely
be the mighty or divine moral agency we
have hitherto conceived it.
Our conclusion, then, is, that we are and
may remain Christians, and that we can
and ought to obey the Christian rule of life;
but that in order to do either we must deal
with the kernel, not the husk; we must
penetrate to the true mind and temper of
Jesus through the accretions which have
overlaid it, the literalism which has dis
figured it, and (be it said with all reverence)
the Orientalism and the incompleteness, if
not the imperfection, which mingled with
and coloured it. Holding this, the utmost
possible conquests of intelligence and
learning are divested of their terrors. It is
not with Christianity that science can ever
be at issue; only with theology calling itself
Christian.
And now, having reached a time of life
when most subjects are grave, and when
some have grown very solemn—when the
angry passions of the controversialist can
find no breath or aliment in the thin, calm
atmosphere of fading years ; when egotism
has little left to gather round it; and when
few sentiments survive in pristine vividness
but the love of nature and the reverence for
�INTRODUCTION TO THE THIRD EDITION
truth—I may be allowed one parting word,
which, though personal, will scarcely be
deemed obtrusive. I not only disclaim any
position or feeling of antagonism to Chris
tianity ; I claim to have written this book
on behalf, and in the cause, of the religion
of Jesus, rightly understood. I entirely
repudiate the pretensions of those whom
I hold to have especially misconceived and
obscured that religion, to be its exclusive or
rightful representatives. I hold that thou
sands of the truest servants of our Lord are
to be found among those who decline to
wear what it is the fashion to pronounce
his livery, with the grotesque and hideous
facings of each successive age. I resent as
an arrogant assumption the habitual
practice of refusing the name of Christian
to all who shrink away from or assail the
errors and corruptions with which its
official defenders have overlaid the faith of
Christ. And I can find no words of
adequate condemnation for the shallow
insolence of men who are not ashamed to
fling the name of “ atheist ” on all whose
conceptions of the Deity are purer, loftier,
more Christian, than their own. Those
who dare to dogmatise about his nature or
his purposes, prove by that very daring
their hopeless incapacity even to grasp the
skirts or comprehend the conditions of that
mighty problem.1 Even if the human
intellect could reach the truth about him,
human language would hardly be adequate
to give expression to the transcendent
1 “ It must be that the light divine,
That on your soul is pleased to shine,
Is other than what falls on mine :
“ For you can fix and formalise
The Power on which you raise your eyes,
And trace him in his palace-skies.
“You can perceive and almost touch
His attributes, as such and such—
Almost familiar over much.
“ You can his thoughts and ends display,
In fair historical array,
From Adam to the judgment-day.
“ I cannot think him here or there—
I think him ever everywhere—•
Unfading light, unstifled air.”
— The Tivo Theologies: Palm Leaves,
by Lord Houghton.
33
thought.
Meanwhile, recognising and
realising this with an unfeigned humbleness
which yet has nothing disheartening in its
spirit, my own conception—perhaps from
early mental habit, perhaps from incurable
and very conscious metaphysical inaptitude
—approaches far nearer to the old current
image of a personal God than to any of the
sublimated substitutes of modern thought.
Strauss’s Universum, Comte’s Humanity,
even Mr. Arnold’s Stream of Tendency that
Makes for Righteousness, excite in me no
enthusiasm, command from me no worship.
I cannot pray to the Immensities and the
Eternities of Carlyle. They proffer me no
help ; they vouchsafe no sympathy ; they
suggest no comfort. It may be that such
a Personal God is a mere anthropomorphic
creation. It maybe—as philosophers with
far finer instruments of thought than mine
affirm—that the conception of such a being,
duly analysed, is demonstrably a self-con
tradictory one. But at least in resting in
it, I rest in something I almost seem to
realise ; at least I share the view which
Jesus indisputably held of the Father whom
he obeyed, communed with, and wor
shipped; at least I escape the indecent
familiarity and the perilous rashness, stum
bling now into the grotesque, now into the
blasphemous, of the infallible creed-concocters who stand confidently ready with
their two-foot rule to measure the Im
measurable, to define the Infinite, to describe
in precise scholastic phraseology the nature
of the Incomprehensible and the substance
of the great Spirit of the universe.
I have but one word more to say—and
that is an expression of unfeigned amaze
ment—so strong as almost to throw into
the shade every other sentiment, and in
creasing with every year of reflection, and
every renewed perusal of the genuine words
and life of Jesus—that, out of anything so
simple, so beautiful, so just, so loving, and
so grand, could have grown up or been
extracted anything so marvellously unlike
its original as the current creeds of
Christendom ; that so turbid a torrent could
have flowed from so pure a fountain, and
�34
INTRODUCTION TO THE THIRD EDITION
yet persist in claiming that fountain as its
source; that any combination of human
passion, perversity, and misconception
could have reared such a superstructure
upon such foundations. Out of the teach
ing of perhaps the most sternly anti-sacerdotal prophet who ever inaugurated a new
religion, has been built up (among the
Catholics and their feeble imitators here)
about the most pretentious and oppressive
priesthood that ever weighed down the
enterprise and the energy of the human
mind. Out of the life and words of a
Master, whose every act and accent
breathed love and mercy and confiding
hope to the whole race of man, has been
distilled (among Calvinists and their cog
nates) a creed of general damnation and
of black despair. Christ set at naught
“observances,” and trampled upon those
prescribed with a rudeness that bordered
on contempt:—Christian worship, in its
most prevailing form, has been made al
most to consist in rites and ceremonies, in
sacraments and feasts and fasts and
periodic prayers. Christ preached per
sonal righteousness, with its roots going
deep down into the inner nature, as the
one thing needful:—his accredited messen
gers and professed followers say No!
purity and virtue are filthy rags ; salvation
is to be purchased only through vicarious
merits and “imputed” holiness. Jesus
taught his disciples to trust in and to
worship a tender Father, long-suffering and
plenteous in mercy:—those who speak in
his name in these later days tell us rather
of a relentless Judge, in whose picture, as
they draw it, it is hard to recognise either
justice or compassion. In Christ’s grand
and simple creed, expressed in his plainest
words, “eternal life” was the assured in
heritance of those who loved God with all
their hearts, who loved their neighbours
as themselves, and who walked purely,
humbly, and beneficently while on earth:—
in their Christian sects and churches of
to-day, in their recognised formularies and
their elaborate creeds, all this is repudiated
as infantine and obsolete; the official
means and purchase-money of salvation
are altogether changed; eternal life is re
served for those, and for those only, who
accept or profess a string of metaphysical
propositions conceived in a scholastic brain
and put into scholastic phraseology; and,
to crown the whole, a Hell is conceived so
horrible as to make Heaven an impossi
bility,—for what must be the temper of the
Elect Few who could taste an hour’s
felicity, while the immeasurable myriads of
their dearest fellow-beings—their husbands
and wives, their mothers, their children —
were writhing in eternal torments within
sight and hearing of their paradise? Theo
logians transmogrify the pure precepts and
devotion of Jesus into a religion as nearly
as possible their opposite, and then decree
that, whoever will not adopt their travesty,
“ without doubt shall perish everlastingly.”
It is the old spectacle which so disturbed
Jeremiah, reproduced in our own days:—
“ A wonderful and a horrible thing is com
mitted in the land ; the prophets prophesy
falsely, and the priests bear rule through
their means; and the people love to have
it so : and what will be the end thereof
�THE
CREED OF CHRISTENDOM
Chapter I.
INSPIRATION OF THE SCRIPTURES
two modes of stating the same doctrine
—a doctine incapable of being defined
or expressed with philosophical precision,
from our ignorance of the modus
operandi of divine influences on the
mind of man. Both propositions mean,
if they have any distinct meaning at all,
this affirmation :—that every statement
of fact contained in the Scriptures is
true, as being information communicated
by the Holy Spirit—that every dogma
of Religion, every idea of Duty, every
conception of Deity, therein asserted,
came from God, in the natural and un
equivocal sense of that expression. That
this is the acknowledged and accepted
doctrine of Protestant Christendom at
least is proved by the circumstance that all
controversies among Christian sects turn
upon the interpretation, not the authority,
of the Scriptures; insomuch, that we
constantly hear disputants make use of
this language : “ Only show me such or
such a doctrine in the Bible, and I am
silenced.”—It is proved, too, by the
pains taken, the humiliating subterfuges
so often resorted to, by men of science to
show that their discoveries are not at
variance with any text of Scripture;—
pains and subterfuges now happily dis
carded by nearly all, as unworthy alike of
the dignity of Science and the rights of
controversy, and as no longer required
amid the increasing enlightenment of the
When an Inquirer, brought up in the
popular Theology of England, questions
his teachers as to the foundations and
evidence of the doctrines he has im
bibed, he is referred at once to the Bible
as the source and proof of all: “ The
Bible, and the Bible only, is the religion
of Protestants.” The Bible, he is told,
is a sacred book of supreme and un
questionable authority, being the pro
duction of writers directly inspired by
God to teach us truth—being, in the
ordinary phrase, The Word of God.
This view of the Bible he finds to be
universal among all religious sects, and
nearly all religious teachers; all at least
of whom, in this country, he is likely to
hear. This belief in the Inspiration of
the Scriptures is, indeed, stated with
some slight variations, by modern
Divines; some affirming that every
statement and word was immediately
dictated from on high; these are the
advocates of Plenary or Verbal Inspira
tion ;—others holding merely that the
Scriptural writers were divinely informed
and authorised Teachers of truth and
narrators of fact, thoroughly imbued
with, and guided by, the Spirit of God,
but that the words, the earthly form in
which they clothed the ideas, were their
own. These are the believers in the
essential Inspiration of the Bible.
It is obvious that the above are only
35
�36
INSPIRATION OF THE SCRIPTURES
age.—It is proved by the observation,
so constantly forced upon us, of theolo
gians who have been compelled to
abandon the theory of Scriptural Inspira
tion or to modify it into a negation, still
retaining, as tenaciously as ever, the
consequences and corollaries of the doc
trine; phrases which sprung out of it,
and have no meaning apart from it; and
deductions which could flow from it
alone.-—It is proved, moreover, by the
indiscriminate and peremptory manner
in which texts are habitually quoted
from every part of the Bible, to enforce
a precept, to settle a doctrine, or to
silence an antagonist.—It is proved,
finally, by the infinite efforts made by
commentators and divines to explain
discrepancies and reconcile contradic
tions which, independently of this doc
trine, could have no importance or
significance whatever.
This, accordingly, is the first doctrine
for which our Inquirer demands evidence
and proof. It does not occur to him to
doubt the correctness of so prevalent a
belief: he is only anxious to discover its
genesis and its foundation. He imme
diately perceives that the Sacred Scrip
tures consists of two separate series of
writings, wholly distinct in their character,
chronology, and language—the one con
taining the sacred books of the Jews, the
other those of the Christians.
We will
commence with the former.
Most of our readers who share the
popular belief in the divine origin and
authority of the Jewish Scriptures would
probably be much perplexed when
called upon to assign grounds to justify
the conviction which they entertain from
habit. All that they could discover may
be classed under the following heads :—I. That these books were received as
sacred, authoritative, and inspired Writ
ings by the Jews themselves.
II. That they repeatedly and habitually
represent themselves as dictated by God,
and containing His ipsissima verba.
III. That their contents proclaim
their origin and parentage, as displaying
a purer morality, a loftier religion, and
altogether a holier tone, than the unas
sisted, uninspired human faculties could,
at that period, have attained.
IV. That the authority of the Writers,
as directly commissioned from on High,
was in many cases attested by mira
culous powers, either of act or prophecy.
V. That Christ and His Apostles
decided their sacred character, by refer
ring to them, quoting them, and assum
ing or affirming them to be inspired.
Let us examine each of these grounds
separately.
I. It is unquestionably true that the
Jews received the Hebrew Canon, or
what wre call the Old Testament, as a
collection of divinely-inspired writings,
and that Christians, on their authority,
have generally adopted the same belief.
—Now, even if the Jews had held the
same views of inspiration that now pre
vail, and attached the modern meaning
to the word; even if they had known
accurately who were the Authors of the
sacred books, and on what authority such
and such writings were admitted into the
Canon, and such others rejected;—we
do not see why their opinion should be
regarded as a sufficient guide and basis
for ours; especially when we remember
that they rejected as an Impostor the
very Prophet whom we conceive to have
been inspired beyond all others. What
rational or consistent ground can we
assign for disregarding the decision of
the Jews in the case of Jesus, and ac
cepting it submissively in the case of
Moses, David, and Isaiah ?
But, on a closer examination, it is dis
covered that the Jews cannot tell us
when, nor by whom, nor on what
principle of selection, this collection of
books was formed. All these questions
are matters of pure conjecture, or of
difficult and doubtful historic inference;
—and the ablest critics agree only in the
opinion that no safe opinion can be pro
nounced. One ancient Jewish legend
attributes the formation of the Canon to
the Great Synagogue, an imagined “ com
pany of Scribes,” o-waywyi; ypap-fjcarewv,
�INSPIRATION OF THE SCRIPTURES
presided over by Ezra.—Another legend,
equally destitute of authority, relates
that the collection already existed, but
had become much corrupted, and that
Ezra was inspired for the purpose of
correcting and purifying it:—that is, was
inspired for the purpose of ascertaining,
Correcting, and affirming the inspiration
of his Predecessors. A third legend
mentions Nehemiah as the Author of
the Canon. The opinion of De Wette
—probably the first authority on these
subjects—an opinion founded on minute
historical and critical investigations, is,
that the different portions of the Old
Testament were collected or brought
into their present form, at various periods,
and that the whole body of it “ came
gradually into existence, and, as it were,
of itself and by force of custom and
public use, acquired a sort of sanction.”
He conceives the Pentateuch to have
been completed about the time of Josiah,
the collection of Prophets soon after
Nehemiah, and the devotional writings
not till the age of the Maccabees.1 His
view of the grounds which led to the
reception of the various books into the
sacred Canon, is as follows“ The
writings attributed to Moses, David, and
the Prophets were considered inspired
on account of the personal character of
their authors. But the other writings,
which are in part anonymous, derive
their title to inspiration sometimes from
their contents and sometimes from
the cloud of antiquity which rests on
them. Some of the writings which were
composed after the exile—such, for
example, as the song of Solomon,
Ecclesiastes, and Daniel—were put on
this list on account of the ancient
authors to whom they were ascribed;
others—for example, Chronicles and
Esther—on account of their contents;
and others again, as Ezra and Nehemiah,
on account of the distinguished merit of
their authors in restoring the Law and
worship of God.”1
2
1 Introduction to the Critical Study of the Old
Testament (by Parker), i. 26-35.
2 De Wette, i. 40.
37
Again: the books of the Hebrew
Canon were customarily classed among
the Jews into three several divisions—
the Books of the Law, the Prophets,
and the other sacred writings, or Hagiographa, as they are termed—and it is
especially worthy of remark that Philo,
Josephus, and all the Jewish authorities
ascribed different degrees of inspiration to
each class, and moreover did not con
ceive such inspiration to be exclusively
confined to the Canonical writers, but to
be shared, though in a scantier degree,
by others;—Philo extending it even to
the Greek translators of the Old Testa
ment ; Josephus hinting that he was not
wholly destitute of it himself; and both
maintaining that even in their day the
gifts of prophecy and inspiration were
not extinct, though limited to few.1
The Talmudists held the same opinion ;
and went so far as to say that a man
might derive a certain kind or degree of
inspiration from the study of the Law
and the Prophets. In the Gospel of
John xi. 51 we have an intimation that
the High Priest had a kind ’of ex officio
inspiration or prophetic power.—It seems
clear, therefore, that the Jews, on whose
authority we accept the Old Testament
as inspired, attached a very different
meaning to the word from that in which
our Theologians employ it; in their
conception it approaches (except in the
case of Moses) much more nearly to the
divine afflatus which the Greeks attri
buted to their Poets.—“ Between the
Mosaic and the Prophetic Inspiration,
the Jewish Church asserted such a dif
ference as amounts to a diversity. . . .
To Moses and to Moses alone—to
Moses, in the recording, no less than
in the receiving of the law—and to every
part of the five books called the books
of Moses, the Jewish Doctors of the
generation before and coeval with the
1 De Wette, i. '39-43. A marked confirma
tion of the idea of graduated inspiration is to be
found in Numbers xii. 6-8. Maimonides (De
Wette, ii. 361) distinguishes eleven degrees of
inspiration, besides that which was granted to
Moses. Abarbanel (De Wette, i. 14) makes a
similar distinction.
�38
INSPIRA T10N OF THE SCRIPTURES
Apostles, assigned that unmodified and
absolute 0eo7nzeuo-Tta, which our divines,
in words at least, attribute to the Canon
collectively.”1 The Samaritans, we know,
carried this distinction so far that they
received the Pentateuch alone as of
divine authority, and did not believe the
other books to be inspired at all.
It will, then, be readily conceded that
the divine authority, or proper inspira
tion (using the word in our modern,
plain, ordinary, theological sense), of a
series of writings of which we know
neither the date, nor the authors, nor
the collectors, nor the principle of selec
tion, cannot derive much support or
probability from the mere opinion of the
Jews ;—especially when the same Jews
did not confine the quality of inspiration
to these writings exclusively;—when a
large section of them ascribed this at
tribute to five books only out of thirtynine ;—and when they assigned to dif
ferent portions of the collection different
degrees of inspiration—an idea quite in
consistent with the modern one of infal
libility.—“ In infallibility there can be
no degrees.”2
II. The second ground alleged for the
popular belief in the Inspiration of the
Jewish Scriptures appears to involve both
a confusion of reasoning and a miscon
ception of fact. These writings, I believe
I am correct in stating, nowhere affirm
their own inspiration, divine origin, or
infallible authority. They frequently,
indeed, use the expressions, “ Thus saith
Jehovah,” and “the Word of the Lord
came to Moses,” &c., which seem to
imply that in these instances they con
sider themselves as recording the very
words of the Most High; but they do
not declare that they are as a whole
dictated by God, nor even that in these
instances they are enabled to record His
words with infallible accuracy. But even
if these writings did contain the most
solemn and explicit assertion of their
own inspiration, that assertion ought not
to have, and in the eye of reason could
not have, any weight whatever, till that
inspiration is proved from independent
sources—after which it becomes super
fluous. It is simply the testimony1 of
a witness to himself—a testimony which
the falsest witness can bear as well as
the truest. To take for granted the
attributes of a writer from his own
declaration of those attributes is, one
would imaginé, too coarse and too
obvious a logical blunder not to be
abandoned as soon as it is stated in
plain language. Yet, in the singular
work which I have already quoted—
singular and sadly remarkable, as dis
playing the strange inconsistencies into
which a craven terror of heresy (or the
imputation of it) can betray even the
acutest thinkers—Coleridge says, first
“that he cannot find any such claim
(to supernatural inspiration) made by
the writers in question, explicitly or by
implication” (p. 16);—secondly, that
where the passages asserting such a
claim are supposed to be found, “ the
conclusion drawn from them involves
obviously &petitio principii—namely, the
supernatural dictation, word by word, of
the book in which the assertion is found;
for until this is established the utmost
such a text can prove is the current
belief of the Writer’s age and country ”
(p. 17);—and, thirdly, that, “whatever
is referred by the sacred penman to a
direct communication from God ; and
whenever it is recorded that the subject
of the history had asserted himself to
have received this or that command,
information, or assurance, from a super
human intelligence; or where the Writer,
in his own person, and in the character
of an historian, relates that the word of
God came to Priest, Prophet, Chieftain,
or other Individual ; I receive the same
with full belief, and admit its inappellable
authority” (p. 27).—What is this, but to
say, at p. 27, that he receives as “in
appellable” that which, at p. 17, he
1 Coleridge, “Confessions of an Enquiring
Spirit,” p. 19.
2 Coleridge, p. 18.
1 “ If I bear witness of myself, my witness is
not true” (i.e., is not to be regarded), John vi.
3i-
�INSPIRATION OF THE SCRIPTURES
declares to involve an obvious petitio
principal—that any self-asserted infalli
bility—any distinct affirmation of divine
communication or command, however
improbable, contradictory, or revolting
— made in any one of a collection of
books, “ the dates, selectors, and com
pilers of which ” he avers to be “ un
known, or recorded by known fabulists ”
(p. 18)—must be received as of supreme
authority, without question, and without
appeal ?—What would such a reasoner as
Coleridge think of such reasoning as this,
on any other than a Biblical question ?
III. The argument for the inspiration
of the Old Testament Scriptures derived
from the character of their contents,
will bear no examination. It is true
that many parts of them contain views
of Duty, of God, and of Man’s relation
to Him, which are among the purest and
loftiest that the human intellect can
grasp;—but it is no less true that other
passages, at least as numerous and
characteristic, depict feelings and
opinions on these topics as low, meagre,
and unworthy as ever took their rise in
savage and uncultured minds. These
passages, as is well known, have long
been the opprobrium of orthodoxy and
the despair of Theologians; and so far
are they from being confirmatory of the
doctrine of scriptural inspiration, that
nothing but the inconsiderate and
absolute reception of this doctrine has
withheld men from regarding and
representing them in their true light.
The contents of the Hebrew Canon as a
whole form the most fatal and convinc
ing argument against inspiration as a
whole. By the popular creed as it now
stands, the nobler portions are compelled
to bear the mighty burden of the lower
and less worthy ;—and often sink under
their weight.
IV. The argument for the Inspiration
of the Old Testament Writers, drawn
from the supposed miraculous or pro
phetic powers conferred upon the
writers, admits of a very brief refutation.
In the first place, as we do not know
who the Writers were, nor at what date
39
the books were written, we cannot
possibly decide whether they were en
dowed with any such powers or not.—
Secondly, as the only evidence we have
for the reality of the miracles rests upon
the divine authority, and consequent
unfailing accuracy, of the books in which
they are recorded, they cannot, without
a violation of all principles of reasoning,
be adduced to prove that authority and
accuracy.—-Thirdly, in those days, as is
well known, superhuman powers were
not supposed to be confined to the
direct and infallible organs of the divine
commands, nor necessarily to imply the
possession of the delegated authority of
God ;—as we learn from the Magicians
of Pharaoh, who could perform many,
though not all, of the miracles of
Moses
from the case of Aaron, who,
though miraculously gifted, and God’s
chosen High Priest, yet helped the
Israelites to desert Jehovah and bow
down before the Golden Calf •—and
from the history of Balaam, who, though
in daily communication with God and
specially inspired by Him, yet accepted a
bribe from His enemies to curse His
people, and pertinaciously endeavoured
to perform his part of the contract.—•
And, finally, as the dogmatic or cre
dential value of prophecy depends on
our being able to ascertain the date at
which it was uttered, and the precise
events which it was intended to predict,
and the impossibility of foreseeing such
events by mere human sagacity, and,
moreover, upon the original language in
which the prophecy was uttered not
having been altered by any subsequent
recorder or transcriber to match the
fulfilment more exactly;—and as in the
case of the prophetical books of the
Hebrew Canon (as will be seen in a
subsequent chapter), great doubt rests
upon almost all these points ; and as,
moreover, for one prediction which was
justified, it is easy to point to two which
were falsified, by the event;—the pro
phecies, even if occasionally fulfilled, can
assuredly, in the present stage of our
inquiry, afford us no adequate foundation
�40
INSPIRATION OF THE SCRIPTURES
on which to build the inspiration of the
library (for such it is) of which they
form a part.
V. But the great majority of Christians
would, if questioned, rest their belief in
the Inspiration of the Old Testament
Scriptures upon the supposed sanction
or affirmation of this view by Christ and
his Apostles.—Now, as Coleridge has
well argued in a passage already cited,
until we know that the words of Christ
conveying this doctrine have been faith
fully recorded, so that we are actually in
possession of his view—and that the
apostolic writings conveying this doctrine
were the production of inspired men—
“ the utmost such texts can prove is the
current belief of the Writer’s age and
country concerning the character of the
books then called the Scriptures.”—The
inspiration of the Old Testament, in this
point of view, therefore, rests upon the
inspiration of the New—a matter to be
presently considered. But let us here
ascertain what is the actual amount of
divine authority attributed to the Old,
by the writers of the New Testament.
It is unquestionable that these Scrip
tures are constantly referred to and
quoted, by the Apostles and Evangelists,
as authentic and veracious histories. It
is unquestionable, also, that the pro
phetic writings were considered by them
to be prophecies—to contain predictions
of future events, and especially of events
relating to Christ. They received them
submissively; but misquoted, misunder
stood, and misapplied them, as will
hereafter be shown.—Further, however
incorrectly we may believe the words of
Christ to have been reported, his
references to the Scriptures are too
numerous, too consistent, and too
probable, not to bring us to the con
clusion that he quoted them as having,
and deserving to have, unquestioned
authority over the Jewish mind. On
this point, however, the opinions of
Christ, as recorded in the Gospel, pre
sent remarkable discrepancies, and even
contradictions. On the one hand, we
read of His saying, “ Think not that I
am come to destroy the Law or the
Prophets : I am not come to destroy,
but to fulfil. For verily I say unto you,
Till Heaven and Earth pass, one jot or
one tittle shall in no wise pass from the
Law till all be fulfilled.”1 He quotes
the Decalogue as “from God”; and he
says that “ God spake to Moses.” 2 It is
true that he nowhere affirms the inspira
tion of the Scriptures, but he quotes the
prophecies, and even is said to represent
them as of prophesying of him.3 He
quotes the Psalms controversially, to put
down antagonists, and adds the remark,
“ the Scriptures cannot be broken.”4
He is represented as declaring once
positively, and once incidentally,5 that
“ Moses wrote of him.”6
On the other hand, he contradicted
Moses, and abrogated his ordinances in
an authoritative and peremptory manner,
which precludes the idea that he sup
posed himself dealing with the direct
commands of God.7 This is done in
many points specified in Matt. v.
34-44 ;—in the case of divorce, in the
most positive and naked manner (Matt,
v. 31, 32; xix. 8. Luke xvi. 18; Mark
x. 4-12);—in the case of the woman
taken in adultery, who would have been
punished with a cruel death by the
Mosaic law but whom Jesus dismissed
with—-“ Neither do I condemn thee : go
and sin no more’’(John viii. 5-11);—
1 Matt. v. 17, 18. Luke xvi. 17.
2 Matt. xv. 4-6; xxii. 31. Mark vii. 9-13 ;
xii. 26.
3 Matt. xv. 7; xxiv. 15. Luke iv. 17-21;
xxiv. 27.
4 John x. 35.
5 John v. 46. Luke xxiv. 44.
6 It seems more than doubtful whether any
passages in the Pentateuch can fairly be con
sidered as having reference to Christ. But
passing over this, if it shall appear that what we
now call “the Books of Moses” were not
written by Moses, it will follow, either that
Christ referred to Mosaic writings which we do
not possess; or that, like the contemporary
Jews and modern Christians, he erroneously
ascribed to Moses books which Moses did not
write.
7 “Ye have heard that it has been said of old
time;”-—“Moses, for the hardness of your
hearts, suffered you to put away your wives,”
&c., &c.
�INSPIRATION OF THE SCRIPTURES
in the case of clean and unclean meats,
as to which the Mosaic law is rigorous
in the extreme, but which Christ puts
aside as trivial, affirming that unclean
meats cannot defile a man, though Moses
declared that it “made them abomin
able.” ’(Matt. xv. ii ; Mark vii. 15.)
Christ even supersedes in the same
manner one of the commands of the
Decalogue—that as to the observance
of the Sabbath, his views and teaching
as to which no ingenuity can reconcile
with the Mosaic law.1
Finally, we have the assertion in
Paul’s Second Epistle to Timothy (iii.
16), which, though certainly translatable
two ways,1 either affirms the inspiration
2
of the Hebrew Canon as a whole, or
assumes the inspiration of certain por
tions of it.—On the whole, there can, I
think, be little doubt that Christ and his
Apostles received the Jewish Scriptures,
as they then were, as sacred and authori
tative. But till their divine authority is
established, it is evident that this, the
fifffi ground for believing the inspiration
of the Old Testament, merges in the
first, i.e.) the belief of the Jews.
So far, then, it appears that the only
evidence for the Inspiration of the
Hebrew Canon is the fact that the Jews
believed in it.—But we know that they
also believed in the Inspiration of other
writings ■)—that their meaning of the
word “ Inspiration ” differed essentially
from that which now prevails;—that
their theocratic polity had so interwoven
1 See this whole question most ably treated
in the notes to Norton, Genuineness of the
Gospels, ii. § 7.
2 The English, Dutch, and other versions
render it, “All Scripture is given by inspiration
of God, and is profitable for teaching,” &c.,
&c. (an obviously incorrect rendering, unless it
can be shown that ypa<p7] is always used by Paul
in reference to the Jewish Canon exclusively).
The Vulgate, Luther, Calmet, the Spanish and
Arabic versions, and most of the Fathers, trans
late it thus : “ All divinely inspired writings are
also profitable for teachings,” &c. This is little
more than a truism. But Paul probably meant,
“Do not despise the Old Testament, because
you have the Spirit; since you know it was
inspired, you ought to be able to make it
profitable,” &c.
41
itself with all their ideas, and modified
their whole mode of thinking, that
almost every mental suggestion, and
every act of power, was referred by
them directly to a superhuman origin.1—
“If” (says Mr. Coleridge) “we take
into account the habit, universal with
the Hebrew Doctors, of referring all
excellent or extraordinary things to the
Great First Cause, without mention of
the proximate and instrumental causes
—a striking illustration of which may be
obtained by comparing the narratives of
the same event in the Psalms and the
Historical Books;—and if we further
reflect that the distinction of the Provi
dential and the Miraculous did not
enter into their forms of thinking—at all
events not into their mode of conveying
their thoughts ;—the language of the
Jews respecting the Hagiographa will be
found to differ little, if at all, from that
of religious persons among ourselves,
when speaking of an author abounding
in gifts, stirred up by the Holy Spirit,
writing under the influence of special
grace and the like.”2—We know, more
over, that the Mahometans believe in
the direct inspiration of the Koran as
firmly as ever did the Hebrews in that
of their sacred books; and that in
matters of such mighty import the belief
of a special nation can be no safe or
adequate foundation for our own.—The
result of this investigation, therefore, is,
that the popular doctrine of the inspira
tion, divine origin, and consequent
unimpeachable accuracy and infallible
authority of the Old Testament Scrip
tures, rests on no foundation whatever—
unless it shall subsequently appear that
Christ and his Apostles affirmed it, and
had means of knowing it and judging of
it, superior to and independent of those
possessed by the Jews of their time.
I have purposely abstained in this
place from noticing those considerations
which directly negative the doctrine in
question; both because many of these
will be more suitably introduced in
1 De Wette, i. 39.
2 Letters of Inspiration, p. 21.
�42
INSPIRATION OF THE SCRIPTURES
subsequent chapters, and because, if
a doctrine is shown to be without
foundation or zzzzproved, disproof is
superfluous.—In conclusion, let us care
fully note that this inquiry has related
solely to the divine origin and infallible
authority of the Sacred Writings, and is
entirely distinct from the question as to
the substantial truth of the narratives
and the correctness of the doctrine they
contain—a question to be decided by a
different method of inquiry. Though
wholly uninspired, they may transmit
narratives, faithful in the main, of God’s
dealings with man, and may be records
of a real and authentic revelation.—All
we have yet made out is this : that the
mere fact of finding any statement or
dogma in the Hebrew Scriptures is no
sufficient proof or adequate warranty
that it came from God.
attested by the miracles they wrought,
or had the power of working.
I. The writings which compose the
volume called by us the New Testa
ment had assumed their present collec
tive form, and were generally received
throughout the Christian Churches,
about the end of the second century.
They were selected out of a number of
others ; but by whom they were selected,
or what principle guided the selection,
history leaves in doubt. We have
reason to believe that in several
instances writings were selected or
rejected, not from a consideration of
the external or traditional evidence of
their genuineness or antiquity, but from
the supposed heresy or orthodoxy of the
doctrines they contained. We find,
moreover, that the early Fathers dis
agreed among themselves in theii
estimate of the genuineness and
authority of many of the books;1 that
some of them received books which we
exclude, and excluded others which we
admit;—while we have good reason to
believe that some of the rejected
writings, as the Gospel of the Hebrews,
and that for the Egyptians, and the
Epistles of Clement and Barnabas,
have at least as much title to be placed
in the sacred Canon as some already
there—the Epistle to the Hebrews, the
second of Peter, and that of Jude, for
example.
It is true that several of the Christian
Fathers who lived about the end of the
second century, as Irenaeus, Tertullian,
and Clement of Alexandria, distinctly
affirm the inspiration of the Sacred
Writings, as those writings were received,
and as that word was understood, by
them.2 But we find that they were in
It is not easy to discover the grounds
on which the popular belief in the
inspiration, or divine origin, of the New
Testament Canon, as a whole, is based.
Probably, when analysed, they will be
found to be the following.
I. That the Canonical Books were
selected from the uncanonical or apocry
phal by the early Christian Fathers,
who must be supposed to have had
ample means of judging; and that the
inspiration of these writings is affirmed
by them.
II. That it is natural to imagine that
God, in sending into the World a
Revelation intended for all times and
all lands, should provide for its faithful
record and transmission by inspiring the
transmitters and recorders.
III. That the Apostles, whose un
questioned writings form a large portion
of the Canon, distinctly affirm their own
inspiration ; and that this inspiration
1 See the celebrated account of the Canon
was distinctly promised them by Christ.
given by Eusebius, where five of our epistles
IV. That the Contents of the New are “disputed”;—the Apocalypse, which, we
Testament are their own credentials, receive, is by many considered “spurious” ; and
and by their sublime tone and character, the Gospel of the Hebrews, which we reject, is
stated to have been by many, especially of the
proclaim their superhuman origin.
Palestinian Christians, placed among the “ ac
V. That the inspiration of most of knowledged writings.” De Wette, i. 76.
the writers may be considered as
2 De Wette, i. 63-66.
�INSPIRATION OF THE SCRIPTURES
43
the habit of referring to and quoting in
discriminately the Apocryphal as well as
the Canonical Scriptures. Instances of
this kind occur in Clement of Rome
(a.d. ioo), Clement of Alexandria (a.d.
200), and, according to Jerome, in
Ignatius also, who lived about a.d. 107.1
Their testimony, therefore, if valid to
prove the inspiration of the Canonical
Scriptures, proves the inspiration of the
rejected Scriptures likewise; and by
necessary sequence, proves the error and
incompetency of the compilers of the
Canon, who rejected them. No one,
however, well acquainted with the
writings of the Fathers will be of
opinion that their judgment in these
matters, or in any matters, ought to
guide our own.2
II. The second argument certainly
carries with it, at first sight, an ap
pearance of much weight; and is, we
believe, with most minds, however un
consciously, the argument which (as
Paley expresses it) “does the business.”
The idea of Gospel inspiration is re
ceived, not from any proof that it is so,
but from an opinion, or feeling, that it
ought to be so. The doctrine arose, not
because it was provable, but because it
was wanted. Divines can produce no
stronger reason for believing in the in
spiration of the Gospel narratives than
their own opinion that it is not likely
God should have left so important a
series of facts to the ordinary chances of
History. But on a little reflection it
will be obvious that we have no ground
whatever for presuming that God will
act in this or in that manner under any
given circumstances, beyond what pre
vious analogies may furnish ; and in this
case no analogy exists. We cannot even
form a probable guess a priori of His
mode of operation;—but we find that
generally, and indeed in all cases of
which we have any certain knowledge,
He leaves things to the ordinary action
of natural laws;—and if, therefore, it is
“natural” to presume anything at all in
this instance, that presumption should
be that God did not inspire the New
Testament writers, but left them to
convey what they saw, heard, or believed,
as their intellectual powers and moral
qualities enabled them.
The Gospels, as professed records of
Christ’s deeds and words, will be allowed
to form the most important portion of
the New Testament Collection.—Now,
the idea of God having inspired four
different men to write a history of the
same transactions—or rather of many
different men having undertaken to
write such a history, of whom God in
spired four only to write correctly,
leaving the others to their own unaided
resources, and giving us no test by which
to distinguish the inspired from the
uninspired—certainly appears self-con
futing and anything but “natural.” If
the accounts of the same transactions
agree, where was the necessity for more
than one? If they differ (as they
notoriously do), it is certain that only
one can be inspiredand which is that
one? In all other religions claiming a
divine origin, this incongruity is avoided.
Further, the Gospels nowhere affirm,
or even intimate, their own inspiration 1
—a claim to credence, which, had they
possessed it, they assuredly would not
have failed to put forth. Luke, it is
clear from his exordium, had no notion
of his own inspiration, but founds his
title to take his place among the an
nalists, and to be listened to as at least
equally competent with any of his com
petitors, on his having been from the
first cognisant of the transactions he was
about to relate. Nor do the Apostolic
writings bear any such testimony to
them; nor could they well do so, having
(with the exception of the Epistles of
1 De Wette, p. 54, &c.
2 See “ Ancient Christianity,” by Isaac Taylor,
passim, for an exposition of what these Fathers
could write and believe. See also “Literature
and Dogma,” by Matthew Arnold, p. 283, for a
few curious specimens.
1 Dr. Arnold, “ Christian Life,” &c., p. 487,—
“ I must acknowledge that the Scriptural narra
tives do not claim this inspiration for them
selves.” Coleridge, “ Confessions,” p. 16,—“I
cannot find any such claim made by these
writers, either explicitly or by implication.”
�44
INSPIRA PION OF THE SCRIPTURES
John) been composed previous to
them.
III. When we come to the considera
tion of the Apostolic writings, the case
is different. There are, scattered through
these, apparent claims to superhuman
guidance and teaching, though not direct
assertion of inspiration. It is, however,
worthy, of remark that none of these
occur in the writings of any of the
Apostles who were contemporary with
Jesus, and who attended his ministry;—
in whom, if in any, might inspiration be
expected; to whom, if to any, was in
spiration promised. It is true that we
find in John1 much dogmatic assertion
of being the sole teacher of truth, and
much denunciation of all who did not
listen submissively to him ; but neither
in his epistles nor in those of Peter,
James, nor Jude, do we find any claim
to special knowledge of truth, or
guarantee from error by direct spiritual
aid. All assertions of inspiration are,
we believe, confined to the epistles of
Paul, and may be found in i Cor. ii.
10—16. Gal. i. 11, 12. i Thess. iv. 8.
1 Tim. ii. 7.
Now, on these passages we have to
remark, first, that “having the Holy
Spirit,” in the parlance of that day, by
no means implied our modern idea of
inspiration, or anything approaching to
it; for Paul often affirms that it was
given to many, nay, to most, of the
believers, and in different degrees?
Moreover, it is probable that a man who
believed he was inspired by God would
have been more dogmatic and less argu
mentative. He would scarcely have run
the risk of weakening his revelation by a
presumptuous endeavour to prove it;
still less by adducing in its behalf argu
ments which are often far from being
irrefragable.3
Secondly. In two or three passages
1 1st Epistle iv. 6. “ We are of God ; he
that knoweth God heareth us ; he that is not of
God heareth not us. Hereby know we the
spirit of truth and the spirit of error.”
2 1 Cor. xii. 8 ; and xiv., passim.
3 Gal. iii. 16, for example. See Arnold’s
“ Literature and Dogma,” p. 140.
he makes a marked distinction between
what he delivers as his own opinion,
and what he speaks by authority
“ The Lord says, not I; ”—“ I, not the
Lord;”—“This I give by permission,
not by commandment,” &c., &c. Hence
Dr. Arnold infers,1 that we are to con
sider Paul as speaking from inspiration
wherever he does not warn us that he
“ speaks as a man.” But unfortunately
for this argument the Apostle expressly
declares himself to be “speaking by the
word of the Lord,” in at least one case
where he is manifestly and admittedly
in error, viz., in 1 Thess. iv. 15;2 of
which we shall speak further in the
following chapter.
Thirdly. The Apostles, all of whom
are supposed to be alike inspired, dif
fered among themselves, contradicted,
depreciated, and
“withstood” one
another.3
Fourthly. As we showed before in
the case of the Old Testament writers,
the Apostles’ assertion of their own in
spiration, even were it ten times more
clear and explicit than it is, being their
testimony to themselves, could have no
weight or validity as evidence.
But, it will be urged, the Gospels re
cord that Christ promised inspiration to
his apostles.—In the first place, Paul
was not included in this promise. In
the next place, we have already seen
that the divine origin of these books
is a doctrine for which no ground can
be shown; and their correctness, as
records of Christ’s words, is still to be
established. When, however, we shall
have clearly made out that the words
promising inspiration were really uttered
by Christ, and meant what we interpret
them to mean, we shall have brought
ourselves into the singular and em
barrassing position of maintaining that
Christ promised them that which in result
they did not possess ; since there can be
no degrees of inspiration, in the ordinary
1 ‘ ‘ Christian Course and Character,”pp. 488-9.
2 See also 1 Cor. vii. 29. Philip, iv. 5.
3 Gal. ii. 11-14. 2 Peter iii. 16. Acts xv.
6-39. Compare Rom. iii., and Gal. ii. and iii.,
with James ii.
�INSPIRATION OF THE SCRIPTURES
45
and dogmatic sense of the word; and
since the Apostles clearly were not alto
gether inspired, inasmuch as they fell
into mistakes,1 disputed, and disagreed
among themselves.
The only one of the New Testament
writings which contains a clear affirma
tion of its own inspiration is the one
which in all ages has been regarded as
of the most doubtful authenticity—viz.,
the Apocalypse.
It was rejected by
many of the earliest Christian authorities.
It is rejected by most of the ablest
Biblical critics of to-day. Luther, in the
preface to his translation inserted a
protest against the inspiration of the
Apocalypse, which protest he solemnly
charged every one to prefix who chose
to publish the translation. In this pro
test one of his chief grounds for the
rejection is the suspicious fact that this
writer alone blazons forth his own in
spiration.
IV. The common impression seems
to be that the contents of the New Testa
ment are their own credentials—that
their superhuman excellence attests their
divine origin. This may be perfectly
true in substance without affecting the
present question ; since it is evident that
the excellence of particular passages, or
even of the great mass of passages, in a
book can prove nothing for the divine
origin of the whole—-unless it can be
shown that all the portions of it are
indissolubly connected. This or that
portion of its contents may attest by its
nature that this or that special portion
came from God, but not that the book
itself, including everything in it, had a
divine source. A truth, or a doctrine,
may be divinely revealed, but humanly
recorded, or transmitted by tradition ;
and may be mixed up with other things
that are erroneous ; else the passages of
scriptural truth contained in a modern
sermon would prove the whole sermon
inspired and infallible.
V. The argument for Inspiration,
drawn from the miraculous gifts of the
alleged recipients of inspiration—a
matter to which we shall refer when
treating of miracles—is thus conclu
sively met by a recent author : “ Shall
we say that miracles are an evidence
of inspiration in the person who per
forms them ? And must we accept as
infallible every combination of ideas
which may exist in his mind ? If we
look at this question abstractedly, it is
not easy to perceive the necessary con
nection between superhuman power and
superhuman wisdom................ And when
we look more closely to the fact, did not
the minds of the Apostles retain some
errors, long after they had been gifted
with supernatural power ? Did they not
believe in demons occupying the bodies
of men and swine ? Did they not ex
pect Christ to assume a worldly sway ?
Did not their Master strongly rebuke
the moral notions and feelings of two
of them, who were for calling down fire
from Heaven on an offending village ?
It is often said that where a man’s asse
veration of his infallibility is combined
with the support of miracles, his inspira
tion is satisfactorily proved; and this
statement is made on the assumption
that God would never confer super
natural power on one who could be
guilty of a falsehood. What, then, are
we to say respecting Judas and Peter,
both of whom had been furnished with
the gifts of miracle, and employed them
during a mission planned by Christ, and
of whom, nevertheless, one became the
traitor of the garden, and the otheruttered against his Lord three falsehoods
in one hour? ” 1
So far, then, our inquiry has brought
us to this negative conclusion: that we
1 The error of Paul about the approaching
end of the world was shared by all the Apostles.
James v. 8. i Peter iv. 7. 2 Peter iii. 12.
1 John ii. 18. Jude, verse 18.
[It may be added that there is no reason to
believe that any of these epistles were the com
position of Apostles.]
1 “ Rationale of Religious Inquiry,” p. 30.
Moreover the law of Moses directs that a false
prophet, even though he work miracles in
attestation, shall be put to death,—and St. Paul
says that if “an angel from Heaven” preaches
any doctrine that conflicts with his, “ let him
be accursed.” Deut. xiii. Galatians i. 8.
�46
A UTHORSHIP OF THE OLD TESTAMENT CANON
can discover no ground for believing
that the Scriptures—z>., either the
Hebrew or the Christian Canonical
Writings—are inspired, taking that word
in its ordinary acceptation—viz., that
they “came from God;” were dictated
or suggested by Him ; were supernaturally preserved from error, both
as to fact and doctrine ; and must there
fore be received in all their parts as
authoritative and infallible. This con
clusion is perfectly compatible with the
belief that they contain a human record,
and in substance a faithful record, of a
divine revelation—-a human history, and,
in the main, a true history, of the deal
ings of God with man. But they have
become to us, by this conclusion, records,
not revelations ;—histories to be investi
gated like other histories ;—documents
of which the date, the authorship, the
genuineness, the accuracy of the text,
are to be ascertained by the same prin
ciples of investigation as we apply to
other documents. In a word, we are to
examine them and regard them, not as
the Mahometans regard the Koran, but
as Niebuhr regarded Livy, and as Arnold
regarded Thucydides—documents out of
which the good, the true, the sound, is
to be educed.
discusses the somewhat nebulous and obso
lete speculations of Coleridge and Arnold ;
men who were incapable of subscribing the
popular view, and yet loth to compendi
ously reject it. Mr. Greg points out that
their evasiveness amounts to repudiation ;
but a repetition of his reasoning does not
seem to be called for, and we may content
ourselves with a simple reproduction of the
concluding words' of his second chapter,
which are as true to-day as in 1850.
The present position of this question
in the public mind of Christendom is
singularly anomalous, fluctuating, and
unsound. The doctrine of Biblical In
spiration still obtains general credence,
as part and parcel of the popular theo
logy ; and is retained as a sort of tacit
assumption, by the great mass of the
religious world, though abandoned as
untenable by their leading thinkers and
learned men ;—many of whom, however,
retain it in name, while surrendering it
in substance ; and do not scruple, while
admitting it to be an error, to continue
the use of language justifiable only on
the supposition of its. truth.
Nay,
further ; — with a deplorable and mis
chievous inconsistency, they abandon
the doctrine, but retain the deductions
and corollaries which flowed from it,
and from it alone. They insist upon
making the superstructure survive the
Addendum.
foundation.
They refuse to give up
possession of the property, though the
The Author devotes a further chapter title by which they hold it has been
io the question of Inspiration, in which he I proved and is admitted to be invalid.
Chapter II.
AUTHORSHIP AND AUTHORITY OF THE PENTATEUCH AND THE OLD TESTAMENT CANON
GENERALLY
The next comprehensive position which
our Inquirer finds at the root of
the popular theology, commanding a
tacit and almost unquestioned assent, is
this
That the Old Testament narra
tives contain an authentic and faithful
�AUTHORSHIP OF THE OLD TESTAMENT CANON
History of the actual dealings of God
with man —that the events which they
relate took place as therein related, and
were recorded by well-informed and
veracious writers ;—that wherever God
is represented as visiting and speaking
to Adam, Noah, Abraham, Moses,
Samuel, and others, He did. really so
appear and communicate His will to
them
that the ark, as built by Noah,
was constructed under the detailed direc
tions of the Architect of all Worlds;
that the Law, as contained in the Penta
teuch, was delivered to Moses and
written down by him under the imme
diate dictation of Jehovah, and the pro
ceedings of the Israelites minutely and
specifically directed by him ; that, in a
word, the Old Testament is a literal and
veracious history, not merely a national
legend or tradition. This fundamental
branch of the popular theology also in
cludes the belief that the Books of
Moses were written by Moses, the book
of Joshua by Joshua, and so on; and
further that the Prophetical Books, and
the predictions contained in Historical
Books, are bond fide Prophecies—genuine
oracles from the mouth of God, uttered
through the medium of His servants,
whom at various times He instructed to
make known His will and institutions to
His chosen People.
That this is the popular belief in
which we are all brought up, and on the
assumption of which the ordinary lan
guage of Divines and the whole tone of
current religious literature proceeds, no
one will entertain a doubt ; and that it
has not been often broadly laid down or
much defended is attributable to the
circumstance, that, among Christians, it
has rarely till of late been directly ques
tioned or openly attacked. The pro
position seems to have been assumed
on the one side and conceded on the
other, with equally inconsiderate ease.
Now, be it observed that if the Hebrew
Narratives bore, on the face of them, an
historical rather than a legendary cha
racter, and were in themselves probable,
natural, and consistent, we might accept
47
them as substantially true without much
extraneous testimony, on the ground of
their antiquity alone. And if the con
ceptions of the Deity therein developed
were pure, worthy, and consistent with
what we learn of Him from reason and
experience, we might not feel disposed
to doubt the reality of the words and
acts attributed to Him. But so far is
this from being the case, that the narra
tives, eminently legendary in their tone,
are full of the most astounding, impro
bable, and perplexing statements; and
the representations of God which the
Books contain are often monstrous, and
utterly at variance with the teachings of
Nature and Christianity. Under these
circumstances, wre, of course, require
some sufficient reason for acceding to
such difficult propositions and receiving
the Hebrew Narratives as authentic and
veracious Histories; and the only reason
offered to us is that the Jews believed
themJ
But we remember that the Greeks
believed the Legends in Herodotus, and
the Romans the figments in Livy—and
the Jews were at least as credulous and
as nationally vain as either. We need,
therefore, some better sponsors for our
creed.
If, indeed, we were only required to
accept the authority of the Jews for the
belief that they sprung from Abraham,
were captives in Egypt, received a com1 Even this, however, must be taken cum
grano. The Jews do not seem to have invari
ably accepted the historical narratives in the
same precise and literal sense as we do.
Josephus, or the traditions which were current
among his countrymen, took strange liberties
with the Mosaic accounts. There is a remark
able difference between his account of Abraham’s
dissimulation with regard to his wife, and the
same translation in Genesis xx.—Moreover, he
explains the passage of the Red Sea as a natural,
not a miraculous event; and many similar dis
crepancies might be mentioned. See De Wette,
ii. 42.
Observe, also, the liberty which Ezekiel
considered himself warranted in taking with the
Mosaic doctrine that God will visit the sins oí
the fathers upon the children (c. xviii. passim),
a liberty scarcely compatible with a belief on
his part that such doctrine was, as alleged,
divinely announced.
�48
AUTHORSHIP OF THE OLD TESTAMENT CANON
píete code of Laws and system of
theocratic polity from Moses, conquered
Canaan, and committed manifold follies,
frauds, and cruelties in their national
career—we might accede to the demand
without much recalcitration.
But we
are called on to admit something very
different from this. We are required to
believe that Jehovah, the Ruler of all
Worlds, the Pure, Spiritual, Supreme,
Ineffable Creator of the Universe—Our
Father who is in Heaven—so blundered
in the creation of man, as to repent and
grieve, and find it necessary to destroy
His own work—selected one favoured
people from the rest of His children—
sanctioned fraud—commanded cruelty
—contended, and for a while in vain,
with the magic of other Gods—wrestled
bodily with one patriarch—ate cakes and
veal with another—sympathised with and
shared in human passions—and mani
fested “scarcely one untainted moral
excellence ”
and we are required to
do this painful violence to our feelings
and our understandings, simply because
these coarse conceptions prevailed some
thousand years ago among a People
whose history, as written by themselves,
is certainly not of a nature to inspire us
with any extraordinary confidence in
their virtues or their intellect. They
were the conceptions prevalent among
the Scribes and Pharisees, whom Jesus
denounced as dishonourers of religion
and corrupters of the Law, and who
crucified Him for endeavouring to
elevate them to a purer faith.
It is obvious, then, that we must seek
for some other ground for accepting the
earlier Scriptural narratives as genuine
histories ;—and we are met in our search
by the assertion that the Books contain
ing the statements which have staggered
us, and the theism which has shocked
us, were written by the great Law-giver
of the Jews—by the very man whom
God commissioned to liberate and
organise His peculiar People. If in
deed the Pentateuch was written by
that same Moses whose doings it
records, the case is materially altered ;
—it is no longer a traditional or
legendary narrative, but a history by
an actor and a contemporary, that we
have before us. Even this statement,
however, were it made out, would not
cast its aegis over the Book of Genesis,
which records events from four to
twenty-five centuries before the time
of Moses.
But when we proceed to the investi
gation of this point, we discover, cer
tainly much to our surprise, not only
that there is no independent evidence
for the assertion that Moses wrote the
books which bear his name, but that
we have nearly all the proof which the
case admits of, that he did not write
them,1 and that they were not composed
—at all events did not attain their
present form—till some hundreds of
years after his death. It is extremely
difficult to lay the grounds of this pro
position before general readers—espe
cially English readers—in a form at
once concise and clear; as they depend
upon the results of a species of scientific
criticism with which, though it proceeds
on established and certain principles,
very few in this country, even of our
educated classes, are at all acquainted.
In the conclusions arrived at by this
scientific process, unlearned students
must acquiesce as they do in those of
Astronomy, or Philology, or Geology;—
and all that can be done is to give them
a very brief glimpse of the mode of
inquiry adopted, and the kind of proof
1 “After coming to these results,” says De
Wette, ii. 160, “ we find no ground and no
evidence to show that the books of the Penta
teuch were composed by Moses. Some con
sider him their author merely from traditional
custom, because the Jews were of their opinion ;
though it is not certain that the more ancient
Jews shared it; for the expressions ‘ the Book
of the Law of Moses,’ ‘ the Book of the Law of
Jehovah by the hand of Moses,’ only designate
him as the author or mediator of the Law, not
as the author of the Book.—The Law is ascribed
to the ‘ Prophets’ in 2 Kings xvii. 13, and in
Ezra ix. 11. The opinion that Moses composed
these books is not only opposed by all the signs
of a later date which occur in the Book itself,
but also by the entire analogy of the history of
the Hebrew literature and language.”
�A UTHORSHIP OF THE OLD TESTAMENT CANON
adduced: this we shall do as concisely
and as intelligibly as we can; and we
will endeavour to state nothing which is
not considered as established by men
of the highest eminence in this very
difficult branch of intellectual re
search.
The discovery in the Temple of the
Book of the Law, in the reign of King
Josiah, about B.c. 624, as related in
2 Kings xxii., is the first certain trace of
the existence of the Pentateuch in its
present form.1 That if this, the Book
of the Law of Moses, existed before this
time, it was generally unknown, or had
been quite forgotten, appears from the
extraordinary sensation the discovery
excited, and from the sudden and
tremendous reformation immediately
commenced by the pious and alarmed
Monarch, with a view of carrying into
effect the ordinances of this law.—Now
we find that when the Temple was built
and consecrated by Solomon, and the
Ark placed therein (about B.c. 1000),
this “ Book of the Law ” was not there—
for it is said (1 Kings viii. 9), “There
was nothing in the Ark save the two
Tables of Stone which Moses put there
at Horeb.”1 Yet on turning to Deuter
2
onomy xxxi. 24-26, we are told that
when Moses had made an end of writing
the words of the Law in a book, he said
to the Levites, “Take this Book of the
Law and put it in the side of the Ark of
the Covenant of the Lord your God, that
it may be there to witness against you,”
&c., &c.
This “ Book of the Law ” which was
found in the Temple in the reign of
Josiah (b.c. 624), which was not there
in the time of Solomon (b.c. 1000), and
which is stated to have been written and
placed in the Ark by Moses (b.c. 1450),
is almost certainly the one ever after
wards referred to and received as the
“Law of God,” the “Law of Moses,”
and quoted as such by Ezra and Nehe1 De Wette, ii. 153.
2 The same positive statement is repeated
2 Chrop. v. JQ.
49
miah.1 And the only evidence we have
that Moses was the author of the books
found by Josiah appears to be the
passage in Deuteronomy xxxi., above
cited.
But how did it happen that a book of
such immeasurable value to the Israelites,
on their obedience to which depended
all their temporal blessings, which was
placed in the sanctuary by Moses, and
found there by Josiah, was not there in
the time of Solomon ?—Must it not have
been found there by Solomon, if really
placed there by Moses? for Solomon
was as anxious as Josiah to honour
Jehovah and enforce His Law.2 In a
word, have we any reason for believing
that Moses really wrote the Book of
Deuteronomy, and placed it in the
Ark, as stated therein ?—Critical science
answers in the negative.
In the first place, Hebrew scholars
assure us that the style and language of
the Book forbids us to entertain the
idea that it was written either by Moses,
or near his time; as they resemble too
closely those of the later writers of the
Old Testament to admit the supposition
that the former belonged to the 15th,
and the latter to the 5th century before
Christ. To imagine that the Hebrew
language underwent no change, or a
very slight one, during a period of two
thousand years—in which the nation
underwent vast political, social, and
moral changes, with a very great admix
ture of foreign blood—is an idea ante
cedently improbable, and is con
tradicted by all analogy. The same
remark applies, though with somewhat
1 Subsequent references seem especially to
refer to Deuteronomy.
2 Conclusive evidence on this point may, we
think, be gathered from Deut. xxxi. 10, where
it is commanded that the law shall be publicly
read every seventh year to the people assembled
at the Feast of Tabernacles ; and from xvii. 18,
where it is ordained that eadh king on his acces
sion shall write out a copy of the Law. It is
impossible to believe that this command, had it
existed, would have been neglected by all the
pious and good kings who sat on the throne of
Palestine. It is clear that they had never heard
of such a command.
li
�5o
AUTHORSHIP OF THE OLD TESTAMENT CANON
less force, to the other four books of the
Pentateuch.1
Secondly. It is certain that Moses
cannot have been the author of the
whole of the Book of Deuteronomy,
because it records his own death, c.
xxxiv. It is obvious also that the last
chapter must have been written, not only
after the death of Moses, but a long
period after, as appears from verse io.
“And there arose not another prophet
since in Israel like unto Moses, whom
the Lord knew face to face.” Now,
there are no critical signs of style or
language which would justify the
assumption that the last chapter was the
production of a different pen, or a later
age, than the rest of the Book.
Thirdly. There are several passages
scattered through the book which speak
in the past tense of events which occurred
after the Israelites obtained possession
of the land of Canaan, and which must
therefore have been written subsequently
-—probably long subsequently—to that
period. For example: “The Horims
also dwelt in Seir beforetime, but the
children of Esau succeeded them, when
they had destroyed them from before
them, and dwelt in their stead; as Israel
did unto the land of his possession, which
the Lord gave unto them.” Deut. ii. 12.
Many other anachronisms occur, as
throughout c. iii., especially verse 14;
xix. 14 ; xxiv. 1-3 ; ii. 20-23.
Finally, as we have seen, at xxxi. 26,
is a command to place the book of the
Law in the Ark, and a statement that it
was so placed. Now as it was notin the
Ark at the time when the Temple was
consecrated, this passage must have been
written subsequent to that event. See
also verses 9-13.
Now either all these passages must
have been subsequent interpolations, or
they decide the date of the whole book.
But they are too closely interwoven,
and too harmoniously coalesce, with the
rest to justify the former supposition.
We are therefore driven to adopt the
conclusion of De Wette and other
1 De Wette, ii. 161.
critics, that the Book of Deuteronomy
was written about the time of Josiah,
shortly before, and with a view to, the
discovery of the Pentateuch in the
Temple.1
With regard to the other four books
attributed to Moses, scientific investiga
tion has succeeded in making it quite
clear, not only that they were written
long after ,his time, but that they are a
compilation from, or rather an imperfect
fusion of, two principal original docu
ments, easily distinguishable throughout
by those accustomed to this species of
research, and appearing to have been a
sort of legendary or traditionary his
tories, current among the earlier
Hebrews. These two documents (or
classes of documents) are called the
Elohistic, and Jehovistic, from the
different Hebrew names they employ in
speaking of the Supreme Being;—the
one using habitually the word Elohim,
which our translation renders God, but
which, being plural in the original, would
be more correctly rendered The Gods;—
the other using the word Jehovah, or
Jehovah Elohim, The God of Gods—
rendered in our translation The Lord
God.2
The existence of two such docu
ments, or of two distinct and often con
flicting narratives, running side by side,
will be obvious on a very cursory perusal
of the Pentateuch, more especially of the
Book of Genesis; and the constant
recurrence of these duplicate and dis
crepant statements renders it astonishing
that the books in question could ever
have been regarded as one original his
tory, proceeding from one pen. At the
very commencement we have separate
and varying accounts of the Creation : —
the Elohistic one, extending from Gen.
i.-ii. 3, magnificent, simple, and sublime,
describing the form of the animate and
1 It is worthy of remark that the Book of
Joshua (x. 13) quotes the Book of Jashar, which
must have been written as late as the time of
David (2 Samuel i. 18). See De Wette, ii. 187.
2 There are, however, other distinctive marks.
De Wette, ii. 77. Bauer, Theol. des Alt. Test,
c. ii. § I.
�AUTHORSHIP OF THE OLD TESTAMENT CANON
inanimate world by the fiat of the
Almighty, and the making of man, male
and female, in the image of God—but
preserving a total silence respecting the
serpent, the apple, and the expulsion
from the Garden of Eden;—the other,
or Jehovistic, extending from Gen. ii. 4
to iii. 24, giving a different account of
the formation of man and woman—
describing the Garden of Eden with its
four rivers, one flowing into the Persian
Gulf and another surrounding Ethiopia1
—narrating the temptation, the sin, and
the curse, and adding a number of
minute and puerile details, bespeaking
the conceptions of a rude and early age,
such as God teaching Adam and Eve to
make coats of skin in lieu of the gar
ments of fig leaves they had contrived
for themselves.
The next comparison of the two docu
ments presents discrepancies almost
equally great. The document' Elohim,
Gen. v. 1-32, gives simply the Genealogy
from Adam to Noah, giving Seth as the
name of Adam’s first-born son ;—whereas
the document Jehovah, Gen. iv. 1-26,
gives Cain as the name of Adam’s first
born and Seth as that of his last.2
Shortly after we have two slightly-varying
accounts 3 of the flood; one being con
tained in vi. 9-22 ; vii. 11-16, 18-22;
1 Cush, or “the land of swarthy men.”
2 “There is,” says Theodore Parker, “a
striking similarity between the names of the
alleged descendants of Adam and Enos (accord
ing to the Elohim document, the grandson of
Adam). It is to be remembered that both names
signify Man.
I.
II.
I. Adam.
I. Enos.
2. Cain.
2. Cainan.
3- Enoch.
3- Mahalaleel.
4- Irad.
4- Jared.
5- Mehujael.
5- Enoch.
6. Methusael.
6. Methusaleh.
7- Lamech (Gen.
7- Lamech (Gen.
iv. 17-19).
v. 9-25).”
The reader may draw his own inferences from
this, or see those of Buttmann, in his “ Mythologus,” 1. c. vii. p. 171. See also on this
matter, Kenrick on “Primeval Plistory,” p.
59-
3 One account affirms that seven specimens of
clean beasts went into the ark ; the other that
only two so entered.
51
viii. 1-19 ; the other comprising vi. 1-8 ;
vii. 7-10, 17, 23.
We will specify only one more instance
of the same event twice related with
obvious and irreconcilable discrepancies,
viz., the seizure of Sarah in consequence
of Abraham’s timid falsehood.
The
document Elohim (Gen. xx.) places the
occurrence in Gerar and makes Abimelech the offender—the document Jehovah
(xii. 10-19) places it in Egypt, and
makes Pharaoh the offender ; whilst the
same document again (xxvi. 1-11)
narrates the same occurrence, represent
ing Abimelech as the offender and
Gerar as the locality, but changing the
persons of the deceivers from Abraham
and Sarah to Isaac and Rebekah.
Examples of this kind might be
multiplied without end; which clearly
prove the existence of at least two
historical documents blended, or rather
bound together, in the Pentateuch. We
will now proceed to point out a few of
the passages and considerations which
negative the idea of either of them having
been composed in the age or by the
hand of Moses.1
The Elohim document must have
been written after the expulsion of the
Canaanites and the settlement of the
Israelites in the Promised Land, as
appears from the following passages
{inter aliaP) —
“Defile not ye yourselves in any of these
things . . . that the land vomit not you
out also, as it vomited forth the nations
which -were beforeyou ” (Lev. xviii. 24, 27,
28).
“For I was stolen away out of the
land of the Hebrews” (Gen. xl. 15).
Palestine would not be called the land
1 The formula, “ unto this day,” is frequently
found under circumstances indicating that the
writer lived long subsequent to the events he
relates (Gen. xix. 38; xxvi. 33; xxxiii. 32).
We find frequent archaeological explanations, as
Ex. xvi. 36: “ Now an omer (an ancient
measure) is the tenth part of an ephah” (a
modern measure).—Explanations of old names,
and additions of the modern ones which had
superseded them, repeatedly occur, as at Gen. xiv.
2, 7, 8, 17 ; xxiii. 2 ; xxxv. 19.
�52
A UTHORSHIP OF THE OLD TESTAMENT CANON
of the Hebrews till after the settlement
of the Hebrews therein.
“And Sarah died in Kirjatharba; the
same is Hebron in the land of Canaan ”
(Gen. xxiii. 2). “And Rachel died and
was buried in the way to Ephrath, which
is Bethlehem” (yaxx. 19). “And Jacob
came unto the city of Arba, which is
Hebron” (xxxv. 27). These passages
indicate a time subsequent to the erec
tion of the Israelitish cities.
The document must have been written
in the time of the Kings; for it says,
Gen. xxxvi. 31, “These are the Kings
that reigned in the land of Edom, before
there reigned any King over the children of
Israel.” Yet it must have been written
before the end of the reign of David, since
Edom, which David subdued, is repre
sented in ch. xxxvi. as still independent.
The conclusion, therefore, which critical
Science has drawn from these and other
points of evidence is, that the Elohim
documents were composed in the time
of Saul, or about b.c. 1055, four hundred
years after Moses.
The Jehovistic documents are con
sidered to have had a still later origin,
and to date from about the reign of
Solomon, b.c. 1000.
For they were
written after the expulsion of the Canaan
ites, as is shown from Gen. xii. 6 and
xiii. 7 : “ The Canaanite was then in
the land.” “ The Canaanite and Perizzite
dwelt then in the land.” They appear to
have been written after the time of the
Judges, since the exploits of Jair the
Gileadite, one of the Judges (x. 4), are
mentioned in Numb, xxxii. 41; after
Saul’s victory over Agag, King of the
Amalekites, who is mentioned there—
“ and his King shall be higher than
Agag ” (Numb. xxiv. 7);—and if, as
De Wette thinks, the Temple of Jeru
salem is signified by the two ex
pressions (Exod. xxiii. 19; xv. 13),
“ The House of Jehovah,” and the
“ habitation of thy holiness,”—they
must have been composed after the
erection of that edifice. This, however,
we consider as inconclusive. On the
other hand, it is thought that they must
have been written before the time of
Hezekiah, because (in Numb. xxi. 6-9)
they record the wonders wrought by the
Brazen Serpent, which that King de
stroyed as a provocative to Idolatry
(2 Kings xviii. 4). We are aware that
many persons endeavour to avoid these
conclusions by assuming that the pas
sages in question are later interpolations.But—not to comment upon the wide
door which would thus be opened to
other and less scrupulous interpreters—
this assumption is entirely unwarranted
by evidence, and proceeds on the pre
vious assumption—equally destitute of
proof—that the Books in question were
written in the time of Moses—the very
point under discussion. To prove the
Books to be written by Moses by re
jecting as interpolations all passages
which show that they could not have
been written by him—is a very clerical,
but a very inadmissible, mode of rea
soning.
It results from this inquiry that the
Pentateuch assumed its present form
about the reign of King Josiah, b.c. 624,
eight hundred years after Moses;—that
the Book of Deuteronomy was probably
composed about the same date;—that
the other four books, or rather the sepa
rate documents of which they consist,
were written between the time of Samuel
and Solomon, or from four to five hun
dred years after Moses;—that they record
the traditions respecting the early history
of the Israelites and the Law delivered
by Moses then current among the Priest
hood and the people, with such material
additions as it seemed good to the
Priests of that period to introduce;—
and that there is not the slightest reason
to conclude that the historical narratives
they contain were anything more than a
collection of the national traditions then
in vogue.1
[The concluding portion of the chapter
deals with the “reconcilers of science
and theology,” such as Whewell and
Buckland, but their speculations are now
1 De Wette and other critics are of opinion
that both the Elohistic and Jehovistic authors
�THE PROPHECIES
quite obsolete, and we may content our
selves with listening to the author’s
parting words :—]
It will not do for Geologists and
Astronomers, who wish to retain some
rags of orthodoxy, however soiled and
torn, to argue, as most do, ‘ that the
Bible was not intended as a revelation of
physical science, but only of moral and
religious truth.’ This does not meet
the difficulty; for the Bible does not
merely use the common language, and
so assume the common errors, on these
points—it gives a distinct account of the
Creation, in the same style, in the same
narrative, in the same book, in which it
narrates the Fall of Man, the Deluge,
the Revelation to Abraham, the history
of Jacob and Joseph.
The writer
evidently had no conception that when
he related the Creation of the Earth, the
Sea, and the Sun he was inventing or
perpetuating a monstrous error; and
that when he related the Fall he was
revealing a mighty and mysterious truth;
53
and when he narrated the promise to
Abraham he was recording a wondrous
prophecy. The Bible professes to give
information on all these points alike :
and we have precisely the same'Scriptural
ground for believing that God first made
the Earth and then the Sun for the
especial benefit of the Earth; that the
globe was submerged by rain which
lasted forty days; and that everything
was destroyed except the animals which
Noah packed into his Ark—as we have
for believing that Adam and Eve were
driven out of Paradise for a transgression;
that God promised Abraham to redeem
the world through his progeny; and that
Jacob and Moses were the subjects of
the divine communications recorded as
being made to them. All the statements
are made in the same affirmative style
and on the same authority. The Bible
equally professes to teach us fact on all
these matters. There is no escape by
any quibble from the grasp of this
conclusion.
Chapter III
THE PROPHECIES
A prophecy, in the ordinary accepta
tion of the term, signifies a prediction of
future events which could not have been
foreseen by human sagacity, and the
knowledge of which was supernaturally
communicated to the prophet. It is
of the Pentateuch had access to more ancient
documents extant in their times, and think it
probable that some of these materials may have
been Mosaic (De Wette, ii. 139).
[Kuenen places the Jehovistic document about
800 B. C. and the Elohistic about 750 B.C. The
four earlier books of the Hexateuch assumed
their present form about 450 B.C., and Deutero
nomy, as Mr. Greg states, about 600 B.c.]
clear, therefore, that in order to establish
the claim of any anticipatory statement,
promise, or denunciation to the rank
and title of a prophecy, four points must
be ascertained with precision—viz., what
the event was to which the alleged pre
diction was intended to refer; that the
prediction was uttered in specific, not
vague, language before the event; that
the event took place specifically, not
loosely, as predicted; and that it could
not have been foreseen by human
sagacity.
Now, there is no portion of the sacred
�54
THE PROPHECIES
writings over which hangs a veil of such
dim obscurity, or regarding the meaning
of which such hopeless discrepancies
have prevailed among Christian divines,
as the Prophetical Books of the Hebrew
Canon. The difficulties to which the
English reader is exposed by the extreme
defects of the received translation, its
confused order, and erroneous divisions
are at present nearly insuperable. No
chronology is observed; the earlier and
the later, the genuine and the spurious
are mixed together; and sometimes the
prophecies of two individuals of different
epochs are given us under the same
name. In the case of some of the more
important of them we are in doubt as to
the date, the author, and the interpreta
tion ; and on the question whether the
predictions related exclusively to Jewish
or to general history, to Cyrus or to
Jesus, to Zerubbabel or to Christ, to
Antiochus Epiphanes, to Titus or to
Napoleon; to events long past, or to
events still in the remote future—the
most conflicting opinions have been held
with equal confidence by men of equal
learning. It would carry us too far, and
prove too unprofitable an occupation, to
enumerate these contradictory interpre
tations ; we shall in preference content
ourselves with a brief statement of some
considerations which will show how far
removed we are on this subject from the
possession of that clear certainty, or
even that moderate verisimilitude of
knowledge, on which alone any reason
ings, such as have been based on Hebrew
prophecy, can securely rest. There is
no department of theology in which
divines have so universally assumed their
conclusions and modified their premises
to suit them as in this.
I. In the first place, it is not uninstructive to remind ourselves of a few of
the indications scattered throughout the
Scriptures of what the conduct and
state of mind of the Prophets often were.
They seem, like the utterers of Pagan
oracles, to have been worked up before
giving forth their prophecies into a
species of religious frenzy, produced
or aided by various means, especially by
music and dancing.1 Philo says, “ The
mark of true prophecy is the rapture of
its utterance; in order to attain divine
wisdom the soul must go out of itself,
and become drunk with divine frenzy.” 2
The same word in Hebrew (and Plato
thought in Greek also) signifies “ to pro
phecy ” and “ to be mad ”;3 and even among
themselves the prophets were often
regarded as madmen 4—an idea to which
their frequent habit of going about
naked5 and the performance occasion
ally of still more disgusting ceremonies
greatly contributed. That many of them
were splendid poets and noble-minded
men there can be no doubt; but we see
in conduct like this little earnest of
sobriety or divine inspiration, and far too
much that reminds us of the fanatics of
eastern countries and of ancient times.
II. Many, probably most, of the socalled prophecies were not intended as
predictions in the proper meaning of
the word, but were simply promises
of prosperity or denunciations of ven
geance contingent upon certain lines of
conduct. The principle of the Hebrew
theocracy was that of temporal rewards
or punishments consequent upon obedi
ence to, or deviation from, the divine
ordinances ; and in the great proportion
of cases the prophetic language seems to
have been nothing more than a reminder
or fresh renunciation of the principle.
This is clearly shown by the circum
stances that several of the prophecies,
though originally given, not in the con
tingent, but in the positive form,, were
rescinded, or contradicted by later pro
phetical denunciations, as in the case of
Eli, David, Hezekiah, and Jonah. The
rescinding of prophecy in i Sam. ii. 30
is very remarkable, and shows how little
1 I Sam. xviii. 10; x. 5 ; 2 Kings iii. 15, 16.
2 Quoted in Mackay’s Progress of the Intel
lect,” ii. 192.
3 Newman, “Heb. Mon.”p. 34. Platoderived
p.a.vrvs from p.aive<r0ai.
4 2 Kings ix. Ii ; Jeremiah xxix. 26.
5 2 Sam. vi. 16, 20; 1 Sam. xix. 24 ; Is. xx.
3 ; Ezek. iv. 4, 6, 8, 12, 15 ; 1 Kings xx. 3533.
�THE PROPHECIES
these enunciations were regarded by the
Israelites from our modern point of
view. Compare 2 Sam. vii. 10, where
the Israelites are promised that they shall
not be moved out of Canaan nor afflicted
any more, with the subsequent denun
ciations of defeat and captivity in a
strange land. Compare, also, 2 Sam.
vii. 12-16, where the permanent pos
session of the throne is promised to
David, and that the lineal descendant
shall not fail him to sit upon the throne
of Judah, with the curse pronounced on
his last royal descendant, Coniah—-“Thus
saith the Lord, Write ye this man child
less, a man that shall not prosper in his
days ; for no man of his seed shall
prosper, sitting upon the throne of
David, and ruling any more in Judah”
(Jer. xxii. 30 ; xxxvii. 30). See, also,
the curious argument as to the liability
of prophecy to be rescinded, in the same
book (Jer. xxxiii. 17-26). The re
scinding of the prediction or denuncia
tion in the case of Hezekiah is recorded
in Isaiah xxxviii. 1-5, and that of Jonah in
the Book which bears his name, iii. 4-10.
III. It is now clearly ascertained, and
generally admitted among critics, that
several of the most remarkable and
specific prophecies were never fulfilled
at all, or only very partially and loosely
fulfilled. Among these may be specified
the denunciation of Jeremiah (xxii. 18,
19; xxxvi. 30), against Jehoiakim, as
may be seen by comparing 2 Kings xxiv.
6 ;—and the denunciation of Amos
against Jeroboam II. (vii. n), as may
be seen by comparing 2 Kings xiv.
23-29. The remarkable, distinct, and
positive prophecies in Ezekiel (xxvi.,
xxvii.), relating to the conquest,
plunder, and destruction of Tyre by
Nebuchadnezzar, we can now state on
the highest authorities,1 were not ful
filled. Indeed (in ch. xxix. 18) is a
confession that he failed, at least so far
as spoil went. The same may be said
of the equally clear and positive pro
phecies of the conquest and desolation
1 Heeren’s “ Researches, ” ii. 11.
439-
Grote, iii.
55
of Egypt by Nebuchadnezzar (Jer. xliii.
10-13 ; Ezek. xxix. ; xxx. 1-19), as Dr.
Arnold, in his Sermons on Prophecy
(p. 48) fully admits.1 Jeremiah’s pro
phecy of the Captivity of Seventy years,
and the destruction of Babylon (xxv.)
have generally been appealed to as
instances of clear prophecy exactly and
indisputably fulfilled. But in the first
place, at the time this prediction was
delivered, the success of Nebuchad
nezzar against Jerusalem was scarcely
doubtful; in the second place, the Cap
tivity cannot, by any fair calculation, be
lengthened out to seventy years ;2 and
in the third place, the desolation of
Babylon (“ perpetual desolation ” is
the emphatic phrase) which was to
take place at the end of the seventy
years, as a punishment for the pride
of Nebuchadnezzar, did not take place
till long after.
Babylon was still a
flourishing city under Alexander the
Great; and, as Mr. Newman observed,
“it is absurd to present the emptiness
of modern Babylon as a punishment for
the pride of Nebuchadnezzar,” or as a
fulfilment of Jeremiah’s prophecy.—
Gen. xlix. 10, must also be considered
to present a specimen of prophecy
signally falsified by the event, and being
composed in the palmiest days of Judah,
was probably little more than a hyper
bolical expression of the writer’s con
fidence in the permanence of her
grandeur. Finally, in Hosea we have
a remarkable instance of self-contradic
tion, or virtual acknowledgment of the
non-fulfilment of prophecy. In viii. 13
and ix. 3, it is affirmed, “ Ephraim shall
return to Egypt ”; while in xi. 5, it is
said, “ Ephraim shall not return to
I
1 Grote, ubi supra.—“Hebrew Monarchy,”
p.363.
2 The chronologies of Kings and Chronicles
do not quite tally; but taking that of Jeremiah
himself, the desolation begun in the seventh
year of Nebuchadnezzar, B.C. 599, was continued
in B.C. 588, and concluded in B.c. 583.—The
exile ended some say 538, some 536. The
longest date that can be made out is 66 years,
and the shortest only 43. To make out 70 years
fairly, we must date from B. C. 606; the first
year of Nebuchadnezzar.
�56
THE PROPHECIES
Egypt.” Isaiah (xvii. i) pronounces on
Damascus a threat of ruin as emphatic
as any that was pronounced against
Tyre, Egypt, or Babylon. “It is taken
away from being a city, and it shall be
a ruinous heap.” Yet Damascus is to
this day the most flourishing city in
those countries.
IV. We find from numberless pas
sages both in the prophetical and the
historical books, that for a considerable
period the Hebrew nation was inundated
with false prophets,1 whom it was diffi
cult and often impossible to distinguish
from the true, although we have both
prophetical and sacerdotal tests given
for this express purpose. It even ap
pears that some of those whom we con
sider as true prophets were by their
contemporaries charged with being, and
even punished for being, the contrary.
In Deut. xviii. 20-22, the decision of
the prophet’s character is made to de
pend upon the fulfilment or non-fulfil
ment of his prophecy. In Deut. xiii.
1-5, this test is rejected, and the de
cision is made to rest upon the doctrine
which he teaches: if this be false he is
to be stoned, whatever miraculous proofs
of his mission he may give.2 From
Jer. xxix. 26, 27, it appears that the
High Priest assumed the right of judg
ing whether a man was a false or a true
prophet; though Jeremiah himself does
not seem to have been willing to abide
by this authority, but to have denounced
priests and the prophets who supported
them (Jer. v. 31). Pashur the priest,
we learn (xx. 1-7), put Jeremiah in the
stocks . for his false prophecies; and
Shemaiah reproves the Priest Jehoiada
for not having repeated the punishment,
and is violently denounced by the pro
phet in consequence (xxix. 24-32.).
V. In the case of nearly all the
prophets we have little external or in
dependent evidence as to the date at
which their prophecies were uttered, and
1 Jeremiah v. 31; xxiii, 16-34. Ezekiel xiv.
9-11.
2 ,§ee a^so
whole remarkable chapter, Jer.
xxviii.
none as to the period at which they were
written down /1 while the internal evi
dence on these points is dubious, con
flicting, and, in the opinions of the best
critics, generally unfavourable to the
popular conceptions.—The Books of
Kings and Chronicles, in which many
of these prophecies are mentioned, and
the events to which they are supposed
to refer, are related, were written, or
compiled in their present form, the
former near the termination of the
Babylonian Exile, or somewhere about
the year b.c. 530, i.e., from 50 to 200
years2 after the period at which the
prophecies were supposed to have been
deliveredwhile the latter appear to
have been a much later compilation,
some critics dating them about 260, and
others about 400 before Christ.3
It is probably not too much to affirm
that we have no instance in the pro
phetical Books of the Old Testament of
a prediction, in the case of which we
possess, at once and combined, clear
and unsuspicious proof of the date, the
precise event predicted, the exact cir
cumstances of that event, and the in
ability of human sagacity to foresee it.
There is no case in which we can say
with certainty—even where it is reason
able to suppose that the prediction was
uttered before the event—that the nar
rative has not been tampered with to
suit the prediction, or the prediction
modified to correspond with the event.4
1 “Hebrew Monarchy,” p. 352 (note.)
2 Amos and Hosea flourished probably about
790 B.c.
Jeremiah about 600.
Zechariah
about 520. De Wette, ii. 436. [Kuenen and
Wellhausen think, however, that Kings was
substantially completed before the Exile, i.e.,
about B.C. 600, a few short passages imply
ing an exilic standpoint being introduced
afterward.]
3 Such at least is the most probable result
at which critical science has yet arrived. De
Wette, ii. 248, 265. [Driver, Intro., p. 486,
thinks. B.c. 332, the earliest date to which
Chronicles can be assigned. Most critics agree,
though Noldeke puts it as late as B.c. 200.]
4 De Wette and other theologians consider
that in many cases where the prophecy is
unusually definite, this has certainly been done.
E 357, 363-
�THE PROPHECIES
The following remarks will show how
little certain is our knowledge, even in
the case of the principal prophets.
Isaiah, as we learn in the first and the
sixth chapters of his Book, appeared as
a Prophet in the last year of the reign of
King Uzziah (b.c. 759), and prophesied
till the fourteenth year of Hezekiah
(b.c. 710). We hear of him in the 2nd
Book of Kings and Chronicles, but not
till the reign of Hezekiah; except that
he is referred to in 2 Chron. xxvi. 22, as
having written a history of Uzziah. The
prophecies which have come down to us
bearing his name extend to sixty-six
chapters, of the date of which (either of
their composition or compilation) we
hare no certain knowledge ; but of which
the last twenty-seven are confidently de
cided by competent judges to be the
production of a different Writer, and a
later-age; and were doubtless composed
during the Babylonish Captivity, later
therefore than the year b.c. 600, or
about 150 years after Isaiah.
The
grounds of this decision are given at
length in De Wette.1 They are found
partly in the marked difference of style
between the two portions of the Book,
but still more in the obvious and per
vading fact that the Writer of the latter
portion takes his stand in the period of
the Captivity, speaks of the Captivity as
an existing circumstance or condition,
and comforts his captive Countrymen
with hopes of deliverance at the hand of
Cyrus. It appears as the general sum
mary result of critical research, that our
present collection consists of a number
of promises, denunciations, and exhort
ations, actually uttered by Isaiah, and
brought together by command, probably
of Hezekiah, greatly enlarged and inter
polated by writings upwards of a century
later than his time, which the ignorance
or unfair intentions of subsequent col
lectors and commentators have not
1 De Wette, ii. 364-390. [Several other
sections of the Book are not the work of Isaiah,
such as chaps, xiii., xv., xvi. 1-12, and probably
others. The entire compilation cannot be earlier
than b.c. 536.]
57
scrupled to consecrate by affixing to
them his venerable name.
Jeremiah appears to have prophesied
from about b.c. 630-580, or before and
at the commencement of the Captivity
at Babylon, and the chief portion of his
writings refer to that event, which in his
time was rapidly and manifestly ap
proaching. The prophecies appear to
have been written down by Baruch, a
scribe, from the dictation of Jeremiah
(xxxvi.) and to have been collected soon
after the return from exile,1 but by whom
and at what precise time is unknown ;—and commentators discover several pas
sages in which the original text appears
to have been interpolated, or worked
over again. Still, the text seems to be
far more pure, and the real, much nearer
to the professed, date, than in the case
of Isaiah.
The genuineness of the Book of
Ezekiel is less doubtful than that of any
other of the Prophets. His prophecies
relate chiefly to the destruction of Jeru
salem, which happened during his time.
He appears to have been carried into
exile by the victorious Chaldteans about
eleven years before they finally con
summated the ruin of the Jewish Nation
by the destruction of their Capital. His
prophecies appear to have continued
many years after the Captivity—sixteen
according to De Wette.2
Of all the prophetical writings, the
Book of Daniel has been the subject of
the fiercest contest. Divines have con
sidered it . of paramount importance,
both on account of the definiteness
and precision of its predictions, and the
supposed reference of many of them to
Christ. Critics, on the other hand, have
considered the genuineness of the Book
to be peculiarly questionable; and few
now, of any note or name, venture to
defend it. In all probability we have
no remains of the real prophecies of the
actual Daniel—for that such a person,
famed for his wisdom and virtue, did
exist, appears from Ezek. xiv. and xxxviii,
1 De Wette, ii. 416 and 396.
2 De Wette, ii. 426.
�58
THE PROPHECIES
He must have lived about 570 years
before Christ, whereas the Book which
bears his name was almost certainly
written in the time of Antiochus' Epiphanes, no years b.c. -Some English
Commentators1 and Divines have endea
voured to escape from the obvious and
manifold difficulties of the Book, by
conceiving part of it to be genuine and
part spurious.—But De Wette has shown2
that we have no reason for believing it
not to be the work of one hand. It is
full of historical inaccuracies and fanciful
legends; and the opening statement is
an obvious error, showing that the Writer
was imperfectly acquainted with the
chronology or details of the period in
which he takes his stand. The first
chapter begins by informing us.that in
the third year of King Jehoiakim, Nebu
chadnezzar, King of Babylon, besieged
and took Jerusalem, and carried the
King (and Daniel) away captive. Where
as, we learn from Jeremiah that Nebu
chadnezzar was not King of Babylon till
the fourth year of Jehoiakim, and did
not take Jerusalem till seveiz years later.3
It would be out of place to adduce all
the marks which betray the late origin of
this Book;—they may be seen at length
in De Wette. It is here sufficient that
we have no froof whatever of its early
date, and that the most eminent critics
have abandoned the opinion of its
genuineness as indefensible.
III. Thirdly, We have already had
ample proof that the Jewish Writers
1 “I have long thought that the greater part of
the book of Daniel is most certainly a very late
work, of the time of the Maccabees; and the
pretended prophecy about the Kings of Greece
and Persia, and of the North and Scuth, is mere
history, like the poetical prophecies in Virgil and
elsewhere. In fact you can trace distinctly the
date when it was written, because the events up
to that date are given with historical minute
ness, totally unlike the character of real pro
phecy; and beyond that date all is imaginary.”
—Again, he thinks that criticism “proves the
non-authenticity of great part of Daniel: that
there may be genuine fragments in it is very
likely.”—“Arnold’s Life and Cor.” ii. 188.
2 De Wette, ii. 499.
3 See the whole argument in De Wette, ii.
484 (note).
not only did not scruple to narrate past
events as if predicting future ones—to
present History in the form of Prophecy
—but that they habitually did so. The
instances are far too numerous to quote;
—we will specify only a few of the most
remarkable :—Gen. xxv. 23 ; xxvii. 28,
29, 39, 4° J xlix. passim ; Numb, xxiv.;
Deut. iv. 27 ; xxviii. 25, 36, 37, 64.
We anticipate that these remarks will
be met by the reply—“ Whatever may
be established as to the uncertainty
which hangs over the date of those pro
phecies which refer to the ■ temporal
fortunes of the Hebrew Nation, no
doubt can exist that all the prophecies
relating to the Messiah were extant in
their present form long previous to the
advent of Him in whose person the
Christian world agrees to acknowledge
their fulfilment.” This is true, and the
argument would have all the force which
is attributed to it, were the objectors
able to lay their finger on a single Old
Testament Prediction clearly referring
to Jesus Christ, intended by the utterers
of it to relate to him, prefiguring his
character and career, and manifestly ful
filled in his appearance on earth. This
they cannot do. Most of the passages
usually adduced as complying with these
conditions, referred, and were clearly
intended to refer,1 to eminent indi
viduals in Israelitish History ;—many
are not prophecies at all ;2—the Messiah,
1 “ We find throughout the New Testament,”
says Dr. Arnold, “references made to various
passages in the Old Testament, which are alleged
as prophetic of Christ, or of some particulars of
the Christian dispensation. Now if we turn to
the context of these passages, and so endeavour
to discover their meaning, according to the only
sound principles of interpretation, it will often
appear that they do not relate to the Messiah, or
to Christian times, but are either expressions of
religious affections generally, such as submission,
love, hope, &c., or else refer to some particular
circumstances in the life and condition of the
writer, or of the Jewish nation, and do not at all
show that anything more remote, or any events
of a more universal and spiritual character, were
designed to be prophesied.”—“Sermons on the
Interpretation of Prophecy.” Preface, p. I.
2 “The great prophecies of Isaiah and
Jeremiah are, critics can now see, not strictly
�i
THE PROPHECIES
the Anointed Deliverer, expected by the
Jews, hoped for and called for by their
Poets and Prophets, was of a character
so different, and a career so opposite, to
those of the meek, lowly, long-suffering
Jesus, that the passages describing the
one never could have been applied to
the other, without a perversion of in
genuity, and a disloyal treatment of
their obvious signification, which, if
employed in any other field than that of
Theology, would have met with the
prompt discredit and derision they
deserve.1 There are, no doubt, scattered
predictions at all; and predictions which are
strictly meant as such, like those in the Book of
Daniel, are an embarrassment to the Bible rather
than a main element of it.”—Literature and
Dogma, p. 114, by Matthew Arnold.
1 This disingenuousness is obvious in one
point especially : the Messianic Prophecies are
interpreted literally or figuratively, as may best
suit their adaptation to the received history of
Jesus. Thus that “ the wolf shall lie down with
the lamb, and the lion eat grass like an ox,” is
taken figuratively : that the Messiah should ride
into Jerusalem on an ass, is taken literally. The
following passage, written five and twenty years
subsequent to the text of this volume, may be
quoted in confirmation. “And what were called
the ‘ signal predictions ’ concerning the Christ of
popular theology, as they stand in our Bibles,
had and have undoubtedly a look of supernatural
prescience. The employment of capital letters,
and other aids, such as the constant use of the
future tense, naturally and innocently adopted
by interpreters who were profoundly convinced
that Christianity needed these express predictions
and that they must be in the Bible, enhanced,
certainly, this look ; but the look, even without
these aids, was sufficiently striking. That Jacob
on his death-bed should two thousand years
before Christ have 1 been enabled,’ as the phrase
is, to foretell to his son Judah that ‘the sceptre
shall not depart from Judah until Shiloh (or the
Messiah) come, and to him shall the gathering
of the people be,’ does seem, when the ex
planation is put with it that the Jewish kingdom
lasted till the Christian era and then perished,
a miracle of prediction in favour of our current
Christian theology. That Jeremiah should have
‘ been enabled ’ to foretell, in the name of
Jehovah ; ‘The days come when I will raise to
David a righteous Branch ; in his days Judah
shall be saved, and Israel shall dwell safely; and
this is the name whereby he shall be called, THE
lord our righteousness!’—does seem a
wonder of prediction in favour of that tenet of
the Godhead of the Eternal Son, for which the
Bishops of Winchester and Gloucester are so
59
verses in the Prophetic and Poetical
Books of the Hebrew Canon, which, as
quotations, are apt and applicable enough
to particular points in Christ’s character
and story;—but of what equally volu
minous collection of poems or rheto
rical compositions may the same not be
anxious to do something. For unquestionably
Jehovah is often spoken of as the saviour of
Judah and Israel: ‘All flesh shall know that I
the Eternal am thy saviour and thy redeemer,
the mighty one of Jacob’; and in- the prophecy
given above as Jeremiah’s, the Branch of David
is clearly identified with Jehovah. Again, that
David should say : ‘ The Lord said unto my
Lord, Sit thou on my right hand until I make
thy foes thy footstool,’—does seem a prodigy of
prediction to the same effect. That he should
say : ‘ Kiss the Son, lest he be angry and so ye
perish,’ does seem a supernaturally prescient
assertion of the Eternal Sonship. And so long
as these prophecies stand as they are here given,
they no doubt bring to Christianity all the
support (and with the mass of mankind this is
by no means inconsiderable) which it can derive
from the display of supernatural prescience.
But who will dispute that it more and more
becomes known that these prophecies cannot
stand as we have here given them ? Manifestly,
it more and more becomes known, that the
passage from Genesis, with its mysterious Shiloh
and the gathering of these people to him, is
rightly to be rendered as follows : ‘ The pre
eminence shall not depart from Judah so long as
the people resort to Shiloh (the national sanctuary
before Jerusalem was won); and the nations (the
heathen Canaanites) shall obey himd We here
purposely leave out of sight any such con
sideration as that our actual books of the Old
Testament came first together through the piety
of the house of Judah, and when the destiny of
Judah was already traced; and that to say
roundly : ‘Jacob was enabled to foretell, The
sceptre shall not depart from Judah,’ as if he
were speaking of a prophecy preached and
published by Dr. Cumming, is wholly inad
missible. For this consideration is of force,
indeed, but it is a consideration drawn from the
rules of literary history and criticism, and not
likely to have weight with the mass of mankind.
Palpable error and mistranslation are what
And what,
will have weight with them.
then, will they say as they come to know
(and do not and must not more and more of
them come to know it every day ?) that Jeremiah’s
supposed signal identification of Christ with the
God of Israel : ‘ I will raise to David a righteous
Branch, and this is the name whereby he shall
be called, the lord our righteousness,’
runs really : I will raise to David a righteous
branch; in his days Judah shall be saved and
�6o
THEISM OF THÈ JEWS IMPURE AND PROGRESSIVE
said ?1 Of the references made by the
Evangelists to such passages, we shall
speak hereafter.
The state of the case appears to be
this: —That all the Old Testament
Prophecies have been assumed -to be
genuine, inspired predictions; and when
falsified in their obvious meaning and
received interpretation by the event,
have received immediately a new inter
pretation, and been supposed to refer to
Israel shall dwell safely; and this is the name
whereby they shall call themselves : The Eternal
is our righteousness
The prophecy thus be
comes simply one of the many promises of a
successor to David under whom the Hebrew
people should trust in the Eternal and follow
righteousness ; just as the prophecy from Genesis
is one of the many prophecies of the enduring
continuance of the greatness of Judah. ‘The
Lord said unto my Lord,’ in like manner—will
not people be startled when they find that it
ought to run instead : ‘ the Eternal said unto my
lord the king,’—a simple promise of victory to a
prince of God’s chosen people?—and that:
‘ Kiss the Son,’ is in reality, ‘ Be warned,’ or ‘ be
instructed ;’ ‘layhold,’ according to the Septuagint, ‘ on instruction’?”—Lite? attire and Dogma,
pp. 110-113. See also pp. 91-106.
1 Perhaps none of the Old Testament prophe
cies are more clearly Messianic than the following
passage from Plato :—Ovtw fiiaKet/j.evos & Alxaios
/j.a<TTiyái(reTai,
SeStjaerai, ¿xicavfMltrerai Tuuf>0aXp.(¿, re\evrS>v irávra xana iradcóv
ava<rxitd)v\evd-r¡ffeTai. Plato, de República, 1.
ii. p. 361, E.
Speaking of this teacher of Mankind whom
he expected, he says, “This just man will
scarcely be endured by them—but probably will
be scourged, racked, tormented, have his eyes
burnt out and at last, having suffered all manner
of evils, shall be impaled”— or as the original
term will signify, “Crucified.”
some other event. When the result has
disappointed expectation, the conclusion
has been, not that the prophecy was
false, but that the interpretation was
erroneous. It is obvious that a mode of
reasoning like this is peculiar to Theo
logical Inquirers.
From this habit of assuming that
Prophecy was Prediction, and must have
its fulfilment—which was perhaps preva
lent among the Jews as among modern
Divines—appears to have arisen the
national expectation of a Messiah.—
A Deliverer was hoped for, expected,
prophesied, in the time of Jewish misery
(and Cyrus was perhaps the first referred
to); but as no one appeared who did
what the Messiah, according to Pro
phecy, should do, they went on
degrading each successive Conqueror
and Hero from the Messianic dignity,
and are still expecting the true Deliverer.
—Hebrew and Christian Divines both
start from the same assumed and un
proven premises, viz.:—that a Messiah
having been foretold, must appear;—
but there they diverge, and the Jews
show themselves to be the sounder
logicians of the two :—the Christians,
assuming that Jesus was the Messiah
intended (though not the one expected},
wrest the obvious meaning of the Pro
phecies to show that they were fulfilled
in him •—while the Jews, assuming the
obvious meaning of the Prophecies to be
their real meaning, argue that they were
not fulfilled in Christ, and therefore that
the Messiah is yet to come.
Chapter IV
THEISM OF THE JEWS IMPURE AND
PROGRESSIVE
It is an assumption of the popular
theology, and an almost universal belief
in the popular mind, that the Jewish
nation was selected by the Almighty to
preserve and carry down to later ages a
knowledge of the One true Godthat
the Patriarchs possessed this know
ledge ;—that Moses delivered and en
�THEISM OF THE JEWS IMPURE AND PROGRESSIVE
forced this doctrine as the fundamental
tenet of the national creed;—and that
it was, in fact, the received and distinctive
dogma of the Hebrew people. This
alleged possession of the true faith by
one only people, while all surrounding
tribes were lost in Polytheism, or some
thing worse, has been adduced by
divines in general as a proof of the
truth of the. sacred history, and of the
divine origin of the Mosaic dispensation,
and forms, indeed, one of the standard
arguments of Theologians in the present
day. Paley, the actual text-book of one
of our Universities, writes of it thus :—
“ Undoubtedly our Saviour assumes
the divine origin of the Mosaic Institu
tion ; and independently of his authority,
I conceive it to be very difficult to assign
any other cause for the commencement
or existence of that Institution;
especially for the singular circumstance
of the Jews adhering to the Unity, when
every other people slid into polytheism ;
for their being men in religion, children
in everything else ; behind other nations
in the arts of peace and war, superior to
the most improved in their sentiments
and doctrines relating to the Deity. ”x
Milman2 speaks of the pure mono
theism of the Jews in a similar strain :
“ The religious history of this people
is no less singular. In the narrow slip
of land inhabited by their tribes the
worship of one Almighty Creator of the
Universe subsists, as in its only sanctuary.
In every stage of society, under the
pastoral tent of Abraham, and in the
sumptuous Temple of Solomon, the same
creed maintains its inviolable simplicity.
. . . Nor is this merely a sublime specu
lative tenet; it is the basis of their civil
constitution, and of their national cha
racter. As there is but one Almighty God
so there is but one People under his
special protection, the descendants of
Abraham.”
Now, the passage we have italicised is
surely an extraordinary over-statement of
the case. Without going so far as Bauer
1 Paley’s Evidences of Christianity.
2 History of the Jews, i, 4.
61
(Theol. des Alt. Test. i. 4) who thinks
that the Jews as a nation scarcely became
true monotheists till after the Captivity,
it seems difficult not to recognise that
they did not believe in the exclusive
existence of one sole God in the earlier
times—perhaps not till a comparatively
late period of their history;—that their
early and popular notions of the Deity
were eminently coarse, low, and un
worthy ;—that among them, as among
all other nations, the conceptions of God
formed by individuals varied according
to their intellectual and spiritual capa
cities, being poor and anthropomorphic
among the ignorant and coarse-minded,
pure and lofty among the virtuous and
richly-gifted;—and, finally, that these
conceptions gradually improved and be
came purified and ennobled, as the
Hebrews advanced in civilisation—be
ing, generally speaking, lowest in the
Historical Books, amended in the Pro
phetical Writings, and reaching their
highest elevation among the Poets of the
Nation.
In its progress from Fetichism to pure
Theism, the human mind generally
passes through three stages—or to speak
more correctly, man’s idea of God passes
through three forms of development. We
have him represented first as the God
of the individual or family; then as the
God of the nation ; lastly as the God of
the human race.—Now we find all these
three views of Deity in the Old Testa
ment—sometimes, it is true, strangely
jumbled together, as might be expected
in books written by different persons
at different times—but on the whole
bearing pretty distinct marks of the
periods at which they respectively pre
vailed.
The representations of God in the
history of Abraham appear to imply that
the God whom he worshipped was a
family God, selected, probably, by him
for some reason unknown to us, out of a
number of others who were worshipped
by his fathers and his tribe. We are
expressly told that the father and grand
father of Abraham “ worshipped other
�Ó2
THEISM OF THE JEWS IMPURE AND PROGRESSIVE
Gods ” ;—and the representations given
of the God of Abraham, and of his
proceedings during the lives of the three
Patriarchs, are so mean and material
that it is difficult to conceive how a
knowledge of the One true God, Maker
of Heaven and Earth, could have been
ascribed to them. God appears to
Abraham with two angels in the form of
men—(they are spoken of as “three
men ”)—sits at the door of his tent—
partakes of his repast—is angry at the
laughter of Sarah, and an altercation
takes place between them ; after which
He discusses with him the case of
Sodom and Gomorrah, and informs him
that He is going down thither to see
whether the reports which have reached
him are correct. “ Your fathers dwelt
on the other side of the flood in old
time, even Terah, the father of Abraham
and the father of Nachor: and they
served other GodsT (Joshua xxiv. 2).
“ The God of Abraham and the God of
Nachor, the God of their father, judge
betwixt us ” (Gen. xxxi. 53). There
are not wanting traces of Polytheism in
the earlier portions of Hebrew History.
The expression Jehovah Elohim, 11 The
God of Gods, ” may, perhaps, be taken
as an indication. Bauer thinks that
“the Elohim, who were probably at
one time worshipped as equal Gods, are
in Genesis recognised as subordinate
deities, with whom Jehovah, the highest
Eloah, enters into council” (Theol.
des Alt. Test. i. 3). It will be remem
bered that Laban, a near relative of
Abraham, whose sister he had expressly
selected as his son Isaac’s wife, pursued
Jacob for having “ stolen his Gods” (Gen.
xxxi. 30). He therefore worshipped
fetiches. In Gen. xxxv. 2-4, we find
Jacob collecting the strange Gods wor
shipped by his household, and hiding
them under an oak. It is certainly
remarkable that both Abraham and
Isaac should insist upon their, sons
marrying into an idolatrous family, if
they had really believed their own God
to be the only one.
Jacob’s ideas of God are, as might be
expected from his mean and tricky
character, even lower than those of
Abraham. He makes a condition, on
which he will select Jehovah to be his
God, and will give Him a tithe of all his
possessions (Gen. xxviii. 20) ;—he re
presents Him as his confidant in cheat
ing Laban, and wrestles with Him bodily
to extort a blessing. Who, after reading
such passages can for a moment accept
the belief that Jacob and Job entertained
the same conceptions of God.
In process of time the descendants
of Abraham multiplied and became a
numerous people, and naturally con
tinued the worship of that God who
had done so much for their forefathers.
Thus the Jamily God of Abraham, Isaac,
and Jacob gradually enlarged into the
national God of the Israelites, to whose
worship they adhered with greater or
less tenacity, with greater or less ex
clusiveness, during their residence in
Egypt. As the history proceeds the
conceptions of this God seem to be
come purer and loftier, till, in the mind
of Moses, an intellectual and highlyeducated man, versed in all the learning
of the Egyptians, they often (as far as
we can guess what came from him)
reached to a sublime simplicity of ex
pression rarely surpassed. Still, there
is no distinct proof that Moses dis
believed in the existence of other Gods :
—the God whom he serves is still “ the
God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob”;—
He is not asserted to be the only God;
the existence and power of rival Deities
is not denied, but is even admitted by
implication. All that Moses claims for
Jehovah is, not that he is the Sole God.
but that he is superior to all Others,
“Who is like unto Thee, Jehovah,
among the Gods ? ” (Ex. xv. 111). And
he represents him to Pharaoh, by
Jehovah’s own command, as the “God
of the Hebrews,” not as the Supreme
Lord of Eleaven and Earth. Even in
1 Jethro says ; “Now I know that Jehovah is
greater than all gods : for in the thing wherein
they dealt proudly, he was above them all.”—
(Exod. xviii. 11.)
�THEISM OF THE JEWS IMPURE AND PROGRESSIVE
the delivery of the Commandments, the
great foundation of the Law, it is not
said, “There is no God but Jehovah,”
but only “I am the Lord thy God,
which brought thee out of the House
of Bondage; thou shalt haw no other
Gods beside Me (or before Me).” The
whole of the xxivth chapter of Joshua
confirms this view : he there urges the
Israelites to choose Jehovah, not as the
only God, whom to desert would be to
become Atheists, but as a God whose
bounties to them had been so great that
it would be black ingratitude not to
prefer Him to all others. The whole
history of the lapses of the Jewish
Nation into idolatry also discourages
the idea of their having been really
monotheists. The worship of the golden
calf and the Canaanitish gods was quite
natural on the supposition of Jehovah
being merely a paramount and preferred
God:—monstrous, if they had believed
Him to be the only one. Moreover,
their idolatry is always spoken of as
infidelity, not as atheism.
As civilisation advanced, prophets,
sages, and poets arose among the
Hebrews, to whom the limited and
anthropomorphic conceptions of the
Deity, prevalent among the people,
were painfully inadequate and revolt
ing;—and they endeavoured by nobler
representations of the object of their
worship to convert the national religion
into a pure theism ; in which, however,
it is thought by many that they did not
succeed till after the Captivity. After
this idea had once taken root, the nation
never showed any disposition to relapse
into idolatry. And even to the latest
period of the Canonical writings we find
representations both of the nature and
attributes of Jehovah so utterly discre
pant as to leave no doubt that among
the Jews, as among all other nations,
the God of the wise and the God of the
ignorant—the God of the Priests and
the God of the Prophets—were the
embodiment of two very different classes
of ideas. Let anyone compare the
partial, unstable, revengeful, and deceit
63
ful God of Exodus and Numbers with
the sublime and unique Deity of Job
and the nobler Psalms, or even the God
of Isaiah with the God of Ezekiel and
Daniel—and he can scarcely fail' to
admit that the conception of the One
living and true God was a plant of slow
and gradual growth in the Hebrew mind,
and was due far less to Moses, the
Patriarchs, or the Priests, than to the
superiority of individual minds at various
periods of their history.
Compare the
following representations which we have
arranged in parallel columns.
And Jehovah spake
to Moses, saying—Let
them make me a sanc
tuary, that I may dwell
among them—And thou
shalt put the mercy-seat
above upon the ark, . . .
and there I will meet
with thee, and I will
commune with thee.—
Exod. xxv. 8, 21-22.
But will God in
very deed dwell on
the earth ? Behold the
Heaven, and the Flea
ven of Heavens, cannot
contain Thee; how
much less this House
that I have builded !
— 1 Kings viii. 27.
Whither shall I go
from thy Spirit ? or
whither shall I flee
from thy presence ?—
Ps. cxxxix. 7-10.
And it came to pass,
as Moses entered into
the tabernacle, that the
cloudy pillar descended,
and stood at the door
of the tabernacle : and
Jehovah talked with
Moses.—And Jehovah
spake unto Moses face to
face, as a man speaketh
unto a friend.—Exod.
xxxiii. 9, II.
For they have heard
that thou Jehovah art
among this people, that
thou Jehovah art seen
face to face.—Numbers
xiv. 14.
Lo, he goeth by me,
and I see him not; he
passeth on also, but I
perceive him not.—Job
ix. 11.
Behold, I go forward,
but he is not there ; and
backward, but I cannot
perceive him: on the
left hand, where he
doth work, but I can
not behold him: he
hideth himself on the
right hand, that I can
not see him. —Tob xxiii.
8, 9.
And Jehovah said,
Behold there is a place
by me, and thou shalt
stand upon a rock.
And it shall come to
pass, while my glory
passeth by, that I will
put thee in a clift of
the rock, and will cover
thee with my hand
while I pass by ! And
I will take away mine
O Jehovah my God,
thou art very great;
thou art clothed with
honour and majesty:
Who coverest thyself
with light as with a gar
ment ; who stretchest
out the Heavens like
a curtain; who layeth
the beams of his cham
bers in the waters;
who maketh the clouds
�ORIGIN OF THE GOSPELS
64
hand, and thou shalt
see my back parts ; but
my face shall not be
seen —Exod.
xxxiii.
21-24.
And Moses returned
to the Lord, and said,
Lord, wherefore hast
thou so evil entreated
this 'people ? Why is
it that thou hast sent
me? For since I came
to Pharaoh to speak in
thy name, he hath done
evil to this people;
neither hast thou de
livered thy people at
all.—Exod. v. 22, 23.
his chariot; who walketh on the wings of
the wind.—Psalm civ.
i-3Then Job answered
and said, I know it is
so of a truth ; but how
should man be just
with God ? If he will
contend with him, he
cannot answer him one
of a thousand.
For he is not a man,
as I am, that I should
answer him, and we
should come together
in judgment.—Job ix.
2, 3, 32-
And Jehovah said,
Who shall persuade
Ahab, that he may go
up and fall at RamothGilead ? And one said
on this manner, and
another said on that
manner.
And there
came forth a spirit, and
stood before the Lord,
and said, I will per
suade him. And Jeho
vah said unto him,
Wherewith ? And he
said, I will go forth,
and I will be a lying
spirit in the mouth of
all his prophets. And
he said, Thou shalt
persuade him, and pre
vail also : go forth, and
do so.—I Kings xxii.
20-23.
For the word of the
Lord is right, and all
his works are done in
truth. He loveth right
eousness and judg
ment.—Ps. xxxiii. 4, 5.
Lying lips are an
abomination to the
Lord: but they that
deal truly are his • de
light.—Prov. xii. 22.
and the tower which all the sons of men.—
the children of men Psalm xxxiii. 13.
builded.—Gen. xi. 5.
And Noah built an
altar unto the Lord,
and offered burnt offer
ings on the altar. And
the Lord smelled a
sweet savour; and the
Lord said in his heart,
I will not again curse
the ground any more
for man’s sake.—Gen.
viii. 20, 21.
I will take no bul
lock out of thy house,
nor he-goats out of thy
folds. For every beast
of the forest is mine and
the cattle upon a thou
sand hills. If I were
hungry, I would not
tell thee ; for the world
is mine, and the ful
ness thereof. Will I
eat the flesh of bulls,
or drink the blood of
goats ? Offer unto God
thanksgiving.—Ps. 1.
9-14.
But ye shall offer the
burnt-offering for a
sweet savour unto the
Lord.—Num. xxviii.
27And ye shall offer a
burnt-offering, a sacri
fice made by fire, of a
sweet savour, unto the
Lord, thirteen bullocks,
two rams, and fourteen
lambs of the first year ;
they shall be without
blemish.—Num. xxix.
I3> 36.
For thou desirest not
sacrifice, else would I
give it: thou delightest
not in burnt-offering.—
Ps. li. 16.
Wherewith shall I
come before Jehovah,
and bow myself before
the high God ? Shall
I come before him
with burnt - offering,
with calves of a year
old ? Will -the Lord
be pleased with thou
sands of rams, or with
ten thousand rivers of
oil ? Shall I give my
first-born for my trans
gressions, the fruit of
my body for the sin of
my soul ? He hath
showed thee, O man,
what is good ; and what
doth Jehovah require
of thee, but to do
justly, to love mercy,
and to walk humbly
with thy God ?—Micah
vi. 6-8.
The eyes of the Lord
And they went in
unto Noah in the ark, are in every place, be
and the Lord shut him holding the evil and the
good.—Prov. xv. 3.
in.—G&x. vii. 16.
And Jehovah came Jehovah looketh from
down to see the city Heaven: he beholdeth
Chapter V
ORIGIN OF THE GOSPELS
The current idea respecting the nature
of the Gospel History is, that the four
Evangelists were eye-witnesses (or the
amanuenses of eye-witnesses) of the
events which they relate; and that we
have, in fact, embodied in their narra
tives, four independent and corroborative
testimonies tp the words and deeds of
�ORIGIN OF THE GOSPELS
Christ. Their substantial agreement is
appealed to in proof of their fidelity, and
their numerous and circumstantial dis
crepancies are accepted as proof of their
independence.1 Let us examine what
foundation can be discovered for this
current opinion. Have we any reason
to believe that all the Evangelists, or
that any of them, were companions of
Christ—eye- and ear-witnesses of his
career? And if not, what does critical
Science teach us of the probable origin
of the four gospels ?
The first Gospel has come down to us
under the title of the Gospel of, or accord
ing to, St. Matthew : and the tradition
of the Church is that it was written
(probably about a.d. 68) by Matthew
the publican, one of the twelve apostles,
the same who was called by Jesus while
“ sitting at the receipt of custom.” This
is distinctly stated by several of the Early
Fathers, as the received opinion or tradi
tion—as by Papias (a.d. 116), Irenæus
(a.d. 178), Origen (a.d. 230), Epiphanius
(A.D.368), and Jerome (a.d. 392).1 All
2
these fathers, however, without exception,
expressly affirm that Matthew wrote his
Gospel in the Hebrew language, whereas
the Gospel which we receive as Matthew’s
1 Thus, Lardner says, “ I hîve all my days
read and admired the first three Evangelists, as
independent witnesses, and I know not how to
forbear ranking the other opinion among those
bold as well as groundless assertions in which
critics too often indulge without considering the
consequences!—Dr. Lardner, like many other
divines, required to be reminded that critics
have nothing to do with consequences, but only
with truths, and that (to use the language of
Algernon Sydney), “a consequence cannot
destroy a truth.”
2 Papias, whose information on this as on
other matters seems to have been derived from
John, whois called “the Presbyter,” an elder
of the Church at Ephesus, simply says, “Mat
thew wrote the divine oracles (ra Aoyia) in
the Hebrew tongue, and every man interpreted
them as he was able.”—Irenæus says, “ Matthew,
then, among the Jews, wrote a Gospel in their
own language, while Peter and Paul were
preaching the Gospel at Rome.”—Origen and
Jerome both state that (according to the tradi
tion come down to them) the first Gospel was
written by Matthew the publican in Hebrew.
65
is written in Greek; and not only have
we no account of its having been trans
lated, and no guarantee of such transla
tion being a faithful one, but learned
men are satisfied from internal evidence
that it is not a translation at all, but
must have been originally written in
Greek.1 Our present Gospel, therefore,
cannot be the Gospel to which the fathers
above cited refer. It would appear simply
that Matthew did write a history, or
rather memorabilia, of Christ (for the ex
pression ra. \oyta says no more), but that
this was something quite different from
our Gospel.2 This notion is confirmed
by the fact that the Ebionites and
Nazarenes, two Christian sects, pos
sessed a Hebrew Gospel, which they
considered to be the only genuine one,
and which they called the Gospel accord
ing to Matthew.3 It appears, however,
to have been so materially different from
our first Gospel as entirely to negative
the supposition of the latter being a
translation from it.
The only external testimony, then,
which exists to show that Matthew the
apostle wrote a gospel, shows at the
same time that our first Gospel is not
the one which Matthew wrote. External
evidence, therefore, gives us no reason
1 Hug, in a most luminous and learned essay,
has succeeded in rendering this, if not certain,
at least in the highest degree probable ; and his
views are supported by Erasmus, Webster,
Paulus, and De Wette.—The only critic or
equal eminence who adopts the opposite opinion
is Eichhorn.
2 It seems to us very probable, however, as
Hennell suggests, “that someone after Matthew
wrote the Greek Gospel which has come down
to us, incorporating these Hebrew Koyia (and
perhaps mainly framed out of them), whence it was
called the Gospel according to Matthew, and in
the second century came to be considered as the
work of the Apostle.”—Hennell’s Origin or
Christianity, p. 124. [Schmiedel, art. Gospels,
Ency. Bib., bluntly says that “for the author
ship of the first Gospel the Apostle Matthew musíbe given up.”]
3 Hug, Introd, part ii. § 7, pp. 317, 320, 392.
—Jerome allows that many considered it to
have been the genuine original Gospel of
Matthew.—Thirlwall’s Introd, to Schleierrnacher, 48-50, and notes.
�66
ORIGIN OF THE GOSPELS
to believe that it was the production of
an eye-witness; and it is worthy of re
mark that the author nowhere names
himself, nor claims the authority of an
eye-witness. Internal evidence goes
further, and we think effectually nega
tives the notion.
1. In the first place, many events are
recorded at which we know from the
record that Matthew was not present—
some, indeed, at which none of the
disciples were present; and yet alb these
are narrated in the same tone and with
the same particularity as the other por
tions of the narrative—sometimes even
with more minute circumstantiality.
Such are the Incarnation (c. i.), the
story of the Magi (ii.), the Temptation
(iv.), the Transfiguration (xvii.), the
Agony and the prayer in Gethsemane
(xxvi.), the denial of Peter (xxvi.), the
dream of Pilate’s wife (xxvii.), the con
versation between Judas and the Priests,
and that between Pilate and the Priests
(xxvii.), and, finally, that between the
Priests and the Soldiers about the miss
ing body of Jesus (xxviii.).
It is difficult to avoid the conclusion
that if the writer was not present at the
colloquy of Pilate with the Chief Priests
about the security of the grave of Jesus,
neither was he present at the feeding of
the five thousand, or the calming of the
waves.
2. Secondly, the abruptness of the
transitions, the fragmentary style of the
narrative, and the entire absence of all
those details as to the mode and object
of the frequent journeys indicated,1
which we should expect from a com
panion, and which we find in Luke’s
account of Paul’s travels—all point to
the conclusion that the writer was a
compiler, not an eye-witness.
3. The same conclusion is drawn from
the circumstance that his frequent double,
narratives of the same events indicate
the confusion of a man who was com
piling from fragmentary materials, rather
than the fulness and clearness of personal
1 Hennell, p. 121.
recollection.1 De Wette and Credner
dwell much upon this argument.
4- If, as the great majority of critics
imagine, Mark and Luke had Matthew’s
Gospel before them .when they wrote
their own, it is certain that they could
not have regarded him as either an eye
witness or a very accurate authority, as
they do not hesitate both to retrench,
to deviate from, and to contradict him.
Moreover, the proem to Luke’s Gospel
must, we think, by all unbiassed minds
be regarded as fatal to the hypothesis of
the authors of any of the gospels then
in existence having been either disciples
or eye-witnesses. It is clear from that,
that although many histories of Christ
were then extant, none of them had any
peculiar or paramount authority.
5. The author of the first Gospel
scarcely appears to have been acquainted
with any portion of Christ’s Ministry,
except that of which Galilee was the
scene.
The second Gospel, like the first, bears
no author’s name; but by Papias, and
Irenaeus,2 and (following them) by the
1 Ex. gr., the cure of the blind men—the
feedings—the demand of a sign—the accusation
regarding Beelzebub.
2 Papias, our parliest source of information on
the matter, was Bishop of Hieropolis, and must
have been intimate with many contemporaries
of the Apostles, and perhaps had conversed with
the Apostle John. His works are now lost,
with the exception of a few fragments preserved
by Eusebius. “Nothing (says Dr. Middleton)
more effectually demonstrates the uncertainty
of all tradition, than what is delivered to us by
antiquity concerning this very Papias. Irenaeus
declares him to have been the companion of
Polycarp, and the disciple of St. John the
Apostle. But Eusebius tells us that he was not
a disciple of St. John the Apostle but of John
the Presbyter, who was a companion only of the
Apostle, but whom Irenaeus mistook for the
Apostle. Now from Papias, through Irenaeus,
came most of the early traditions, some of them
relating to the millennium, of the most mon
strous character, which Irenaeus does not scruple
to ascribe to our Saviour, and which fully dis
pose us to credit the account of Eusebius, who
says, ‘ Papias was a weak man, of very shallow
understanding, as appears from his writings;
and by mistaking the meaning of the Apostles,
imposed these silly traditions upon Irenaeus and
�ORIGIN OF THE GOSPELS
universal tradition of the Church, is
attributed to Mark, a friend and fellowtraveller of Peter, Barnabas, and Paul,
who is several time's mentioned in the
New Testament.1 Papias says expressly
that he was neither a hearer nor a
follower of Christ, but compiled his
Gospel from information obtained from
Peter, whose “interpreter”2 he is said
to have been. Papias gives “ the Pres
byter John,” supposed to have been an
elder of the Ephesian Church, as his
authority. Mark, then, it is certain, was
not an eye-witness. Nor have we any
reason, beyond the similarity of name,
to believe that the writer of the second
Gospel was the same Mark who is menthe greatest part of the ecclesiastical writers
who, reflecting on the age of man, and his near
approach to the Apostles, were drawn by him
into the same opinions.” In another passage,
indeed, Eusebius speaks of Papias in a much
more respectful manner, as remarkable for
eloquence and Scriptural knowledge; but this
passage is not found in the older copies, and is
supposed to be spurious. It is obvious, there
fore, that little reliance can be placed on any
traditions which are traced to Papias. Irenaeus,
our next earliest authority, derives weight from
his antiquity alone. His extreme childishness
goes far to discredit many of his statements, and
no reliance can be placed upon such of them as
are at variance with the conclusions of critical
science. His traditions of what John had
related to the elders regarding the millennium
are worse than anything in the Koran, yet he gives
them as “testified by Papias.” The following
passage will induce us to receive with great
caution any evidence he gives regarding the
origin and authenticity of the Gospels:—-“As
there are four quarters of the world in which we
live, and four chief winds, and the Church is
spread over all the earth, but the pillar and
support of the Church is the Gospel and its
breath of life, plainly the Church, must have
four columns, and from them must come forth
four blasts,” &c., &c.—Adv. Hceres. c. iii. It
would be melancholy to reflect that through
such sources our only surviving testimony on
these matters is derived, had these matters the
supreme importance usually ascribed to them.
1 Acts xii. 12, 25 ; xiii. 5-13 ; xv. 37. Col.
iv. 10. Phil. 24. 1 Peter v. 13.
3 What this could mean, as applied to a man
who “spoke with tongues,” it is for the Church
to explain. [“All that can be said to be certain
is this, that it is vain to look to the Church
fathers for trustworthy information on the origin
of the Gospels ”—Schmiedel, loc. cit.\
&7
tioned in the Acts as the companion of
Paul and Barnabas {not of Peter, by the
way), nor the same who is mentioned
in 1 Peter v. 13 as his son. Mark was
one of the commonest of Roman names;
and it is probable that the idea of the
identity of the three Marks was an
imagination of Papias merely.
Neither was the author of the third
Gospel an eye-witness.
His proem
merely claims to set forth faithfully that
which he had heard from eye-witnesses.
Irenaeus is the first person who distinctly
mentions Luke as the author of this
Gospel; but little doubt appears to exist
that he wrote both the Gospel and the
Acts of the Apostles, and was the com
panion of Paul in many of his voyages.1
The authorship of the fourth Gospel
has been the subject of much learned
and anxious controversy among theolo
gians. The earliest, and only very im
portant, external testimony we have is
that of Irenaeus (a.d. 178), who says,
that after Luke wrote, “ John, the disciple
of the Lord, who also leaned upon his
breast, likewise published a Gospel while
he dwelt at Ephesus in Asia.” The last
chapter of the Gospel contains an attesta
tion of its having been written by John
(verse 24); but as this attestation
obviously does not proceed from John
himself,2 and as we do not know from
whom it does proceed, its authority can
have little weight. It is generally be
lieved that the Gospel and the first
epistle proceed from the same pen, but
if the second and third epistles are
genuine,3 it is very questionable whether
this pen was that of John the Apostle ;
for though, in the first chapter of the
first epistle, the writer declares himself
1 [The author’s opinion must be set aside in
the light of recent research: “If Luke cannot
have been the author of Acts, neither can he
have been the author of the third Gospel.”
Schmiedel, loc. cit.\
2 De Wette doubts the genuineness of the
whole chapter, and internal evidence is certainly
against it.
3 Their genuineness, however, is doubted
both by Eusebius and Origen.—See De Wette,
i. §§ 23, 24.
�68
ORIGIN OF THE GOSPELS
to have been personally acquainted with
Jesus, yet in the second and third
epistles he calls himself “ the Elder.”
Now there was a John at Ephesus (from
whom Papias derived all his information,
and who, he says, -was also a disciple of
Jesus), to whom the title of “Elder”
(irpeo-^ilTcpos) was given, to distinguish
him from the Apostle John.
The balancing of the internal evidence
for and against the supposition that the
Apostle John was the author of the
Gospel, is a matter of extreme difficulty.
The reasons adduced in behalf of each
opinion are very strong. Hug enter
tains no doubt that the decision should
be in the affirmative ;—Bretschneider
almost proves the negative ;—De Wette
finds it impossible to decide;—while
Strauss, who in his earlier editions had
expressed himself satisfied that the
Gospel was not genuine, writes thus in
the preface to the third edition : “With
De Wette and Neander in my hand, I
have recommenced the examination of
the fourth Gospel, and this renewed
investigation has shaken the doubts. I
had conceived against its authenticity
and credibility ;—not that I am con
vinced that it is authentic, but neither
am I convinced that it is not.” In his
New Life of Jesus, however, written
thirty years after his first great book, he
finally and confidently decides against
its authenticity.
Renan, in the first
edition of his Vie de Jésus, accepted the
fourth Gospel as genuine, and largely
maimed the completeness and beauty
of his estimate of Christ by doing so.
In the thirteenth edition (1867) he
entirely discards his previous assump
tion, and decides after long investiga
tion that it was not the work of the
Apostle John. In the same year was
published Mr. J. J. Tayler’s Character
of the Fourth Gospel, . in which the
writer, after an exhaustive examination
of the whole question, indisputably, as
it seenis to us, establishes the same
negative conclusion.1
1 [Unquestionably the trend of present-day
criticism is on the negative side.]
One argument against the supposition
of John having been the author of the
fourth Gospel has impressed my mind
very forcibly. It is this : that several of
the most remarkable events recorded by
the other Evangelists, at which we are
told by them that only Peter, James, and
John were present, and of which, there
fore, John alone of all the evangelists
could have spoken with the distinctness
and authority of an eye-witness, are
entirely omitted—we may say, ignored—
by him. Such are the raising of Jairus’s
daughter, the Transfiguration, the agony
in Gethsemane. Now, on the assump
tion that John was the author of the
fourth Gospel,—either he had not seen
the works of the other Evangelists, in
which case he would certainly not have
omitted to record narratives of such
interest and beauty, especially that of
the Transfiguration; or he had seen
them, and omitted all notice of them
because he could not confirm the state
ments : for we cannot imagine that he
did not record them in consequence of
finding them already recorded, and see
ing nothing to alter in the relation ;—as
an eye-witness, he would certainly, had
they been true, have given them at least
a passing word of confirmation, and we
find that he does, on more than one
occasion, relate events of less moment
already recorded in the other Gospels, as
the feeding of the five thousand, the
anointing of Jesus’s feet, &c.. But all
the events said to have been witnessed by
John alone, are omitted by John alone !
This fact seems fatal either to the reality
of the events in question, or to the
genuineness of the fourth Gospel.—
Thus much, however, seems certain, and
admittedthat, if the Gospel in ques
tion were the genuine composition of
the Apostle John, it must have been
written when he was at least ninety
years of age—when his recollections of
events and conversations which had
passed sixty years before had become
faint and fluctuating—when . ill-digested
Grecian learning had overlaid the sim
plicity of his fisherman’s character, and
�ORIGIN OE THE GOSPELS
his Judaic education—and the scenes
and associations of Ionia had over
powered and obscured the recollections
of Palestine. It therefore becomes, as
we shall see hereafter, an inquiry of only
secondary moment. An almost identical
conclusion has been expressed many
years later by a critic incomparably
more competent than I can pretend to
be. Renan says:—“L’esprit de Jésus
n’est pas là ; et si le fils de Zébédée a
vraiment tracé ces pages, il avait certes
bien oublié en les écrivant le lac de
Génésareth et les charmants entretiens
qu’il avait entendus sur ses bords.”—Vie
de Jésus, Introd. xxxi.
Of the first three (or, as they are
commonly termed, the Synoptical)
Gospels, we knozv that two, and we
believe that all three, were not the pro
ductions of eye-witnesses.1 The question
then arises, in what manner, and from
what materials, were they composed ?
This subject has for a long period exer
cised the minds of the most acute and
learned divines of Germany, as Eichhorn,
Credner, Bretschneider, De Wette, Hug,
Schleiermacher, and Strauss ; and the
results of their investigations may be
thus briefly summed up.
The numerous and irreconcilable dis
crepancies observable in the three
Evangelists preclude the supposition of
their having all drawn their information
from one and the same source—while
the still more remarkable points of
similarity and agreement, often extend
ing to the most minute verbal peculiari
ties, entirely forbid the idea of their
having derived their materials from
independent, and therefore mutually
confirmatory, sources.
Three different hypotheses have been
formed by competent judges to account
for those marked characteristics of the
first three Evangelists. Eichhorn (and,
following him, Dr. Marsh) adopted the
idea of an original document, now lost,
written in the Hebrew or Syro-Chaldaic
1 [As we have seen, none of the Gospels are
the work of eye-witnesses.]
69
language (the Aramaic Gospel, as it is
called by some), from which all three
Evangelists copied their accounts, with
additions and omissions peculiar to
themselves. With many divines this
hypothesis is still the favourite one;—
but, in addition to the difficulty arising
from the fact that we can nowhere find
any allusion to the existence of such a
document, more minute criticism dis
covered so many peculiarities inexplic
able on this theory that its credit was
much shaken, and its principal sup
porter, Eichhorn, was driven, in order to
maintain it, to admit modifications which
have made it almost unintelligible. The
hypothesis appears to us to have been
since completely demolished by the
reasonings of Hug, Thirlwall, and
Schleiermacher.1 An ingenious modi
fication of this theory by Giesler, who
substitutes an oral for a written original,
is explained and controverted by Dr.
Thirlwall, in the admirable treatise we
have already quoted (p. cxvi).
The
proem to Luke’s Gospel, moreover,
tacitly, but effectually, negatives the
supposition that he was acquainted with
any such original and paramountly
authoritative document.
The second hypothesis is the prevalent
one—that one of the Evangelists wrote
first, and that the others copied him,
with alterations, additions, and omissions,
dictated by their own judgment or
by extraneous sources of information.
Matthew is generally considered to have
been the earliest writer ; but critics differ
in the relative order they assign to Mark
and Luke—some, as Mill, Hug, and
Wetstein, conceiving that Luke copied
both from Mark and Matthew; and
others, as De Wette and Griesbach,
1 “For my part (says this latter) I find it quite
enough to prevent me from conceiving the origin
of the Gospel according to Eichhorn’s theory, that
I am to figure to myself our good Evangelists
surrounded by five or six open rolls or books,
and that too in different languages, looking by
turns from one into another, and writing a com
pilation from them. I fancy myself in a German
study of the 19th century, rather than in the
primitive age of Christianity.”—Schleiermacher,
“ Crit. Essay on Luke,” Intr. p. 6.
�7°
ORIGIN OF THE GOSPELS
arguing that Mark was the latest in order
of time, and made use of both his pre
decessors. Mr. Kenrick, in a masterly
analysis fProsp. Rev. xxi.), has, however,
we think, succeeded in making it more
than probable that Mark’s Gospel was
both first in order of time and in fidelity
of narration.1
This theory has been much and
minutely examined, and to our minds
it appears unsatisfactory. It accounts
for the agreements, but not for the
discrepancies, of the Gospels; and
Dr. Thirlwall, in his translation of
Schleiermacher, has succeeded in show
ing that it is highly improbable, if not
wholly inadmissible.
The third hypothesis, which was first
propounded by Lessing, and has since
been revived and elaborated by Schleier
macher (one of the highest theological
authorities of Germany), seems to us to
have both critical evidence and a priori
likelihood in its favour. These writers
presume the existence of a number of
fragmentary narratives, some oral, some
written, of the actions and sayings of
Christ, such as would naturally be pre
served and transmitted by persons who
had witnessed those wonderful words and
deeds. Sometimes there would be two
or more narratives of the same event,
proceeding from different witnesses;
sometimes the same original narrative
in its transmission would receive inten
tional or accidental variations, and thus
come slightly modified into the hands of
different Evangelists. Sometimes detached
sayings would be preserved without the
context, and the Evangelists would locate
them where they thought them most
appropriate, or provide a context for
them, instances of which are numberless
in the Gospels.2 But all these materials
would be fragmentary.
Each witness
1 [The priority of Mark is now ‘generally
recognised. On this question and the inter
dependence of the gospel writers the best
authority is Abbott in his article Gospels, in the
Ency. Brit.]
2 “The verbal agreement is generally greater
in reports of the discourses of Christ than in
relations of events; and the speeches of other
would retain and transmit that portion of a
discourse which had impressed him most
forcibly, and two witnesses would retain
the same expressions with varying degrees
of accuracy.1 One witness heard one
discourse, or was present at one trans
action only, and recorded that one by
writing or verbally, as he best might.
Of these fragments some fell into the
hands of all the Evangelists—some only
into the hands of one, or of two:2 and in
some cases different narratives of the
same event, expression, or discourse
would fall into the hands of different
Evangelists, which would account for their
discrepancies—sometimes into the hands
of one Evangelist, in which case he would
select that one which his judgment (or
information from other sources) prompted,
or would compile an account from them
jointly. In any case, the evangelical
narratives would be compilations from a
series of fragments of varying accuracy
and completeness. The correctness of
this theory of the origin of the Gospels
seems to be not so much confirmed as
distinctly asserted by Luke : “ Forasmuch
as many have taken in hand to set forth
in order a declaration of those things
which are most surely believed among us,
even as they delivered them unto us which
from the beginning were eye-witnesses and
ministers of the wordP
“The first step (says Schleiermacher) 3
towards a Christian History was a natural
and reasonable desire on the part of those
who had believed on Jesus, without
having a knowledge of his person. These
persons are often given in the same terms,
though the circumstances which led to them are
differently described.”—Thirlwall, cxvi.
1 The habit of retaining and transmitting dis
courses orally was much more common then than
now, and the practice carried to great perfection.
The learning of the Jews was transmitted exclu
sively by oral tradition from one generation to
another, and we entertain little doubt that the
fragments both of narratives and discourses
which formed the materials of our Evangelists
were almost entirely oral.—(See Thirlwall, cxviii.
Norton, i. 287.)
2 Thus the materials of the first three Evange
lists were evidently collected chiefly in Galilee ;
those of the fourth came principally from Judsea.
3 “ Grit. Essay on Luke,” Introd. 12-14.
�FIDELITY OF THE GOSPEL HISTORY
individuals would undoubtedly be glad were more anxiously sought for, when the
to learn some particulars of his life, in great body of the original companions
order to place themselves as nearly as and friends of Christ was dispersed by
possible on an equality with their elder persecutions, and still more when that
and more fortunate brethren. In the first generation began to die away. It
public assemblies of the Christians this would, however, have been singular if,
desire was of course only incidentally and even before this, the inquirers who took
sparingly gratified, when a teacher hap those notes had possessed only detached
pened to refer to memorable sayings of passages; on the contrary, they, and
Christ which could only be _ related still more their immediate copiers, had
together with the occasion which had undoubtedly become collectors also, each
called them forth : more copious and according to his peculiar turn of mind :
detailed accounts they could only pro and thus one, perhaps, collected only
cure in familiar intercourse upon express accounts of miracles; another, only
inquiry. And in this way many par discourses; a third, perhaps, attached
ticulars were told and heard, most of exclusive importance to the last days of
them, probably, without being committed Christ, or even to the scenes of his
to writing; but, assuredly, much was very resurrection. Others, without any such
soon written down, partly by the narrators particular predilection, collected all that
themselves, as each of them happened to fell in their way from good authority.”
The work from which the above is a
be pressed by a multiplicity of questions
on a particular occurrence, respecting quotation is a masterly analysis of Luke’s
which he was peculiarly qualified to give gospel, with a view to test the correctness
information. Still more, however, must of the author’s hypothesis as to the origin
have been committed to writing by of the evangelical histories; and the
His
the inquirers, especially by such as did success is, we think, complete.
not remain constantly in the neighbour conclusion is as follows (p. 313) :—
“The main position is firmly estab
hood of the narrators, and were glad to
communicate the narrative again to many lished, that Luke is neither an indepen
others, who, perhaps, were never able to dent writer, nor has made a compilation
consult an eye-witness. In this way from works which extended over the
detached incidents and discourses were whole course of the life of Jesus. He
noted down. Notes of this kind were at is from beginning to end no moré than
first, no doubt, less frequently met with the compiler and arranger of documents,
among the Christians settled in Palestine, which he found in existence, and which
and passed immediately into more distant he allows to pass unaltered through his
parts, to which the pure oral tradition hands. His merit in this capacity is
flowed more scantily. They, however, twofold—that of arrangement and of
appeared everywhere more frequently, and judicious selection.”1
Chapter VI
FIDELITY OF THE GOSPEL HISTORY.—NATURE
AND LIMITS
Having in our last chapter arrived at
the conclusion that the Gospels are com
pilations from a variety of fragmentary
narratives, and reports of discourses and
conversations, oral or written, which
1 [The synoptical problem is a very compli
cated one, and none of the hypotheses, taken
apart, affords a satisfactory solution. They must
�72
FIDELITY OF THE GOSPEL HISTORY
were current in Palestine from thirty to
forty years after the death of Jesus—we
now come to the very interesting and
momentous inquiry, how far these narra
tives and discourses can be accepted as
accurate and faithful records of what was
actually said and done ?—whether they
can be regarded as thoroughly and
minutely correct ?—and, if not, in what
respects and to what extent do they
deviate from that thorough and minute
correctness ?
It is clear at first view that the same
absolute reliance cannot be placed upon
a narrative compounded from traditionary
fragments, as upon a consecutive history
related by an eye-witness. Conceding
to both faithful intention and good,
though imperfect, powers of memory,
there are obvious elements of inaccuracy
in the one case which do not appertain to
the other. To the corruptions, lapses,
and alterations inseparable from trans
mission, especially when oral, is added
the uncertainty arising from the number
of the original sources of the tradition,
whose character, capacity, and oppor
tunities of knowledge are unknown to
us. If Luke had recorded only what he
had seen, or Mark only what he had
heard from Peter, we should have com
paratively ample means of forming a
decision as to the amount of reliance to
be placed upon their narrations; but
when they record what they learned from
perhaps a dozen different narrators —
some original, others only second-hand,
and all wholly unknown—it becomes
obvious that causes of inaccuracy are
introduced, the extent of the actual
operation of which on the histories that
have come down to us, it is both ex
tremely important and singularly difficult
to estimate.
This inquiry we consider as of
paramount interest to every other
question of criticism; for on the con
clusion to which it leads us depends
the whole—not of Christianity, which,
be combined, the sources-hypothesis and the
borrowing-hypothesis, supported by an oral
tradition prior to them both.]
-
as we view it, is unassailable, but—of
textual or dogmatic Christianity, i.e., the
Christianity of nine-tenths of nominal
Christendom. We proceed, therefore,
to ask what evidence we possess for
assuming or impugning the minute
fidelity of the Gospel history.
There are certain portions of the
Synoptical Gospels the genuineness of
which has been much disputed, viz., the
first two chapters of Matthew—the first
two of Luke—and the last twelve verses
of the xvith chapter of Mark.1 Into this
discussion we cannot enter, but must
refer such of our readers as wish to
know the grounds of decision to Norton,
Hug, De Wette, Eichhorn, and Griesbach.
The result of critical inquiry seems to be,
that the only solid ground for supposing
the questioned portions of Luke and
Matthew not to be by the same hand as
the rest of their respective gospels, is the
obviously insufficient one of the extra
ordinary character of their contents ;2—
while the spuriousness of the last twelve
verses of Mark is established beyond
question •—the real Gospel of Mark (all
of it, at least, that has come down to us)
ends with the 8 th verse of the xvith
chapter. In our subsequent remarks we
shall therefore treat the whole of the
acknowledged text of these gospels as
genuine, with the exception of the con
clusion of Mark ;—and we now proceed
to inquire into the nature and limits of
the fidelity of Matthew’s record.
In the first place, while admitting to
the fullest extent the general clearness
and fulness with which the character of
Jesus is depicted in the first Gospel, it
is important to bear in mind that—as Hug
has clearly3 proved—it was written with a
1 See Norton, i. 16, 17.'
2 Strauss, i. 117, 142. Hug, 469-479. See
also Schleiermacher. Norton, however, gives
some reasons to the contrary, which deserve con
sideration, i. 209.
3 “All Matthew’s reflections are of one kind.
He shows us, as to everything that Jesus did
and taught, that it was characteristic of the
Messiah. On occasion of remarkable events,
or a recital of parts of the discourses of Jesus,
he refers us to the ancient scriptures of the Jews
�FIDELITY OF THE GOSPEL HISTORY
73
special, we might almost say a polemical,
object. It was composed, less to give a
continuance and complete history of
Jesus, than to prove that he was the
expected Messiah; and those passages
were therefore selected out of the author’s
materials which appeared most strongly
to bear upon and enforce this conclusion.
The remembrance of this object of
Matthew’s will aid us in forming our
judgment as to his fidelity.
According to the universal expectation,
the Messiah was to be born of the seed
of Abraham, and the lineage and tribe of
David. Accordingly, the Gospel opens
with an elaborate genealogy of Jesus,
tracing him through David to Abraham.
Now, in the first place, this genealogy is
not correct:—secondly, if the remainder
of the chapter is to be received as true,
it is in no sense the genealogy of Jesus ;
and, thirdly, it is wholly and irreconcil
ably at variance with that given by
Luke.
i. In verse 17, Matthew sums up the
genealogy thus :—“ So all thegenerations
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 until Christ are fourteen
generations.”—Now (passing over as un
necessarily minute and harsh the criticism
of Strauss, that by no way of counting
can we make out fourteen generations in
the last series, without disturbing the
count of the others), we must call atten
tion to the fact that the number fourteen
in the second series is only obtained by
the deliberate omission offour generations,
viz., three between Joram and Ozias, and
one between Josiah and Jeconiah—as
may be seen by referring to 1 Chron. iii.
There is also (at verse 4-6) another
apparent, and we think, certain, error.
Only four generations are reckoned
between Naasson, who lived in the time
of Moses, and David, a period of four
hundred years. (Compare Num. i. 7,
Ruth v. 20).
2. The genealogy here given, correct
or incorrect, is the genealogy of Joseph,
who was in no sense whatever the father
(or any relation at all) of Jesus, since
this last, we are assured (verses 18 to
25), was in his mother’s womb before she
and her husband came together. The
story of the Incarnation and the gene
alogy are obviously at variance ; and no
ingenuity, unscrupulously as it has been
applied, can produce even the shadow of
an agreement; and when the flat contra
diction given to each other by the 1st
and 18th verses are considered, it is
difficult for an unprejudiced mind not to
feel convinced that the author of the
genealogy (both in the first and third
Gospels) was ignorant of the story of the
Incarnation, though the carelessness and
uncritical temper of the evangelist—a
carelessness partially avoided in the
cases of Luke, by an interpolation1—
has united the two into one compilation.
3. The genealogy of Jesus given by
Luke is wholly different from that of
Matthew; and the most desperate efforts
of divines have been unable to effect
even the semblance of a reconciliation.
Not only does Matthew give 26 genera
tions between David and Joseph where
Luke has 41, but they trace the descent
through an entirely different line of
ancestry. According to Matthew, the
father of Joseph was named Jacob—
according to Luke, Heli. In Matthew,
the son of David through whom Joseph
descended is Solomon ;—in Luke it is
Nathan. Thence the genealogy of Mat
thew descends through the known royal
line—the genealogy of Luke through
an obscure collateral branch. The two
lines only join in Salathiel and Zoro-
in which this coming Saviour is delineated, and
shows in detail that the great ideal which flitted
before the minds of the Prophets was realised in
Jesus.” Hug, Introd. 312. These references
are twelve in Matthew, two in Mark, and three
in Luke. Again, he says (p. 384), “Matthew
is an historical deduction ; Mark is history. ”
1 Luke iii. 23, “Jesus . . . being, as was
supposed (¿s ero/xi^ero), the son of Joseph,”—a
parenthesis which renders nugatory the whole
of the following genealogy, and cannot have
originally formed a part of it.-—-The 16th verse
of Matthew also bears indications of a similar
emendation.
�74
FIDELITY OF THE GOSPEL HISTORY
babel; and even here they differ as to
the father of Salathiel and the son of
Zorobabel. Many ingenious hypotheses
have been broached to explain and har
monise these singular discrepancies, but
wholly in vain. One critic supposes that
one evangelist gives the pedigree of the
adoptive, the other of the real father of
Joseph. Another assumes that one is
the genealogy of Joseph, and the other
that of Mary-—a most convenient idea,
but entirely gratuitous, and positively
contradicted by the language of the text.
The circumstance that any man could
suppose that Matthew, when he' said
“Jacob begat Joseph,” or Luke, when
he said “Joseph was the son of Heli,”
could refer to the wife of the one, or the
daughter-in-law of the other, shows to
what desperate stratagems polemical
orthodoxy will resort in order to defend
an untenable position.
The discrepancy between Matthew
and Luke in their narratives of the
miraculous conception affords no ground
for suspecting the fidelity of the former.
Putting aside the extraordinary nature of
the whole transaction—a consideration
which does not at present concern us—
the relation in Matthew is simple, natu
ral, and probable ; the surprise of Joseph
at the pregnancy of his wife (or his
betrothed, as the words may mean) ;
his anxiety to avoid scandal and exposure;
his satisfaction through the means of a
dream (for among the Jews dreams were
habitually regarded as means of commu
nication from heaven); and his absti
nence from all conjugal connection with
Mary till after the birth of the miracu
lous infant,—present precisely the line
of conduct we should expect from a
simple, pious, and confiding Jew.
But when we remember the dogmatic
object which, as already mentioned, Mat
thew had in view, and in connection with
that remembrance read the 22ndand23rd
verses, the whole story at once becomes
apocryphal, and its origin at once clear.
“All these things were done,” says Mat
thew, “ that it might be fulfilled which was
spoken of the Lord by the Prophet, say
ing, Behold a virgin shall be with child,
and shall bring forth a son,” &c., &c.
Now this is one of the many instances
which we shall have to notice in which
this evangelist quotes prophecies as in
tended for Jesus, and as fulfilled in him,
which have not the slightest relation to
him or his career. The adduced pro
phecy 1 is simply an assurance sent to
the unbelieving Ahaz, that before the
child, which the wife of Isaiah would
shortly conceive (see Isa. viii. 2-4), was
old enough to speak, or to know good
from evil, the conspiracy of Syria and
Ephraim against the King of Judsea
should be dissolved ; and had manifestly
no more reference to Jesus than to Na
poleon. The conclusion, therefore, is
unavoidable, that the events said to
have occurred in fulfilment of a prophecy,
which Matthew wrongly supposed to have
reference to them, were by him imagined,
or modified into accordance with the
supposed prophecy; since it is certain
that they did not, as he affirms, take
place, “ in order that the prophecy might
be fulfilled.”
Pursuing this line of inquiry, we shall
find many instances in which this ten
dency of Matthew to find in Jesus the
fulfilment of prophecies, which he erro
neously conceived to refer to him, has
led him to narrate circumstances respect
ing which the other evangelists are silent,
as well as to give, with material (but AztentionaT) variations, relations which are
1 “Therefore the Lord spake unto Ahaz,
saying, . . . Behold a virgin shall conceive,
and bear a son, and shall call his name Im
manuel. ... 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.”—Isa. vii. 10-16.
“And I went unto the prophetess, and she
conceived and bare a son. Then said the Lord
unto me . . . before the child shall have know
ledge to cry, My father and my mother, the
riches of Damascus and the spoil of Samaria
shall be taken away before the King of Assyria.”
—viii. 3, 4.
No divine of character will now, we believe,
maintain that this prophecy had any reference
to Jesus ; nor ever would have imagined it to
have, without Matthew’s intimation.—See
“ Hebrew Monarchy,” p. 262.
�FIDELITY OF THE GOSPEL HISTORY
common t o them all—a peculiarity which
throws great suspicion over several pas
sages. Thus in ii. 13-15, we are told
that immediately after the visit of the
Magi, Joseph took Mary and the child,
and fled into Egypt, remaining there till
the death of Herod, “that it might be
fulfilled which was spoken of- the Lord
by the prophet, saying, Out of Egypt
have I called my son.” The passage in
question occurs in Hosea, xi. 1, and has
not the slightest reference to Christ. It
is as follows :—“ When Israel was a child,
then I loved him, and called my son out
of Egypt.” Here is an event related,
very improbable in itself, flatly contra
dicted by Luke’s history1 and which
occurred, we are told, that a prophecy
might be fulfilled to which it had no re
ference, of which it was no fulfilment,
and which, in fact, was no prophecy at
all.
A similar instance occurs immediately
afterwards in the same chapter. We are
told that Herod, when he found “ that
he was mocked of the wise men, was ex
ceeding wroth, and sent forth and slew
all the children that were in Bethlehem,
and in all the coasts thereof, from two
years old and under
an act which,
whether suitable or not to the known
character of Herod (who was cruel and
tyrannical, but at the same time crafty
and politic, not silly nor insane 2)—must,
if it had occurred, have created a prodi
gious sensation, and made one of the
most prominent points in Herod’s his
tory3—yet of which none of the other
1 Luke’s account entirely precludes the sojourn
in Egypt. He says that eight days after the
birth of Jesus he was circumcised, forty days
after was presented in the temple, and that when
these legal ceremonies were accomplished, he
went with his parents to Nazareth.
2 Neander argues very ably that such a deed
is precisely what we should expect from Herod’s
character. But Sir ,W. Jones gives reason for
believing that the whole story may be of Hindoo
origin.-—“ Christian Theism,” p. 84, where the
passage is quoted.
3 Mr. Milman (“Hist. Jews,” b. xii.), how
ever, thinks differently, and argues that, among
Herod’s manifold barbarities, “ the murder of
a few children in an obscure village ” would
easily escape notice. The story is at least
75
evangelists, nor any historian of the day,
nor Josephus (though he devoted a con
siderable portion of his history to the
reign of Herod, and does not spare his
reputation), makes any mention.
But
this also, according to Matthew’s notion,
was the fulfilment of a prophecy. “ Then
was fulfilled that which was spoken by
Jeremy the prophet, saying, In Rama
there was a voice heard, lamentation, and
weeping, and great mourning, Rachel
weeping for her children, and would not
be comforted, because they are not.”—
Here, again, the adduced prophecy was
quite irrelevant, being simply a descrip
tion of the grief of Judea for the capti
vity of her children, accompanied by a
promise of their return.1
A still more unfortunate instance is
found at the 23rd verse, where we are
told that Joseph abandoned his intention
of returning into Judea, and turned aside
into Galilee, and came and dwelt at
Nazareth, “that it might be fulfilled
which was spoken by the prophets, He
shall be called a Nazarene.” Now, in
the first place, the name Nazarene was
not in use till long afterwards ;—secondly,
there is no such prophecy in the Old
Testament.
The evangelist, perhaps,
had in his mind the words that were
spoken to the mother of Samson (Judg.
xiii. 5) respecting her son : “ The child
shall be a Nazarite (z'.e. one bound by a
vow, whose hair was forbidden to be cut,
which never was the case with Jesus 2) to
God from the womb.”
In this place we must notice the
marked discrepancy between Matthew
and Luke, as to the original residence of
highly improbable, • for had Herod wished to
secure the death of Jesus, so cunning a prince
would have sent his messengers along with the
Magi, not awaited their doubtful return.
1 The passage is as follows :—“A voice was
heard in Ramah, lamentation, and bitter weep
ing ; Rachel weeping for her children, refused
to be comforted for her children, because they
were not. Thus saith the Lord, Refrain thy
voice from weeping, and thine eyes from tears ;
for thy work shall be rewarded, saith the Lord ;
and they shall come again from the land of the
enemy.”—Jer. xxxi. 15, 16.
2 See Num. vi. 2-76.
�76
FIDELITY OF THE GOSPEL HISTORY
the parents of Jesus. Luke speaks of
them as living at Nazareth before the
birth of Jesus : Matthew as having left
Bethlehem, the birth-place of their child,
to go to Nazareth, only after that event,
and from peculiar considerations. Critics,
however, are disposed to think Matthew
right on this occasion.
There are, however, several passages in
different parts of the Evangelists which
suggest serious doubts as to whether
Jesus were really born at Bethlehem, and
were really a lineal descendant of David,
and whether both these statements were
not unfounded inventions of his followers
to prove his title to the Messiahship. In
the first place, the Jews are frequently
represented as urging that Jesus could
not be the Messiah, because he was not
born at Bethlehem; and neither Jesus
nor his followers ever set them right
upon this point. If he were really born
at Bethlehem, the circumstance was
generally unknown, and though its being
unknown presented an obvious and valid
objection to the admission of his claim
to the Messianic character, no effort was
made either by Christ or his disciples to
remove this objection, which might have
been done by a single word. (John vii.
4I_43> 52 1 i- 46.) “ Others said, This is
the Christ. But some said, Shall Christ
come out of Galilee? Hath not the
Scripture said that Christ cometh of the
seed of David, and out of the town of
Bethlehem, where David was ? So there
was a division among the people because
of him.”—Again, the Pharisees object to
Nicodemus, when arguing on Jesus’
behalf—“ Search and look, for out of
Galilee ariseth no prophet.”
The three Synoptical evangelists (Matt,
xxii. 41; Mark xii. 35 ; Luke xx. 41) all
record an argument of Christ addressed
to the Pharisees, the purport of which is
to show that the Messiah need not be,
and could not be, the Son of David.
“ While the Pharisees were gathered
together, Jesus asked them, saying,
What think ye of Christ? whose son
is he ? They say unto him, The son
of David. He saith unto them, How
then doth David in spirit call him Lord,
saying, the Lord saith unto my Lord,
Sit thou on my right hand, till I make
thine enemies thy footstool ! If David
then call him Lord, how is he his son ? ”
Now,—passing by the consideration that,
as Mr. Arnold informs us, “ the transla
tion ought to run, ‘The Eternal said
unto my lord the king,’ and was a
simple promise of victory to a prince
of God’s chosen people,”—is it conceiv
able that Jesus should have brought for
ward the passage as an argument if he
were really a descendant of David?
Must not his intention have been to
argue that, though not a son of David,
he might still be the Christ ?
In xxi. 2-4, 6, 7, the entry into Jeru
salem is thus described : “ Then sent
Jesus two disciples, saying unto them,
Go into the village over against you, and
straightway ye shall find an ass tied, and
a colt with her: loose them and bring
them to me. . . . And the disciples went
and did as Jesus commanded them, and
brought the ass and the colt, and put on
them their clothes, and set him thereon ”
(literally “ upon themf ¿7ravw avrwv). Now,
though two animals may well have been
■brought, the foal naturally accompanying
its mother, yet the description (in ver. 16),
representing Jesus as sitting upon both
animals, is absurd; and, again, Mark,
Luke, and John, who all mention the
same occurrence, agree in speaking of
one animal only. But the liberty which
Matthew has taken with both fact and
probability is at once explained, when
we read in the 4th verse : “ All this was
done, that it might be fulfilled which
was spoken by the prophet, saying, Tell
ye the daughter of Zion, Behold thy
King cometh unto thee, meek, and sitting
upon an ass, and a colt the foal of an
ass.”1
As a final example, we may instance
1 The quotation is from Zechariah ix. 9 ; the
passage has reference to the writer’s own time,
and the second animal is obviously a mere
common poetical reduplication, such as is met
with in every page of Hebrew poetry. But
Matthew thought a literal similitude essential.
“ And ” ought to have been translated “ even.”
�FIDELITY OF THE GOSPEL HISTORY
the treachery of Judas. The other evan
gelists simply narrate that Judas cove
nanted with the chief priests to betray
Jesus. Matthew, however, relates the
conversation between the traitor and his
fellow-conspirators as minutely as if he
had been present, specifies the exact
sum of money that was given, and the
use to which it was put by the priests
(the purchase of the Potter’s field), when
returned to them by the repentant Judas.1
Here, as usual, the discrepancy between
Matthew and his fellow-evangelists is
explained by a prophecy which Matthew
conceived to apply to the case before
him, and thought necessary therefore
should be literally fulfilled; but which,
on examination, appears to have had no
allusion to any times but those in which
it was uttered, and which, moreover, is
not found in the prophet whom Matthew
quotes from, but in another.2 The pas
sage as quoted by Matthew is as fol
lows :—“ And they took the thirty pieces
of silver; the price of him that was
valued, whom they of the children of
Israel did value, and gave them for the
Potter’s field, as the Lord appointed
me. ” The original passage in Zechariah
is given in a note.
To pass from this ground of want of
confidence in Matthew’s fidelity, we may
specify two others -.—first, we find several
discrepancies between him and the other
evangelists, in which there is reason to
1 Luke, however, in the Acts (i. 18), states
that Judas himself purchased the field with the
money he had received, and died accidentally
therein. Matthew says he returned the money,
and went and hanged himself.
2 Matthew quotes Jeremiah, but the passage
is contained in Zechariah xi. 12, 13. Some
people, however, imagine that the latter chapters
of Zechariah do really belong to Jeremiah.
Others conceive the passage to be contained in
some lost book of Jeremiah. “ And I said unto
them, If ye think good, give me my price ; and
if not, forbear. So they weighed for my price
thirty pieces of silver. And the Lord said unto
me, Cast it unto the potter : a goodly price
that I was prized at of them. And I took the
thirty pieces of silver, and cast them to the
potter in the house of the Lord.” The word
“potter” is a translation made to accommodate
Matthew.
The LXX. has “treasury” or
“ foundry,” as it were our “mint.”
77
believe that he was wrong ; and, secondly,
we find words and parts of discourses
put by him into Jesus’ mouth, which
there is ample reason to believe that
Jesus never uttered.
I. The second chapter opens with an
account (peculiar to Matthew) of the
visit of the wise men of the East to
Bethlehem, whither they were guided by
a star which went before them, and stood
over the house in which the infant Jesus
lay. The general legendary character
of the narrative—its similarity in style
with those contained in the apocryphal
gospels—and more especially its con
formity with those astrological notions
which, though prevalent in the time of
Matthew, have been exploded by the
sounder scientific knowledge of our days
—all unite to stamp upon the story the
impress of poetic or mythic fiction ; and
its admission into his history is not cre
ditable to Matthew’s judgment, though
it may not impugn his fidelity; as it
may have been among his materials, and
he had no critical acumen which should
lead him to reject it.
In Matt. viii. 28-34, we have an
account of the healing of two de
moniacs, whose diseases (or whose
devils, according to the evangelist) were
communicated to an adjacent herd of
swine. Now, putting aside the great
improbability of two madmen, as fierce
as these are described to be, living
together, Mark and Luke.1 who both
relate the same occurrence, state that
there was one demoniac, obviously a
much preferable version of the narrative.
In the same manner, in chap. xx. 3034, Matthew relates the cure of two
blind men near Jericho.
Mark and
Luke 2 narrate the same occurrence, but
speak of only one blind man. This story
affords also an example of the evangelist’s
carelessness as a compiler, for (in chap,
ix. 27) he has already given the same
1 Mark v. 1 ; Luke viii. 26. There are other
discrepancies between the three narratives, both
in this and the following case, but they are
beside our present purpose.
2 Mark x. 46 ; Luke xviii. 35.
�78
FIDELITY OF THE GOSPEL HISTORY
narrative, but has assigned to it a dif
ferent locality.
A still more remarkable instance of
Matthew’s tendency to amplification, or
rather to multiplication and repetition, is
found in xiv. 16, et seq., and xv. 32, et
seq.,1 where the two miraculous feedings
of the multitude are described. The
feeding of the five thousand is related by
all four evangelists; but the repetition
of the miracle, with a slight variation in
the number of the multitude and of the
loaves and fragments, is peculiar to
Matthew and to Mark.2 Now, that both
these narratives are merely varying ac
counts of the same event (the variation
arising from the mode in which the ma
terials of the gospel history were col
lected, as explained in our preceding
chapter), and that only one feeding was
originally recorded, is now admitted by
all competent critics,3 and appears clearly
from several considerations.—First, Luke
and John relate only one feeding; in the
next place, the two narratives in Matthew
are given with the same accompaniments,
in a similar, probably in the very same,
locality; thirdly, the particulars of the
occurrence and the remarks of the
parties are almost identically the same
on each occasion; and, finally (what
is perfectly conclusive), in the second
narration, the language and conduct both
of Jesus and his disciples show a per
fect unconsciousness of any previous
occurrence of the same nature. Is it
credible, that if the disciples had, a few
days before, witnessed the miraculous
feeding of the “five thousand” with
“ five loaves and two fishes,” they should
on the second occasion, when they had
“seven loaves and a few small fishes,”
have replied to the suggestion of Jesus
1 The parallel passages are Mark vi. 35;
Luke ix. 12 ; John vi. 5.
2 See Mark viii. 1, et seq. The language of
the two evangelists is here so precisely similar,
as to leave no doubt that one copied the other,
or both a common document. The word baskets
is it6<l>ivoi in the first case, and airvlSpes in the
second, in both evangelists.
3 See also Schleiermacher, p. 144, who does
not hesitate to express his full disbelief in the
second feeding.
that the fasting multitude should again
be fed, “ whence should we have so
much bread in the wilderness as to fill
so great a multitude ? ” It is certain
that the idea of two feedings having
really taken place, could only have found
acceptance in minds preoccupied with
the doctrine of the plenary inspiration
and infallibility of Scripture.
It is
now entirely abandoned by all divines
except the English, and by the few
thinkers even among them.
A con
firmatory argument, were any needed,
might be drawn from observing that the
narrative of the fourth evangelist agrees
in some points with Matthew’s first, and
in some with his second account.
The story contained in xvii. 17, et seq.,
of Jesus commanding Peter to catch a
fish in whose mouth he should find the
tribute money, has a most pagan and
unworthy character about it, harmonises
admirably with the puerile narratives
which abound in the apocryphal gospels,
and is ignored by all the other evan
gelists.
In xxvii. 24, we find this narrative:
“ When Pilate saw that he could prevail
nothing, but rather that a tumult was
made, he took water and washed his
hands before the multitude, saying, I
am innocent of the blood of this just
person; see ye to it.” Now, in the first
place, this symbolic action was a Jewish,
not a Roman, ceremony,3 and as such
most unsuitable and improbable in a
Roman governor, one of a nation noted
for their contempt of the habits and
opinions of their subject nations. In
the second place, it is inconceivable
that Pilate should so emphatically have
pronounced his own condemnation, by
declaring Jesus to be a “just man” at
the very moment when he was about to
scourge him, and deliver him over to
the most cruel tortures.
1 It appears from Deut. xxi. 1-9, that the
washing of the hands was a specially-appointed
Mosaic rite, by which the authorities of any city
in which murder had been committed were to
avow their innocence of the crime and ignorance
of the criminal.
�FIDELITY OF THE GOSPEL HISTORY
In Matthew’s account of the last
moments of Jesus, we have the following
remarkable statements (xxvii. 50-53):—
“Jesus, when he had cried again with a
loud voice, yielded up the ghost. And,
behold, the veil of the temple was rent
in twain from the top to the bottom;
and the earth did quake, and the rocks
rent; and the graves were opened, and
many bodies of the saints which slept
arose, and came out of the graves after
his resurrection, and went into the holy
city, and appeared unto many.” _ Now,
first, this extraordinary fact, if it be a
fact (and it is said to have been a public
one—“they appeared unto many”), is
ignored by the other evangelists; nor
do we find any reference to it in the
Acts or the Epistles, nor any reason to
believe that any of the apostles were
aware of the occurrence—one, certainly,
to excite the deepest interest and wonder.
Secondly, the statement is a confused, if
not a self-contradictory, one. The asser
tion in ver. 52, clearly is, that the open
ing of the graves, and the rising of the
bodies of saints, formed a portion of
that series of convulsions of nature
which is said to have occurred at the
moment when Jesus expired; whereas
the following verse speaks of it as occur
ring “after his resurrection.” To sup
pose, as believers in verbal accuracy do,
and must do, that the bodies were re
animated on the Friday, and not allowed
to come out of their graves till the
Sunday, is clearly too monstrous to be
seriously entertained. If, to avoid this
difficulty, we adopt Griesbach’s reading,
and translate the passage thus : “ And
coming out of their graves, went into
the holy city after the resurrection ”—
the question still recurs, “ Where did
they remain between Friday and Sunday?
And did they, after three days’ emanci
pation, resume their sepulchral habili
ments, and return to their narrow
prison-house, and their former state of
dust?” Again, when we refer to the
original, we find that it was the bodies
(o-^ara) which “arose”; but, if we
suppose that the evangelist wrote gram
79
matically, it could not have been the
bodies which “came out of the graves,”
or he would have written eifXOovra, not
e&Xflovres. Whence Bush 1 assumes that
the bodies arose (or were raised, ■yfipfbfi
at the time of the crucifixion, but lay
down again,2 and that it was the souls
which came out of the graves after the
resurrection of Christ and appeared unto
many ! We cannot, however, admit that
souls inhabit graves.
There can, we think, remain little
doubt in unprepossessed minds that the
whole legend (it is greatly augmented in
the apocryphal gospels3) was one of
those intended to magnify and honour
Christ,4 which were current in great
numbers at the time when Matthew
wrote, and which he, with the usual want
of discrimination and somewhat omni
vorous tendency which distinguished
him as a compiler, admitted into his
gospel;—and that the confusing phrase,
“ after his resurrection,” was added either
by him or by some previous transmitter,
or later copier, to prevent the apparent
want of deference and decorum involved
in a resurrection which should have
preceded that of Jesus.
In chap, xxvii. 62-66, and xxviii.
1 See a very elaborate work of Professor Bush,
entitled “Anastasis, or the Resurrection of the
Body” (p. 210), the object of which is to prove
that the resurrection of the body is neither a
rational nor a scriptural doctrine.
2 The Professor’s notion appears to be that
the rising of the bodies on the Friday was a mere
mechanical effect of the earthquake, and that
re-animation did not take place till the Sunday,
and that even then it was not the bodies which
arose.
3 The Gospel of the Hebrews says that a
portion of the temple was thrown down. See
also the Gospel of Nicodemus.
4 Similar prodigies were said, or supposed to
accompany, the deaths of many great men in
former days, as in the case of Caesar (Virgil,
Gorg. i. 463, etseq.). Shakespeare has embalmed
some traditions of the kind, exactly analogous
to the present case. See Julius Caesar, Act ii.
Sc. 2. Again he says : Hamlet, Act i. Sc. 1.
“ In the most high and palmy state of Rome,
A little ere the mightiest Julius fell,
The graves stood tenantless, and the sheeted
dead
Did squeak and gibber in the Roman streets.”
�8o
FIDELITY OF THE GOSPEL HISTORY—MATTHEW
11-15, we find a record of two conver
sations most minutely given—one be
tween the chief priests and Pilate, and
the other between the priests and the
guards of the sepulchre—at which it is
impossible the evangelist, and most im
probable that any informant of his,
could have been present;—and which,
to our minds, bear evident marks of
being subsequent fictions supposed in
order to complete and render more in
vulnerable the history of Jesus’ resurrec
tion. It is extremely unlikely that the
chief priests and Pharisees should have
thought of taking precautions before
hand against a fraudulent resurrection.
We have no reason to believe that they
had ever heard of the prophecy to which
they allude,1 for it had been uttered
only to his own disciples, the twelve,
and to them generally with more or less
secrecy ;2 and we know that by them it
was so entirely disregarded,3 or had
been so completely forgotten, that the
resurrection of their Lord was not only
not expected, but took them completely
by surprise. Were the enemies of Christ
more attentive to, and believing on, his
predictions than his own followers ?
1 It is true that John (ii. 19) relates that Jesus
said publicly in answer to the Jews’ demand
for a sign, “ Destroy this temple, and in three
days I will build it up again.” This John con
siders to have reference to his resurrection, but
we know that the Jews attach no such meaning to
it, from ver. 20, and also from Matt. xxvi. 61.
2 Matt. xvi. 21, xx. 19 ; Mark viii. 31, x. 32 ;
Luke ix. 22, xviii. 33.
3 This is distinctly stated, John xx. 9 : “For
as yet they knew not the Scripture, that he must
rise again from the dead,” and indeed it is clear
from all the evangelical narratives.
The improbability of the sequel of the
story is equally striking. That the guard
placed by the Sanhedrim at the tomb
should, all trembling with affright from
the apparition (xxviii. 4), have been at
once, and so easily, persuaded to deny
the vision, and propagate a lie;—that
the Sanhedrim, instead of angrily and
contemptuously scouting the story of the
soldiers, charging them with having slept,
and threatening them with punishment,
should have believed their statement,
and, at the same time, in full conclave,
resolved to bribe them to silence and
falsehood;—that Roman soldiers, as it
is generally assumed they were, who
could scarcely commit a more heinous
offence against discipline than to sleep
upon their post, should so willingly have
accepted money to accuse themselves of
such a breach of duty;—are all too
improbable suppositions to be readily
allowed; especially when the 13th verse
indicates a subsequent Jewish rumour as
the foundation of the story, and when
the utter silence of all the other evan
gelists and apostles respecting a narrative
which, if true, would be so essential a
feature in their preaching of the resur
rection, is duly borne in mind.
Many minor instances in which Mat
thew has retrenched or added to the
accounts of Mark, according as retrench
ment or omission would, in his view,
most exalt the character of Jesus, are
specified in the article already re
ferred to (Prosp. Rev. xxi.), which we
recommend to the perusal of all our
readers as a perfect pattern of critical
reasoning.
Chapter VII
FIDELITY OF THE GOSPEL HISTORY CON
TINUED—MATTHEW
In pursuing our inquiry as to the degree
of reliance to be placed on Matthew’s
narrative, we now come to the considera
tion of those passages in which there is
reason to believe that the conversations
and discourses of Christ have been in
�FIDELITY OF THE GOSPEL HISTORY—MATTHEW
81
correctly reported : and that words have
been attributed to him which he did not
utter, or at least did not utter in the form
and context in which they have been
transmitted to us. That this should be
so, is no more than we ought to expect
a priori ; for, of all things, discourses
and remarks are the most likely to be
imperfectly heard, inaccurately reported,
and materially altered and corrupted in
the course of transmission from mouth
to mouth. Indeed, as we do not know,
and have no reason to believe, that the
discourses of Christ were written down
by those who heard them immediately
after their delivery, or indeed much be
fore they reached the hands of the evan
gelists, nothing less than a miracle per
petually renewed for many years could
have preserved these traditions perfectly
pore and genuine. In admitting the be
lief, therefore, that they are in several
points imperfect and inaccurate, we are
throwing no discredit upon the sincerity
or capacity, either of the evangelists or
their informants, or the original reporters
of the sayings of Christ;—we are simply
acquiescing in the alleged operation of
natural causes.1 In some cases, it is
true, we shall find reason to believe
that the published discourses of Christ
have been intentionally altered and arti
ficially elaborated by some of the parties
through whose hands they passed;
but in those days when the very idea of
historical criticism was yet unborn, this
might have been done without any un
fairness of purpose. We know that at
that period, historians of far loftier pre
tensions and more scientific character,
writing in countries of far greater literary
advancement, seldom scrupled to fill up
and round off the harangues of their
orators and statesmen with whatever they
thought appropriate for them to have
said—nay, even to elaborate for them
long orations out of the most meagre
hearsay fragments.1
A general view of Matthew, and still
more a comparison of his narrative with
that of the other three gospels, brings
into clear light his entire indifference to
chronological or contextual arrangement
in his record of the discourses of Christ.
Thus in ch. v., vi., vii., we have crowded
into one sermon the teachings and aphor
isms which in the other evangelists are
spread over the whole of Christ’s minis
try. In ch. xiii. we find collected to
gether no less than six parables of simili
tudes for the kingdom of heaven. In ch.
x. Matthew compresses into one occa
sion (the sending of the twelve, where
many of them are strikingly out of place)
a variety of instructions and reflections
which must have belonged to a subse
quent part of the career of Jesus, where
indeed they are placed by the other
evangelists. In c. xxiv., in the same
manner, all the prophecies relating to the
destruction of Jerusalem and the end of
the world are grouped together; while,
in many instances, remarks of Jesus are
introduced in the midst of others with
which they have no connection, and
where they are obviously out of place ;
as xi. 28-30, and xiii. 12, which evidently
belongs to xxv. 29.
1 This seems to be admitted even by orthodox
writers. Thus Abp. Trench says :—“The most
earnest oral tradition will in a little while lose
its distinctness, undergo essential though in
sensible modifications. Apart from all desire to
vitiate the committed word, yet, little by little,
the subjective condition of those to whom it is
entrusted, through whom it passes, will infallibly
make itself felt; and in such treacherous keeping
is all which remains merely in the memories of
men, after a very little while, rival schools of
disciples will begin to contend not merely how
their Master’s words were to be accepted, but
what those very words were.” — Trench’s
“ JIulsean Lectures,” p. 15.
1 This in fact was the custom of antiquity—
the rule, not the exception :—See Thucydides,
Livy, Sallust, &c. passim. We find also (see
Acts v. 34-39), that Luke himself did not scruple
to adopt this common practice, for he gives us
a verbatim speech of Gamaliel delivered in the
Sanhedrim, after the apostles had been expressly
excluded, and which therefore he could have
known only by hearsay report. Moreover, it is
certain that this speech must have been Luke’s,
and not Gamaliel’s, since it represents Gamaliel
in the year A.D. 34 or 35, as speaking in the
past tense of an agitator, Theudas, who did not
appear, as we learn from Josephus, till after the
year a.d. 44.
�82
FIDELITY OF THE GOSPEL HISTORY—MATTHEW
In c. xi. 12 is the following expression :
“ And from the days of John the Baptist
until now, the kingdom of Heaven suffereth violence, and the violent take it
by storm.” Now, though the meaning
of the passage is difficult to ascertain
with precision, yet the expression, “ from
the days of John the Baptist until now,”
clearly implies that the speaker lived at
a considerable distance of time from
John ; and though appropriate enough in
a man who wrote in the year a.d. 65, or
30 years after John, could not have been
used by one who spoke in the year a.d.
30 or 33, while John was yet alive. This
passage, therefore, must be regarded as
coming from Matthew, not from Jesus.
The passage at c. xvi. 15-19 bears
obvious marks of being either an addi
tion to the words of Christ, or a corrup
tion of them. “ He saith unto them,
But whom say ye that I am? And
Simon Peter answered and said, Thou
art the Christ, the Son of the living God.
And Jesus answered and said unto him,
Blessed art thou, Simon Bar-jona: for
flesh and blood hath not revealed it unto
thee, but my Father which is in Heaven.
And I say also unto thee, That thou art
Peter, and upon this rock I will build
my church; and the gates of hell shall
not prevail against it. And I will give
unto thee the keys of the kingdom of
heaven; and whatsoever thou shalt
bind on earth shall be bound in heaven;
and whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth
shall be loosed in heaven.”
The confession by Simon Peter of his
belief in the Messiahship of Jesus is
given by all the four evangelists, and
there is no reason to question the
accuracy of this part of the narrative.
Mark and John, as well as Matthew,
relate that Jesus bestowed on Simon the
surname of Peter, and this part, there
fore, may also be admitted. The re
mainder of the narrative corresponds
almost exactly with the equivalent pas
sages in the other evangelists; but the
18th verse has no parallel in any of
them. Moreover, the word “church”
betrays its later origin. The word ¿KKhycria
was used by the disciples to signify those
assemblies and organisations into which
they formed themselves after the death
of Jesus, and is met with frequently in
the epistles, but nowhere in the gospels,,
except in the passage under considera
tion, and one other, which is equally,
or even more, contestable.1 It was in
use when the gospel was written, but
not when the discourse of Jesus was
delivered. It must be taken as belong
ing, therefore, to Matthew, not to Jesus.
The following verse, conferring spiritual
authority, or, as it is commonly called,
“ the power of the keys,” upon Peter, is
repeated by Matthew in connection with
another discourse (in c. xviii. 18); and
a similar passage is found in John (c. xx.
23), who, however, places the promise
after the resurrection, and represents
it as made to the apostles generally,
subsequent to the descent of the Holy
Spirit.
But there are considerations
which effectually forbid our receiving
this promise, at least as given by Mat
thew, as having really emanated from
Christ. In the frst place, in both pas
sages it occurs in connection with the
suspicious word “church,”and indicates
an ecclesiastical as opposed to a Chris
tian origin. Secondly, Mark, who nar
rates the previous conversation, omits
this promise so honourable and distin
guishing to Peter, which it is impossible
for those who consider him as Peter’s
mouthpiece, or amanuensis, to believe
he would have done, had any such
promise been actually made.2 Luke,
the companion and intimate of Paul and
other apostles, equally omits all mention
of this singular conversation. Thirdly,
not only do we know Peter’s utter unfit
ness to be the depositary of such a
fearful power, from his impetuosity and
instability of character, and Christ’s
1 C. xviii. 17. “If he shall neglect to hear
them, tell it unto the church ; but if he neglect
to hear the church, let him be unto thee as a
heathen man and a publican.” The whole pas
sage with its context, betokens an ecclesiastical,
not a Christian spirit.
2 See Thirl wall, cvii., “ Introd, to Schleiermacher.”
�FIDELITY OF THE GOSPEL HISTORY—MATTHEW
83
There are two other classes of dis
thorough perception of this unfitness,
but we find that immediately after it is courses attributed to Jesus both in this
said to have been conferred upon him, and in the other gospels, over the char
his Lord addresses him indignantly by acter of which much obscurity hangs—
the epithet of Satan, and rebukes him those in which he is said to have fore
for his presumption and unspirituality ; told his own death and resurrection;
and shortly afterwards this very man and those in which he is represented as
thrice denied his Master. Can anyone speaking of his second advent. The
maintain it to be conceivable that Jesus instances of the first are in Matthew
should have conferred the awful power five in number, in Mark four, in Luke
of deciding the salvation or damnation four, and in John three!
Now we will at once concede that it is
of his fellow-men upon one so frail, so
faulty, and so fallible ? Does anyone extremely probable that Christ might
believe that he did I We cannot, there easily have foreseen that a career and
fore, regard the 19th verse otherwise conduct like his could, in such a time
than as an unwarranted addition to the and country,-terminate only in a violent
words of Jesus, and painfully indica and cruel death ; and that indications of
tive of the growing pretensions of the such an impending fate thickened fast
Church at the time the gospel was com around him as his ministry drew nearer
to a close. It is even possible, though
piled.
In c. xxviii. 19 is another passage in the highest degree unlikely,2 that his
which we may say with almost certainty study of the prophets might have led
never came from the mouth of Christ: him to the conclusion that the expected
“ Go ye therefore and teach all nations, Messiah, whose functions he believed
baptising them in the name of the Father, himself sent to fulfil, was to be a suffer
and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.” ing and dying Prince. We will not even
That this definite form of baptism pro dispute that he might have been so
ceeded from Jesus, is opposed by the amply endowed with the spirit of pro
fact that such an allocation of the Father, phecy as distinctly to foresee his ap
Son, and Spirit does not elsewhere ap proaching crucifixion and resurrection.
pear, except as a form of salutation in But we find in the Evangelists them
the epistles ; while as a definite form of selves insuperable difficulties in the way
baptism it is nowhere met with through of admitting the belief that he actually
out the New Testament. Moreover, it did predict these events, in the language,
was not the form used, and could scarcely or with anything of the precision, which
therefore have been the form commanded ; is there ascribed to him.
for in the apostolic epistles, and even in
In the fourth gospel, these predictions
the Acts, the form always is “ baptising are three in number,3 and in all the
into Christ Jesus,” or, “into the name
1 Matt. xii. 40; xvi. 21 ; xvii. 9, 22, 23 ; xx.
of the Lord Jesus ” j1 while the threefold 17-19 ; xxvi. 3. Mark viii. 31 ; ix. 10, 31 ; x.
reference to God, Jesus, and the Holy 33 ; xiv. 28. Luke ix. 22, 44; xviii. 32, 33 ;
xxii. 15. John ii. 20-22; iii. 14; xii. 32, 33:
Ghost is only found in ecclesiastical all very questionable.
writers, as Justin. Indeed, the formula
2 It was in the highest degree unlikely,
in Matthew sounds so exactly as if it-had because this was neither the interpretation put
been borrowed from the ecclesiastical upon the prophecies among the Jews of that
ritual, that it is difficult to avoid the sup time, nor their natural signification, but it was
an interpretation of the disciples ex eventu.
position that it was transferred thence
3 We pass over those touching intimations of
into the mouth of Jesus. Many critics, approaching separation contained in the parting
in consequence, regard it as a subsequent discourses of Jesus during and immediately pre
ceding the last supper, us there can be little doubt
interpolation.
1 Rom. vi. 3. Gal. iii. 27.
16 ; x. 48 ; xix, 5.
Acts ii. 38; viii.
that at that time his fate was so imminent as to
have become evident to any acute observer, with
out the supposition of supernatural information.
�84
FIDELITY OF THE GOSPEL HISTORY—MATTHEW
language is doubtful, mysterious, and
obscure, and the interpretation com
monly put upon them is not that sug
gested by the words themselves, nor that
which suggested itself to those who
heard them ; but is one affixed to them
by the Evangelist after the event sup
posed to be referred to; it is an interpretatio ex eventuP In the three synop
tical gospels, however, the predictions
are numerous, precise, and conveyed in
language which it was impossible to
mistake.
Thus (in Matt. xx. 18, 19,
and parallel passages), “ Behold, wre go
up to Jerusalem, and the Son of man
shall be betrayed unto the chief priests,
and unto the scribes, and they shall
condemn him to death, and shall deliver
him to the Gentiles to mock, and to
scourge, and to crucify him : and the
third day he shall rise again.” Language
such as this, definite, positive, explicit,
and circumstantial, if really uttered,
could not have been misunderstood, but
must have made a deep and ineradicable
impression on all who heard it, especially
when repeated, as it is stated to have
been, on several distinct occasions. Yet
we find ample proof that no such im
pression was made ;—that the disciples
had no conception of their Lord’s ap
proaching death—still less of his resur
rection ;—and that so far from their
expecting either of these events, both,
when they occurred, took them entirely
by surprise;—they were utterly con1 In the case of the first of these predictions
—“ Destroy this temple, and in three days I
will raise it up,”—we can scarcely admit that
the words were used by Jesus (if uttered by him
at all) in the sense ascribed to them by John;
since the words were spoken in the temple, and
in answer to the demand for a sign, and could
therefore only have conveyed, and have been
intended to convey, the meaning which we know
they actually did convey to the inquiring Jews.
In the two other cases (or three, if we reckon
viii. 28 as one), the language of Jesus is too
indefinite for us to know what meaning he
intended it to convey. The expression “ to be
lifted up ” is thrice used, and may mean exalta
tion, glorification (its natural signification), or,
artificially and figuratively, might be intended
tp refer to his crucifixion.
founded by the one, and could not be
lieve the other.
We find them shortly after (nay, in
one instance instantly after) these pre
dictions were uttered, disputing which
among them should be greatest in their
coming dominion (Matt. xx. 24; Mark
ix. 35 ; Luke xxii. 25) ■—glorying in the
idea of thrones, and asking for seats
on his right hand and on his left, in his
Messianic kingdom (Matt. xix. 28, xx.
21 ; Mark x.»37 ; Luke xxii. 30); which,
when he approached Jerusalem, they
thought “ would immediately appear ”
(Luke xix. 11, xxiv. 21). When Jesus
was arrested in the garden of Geth
semane, they first attempted resistance,
and then “ forsook him and fled ” ; and
so completely were they scattered, that
it was left for one of the Sanhedrim,
Joseph of Arimathaea, to provide even
for his decent burial;—while the women
who “watched afar off,” and were still
faithful to his memory, brought spices
to embalm the body—a sure sign, were
any needed, that the idea of his resur
rection had never entered into their
minds. Further, when the women re
ported his resurrection to the disciples,
“ their words seemed to them as idle
tales, and they believed them not”
(Luke xxiv. 11).
The conversation,
moreover, of the two disciples on the
road to Emmaus is sufficient proof that
the resurrection of their Lord was a con
ception which had never crossed their
thoughts;—and, finally, according to
John, when Mary found the body gone,
her only notion was that it must have
been removed by the gardener (xx. 15).
All this shows, beyond, we think, the
possibility of question, that the cruci
fixion and resurrection of Jesus were
wholly unexpected by his disciples. If
further proof were wanted, we find it in
the words of the evangelists, who re
peatedly intimate (as if struck by the
incongruity we have pointed out) that
they “knew not,” or “understood not,”
these sayings. (Mark ix. 31; Luke ix.
45, xviii. 34; John xx. 9).
Here, then, we have two distinct
�FIDELITY OF THE GOSPEL HISTORY—MAtTHÉW
«5
Another argument may be adduced,
statements, which mutually exclude and
contradict each other. If Jesus really strongly confirmatory of this view. Jesus
foretold his death and resurrection in is repeatedly represented as affirming
the terms recorded in the gospels, it is that his expected sufferings and their
inconceivable that the disciples should glorious termination must take place,
have misunderstood him; for no words in order that the prophecies might be
could be more positive, precise, or in fulfilled. (Matt. xxvi. 24, 54; Mark ix.
telligible than those which he is said 12, xiv. 49; Luke xiii. 33, xviii. 31,
to have repeatedly addressed to them. xxii. 37, xxiv; 27.) Now, the passion
Neither could they have forgotten what of the disciples for representing every
had been so strongly urged upon their thing connected with Jesus as the fulfil
memory by their Master, as completely ment of prophecy, explains why they
as it is evident from their subsequent should have sought, after his death, for
conduct they actually did.1 They might, passages which might be supposed to
indeed, have disbelieved his prediction prefigure it,1—and why these accommo
(as Peter appears in the first instance to dations of prophecy should, in process
have done), but in that case his cruci of time, and of transmission, have been
fixion would have led them to expect attributed to Jesus himself. But if we
his resurrection, or, at all events, to think assume, as is commonly done, that
of it:—which it did not. The fulfilment these references to prophecy really pro
of one prophecy would necessarily have ceeded from Christ in the first instance,
we are landed in the inadmissible, or at
recalled the other to their minds.
The conclusion, therefore, is inevitable least the embarrassing and unorthodox,
—that the predictions were ascribed to conclusion that he interpreted the pro
Jesus after the event, not really uttered phets erroneously. To confine ourselves
by him. It is, indeed, very probable to the principal passages only, a profound
that, as gloomy anticipations of his own grammatical and historical exposition has
death pressed upon his mind, and be convincingly shown, to all who are in a
came stronger and more confirmed as condition to liberate themselves from
the danger came nearer, he endeavoured dogmatic presuppositions, that in none
to communicate these apprehensions to of these is there any allusion to the
his followers, in order to prepare them sufferings of Christ.2
One of these references to prophecy
for an event so fatal to their worldly
hopes. That he did so, we think the in Matthew has evident marks of being
conversations during, and previous to, an addition to the traditional words of
the last supper afford ample proof. Christ by the Evangelist himself. In
These vague intimations of coming evil
1 “ There were sufficient motives for the
—intermingled and relieved, doubtless, by Christian legend thus to put into the mouth of
strongly expressed convictions of a future Jesus, after the event, a prediction of the parti
existence of reunion and reward, dis cular features of his passion, especially of the
a Christ
believed or disregarded by the disciples ignominious crucifixion.the The morestumblingcrucified became ‘to
Jews a
at the time—recurred to their minds block, and to the Greeks foolishness ’ (1 Cor. i.
after all was over; and gathering strength, 23), the more need was there to remove the
and expanding in definiteness and fulness offence by every possible means ; and as, among
during constant repetition for nearly the subsequent events, the resurrection espe
cially served as a retrospective cancelling of that
forty years, had, at the period when the shameful death, so it must have been earnestly
Evangelists wrote, become consolidated desired to take the sting from that offensive
into the fixed prophetic form in which catastrophe beforehand also ; and this could not
be done more effectually than by such a minute
they have been transmitted to us.
1 Moreover, if they had so completely for
gotten these predictions, whence did the evan
gelists derive them ?
prediction.”—Strauss, iii. 54, where this idea is
fully developed.
2 Even Dr. Arnold admitted this fully. (“ Ser
mons on Interpretations of Prophecy,” Preface.)
�86
FIDELITY OF THE GOSPEL HISTORY—MATTHEW
Matt. xvi. 4, we have the following:
“A wicked and adulterous generation
seeketh after a sign; and there shall
no sign be given to it but the sign of
the prophet Jonas.” The same expres
sion precisely is recorded by Luke (xi.
29), with this addition, showing what
the reference to Jonas really meant:
“For as Jonas was a sign to the Ninevites, so also shall the Son of man be
to this generation. The men of Nineveh
shall rise up in judgment against this
generation, and shall condemn it; for
they repented at the preaching of Jonas;
and, behold, a greater than Jonas is
here.” But when Matthew repeats the
same answer of Jesus in response to the
same demand for a sign (xii. 40), he
adds the explanation of the reference,
“for as Jonas was three days and three
nights in the whale’s belly, so shall the
Son of man be three days and three
nights [which Jesus was not, but only
one day and two nightsin the heart
of the earth ” ;—and he then proceeds
with the same context as Luke.
The prophecies of the second coming
of Christ (Matt, xxiv.; Mark xiii.; Luke
xvii. 22-37 ; xxi. 5-36) are mixed up
with those of the destruction of Jeru
salem by Titus in a manner which has
long been the perplexity and despair of
orthodox commentators. The obvious
meaning of the passages which contain
these predictions—the sense in which
they were evidently understood by the
Evangelists who wrote them down—
the sense which we know from many
sources1 they conveyed to the minds
2
of the early Christians—clearly is, that
the coming of Christ to judge the
world should follow immediately 3 (“ im
1 Nay : possibly only a few hours.
2 See 1 Cor. x. 11; xv. 51. Phil. iv. 5.
1 Thess. iv. 15. James v. 8. 1 Peter iv. 7.
I John ii. 18. Rev. i. 1, 3 ; xxii. 7, 10, 12, 20.
3 An apparent contradiction to this is pre
sented by Matt. xxiv. 14; Matt. xiii. 10, where
we are told that “ the gospel must be first
preached to all nations.” It appears, however,
from Col. i. 5, 6, 23 (see also Romans x. 18),
that St. Paul considered this to have been
already accomplished in his time.
mediately,” “ in those days ”) the des
truction of the Holy City, and should
take place during the lifetime of the
then existing generation. “ Verily I say
unto you, This generation shall not pass
away till all these things be fulfilled ”
(Matt. xxiv. 34; Mark xiii. 30; Luke
xxi. 32).
“There be some standing
here that shall not taste of death till
they see the Son of man coming in
his kingdom” (Matt. xvi. 28). “Verily
I say unto you, Ye shall not have gone
over the cities of Israel, till the Son of
man be come” (Matt. x. 23). “If I
will that he tarry till I come, what is
that to thee?” (John xxi. 23).
Now if these predictions really pro
ceeded from Jesus, he was entirely in
error on the subject, and the prophetic
spirit was not in him ; for not only did
his advent not follow close on the
destruction of Jerusalem, but 1800 years
have since elapsed, and neither he nor
the preliminary signs which were to
announce *him have yet appeared. If
these predictions did not proceed from
him, then the Evangelist has taken the
liberty of putting into the mouth of Christ
words and announcements which Christ
never uttered.
Much desperate ingenuity has been
exerted to separate the predictions
relating to Jerusalem from those relating
to the Advent: but these exertions have
been neither creditable nor successful;
and they have already been examined
and refuted at great length. Moreover,
they are rendered necessary only by two
previous assumptions: first, that Jesus
cannot have been mistaken as to the
future; and, secondly, that he really
uttered these predictions. Now, neither
of these assumptions is capable of proof.
The first we shall not dispute, because
we have no adequate means of coming
to a conclusion on the subject. But as
to the second assumption, we think there
are several indications that, though the
predictions in question were current
among the Christians when the gospels
were composed, yet that they did not, at
least as handed down to us, proceed
�FIDELITY OF THE GOSPEL HISTORY—MARK AND LUKE
from the lips of Christ ; but were, as
far as related to the second advent,
the unauthorised anticipations of the dis
ciples; and, as far as related to the destruc
tion of the city, partly gathered from the
denunciations of Old Testament pro
phecy, and partly from actual knowledge
of the events which passed under their
eyes.
In the first place, it is not admissible
that Jesus could have been so true a
prophet as to one part of the prediction,
and so entirely in error as to the other,
both parts referring equally to future
events. Secondly, the three gospels in
which these predictions occur are allowed
to have been written between the years
65 and 72 a.d., or during the war which
ended in the destruction of Jerusalem1;
that is, they were written during and
87
after the events which they predict.
They may, therefore, either have been
entirely drawn from the events, or have
been vaguely in existence before, but
have derived their definiteness and pre
cision from the events. And we have
already seen in the case of the first
evangelist, that he, at least, did not
scruple to eke out and modify the pre
dictions he recorded, from his own
experience of their fulfilment. Thirdly,
the parallel passages, both in Matthew
and Mark, contain an expression twice
repeated—“ the elect”—which we can
say almost with certainty was unknown
in the time of Christ, though frequently
found in the epistles, and used, at the
time the gospels were composed, to
designate the members of the Christian
Church.
Chapter VIII
SAME SUBJECT CONTINUED—MARK AND LUKE
Many of the criticisms contained in
the last chapter—tending to prove that
Matthew’s Gospel contains several state
ments not strictly accurate, and attributes
to Jesus several expressions and dis
courses which were not really uttered by
him—are equally applicable both to Mark
and Luke. The similarity—not to say
identity—of the greater portion of Mark’s
narrative with that of Matthew leaves no
room for doubt either that one evangelist
copied from the other, or that both
employed the same documents, or oral
narratives, in the compilation of their
histories. Our own clear conviction is
that Mark was the earliest in time, and
far the most correct in fact.
1 The war began by Vespasian’s entering
Galilee in the beginning of the year a.d. 67,
and the city was taken in the autumn of a.d.
70.
As we have already stated, we attach
little weight to the tradition of the second
century, that the second gospel was
written by Mark, the companion of Peter.
It originated with Papias, whose works
are now lost, but who was stated to be
a “ weak man ” by Eusebius, who records
a few fragments of his writings. But if
the tradition be correct, the omissions in
this gospel, as compared with the first,
are significant enough. It omits entirely
the genealogies, the miraculous concep
tion, several matters relating to Peter
(especially his walking on the water, and
the commission of the keys), and every
thing miraculous or improbable relating
to the resurrection1—everything, in fact,
but the simple statement that the body
1 We must not forget that the real genuine
Gospel of Mark terminates with the 8th verse
of the 16th chapter.
�88
FIDELITY OF THE GOSPEL HISTORY-MARK AND LUKE
was missing, and that a “young man”
assured the visitors that Christ was
risen.
In addition to these, there are two or
three peculiarities in the discourses of
Jesus, as recorded by Mark, which in
dicate that the evangelist thought it
necessary and allowable slightly to
modify the language of them, in order
to suit them to the ideas or the feelings
of the Gentile converts; if, as is com
monly supposed, it was principally
designed for them. We copy a few
instances of these, though resting little
upon them.
Matthew, who wrote for the Jews, has
the following passage, in the injunctions
pronounced by Jesus on the sending
forth of the twelve apostles : “ Go not
into the way of the Gentiles, and into
any city of the Samaritans enter ye
not. But go rather to the lost sheep of
the house of Israel” (x. 5). Mark, who
wrote for the Gentiles, omits entirely
this unpalatable charge (v. 7—13).
Matthew (xv. 24), in the story of the
Canaanitish woman, makes Jesus say,
“I am not sent but to the lost sheep
of the house of Israel.” Mark (vii. 26)
omits this expression entirely, and modi
fies the subsequent remark. In Matthew
it is thus :—“ It is not meet to take the
children’s bread and cast it unto the
dogs.” In Mark it is softened by the
preliminary, “ Let the children first be
filled? &c.
Matthew (xxiv. 20), “But pray ye
that your flight be not in the winter,
neither on the Sabbath day.” Mark
omits the last clause, which would have
had no meaning for any but the Jews,
whose Sabbath day’s journey was by law
restricted to a small distance.
In the promise given to the disciples,
in answer to Peter’s question, “Behold
we have forsaken all, and followed thee;
what shall we have therefore ? ” The
following verse, given by Matthew
(xix. 28), is omitted by Mark (x. 28):—
“ Verily I say unto you, That ye which
have followed me, in the regeneration,
when the Son of Man shall sit in the
throne of his glory, ye also shall sit
upon twelve thrones, judging the twelve
tribes of Israel.”
The Gospel of Luke, which is a work
in some respects of more pretension,
and unquestionably of more literary
merit, than the two first, will require a
few additional observations. The re
marks we have made on the prophecies
of his own sufferings and resurrection,
alleged by Matthew and Mark to have
been uttered by Jesus, apply equally to
Luke’s narrative, in which similar- pas
sages occur; and in these, therefore, we
must admit that the third evangelist, like
the other two, ascribed to Jesus dis
courses which never really proceeded
from him. But besides these, there are
several passages in Luke which bear an
equally apocryphal character, some of
which it will be interesting to notice.
The first chapter, from verse 5-80,
contains the account of the annunciation
and birth of John the Baptist, with all
the marvellous circumstances attending
it, and also the annunciation to Mary,
and the miraculous conception of Jesus
—an account exhibiting many remark
able discrepancies with rhe correspond
ing narrative in Matthew. We are
spared the necessity of a detailed inves
tigation of this chapter by the agreement
of the most learned critics, both of the
orthodox and sceptical schools, in con
sidering the narrative as poetical and
legendary.1 It is examined at great
length by Strauss, who is at the head of
the most daring class of the Biblical
Commentators of Germany, and by
Schleiermacher, who ranks first among
the learned divines of that country. The
latter (in the work translated by one of
our most erudite and liberal Prelates,
and already often referred to), writes thus,
PP- 25-7
“ Thus, then, we begin by detaching
the first chapter as an originally inde
pendent composition. If we consider it
in this light somewhat more closely, we
1 [The recent repudiation of the “Virgin
birth ” by modern divines will be in the memory
of all.]
�FIDELITY OF THE GOSPEL HISTORY—MARK AND LUKE
cannot resist the impression that it was
originally rather a little poetical work
than a properly-historical narrative. The
latter supposition, in its strictest sense
at all events, no one will adopt, or con
tend that the angel Gabriel announced
the advent of the Messiah in figures so
purely Jewish, and in expressions taken
mostly from the Old Testament ; or that
the alternate song between Elizabeth
and Mary actually took place in the
manner described ; or that Zacharias, at
the instant of recovering his speech,
made use of it to utter the hymn, with
out being disturbed by the joy and sur
prise of the company, by which the
narrator himself allows his description
to be interrupted. At all events we
should then be obliged to suppose that
the author made additions of his own,
and enriched the historical narrative by
the lyrical effusions of his own genius.”
... “ If we consider the whole group
ing of the narrative, there naturally
presents itself to us a pleasing little
composition, completely in the style and
manner of several Jewish poems, still
extant among our apocryphal writings,
written in all probability originally in
Aramaic by a Christian of the more
liberal Judaising school.” . . . “There
are many other statements which I should
not venture to pronounce historical, but
would rather explain by the occasion
the poet had for them. To these belongs,
in the first place, John’s being a lateborn child, which is evidently only
imagined for the sake of analogy with
several heroes of Hebrew antiquity ;
and, in the next place, the relation
between the ages of John and Christ,
and likewise the consanguinity of Mary
and Elizabeth, which besides, it is diffi
cult to reconcile with the assertion of
John (John, i, 33), that he did not know
Christ before his baptism.”
In the second chapter we have the
account of the birth of Jesus, and the
accompanying apparition of a multitude
of angels to shepherds in the fields near
Bethlehem—as to the historical founda
tion of which Strauss and Schleierma-
89
cher are at variance; the former regard
ing it as wholly mythical, and the latter
as based upon an actual occurrence, im
perfectly remembered in after times, when
the celebrity of Jesus caused every con
tribution to the history of his birth and
infancy to be eagerly sought for. All that
we can say on the subject with any cer
tainty is, that the tone of the narrative
is legendary. The poetical rhapsody of
Simeon when Jesus was presented in the
temple may be passed over with the same
remark ;—but the 33rd verse, where we
are told that “ Joseph and his mother
marvelled at those things which were
spoken of him,” proves clearly one of
two things : — either the unhistorical
character of the Song of Simeon, and of
the consequent astonishment of the
parents of Jesus—or the unreality of the
miraculous annunciation and conception.
It is impossible, if an angel had actually
announced to Mary the birth of the di
vine child in the language, or in anything
resembling the language, recorded in
Luke i. 31-35 ; and if, in accordance with
that announcement, Mary had found
herself with child before she had any
natural possibility of being so—that she
should have felt any astonishment what
ever at the prophetic announcement of
Simeon, so consonant with the angelic
promise, especially when occurring after
the miraculous vision of the Shepherds,
which, we are told, “ she pondered in her
heart.” Schleiermacher has felt this diffi
culty, and endeavours to evade it by
considering the first and second chapters
to be two monographs originally by dif
ferent hands, which Luke incorporated
into his gospel. This was very probably
the case ; but it does not avoid the diffi
culty, as it involves giving up ii. 33 as an
unauthorised and incorrect statement.
The genealogy of Jesus, as given in the
third chapter, may be in the main cor
rect, though there are some perplexities
in one portion of it; but if the previous
narrative be correct, it is not the genear
logy of Jesus at all, but only of Joseph,
who was no relation to him whatever,
but simply his guardian. On the other
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FIDELITY OF THF GOSPEL HISTORY—MARK AND LUKE
hand, if the preparer of the genealogy,
or the evangelist who records it, knew or
believed the story of the miraculous
conception, we can conceive no reason
for his admitting a pedigree which is
either wholly meaningless, or destructive
of his previous statements. The inser
tion in verse 23, “as was supposed,”
whether by the evangelist or a subsequent
copyist, merely shows that whoever made
it perceived the incongruity, but preferred
neutralising the genealogy to omitting it.1
In all the synoptical gospels we find in
stances of the cure of demoniacs by
Jesus early in his career, in which the
demons, promptly, spontaneously, and
loudly, bear testimony to his Messiahship. These statements occur once in
Matthew (viii. 29)—four times in Mark
(i. 24, 34 ; iii. 11 ; v. 7); and three times
in Luke (iv. 33,41; viii. 28).2 Now, two
points are evident to common sense, and
are fully admitted by honest criticism:
—first, that these demoniacs were lunatic
and epileptic patients ; and secondly, that
Jesus (or the narrators who framed the
language of Jesus throughout the synop
tical gospels) shared the common belief
that these maladies were caused by evil
spirits inhabiting the bodies of the suf
ferers. We are then landed in this con
clusion—certainly not a probable one,
nor the one intended to be conveyed by
the narrators—that the idea of Jesus
being the Messiah was adopted by mad
men before it had found entrance into
the public mind, apparently even before
it was received by his immediate disci
ples—was in fact first suggested by mad
men ;—in other words,-that it was an
idea which originated with insane brains
1 The whole story of the Incarnation, how
ever, is effectually discredited by the fact that
none of the Apostles or sacred Historians make
any subsequent reference to it, or indicate any
knowledge of it.
2 It is worthy of remark that no narrative of
the healing of demoniacs, stated as such, occurs
in the fourth gospel. This would intimate it to
be the work of a man who had outgrown, or had
never entertained, the idea of maladies arising
from possession. It is one of many indications
in this evangelist of a Greek rather than a
Jewish mind.
—which presented itself to, and found
acceptance with, insane brains more
readily than sane ones. The conception
of the evangelists clearly was that Jesus
derived honour (and his mission confir
mation) from this early recognition of
his Messianic character by hostile spirits
of a superior order of Intelligences; but
to us, who know that these supposed
superior Intelligences were really un
happy men whose natural intellect had
been perverted or impaired, the effect of
the narrative becomes absolutely re
versed ;—and if they are to be accepted
as historical, they lead inevitably to the
conclusion that the idea of the Messiahship of Jesus was originally formed in
disordered brains, and spread thence
among the mass of the disciples. The
only rescue from this conclusion lies in
the admission, that these narratives are
not historical, but mythic, and belong to
that class of additions which early grew
up in the Christian Church, out of the
desire to honour and aggrandise the
memory of its Founder, and which our
uncritical evangelists embodied as they
found them.
Passing over a few minor passages of
doubtful authenticity or accuracy, we
come to one near the close of the gospel,
which we have no scruple in pronouncing
to be an unwarranted interpolation. In
xxii. 36-38, Jesus is reported, after the
last Supper, to have said to his disciples,
“ He that hath no sword, let him sell his
garment and buy one. And they said,
Lord, behold, here are two swords. And
he said, It is enough.” Christ never
could have uttered such a command, nor,
we should imagine, anything which could
have been mistaken for it. The very idea
is contradicted by his whole character,
and utterly precluded by the narratives
of the other evangelists ; — for when
Peter did use the sword, he met with a
severe rebuke from his Master:—“Put
up thy sword into the sheath : the cup
which my Father hath given me shall I
not drink it ? ”—according to John “ Put
up again thy sword into its place; for all
they that take the sword shall perish by
�FIDELITY OF THE GOSPEL HISTORY—GOSPEL OF JOHN
the sword,”—according to Matthew. The
passage we conceive to be a clumsy in
vention of some early .narrator, to account
for the remarkable fact of Peter having
a sword at the time of Christ’s appre
hension ; and it is inconceivable to us
how a sensible compiler like Luke could
have admitted into his history such an
apocryphal and unharmonising fragment.
In conclusion, then, it appears certain
that in all the synoptical gospels we have
events related which did not really occur, 1
91
and words ascribed to Jesus which Jesus
did not utter; and that many of these
words and events are of great significance.
In the great majority of these instances,
however, this incorrectness does not
imply any want of honesty on the part
of the Evangelists, but merely indicates
that they adopted and embodied, with
out much scrutiny or critical acumen,
whatever probable and honourable nar
ratives they found current in the Christian community.
Chapter IX
SAME SUBJECT CONTINUED—GOSPEL OF JOHN
In the examination of the fourth Gospel
a different mode of criticism from that
hitherto pursued is required. Here we
do not find, so frequently as in the other
Evangelists, particular passages which
pronounce their own condemnation, by
anachronisms, peculiarity of language,
or incompatibility with others more ob
viously historical \ but the whole tone
of the delineations, the tenor of the
discourses, and the general course of
the narrative, are utterly different from
those contained in the synoptical gospels,
and also from what we should expect
from a Jew speaking to Jews, writing of
Jews, imbued with the spirit and living
in the land of Judaism.
By the common admission of all recent
critics, this gospel is rather to be regarded
as a polemic, than an historic composi
tion.1 It was written less with the in
tention of giving a complete and con
tinuous view of Christ’s character and
career, than to meet and confute certain
heresies which had sprung up in the
Christian church near the close of the
first century, by selecting, from the
1 See Hug, Strauss, Hennell, De Wette.
Also Dr. Tait’s “ Suggestions.”
memory of the author, or the tradi
tions then current among believers,
such narratives and discourses as were
conceived to be most opposed to the
heresies in question. Now these heresies
related almost exclusively to the person
and nature of Jesus; on which points
we have many indications that great
difference of opinion existed, even during
the apostolic period. The obnoxious
doctrines especially pointed at in the
gospel appear, both from internal evi
dence and external testimony,1 to be
those held by Cerinthus and the Nico
lai tans, which, according to Hug, were
as follows :—The one Eternal God is too
pure, perfect, and pervading an essence
to be able to operate on matter; but
from him emanated a number of in
ferior and gradually degenerating spiritual
natures, one of whom was the Creator
of the world,—hence its imperfections.
Jesus was simply and truly a man,
though an eminently great and virtuous
one; but one of the above spiritual
1 Irenaeus, Jerome, Epiphanius. See Hug,
§ 51. See also a very detailed account of the
Gnostics in Norton’s “Genuineness of the
Gospels,” ii. c. 1, 2.
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FIDELITY OF THE GOSPEL HISTORY-GOSPEL OF JOHN
natures—the Christ, the Son of Godunited itself to Jesus at his baptism,
and thus conferred upon him super
human power.
“This Christ, as an
immaterial Being of exalted origin, one
of the purer kinds of spirits, was from
his nature unsusceptible of material affec
tions, of suffering and pain. He, there
fore, at the commencement of the Pas
sion, resumed his separate existence,
abandoned Jesus to pain and death, and
soared upwards to his native heaven.
Cerinthus distinguished Jesus and Christ,
Jesus and the Son of God, as beings of
different nature and dignity.1 The Nicolaitans held similar doctrines in regard
to the Supreme Deity and his relation
to mankind, and an inferior spirit who
was the Creator of the world. Among
the subaltern orders of spirits they con
sidered the most distinguished to be
the only-begotten, the /xovoyei/^s (whose
existence, however, had a beginning),
and the Xoyos, the Word, who was an
immediate descendant of the onlybegotten.” 1
2
These, then, were the opinions which
the author of the fourth gospel wrote to
controvert; in confirmation of which
being his object we have his own state
ment (xx. 31): “These are written”
(not that ye may know the life and under
stand the character of our great Teacher,
but that ye may believe his nature to be
what I affirm) “ that ye might believe
that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God ;
and that believing, ye might have life
through his name.” Now, a narrative
written with a controversial aim—a nar
rative, more especially, consisting of re
collected or selected circumstances and
discourses—carries within it, as everyone
will admit, from the very nature of fallible
humanity, an obvious element of inac
curacy. A man who writes a history to
prove a doctrine must be something more
than a man, if he writes that history with
1 Several critics contend that the original
reading of 1 John iv. 3 was, “ Every spirit that
separateth Jesus (from the Christ) is not of
God.”—See Hug, p. 423.
2 Hug, § 51.
a scrupulous fidelity of fact and colour
ing. Accordingly, we find that the public
discourses of Jesus in this gospel turn
almost exclusively upon the dignity of
his own person, which topic is brought
forward in a manner and with a fre
quency which it is impossible to regard
as historical. The prominent feature
in the character of Jesus, as here de
picted, is an overweening tendency to
self-glorification. We see no longer, as
in the other gospels, a prophet eager to
bring men to God, and to instruct them
in righteousness, but one whose whole
mind seems occupied with the grandeur
of his own nature and mission. In the
first three gospels we have the message ;
in the fourth we have comparatively little
but the messenger. If any of our readers
will peruse the gospel with this observa
tion in their minds, we are persuaded
the result will be a very strong and prob
ably painful impression that they cannot
here be dealing with the genuine lan
guage of Jesus, but simply with a com
position arising out of deep conviction
of his superior nature, left in the mind
of the writer by the contemplation of
his splendid genius and his noble and
lovely character.
The difference of style and subject
between the discourses of Jesus in the
fourth gospel and in the synoptical ones
has been much dwelt upon, and we think
by no means too much, as proving the
greater or less unauthenticity of the
former. This objection has been met
by the supposition that the finer intellect
and more spiritual character of John in
duced him to select, and enabled him
to record, the more subtle and specu
lative discourses of his Master, which
were unacceptable or unintelligible to
the more practical and homely minds of
the other disciples; and reference is
made to the parallel case of Xenophon
and Plato, whose reports of the conver
sations of Socrates are so different in
tone and matter as to render it very
difficult to believe that both sat at the
feet of the same master, and listened
to the same teaching. But the citation
�FIDELITY OF THE GOSPEL HISTORY—GOSPEL OF JOHN
is an unfortunate one; for in this case,
also, it is more than suspected that the
more simple recorder was the more cor
rect one, and that the sublimer and
subtler peculiarities in the discourses
reported by Plato belong rather to the
disciple than to the teacher. Had John
merely superadded some more refined
and mystical discourses omitted by his
predecessors, the supposition in question
might have been admitted; but it is im
possible not to perceive that here the
whole tone of the mind delineated is new
and discrepant, though often eminently
beautiful.
Another argument, which may be con
sidered as conclusive against the histori
cal fidelity of the discourses of Jesus in
the fourth gospel is, that not only they,
but the discourses of John the Baptist
likewise, are entirely in the style of the
evangelist himself, where he introduces
his own remarks, both in the gospel and
in the first epistle.
He makes both
Jesus and the Baptist speak exactly as
he himself speaks. Compare the follow
ing passages:—
John
iii. 31-36.
(Baptist loquitur.) He
that cometh from above
is above all: he that is
of the earth is earthly,
and speaketh of the
earth: he that cometh
from heaven is above
all. And what he hath
seen and heard, that
he testifieth; and no
man receiveth his testimony.
He that receiveth his
testimony hath set to
his seal that God is
true.
For he whom God
hath sent speaketh the
words of God; for God
giveth not the spirit by
measure.
The Father loveth
the Son, and hath given
all things into his
hand.
He that believeth on
the Son hath ever
lasting life, and he that
believeth not the Son
shall not see life; but
the wrath of God
abideth on him.
93
that the Father had
given all things into his
hands.
vi. 47. (Jesus loq.)
He that believeth on
me hath everlasting
life.—(See
also
I
Epistle v. 10-13, and
Gospel iii. 18, where
the Evangelist or Jesus
speaks.)
vi. 40. (Jesus loq.)
And this is the will of
him that sent me, that
every one which seetli
the Son, and believeth
on him, may have ever
lasting life.
Another indication that in a great part
of the fourth gospel we have not the
genuine discourses of Jesus, is found in
the mystical and enigmatical nature of
the language. This peculiarity, of which
we have scarcely a trace in the other
Evangelists, beyond the few parables
which they did not at first understand,
but which Jesus immediately explained
to them, pervades the fourth gospel.
The great Teacher is here represented as
absolutely labouring to be unintelligible,
John viii. 23. (Jesus
to soar out of the reach of his hearers,
loquitur.) Ye are from
and at once perplex and disgust them.
beneath, I am from
“ It is the constant method of this Evan
above ; ye are of this
gelist, in detailing the conversation of
world ; I am not of this
world.
Jesus, to form the knot and progress of
iii. II. (Jesus loq.)
the discussions, by making the inter
We speak that we do
locutors understand literally what Jesus
know, and testify that
intended figuratively. The type of the
we have seen; and ye
receive not our testidialogue is that in which language in
mony.
tended spiritually is understood car
nally.” The instances of this are incon
ceivably frequent and unnatural. We
have the conversation with the Jews
about “ the temple of his body ” (ii. 21);
viii. 26. (Jesus loq.)
the mystification of Nicodemus on the
I speak to the world
subject of regeneration (iii. 3-10); the
those things which I
have heard of him.—
conversation with the Samaritan woman
(See also vii. 16-18;
(iv. 10-15) ;
his disciples about “ the
xiv. 24.)
food which ye know not of” (iv. 32);
v. 20. (Jesus loq.)
with the people about the “ bread from
The Father loveth the
Son, and showeth him
heaven” (vi. 31-35); with the Jews
all things that himself about giving them his flesh to eat (vi.
doeth.
48-66); with the Pharisees about his
xiii. 3. (Evangelist
disappearance (vii. 33-39, and viii. 21,
loq.) Jesus knowing
�94
FIDELITY OF THE GOSPEL HISTORY-GOSPEL OF JOHN
22); again about his heavenly origin
and pre-existence (viii. 37, 34, and 5658); and with his disciples about the
sleep of Lazarus (xi. 11-14). Now, in
the first place, it is very improbable that
Jesus, who came to preach the gospel
to the poor, should so constantly have
spoken in a style which his hearers could
not understand; and in the next place,
it is equally improbable that an Oriental
people, so accustomed to figurative lan
guage,1 and whose literature was so
eminently metaphorical, should have
misapprehended the words of Jesus so
stupidly and so incessantly as the Evan
gelist represents them to have done.
But perhaps the most conclusive
argument against the historical character
of the discourses in the fourth gospel is
to be found in the fact that, whether
dialogues or monologues, they are com
plete and continuous, resembling com
positions rather than recollections, and
of a length which it is next to impossible
could have been accurately retained—
even if we adopt Bertholdt’s improbable
hypothesis, that the apostle took notes of
Jesus’ discourses at the time of their
delivery. Notwithstanding all that has
been said as to the possible extent to
which the powers of memory may go, it
is difficult for an unprepossessed mind
to believe that discourses such as that
contained in the 14th, 15 th, and 16th
chapters could have been accurately
retained and reported unless by a short
hand writer, or by one favoured with
supernatural assistance. “ We hold it
therefore to be established ” (says Strauss,2
and in the main we agree with him)
“that the discourses of Jesus in the
fourth gospel are mainly free compositions
of the Evangelist; but we have admitted
that he has culled several sayings of Jesus
. 1 See the remarks of Strauss on the conversa
tion with Nicodemus, from which it appears that
the image of a new birth was a current one
among the Jews, and cozild not have been so
misunderstood by a master in Israel, and in fact
that the whole conversation is almost certainly
fictitious.—ii. 153.
3 “ Leben Jesu,” ii. 187.
from an authentic tradition, and hence
we do not extend this proposition to
those passages which are countenanced
by parallels in the syn opti cal gospels. In
these latter compilations we have an
example of the vicissitudes which befall
discourses that are preserved only in the
memory, of a second party. Severed
from their original connection, and broken
up into smaller and smaller fragments,
they present, when reassembled, the
appearance of a mosaic, in which the
connection of the parts is a purely
external one, and every transition an
artificial juncture. The discourses in
John present just the opposite appear
ance. Their gradual transitions, only
occasionally rendered obscure by the
mystical depths of meaning in which
they lie—transitions in which one thought
develops itself out of another, and a
succeeding proposition is frequently but
an explanatory amplification of the pre
ceding one—are indicative of a pliable,
unresisting mass, such as is never pre
sented to a writer by the traditional
sayings of another, but by such only as
proceeds from the stores of his own
thought, which he moulds according to
his will. For this reason the contribu
tions of tradition to these stores of
thought were not so likely to have been
particular independent sayings of Jesus,
as rather certain ideas which formed the
basis of many of his discourses, and which
were modified and developed according
to the bent of a mind of Greek or
Alexandrian culture.”1
.Another peculiarity of this gospel
arising, probably, out of its controversial
origin—is its exaltation of dogma over
morality—of belief over spiritual affection.
1 See also Hennell, p. 200. “The picture of
Jesus bequeathing his parting benedictions to
the disciples, seems fully to warrant the idea
that the author was one whose imagination and
affections had received an impress from real
scenes and real attachments. The few relics of
the words, looks, and acts of Jesus, which friend
ship itself could at that time preserve unmixed,
he expands into a complete record of his own
and the disciples’ sentiments ; what they felt, he
makes Jesus speak.”
�FIDELITY OF THE GOSPEL HISTORY—GOSPEL OF JOHN
In the other gospels, piety, charity, for
giveness of injuries, purity of life, are
preached by Christ as the titles to
his kingdom and his Father’s favour.
Whereas, in John’s gospel, as in his
epistles, belief in Jesus as the Son of
God, the Messiah, the Logos—belief, in
fact, in the evangelist’s view of his
nature—is constantly represented as the
one thing needful. The whole tone of
the history bears token of a time when
the message was beginning to be for
gotten in the Messenger ; when meta
physical and fruitless discussions as to
the nature of Christ had superseded
devotion to his spirit, and attention to the
sublime piety and simple self-sacrificing
holiness which formed the essence of his
own teaching. The discourses are often
touchingly eloquent and tender, the nar
rative is full of beauty, pathos, and nature;
but we miss the simple and intelligible
truth, the noble, yet practicable, morality
of the other histories ; we find in it more
of Christ than of Christianity, and more
of John than of Jesus. If the work of an
apostle at all, it was of an apostle who
had caught but a fragment of his Master’s
mantle, or in whom the good original
seed had been choked by the long bad
habit of subtle and scholastic contro
versies.
We cannot but regard this
gospel as decidedly inferior in moral
sublimity and purity to the other repre
sentations of Christ’s teaching which
have come down to us; its religion is
more of a dogmatic creed, and its very
philanthropy has a narrower and more
restricted character.
There are several minor peculiarities
which distinguish this gospel from the
preceding ones, which we can do no
more than indicate. We find here little
about the Kingdom of Heaven—nothing
about Christ’s mission being confined to
the Israelites—nothing about the casting
out of devils—nothing about the destruc
tion of Jerusalem -nothing a,bout the
struggle between the law and gospel—
topics which occupy so large a space in
the pictureof Christ’s ministry given in the
synoptical gospels; and the omission of
95
which seems to refer the composition of
this narrative to a later period, when the
Gentiles were admitted into the Church
—when the idea of demoniacal posses
sion had given way before a higher cul
ture—when Jerusalem had been long
destroyed—and when Judaism had quite
retired before Christianity, at least
within the pale of the Church.1
1 Modern criticism has detected several slight
errors and inaccuracies in the fourth gospel,
such as Sychar for Sichem, Siloam erroneously
interpreted sent, &c., &c., from which it has
been argued that the writer could not haye been
a native of Palestine, and by consequence not
the Apostle John.
These, however, are insignificant in comparison
with the discrepancy as to the date of the Last
Supper in the different Evangelists, the Synoptists fixing it on the Feast of the Passover and
the Fourth Gospel on the previous day. This
discrepancy gave rise to the famous ‘ ‘ Quartodeciman Controversy,” as it is called, which so
long agitated the early Church, and was at last
only quelled by an authoritative decree of the
Emperor Constantine. Those who wish to
understand the question, and the light which its
details throw upon the probable authorship of
the fourth Gospel, will find an exhaustive a.ccount
in Section ix. of Mr. Tayler’s learned inquiry
already referred to.—The remarkable points are
that the early controversialists, who took the
view and held to the practice of the Synoptists,
appealed to the Apostle John as their strongest
authority on their side;—while it was not till
very late in the discussion that their adversaries
seem to have thought of quoting the fourth
Gospel in their favour;—that this Gospel en
tirely ignores the institution of the Eucharist in
its account of the last days of Jesus, though
apparently alluding to it in some earlier chapters ;
—and that the object of the author appears to
have been to represent, by implication at least,
Christ as being himself the Paschal Lamb, not
as partaking of it.
If the fourth gospel were really the work of
the Apostle John, it would seem impossible to
avoid the inference that the institution of “the
Sacrament ” of bread and wine as recorded by
the other Evangelists is entirely unhistorical,
and then all the stupendous ecclesiastical
corollaries flowing from it fall to the ground.
It is impossible that John could have forgotten
such commands or assertions as are supposed to
be involved in the words, “Take eat; this is
my body,” &c.—It is equally impossible that, if
they were ever spoken, and signified what
Christians in general believe to be their signifi
cance, the disciple who leaned on the bosom of
Jesus while they were uttered could have so
under-valued their meaning as to have omitted
to record them. The dilemma, then, seems to
�96
FIDELITY OF THE GOSPEL HISTORY—GOSPEL OF JOHN
Though we have seen ample reason their own countrymen. They would
to conclude that nearly all the discourses have said, the People, or, the Pharisees.
of Jesus in the fourth gospel are mainly The same observation applies to xiii. 33,
the composition of the evangelist from and also probably to xviii. 36.
memory or tradition, rather than the
Ch. xvii. 3. “ And this is life eternal,
genuine utterances of ' our great Teacher, that they might know Thee the only true
it may be satisfactory, as further con God, and Jesus Christ whom Thou hast
firmation, to select a few single passages sent.” This would be a natural expres
and expressions, as to the unauthentic sion for the evangelist, but scarcely for
character of which there can be no ques his Master.
tion. Thus at ch. iii. n, Jesus is repre
As before observed, great doubt hangs
sented as saying to Nicodemus, in the over the whole story of the testimony
midst of his discourse about regenera borne by the Baptist to Jesus at his
tion, “We speak that we do know, and baptism. In the fourth evangelist, this
testify that which we have seen; and ye testimony is represented as most em
receive not our witness,”—expressions phatic, public, and repeated—so that it
wholly unmeaning and out of place in could have left no doubt in the minds
the mouth of Jesus on an occasion of any of his followers, either as to the
where he is testifying nothing at all, but grandeur of the mission of Jesus, or as
merely propounding a mystical dogma to to his own subordinate character and
an auditor dull of comprehension—but position (i. 29-36; iii. 26-36). Yet
expressions which are the evangelist’s we find, from Acts xviii. 25, and again
habitual form of asseveration and com xix. 3, circles of John the Baptist’s dis
plaint.
ciples, who appear never even to have
It is not clear whether the writer heard of Jesus—a statement which we
intended verses 16-21 to form part of think is justly held irreconcilable with
the discourse of Jesus, or merely a com the statements above referred to in the
mentary of his own. If the former, fourth gospel.
they are clearly unwarrantable; their
The question of miracles will be con
point of view is that of a period when sidered in a future chapter, and several
the teaching of Christ had been known of those related in this Gospel—
and rejected, and they could not have significantly seven in number, and in cul
been uttered with any justice or appro minating order—have special character
priateness at the very commencement of istics of their own; but there is one
his ministry.
miracle, peculiar to John, of so singular
Ch. xi. 8. “ His disciples say unto and apocryphal a character as to call
him, Master, the Jews of late sought to for notice here. The turning of water
stone thee: and goest thou thither into wine at the marriage feast in Cana
again ? ” The Jews is an expression of Galilee has long formed the oppro
which would be natural to Ephesians or brium and perplexity of theologians, and
other foreigners when speaking of the must continue to do so as long as they
inhabitants of Palestine, but could not persist in regarding it as an accurate
have been used by Jews speaking of historical relation. None of the number
less attempts to give anything like a
be inescapable :—Either John did not write the
fourth Gospel—in which case we have the direct probable explanation of the narrative
testimony of no eye-witness to the facts and
has been attended with the least success.
sayings of Christ’s ministry ;—-Or the Sacrament
They are for the most part melancholy
of the Lord’s supper, as deduced from the
Synoptical accounts, with the special doctrines specimens of ingenuity misapplied, and
of Sacramental grace to partakers of it, and of plain honesty perverted by an originally
the Atonement (as far as it is warranted or
false assumption. No portion of the
originally was suggested by those words of
Christ), becomes “the baseless fabric of a gospel history, scarcely any portion of
Old Testament, or even of apocryphal,
vision.”
�RESULTS OF THE FOREGOING CRITICISM
narratives, bears such unmistakable
marks of fiction. It is a story which,
if found in any other volume, would at
once have been dismissed as a clumsy
and manifest invention. In the first
place, it is a miracle wrought to supply
more wine to men who had already
drunk much—a deed which has no suit
ability to the character of Jesus, and no
analogy to any other of his miracles.
Secondly, though it was, as we are told,
the first of his miracles, his mother is
represented as expecting him to work a
miracle, and to commence his public
career with so unfit and improbable a
one. Thirdly, Jesus is said to have
spoken harshly1 to his mother, asking
her what they had in common, and tell
ing her that “ his hour (for working
miracles) was not yet come,” when he
97
knew that it was come. Fourthly, in
spite of this rebuff, Mary is represented
as still expecting a miracle, and this
particular one, and as making preparation
for it: “ She saith to the servants, What
soever he saith unto you, do it ”; and
accordingly Jesus immediately began to
give orders to them. Fifthly, the superior
quality of the wine, and the enormous
quantity produced (135 gallons, or in
our language, above 43 dozen *) are
obviously fabulous. And those who are
familiar with the apocryphal gospels will
have no difficulty in recognising the close
consanguinity between the whole narra
tive and the stories of miracles with
which they abound. It is perfectly
hopeless, as well as mischievous, to
endeavour to retain it as a portion of
authentic history.
Chapter X
RESULTS OF THE FOREGOING CRITICISM
The conclusion at which we have arrived
in the foregoing chapters is of vital mo
ment, and deserves to be fully developed.
When duly wrought out, it will be found
the means of extricating Religion from
Orthodoxy—of rescuing Christianity from
Calvinism. We have seen that the Gos
pels, while they give a fair and faithful
outline of Christ’s character and teaching
(the Synoptical gospels at least) fill up that
outline with much that is not authentic ;
that many of the statements therein re
lated are not historical, but mystical or
legendary ; and that portions at least of
the language ascribed to Jesus were
never uttered by him, but originated
either with the Evangelists themselves, or
more frequently in the traditional stores
from which they drew their materials.
1 All attempts at explanation have failed to
remove this character from the expression—
•yvvai ri
Kai trol.
We cannot, indeed, say in all cases, nor
even in most cases, with certainty—
in many we cannot even pronounce
with any very strong probability—that
such and such particular expressions
or discourses are, or are not, the genuine
utterances of Christ. With respect to
some, we can say with confidence that
they are not from him; with respect to
others, we can say with almost equal
confidence that they are his actual words;
but with regard to the majority of pas
sages this certainty is not attainable.
But as we know that much did not pro
ceed from Jesus —that much is unhistorical and ungenuine—we are entitled
1 See the calculation in Hennell, and in
Strauss, ii. 432. The
is supposed to
correspond to the Hebrew bath, which was equal
to i| Roman amphora, or 87 gallons; the
whole quantity would therefore be from 104 to
156 gallons.
H
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RESULTS OF THE FOREGOING CRITICISM
to conclude—we are even forced, by the
very instinct of our reasoning faculty, to
conclude that the unhistorical and ungenuine passages are those in which
Jesus is represented as speaking and
acting in a manner uncomformable to
his character as otherwise delineated,
irreconcilable with the tenour of his
teaching as elsewhere described, and
at variance with those grand moral
and spiritual truths which have com
manded the assent of all disciplined and
comprehensive minds, and which could
scarcely have escaped an intellect so just,
wide,- penetrating, and profound as that
of our great Teacher.
Most reflecting minds rise from a
perusal of the gospel history with a clear,
broad, vivid conception of the character
and mission of Christ, notwithstanding
the many passages at which they have
stumbled, and which they have felt—
perhaps with needless alarm and selfreproach—to be incongruous and unhar
monising with the great whole. The
question naturally arises, Did these in
congruities and inconsistencies really
exist in Christ himself? or, are they the
result of the imperfect and unhistorical
condition in which his biography has
been transmitted to us ? The answer, it
seems to us, ought to be this -We can
not prove, it is true, that some of these
unsuitabilities did not exist in Christ
himself, but we have shown that many
of them belong to the history, not to the
subject of the history, and it is only fair,
therefore, in the absence of contrary evi
dence, to conclude that the others also
are due to the same origin.
Now the peculiar, startling, perplexing,
revolting, and contradictory doctrines of
modern orthodoxy—so far as they have
originated from or are justified by the
gospels at all—have originated from, or
are justified by, not the general tenour
of Christ’s character and preaching, but
those single unharmonising, discrepant,
texts of which we have been speaking.
Doctrines, which unsophisticated men
feel to be inadmissible and repellent
and which those who hold them most
devotedly secretly admit to be fearful
and perplexing, are founded on particular
passages which contradict the generality
of Christ’s teaching, but which, being
attributed to him by the evangelists,
have been regarded as endowed with
an authority which it would be profane
and dangerous to resist. In showing,
therefore, that several of these passages
did not emanate from Christ, and that
in all probability none of them did, we
conceive that we shall have rendered a
vast service to the cause of true religion,
and to those numerous individuals in
whose tortured minds sense and con
science have long struggled for the
mastery. We will elucidate this matter
by a few specifications.1
One of the most untenable, unphilosophical, uncharitable doctrines of the
orthodox creed—one most peculiarly
stamped with the impress of the bad
passions of humanity—is, that belief
(by which is generally signified belief
in Jesus as the Son of God, the promised
Messiah, a Teacher sent down from
Heaven on a special mission to redeem
mankind) is essential, and the one thing
essential, to Salvation. The source of
this doctrine must doubtless be sought
for in that intolerance of opposition un
happily so common among men, and in
that tendency to ascribe bad motives to
those who arrive at different conclusions
from themselves, which prevails so gene
rally among unchastened minds. But
it cannot be denied that the gospels
contain many texts which clearly affirm
or fully imply a doctrine so untenable and
harsh. Let us turn to a few of these
and inquire into the degree of authenti
city to which they are probably entitled.
The most specific assertion of the
1 It is true that many of the doctrines in
question had not a scriptural origin at all, but
an ecclesiastical one; and, when originated,
were defended by texts from the epistles, rather
than the gospels. The authority of the epistles
we shall consider in a subsequent chapter, but
if in the meantime we can show that those
doctrines have no foundation in the language of
Christ, the chief obstacle to the renunciation of
them is removed.
�RESULTS OF THE FOREGOING CRITICISM
tenet in question, couched in that posi
tive, terse, sententious damnatory lan
guage so dear to orthodox divines, is
found in the spurious portion of the
gospel of Mark (c. xvi. 16),1 and is
there by the writer, whoever he was,
unscrupulously put into the mouth of
Jesus after his resurrection.
In the
synoptical gospels may be found a few
texts which may be wrested to support
the doctrine, but there are none which
teach it. But when we come to the
fourth gospel we find several passages
similar to that in Mark,2 proclaiming
Salvation to believers, but all in the
peculiar style and spirit of the author
of the first Epistle ofJohn, which abounds
in denunciations precisely similar 3 (but
directed, it is remarkable, apparently
against heretics, not against infidels,
against those who believe amiss, not
against those who do not believe at all)—
all, too, redolent of the temper of that
Apostle who wished to call down fire
from heaven on an unbelieving vil
lage, and who was rebuked by Jesus for
the savage and presumptuous suggestion.
In the last chapter we have shown
that the style of these passages is of a
nature to point to John, and not to
Jesus, as their author, and that the spirit
of them is entirely hostile and incom
patible with the language of Jesus in
other parts more obviously faithful. It
appears, therefore, that the passages
confirmatory of the doctrine in question
are found exclusively in a portion of the
synoptists which is certainly spurious,
and in portions of the fourth gospel
which are almost certainly unhistorical;
and that they are contradicted by other
passages in all the gospels. It only
remains to show that as the doctrine is
at variance with the spirit of the mild
1 “ He that believeth and is baptized shall be
saved ; but he that believeth not shall be
damned,” a passage which, were it not happily
spurious, would suffice to “damn” the book
which contains it.
2 John iii. 16, 18, 36; v. 24 ; vi. 29, 40, 47 ;
xi. 25, 26; xx. 31.
3 1 John ii. 19, 22, 23 ; iv. 2, 3, 6, 15 ; v, I,
5, IO, 12, 13.
99
and benevolent Jesus, so it is too
obviously unsound not to have been
recognised as such by one whose clear
and grand intelligence was informed and
enlightened by so pure a heart.
In the first place, Christ must have
known that the same doctrine will be
presented in a very different manner,
and with very different degrees of
evidence for its truth, by different
preachers; so much so that to resist
the arguments of one preacher would
imply either dulness of comprehension
or obstinate and wilful blindness, while
to yield to the arguments of his colleague
would imply weakness of understanding
or instability of purpose. The same
doctrine may be presented and defended
by one preacher so clearly, rationally,
and forcibly that all sensible men
(idiosyncrasies apart) must accept it,
and by another preacher so feebly, cor
ruptly, and confusedly, that all sensible
men must reject it. The rejection of
the Christianity preached by Luther,
and of the Christianity preached by
Tetzel, of the Christianity preached by
Loyola and Dunstan, and of the Christ
ianity preached by Oberlin and Pascal,
cannot be worthy of the same con
demnation.
Few Protestants, and no
Catholics, will deny that Christianity
has been so presented to men as to make
it a simple affair both of sense and virtue
to reject it. To represent, therefore, the
reception of a doctrine as a . matter of
merit, or its rejection as a matter of
blame, without reference to the considera
tion how and by whom it is preached, is
to leave out the main element of judg
ment—an error which could not have
been committed by the just and wise
Jesus.
Further. The doctrine and the pas
sages in question ascribe to “belief”
the highest degree of merit, and the
sublimest conceivable reward—“eternal
life”; and to “disbelief,” the deepest
wickedness, and the most fearful penalty,
“damnation,” and “the wrath of God.”
Now, here we have a logical error,
betraying a confusion of intellect which
�IOO
RESULTS OF THE FOREGOING CRITICISM
we may well scruple to ascribe to Jesus.
Belief is an effect produced by a cause.
It is a condition of the mind induced
by the operation of evidence presented.
Being, therefore, an. effect, and not an
act, it cannot be, or have, a merit. The
moment it becomes a distinctly voluntary
act (and therefore a thing of which merit
can be predicated} it ceases to be genuine
—it is then brought about (if it be not
an abuse of language to name this state
“belief”) by the will of the individual,
not by the bond fide operation of evidence
upon his mind—which brings us to the
reductio ad absurdum, that belief can
only become meritorious by ceasing to
be honest.
In sane and competent minds, if the
evidence presented is sufficient, belief
will follow as a necessary consequence—
if it does not follow, this can only arise
from the evidence adduced being in
sufficient—and in such case to pretend
belief, or to attempt belief, would be a
forfeiture of mental integrity; and can
not therefore be meritorious, but the
reverse.
To disbelieve, in spite of
adequate proof is impossible—to believe
without adequate proof is weak or
dishonest. Belief, therefore, can only
become meritorious by becoming sinful
—can only become a fit subject for
reward by becoming a fit subject for
punishment. Such is the sophism in
volved in the dogma which theologians
have dared to put into Christ’s mouth,
and to announce on his authority.
But, it will be urged, the disbelief
which Christ blamed and menaced with
punishment was (as appears from John
iii. 19) the disbelief implied in a wilful
rejection of his claims, or a refusal to
examine them—a love of darkness in
preference to light. If so, the language
employed is incorrect and deceptive,
and the blame is predicated of an effect
instead of a cause—it is meant of a
voluntary action, but it is predicated of
a specified and denounced consequence
wffiich is no natural or logical indication
of that voluntary action, but may arise
from independent causes. The moralist
who should denounce gout as a sin,
meaning the sinfulness to apply to the
excesses of which gout is often, but by
no means always, a consequence and an
indication, would be held to be a very
confused teacher and inaccurate logician.
Moreover, this is not the sense attached
to the doctrine by orthodox divines in
common parlance. And the fact still
remains that Christ is represented as
rewarding by eternal felicity a state of
mind which, if honestly attained, is in
evitable, involuntary, and therefore in
no way a fitting subject for reward, and
which, if not honestly attained, is hollow,
fallacious, and deserving of punishment
rather than of recompense.
We are aware that the orthodox seek
to escape from the dilemma, by asserting
that belief results from the state of the
heart, and that if this be right belief will
inevitably follow. This is simply false
in fact, How many excellent, virtuous,
and humble minds, in all ages, have been
anxious but unable to believe—have
prayed earnestly for belief, and suffered
bitterly for disbelief—in vain !
The dogma of the Divinity, or, as it
is called in the technical language of
polemics, the proper Deity, of Christ,
though historically provable to have
had an ecclesiastical, not an evangelical,
origin 1—though clearly negatived by the
whole tenour of the synoptical gospels,
and even by some passages in the fourth
gospel [and though it is difficult to read
the narrative of his career with an un
forestalled mind without being clear that
Jesus had no notion of such a belief
himself, and would have repudiated it
with horror]—can yet appeal to several
isolated portions and texts, as suggesting
and confirming, if not asserting it. On
close examination, however, it will be
seen that all these passages are to be
found either in the fourth gospel—which
we have already shown reason to con
clude is throughout an unscrupulous and
1 “ The Unscriptural Origin and Ecclesiastical
History of the Doctrine of the Trinity,” by the
Rev. J. Hamilton Thom.
�RESULTS OF THE FOREGOING CRITICISM
IOI
of which we have already shown to be
of very questionable genuineness,-—and
the voice from heaven said to have been
and from independent trains of argu heard at the baptism and the transfigura
ment, have been selected as at least of tion, saying, “ This is my beloved Son/*
But, besides that, as shown in
questionable authenticity.
It is true &c.
that the doctrine in question is now chapter vi., considerable doubt rests on
chiefly defended by reference to the the accuracy of the first of these relations :
Epistles; but at the same time it would the testimony borne by the heavenly
scarcely be held so tenaciously by voice to Jesus can in no sense mean that
the orthodox if it were found to be he was physically the Son of God, or a
wholly destitute of evangelical support. partaker of the divine nature, inasmuch
Now, the passages which appear most as the very same expression was fre
confirmatory of Christ’s Deity, or Divine quently applied to others, and as indeed
Nature, are, in the first place, the narra a “Son of God” was, in the common
tives of the Incarnation, or the miracu parlance of the Jews, simply a prophet,
lous Conception, as given by Matthew a man whom God had sent, or to whom
and Luke.
We have already entered he had spoken.1
But when we come to the fourth gospel,
pretty fully into the consideration of the
authenticity of these portions of Scrip especially to those portions of it whose
ture, and have seen that we may almost peculiar style betrays that they came
with certainty pronounce them to be from John, and not from Jesus, the case
fabulous, or mythical. The two narra is very different. We find here many
tives do not harmonise with each other ; passages evidently intended to convey
they neutralise and negative the gene the impression that Jesus was endowed
alogies on which depended so large a with a superhuman nature, but nearly all
portion of the proof of Jesus being the expressed in language savouring less of
Messiah ;1—the marvellous statement Christian simplicity than of Alexandrian
they contain is not referred to in any philosophy. The Evangelist commences
subsequent portion of the two gospels, his gospel with a confused statement of
».nd is tacitly but positively negatived by the Platonic doctrine as modified in
several passages—it is never mentioned Alexandria, and that the Logos was a
in the Acts or in the Epistles, and was evi partaker of the Divine Nature, and was
dently unknown to all the Apostles—and, the Creator of the world ; on which he
finally, the tone of the narrative, espe proceeds to engraft his own notion, that
cially in Luke, is poetical and legendary, Jesus was this Logos—that the Logos or
and bears a marked similarity to the stories the divine wisdom, the second person in
Plato’s Trinity, became flesh in the per
contained in the apocryphal gospels.
The only other expressions in the son of the Prophet of Nazareth. Now, can
first three gospels which lend the slightest anyone read the epistles, or the first three
countenance to the doctrine in ques gospels—or even the whole of the fourth
tion are the acknowledgments of the dis —and not at once repudiate the notion
ciples, the centurion, and the demoniacs that Jesus was, and knew himself to be,
that Jesus was the Son of God,2—some the Creator of the World ?—which J ohn
most inexact paraphrase of Christ’s teach
ing—or in those portions of the first
three gospels which, on other accounts
1 The Messiah must, according to Jewish
prophecy, be a lineal descendant of David : this
Christ was, according to the genealogies ; this
he was not, if the miraculous conception be a
fact. If, therefore, Jesus came into being as
Matthew and Luke affirm, we do not see how
he could have been the Messiah.
2 An expression here merely signifying a
prophet or the Messiah.
1 “The Lord hath said unto me [David],
Thou art my son; this day have I begotten
thee.”—(Ps. ii. 7.) Jehovah says of Solomon,
“ I will be his father, and he shall be my son.”
—(2 Sam. vii. 14.) The same expression is
applied to Israel (Exod. iv. 22, Hos. xi. 1), and
to David (Ps. lxxxix. 27). “I have said, Ye
are gods, and all of you are children of the
Most High.”—(Ps. lxxxii. 6.)
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RESULTS OF THE FOREGOING CRITICISM
affirms him to have been. Throughout
this gospel we find constant repetitions
of the same endeavour to make out a
superhuman nature for Christ; but the
ungenuineness of these passages has
already been fully considered.
. Take, again, the doctrine of the Eter
nity of future punishments—the most
impossible of the tenets included in the
popular creed. It rests upon and is
affirmed by one single Gospel text, Matt,
xxv. 46 ;—for, though “hell fire,” “ ever
lasting fire ”—i.e., the fire that was kept
perpetually burning in the adjacent valley
of Gehenna for the consumption of the
city refuse—is often spoken of as typify
ing the fate of the wicked, yet the ex
pression distinctly implies, not everlast
ing life in fire, but the precise opposite,—
namely, death, annihilation, total destruc
tion, in a fire ever at hand and never
extinguished. The doctrine is not only
in diametric antagonism to all that we
can conceive or accept of the attributes
of the God of Jesus, but to the whole
spirit and teaching of our great Master.
It is at variance with other texts and
with the general view 1 gathered from
authentic Scripture, which teaches the
“perishing,” the “death ” of the wicked,
not their everlasting life in torment. And
finally, the isolated text in question
occurs in one only of the gospels,—and
occurs there (as will be seen by compar
ing Matt. xxv. 31 with xxiv. 30) in im
mediate connection with the prophecy as
to the coming of the end of the world
within the lifetime of the then existing
generation,—a prophecy the erroneous
ness of which is now demonstrated, and
which there is (to say the least) no need
for believing ever to have come out of
the mouth of Christ. What are called
the “eschatological” discourses are
notoriously among the passages in the
gospels of most questionable genuineness.
1 See countless arguments from the pens, not
of unbelievers, but of qualified divines—among
later ones, “ Harmony of Scripture on Future
Punishments,” by the Rev. S. Minton, and a
paper by ‘ ‘ Anglicanus ” in the Contemporary
Review for May, 1872.
Yet it is on the authority of a single
verse, so suspiciously located, so re
peatedly contradicted elsewhere either
distinctly or by implication, and so
flagrantly out of harmony with the spirit
both of Theism and of Christianity,
that we are summoned to accept a dogma
revolting alike to our purer instincts and
our saner reason !
Once more : the doctrine of the Atone
ment, of Christ’s death having been a
sacrifice in expiation of the sins of man
kind, is the keystone of the common
form of modern orthodoxy. It takes its
origin from the epistles, and we believe
can only appeal to three texts in the
Evangelists for even partial confirmation.
In Matt. xx. 28 it is said : “The Son of
man came, not to be ministered unto,
but to minister, and to give his life a
ransom for many,”—an expression which
may countenance the doctrine, but as
suredly does not contain it. Again, in
Matt. xxvi. 28 we find: “ This is my
blood of the New Testament, which is
shed for many for the remission of sins.”
Mark (xiv. 24) and Luke (xxi. io), how
ever, who gave the same sentence, both
omit the significant expression; while
John omits, not only the expression, but
the entire narrative of the institution of
the Eucharist, which is said elsewhere to
have been the occasion of it. In the
fourth gospel, John the Baptist is repre
sented as saying of Jesus (i. 29), “Be
hold the Lamb of God, which taketh
away the sin of the world,” an expression
which may possibly be intended to convey
the doctrine, but which occurs in what we
have already shown to be about the most
apocryphal portion of the whole gospel.
In fine, then, we arrive at this irresist
ible conclusion ; that—knowing several
passages in the Evangelists to be unauthentic, and having reason to suspect
the authenticity of many others, and
scarcely being able with absolute cer
tainty to point to any which are perfectly
and indubitably authentic—the proba
bility in favour of the fidelity of any of
�RESURRECTION OF JESUS
the texts relied on to prove the peculiar
and perplexing doctrines of modern
orthodoxy, is far inferior to the proba
bility against the truth of those doctrines.
A doctrine perplexing to our reason and
painful to our feelings may be from God ;
but in this case the proof of its being
from God must be proportionally clear
and irrefragable ; the assertion of it in a
narrative which does not scruple to
attribute to God’s messenger words which
he never uttered, is not only no proof,
but scarcely even amounts to a presump
tion. There is no text in the Evangelists,
the divine (or Christian) origin of which
is sufficiently unquestionable to enable it
to serve as the foundation of doctrines
repugnant to natural feeling or to common
Sense.
But, it will be objected, if these con
clusions are sound, absolute uncertainty
is thrown over the whole gospel history,
and all over Christ’s teaching. To this
we reply, in limine, in the language of
Algernon Sydney, “ No consequence can
destroy any truth ”; the sole matter for
consideration is, Are our arguments
correct? not, Do they lead to a result
which is embarrassing and unwelcome ?
But the inference is excessive; the
premises do not reach so far. The
uncertainty thrown is not over the main
103
points of Christ’s history, which, after all
its retrenchments, still stands out an
intelligible though a skeleton account—not over the grand features, the pervading
tone, of his doctrines or his character,
which still present to us a clear, con
sistent, and splendid delineation; but
over those individual statements, pas
sages, and discourses which mar this
delineation, which break its unity, which
destroy its consistency, which cloud its
clearness, which tarnish its beauty. The
gain to us seems immense. It is true,
we have no longer absolute certainty with
regard to any one especial text or scene :
such is neither necessary nor attainable;
it is true that, instead of passively accept
ing the whole heterogeneous and indigest
ible mass, we must, by the careful and con
scientious exercise of those faculties with
which we are endowed, by ratiocination
and moral tact, separate what Christ did
from what he did not teach, as best we
may. But the task will be difficult to
those only who look in the gospels for a
minute, dogmatic, and sententious creed
—not to those who seek only to learn
Christ’s spirit, that they may imbibe it,
and to comprehend his views of virtue
and of God, that they may draw strength
and consolation from those fountains of
living water.1
Chapter XI
RESURRECTION OF JESUS
We are now arrived at the most vitally
important, and the most intensely interest
ing, portion of the Christian records—
the Resurrection of Jesus. This is the
great fact to which the affections of
Christians turn with the most cherished
eagerness, the grand foundation on
which their hopes depend, on which
their faith is fixed. If, in consequence
of our inquiries, the ordinary doctrine of
Scriptural Inspiration be relinquished,
we have reason to rejoice that Religion is
relieved from a burden often too great
for it to bear. If the complete verbal
accuracy of the Gospel narratives is dis1 “The character of the record is such that I
see not how any great stress can be laid on particu
lar actions attributed to Jesus. That he lived a
divine life, suffered a violent death, taught and
lived a most beautiful religion—this seems the
great fact about which a mass of truth and error
has been collected.”—Theodore Parker, “ Dis
course,” p. 188.
�104
resurrection OF JESUS
proved, orthodoxy and not Christianity
is a sufferer by the change, since it is only
the more minute and embarrassing tenets
of our creed that find their foundation
swept away. If investigation shows the
miracles of the Bible to be untenable, or
at least unobligatory upon our belief,
theologians are comforted by feeling that
they have one weak and vulnerable out
post the less to defend. But if the
resurrection of our Lord should prove,
on closer scrutiny, to rest on no adequate
evidence, and mental integrity should
compel us to expunge it from our creed,
the generality of Christians will feel that
the whole basis of their faith and hope is
gone, and their Christianity will vanish
with the foundation on which, perhaps
half-unconsciously, theyrested it. Whether
this ought to be so is a point for
future consideration. All that we have
now to do is to remember that truth
must be investigated without any side
glance to the consequences which that
investigation may have upon our hopes.
Our faith is sure to fail us in the hour of
trial if we have based it on consciously
or suspectedly fallacious grounds, and
maintained it by wilfully closing our eyes
to the flaws in its foundations.
The belief in the resurrection of our
Lord, when based upon reflection at all,
and not a mere mental habit, will be
found to rest on two grounds : Jirst, the
direct testimony of the Scripture narra
tives ; and secondly, the evidence deriv
able from the subsequent conduct of the
Apostles.
I. The narratives of the resurrection
contained in the four Gospels present
many remarkable discrepancies.
But
discrepancies in the accounts of an event
given by different narrators, whether
themselves witnesses, or merely his
torians, by no means necessarily impugn
the reality of the event narrated, but
simply those accessories of the event to
which the discrepancies relate. Thus,
when one Evangelist tells us that the two
malefactors, who were crucified along with
Jesus, reviled him, and another Evange- |
list relates that only one of them reviled
him, and was rebuked by the other for
so doing, though the contradiction is
direct and positive, no one feels that the
least doubt is thereby thrown upon the
fact of two malefactors having been
crucified with Jesus, nor of some reviling
having passed on the occasion. There
fore the variations in the narratives of
the resurrection given by the four Evan
gelists do not, of themselves, impugn
the fact of the resurrection. Even were
they (which they are not) the first-hand
accounts of eye-witnesses, instead of be
ing merely derived from such, still it is
characteristic of the honest testimony
of eye-witnesses to be discrepant in
collateral minutise. But, on a closer
examination of these accounts, several
peculiarities present themselves for more
detailed consideration.
1. We have already seen reason for
concluding that, of the four Gospels,
three at least were certainly not the
production of eye-witnesses, but were
compilations from oral or documentary
narratives current among the Christian
community at the time of their com
position, and derived doubtless for the
most part from very high authority.
With regard to the fourth Gospel the
opinions of the best critics are so much
divided, that all we can pronounce upon
the subject with any certainty is, that if
it were the production of the Apostle
John, it was written at a time when,
either from defect of memory, redun
dancy of imagination, or laxity in his
notions of an historian’s duty, he allowed
himself to take strange liberties with
fact.1 All, therefore, that the Gospels
now present to us is the narrative of the
Resurrection, not as it actually occurred,
but in the form it had assumed among
the disciples thirty years or more after
the death of Jesus.
Now, the discrepancies which we
notice in the various accounts are not
greater than might have been expected
in historians recording an event, or
rather traditions of an event, which oc1 See chap. ix.
�RESURRECTION OF JESUS
curred from thirty to sixty years before
they wrote. These records, therefore,
discrepant as they are, are, we think,
quite sufficient to prove that something of
the kind occurred, i.e., that some occur
rence took place which gave rise to the
belief and traditions;—-but no more.
The agreement of the several accounts
shows that something of the kind oc
curred :—their discrepancies show that
this occurrence was not exactly such as
it is related to have been.
Something of the kind occurred which
formed the groundwork for the belief
and the narrative. What, then, was this
something—this basis—this nucleus of
fact? The Gospel of Mark appears to
contain this nucleus, and this alone.1
It contains nothing but what all the
other accounts contain, and nothing that
is not simple, credible, and natural, but
it contains enough to have formed a
foundation for the whole subsequent
superstructure. Mark informs us that
when the women went early to the
Sepulchre, they found it open, the body
of Jesus gone, and someone in white
garments who assured them that he was
risen. This all the four narratives agree
in :—and they agree in nothing else. The
disappearance of the body, then, was cer
tain;—the information that Jesus was
risen came from the women alone, who
believed it because they were told it, and
who were also the first to affirm that they
had seen their Lord. In the excited
state of mind in which all the disciples
must have been at this time, were not
these three unquestioned circumstances
—that the body was gone ;—that a figure
dressed in white told the women that
their Lord was risen;—and that the
same women saw someone whom they be
lieved to be him;—amply sufficient to
make a belief in his resurrection spread
with the force and rapidity of a con
tagion ?
1 We must bear in mind that the genuine
Gospel of Mark ends with the 8th verse of
chapter xvi. ; and that there is good reason to
believe that Mark’s Gospel was, if not the
original one, at least the earliest.
105
2. It is clear that to prove such- a
miracle as the reappearance in life of a
man who had been publicly slain, the
direct and concurrent testimony of eye
witnesses would be necessary ;—that two
or more should state that they saw him
at such a time and place, and knew him ;
—and that this clear testimony should
be recorded and handed down to us in
an authentic document. This degree
of evidence we might have had :—this
we have not. We have epistles from
Peter, James, John, and Jude—all of
whom are said by the Evangelists to have
seen Jesus after he rose from the dead,
in none of which epistles is the fact of
the resurrection even stated, much less
that Jesus was seen by the writer after
his resurrection. This point deserves
weighty consideration. We have ample
evidence that the belief in Christ’s re
surrection 1 was very early and very
general among the disciples, but we
have not the direct testimony of any
one of the twelve, nor any eye-witness
at all, that they saw him on earth after
his death. Many writers say,
was
seen ” ;—no one says, “Z saw him alive
in the flesh.”
There are three apparent exceptions
to this, which, however, when examined,
will prove rather confirmatory of our
statement than otherwise. If the last
chapter of the fourth Gospel were written
by the Apostle John, it would contain
the direct testimony of an eye-witness to
the appearance of Jesus upon earth after
his crucifixion. But its genuineness has
long been a matter of question among
learned men,2 and few can read it
critically and retain the belief that it is
a real relic of the beloved Apostle, or
even that it originally formed part of
the Gospel to which it is appended. In
1 The belief in a general resurrection was, we
know, prevalent among the Jews in general, and
the disciples of Christ especially ; and it appears
from several passages that the opinion was that
the resurrection would be immediate upon death
(Luke xx. 38 ; xxiii. 43). In this case the
belief that Christ was risen would follow im
mediately on the knowledge of his death.
2 See Hug, 484.
�io6
RESURRECTION OE JESUS
the first place, the closing verse of the
preceding chapter unmistakably indicates
the termination of a history. Then,
the general tone of the twenty-first
chapter—its particularity as to the dis
tance of the bark from shore, and the
exact number of fishes taken—the fire
ready made when the disciples came to
land—the contradiction between the
fourth verse and the seventh and twelfth,
as to the recognition of Jesus—all par
take strongly of the legendary character,
as does likewise the conversation between
Jesus and Peter. Again, the miraculous
draught of fishes which is here placed
after the resurrection of Christ, is by
Luke related as happening at the very
commencement of his ministry. And
finally, the last two verses, it is clear,
cannot be from the pen of John, and
we have no grounds for supposing them
to be less genuine than the rest of the
chapter. On a review of the whole
question we entertain no doubt that the
whole chapter was an addition of later
date, perhaps by some elder of the
Ephesian Church.
In the first Epistle of Peter (iii. 21,
22), the resurrection and existence in
heaven of Jesus are distinctly affirmed ;
but when we remember that the Jews
at that time believed in a future life,
and apparently in an immediate trans
ference of the spirit from this world to
the next, and that this belief had been
especially enforced on the • disciples of
Jesus (Matt. xvii. 1-4; xxii. 32. Luke
xvi. 23-31 ; xxiii. 43), this will appear
very different from an assertion that
Jesus had actually risen to an earthly
life, and that Peter had seen him.
Indeed, the peculiar expression that is
made use of at ver. 18, in affirming the
doctrine (“being slain in flesh, but made
alive again in spirit ”) indicates, in the
true meaning of the original, not a fleshly,
but a spiritual revivification.
There remains the statement of Paul
(1 Cor. xv; 8), “And last of all, he was
seen of me also.” This assertion, taken
with the context, negatives rather than
affirms the reappearance of Christ upon
the earth to the bodily eye of his dis
ciples. The whole statement is a some
what rambling one, and not altogether
consistent with the Gospel narratives ;
but the chief point to be attended to
here is that Paul places the appearance
of Jesus to the other disciples on the
same footing as his appearance to him
self. Now, we know that his appearance
to Paul was in a vision—a vision visible
to Paul alone of all the bystanders, and,
therefore, subjective or mental merely.
Moreover, strictly speaking, there was
no vision at all;—no one was seen;
there was a bright light, and a voice was
heard. In this all the accounts agree.
In a subsequent verse, indeed (xxii. 18)
Paul says that, when “ in a trance in the
Temple at Jerusalem,” he “saw, him (the
Lord) saying to him,” &c. But .this
expression, again, seems to imply hear
ing, not sight. The conclusion to be
drawn from the language of Paul would,
therefore, be that the appearance of
Jesus to the other disciples was visionary
likewise. Our original statement, there
fore, remains unqualified :—We might
have had, and should have expected to
have, the direct assertion of four Apos
tles, that they had seen Jesus on earth
and in the flesh after his death :—we
have not this assertion from any one of
them.
3. The statements which have come
down to us as to when, where, by whom,
and'how often Jesus was seen after his
death, present such serious and irre
concilable variations as to prove beyond
question that they are not the original
statements of eye-witnesses, but merely
the form which the original statements
had assumed, after much transmission,
thirty or forty years after the event to
which they relate. Let us examine them
more particularly. It will be seen that
they agree in everything that is natural
and probable, and disagree in everything
that is supernatural and difficult of
credence. All the accounts agree that
the women, on their matutinal visit to
the sepulchre, found the body gone, and
saw some one in white raiment who
�RESURRECTION OF JESUS
spoke to them.
else.
They agree in nothing
(1.) They differ as to the number of
the women. John mentions only one,
Mary Magdalene; Matthew two, Mary
Magdalene and the other Mary;—Mark
three, the two Marys and Salome;—
Luke several, the two Marys, Joanna,
and “ certain others with them.”
(2.) They differ as to the number of
persons in white raiment who appeared
to the women. Mark speaks of one
“ young man ; ”—Matthew of one
“ angel; ”—Luke of two “ men ; ”—
John of two “angels.”—According to
John, also, the appearance of the two
angels was not till Mary’s second visit
to the tomb, after Peter and John had
been there.
(3.) They differ as to the words
spoken by the apparitions. According
to Matthew and Mark they asserted the
resurrection of Jesus, and his departure
into Galilee, and sent a message to his
disciples enjoining them to follow him
thither. According to Luke they simply
stated that he was risen, and referred to
a, former prediction of his to this effect.
According to John they only asked Mary,
“Woman ! why weepest thou?”
(4.) They differ in another point.
According to Matthew, Luke, and John,
the women carried the information as to
what they had seen at once to the
disciples. According to Mark “they
said nothing to any man.”
(5.) They differ as to the parties to
whom Jesus appeared.—According to
Mark it was to no one. According to
Matthew it was first to the two women,
then to the eleven. According to John
it was first to one woman then twice to
the assembled Apostles. According to
Luke it was first to no woman, but to
Oeopas and his companion, then to
Peter,1 and then to the assembled eleven.
(6.) They differ as to the locality.
1 This appearance to Peter is also mentioned
by Paul (1 Cor. xv. 7), from whom probably
Luke received it. We have nowhere else any
trace of it.
107
According to Mark it was nowhere.
According to Matthew it was first at
Jerusalem and then at Galilee, whither
the disciples went in obedience to the
angelic command. According to Luke
it was in Jerusalem and its vicinity, and
there alone, where the disciples remained
in obedience to the reiterated command
of Jesus himself.1 According to the
genuine part of John, also, the appear
ances were confined to Jerusalem.
The account of Paul differs slightly
from all the others; it must have been
second-hand; and is valuable'only as
showing the accounts which were current
in the Christian Church at the time at
which he wrote, and how much these
varied from the evangelic documents,
which were, in fact, a selection out of
these current accounts. The epistle of
Paul was written, probably, about the
year a.d. 57; the first three Gospels
between the years a.d. 60 and 70. The
appearance to James, which Paul
mentions, was taken from the Gospel to
the Hebrews, now lost.2
Now, we put it to any candid man
whether the discrepancies in these
accounts are not of a nature, and to an
extent, entirely to disqualify them from
being received as evidence of anything,
except the currency and credit of such
stories among Christians thirty years
after the death of Christ ?
4. A marked and most significant
peculiarity in these accounts, which has
not received the attention it deserves, is,
1 Luke xxiv. 49, 53 ; Acts i. 4. Luke and
Matthew thus contradict each other past all
possibility of reconciliation. Matthew tells us
that Jesus commanded them to go into Galilee,
and that they went thither
Luke tells us that
he positively commanded them “not to depart
from Jerusalem,” and that they remained there
(xxiv. 53). But Luke contradicts himself quite
as flatly on another point. In the Gospel he
represents the ascension as taking place on the
evening of the third day after the crucifixion :
such is the clear meaning of the text (as may be
seen from verses 21, 33, 36, 50):—in the Acts
he places the ascension forty days after the
resurrection, and says that Jesus was seen by his
disciples during the whole interval.
2 The passage, however, is preserved by
Jerome (See Hennell, p< 227).
�108
RESURRECTION OF JESUS
that scarcely any of those who are said
to have seen Jesus after his resurrection
recognised him, though long and in
timately acquainted with his person.
According to Matthew (xxviii. 17), when
Jesus appeared to the eleven in Galilee
by his own appointment, some, even of
them, “ doubted ”; which could not
have been the case had his identity been
clearly recognisable.
According to
Luke, the two disciples, with whom he
held a long conversation, and who passed
many hours in his company, did not
recognise him. “ Their eyes were holden,
that they should not know him ”x And
even after the disciples had been in
formed, both of this reappearance and
of that to Peter (xxiv. 34-37), yet when
Jesus appeared to them, they were
affrighted, and supposed that they saw a
spirit. According to John, even Mary
Magdalene, after Jesus had spoken to
her, and she had turned to look at
him, still did not recognise him, but
supposed him to be the gardener. In
the spurious part of John (xxi. 4-6)
the same want of recognition is observ
able. In the spurious part of Mark we
see traces of a belief that Jesus assumed
various forms after his resurrection, to
account, doubtless, for the non-recog
nition of some and the disbelief of
others (xvi. 11, 12, 13) : “After that he
appeared in another form unto two of
them.” Now, if it really were Jesus
who appeared to these various parties,
would this want of recognition have been
possible? If it were Jesus, he was so
changed that his most intimate friends
1 Here another interesting point comes in for
consideration. The conversation between Jesus
and his two companions turned upon the
Messianic prophecies, which the disciples held to
have been disappointed by the death of Jesus,
but which Jesus assured them related to and
were fulfilled in him. Now, if the conclusion
at which we arrived in a previous chapter (iii.)
be correct, viz., that the Old Testament pro
phecies contain no real reference to a suffering
Messiah, or to Jesus at all, it follows that at
least half the story of Cleopas must be fabulous,
unless, indeed, we adopt the supposition that
Jesus held the same erroneous views respecting
these prophecies as his disciples.
did not know him. How then can we
know that it was himself?
We will not attempt to construct, as
several have endeavoured to do, out of
these conflicting traditions, a narrative
of the real original occurrence which
gave rise to them, and of the process by
which they attained the form and con
sistency at which they have arrived in
the evangelical documents. Three dif
ferent suppositions may be adopted, each
of which has found favour in the eyes of
some writers. We may either imagine
that Jesus was not really and entirely
dead when taken down from the cross,
a supposition which Paulus and others
show to be far from destitute of pro
bability :1 or we may imagine that the
apparition of Jesus to his disciples be
longs to that class of appearances of
departed spirits for which so much
staggering and bewildering evidence is
on record;2 or, lastly, we may believe
that the minds of the disciples, excited
by the disappearance of the body, and
the announcement by the women of his
resurrection, mistook some passing in
dividual for their crucified Lord, and
that from such an origin multiplied
rumours of his reappearance arose and
spread. We do not, ourselves, defini
tively adopt any of these hypotheses:
we wish simply to call attention to the
circumstance that we have no clear, con
sistent, credible account of the resurrec
tion ; that the only elements of the
narrative which are retained and remain
uniform in all its forms—viz., the dis
appearance of the body, and the appear
ance of someone in white at the tomb,
are simple and probable, and in no way
necessitate, or clearly point to, the sur
mise of a bodily resurrection at all.
Christ may have risen from the dead and
appeared to his disciples; but it is cer
tain that if he did, the Gospels do not
contain a correct account of such resurrec
tion and reappearance.
II. The conduct of the Apostles sub
sequent to the death of Jesus—the
1 Strauss, iii. 288.
2 See Bush’s Anastasis, 156.
�RESURRECTION OF JESUS
marked change in their character from
timidity to boldness, and in their feel
ings from deep depression and dismay
to satisfaction and triumph—as depicted
in the Acts, affords far stronger evidence
in favour of the bodily resurrection of
their Lord, than any of the narratives
which have recorded the event.
It
seems to us certain that the Apostles
believed in the resurrection of Jesus with
absolute conviction. Nothing short of
such a belief could have sustained them
through what they had to endure, or
given them enthusiasm for what they
had to do; the question, therefore,
which remains for our decision is,
whether the Apostles could have be
lieved it, had it not been fact; whether
their reception of the doctrine of a
general resurrection, or rather of a future
life,1 coupled with the disappearance of
the body of Jesus from the sepulchre in
which he had been laid, and the report
of the women regarding the statement
of the angelic vision, be sufficient . to
account for so vivid and actuating a faith,
without the supposition of his actual
appearance to themselves; whether, in
fact, the Apostles, excited by the report
that he was risen, could have believed
that they had seen him if they had not
really done so. This question will be
differently answered by different minds ;
nor do we know that any argument will
weigh more on either side than the simple
statement of the problem to be resolved.1
2
1 The current belief in those days appears to
have been not in an immediate liberation of the
soul to a spiritual existence but in an ultimate
resurrection of all at the great day of account.
John xi. 24; Luke xx. 33 ; Mark xii. 23.
2 It is certain that we, in these days,, could
not believe in the resurrection of an individual
to an earthly life unless we had ascertained his
death, and ourselves seen him afterwards alive.
But we cannot justly apply this reasoning to the
early followers of Christ; they were not men
of critical, inquiring, or doubting minds, nor
accustomed to sift or scrutinise testimony, but,
on the contrary, inured to marvels, and trained
to regard the supernatural as almost an ordinary
part of the natural, given moreover to see
visions, and unhesitatingly to accept them as
divine communications.
109
Certainly, the bold faith of the Apostles,
if sufficient, is the only sufficient evid
ence for the occurrence; the narra
tive testimony would be inadequate to
prove a far more credible event. All
we can say is this, that a belief in the
resurrection and bodily reappearance of
Jesus early prevailed.and rapidly obtained
currency in the Christian community;
that the Apostles shared the belief in the
resurrection, and did not discourage that
in the bodily reappearance; that, how
ever, none of them (the fourth Gospel
not having been written by John) has
left us his own testimony to having him
self seen Jesus alive after his death ; and
that some of the disciples doubted, and
others long after disbelieved the fact.1
In order to mitigate our pain at finding
that the fact of Christ’s resurrection has
been handed down to us on such in
adequate testimony as to render it at
best a doubtful inference, it is desirable
to inquire whether, in reality, it has the
doctrinal value which it has been the
habit of theologians to attribute to it.
We have been taught to regard it not
only as the chief and crowning proof of
the divinity of our Saviour’s mission,
but as the type, earnest, and assurance
of our own translation to a life beyond
the grave. It is very questionable, how
ever, whether either of these views of it
is fully justified by reason.
There can be no doubt that the fact
of an individual having been miracu
lously restored to life is a signal proof
of divine interposition in his behalf.
Such restoration may be viewed in three
lights—either as a reward for a life of
extraordinary virtue, or as an intimation
that his mission upon earth had been
prematurely cut short, and that his re1 See I Cor. xv. 12. The whole argument of
Paul respecting the resurrection is remarkable—
it is simply this, there must be a resurrection from
the dead because Christ “ is preached” to have
risen; and that if there were no resurrection,
then Christ could not be risen. It would seem as
if he considered the truth of the -resurrection
of Christ to depend upon the correctness of the
doctrine of the general resurrection (verse 13).
�no
RESURRECTION OF JESUS
animation was necessary for its fulfil
ment, or as an announcement to the
world that he was in a peculiar manner
the object of. divine regard and the
subject of divine influence. The first
point of view is evidently irrational, and
the offspring of unregenerate and uncul
tivated thought. It is prompted either
by the inconsiderate instincts of the
natural man, or by disbelief in a future
life. It implies either that there is no
future world, or that this world is
preferable to it, since no man, believing
in another and a better state of exist
ence, would regard it as an appropriate
reward for distinguished excellence to
be reduced to this. The second point
of view is, if possible, still more un
reasonable, since it assumes that G'od
had permitted such an interference with
and defeat of his plans, that he was
obliged, to interpose for their renewal.
The third aspect in which such a fact
is to be regarded alone remains, and is
in effect the one in which it is commonly
viewed throughout Christendom, viz., as
a public announcement from the Most
High, “This is my beloved Son, hear
ye him.” But this point of view is
attended with many difficulties.
In the first place, if the Gospel narra
tives are to be taken as our standing
ground (and they are as valid for the
one case as for the other), the restora
tion of the dead to life did not neces
sarily imply any such peculiar favour, or
contain any such high announcement.
The evangelists record three instances
of such miraculous resuscitation, in none
of which have we any reason for believ
ing the subject of the miracle to be
peculiarly an object of divine love or
approbation, in all of which the miracle
was simply one of mercy to mourning
friends. The resuscitated parties were
all obscure individuals, and only one
of them appears to have been a follower
of Christ. Secondly, this point of view
was not the one taken by the Apostles.
To them the value of Christ’s resurrec
tion consisted in its enabling them still
to retain, or rather to resume, that belief
in the Messiahship of Jesus which his
death had shaken. If restored to life,
he might yet be, and probably was, that
Great Deliverer whom, as Jews, they
watched and waited and prayed for; if
he were dead, then that cherished notion
was struck dead with him. How, if we
are right in the conclusion at which we
arrived in an earlier chapter, viz., that
Jesus had nothing in common with that
liberating and triumphant conqueror
predicted by the Jewish prophets and
expected by the Jewish nation: it
follows that the especial effect which
the resurrection of Christ produced
upon the minds of his disciples was
to confirm them in an error. This, to
them, was its dogmatic value, the ground
on which they hailed the announcement
and cherished the belief.
Thirdly, it
will admit of question whether, in the
eye of pure reason, the resurrection of
Christ, considered as an attestation to
the celestial origin of his religion, be
not superfluous —whether it be not
human weakness, rather than human
reason, which needs external miracle
as sanction and buttress of a system
which may well rely upon its own innate
strength, whether the internal does not
surpass and supersede the external testi
mony to its character, whether the divine
truths which Christ taught should not be
to us the all-sufficient attestation of his
divine mission. We have seen in the
preceding chapter that miraculous power
in any individual is no guarantee for the
correctness of his teaching. We have
seen that if the doctrines which Jesus
taught approve themselves to the en
lightened understanding and the uncor
rupted heart, they are equally binding
on our allegiance whether he wrought
miracles in the course of his career or
not. And if the truth that God is a
loving father, and the precept, “Thou
shalt love thy neighbour as thyself,”
derive no corroboration from the resur
rection of Lazarus or the Youth of Nain,
neither can they from that of Christ
himself. Doubtless we should sit with
more prostrate submission and a deeper
�RESURRECTION OF JESUS
reverence at the feet of a teacher who
came to us from the grave, but it is
probably only the infirmity of our faith
and reason which would cause us to
do so.1 Rationally considered, Christ’s
resurrection cannot prove doctrines true
that would else be false, nor certain
that would else be doubtful. There
fore, considered as a reward, it is con
tradictory and absurd; considered as the
renewal of an interrupted mission, it
involves an unworthy and monstrous
Conception of God’s providence; con
sidered as an attestation to the Messiahghip of Jesus, it is an attestation to an
error ; considered as a sanction and
corroboration of his doctrines, it is, or
Ought to be, superfluous.
Is the other view which we have been
accustomed to take of Christ’s resur
rection—viz., as the type, pledge, and
foretelling of our own,—more consonant
to sound reason ? We believe the reverse
will prove nearer to the truth. That it
was regarded in this view by the Apostles
is here no argument for us. For they
looked for the coming of their Lord and
the end of the world, if not in their own
lifetime, at least in that of the existing
generation,—when they who were alive
would be caught up into the clouds, and
those who were dead would come forth
out of their graves, and join together the
glorious company of the redeemed. They
looked for a bodily resurrection for them
selves—which on their supposition of the
date might appear possible—a resurrec
tion, therefore, of which that of Jesus
was a prototype—a pattern—a cognate
occurrence. But in our position the case
is not only altered, but reversed. Christ’s
resurrection was believed, and is affirmed
to have been, a réanimation of the body
which he wore in life; it could, there
fore, be an earnest of the resurrection of
those only whose bodies still remained
to be reanimated ; it was an exceptional
case ; it refers not to us ; it conveys no
1 Jesus seems to intimate as much when he
says, “If they hear not Moses and the Prophets,
neither will they be persuaded though one rose
from the dead.”
in
hope to us ;—we are not of those whose
resurrection it could typify or asstire ; for
our bodies, like those of the countless
generations who have lived and passed
away since Christ trod our earth, will
have crumbled info dust, and passed
into other combinations, and become in
turn the bodies of myriads of other
animated beings before the great ex
pected day of the resurrection of the
just. To us a bodily resurrection is
impossible. If, therefore, Christ’s resur
rection were spiritual—independent of
his buried body—it might be a type and
foreshadowing of our own ;—if, on the
other hand, as the evangelists relate, it
was corporeal—if his body left the grave
undecayed, and appeared on earth, and
ascended into glory,—then its value as a
pledge belonged to the men of that time
alone,—we have neither part nor lot in its
signification;—it is rather an extinguisher
than a confirmation of our hopes.
It will be seen that we make no scruple
in negativing a doctrine held verbally by
the Church, viz., “ the resurrection of the
body ” ; since, whatever was intended by
the authors of this phrase1—the mean
ing of which is by no means clear to us,
and was probably no clearer to them
selves,—thus much is certain, that our
“resurrection of the body” can bear no
similarity to Christ’s resurrection of the
body ;—for his body remained only a
few hours in the grave, and, we are
expressly told, “ did not see corruption,”
and ours, we know, remains there for
untold years, and moulders away into
the original elements of its marvellous
chemistry.
We conclude, then, as before :—that
as we cannot hope to rise, as Christ is
said to have done, with our own present
uncorrupted body, his resurrection, if
it were a réanimation of his earthly
frame, can be no argument, proof, pledge,
1 “We can,” says Pearson, “no otherwise
expound this article teaching the resurrection of
the body, than by asserting that the same bodies
which have lived and died shall live again ; that
the same flesh which is corrupted shall be
restored. ”—Pearson on the Creed, art. xi.
�112
/S CHRISTIANITY A REVEALED RELIGION?
pattern, or foreshadowing of our own. If,
on the contrary, his resurrection were
spiritual, and his appearances to his
disciples mental and apparitionary only,
they would, pro tanto, countenance the
idea of a future state. Our interest,
therefore, as waiters and hopers for an
immortality, would appear to lie in
^believing the letter of the Scripture
narratives,
Chapter XII
IS CHRISTIANITY A REVEALED RELIGION?
Having now arrived at this point of our
inquiry, let us pause and cast a summary
glance on the ground over which we
have travelled, and the conclusions at
which we have arrived. We have found
that the popular doctrine of Scriptural
Inspiration rests on no foundation what
ever, but is a gratuitous as well as an
untenable assumption. We have seen
that neither the books of Moses nor the
laws of Moses, as we have them, were (at
least as a whole) the production of the
great Leader and Lawgiver whose name
they bear. We have seen ample reason
for concluding that a belief in One only
supreme God was not the primary
religion either of the Hebrew nation or
the Hebrew priests ; but that their
Theism—originally limited and impure—
was gradually elevated and purified into
perfect and exclusive monotheism by
the influence of their Poets and Sages
and the progressive advance of the people
in intelligence and civilisation. We have
discovered that their Prophets were
Poets and Statesmen, not Predictors—
and that none of their writings contain a
single prediction which was originally
designed by them, or can be honestly
interpreted by us, to foretell the appear
ance and career of Jesus of Nazareth.
What have been commonly regarded as
such are happy and applicable quotations :
but no more. We have seen further that
none of the four histories of Christ which
have come down to us are completely
genuine and faithful ; -that while they are
ample and adequate for showing us what
Christ was. and what was the essence and
spirit of his teaching, we yet do not possess
sufficient certainty that they record, in
any special instance, the precise words
or actions of Christ, to warrant us in
building upon those words or actions
doctrines revolting to our uncorrupted
instincts and our cultivated sense. We
have found, moreover, that the Apostles
—zealous and devout men as they were
—were yet most imperfect and fallible
expounders of the mind of their departed
Lord. We have seen that miracles—
even where the record of them is ade
quate and above suspicion, if any such
case there be—are no sufficient guarantee
of the truth of the doctrines preached by
the worker of those wonders. And finally
we have been compelled to conclude that
not only is the resurrection of our Lord,
as narrated in the Gospels, encumbered
with too many difficulties and contra
dictions to be received as unquestion
able, but that it is far from having the
dogmatic value usually attached to it, as
a pledge and foreshowing of our own.
But however imperfect may be the re
cords we possess of Christ’s ministry, this
imperfection does not affect the nature or
authority of his mission. Another great
question, therefore, here opens before
us:—“Was Christ a divinely-commis
sioned Teacher of Truth ? ” In other
words, “ Is Christianity to be regarded as
a Religion revealed by God to man
through Christ ? ”
What is the meaning which, in ordi
nary theological parlance, we attach to
�ZS CHRISTIANITY A REVEALED RELIGION?
the words, “ Divine Revelation ? ” What
do we intend to signify when we say
that “ God spoke ” to this Prophet or
to that saint ?
We are all of us conscious of thoughts
which come to us—which are not, pro
perly speaking, our own—which we do
not create, do not elaborate ;—flashes of
light, glimpses of truth, or of what seems
to us such, brighter and sublimer than
commonly dwell in our minds, which we
are not conscious of having wrought out
by any process of inquiry or meditation.
These are frequent and brilliant in pro
portion to the intellectual gifts and
spiritual elevation of the individual :
they may well be termed inspirations—
revelations; but it is not such as these
that we mean when we speak of the
Revelation by Christ.
Those who look upon God as a Moral
Governor, as well as an original Creator,
—a God at hand, not a God. afar off in
the distance of infinite space, and in the
remoteness of past or future eternity,—
who conceive of him as taking a watch
ful and .presiding interest in the affairs of
the world, and as influencing the hearts
and actions of men,—believe that through
the workings of the Spirit He has spoken
to many, has whispered His will to
them, has breathed great and true thoughts
into their minds, has “wrought mightily”
within them, has in their secret communings and the deep visions of the
night caused His Spirit to move over
the troubled waters of their souls, and
educed light and order from the mental
chaos. These are the views of many
religious minds ; but these are not what
We mean when we speak of the Revela
tion made by God to Christ.
Those, again, who look upon God as
the great artificer of the world of life and
matter, and upon man, with his wonder
ful corporeal and mental frame, as His
direct work, conceive the same idea in a
somewhat modified and more material
form. They believe that He has made
men with different intellectual capa
cities ; and has endowed some with
brains so much larger and fiper
113
than those of ordinary men as to
enable them to see and originate truths
which are hidden from the mass; and
that when it is His will that Mankind
should make some great step forward,
should achieve some pregnant discovery,
He calls into being some cerebral organi
sation of more than ordinary magnitude
and power, as that of David, Isaiah,
Plato, Shakespeare, Bacon, Newton,
Luther, Pascal, which gives birth to new
ideas and grander conceptions of the
truths vital to humanity. But we mean
something essentially distinct from this
when we speak of Christ as the Teacher of
a Religion revealed to him by his Father.
When a Christian affirms Christianity
to be a “ revealed religion,” he intends
simply and without artifice to declare his
belief that the doctrines and precepts
which Christ taught were not the produc
tion of his own (human) mind, either in
its ordinary operations or in its flights
of sublimest contemplation; but were
directly and supernaturally communicated
to him from on high.1 He means this,
or he means nothing that is definable
and distinctive. What grounds have
we, then, for adopting such an opinion ?
It is evident that, if the conclusions
to which our previous investigations have
led us be correct, our only arguments
for believing Christianity to be a divine
revelation in contradistinction to a human
conception must be drawn from the
steperhumanity of its nature and contents.
What human intellect could ascertain it
would be superfluous for God to reveal.
The belief of Christ himself, that his
teaching “was not his, but his Father’s,”
—even if we were certain that he used
these precise words, and intended them
to convey precisely the meaning we
attach to them,—could not suffice us, for
the reasons assigned in the first chapter
of this work. The belief in communi
cations with the Deity has in all ages
1 Those who believe that Christ was God—
if any such really exist—-must, of course, hold
everything he taught was, ipso facto, a divine
revelation. With such all argument and inquiry
is necessarily superseded.
�114
ZS CHRISTIANITY A REVEALED RELIGION?
been common to the most exalted and dowments, in the common acceptation
poetical order of religious minds. The fact of the word. The Old Testament con
that Christ held a conviction which he tained his teaching ; it was reserved for
shared with the great and good of other him to elicit, publish, and enforce it. A
times can be no argument for ascribing thoughtful perusal of Job, the Psalms,
to him divine communications distinct Ecclesiastes, and Isaiah will show beyond
from those granted to the great and good question the germs of those views which
of other times. It remains, therefore, in the purer and sublimer genius of
a simple question for our consideration, Christ rose to so high an elevation.1
whether the doctrines and precepts The doctrine of a future world, though
taught by Jesus are so new, so profound, not enforced, perhaps probably not
so perfect, so distinctive, so above and found, in the Old Testament, was, we
beyond parallel, that they could not have know, currently believed among the Jews
emanated naturally from a clear, simple, before the time of Jesus, and must have
unsoiled, unwarped, powerful, meditative been familiar to him from his infancy.
mind,—living four hundred years after We have no hesitation in concluding
Socrates and Plato—brought up among that a pure and powerful mind, filled
the pure Essenes, nourished on the with warm affections and devotional
wisdom of Solomon, the piety of David,
feelings, and studying the Hebrew
the poetry of Isaiah—elevated by the Scriptures discriminatively, appropriating
knowledge and illuminated by the love and assimilating what was good and
of the one true God.
noble, and rejecting what was mean
Now on this subject we hope our con and low, could and might naturally
fession of faith will be acceptable to all arrive at the conclusion which Jesus
save the narrowly orthodox. It is diffi reached, as to the duties of men, the
cult, without exhausting superlatives, attributes of God, and the relation of
even to unexpressive and wearisome man to God. Christianity is distin
satiety, to do justice to our intense love, guished from Judaism rather by what
reverence, and admiration for the char it excluded than by what it added. It
acter and teaching of Jesus. We regard is an eclecticism and an expansion of
him not as the perfection of the intel the best elements of its predecessor. It
lectual or philosophic mind, but as the selects the grand and beautiful, the
perfection of the spiritual character,— tender, the true, and ignores or sup
as surpassing all men of all times in the presses the exclusive, the narrow, the
closeness and depth of his communion corrupt, the coarse, and the vindictive.
with the Father. In reading his sayings, It is Moses, David, Solomon, Isaiah
we feel that we are holding converse purified, sublimated and developed. If
with the wisest, purest, noblest Being this be so, then the supposition that
that ever clothed thought in the poor Christianity was supernaturally commu
language of humanity. In studying his nicated falls to the ground as needless
life we feel that we are following the and therefore inadmissible. What man
footsteps of the highest ideal yet pre could discover naturally God would not
sented to us upon earth. “ Blessed be communicate supernaturally.
God that so much manliness has been
But we may go further. Not only is
lived out, and stands there yet, a lasting there no. necessity for supposing that
monument to mark how high the tides of Christ’s views as to God and duty were
divine life haverisenin the world of man!”
1 A quotation of‘texts is scarcely the right
But these convictions—strong, deep- mode of proving this. See Hennell for an ex
seated, and well-grounded as they are— position of how much of Christianity was already
do not bring us to the conclusion that extant in Jewish teaching; also Mackay’s
“Progress of
Intellect,”
[Em.
either the rare moral or mental supe Deutch’s paper the the Talmud, ii. 376. Review,
on
Quart.
riorities of Jesus were supernatural en No- 246, and Renan, “Vie de Jesus,” ch. v.J.
�IS CHRISTIANITY A REVEALED RELIGION?
supernaturally revealed to him, but there
is almost a necessity for adopting an
opposite conclusion. If they were the
elaboration of his own mind we may
well imagine that they may contain some
admixture of error and imperfection. If
they were revealed to him by God this
Could not be the case. If, therefore, we
find that Jesus was in error in any point
either of his practical or his speculative
teaching, our conclusion, hitherto a pro
bability, becomes a certainty. It is evi
dent that we could treat of this point
with far more satisfaction if we were in a
position to pronounce with perfect pre
cision what Christ did, and what he did
not, teach. But as we have seen that
many words are put into his mouth
which he never uttered, we cannot ascer
tain this as undoubtedly as is desirable.
There must still remain some degree of
doubt as to whether the errors and im
perfections which we detect originated
with or were shared by Christ, or whether
they were wholly attributable to his
followers and historians.
There are, however, some matters on
which thegeneralconcurrence of theevangelical histories and their undesigned
and incidental intimations lead us to
conclude that Jesus did share the mis
takes which prevailed among his dis
ciples, though, in going even so far as
this, we speak with great diffidence. He
appears to have held erroneous views
respecting demoniacal possession, the
interpretation of Scripture,1 his own
Messiahship, his second coming, and
the approaching end of the world. At
least, if he held the views ascribed to
him (and the preponderance of evidence
is in favour of the assumption that he
1 Perhaps the most singular instance of this
#iisinterpretation of Scripture is in the sophisti
cal argument ascribed to Christ, concerning the
supposed address of David to the Messiah.
The Lord said unto my Lord,” &c. (Matth.
xxii. 41, and parallel passage). It appears clear
that this Psalm was not composed by David,
but was addressed to David by Nathan, or some
Court Prophet, on the occasion of some of his
signal victories.—-See “ Hebrew Monarchy,”
p. 92. David did not call the Messiah “ Lord ” ;
It was the Poet that called David “ Lord.”
IIS
did), we know that on these topics he
was mistaken. Now if he was so in
error his teaching could not have been
an infallible revelation from the God of
truth, in the sense in which Christendom
employs that phrase.
But we now come upon another ques
tion, which, if answered in the negative,
at once closes the inquiry to which this
chapter is devoted. “ Is the revelation
of an undiscoverable truth possible ? ”
That is, “ Can any doctrine be taught
by God to man—be supernaturally in
fused, that is, into his mind, which he
might not by the employment of his own
faculties have discerned or elicited ? ” In
other words, “ Can the human mind
receive an idea which it could not origi
nate ? ” We think it plain that it cannot ;
though the subject is one which may be
better illuminated by reflection than by
discussion. At least it is difficult to con
ceive the nature and formation of that
intellect which can comprehend and
grasp a truth when presented to it, and
perceive that it is a truth, and which yet
could not, in the course of time and
under favourable conditions, work out
that truth by the ordinary operation of
its own powers. It appears to us that,
by the very nature of the statement, the
faculties necessary for the one mental
process must be competent to the other.1
If an idea (and a truth is only an idea,
or a combination of ideas, which ap
proves itself to us) can find entrance
into the mind and take up its abode
there, does not this very fact show a
fitness for the residence of that idea 1—a
fitness, therefore, which would have
ensured admittance to the idea if sug
gested in any of those mental processes
which we call thought, or by any of those
1 It may be objected that external facts may
be revealed which could not be discovered. We
may be assured by revelation that the inhabitants
of Saturn have wings or have no heads, but then,
we do not recognise the truth of the assurance,
We may be assured by revelation of the exist
ence of a future world; but could we receive
the assurance unless our minds were already so
prepared for it, or so constituted, that it would
naturally have occurred to them ?
�ii6
/S CHRISTIANITY A REVEALED RELIGION?
combinations of occurrences which we call
accident—a fitness, therefore, which, as
the course of time and the occurrence of
a thousand such possible suggesting ac
cidents must almost necessarily have
ensured the presentation of the idea,
would also have ensured its reception ?
If, on the other hand, the idea, from its
strangeness, its immensity, its want of
harmony with the nature and existing
furniture of the mind, could never have
presented itself naturally, would not the
same strangeness, the same vastness, the
same incompatibility of essence inca
pacitate the mind from receiving it if
presented supernaturally ?
Further, we are at a loss to imagine
how a man can distinguish between an
idea revealed to him and an idea con
ceived by him. In what manner and by
what sure token can it be made clear to
him that a thought came to him from
without, not arose within; he may per
ceive that it is resplendently bright, un
questionably new; he may be quite
unconscious of any process of ratio
cination or meditation J>y which it can
have been originated; but this is no
more than may be said of half the ideas
of profound and contemplative genius.
Shall we say that it was breathed into
him “in a dream, in a vision of the
night, when deep sleep falleth upon
man ” ; and that, therefore, he assumes
that it is not his, but God’s? Yet what
is this but to declare that God chooses
for his communications with the mind of
man the period of its most unquestion
able imperfection, when the phantasy
is ascendant and the judgment is torpid
and in abeyance ? Shall we say that
the thought was spoken to him aloud,
in the ordinary language of humanity,
and that, therefore, he knows it to have
been a divine communication, not a
human conception ! But what singular
logic is this ! Is the voice of God, then,
only, or then most, recognisable when it
borrows the language of man ? Is that
unprecise and feeble instrument of
thought and utterance, invented by man’s
faulty faculties, God’s best and surest
mode of communication with the spirit he
has created? Nay, is not imperfect lan
guage an impossible m edium for the convey
ance of absolute and infinite truth ? And
do we really mean that we feel certain it
is God’s voice which we hear from the
clouds, and doubtful that it is his which
speaks to us silently, and in the deep and
sacred musings of the Soul ? We cannot
intend to maintain this monstrous thesis.
Our reflections, then, bring us to this
conclusion :—that the only certain proof
we can have of a revelation must lie in
the truths it teaches being such as are
inaccessible to, and therefore incom
prehensible by, the mind of man; that
if they are such as he can conceive and
grasp and accept, they are such as he
might have discovered, and he has no
means of knowing that he has not dis
covered them ; if they are such as he
could not have discovered, they are such
as he cannot receive, such as he could
not recognise or ascertain to be truth.
Since, then, we can find no adequate
reason for believing Jesus to be the Son
of God, nor his doctrines to be a direct
and special revelation to him from the
Most High—using these phrases in their
ordinary signification—in what light do
we regard Christ and Christianity ?
We do not believe that Christianity
contains anything which a genius like
Christ’s, brought up and nourished as
his had been, might not have disen
tangled for itself. We hold that God
has so arranged matters in this beautiful
and well-ordered, but mysteriouslygoverned universe, that one great mind
after another will arise from time to time,
as such are needed, to discover and
flash forth before the eyes of men the
truths that are wanted, and the amount
of truth that can be borne. We con
ceive that this is effected by endowing
them, or (for we pretend to no scholastic
nicety of expression) by having arranged
that Nature and the course of events
shall send them into the world endowed
with that superior mental and moral
organisation, in which grand truths, sub
�AS CHRISTIANITY A REVEALED RELIGION?
lime gleams of spiritual light, will spon
taneously and inevitably arise. Such a
one we believe was Jesus of Nazareth,
the most exalted religious genius whom
God ever sent upon the earth ; in him
self an embodied revelation; humanity
in its divinest phase, “ God manifest in
the flesh,” according to Eastern hyper
bole ; an exemplar vouchsafed, in an
early age of the World, of what man
may and should become, in the course
of ages, in his progress towards the
realisation of his destiny ; an individual
gifted with a grand clear intellect, a
noble soul, a fine organisation, marvel
lous moral intuitions, and a perfectly
balanced moral being; and who, by virtue
of these endowments, saw further than
all other men—
“ Beyond the verge of that blue sky
Where God’s sublimest secrets lie ” ;
an earnest, not only of what humanity
may be, but of what it will be, when the
most perfected races shall bear the same
relation to the finest minds of existing
times, as these now bear to the Bushmen
or the Esquimaux. He was, as Parker
beautifully expresses it, “ the possibility
of the race made real.” He was a
sublime poet, prophet, moralist, and
hero ; and had the usual fate of such—
misrepresented by his enemies,—mis
construed by his friends ; unhappy in this,
that his nearest intimates and followers
were not of a calibre to understand him ;
happy in this, that his words contained
such undying seeds of truth as could
survive even the media through which
they passed. Like the wheat found in
the Egyptian Catacombs, they retain the
power of germinating undiminished,
whenever their appropriate soil is found.
They have been preserved essentially
almost pure, notwithstanding the Judaic
narrowness of Peter, the orthodox
passions of John, the metaphysical
subtleties of Paul. Everything seems to
us to confirm the conclusion that we have
in the Christianity of Scripture, not a code
of law, still less a system of dogma, but a
mass of beautiful, simple, sublime, pro
found, not perfect truths, obscured by
ii7
having come down to us through the inter
vention of minds far inferior to that of its
Author—narrowed by their uncultivation
—marred by their misapprehensions—
and tarnished by their foreign admixtures.
It is a collection of grand truths, trans
mitted to us by men who only half
comprehended their grandeur, and
imperfectly grasped their truth.
In grasping after a certainty, which can
be but a shadow, ordinary Christianity
has lost the substance—it has sacrificed
in practical more than it has gained in
dogmatic value. In making Christ the
miraculous Son of God, it has destroyed
Jesus as a human exemplar. If he were
in a peculiar manner “the only begotten
of the Father,” a partaker in his essential
nature, then he is immeasurably removed
from us; we may revere, we cannot
imitate him. We listen to his precepts
with submission, perhaps even greater
than before. We dwell upon the excel
lence of his character, no longer for
imitation, but for worship. We read
with the deepest love and admiration of
his genius, his gentleness, his mercy, his
unwearying activity in doing good, his
patience with the stupid, his compassion
for the afflicted, his courage in facing
torture, his meekness in enduring wrong;
and then we turn away and say, “ Ah !
he was a God; such virtue was not for
humanity, nor for us.” It is useless by
honeyed words to disguise the truth. If
Christ were a man, he is our pattern;
“the possibility of our race made real.”
If he were God-—a partaker of God’s
nature, as the orthodox maintain—then
they are guilty of a cruel mockery in
speaking of him as a type and model of
human excellence. How can one en
dowed with the perfections of a God be
an example to beings encumbered with
the weaknesses of humanity? Adieu, then,
to Jesus as anything but a Propounder
of doctrines, an Utterer of precepts !
The vital portion of Christianity is swept
away. His Character—that from which
so many in all ages have drawn their
moral life and strength—that which so
irresistibly enlists our deepest sympathies,
�n8
ZS CHRISTIANITY A REVEALED RELIGION ?
and rouses our highest aspirations—it
becomes an irreverence to speak of. The
character, the conduct, the virtues of a
God!—these are felt to be indecent
expressions. Verily, orthodoxy has slain
the life of Christianity. In the pre
sumptuous endeavour to exalt Jesus, it
has shut him up in the Holy of Holies,
and hid him from the gaze of humanity.
It has displaced him from an object of
imitation into an object of worship. It
has made his life barren, that his essence
might be called divine.
“But,” it will be objected, “what, on
this system, becomes of the religion of
the poor and ignorant, the uneducated
and the busy ? If Christianity is not a
divine revelation, and therefore entirely
and infallibly true—if the Gospels are
not perfectly faithful and accurate ex
positors of Christ’s teaching and of God’s
will,—what a fearful loss to those who
have neither the leisure, the learning, nor
the logical habits of thought requisite to
construct out of the relics that remain to
them and the nature that lies before
them a faith for themselves ! ”
To this objection we reply that the
more religion can be shown to consist
in the realisation of great moral and
spiritual truths, rather than in the recep
tion of distinct dogmas, the more the
position of these classes is altered for the
better. In no respect is it altered for
the worse. Their creeds, i.e., their collec
tion of dogmas, those who do not or
cannot think for themselves must always
take on the authority of others. They
do so now : they have always done so.
They have hitherto believed certain doc
trines because wise and good men assure
them that these doctrines were revealed
by Christ, and that Christ was a Teacher
sent from God. They will in future
believe them because wise and good
men assure them of their truth, and their
own hearts confirm the assurance. The
only difference lies in this,—that, in the
one case, the authority on which they
lean vouches for the truth; in the other,
for the Teacher who proclaimed it.
Moreover, the Bible still remains;
though no longer as an inspired and
infallible record. Though not the word
of God, it contains the words of the
wisest, the most excellent, the most
devout men, who have ever held com
munion with him.
The poor, the
ignorant, the busy, need not, do not,
will not, read it critically. To each of
them it will still, through all time, pre
sent the Gospels and the Psalms,—the
glorious purity of Jesus, the sublime
piety of David and of Job. Those who
read it for its spirit, not for its dogmas—
as the poor, the ignorant the busy, if
unperverted, will do—will still find in it
all that is necessary for their guidance in
life, their support in death, their consola
tion in sorrow, their rule of duty, and
their trust in God.
A more genuine and important
objection to the consequences of our
views is felt by indolent minds on their
own account. They shrink from the toil
of working out truth for themselves, out
of the materials which Providence has
placed before them. They long for the
precious metal, but loathe the rude ore
out of which it has to be extricated by
the laborious alchemy of thought. A
ready-made creed is the Paradise of their
lazy dreams. A string of authoritative dog
matic propositions comprises the whole
mental wealth which they desire. The
volume of nature, the volume of history,
the volume of life, appal and terrify them.
Such men are the materials out of whom
good Catholics—of all sects—are made.
They form the uninquiring and sub
missive flocks which rejoice the hearts of
all Priests. Let such cling to the faith
of their forefathers—if they can. But
men whose minds are cast in a nobler
mould and are instinct with a diviner
ife, who love truth more than rest, and
the peace of Heaven rather than the
peace of Eden, to whom “a loftier being
brings severer cares,”—
“ Who know Man does not live by joy alone
But by the presence of the power of God,”—
such must cast behind them the hope of
any repose or tranquillity save that which
�CHRISTIAN ECLECTICISM
is the last reward of long agonies of
they must relinquish all
prospect of any Heaven save that of
which tribulation is the avenue and
portal; they must gird up their loins
and trim their lamp for a work which
thought;
. 119
cannot be put by, and which must not be
negligently done. “ He,’’ says Zschokke,
“ who does not like living in
furnished
lodgings of tradition, must build his own
house, his own system of thought and
faith, for himself.”1
Chapter XIII
CHRISTIAN ECLECTICISM
Christianity, then, not being a revela
tion, but a conception—the Gospels not •
being either inspired or accurate, but
fallible and imperfect human records—
the practical conclusion from such
premises must be obvious to all. Every
doctrine and every proposition which
the Scriptures contain, whether or not
we believe it to have come to us un
mutilated and unmarred from the mouth
of Christ, is open, and must be subjected,
to the scrutiny of reason. Some tenets
we shall at once accept as the most
perfect truth that can be received by
the human intellect and heart;—others
we shall reject as contradicting our
instincts and offending our understand
ings ;—others, again, of a more mixed
nature, we must analyse, that so we may
extricate the seed of truth from the husk
of error, and elicit “the divine idea that
lies at the bottom of appearance.”1
• I. I value the Religion of Jesus, not
O being absolute and perfect truth, but
aS containing more truth, purer truth,
higher truth, stronger truth, than has
ever yet been given to man. Much of
his teaching I unhesitatingly receive as,
to the best of my judgment, unimprovable
and unsurpassable—fitted, if obeyed, to
make earth all that a finite and material
scene can be, and man only a little
lower than the angels. The worthlessness
ofceremonial observances, and the necessity
of essential righteousness—“ Not every
one that saith unto me, Lord 1 Lord 1
1 Fichte.
but he that doeth the will of my Father
which is in Heaven ; ” “ By their fruits
ye shall know them; ” “I will have
mercy, and not. sacrifice ; ”—The enforce
ment ofpurity of heart as the security for
purity of life, and of the government of the
thoughts as the originators and fore
runners of action—“ He that looketh on
a woman, to lust after her, hath com
mitted adultery with her already in his
heart; ” “ Out of the heart proceed
murders, adulteries, thefts, false witness,
blasphemies : these are the things which
defile a man ; ” — Universal good-will
towards men—“ Thou shalt love thy
neighbour as thyself;” “whatsoever ye
would that men should do unto you, that
do ye also unto them, for this is the Law
and the Prophets : ”—Forgiveness of
injuries “ Love your enemies; do good
to them that hate you ; pray for them
which despitefully use you and persecute
you —“ If ye love them only that love
you, what reward have ye ? do not even
publicans the same ? ”—The necessity of
selfsacrifice in the cause of duty—“Blessed
are they which are persecuted for
.righteousness’ sake; ” “ If any man will
be my disciple, let him deny himself,
and take up his cross daily, and follow
me ; ” “ If thy right hand offend thee
cut it off and cast it from thee ; ” “ No
man having put his hand to the plough
and looking back, is fit for the kingdom
of God ; ”—Humility—“ Blessed are the
meek, for they shall inherit the earth ; ”
1 Zschokke’s “Autobiography,” p. 29.
whole section is most deeply interesting.
The
�ffio ■
CHRISTIAN ECLECTICISM
“He that humbleth himself shall be
exalted ; ” “ He that is greatest among
you, let him be your servant; ”—Genuine
sincerity: being, not seeming—“ Take
heed that ye do not your alms before
men to be seen of them ; ” “ When
thou prayest enter into thy closet and
shut thy door; ” “ When thou fastest,
anoint thine head, and wash thy face,
that thou appear not unto men to fast; ”
—all these sublime precepts need no
miracle, no voice from the clouds, to
recommend them to our allegiance, or
to assure us of their divinity; they
command obedience by virtue of their
inherent rectitude and beauty, and
vindicate their author as himself the
one towering perpetual miracle of
history.
II. Next in perfection come the views
which Christianity unfolds to us of God
in his relation to man, which were
probably as near the truth as the minds
of men could in that age receive. God
is represented as Our Father in Heaven
—to be whose especial children is the
best reward of the peace-makers—to see
whose face is the highest hope of the
pure in heart—who is ever at hand to
strengthen his true worshippers—to
whom is due our heartiest love, our
humblest
submission—whose
most
acceptable worship is righteous conduct
and a holy heart—in whose constant
presence our life is passed—to whose
merciful disposal we are resigned by
death. It is remarkable that, throughout
the Gospels, with the exception, I
believe, of a single passage,1 nothing is
said as to the nature of the Deity:—his
relation to us is alone insisted on :—all
that is needed for our consolation, our
strength, our guidance, is assured to us :
—the purely speculative is passed over
and ignored.
Thus, in the two great points essential
to our practical life—viz., our feelings
towards God and our conduct towards
man—the Gospels, relieved of their unauthentic portions, and read in an under
standing spirit, not with a slavish and
1 God is a spirit.
unintelligent adherence to the naked
letter, contain little about which men may
differ—little from which they can dissent.
He is our Father, we are all brethren^
This much lies open to the most ignorant
and busy, as fully as to the most leisurely
and learned. This needs no Priest to
teach it—no authority to endorse it. The
rest is Speculation—intensely interesting,
indeed, but of no practical necessity.
III. There are, however, other tenets
taught in Scripture and professed by
Christians, in which reflective minds of
all ages have found it difficult to
acquiesce. Thus :—however far we may
stretch the plea for a liberal interpreta
tion of Oriental speech, it is impossible
to disguise from ourselves that the New
Testament teaches, in the most unre
served manner and in the strongest
language, the doctrine of the efficacy of
Prayer in modifying the divine purposes
and in obtaining the boons asked for at
the throne of grace. It is true that one
passage (John xi. 42) would seem to in
dicate that prayer was a form which
Jesus adopted for the sake of others; it
is also remarkable that the model of
prayer which he taught to his disciples
contains only one simple and modest
request for personal and temporal good 1;
yet not only are we told that he prayed
earnestly and for specific mercies (though
with a most submissive will) on occasions
of peculiar suffering and trial, but few of
his exhortations to his disciples occur
more frequently than that to constant
prayer, and no promises are more distinct
or reiterated than that their prayers shall
be heard and answered. “ Watch and
pray ; ” “ What things soever ye desire,
when ye pray, believe that ye shall re
ceive them, and ye shall have them; ”
“Verily, verily, I say unto you, whatso
ever ye shall ask of the Father in my
name, he will give it you ; ” “ Ask, and
it shall be given you.”
1 “ It is a curious fact that the Lord’s prayer
may be reconstructed,” says Wetstein, “ almost
verbatim out of the Talmud, which also contains
a prophetic intimation that all prayer will one
day cease, except the prayer of Thanksgiving.”
(Mackay’s “ Progress of the Intellect,” ii. 379.)
�CHRISTIAN ECLECTICISM
No one can read such passages, and
the numberless others of a'similar char
acter with which both Testaments abound,
and doubt that the opinion held both by
Christ and his disciples was that “ Jeho
vah is a God that heareth and answereth
prayer ; ”—that favours are to be obtained
from Him by earnest and reiterated
entreaty; that whatever good thing His
sincere worshippers petition for, with
instance and with faith, shall be granted
to them, if consonant to his purposes,
and shall be granted in consequence of
their petition; that, in fact and truth,
apart from all metaphysical subtleties
and subterfuges the designs of God can
be modified and swayed, like those of an
earthly father, by the entreaties of His
children.
This doctrine is set forth
throughout the Jewish Scriptures in its
coarsest and nakedest form and it reap
pears in the Christian Scriptures in a
form only slightly modified and refined.
Now, this doctrine has in all ages been
a stumbling-block to the thoughtful. It
is obviously irreconcilable with all that
reason and revelation teach us of the
divine nature; and the inconsistency
has been felt by the ablest of the Scrip
ture writers themselves.1 Various and
desperate have been the expedients and
suppositions resorted to, in order to re
concile the conception of an immutable,
all-wise, all foreseeing God, with that of a
father who is turned from his course by
the prayers of his creatures. But all
such efforts are, and are felt to be, hope
less failures. They involve the assertion
and negation of the same proposition in
one breath. The problem remains still
insoluble ; and we must either be con
tent to have it so, or we must abandon
one or other of the hostile premises.
The religious man, who believes that
all events, mental as well as physical, are
pre-ordered and arranged according to
the decrees of infinite wisdom, and the
philosopher, who knows that, by the wise
and eternal laws of the universe, cause
and effect are indissolubly chained to1 “ God is not a man that he should lie, nor
the son of man, that he should repent.”
lit
gether, and that one follows the other in
inevitable succession,—equally feel that
this ordination—this chain—cannot be
changeable at the cry of man. To sup
pose that it can is to place the whole
harmonious system of nature at the
mercy of the weak reason and the selfish
wishes of humanity. If the purpose of
God were not wise, they would not be
formed:—if wise, they cannot be changed,
for then they would become unwise. To
suppose that an all-wise Being would
alter his designs and modes of proceed
ing at the entreaty of an unknowing
creature, is to believe that compassion
would change his wisdom into foolish
ness. It has been urged that prayer may
render a favour wise, which would else be
unwise ; but this is to imagine that events
are not foreseen and pre-ordered, but are
arranged and decided pro re nata : it is
also to ignore utterly the unquestionable
fact, that no event in life or in nature is
isolated, and that none can be changed
without entailing endless and universal
alterations. If the universe is governed
by fixed laws, or (which is the same pro
position in different language) if all
events are pre-ordained by the foreseeing
wisdom of an infinite God, then the
prayers of thousands of years and genera
tions of martyrs and saints cannot
change or modify one iota of our destiny.
The proposition is unassailable by the
subtlest logic. The weak, fond affections
of humanity struggle in vain against the
unwelcome conclusion.
It is a conclusion from which the feel
ings of almost all of us shrink and revolt.
The strongest sentiment of our nature,
perhaps, is that of our helplessness in
the hands of fate, and against this help
lessness we seek for a resource in the
belief of our dependence on a Higher
Power, which can control and will inter
fere with fate. And though our reason
tells us that it is inconceivable that the
entreaties of creatures as erring and as
blind as we are can influence the all
wise purposes of God, yet we feel an
internal voice, more potent and per
suasive than reason, which assures us
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CHRISTIAN ECLECTICISM
that to pray to him in trouble is an irre
pressible instinct of our nature—an in
stinct which precedes teaching—which
survives experience—which defies philo
sophy.
“ For sorrow oft the cry of faith
In bitter need will borrow.”
It would be an unspeakable consola
tion to our human infirmity could we,
in this case, believe our reason to be
erroneous and our instinct true ; but we
greatly fear that the latter is the result,
partly of that anthropomorphism which
pervades all our religious conceptions,
which our limited faculties suggest, and
which education and habit have rooted
so fixedly in our mental constitution,
and partly of that fond weakness which
recoils from the idea of irreversible and
inescapable decree. The conception of
subjection to a law without exception,
without remission, without appeal, crush
ing, absolute, and universal, is truly an
appalling one; and, most mercifully, can
rarely be perceived in all its overwhelm
ing force, except by minds which, through
stern and lofty intellectual training, have
in some degree become qualified to
bear it.
Communion with God, we must ever
bear in mind, is something very different
from prayer for specific blessings, and
often confers the submissive strength of
soul for which we pray; and we believe
it will be found that the higher our souls
rise in their spiritual progress, the more
does entreaty merge into thanksgiving,
the more does petition become absorbed
in communion with the “ Father of the
spirits of all flesh.” That the piety of
Christ was fast tending to this end is,
we think, indicated by his instructions
to his disciples (Matt. vi. 8, 9): “ When
ye pray, use not vain repetitions, for your
father knoweth what things ye have need
of before ye ask him. After this manner,
therefore, _ pray ye,” &c.; and by that
last sublime sentence in Gethsemane,
uttered when the agonising struggle of
the spirit with the flesh had terminated
in the complete and final victory of the
first, “ Father, if this cup may not pass
from me except I drink it, thy will be
done.”
Prayer may be regarded as the form
which devotion naturally takes in ordinary
minds, and even in the most enlightened
minds in their less spiritual moods. The
highest intellectual efforts, the loftiest
religious contemplations, dispose to de
votion, but check the impulses of
prayer. The devout philosopher, trained
to the investigation of universal system
—the serene astronomer, fresh from the
study of the changeless laws which
govern innumerable worlds—shrinks
from the monstrous irrationality of ask
ing the great Architect and Governor of
all to work a miracle in his behalf—to
interfere, for the sake of his convenience,
wc his plans, with the sublime order con
ceived by the Ancient of Days in the
far Eternity of the Past; for what is a
special providence but an interference
with established laws ? And what is
such interference but a miracle ?
_ IV. Remotely connected with the doc
trine of an interposing and influencible
Providence is the fallacy, or rather the
imperfection, which lies' at the root of
the ordinary Christian view of Resigna
tion as a duty and a virtue. Submission,
cheerful acquiescence in the dispensa
tions of Providence, is enjoined upon us,
not because these dispensations are just
and wise—not because they are the
ordinances of His will who cannot err,—
but because they are ordained for our
benefit, and because He promised that
“ all things shall work together for good
to them that love Him.” We are assured
that every trial and affliction is designed
solely for. our good, for our discipline,
and will issue in a blessing, though we
see not how; and that therefore we must
bow to it with unmurmuring resignation.
These grounds, it is obvious, are purely
self-regarding; and resignation, thus re
presented and thus motived, is no virtue,
but a simple calculation of self-interest.
This narrow view results from that in
corrigible egotism of the human heart
which makes man prone to regard him
�.CHRISTIAN ECLECTICISM
self as the special object of divine con
sideration, and the centre round which
the universe revolves. Yet it is unques
tionably the view most prominently and
frequently presented in the new Testa
ment and by all modern divines.1' It
may be that the prospect of “ an ex
ceeding, even an eternal weight of glory,”
may be needed to support our frail pur
poses under the crushing afflictions of
our lot; it may be that, by the perfect
arrangements of omnipotence, the suf
ferings of all may be made to work out
the ultimate and supreme good of each ;
but this is not, cannot be, the reason
why we should submit with resignation
to whatever God ordains. His will must
be wise, righteous, and wre believe bene
ficent, whether it allot to us happiness
or misery : it zk His will; we need inquire
no further. Job, who had no vision of
a future compensatory world, had in this
attained a sublimer point of religion
than St. Paul:—“ Though He slay me,
yet will I trust in Him.” “What 1 shall
we receive good at the hands of God,
and shall we not receive evil?” (Job
xiii. 15 ; ii. 10.)
To the orthodox Christian, who fully
believes all he professes, cheerful re
signation to the divine will is compara
tively a natural, an easy, a simple thing.
To the religious philosopher, it is the
highest exercise of intellect and virtue.
The man who has realised the faith that
his own lot, in all its minutest particu
lars, is not only directly regulated by
God,—but is so regulated by God as
unerringly to work for his highest good,—
with an express view to his highest good—
with such a man, resignation, patience,
1 The sublimest and purest genius among
modern divines goes so far as to maintain that,
apart from the hope of future recompense, ‘ ‘ a
deviation from rectitude would become the part
of wisdom, and should the path of virtue be
obstructed by disgrace, torment, or death, to
persevere would be madness and folly.”
(“Modern Infidelity,” p. 20, by Robert Hall.) It
is sad to reflect how mercenary a thing duty has
become in the hands of theologians. Were their
belief in a future retribution once shaken, they
would become, on their own showing, the
lowest of sensualists, the worst of sinners.
123
nay, cheerful acquiescence in all suffer
ing and sorrow appears to be in fact
only the simple and practical expression
of his belief. If, believing all this, he
still murmurs and rebels at the trials
and contrarieties of his lot, he is guilty of
the childishness of the infant which
quarrels with the medicine that is to
lead it back to health and ease. But
the religious Philosopher,—who, sin
cerely holding that a Supreme God
created and governed this world, holds
also that He governs it by laws which,
though wise, just, and beneficent, are
yet steady, unwavering, inexorable;—
who believe that his agonies and sorrows
are not specially ordained for his chas
tening, his strengthening, his elaboration
and development,—but are incidental
and necessary results of the operation
of laws the best that could be devised
for the happiness and purification of
the species,—or perhaps not even that,
but the best adapted to work out the
vast, awful, glorious, eternal designs of
the Great Spirit of the universe; who
believes that he ordained operations of
Nature, which have brought misery to
him, have, from the very unswerving
tranquillity of their career, showered
blessing and sunshine upon every other
path,—that the unrelenting chariot of
Time, which has crushed or maimed
him in its allotted course, is pressing
onward to the accomplishment of those
serene and mighty purposes, to have
contributed to which—even as a victim
—is an honour and a recompense :—
he who takes this view of Time, and
Nature, and God, and yet bears his lot
without murmur or distrust, because
it is portion of a system, the best possible,
because ordained by God,—has achieved
a point of virtue, the highest, amid pas
sive excellence, which humanity can
reach;—and his reward and support
must be found in the reflection that he
is an unreluctant and self-sacrificing
co-operator with the Creator of the
universe, and in the noble consciousness
of being worthy and capable of so sublime
a conception, yet so sad a destiny.
�1^4
CHRISTIAN ECLECTICISM
In a comparison of the two resignations, the patience of secrecy and silence, to
there is no measure of their respective bring about some political or social
grandeurs. The orthodox sufferer fights change which they felt convinced would
the battle only on condition of surviving ultimately prove o'f vast service to
to reap the fruits of victory :—the other humanity, may live to see the change
fights on, knowing that he must fall effected, or the anticipated good flow
early in the battle, but content that his from it. Fewer still of them will be able
body should form a stepping-stone for to pronounce what appreciable weight
the future conquests of humanity.
their several efforts contributed to the
Somewhat similar remarks may be achievement of the change desired. And
made with reference to the virtues of discouraging doubts will therefore often
action as to those of endurance. It is creep in upon minds in which egotism
a matter suggestive of much reflection, is not wholly swallowed up by earnest
that, throughout the New Testament, ness, as to whether, in truth, their
the loftiest and purest motive to action— exertions had any influence whatever—
love of duty, as duty, obedience to the whether in sad and sober fact they have
will of God because it is His will—is not been the mere fly upon the wheel.
rarely appealed to; one or two expres With many men these doubts are fatal
sions of Christ and the 14th chapter of to active effort. To counteract them
John forming the only exceptions. The we must labour to elevate and purify
almost invariable language—pitched to our motives, as well as sedulously cherish
the level of ordinary humanity—is, “ Do the conviction—assuredly a true one—
your duty at all hazards, for your Father that in this world there is no such thing
which seeth in secret shall reward you as effort thrown away—that “ in all labour
openly.” “ Verily, I say unto you, ye there is profit ”—that all sincere exertion
shall in no wise lose your reward.”
in a righteous and unselfish cause is
Yet this is scarcely the right view of necessarily followed, in spite of all ap
things. The hope of success, not the pearance to the contrary, by an appro
hope of reward, should be our stimulat priate and proportionate success—that
ing and sustaining might. Our object, no bread cast upon the waters can be
not ourselves, should be our inspiring wholly lost—that no good seed planted
thought. The labours of philanthropy in the ground can fail to fructify in due
are comparatively easy, when the effect time and measure; and that, however
of them, and their recoil upon ourselves, we may in moments of despondency be
is immediate and apparent. But this it apt to doubt, not only whether our cause
can rarely be, unless where the field of will triumph, but whether we shall have
our exertions is narrow, and ourselves contributed to its triumph,—there is
the only or the chief labourers. In the One who has not only seen every exer
more frequent cases where we have to tion we have made, but who can assign
join our efforts to those of thousands of the exact degree in which each soldier
others to contribute to the carrying for has assisted to gain the great victory
ward of a great cause, merely to till over social evil. The Augean stables
the ground or sow the seed for a of the world—the accumulated unclean
very distant harvest, or to prepare the ness and misery of centuries—require a
way for the future advent of some mighty river to cleanse them thoroughly
great amendment; the amount which away : every drop we contribute aids to
each man has contributed to the achieve swell that river and augment its force, in
ment of ultimate success, the portion of a degree appreciable by God, though not
the prize which justice should assign to by man;—and he whose zeal is deep
each as his especial production, can and earnest will not be over anxious
never be accurately ascertained. Per that his individual drop should be dis
haps few of those who have laboured, in tinguishable amid the mighty mass of
�CHRISTIAN ECLECTICISM
cleansing and fertilising waters, far less
that, for the sake of distinction it should
flow in effective singleness away. He
will not be careful that his name should
be inscribed upon the mite which he
casts into the treasury of God. It should
suffice each of us to know that, if we
have laboured, with purity of purpose,
in any good cause, we must have con
tributed to its success; that the degree
in which we have contributed is a matter
of infinitely small concern; and still
more, that the consciousness of having
so contributed, however obscurely and
unnoticed, should be our sufficient, if
our sole, reward. Let us cherish this
faith ; it is a duty. He who sows and
reaps is a good labourer, and worthy of
his hire. But he who sows what shall be
reaped by others who know not and reck
not of the sower, is a labourer of a nobler
order, and worthy of a loftier guerdon.
V. The common Christian conception
Of the pardon of sin upon repentance
and conversion seems to us to embody
a very transparent and pernicious fallacy.
“Who can forgive sins but God only? ”
asked the Pharisees. There is great con
fusion and contradiction in our ideas on
this subject. God is the only being who
Can not forgive sins. “ Forgiveness of
sins” means one of two things :—it
either means saving a man from the con
sequences of his sins, that is, interposing
between cause and effect, in which case
it is working a miracle (which God no
f doubt can do, but which we have no
right to expect that He will do, or ask
that He shall do); or it means an engage
ment to forbear retaliation, a suppression
pf the natural anger felt against the
offender by the offended party, a fore
going of vengeance on the part of the in
jured—in which meaning it is obviously
quite inapplicable to a Being exempt and
aloof from human passions. When we
entreat a fellow-creature to forgive the
offences we have committed against him,
we mean to entreat that he will not, by
any act of his, punish us for them, that
he will not revenge nor repay them, that
he will retain no rancour in his breast
125
against us on account of them; and
such a prayer addressed to a being of
like passions to ourselves is rational and
intelligible, because we know that it is
natural for him to feel anger at our in
juries, and that, unless moved to the
contrary, he will probably retaliate. But
when we pray to our Heavenly Father to
“ forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive
them that trespass against us,” we over
look the want of parallelism of the two
cases, and show that our notions on the
subject are altogether misty and con
fused ; for God cannot be injured by
our sins, and He is inaccessible to the
passions of anger and revenge. Yet the
plain expression of the Book of Common
Prayer—“ Neither take Thou vengeance
of our sins ”—embodies the real signifi
cation attached to the prayer for forgive
ness, by all who attach any definite signi
fication to their prayers. Now, this ex
pression is an Old Testament or a Pagan
expression, and can only be consistently
and intelligibly used by those who enter
tain the same low ideas of God as the
ancient Greeks and Hebrews entertained
—that is, who think of Him as an irrit
able, jealous, and avenging Potentate.
If, from this inconsistency, we take
refuge in the other meaning of the Prayer
for forgiveness, and assume that it is a
prayer to God that he will exempt us
from the natural and appointed conse
quences of our misdeeds, it is important
that we should clearly define to our minds
what it is that we are asking for. In our
view of the matter, punishment for sins
by the divine law is a wholly different
thing and process from punishment for
violations of human laws. It is not an
infliction for crime, imposed by an ex
ternal authority and artificially executed
by external force, but a natural and in
evitable result of the offence—a child
generated by a parent—a sequence fol
lowing an antecedent—a consequence
arising out of a cause.
The punishment of sin consists in the
consequences of sin. These form a
penalty most adequately heavy. A sin
without its punishment is as impossible,
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CHRISTIAN ECLECTICISM
as complete a contradiction in terms, as and entreaty; a belief consistent and intel
a cause without an effect.
ligible among the Greeks, inconsistent
To pray that God will forgive our sins, and irrational among Christians, appro
therefore, appears in all logical accuracy priate as applied to Jupiter, unmean
to involve either a most unworthy con ing or blasphemous as applied to Jehovah.
ception of His character, or an entreaty
We have, in fact, come to regard sin,
of incredible audacity—viz., that He not as an injury done to our own nature,
wih work daily miracles in our behalf. an offence against our own souls, a dis
It is either beseeching Him to renounce figuring of the image of the Beautiful
feelings and intentions which it is and Good, but as a personal affront
impossible that a Nature like His should offered to a powerful and avenging Bein<q
entertain : or it is asking Him to violate which, unless apologised for, will be chas
the eternal and harmonious order of the tised as such. We have come to regard
universe, for the comfort of one out of it as an injury to another party, for which
the infinite myriads of its inhabitants.
atonement and reparation can be made
It may, perhaps, be objected, that and satisfaction can be given; not as a
Punishment of sins may be viewed, not deed which cannot be undone, eternal
as a vengeance taken for injury or insult in its consequences; an act which, once
committed, nor yet as the simple and committed,- is numbered with the irre
necessary sequence of a cause—but as vocable past. In a word, Sin contains
chastisement, inflicted to work repentance its own retributive penalty as surely, and
and amendment. But, even when con as naturally, as the acorn contains the
sidered in this light, prayer for forgive oak. Its consequence is its punishment,
ness remains still a marvellous incon it needs no other, and can have no
sistency. It then becomes the entreaty heavier : and its consequence is involved
of the. sick man to his Physician not to in its commission, and cannot be
heal him. “ Forgive us our sins,” then separated from it. Punishment (let us
means, “ Let us continue in our iniquity.” fix this in our minds) is not the execution
It is clear, however, that the first mean of a sentence, but the occurrence ofan effect.
ing we have mentioned, as attached to It is ordained to follow guilt by God,
the prayer for forgiveness of sins, is both not as a Judge, but as the Creator and
the original and the prevailing one; and Legislator of the Universe. This con
that it arises from an entire misconcep viction once settled in our understand
tion of the character of the Deity, and of ings, will wonderfully clear up our views
the feelings with which He may be on the subject of pardon and redemption.
supposed to regard sin—a misconception Redemption becomes then, of necessity,
inherited from our Pagan and Jewish not a saving but a regenerating process.
predecessors ; it is a prayer to deprecate We can be saved from the punishment of
the just resentment of a Potentate whom sin only by being saved from its com
we have offended—a petition which mission. Neither can there be any such
would be more suitably addressed to an thing as a vicarious atonement or punish
earthly foe or master than to a Heavenly ment (which, again, is a relic of heathen
Father. The misconception is natural conceptions of an angered Deity, to be
to a rude state of civilisation and of propitiated by offerings and sacrifices).
theology. It is the same notion from Punishment, being not the penalty, but
which arose sacrifices (z’.e., offerings to the result of sin, being not an arbitrary
appease wrath), and which caused their and artificial annexation, but an ordinary
universality in early ages and among and logical consequence, cannot be borne
barbarous nations.
It is a relic of by other than the sinner.
anthropomorphism ; a belief that God,
It is curious that the votaries of the
like man, is enraged by neglect or disobe doctrines of the Atonement admit the
dience, andean be pacified by submission correctness of much of the above reason-
�CHRISTIAN ECLECTICISM
ing, saying (see “ Guesses at Truth,” by
J. and A. Hare), that Christ had to suffer
for the sins of men, because God could
could not forgive sin ; He must punish in
some way. Thus holding the strangely
inconsistent doctrine that God is so just
that He could not let sin go unpunished,
yet so unjust that He could punish it in
the person of the innocent. It is for
orthodox dialects to explain how Divine
Justice can be impugned by pardoning
the guilty, and yet vindicated^ punishing
the innocent 1
If the foregoing reflections are sound,
the awful, yet wholesome, conviction
presses upon our minds, that there can be
no forgiveness of sins; that is, no inter
ference with, or remittance of, or pro
tection from their natural effects; that
God will not interpose between the cause
and its consequence1 :—that 11 whatso
ever a man soweth, that shall he also
reap.” An awful consideration this;
yet all reflection, all experience, confirm
its truth. The sin which has debased
Our soul may be repented of, may be
turned from, but the injury is done : the
debasement may be redeemed by after
efforts, the stain may be obliterated by
bitterer struggles and severer sufferings,
by faith in God’s love and communion
with His Spirit; but the efforts and the
endurance which might have raised the
soul to the loftiest heights are now
exhausted in merely regaining what it has
lost. “There must always be a wide
difference (as one of our divines has said)
between him who only ceases to do evil,
and him who has always done well ;
between the man who began to serve his
God as soon as he knew that he had a
God to serve, and the man who only
turns to Heaven after he has exhausted
all the indulgences of Earth.”
1 Refer to Matt. ix. 2-6. “Whether it is
easier to say, Thy sins be forgiven thee ! or to
say, Arise, take up thy bed and walk? ” Jesus
seems here clearly to intimate that the view
taken above (of forgiveness of sins, namely,
involving an interference with the natural order
of sequence, and being therefore a miracle} is
correct. He places the two side by side, as
equally difficult.
127
Again, in the case of sin of which you
have induced another to partake. You
may repent—-you may, after agonising
struggles, regain the path of virtue—
your spirit may re-achieve its purity
through much anguish, and after many
stripes; but the weaker fellow-creature
whom you led astray, whom you made a
sharer in your guilt, but whom you can
not make a sharer in your repentance and
amendment, whose downward course
(the first step of which you taught) you
cannot check, but are compelled to
witness, what “ forgiveness ” of sins can
avail you there ? There is your per
petual, your inevitable punishment, which
no repentance can alleviate and no
mercy can remit.
This doctrine, that sins may be for
given, and the consequences of them
averted, has in all ages been a fertile
source of mischief. Perhaps few of our
intellectual errors have fructified in a
vaster harvest of evil, or operated more
powerfully to impede the moral progress
of our race. While it has been a source
of unspeakable comfort to the penitent,
a healing balm to the wounded spirit,
while it has saved many from hopeless
ness, and enabled those to recover them
selves who would otherwise have flung
away the remnant of their virtue in
despair; yet, on the other hand, it has
encoura ged millions, feeling tvhat a safety
was in store for them in ultimate resort,
to persevere ' in their career of folly or
crime, to ignore or despise those natural
laws which God has laid down to be the
guides and beacons of our conduct, to
continue to do “ that which was pleasant
in their own eyes,”convinced that nothing
was irrevocable, that however dearly they
might have to pay for re-integration,
repentance could at any time redeem
their punishment, and undo the past.
The doctrine has been noxious in exact
ratio to the baldness and nakedness with
which it has been propounded. In the
Catholic Church of the middle ages we
see it perhaps in its greatest form, when
pardon was sold, bargained for, rated at
a fixed price; when one hoary sinner,
�128
CHRISTIAN ECLECTICISM
on the bed of sickness, refused to repent,
because he was not certain that death
was close at hand, and he did not wish
for the trouble of going through the
process twice, and was loth, by a prema
ture amendment, to lose a chance of any
of the indulgences of sin. Men would
have been far more scrupulous watchers
over conduct, far more careful of their
deeds, had they believed that those
deeds would inevitably bear their natural
consequences, exempt from after inter
vention, than when they held that peni
tence and pardon could at any time
unlink the chain of sequences; just as
now they are little scrupulous of indulg
ing in hurtful excess, when medical aid
is at hand to remedy the mischief they
have voluntarily encountered. But were
they on a desert island, apart from the
remotest hope of a doctor or a drug, how
far more closely would they consider the
consequences of each indulgence, how
earnestly would they study the laws of
Nature, how comparatively unswerving
would be their endeavours to steer their
course by those laws, obedience to which
brings health, peace, and safety in its
train!
Let any one look back upon his past
career—look inward on his daily life—
and then say what effect would be pro
duced upon him, were the conviction
once fixedly embedded in his soul, that
everything done is done irrevocably—
that even the Omnipotence of God can
not uncommit a deed—cannot make that
undone which has been done ; that every
act must bear its allotted fruit according
to the everlasting laws—must remain for
ever ineffaceably inscribed on the tablets
of universal Nature. And then let him
consider what would have been the
result upon the moral condition of our
race, had all men ever held this convic
tion.
Perhaps you have led a youth of dis
sipation and excess which has under
mined and enfeebled your constitution,
and you have transmitted this injured
and enfeebled constitution to your
children. They suffer, in consequence,
through life; suffering, perhaps even sin,
is entailed upon them ; your repentance,
were it in sackcloth and ashes, cannot
help you or them. Your punishment is
tremendous, but it is legitimate and
inevitable. You have broken Nature’s
laws, or you have ignored them; and
no one violates or neglects them with
impunity.
What a lesson for timely
reflection and obedience is here !
Again,—You have broken the seventh
commandment. You grieve, you repent,
you resolutely determine against any
such weakness in future. It is well.
But “you know that God is merciful,
you feel that he will forgive you.” You
are comforted. But no—there is no for
giveness of sins : the injured party may
forgive you, your accomplice or victim
may forgive you, according to the mean
ing of human language; but the deed is
done, and all the powers of Nature, were
they to conspire in your behalf, could
not make it undone: the consequences
to the body, the consequences to the
soul, though no man may perceive them,
are there, are written in the annals of the
Past, and must reverberate through all
time.
But all this, let it be understood, in
no degree militates against the value or
the necessity of repentance. Repentance,
contrition of soul, bears, like every other
act, its own fruit, the fruit of purifying
the heart, of amending the future, not,
as man has hitherto conceived, of effacing
the Past. The commission of sin is an
irrevocable act, but it does not incapaci
tate the soul for virtue. Its consequences
cannot be expunged, but its course need
not be pursued. Sin, though it is in
effaceable, calls for no despair, but for
efforts more energetic than before. Re
pentance is still as valid as ever ; but it
is valid to secure the future, not to
obliterate the past.
PRINTED BY WATTS AND CO., 17, JOHNSON’S COURT, FLEET STREET, LONDON, E.C.
�Now Ready, X.-117 large pages (with cover • illustrated by Walter Crane),
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THE CHILDREN’S BOOK OF
MORAL LESSONS.
First Series: “SELF-CONTROL”
and
“TRUTHFULNESS.”
’
By F. J. GOULD.
(A Suitable Reading-Book for the Third or Fourth Standard.)
'AUTHOR’S PREFACE.
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character as a moral being; and to attain this end we must discipline the child’s
natural good feeling by systematic lessons in the interpretation of personal and
civic conduct. The lessons in this book are rather “ lessons ” in the teacher’s or
parent’s sense, but to the children themselves (so the author hopes) the idea of
“ lesson ” will yield to the dramatic interest of the 'stories and illustrations which
form the vehicles of the moral instruction.
It would be a truly noble issue out of the present educational crisis if persons
of all schools of thought could unite in- the establishment of a sound and practical
moral teaching detached from controversial doctrines.
The lessons are intended for children aged 10 to 14.
F. J. G.
Uniform
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R. P. A. Reprints. 160 pp., price 6d., by post 8d.;
cloth is., by post is. 3d.
INGERSOLL’S
What
LECTURES AND
ESSAYS.
Contents of First Series:—
The Truth.
The Gods.
About the Holy Bible.
Must We Do to be Saved?
Liberty of Man, Woman, and Child.
A Thanksgiving Sermon.
The Ghosts.
How to Reform Mankind.
Art and Morality.
Withfine Portrait of Author, and Introduction by Charles T. Gorham.
;
The Second Series (ready shortly) will contain “The Mistakes of Moses”
(complete edition), Lecture on “ Shakespeare,” etc., etc.
WATTS & CO., 17, JOHNSON’S COURT, FLEET STREET, LONDON, E.C.
�NOW READY, Cloth, 4s. net, by post 4s. 4d.
The Cosmos and the Creeds.
ELEMENTARY NOTES ON THE ALLEGED FINALITY OF
THE CHRISTIAN FAITH.
By Captain W. USBORNE MOORE.
Some Press Opinions:—
“ The author does not offer any new facts, but
he succeeds in his effort to clear the way for
profitable discussion.”—Birmingham Gazette.
suitable text-book for the commencement of their
studies upon the 4 Riddle of the Universe 5 ”_
Reynolds's Newspaper.
“The reader will find many orthodox beliefs
“ The author has made a painstaking effort to
vigorously assailed in these pages, but the
collate and present in a tangible and concrete
argument is well sustained in a lofty spirit.”_
form the varied facts brought to light by recent
Leicester Daily Mercury*
research. In this respect it is a much more
readable and convincing book than some that
44 It is an able rationalistic argument for freethought as against sacerdotal dogmas, and gives
have been written on the subject, and, whether
the. reader agrees or not with the conclusions
a suggestive review of many points in which the
arrived at, a careful perusal of the facts and
teachings of physical science and modern philo
arguments cannot fail to broaden the mind and
sophy run counter to the authority of the Bible
enlarge the understanding.”—Oxford Review.
as history. While not a book to be read with
out shock by people who do not know how far
“ Captain Moore popularises current know
rationalist criticism has advanced, it is both an
ledge on this all-important subject—knowledge,
earnest and a thoughtful work, which will be
scattered through many publicai ons inaccessible
read with interest and profit by anyone in search
to the general reader. Those interested in the j of arguments against the more reactionary
great problem of existence would find this a : powers of priestcraft.”—Scotsman.
J
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Victorian Blogging
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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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The creed of Christendom : its foundations contrasted with its superstructure
Creator
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Greg, William R. (William Rathbone) [1809-1881]
Sullivan, W. R. Washington
Description
An account of the resource
Place of publication: London
Collation: 128 p. ; 22 cm.
Series title: R.P.A. Cheap Reprints
Series number: 20
Notes: Issued for the Rationalist Press Association. Includes bibliographical references. Printed in double columns. Part of the NSS pamphlet collection.
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Watts & Co.
Date
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1905
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RA509
RA1670
N292
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Christianity
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 (The creed of Christendom : its foundations contrasted with its superstructure), 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
Apologetics
Bible-Controversial literature
Bible-Criticism
Christianity
Free Thought
NSS
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NATIONAL SECULAR SOCIETY
INTRODUCTORY SKETCH OF THE LIFE
OF ROBERT COOPER.
I first became acquainted with R bert Cooper when he was
editing the London Investigator in 1861, and the following sketch,
is compiled from an autobiographic* < statement written by Mr.
Cooper about two months before h death, and sent to me by
his son for publication in the Nation I Reformer.
Robert Cooper was born on th 29 th December, 1819, at
Barton-upon-Wevell, near Mauches r. His father was an old
Yorkshire Radical, with experience >f Peterloo. At his father’s
house young Cooper had occasio illy to read aloud to the
collected guests from “Godwin’s P itical Justice,” and heard
Lancashire men discuss theviews of Voltaire, Paine, Washington,
Cartwright, Horne Tooke, Cobbe* , Hunt, Richard Carlile,
Robert Owen, Henry Brougham, G orge Combe, Godwin, and
other advanced thinkers. When about twelve years of age
Robert Cooper became a clerk in a A lanchester house, where he
remained for nine years. When foe ■ceen he was also appointed
teacher in the Salford Co-operatr Evening Schools, where
James Rigby and Joseph Smith, w<- i known disciples of Robert
Owen, were then assistants.
Before he was fifteen Robert C< > per was elected Hon.. Sec.
to the School, and soon after delivei d his first lecture, on “ the
necessity of free schools for the wo ting classes ”. About this
time Robert Owen, then in the heych ' of his socialistic agitation,
lectured at Salford, in the first insti ition erected in England by
To use Robert Cooper’s
the promoters of English Socialise
own words, this event “ constitute! an epoch in my life”. Of
Robert Owen, he writes: “ His mil and gentle, yet impressive
and commanding bearing producer profound effect upon me.
It determined my future career. To io day of his death I revered
him as a father, and he treated me s a son. During the latter
portion of his extraordinary labor* ie spent much of his time
with my family in London. When is eyesight began to fail I
accompanied him on the platform t< > •sist in reading his lectures.
His hearing, too, grew weak, and 1 , idertook the task of recapitulating the questions and speeche from the audience close to
his ear.” In 1836, Robert Cooper tened a debate on “ Secularism”—“a term just then coi i ”—before the, debating
Shortly after, the young
society of the Manchester Athen feu
and eloquent Socialist advocate he his first public discussion
with the Rev. J. Bromley, in the C. penter’s Hall, Manchester,
�2
SKETCH OE THE LIFE OF ROBERT COOPER.
and now, on Sundays, lectured through, the towns and villages
of Lancashire on the “ Social System ”. When scarcely eighteen
he published a pamphlet on “ Original Sin ” ; and the present
little work, which was attacked in Parliament, was issued when
Robert Cooper was only twenty years of age. His prominence
as a Socialist led to his dismissal from his situation, and Robert
Cooper then became one of the paid Social Missionaries,
and was first stationed at Hull, whence he was sent North,
passing the greater part of 1842 and 1843 in lecturing in Scot
land. Coming South, in 1843, to Derby, he went thence to
Stockport, again to Scotland, and lastly to the West Riding of
Yorkshire, which was his final appointment as “ Social Mis
sionary”. 1846, which witnessed the dissolution of the Eng
lish Socialistic organisation, found Mr. Cooper conducting
some excellent educational classes at Huddersfield. The
break-up of the Socialistic Mission drove him to London,
where he became a familiar Freethought lecturer at the Old
John Street Institution, and, at intervals, carried on the plat
form work in the West and North of England. While editing
the London Investigator, Mr. Cooper’s health, which had been
undermined by many hardships in his early lecturing career, gave
way, and, in 1856, he was compelled to abandon some of his
work. Fainting more than once on the platform, his lecturing
was brought to a close at John Street Institution, in 1858 : his
medical advisers insisting on abstinence from the excitement
of public speaking. Fortunately, a legacy by Samuel Fletcher,
who died in 1856, came in time to furnish the means for
recruiting lost strength, and Mr. Cooper lived quietly in Man
chester until the breaking out of the Reform agitation in 1866,
when he became Honorary Secretary to the Manchester
Reform Union. The new work, and consequent excite
ment, brought on a fresh attack of the old disease, and
after lingering through 1867, he died on the 3rd May, 1868,
only forty-eight years of age. Writing just before he died,
when misfortune had swept away his resources, he penned the
following touching lines : “ I now rest for succor on the
affections of my children, strengthened by the noble devotion of
a wife who has ever been, through a marriage of twenty-nine
years, an adviser in my struggles, a partner in my successes,
and a companion in my vicissitudes ”; and he adds, “Should
my health not be restored and the couch upon which I repose
be my death-bed, I can leave the world with the assurance that
those who are dearest to me and know me best, love me most
In editing this work some of the quotations have been
abridged, some slight corrections have been made, and some
new matter inserted between brackets.
CHARLES BRADLAUGH.
�A
VINDICATION,
WRITTEN FOR THE SECOND EDITION AFTER THE WORK HAD BEEN
SPECIALLY ATTACKED BY THE BISHOP OF EXETER IN
THE HOUSE OF LORDS.
At a period like the present, when the voice of reason and free
inquiry is rousing the intellectual faculties of the people from
their dormancy and enslavement; when the luminary of true
knowledge is diffusing its ennobling and enlightening influence
among mankind, giving, at once, a vitality and intensity to
their highest and noblest aspirations ; when, indeed, men are
becoming intelligent and reflective, instead of ignorant and
credulous beings, it is not to be wondered at that the priest
hood and their abettors should feel so distressingly alarmed,
and have recourse to all kinds of expedients in order to the
maintenance of their power and influence. Knowing as they
do, that priestcraft and enlightenment cannot eventually co
exist or co-operate—they that are at irreconcilable variance—
that there is no affinity between them—that the one must
necessarily stultify and annihilate the other; and, seeing as
they do, the extraordinary developments of mind—the rapid
advances in intelligence and rationality which are every day
taking place, they are almost driven to desperation. They are
beginning to apprehend their case is hopeless, the days of
their domination and ascendancy are over; that they have
passed the meridian of their glory, and must now retire into
utter and permanent obscurity. But being valiant and per
severing men, at least when their own interests are concerned,
they are determined that they will not die without a struggle
—a fearless and desperate struggle. And, therefore, they
have organised all the means at their command, and com
menced a most furious onslaught upon all who have presumed
or will still continue to presume, to advocate views prejudicial
to their own. In this display of clerical zeal and intolerance,
I was not in the least surprised that this work, amongst the
rest, should fall in for its due quantum of abuse. Indeed, I
fully expected it. I anticipated they would make an attack
upon it, not indeed with the weapons of reason and argument
by any means, as they are altogether unaccustomed to the
use of them, but with those of anathema and denunciation.
Notwithstanding, however, that this was my decided expecta
tion, I certainly did not suppose that it would have been
�4
A VINDICATION.
deemed requisite for so august a personage as the Lord Bishop
of Exeter to have opened the attack. Great as my presump
tion may be, impious as my audacity certainly is in their
estimation, it is yet not so great, so impious as to have
emboldened me to have presumed that so sacred and immacu**
late a being as a Bishop would have deigned to have noticed
it.
Yet so it was. Not only did he honor it with an
observation, but he even took the trouble to denounce and
anathematize it, not in a private company, not in any of the
churches of his diocese, but in the highest judicature in the
realm. The weight of his mitre, however, could not crush it.
Since that time to the present the clergy and their partisanShave endeavored to produce an unfavorable impression upon
the public mind as to its object and tendency. Th® most
malicious misrepresentations have been circulated, and in
consequence considerable misapprehension prevails upon the
subject. It is, therefore, to disabuse the public of these mis
apprehensions, and to rebut the charges which have been
brought against it, that this Vindication is written.
One of the most common, and yet, at the same time, one of
the most singular, statements which are made respecting this
work, is that it is a blasphemous publication—-vilifies the
Almighty. Now, so far from its being blasphemous, it is
just the reverse. So far from its impugning, it vindicates
the Divinity. Indeed, the work is written for the avowed
purpose of exposing the blasphemy pronounced against the
Deity by the priesthood and their abettors in saying that
such a book as the Bible originated from him—is His .re
vealed word—His only and especial organ. To attribute tothe Almighty such revolting atrocities, such shameless indecen
cies, such outrageous indignities as are recorded, and directly
ascribed to Him in the Scriptures, is, I contend, one of the
foulest and most monstrous blasphemies that could possibly be
perpetrated. And to denominate a work as blasphemous
whose only and express object is to repudiate such practices,
is a paradox which I am almost at a loss to explain. Had I
not an idea that the priesthood, being conscious of their own
blasphemy were desirous of concealing it by accusing others
of the crime, it would, to me at least, be utterly inexplicable.
To affix the stigma of blasphemy to a work having such
objects in view is precisely as absurd and inconsistent as to
apply the epithet of dishonesty to a man whose invariable
wish had been, through the whole of his career, to pursue an
honorable and straightforward course. This policy of the
priesthood, however, cannot be adopted with success much
longer. The intellect of society is awakening. The long
night of ignorance and credulity is passing away, and the
eyes of the people are opening upon that awful mass of cant
and corruption which is secreted within the strongholds of
the clergy. Let but a few short years roll over, and the
old dilapidated tower of priestcraft, which already totters
to its basement, will fall with a crash that will loudly and
�A VINDICATION.
5
■emphatically proclaim the annihilation of superstition and
intolerance.
It is next affirmed that this is an irreligious work. This
•charge is as false as it is unjust. That it is opposed, however,
to the religion of priestcraft—to a religion that would allow
a selfish and arbitrary priesthood to lord over their fellow
creatures, to trample down their moral and intellectual capa
bilities, and divest them of all that adds purity and dignity to
■ their existence—to a religion that would allow one child of
humanity to drink of the fountain of felicity, and compel
another to perish in the wilderness of sorrow and despair—to a
religion, in short, that would make this world “ a hell to gain a
heaven ”—I freely and unhesitatingly admit; but that it is
inimical to the religion of charity and free inquiry—to the
religion that would infuse the balm of benevolence and love
into the bosom of every human creature, and allow all, of every
Sect, country and color, to express their honest and sincere
opinions without let or hindrance, I distinctly and broadly
deny. No; let it not be imagined that I am averse to an
enlarged, an enlightened religion, for as the poet felicitously
•observed:—
“ My religion is love—’tis the noblest and purest;
My temple the universe—widest and surest;
I worship my God through his works which are fair,
And the joy of my thoughts is perpetual prayer.”
There is no word which has been more abused than that of
religion. It has frequently been made the pretext for the
accomplishment of the most selfish, malignant, and degrading
purposes. In the hands of the priesthood it has teen the bane
of human existence—the poison that has vitiated the virtues of
humanity—the monster that has sought to strangle its intel
lectuality. It has been religion, under the auspices of the
priesthood, which has fomented that awful storm of an
tagonism and cruelty which has from generation to generation
afflicted the human race; which has harrowed up the most
implacable asperities and antipathies of their nature, and
almost shipwrecked their moral sensibilities and aspirations.
Wherever we observe its operations, whether in ancient or
modern times, whether in our own or foreign nations, in
Ancient Chaldea, Egypt, Greece, or Rome, or modern Spain,
Italy, France, or Great Britain, its object and tendency has
been invariably the same—the subjection of human reason—the
contraction of human thought—the paralysation of the human
faculties. On looking into the pages of history we find that
the brightest, noblest, and best of men of every clime—those
who have been the master spirits of the age in which they
flourished—all, indeed, whose exertions have tended to the
enlightenment and emancipation of man, if they have not
fallen actual sacrifices at the altar of bigotry, they have been
necessitated to fly from its scourge, or succumb, more or less,
to its arbitrary domination. If this assertion needs proof,
�6
A VINDICATION.
arise, ye departed spirits of Anaxagoras, Socrates, Pythagoras,
Aristotle, Locke, and a Lawrence, and bear witness! Oh I
when we think of the barbarities and indignities to which
these men were subjected, we cannot but exclaim of religion,
as Madame Poland did of liberty, “ O! Religion, what crimes
are committed in thy name!
No, let it not be conceived,
that this work is inimical to “pure religion, and undefiled
before God ”; it can only be destructive to the cupidity and
intolerance, superstition and delusion practised and perpetuated
under its assumed sanction.
It is next said by these “Ambassadors of God” and their
deluded votaries, that I have endeavored to bring the ‘ ‘ Holy
Scriptures” into contempt by unfair and dishonest means—
that I have entirely disregarded the immense mass of external
evidence in favor of the genuineness and authenticity of the
Bible, and contented myself by merely examining its internal
evidence; and to cap the climax of their rage and denuncia
tion, they state that a work like this ought not, for a single
moment, to be tolerated, but the strong arm of the law should
exert its supremacy and immediately stop it. Now, as to my
having endeavored “ to bring the Holy Scriptures into con
tempt by unfair and dishonest means ”, I most unhesitatingly
and fearlessly deny the charge. What are the means which I
have adopted ? They are these. In the first place I stated if
the Bible was the word of God, if he either wrote, or inspired,
men to write it, it could not by any possibility contain
anything absurd, contradictory, or demoralising, but every
chapter, every verse, every sentence, every line would be
perfectly true, consistent, and ennobling. To suppose that
such would not be the case, is to suppose that which is not
only ridiculous and inconsistent, but truly impious and blas
phemous.. Well, this position being established, I proceeded
to ascertain whether the Bible contained passages of an absurd,
contradictory, or demoralising character. On examining it I
found it did contain such passages—that it abounded in them,
that the whole of the books from Genesis to Revelation were
replete with them; and that passages of a rational, consistent
and ameliorating character were very rarely to be met with—
were, like “angels’ visits, few and far between”. Finding this
to be the case, I naturally and reasonably deduced the infer
ence that the Bible could not be the word of God, and therefore
could be nothing more than a mere imposition. Some of the
passages showing it could not be of divine origin I published in
the order in which they are arranged in these pages, and to
obviate any confusion or misunderstanding I affixed the
chapter and verse to each passage. Now, I ask, are not these
means honest, just, and straightforward ? True it is I have not
wasted my time in discussing the external evidence, in en
deavoring to inflict elaborate, erudite and labored dissertationsupon the reader, in order to invalidate the boasted testimony
of Josephus, Tacitus, Pliny, Strabo and others, as I conceive
such is not necessary or advisable when it can be clearly proved.
�A VINDICATION'.
7
from the internal evidence of the book, from his own words, as
it were, that it cannot possibly have originated, directly or
indirectly, from the alleged Cause of all things. No matter
what amount of external evidence might be adduced in favor
of its genuineness and authenticity, if its internal evidence is
invalidated and exploded, it goes for nothing. In this opinion
I do not stand alone. Dr. Conyers Middleton, a celebrated
writer and divine, says: “ Examining the external evidence is
certainly losing time and beginning at the wrong end, since it
is allowed on all hands that if any narration can be shown to
be false, any doctrine irrational and immoral, ’tis not all the
external evidence in the world that can or ought to convince
us that such a doctrine came from God.” And that I have
proved it contains narrations that “ can be shown to be false”,
and “ doctrines irrational and immoral”, I presume the follow
ing extracts fully demonstrate.
As to the statement that this work ought not to be tolerated,
and the strong arm of the law should instantly suppress it, I,
of course, was duly prepared to hear it. Invariably has it been
the modus operandi of the priesthood, whenever they have been
forced from the field of reason and argument, whenever they
have found that they were incapable of sustaining their position
on anything like reasonable grounds, to resort to calumny, foul
and virulent, and to persecution brutal and unjust. The Law !
the Law! ! has always been one of their most obliging and
Constant friends. Indeed, the old musty enactments in our
statute books are the only prop left to support the declining
fatme of priestcraft. Take these away, and the poor sickly
thing will fall upon the earth, helpless and dismembered. It
has been well observed by Fielding : “ Let a man abuse a phy
sician, he makes another physician his friend: let him rail at a
lawyer another pleads his cause gratis; if he libels this courtier,
that courtier receives him into his bosom ; but let him once
attack a hornet’s nest, or a priest, both nests are instantly sure
to be upon him ”, The history of the world, from the most
remote ages of antiquity, amply proves how dangerous it is to
attack the priesthood. There have occasionally been found a
few bold spirits who have presumed to encounter the monster,
but they have generally suffered, more or less, for their audacity;
and all who are determined to follow their steps—who are
resolved to struggle for the mental emancipation of man from
the thraldom of priestcraft—may rest assured, they will have
to experience annoyances, and submit to privation of no trivial
or transitory character. Let them remember, however, that
no great abuse has ever been remedied, no glorious object ever
been attained, without considerable sacrifices. Let them re
member, that should they fall victims to the idol of superstition
and intolerance, still posterity will be free—posterity will bless
them. When the cold hand of death shall have passed over
them, when they are quietly entombed in the bosom of their
mother earth, and the green herbage waves over their graves,
their memories will be revered with grateful and unfeigned
�8
A VINDICATION.
esteem. Oh! one tear* of sympathy and gratitude dropped
upon the grave of a martyr to truth is infinitely more precious
than a thousand diadems placed on the head of a political
despot, or a thousand miti es grasped in the hand of a religious
bigot. Mosheim, the gr-at ecclesiastical writer, says: “It
generally happens that when danger attends the discovery and
profession of truth, the prudent are silent, the multitude believe,
and impostors triumph ”. But shall this be any longer ? Shall
the impostors triumph ? Shall the demon of bigotry and cant
any longer devour the moral and intellectual vitals of man?
Truth, justice, humanity cry, No ; and every honest and inde
pendent mind must respond to the determination. Delightful
and cheering is the thought, that the career of this nuisance is
coming to a termination. A mighty movement is commencing
in society, which will speedily stultify so foul and deleterious a
pestilence. Already has the bright star of reason and free
inquiry dawned upon humanity, and soon by its illuminating
influence will the world be converted from a slaughter-house
of intolerance, persecution, and domination, into an arena of
equity, enlightenment, and peace. To close, in the sublime
words of one of the finest ft male writers that ever graced the
field of literature and moral philosophy—
“ Long have the nations slept—hark to that sound:
The sleep is ended, and the wo Id awakes :
Man rises in his strength, and looks around,
While on his sight ti e dawn of reason breaks.
Lo ! knowledge draws the curtain from his mind,
Quells fancy’s vision, and his spirit tames
Deep in his breast, that law to seek and find,
Which kings would write in blood, and priests in flames.
Shout, Earth ! the creature man, till now the foe
Of thee, and all who tread thy parent breast,
Henceforth shall learn himself and thee to know,
And in that knowledge shall be wise and blest.”
Manchester, July, 1840.
ROBERT COOPER.
�THE HOLY SCRIPTUBES ANALYSED.
.Passages inconsistent with the Attributes generally ascribed to
the Deity by the Christian world.
I.—IMMATERIALITY.
“ God is a spirit.”—John iv., 24.
[Christians allege “that the terms employed are terms of
condescending comparison with the acts and effects of the thus
mentioned organs of the human body, to convey, especially to
unpolished men, a conception of those properties and actions
of God which, to our feeble ideas, have a resemblance, and
that they were so understood —Dr. J. Pye Smith’s “ First lines
of Christian Theology”, p. 129].
1. —“So God created man in his own image, in the image of
God created he him; male and female created he them.”
Gen. i., 27. [“And they heard the voice of the Lord God
walking in the garden in the cool of the day.” Gen. iii., 8.]
2. —“ The eyes of the Lord are in every place, beholding the
•evil and the good.” Prov. xv. 3.
3. —“So shall my word be that goeth forth out of my
mouth.” Isaiah lv., 11.
4. —“ These are smoke in my nose, a fire that burneth all the
day.” Isaiah lxv. 5.
5. —“ His lips are full of indignation, and his tongue as a
•devouring fire.” Isaiah xxx., 27.
6. —“ The Lord heard our voice, and looked on our affliction,
and our labor, and our oppression.” Deut. xxvi, 7.
7. —“ Lord, bow down thine ear, and hear; open Lord,
thine eyes and see.” 2 Kings xix., 16.
8. —“And he said unto me, Son of man, the place of my
throne, and the place of the soles of my feet where I will
■dwell.” Ezekiel xliii., 7.
9. —“And I myself will fight against you with an out
stretched hand, and with a strong arm.” Jer. xxi., 5.
10. —“The Lord hath made bare his holy arm.” Isaiah lii., 10.
11. —“ When I consider thy heavens, the work of thy
fingers.” Ps. viii., 3.
12. —“And he gave unto Moses, when he had made an end
■of communing with him upon Mount Sinai, two tables of
�10
THE HOLY SCRIPTURES
testimony, two tables of stone, written with the finger of
God.” Exod. xxxi., 18.
13. —“ And I saw as the color of amber, as the appearance
of fire round about within it, from the appearance of his loins
even upward, and from the appearance of his loins even down
ward.” Ezekiel i., 27.
14. —“And it repented the Lord that he had made man on
the earth, and it grieved him at his heart.” Genesis vi., 6.
15. —[“Let a little water, I pray you, be fetched, and wash
your feet .... and he took butter, and milk, and the calf
which he had dressed, and set it before them : and he stood by
them under the tree and they did eat. And they said unto him,
Where is Sarah thy wife . . . And he said, I will certainly
return unto thee according to the time of life, and lo ! Sarah
thy wife shall have a son . . . And the Lord said unto Abra
ham. wherefore did Sarah laugh ? ... Is anything too hard
for the Lord ? At the time appointed I will return unto thee.”
Gen. xviii., 4—14].
16. —“And with the blast of thy nostrils the waters were
gathered together. ” Exod. xv. 2.
17. —“And it shall come to pass while my glory passeth by
that I will put thee in a clift of the rock, and will cover theewith my hand while I pass by. And I will take away mine
hand, and thou shalt see my back parts, but my face shall not
be seen.” Exod. xxxiii., 22, 23.
18. —“ Then the Lord put forth his hand, and touched my
mouth.” Jeremiah i., 9.
19. —“ Behold the Lord’s hand is not shortened, that it can
not save ; neither his ear heavy, that it cannot hear.” Isaiah
lix., 1.
20. —■“ Mine hand also hath laid the foundation of the earth,
and my right hand hath spanned the heavens.”
Isaiah
xlviii., 13.
21. —“I will also smite mine hands together, and I will
cause my fury to rest: I the Lord have said it.” Exekiel xxi. ,17.
22. —“ And the Lord spake unto Moses, saying.” Numbers
xxv., 16.
23. —“ And God spake unto Noah, saying.” Genesis viii., 15.
24. —“ And the Lord spake unto the fish, and it vomited out
Jonah upon the dry land.” Jonah ii., 10.
25. —“ And Abram fell on his face; and God talked with him
saying.” Genesis xvii., 3.
26. —“And the Lord smelled a sweet savor, and the Lord
said in his heart.” Genesis viii.. 21.
27. —“And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the
ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life : and
man became a living soul.” Genesis ii., 7.
28. —“ By the breath of God frost is given; and the breadth
of the waters is straitened.” Job xxxvii., 10.
29. —“ So Moses the servant of the Lord died there in the
land of Moab, according to the word of the Lord. And he
buried him in a valley in the land of Moab, over against Beth-
�ANALYSED.
11
peor; but no wan knoweth of his sepulchre unto this day,’*
Dent. xxxiv., 5, 6.
30.—“ They shall walk after the Lord; he shall roar like a
lion; when he shall roar, then the children shall tremble from,
the west.” Hosea xi., 10.
Also 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 40, 45, 47, 58, 59, 60, 61, 110, 125,
126, 128.
_____
II.—OMNIPRESENCE.
“ One God and father of all, who is above all, and through
all, and in you all.” Ephesians iv., 6.
“Whither shall I go from thy spirit ? Or whither shall I
flee from thy presence ? If I ascend up into heaven, thou art
there; if I make my bed in hell, behold, thou art there. If I
take the wings of the morning and dwell in the uttermost part
of the sea ; even there shall thy hand lead me ; and thy right
hand shall hold me.” Psalms cxxxix., 7—10.
31. —“ Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ
Jesus; who being in the form of God thought it not robbery to
be equal with God.” Philippians ii., 5, 6.
32. —“And the Lord came down upon Mount Sinai on the
top of the Mount; and the Lord called Moses up to the top of
the Mount, and Moses went up.” Exodus xix., 20.
33. —“ And the Lord came down in a cloud and spake unto
him, and took of the spirit that was upon him.” Num. xi., 25.
34. —“ And the Lord came down in the pillar of the cloud,
and stood in the door of the tabernacle.” Num. xii., 5.
35. —“I will gather all nations and tongues, and they shall
Come and see my glory.” Isaiah lxvi., 18.
36. —“ And come and stand before me in this house, which is
called by my name.” Jeremiah vii., 10.
37. —“ And the Lord said unto Moses. Come up to me into
the Mount, and be there.” Exodus xxiv., 12.
38. —“And he left off talking with him, and God went up
from Abraham.” Gen. xvii., 22.
39. —“And the Lord came down to see the city and the
tower, which the children of men builded.” Gen. xi., 5.
40. —“ And the Holy Ghost descended in a bodily shape like
a dove upon him, and a voice came from heaven which said,
Thou art my beloved son.” Luke iii., 22.
41. —“ For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with
a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of
God; and the dead in Christ shall rise first.” 1 Thess. iv., 16.
42. —“Thus saith the Lord, I am returned unto Zion, and
will dwell in the midst of Jerusalem.” Zechariah viii., 3.
43. —“ And I will return amongst the children of Israel, and
will be their God.” Exodus xxix., 45.
44. —“ And God met Balaam.” Num. xxiii., 4.
45. —“For the Lord thy God walketh in the midst of thy
camp .... therefore shall thy camp be holy, that he see no
�12
THE HOLY SCRIPTURES
unclean thing in thee, and turn away from thee.” Dent,
xxiii., 14.
46. —“They shall be carried to Babylon, and there shall they
be until the day that I visit them, saith the Lord.” Jer.
xxvii., 22.
47. —“I saw the Lord standing upon the altar.” Amos ix., 1.
48. —“ God that made the world, and all things therein,
seeing that he is the Lord of heaven and earth, dwelleth not in
temples made with hands.” Acts xvii., 24.
49. —“ Moreover the word of the Lord came to me, saying.”
Jer. ii., 1.
50. —“ God came from Teman, and the Holy One from Mount
Paran.” Habakkuk iii., 3.
Also 1, 59, 62, 65, 320.
III.—OMNIPOTENCE.
“With God all things are possible.” Matt, xix., 26.
51. —“And the Lord was with Judah, and he drave out the
inhabitants of the mountain, but could not drive out the inhabi
tants of the valley, because they had chariots of iron.” Judges
i., 19.
52. —“ Because the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and
the weakness of God is stronger than men.” 1 Cor. i., 25.
53. — “A noise shall come even to the ends of the earth, for
the Lord hath a controversy with the nations; he will plead
with all flesh.” Jeremiah xxv., 31.
54. —“ Hear the word of the Lord, ye children of Israel, for
the Lord hath a controversy with the inhabitants of the land.”
Hosea iv., 1.
55. —“I will also gather all nations, and will bring them
down into the valley of Jehoshaphat; and will plead with them
there for my people, and for my heritage Israel.” Joel iii., 2.
56. —“ Now, therefore, let me alone that my wrath may wax
hot against them, and that I may consume them.” Exodus
xxxii., 10.
57. —“ In six days the Lord made heaven and earth, and on
the seventh day he rested and was refreshed.” Exodus xxxi., 17.
58. —“For God created man to be immortal, and made him
to be an image of his own eternity. Nevertheless, through the
envy of the Devil, came death into the world; and they that do
hold of his side do find it.” Wisdom of Solomon, ii., 23, 24.
59. —“And Jacob was left alone; and there wrestled a man
with him until the breaking of the day. And when he saw
that he prevailed not against him, he touched the hollow of his
thigh ; and the hollow of Jacob’s thigh was out of joint, as he
wrestled with him. And he said, Let me go, for the day
breaketh; and he said, I will not let thee go except thou bless
me. And he said unto him, What is thy name ? And he said
Jacob. And he said, Thy name shall be called no more Jacob,
but Israel; for as a prince hast thou power with God, and with
�ANALYSED.
13;
menj and hath prevailed.” .... “ And Jacob called the name
of the place Peniel, for I have seen God face to face, and my
life is preserved.” Genesis xxxii., 24-30.
IV.—OMNISCIENCE.
“Thou Lord which knowest the hearts of all men.” Acts i.r
24.
*• But God hath revealed them unto us by his spirit: for the
spirit searcheth all things, yea, the deep things of God.”
1 Cor. ii. 10.
“ No thought escaped him, neither any word is hidden from
him ” Ecclesiasticus xlii., 20.
“O the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and know
ledge of God! how unsearchable are his judgments, and his
ways past finding out! ” Romans xi., 33.
60. —“ And the Lord God called unto Adam, and said unto
him, Where art thou ? ” Genesis iii. 9.
61. —“And he said, Who told thee that thou wast naked?
Hast thou eaten of the tree whereof I commanded thee that
thou shouldst not eat?” Genesis iii., 11.
62. —“ And God came unto Balaam, and said, What men are
these with thee ?” Numbers xxii., 9.
63. —“ And the Lord said, Who shall entice Ahab, king of
Israel, that he may go up and fall at Ramoth-gilead ? ”
2 Chron. xviii., 19.
64. —“Thus saith the Lord, What iniquity have your fathers
found in me, that they are gone far from me, and have walked
after vanity and are become vain ? ” Jeremiah ii., 5.
65. —“Then said the Lord unto Moses, Behold I will rain
bread from heaven for you, and the people shall go out and
gather a certain rate every day, that I may prove them
whether they will walk in my law or no.” Exodus xvi., 4.
66. —“ When therefore the Lord knew how the Pharisees had
heard that Jesus made and baptised more disciples than John.”
John iv., 1.
67. —“ Because the foolishness of God is wiser than men.”
1 Cor. i., 25.
68. —“Then they that feared the Lord spake often one to
another, and the Lord hearkened, and heard it, and a book of
remembrance was written before him for them that feared the
Lord, and that thought upon his name.” Malachi iii., 16.
69. —“ The Lord your God, which goeth before you, he shall
fight for you, according to all that he did for you in Egypt
before your eyes.” Deuteronomy i., 30.
70. —“And the Lord came down to.see the city, and the
tower which the children of men builded.” Genesis xi., 5.
71. —“I will go down now and see whether they have done
altogether according to the cry of it. . . . and if not, I will
know.” Genesis xviii., 21.
Also 59, 117, 140, 143, 307.
�14
THE HOLY SCRIPTURES
V.—MUNIFICENCE.
“He that loveth not, knoweth not God: for God is love.”
1 John iv., 8.
“ The Lord is good, a strong hold in the day of trouble, and
he knoweth them that trust in him.” Nahum i., 7.
‘ ‘ All the works of the Lord are good; and he will give every
needful thing in due season.” Ecclesiasticus xxxix., 33.
72. —“ For the Lord thy God is a consuming fire, even a
jealous God.” Deuteronomy iv., 24.
73. —“God is jealous, and the Lord revengeth; the Lord
revengeth and is furious: the Lord will take vengeance on
his adversaries; and he reserveth wrath for his enemies.”
Nahum i., 2.
74. —“ It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living
God.” Hebrews x., 31.
75. —“ For thou shalt worship no other God : for the Lord,
whose name is jealous, is a jealous God.” Exodus xxxiv., 14.
76. —“ They have moved me to jealousy with that which is
not God; they have provoked me to anger with their vanities;
and I will move them to jealousy with those which are not a
people, I will provoke them to anger with a foolish nation.”
Deuteronomy xxxii., 21.
77. —“I am the Lord, that is my name ; and my glory will I
not give to another, neither my praise to graven images.”
Isa. lxii., 8.
78. —“Turn, O backsliding children, saith the Lord; for I
am married unto you; and I will take you one of a city,
and two of a family, and I will bring you to Zion.” Jeremiah
iii., 14.
79. —“The Lord is a man of war; the Lord is his name.”
Exodus xv., 3.
80. —“The Lord shall go forth as a mighty man; he shall
stir up jealousy like a man of war.” Isaiah xlii., 13.
81. —“ The Lord hath opened his armory, and hath brought
forth the weapons of his indignation.” Jer. 1., 25.
82. —“ Thus saith the Lord God of Israel. Put every man
his sword by his side, and go in and out from gate to gate
throughout the camp, and slay every man his brother, and
every man his companion, and every man his neighbor. And
the children of Levi did according to the word of Moses ; and
there fell of the people that day about three thousand men.”
Exodus xxxii., 27, 28.
83. —“ For a fire is kindled in my anger, and shall burn unto
the lowest hell, and shall consume the earth with her increase,
and set on fire the foundations of the mountains. I will heap
mischiefs upon them, I will spend mine arrows upon them.
They shall be burnt with anger, and devoured with burning
heat, and with bitter destruction. I will also send the teeth of
beasts upon them, with the poison of serpents of the dust. The
sword without, and terror within, shall destroy both the young
�ANALYSED.
15
man, and the virgin, the suckling also with the man of grey
Itrafs.” Deuteronomy xxxii., 22, 23, 24, 25.
84. -—** Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve
them; for I the Lord thy God am a jealous God ; visiting the
iniquity of the fathers upon the children, unto the third and
fourth generation of them that hate me.” Exodus xx., 5.
85. —“The Lord hath made all things for himself ; yea, even
the wicked for the day of evil.” Proverbs xvi., 4.
86. —“I form the light, and create darkness; I make peace
and create evil; I the Lord do all these things.” Isaiah xlv., 7.
87. —“ And I will harden Pharaoh’s heart, and multiply my
signs and my wonders in the land of Egypt. But Pharaoh
shall not hearken unto you, that I may lay my hand upon
Egypt, and bring forth mine armies and my people the children
of Israel out of the land of Egypt, by great judgments.” Exod.
vii., 3, 4.
88. —“ And it came to pass that at midnight the Lord smote
all the first-born in the land of Egypt, from the first-born of
Pharaoh, that sat on his throne, unto the first-born of the
captive that was in the dungeon; and all the first-born of
cattle.” Exod. xii., 29.
89. —“ And my wrath shall wax hot, and I will kill you with
the sword ; and your wives shall be widows, and your children
fatherless.” Exod. xxii., 24.
90. —-“And the Lord spake unto Moses, saying, Vex the
Midianites, and smite them.” Numbers xxv., 16, 17.
91. —“ And the Lord’s anger was kindled the same time, and
he sware, saying: Surely none of the men that came up out of
Egypt from twenty years old and upwards, shall see the land
which I sware unto Abraham, unto Isaac, and unto Jacob ; be
cause they have not wholly followed me.” Num. xxxii., 10, 11.
92. —“Now go, and smite Amalek, and utterly destroy all
that they have, and spare them not; but slay both man and
woman, infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and ass.”
1 Samuel xv., 3.
93. «*“ The nations which thou hast removed and placed in
the cities of Samaria, know not the manner of the God of the
land; therefore, he hath sent lions among them, and behold,
they slay them, because they know not the manner of the God
of the land.” 2 Kings xvii., 26.
94. —“For the indignation of the Lord is upon all nations,
and his fury upon all their armies; he hath utterly destroyed
them, he hath delivered them to the slaughter.” Isaiah
xxxiv., 2.
95. —“Then the angel of the Lord went forth, and smote in
the camp of the Assyrians a hundred and four score and five
thousand.” Isaiah xxxvii., 36.
96. —“Therefore thus saith the Lord, Behold I will bring
evil upon them, which they shall not be able to escape, and
though they shall cry unto me, I will not hearken unto them.”
Jeremiah xi., 11.
97. —“ The fierce anger of the Lord shall not return until he
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THE HOLY SCRIPTURES
have done it, and until he have performed the intents of hi®
heart; in the latter days ye shall consider it.” Jer. xxx., 24.
98. —“ They come to fight with the Chaldeans, but it is to fill
them with the dead bodies of men whom I have slain in mine
anger, and in my fury, and for all whose wickedness I have hid
my face from this city.” Jer. xxxiii., 5.
99. —“ And he hath violently taken away his tabernacle as if
if it were of a garden; he hath destroyed his places of the
assembly; the Lord hath caused the solemn feasts and Sabbaths
to be forgotten in Zion, and hath despised in the indignation of
his anger the king and the priest.” Lam. of Jer. ii., 6.
100. —“The young and the old lie on the ground in the
streets: my virgins and my young men are fallen by the sword;
thou hast slain them in the day of thine anger; thou hast killed
and not pitied.” Lam. of Jer. ii., 21.
101. —“ Therefore the fathers shall eat the sons in the midst
of thee, and the sons shall eat their fathers; and I will execute
judgments in thee, and the whole remnant of thee will I scatter
into all the winds. Wherefore as I live, saith the Lord God,
surely because thou hast defiled my sanctuary with all thy de
testable things, and with all thine abominations, therefore will
I also diminish thee, neither shall mine eye spare, neither will I
have any pity.” Ezek. v., 10, 11.
102. —“So the Lord sent pestilence upon Israel; and there
fell of Israel seventy thousand men.” 1 Chronicles xxi., 14.
103. —“ He that is far off shall die of the pestilence, and he
that is near shall fall by the sword, and he that remaineth and
is besieged shall die by the famine; and thus will I accomplish
my fury upon them.” Ezek. vi., 12.
104. —“ Samaria shall become desolate, for she hath rebelled
against her God; they shall fall by the sword; their infants
shall be dashed in pieces, and their women with child shall be
ripped up.” Hosea xiii., 16.
Also 53, 70, 113, 114, 117, 122, 138, 141, 186.
VI.—IMPARTIALITY.
“ God is no respecter of persons.” Acts x., 34.
“ For there is no respect of persons with God.” Rom. ii., 11.
105. —“Therefore I endure all things for the elects’ sakes,
that they may also obtain the salvation.” 2 Timothy ii., 10.
106. —“For thou art an holy people unto the Lord thy God;
the Lord thy God hath chosen thee to be a special people unto
himself, above all people that are upon the face of the earth.”
Deuteronomy vii., 6.
107. —“And I will dwell among the children of Israel, and
will be their God.” Exodus xxix., 45.
108. —“ I will also gather all nations, and will bring them
down into the valley of Jehosophat, and will plead with
them there for my people, and for my heritage Israel, whom
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17
they have scattered among the nations, and parted my land.”
Joel iii., 2.
109. —“Lo, I have given thee a wise and understanding
heart, so that there was none like thee before thee, neither
after thee shall any arise like unto thee.” 1 Kings iii., 12.
110. —“ I have loved you, saith the Lord ; yet ye say, Where
in hast thou loved us ? Was not Esau Jacob’s brother, saith the
Lord ; yet I loved Jacob, and I hated Esau, and laid his moun
tains and his heritage waste, for the dragons of the wilderness.”
Malachi i., 2, 3.
111. —“ As it is written, Jacob have I loved, but Esau have I
hated.” Rom. ix., 13.
112. —“ Now God had brought Daniel into favor and tender
love with the prince of the eunuchs.” Daniel i., 9.
113. —“ For God loveth none but him that dwelleth with
wisdom.” Wisdom of Solomon vii., 28.
114. —“ The Lord maketh poor and maketh rich, he bringeth
low, and lifteth up.” 1 Samuel ii., 7.
115. —“The rich and poor meet together: the Lord is the
maker of them all.” Proverbs xxii., 2.
116. —“ For he saith to Moses, I will have mercy on whom I
will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I will
have compassion.” Homans ix., 15.
Also 87.
VII—IMMUTABILITY.
“For I am the Lord, I change not; therefore ye sons of
Jacob are not consumed.” Malachi iii., 6.
“Every good gift, and every perfect gift is from above, and
cometh down from the father of lights, with whom is no
variableness, neither shadow of turning.” James i., 17.
‘ ‘ God is not a man, that he should lie, neither the son of man
that he should repent; hath he said, and shall he not do it ? or
hath he spoken, and shall he not make it good ? ” Numbers
xxiii., 19.
_____
117. —“ And the Lord said, I will destroy man, whom I have
created, from the face of the earth, both man and beast, and
the creeping thing, and tbe fowls of the air; for it repenteth
me that I have made them.” Gen. vi., 7.
118. —“ And the Lord repented of the evil which he thought
to do unto his people.” Exodus xxxii., 14.
119. —“ It repenteth me that I have set up Saul to be king.”
1 Samuel xv., 11.
•
120. —“And when the angel stretched out his hand upon
Jerusalem to destroy it, the Lord repented him of the evil, and
said to the angel that destroyed the people, it is enough; stay
now thine hand.” 2 Samuel xxiv., 16.
121. -—“ If that nation against whom I have pronounced, turn
from their evil, I will repent of the evil that I thought to do
unto them.”—“ If it do evil in my sight, that it obey not my
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THE HOEY SCRIPTUBES
voice, then I will repent of the good wherewith I said I would
benefit them.” Jeremiah xviii., 8, 10.
122. —“For thus saith the Lord, Like as I have brought all
this great evil upon this people, so will I bring upon them all
the good that I have promised them.” Jeremiah xxxii., 42.
123. —“ Turn unto the Lord your God: for he is gracious and
merciful, slow to anger, and of great kindness, and repenteth
him of the evil.” Joel ii., 13.
124. —“ And God saw their works, that they turned from their
evil way; and God repented of the evil that he had said that
he would do unto them, and he did it not.” Jonah iii., 10.
125. —“ Thou hast forsaken me, saith the Lord, thou art gone
backward; therefore will I stretch out my hand against thee,
and destroy thee; I am weary with repenting. ’ ’ Jeremiah xv., 6.
Also 14 and 26.
VIII.—INCOMPREHENSIBILITY.
“ Who is the image of the invisible God, the first-born of
every creature.” Coloss, i., 15.
“ O the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and know
ledge of God! how unsearchable are his judgments, and his
ways past finding out I ” Romans xi., 33.
“For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your
ways my ways, saith the Lord.” Isaiah lv., 8.
126.—“And the Lord spake unto Moses face to face, as a
man speaketh unto his friend.” Exodus xxxiii., 11.
. 127.—“Then went up Moses and Aaron, Nadab and Abihu,
and seventy of the elders of Israel. And they saw the God of
Israel; and there was under his feet as it were a paved work
of a sapphire stone, and as it were the body of heaven in his
clearness.” Exodus xxiv., 9, 10.
128. —“ And Jacob called the name of the place Peniel; for
I have seen God face to face, and my life is preserved.”
Genesis xxxii., 30.
129. —“I sawtheLord standing upon the altar,” Amos ix., 1.
130. —“And Jesus when he was baptised went up straight
way out of the water: and lo, the heavens were opened unto
him, and he saw the spirit of God descending like a dove, and
lighting upon him.” Matthew iii., 16.
131. —“ And the Lord appeared unto him (Isaac), and said,
Go not down into Egypt; dwell in the land which I shall tell
thee of.” Genesis xxvi., 2.
132. —“ And the Lord appeared in the tabernacle in a pillar
of a cloud; and the pillar of the cloud stood over the door of
the tabernacle.” Deuteronomy xxxi., 15.
133. —“ Seek ye the Lord while he may be found, call ye
upon him while he is near.” Isaiah lv., 6.
134. —“And ye shall seek me and find me, when ye shall
search for me with all your heart.” Jeremiah xxix., 13.
135. —“Beloved, let us love one another; for love is of God;
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19
'and everyone that loveth is born of God, and knoweth God.”
1 John iv., 7.
136.—“This, then, is the message which we have heard of
him, and declare unto you, that God is light, and in him is no
darkness at all.” 1 John i., 5.
Also 1, 17, 34, 72, 79.
PASSAGES IMMORAL AND OBSCENE.
[We feel so strongly the harm that may be done by printing
at full length the obscene passages from the Bible, that we
only give the references to them. This book is meant for
general circulation, and we cannot reconcile it with secular
morality to print foul and disgusting language, conveying no
useful instruction, and so to aid the Christian Church to
“ corrupt the morals as well of youth as of divers other liege
subjects”, and to “ incite and encourage the said liege sub
jects to indecent, obscene, unnatural, and immoral practices.”]
GOD.
137. —Matthew i., 18, 19, and 20.
138. —“ And I will give this people favor in the sight of the
Egyptians; and it shall come to pass, that, when ye go, ye
shall not go empty. But every woman shall borrow of her
neighbor, and of her that sojourneth in her house, jewels of
silver and j ewels of gold, and raiment; and ye shall put them
upon your sons, and upon your daughters; and ye shall spoil
the Egyptians.” Exodus iii., 21, 22.
139. —“ So Jehu slew all that remained in the house of Ahab
in Jezreel, and all his great men, and his kinsfolks, and his
priests, until he left him none remaining.”—“ And the Lord
Said unto Jehu, Because thou hast done well in executing that
which is right in mine eyes, and hast done unto the house of
Ahab according to all that was in mine heart, thy children
of the fourth generation shall sit on the throne of Israel.”
2 Kings x., 11 and 30.
140. —“And the Lord said unto Samuel, How long wilt thou
mourn for Saul, seeing I have rejected him from reigning over
Israel ? Fill thine horn with oil, and go, I will send thee to
Jesse the Beth-lehemite : for I have provided me a king among
his sons. And Samuel said, How can I go ? If Saul hear it
he will kill me. And the Lord said, Take an heifer with thee,
and say I am come to sacrifice to the Lord.” 1 Samuel xvi.»
1, 2.
141. —“Wherefore I gave them also statutes that were not good,
and judgments whereby they should not live.” Ezekiel xx., 25.
142. -—-“And with all deceivableness of unrighteousness in
them that perish: because they receive not the love of the truth
that they might be saved. And for this cause, God shall send
them strong delusion, that they should believe a lie.” 2 Thess.
ii., 10, 11.
143. —“ And the Lord said, Who shall entice Ahab king of
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THE HOLY SCRIPTURES
Israel, that he may go up and fall at Ramoth-gilead ? And one
spake saying after this manner, and another saying after that
manner. Then their came out a spirit and stood before the
Lord, and said, I will entice him. And the Lord said unto him
Wherewith ? And he said, I will go out and be a lying spirit
in the mouth of all his prophets. And the Lord said, Thou
shalt entice him, and thou shalt also prevail; go out, and do
even so.” 2 Chron. xviii., 19, 20, 21.
144. —“ And if the prophet be deceived when he have spoken
a thing, I the Lord have deceived that prophet, and I will
stretch out mine hand upon him, and will destroy him from
the midst of my people Israel.” Ezek. xiv., 9.
145. —“And I will make drunk her princes, and her wise
men, her captains, and her rulers, and her mighty men: and
they shall sleep a perpetual sleep, and not wake, saith the king
whose name is the Lord of Hosts.” Jer. li., 57.
146. —“ Therefore thou shalt say unto them, Thus saith the
Lord of Hosts, the God of Israel, Drink ye and be drunken,
and spue, and fall, and rise no more, because of the sword
which I will send apiong you.” Jer. xxv., 27.
147. —“And thou shalt bestow that money for whatsoever
thy soul lusteth after, for oxen, or for sheep, or for wine, or
for strong drink, or for whatsoever thy soul desireth; and
thou shalt eat there before the Lord thy God, and thou shalt
rejoice, thou and thine household.” Deut. xiv., 26.
148. —“ Behold I will corrupt your seed and spread dung upon
your faces, even the dung of your solemn feasts.” Mai. ii., 3.
MOSES.
149. —“ And it came to pass in those days, when Moses was
grown, that he went out unto his brethren, and looked on their
burdens; and he spied an Egyptian smiting an Hebrew, one of
his brethren. And he looked this way and that way, and when
he saw that there was no man, he slew the Egyptian, and hid
him in the sand.” Exodus ii., 11, 12.
150. —Numbers xxxi., 17, 18.
151. —“And Moses spake unto the people, saying, Arm some
of yourselves unto the war, and let them go against the
Midianites, and avenge the Lord of Midiah.”—“And Moses
sent them to the war, a thousand of every tribe, them and
Phinehas the son of Eleazar the priest to the war, with the
holy instruments, and the trumpets to blow in his hand.”
Num. xxxi., 3, 6.
DAVID.
152. —2 Sam. xi., 2—25.
153. —“ And David laid up these words in his heart, and was
sore afraid of Achish the King of Gath. And he changed his
behavior before them, and feigned himself mad in their hands,
and scrabbled on the doors of the gate, and let his spittle fall
down upon his beard.” 1 Samuel xxi., 12, 13.
154. —Psalms xxxviii., 5, 7, 11.
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21
155. —1 Samuel xviii., 27.
156. —1 Kings i., 1 to 4.
157. —“ And David gathered all the people together, and
went to Kabbah, and fought against it, and took it. And he
took their king’s crown from off his head the weight whereof
was a talent of gold, with the precious stones, and it was set on
David’s head. And he brought forth the spoil of the city in
great abundance. And he brought forth the people that were
therein, and put them under saws and under harrows of
iron, and under axes of iron, and made them pass through the
brick-kiln; and thus did he unto all the cities of the children
of Ammon.
So David and all the people returned unto
Jerusalem.” 2 Samuel xii., 29 to 31.
158. —“ And behold (says David in his dying moments to his
son Solomon), thou hast with thee Shimei the son of Gera, a
Benjamite of Bahurim, which cursed me with a grievous curse,
in the day when I went to Mahanaim : but he came down to
meet me at Jordan, and I sware to him by the Lord, saying I will
not put thee to death by the sword. Now therefore hold him
not guiltless ; for thou art a wise man and knowest what thou
oughtest to do unto him ; but his hoar head bring thou down
to the grave with blood.” 1 Kings ii., 8, 9.
[ “Thou hast not been as my servant David, who kept my
■commandments and who followed me with all his heart, to do
only that which was right in mine eyes.” 1 Kings xiv., 8.]
SOLOMON.
159. —“ And he had seven hundred wives, princesses, and
three hundred concubines: and his wives turned away his
heart.” 1 Kings xi., 3.
160. —Solomon’s Song vii., 1 to 4.
JOSHUA.
161. —“And they utterly destroyed all that was in the city,
both man and woman, young and old, and ox, and sheep, and
ass, with the edge of the sword.” Joshua vi., 21.
162. —“And it was told Joshua saying, the five kings are
found hid in a cave at Makkedah. And Joshua said, Roll great
stones upon the mouth of the cave, and set men by it for to
keep them. And stay ye not but pursue after your enemies,
and smite the hindmost of them, suffer them not to enter into
their cities: for the Lord your God hath delivered them into
your hand. Then said Joshua, Open the mouth of the cave,
and bring out those five kings unto me out of the cave. And
afterwards Joshua smote them, and slew them, and hanged
them on five trees and they were hanging upon the trees until
the evening.” Joshua x., 17, 18, 19, 22, 26.
.
EZEKIEL.
163. —Ezekiel iv., 12 to 15.
ABRAHAM.
164.—“ And Abraham journeyed from thence towards the
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THE HOLY SCRIPTURES
south country, and dwelled between Kadqsh and Shur and
sojourned in Gerar. And Abraham said of Sarah, his wife,
She is my sister; and Abimelech king of Gerar sent and took
Sarah. But God came to Abimelech in a dream by night, and
said to him, Behold thou art but a dead man for the woman
which thou hast taken; for she is a man’s wife. But Abime
lech had not come near her, and he said, Lord wilt thou slay also
a righteous nation ? Said he not unto me, She is my sister ?
and she, even she herself, said, He is my brother: in the
integrity of my heart and innocency of my hands have I done
this.” Genesis xx., 1-5.
165. —“And Sarah saw the son of Hagar the Egyptian,
which she had bom unto Abraham, mocking. Wherefore she
said unto Abraham, cast out this bondwoman, and her son;
for the son of this bondwoman shall not be heir with my son,
even with Isaac. And Abraham rose up early in the morning
and took bread and a bottle of water, and gave it unto Hagar,
putting it on her shoulder, and the child, and sent her away;
and she departed and wandered in the wilderness of Beersheba.”
Genesis xxi., 9, 10, 14.
ISAAC.
166. —“ And the men of the place asked him of his wife : and
he said, She is my sister, for he feared to say, She is my wife;
lest, said he, the men of the place should kill me for Rebekah :
because she was fair to look upon. And it came to pass when
he had been there a long time, that Abimelech king of the
Philistines looked out at a window, and saw, and, behold, Isaac
was sporting with Rebekah his wife. And Abimelech called
Isaac, and said, Behold of a surety she is thy wife; and how
sayest thou, She is my sister ? And Isaac said unto him because
I said, Lest I die for her.” Genesis xxvi., 7, 8, 9.
NOAH.
• 167.—Genesis ix., 21, 22.
SAMSON.
168. —Judges xvi., 1.
JUDAH.
169. —Genesis xxxviii., 1 to 3. I 171.—Gen. xxxviii., 13 to 30.
170. —Genesis xxxviii., 8 to 9. |
LOT.
172. —Genesis xix., 30 to 36.
RUTH.
173. —Ruth iii., 3, 4, 7, "8, 9, 10, 11.
^RACHEL.
174. —Genesis xxx., 1 to 5. | 1,75.—Genesis xxxi., 33 to 35.
�ANALYSED,
23
POTIPHAR’S WIFE.
176. —Genesis xxxix., 7 to 20.
REUBEN.
177. —Genesis xxxv., 22.
| 178.—Genesis xlix., 3, 4.
AMNON.
179. —2 Sam. xiii., 10 to 14.
ABSALOM.
180. —2 Sam. xvi., 21, 22.
SHECHEM.
181. —Genesis xxxiv., 1, 2.
CHRIST.
182. —“ If any man come to me, and hate not his father, and
mother, and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters, yea,
and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple.” Luke xiv., 26.
183. —“ I am come to send fire on the earth ; and that will I,
if it be already kindled ? Suppose ye that I am come to give
peace on earth ? I tell you, Nay; but rather division.” Luke
xii., 49, 51.
184. —“Think not that I am come to send peace on earth; I
came not to send peace, but a sword. For I am come to set a
man at variance against his father, and the daughter against
her mother, and the daughter-in law against her mother-inlaw.” Matthew x., 34, 35.
185. —“Then said he unto them, But now, hethat hatha
purse, let him take it, and likewise his scrip; and he that hath
no sword, let him sell his garment, and buy one.” Luke xxii., 36.
186. —“But those mine enemies, which would not that I
should reign over them, bring hither, and slay them before
me.” Luke xix., 27.
|
187. —“He that believeth, and is baptised, shall be saved;
but he that believeth not shall be damned.” Mark xvi., 16.
188. —“ And whosoever shall not receive you, nor hear your
words, when ye depart out of that house, or city, shake off the
dust of your feet. Verily, I say unto you, it shall be more
tolerable for the land of Sodom and Gomorrah, in the day of
judgment, than for that city.” Matthew x., 14, 15.
189. —“And he said unto him, Unto you it is given to know
the mystery of the kingdom of God, but unto them that are
without, all these things are done in parables; That seeing they
may see, and not perceive, and hearing they may hear, and not
understand ; lest at any time they should be converted, and
their sins should be forgiven them.” Mark iv., 11, 12.
190. —“ And when they came nigh to Jerusalem, unto Bethphage, and Bethany, at the Mount of Olives, he sendeth forth
two of his disciples. And saith unto them, Go your way into,
the village over against you; and, as soon as ye be entered into
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THE HOLY SCRIPTURES
it, ye shall find a colt tied, whereon, never man sat; loose him,
and bring him. And if any man say unto you, Why do ye
this ? Say ye that the Lord hath need of him; and straight
way he will send him hither.” Mark xi., 1 to 3.
191. —“Now there was there, nigh unto the mountain, a
great herd of swine feeding. And all the devils besought him,
saying, Send us into the swine, that we may enter into them.
And forthwith Jesus gave them leave. And the unclean spirits
went out and entered into the swine ; and the herd ran violently
down a steep place into the sea (they were about two thousand)
and were choked in the sea.” Mark v., 11, 12, 13.
192. —“And on the morrow, when they were come from
Bethany, he was hungry. And seeing a fig-tree afar off, having
leaves, he came if haply he might find anything thereon : and
when he came to it, he found nothing but leaves ; for the time
of figs was not yet. And Jesus answered and said unto it, No
man eat fruit of thee hereafter for ever. And his disciples
heard it. And in the morning, as they passed by, they saw the
fig-tree dried up from the roots. And Peter, calling to remem
brance, saith unto him, Master, behold, the fig-tree which thou
cursedst is withered away.” Mark xi., 12, 13, 14, 20, 21.
PETER.
193. —“Then Simon Peter, having a sword, drew it, and
smote the high priest’s servant, and cut off his right ear. The
servant’s name was Malchus.” John xviii., 10.
194. —Peter says “ And it shall come to pass that every soul
which will not hear that prophet shall be destroyed from among
the people.” Acts iii., 23.
195. —“ Then took they him (Christ) and led him and brought
him into the high priest’s house, and Peter followed afar off.
And when they had kindled a fire in the midst of the hall, and
were set down together, Peter sat down among them. But a
certain maid beheld him, as he sat by the fire, and earnestly
feoked upon him, and said, This man was also with him. And
he denied him, saying, Woman, I know him not. And after a
little while another saw him, and said, Thou art also of them.
And Peter said, Man, I am not.” Luke xxii., 54 to 58.
PAUL.
196. —“ I robbed other churches, taking wages of them, to do
you service.” 2 Corinthians xi., 8.
197. —“ For if the truth of God hath more abounded through
my lie unto his glory, why yet am I also judged as a sinner.”
Romans iii., 7.
198. —“ But if any man be ignorant let him be ignorant.” 1
Corinthians xiv., 38.
199. —“ Beware lest any man spoil you through philosophy and
vain deceit, after the tradition of men, after the rudiments of the
world, and not after Christ.” Colossians ii., 8.
200. —“ As we said before, so say I now again, If any man
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25
/
preach any other gospel unto you, than that ye have received,
let him be accursed.” Galatians i., 9.
201. —“ If any man love not the Lord Jesus Christ, let him be
Anathema Maran-atha.” 1 Corinthians xvi., 22.
202. —“ A man that is an heretic, after the first and second
admonition reject.” Titus iii., 10.
203. —“ I would they were even cut off which trouble you.”
Galatians v., 12.
204. —“ But be it so, I did not burden you: nevertheless, be
ing crafty, I caught you with guile.” 2 Corinthians xii., 16.
205. —“ But Elymas the sorcerer (for so is his name by inter
pretation) withstood- them, seeking to turn away the deputy
from the faith. Then Saul (who also is called Paul) filled with
the Holy Ghost, set his eyes on him, and said, O full of all sub
tlety and all mischief, thou child of the devil, thou enemy of
all righteousness, wilt thou not cease to pervert the right ways
of the Lord. And now, behold, the hand of the Lord is upon
thee, and thou shalt be blind, not seeing the sun for a season.
And immediately there fell on him a mist and a darkness; and
he went about seeking some to lead him by the hand.” Acts
xiii., 8 to 11.
BARNABAS AND PAUL.
206. —“ And, some days after, Paul said unto Barnabas, Let
us go again and visit our brethren in every city where we have
preached the word of the Lord, and see how they do. And
Barnabas determined to take with them John, whose surname
was Mark. But Paul thought not good to take him with them,
who departed from them from Pamphylia, and went not with
them to the work. And the contention was so sharp between
them, that they departed asunder, one from the other; and so
Barnabas took Mark, and sailed unto Cyprus. And Paul chose
Silas, and departed, being recommended by the brethren unto
the grace of God.” Acts xv., 36 to 40.
JOHN.
•
207.—“ If there come any unto you, and bring not this
doctrine, receive him not into your house, neither bid him God
speed.” 2 John, 10.
GENERAL.
217. —Ezekiel xxiii.
208. —Isaiah xx., 4.
209. —Jeremiah iii., 9.
218. —2 Kings xviii., 27.
219. —1 Kings xiv., 10.
210. —Job xl., 17.
220. —Isaiah xvi., 11.
211. —Isaiah xlvii., 1, 2, 3.
221. —Isaiah xxvi., 18.
212. —Jeremiah xxx., 6.
222. —Judges iii., 21, 22.
213. —Isaiah xxxvi., 12.
223. —Deut. xxiii , 1.
214. —Isaiah xxxii., 11.
215. —1 Kings xiv., 24.
224. —1 Samuel xxv., 22.
216. —Ezekiel xvi., 4 to 58.
225. —Deut.-xxiii., 13.
226.—“Hethat is unjust, let him be unjust still; and he
which is filthy, let him be filthy still; and he that is righteous,
�26
THE HOLY SCRIPTUBES
let him be righteous still; and he that is holy, let him be holy
still.” Rev. xxii., 11.
227. ---Leviticus xi., 16, 17, IS, 24, 25, 32, 33.
228. —Leviticus xv., 2 to 13, 16 to 28, 32, 33.
229. —Leviticus xviii., 6 to 23.
230. —Leviticus xx., 10 to 21.
231. —Genesis xxv., 21 to 26.
232. —Deuteronomy xxviii., 57.
233. —Deuteronomy xxii., 15, 20, 21.
234. —Romans i., 26,- 27.
235. —2 Samuel xii., 11.
236. —Revelation xvii., 1 to 4.
237. —“ And there was war in heaven : Michael and his
angels fought against the dragon, and the dragon fought and
his angels.” Revelation xii., 7.
238. —“ And he was clothed in a vesture dipt in blood: and
his name is called, The Word of God. And the armies which
were in heaven followed him upon white horses, clothed in fine
linen, white and clean.” Revelation xix., 13, 14.
PASSAGES ABSURD AND UNNATURAL.
239. —“ Then spake Joshua unto the Lord, in the day when
the Lord delivered up the Amorites before the children of Israel,
and he said, in the sight of Israel, Sun, stand thou still upon
Gibeon, and thou, moon, in the valley of Ajalon. And the sun
stood still, and the moon stayed, until the people had avenged
themselves upon their enemies. Is not this written in the book
of Jasher ? So the sun stood still in the midst of heaven, and
hasted not to go down about a whole day.” Joshua x., 12, 13.
240. —“ The sun and moon stood still in their habitation ; at
the light of thine arrows they went, and at the shining of thy
glittering spear.” Habakkuk iii., 11.
241. —“ And Moses stretched out his hand over the sea, and
the Lord caused the sea to go back by a strong east wind all that
night, and made the sea dry land, and the waters were divided.
And the children of Israel went into the midst of the sea upon
the dry ground ; and the waters were a wall unto them on their
right hand, and on their left.” Exodus xiv., 21, 22.
242. —“ And Moses answered and said, But, behold, they will
not believe me, nor hearken unto my voice : for they will say,
The Lord hath not appeared unto thee. And the Lord said
unto him, What is that in thine hand ? And he said, A rod.
And he said, Cast it on the ground; and he cast it on the ground
and it became a serpent; and Moses fled from before it. And
the Lord said unto Moses, Put forth thine hand, and take it by
the tail; and he put forth his hand, and caught it, and it be
came a rod in his hand.” Exodus iv., 1, 2, 3, 4.
243. —“And the Lord said unto Moses, say unto Aaron,
stretch out thy rod, and smite the dust of the land, that it may
become lice throughout all the land of Egypt. And they did
so; for Aaron stretched out his hand with his rod, and smote
�ANALYSED.
the dust of the earth, and it became lice in man and in beast:
all the dust of the land became lice throughout all the land of
Egypt. And the magicians did so with their enchantments to
bring forth lice, but they could not; so there were lice upon
man and upon beast.” Exodus viii., 16—-18.
244. —“Make thee an ark of gopher-wood : rooms shalt thou
make in the ark, and shalt pitch it within and without, with
pitch. And this is the fashion which thou shalt make it of;
the length of the ark shall be three hundred cubits, the breadth
of it fifty cubits, and the height of it thirty cubits. A window
shalt thou make to the ark, and in a cubit shalt thou finish it
above; and the door of the ark shalt thou set in the side
thereof; with lower, second, and third stories shalt thou make
it. And behold I, even I, do bring a flood of waters upon the
earth, to destroy all flesh wherein is the breath of life from
under heaven; and everything that is in the earth shall die.
But with thee will I establish my covenant; and thou shalt
come into the ark; thou, and thy sons, and thy wife, and thy
sons’ wives with thee. And of every living thing of all flesh,
two of every sort shalt thou bring into the ark, to keep them alive
with thee ; they shall be male and female. Of fowls after their
kind, and of cattle after their kind, of every creeping thing on
the earth after his kind; two of every sort shall come unto thee
•to keep them alive. And take thou unto thee of all food that
is eaten, and thou shalt gather it to thee; • and it shall be for
food for thee, and for them. Thus did Noah ; according to all
that God commanded him, so did he.” Genesis vi., 14—22.
245. —“ And the flood was forty days upon the earth ; and
the waters increased, and bare up the ark, and it was lift up
above the earth. And the waters prevailed, and were increased
greatly upon the earth; and the ark went upon the face of the
waters. And the waters prevailed exceedingly upon the earth;
and all the high hills, that were under the whole heaven, were
covered. Fifteen cubits upwards did the waters prevail, and the
mountains were covered.” Genesis vii., 17—20.
246. —“ Elias was a man subject to like passions as we are,
and he prayed earnestly that it might not rain: and it rained
not on the earth by the space of three years and six months.”
James v., 17.
247. —“ And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the
ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and
man became a living soul.” Genesis ii., 7.
248. —“ And the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon
Adam, and he slept; and he took one of his ribs, and closed up
the flesh instead thereof. And the rib which the Lord God had
taken from man, made he a woman, and brought her unto the
man.” Genesis ii., 21, 22.
249. —“Then the Lord rained upon Sodom and upon Gomorrah
brimstone and fire from the Lord out of heaven. And he over
threw those cities, and all the plain, and all the inhabitants of
the cities, and that which grew upon the ground. But his
�28
THE HOLY .SCRIPTURES
(Lot’s) wife looked back from behind him, and she became a
pillar of salt.” Genesis xix., 24, 25, 26.
250. —“And he (Jacob) dreamed, and behold a ladder set
upon the earth, and the top of it reached to heaven; and
• behold, the angels of God ascending and descending on it. And
behold, the Lord stood above it, and said, I am the Lord God
of Abraham thy father, and the God of Isaac; the land whereon
thou liest to thee will I give it, and to thy seed.” Genesis
xxviii., 12, 13.
251. —“And it came to pass, as they still went on and talked,
that behold there appeared a chariot of fire, and horses of fire,
and parted them both asunder: and Elijah went up by a
whirlwind into heaven.” 2 Kings ii., 11.
252. —“Now the Lord had prepared a great fish [which Christ
tells us in Matthew xii., 45, was a whale] to swallow up Jonah.
And Jonah was in the belly of the fish three days and three
nights. Then Jonah prayed unto the Lord his God out of the
fish’s belly. And the Lord spake unto the fish, and it vomited
out Jonah upon the dry land.” Jonah i., 17, and ii., 1 and 10.
253. —“And he found a new jawbone of an ass, and put
forth his hand and took it, and slew a thousand men therewith.
And Samson said, With the jawbone of an ass, heaps upon
heaps, with the jawbone of an ass, have I slain a thousand
men.” Judges xv., 15,*16.
254. —“ And it came to pass, when she (Delilah) pressed him
(Samson) daily with her words, and urged him, so that his soul
was vexed unto death : that he told her all his heart, and said
unto her, There hath not come a razor upon mine head, for I
have been a Nazarite unto God from my mother’s womb; if I
be shaven, then my strength will go from me, and I shall
become weak, and be like any other man.” The story then
proceeds to represent Delilah as betraying Samson into the
hands of his enemies the Philistines, who shave off the hair of
his head, and afterwards put out his eyes and imprison him.
In course of time his hair begins to grow again, when his
strength returns. The Philistines then take him to their temple,
that he may make sport for them, and Samson then says unto
the lad that held him by the hand, “ Suffer me that I may feel
the pillars whereupon the house standeth, that I may lean upon
them. Now the house was full of men and women, and all the
lords of the Philistines were there; and there were upon the
roof about three thousand men and women that beheld while
Samson made sport............ And Samson took hold of the
two middle pillars, upon which the house stood, and on which
it was borne up, of the one with his right hand and the other
with his left.
And Samson said, Let me die with the
Philistines, and he bowed himself with all his might; and the
house fell upon the lords, and upon all the people that were
therein; so the dead which he slew at his death were more than
they which he slew in his life.” Judges xvi., 16—30.
255. —“And these three men,Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed-
�ANALYSED.
29
nego, fell down bound in the midst of the burning fiery furnace.
Then Nebuchadnezzar came near to the mouth of the burning
fiery furnace, and spake and said, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, ye servants of the most high God, come forth and come
hither. Then Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego came forth of
the midst of the fire. And princes, governors, and captains, and
the king’s counsellors being gathered together, saw these men
upon whose bodies the fire had no power, nor was a hair of
their head singed, neither were their coats changed, nor the
smell of fire had passed on them.” Daniel iii., 23, 26, 27.
256. —“ Then the king commanded and they brought Daniel,
and cast him into the den of lions. Now the king spake and
said unto Daniel, Thy God whom thou servest continually, he
will deliver thee. Then the king arose very early in the morn
ing, and went in haste unto the den of lions. And when he
came to the den, he cried with a lamentable voice unto Daniel:
and the king spake and said to Daniel, O Daniel servant of the
living God, is thy God, whom thou servest continually, able to
deliver thee from the lions ? Then said Daniel unto the king, O
king live for ever. My God hath sent his angel and hath shut
the lion’s mouths that they have not hurt me, forasmuch as
before him innocency was found in me ; and also before thee, O
king, have I done no hurt.” Daniel vi., 16, 19, 20, 21, 22.
257. —“And God saw the light that it was good; and God
divided the light from the darkness.” Genesis i., 4.
258. —“ And God made two great lights; the greater light to
rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night; he made the
stars also. And God set them in the firmament of the heaven,
to give light upon the earth.” Genesis i., 16, 17.
259. —“ And there shall be upon every high mountain, and
upon every high hill, rivers and streams of waters, in the day
of the great slaughter when the towers fall. Moreover, the light
Of the moon shall be as the light of the sun, and the light of
the sun shall be sevenfold, as the light of seven days, in the day
that the Lord bindeth up the breach of his people, and healeth
the stroke of their wound.” Isaiah xxx., 25, 26.
260. —“ Again, the Devil taketh him (Christ) up into an ex
ceeding high mountain, and showeth him all the kingdoms of
the world and the glory of them.” Matthew iv., 8.
261. —“ The hand of the Lord was upon me, and carried me
out in the spirit of the Lord, and set me down in the midst of
the valley which was full of bones, and caused me to pass by
them round about; and behold, there were very many in the
open valley; and lo, they were very dry. And he said unto me,
Son of Man, can these bones live ? And I answered, O Lord God
thou knowest. Again he said unto me prophesy upon these
bones, and say unto them, O ye dry bones, hear the word of the
Lord. Thus saith the Lord God unto these bones, Behold, I will
cause breath to enter into you and ye shall live. And I will lay
sinews upon you, and will bring up flesh upon you, and cover
you with skin, and put breath in you; and ye shall live, and ye
�30
THE HOLY SCBIFTITRES
shall know that I am the Lord. So I prophesied as I was com
manded ; and as I prophesied there was a noise, and behold a
shaking and the bones came together bone to his bone. And,
when I beheld, lo, the sinews and the flesh came upon them, and
the skin covered them above : but there was no breath in them.
Then said he unto me, Prophesy unto the wind, prophesy, Son
of Man, and say to the wind, Thus saith the Lord God, Come
from the four winds, O breath, and breathe upon these slain,
that they may live. So I prophesied as he commanded me, and.
the breath came into them, and they lived, and stood upon their
feet, an exceeding great army.” Ezekiel xxxvii., 1—10.
262. —“And it came to pass as they were burying a man, that
behold, they spied a band of men, and they cast the man into
the sepulchre of Elisha, and when the man was let down and
touched the bones of Elisha he revived, and stood up on his
feet.” 2 Kings xiii., 21.
263. —“Marvel not at this, for the hour is coming in the
which all that are in the graves shall hear his voice.” John v.,
28.
264. —“In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last
trump; for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be
raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed.” 1 Cor. xv., 52.
265. —“ Eor the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with
a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of
God; and the dead in Christ shall rise first; then we, which
are alive and remain, shall be caught up together with them in
the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air; and so shall we ever be
with the Lord.” 1 Thessalonians iv., 16, 17.
266. —“And I saw the dead small and great, stand before
God; and the books were opened, and another book was
opened, which is the book of life; and the dead were judged
out of those things which were written in the books according to
their works. And the sea gave up the dead which were in it;
and death and hell delivered up the dead which were in them;
and they were judged every man according to their works. And
death and hell were cast into the lake of fire. This is the second
death.” Revelation xx., 12—14.
267. —“ I am he that liveth and was dead; and behold I am
alive for evermore, Amen; and have the keys of hell and of
death.” Revelation i., 18.
268. —“But Mary stood without at the sepulchre, weeping;
and as she wept she stood down, and looked into the sepulchre.
And seeth two angels in white, sitting the one at the head, and
the other at the feet, where the body of Jesus had lain. And
they say unto her, Woman, why weepest thou ? She saith unto
them, Because they have taken away my Lord, and I know not
where they have laid him. And when she had thus said, she
turned herself back, and saw Jesus standing, and knew not that
it was Jesus. Jesus saith unto her, Woman, why weepest thou?
whom seekest thou ? She supposing him to be the gardener,
saith unto him, Sir, if thou have borne him hence, tell me
where thou hast laid him, and I will take him away. Jesus
�analysed.
31
saith unto her, Mary; she turned herself, and saith unto him,
Rabboni, which is to say Master.” John xx., 11—16.
269. —But Thomas, one of the twelve, called Didymus, was
not with them when Jesus came. The other disciples therefore
saith unto him, We have seen the Lord. But he said unto them,
Except I shall see in his hands the print of the nails, and put
my finger into the print of the nails, and thrust my hand into
his side I will not believe. And after eight days again his dis
ciples were within, and Thomas with them; then came Jesus,
the doors being shut, and stood in the midst, and said, Peace
be unto you. Then saith he to Thomas, Reach hither thy
finger, and behold my hands ; and reach hither thy hand, and
thrust it into my side ; and be not faithless but believing.”
John xx., 24—27.
270. —“Jesus saith unto them, Come and dine. And none of
his disciples durst ask him, Who art thou ? knowing that it was
the Lord. Jesus then cometh, and taketh bread, and giveth them,
and fish likewise. This is now the third time that Jesus showed
himself to his disciples, after that he was risen from the dead.”
Johnxxi., 12, 13, 14.
271—“And when he had spoken these things, while they
beheld, he was taken up; and a cloud received him out of their
sight. And while they looked steadily toward heaven, as he
went up, behold, two men stood by them in white apparel;
Which also said, Ye men of Galilee, why stand ye gazing up into
heaven ? This same Jesus, which is taken up from you into heaven
shall so come in like manner as ye have seen him go into heaven.”
Acts i., 9, 10, 11.
272. —“ Then the Spirit took me up, and I heard behind me a
voice of a great rushing, saying, Blessed be the glory of the Lord
from his place. So the Spirit lifted me up, and took me away,
and I went in bitterness, in the heat of my spirit; but the hand
of the Lord was strong upon me.” Ezekiel iii., 12, 14.
273. —“ And he put forth the form of an hand, and took me
by a lock of mine head; and the Spirit lifted me up between
the earth and the heaven, and brought me in the visions of God
to Jerusalem to the door of the inner gate, that looketh toward
the north, where was the seat of the image of jealousy, which
provoketh to jealousy.” Ezekiel viii., 3.
274. —“And Habbakuk said, Lord I never saw Babylon;
neither do I know where the den is. Then the angel of the
Lord took him by the crown, and bare him by the hair of his
head, and through the vehemency of spirit, set him in Babylon
over the den. And Habbakuk cried, saying, O Daniel, Daniel,
take the dinner which God hath sent thee.” Bel and the
Dragon, 35—37.
275. —“Then the high priest rose up, and all they that were
with him (which is the sect of the Sadduces) and were filled
with indignation. And laid their hands on the apostles, and
put them in the common prison. But the angel of the Lord by
night opened the prison doors, and brought them forth, and said
�32
THE HOLY SCRIPTURES
Go, stand and speak in the temple to the people, all the words
of this life.” Acts v., 17—20.
276. —“And behold, there was a great earthquake: for the
angel of the Lord descended from heaven, and came and rolled
back the stone from the door, and sat upon it.” Matthew
xxviii., 2.
277. —“And the angel of the Lord came again the second
time, and touched him, and said, Arise and eat, because thy
journey is too great for thee.” 1 Kings xix., 7.
278. —“Then the angel of the Lord put forth the end of the
staff that was in his hand, and touched the flesh, and the un
leavened cakes; and there rose up fire out of the rock, and
consumed the flesh, and the unleavened cakes. Then the angel
of the Lord departed out of his sight.” Judges vi., 21.
279. —“ Then Tobit called his son Tobias, and said unto him,
My son, see that the man have his wages which went with thee,
and thou must give him more. So he called the angel, and he
said unto him, Take half of all that ye have brought, and go
away in safety.” Tobit xii., 1, 5.
280. —“ Then the woman came and told her husband, saying,
A man of God came unto me, and his countenance was like the
countenance of an angel of God, very terrible; but I asked him
not whence he was, neither told he me his name.” Judges
xiii., 6.
281. —“ Whose throne is inestimable, whose glory may not be
comprehended, before whom the hosts of angels stand with
trembling.” 2 Esdras viii., 21.
282. —“ Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live.” Exod. xxii.,
18.
283. —“A man also, or woman that hath a familiar spirit, er
that is a wizard, shall surely be put to death; they shall stone
them with stones : their blood shall be upon them.” Lev. xx.,
27.
284. —“ And the woman said unto him, Behold thou knowest
what Saul hath done, how he hath cut off those who have
familiar spirits, and the wizards out of the land : wherefore, then
layest thou a snare for my life, to cause me to die ? ” 1 Sam.
xxviii., 9.
285. —“Jesus saith unto them, Eill the water pots with water.
And they filled them up to the brim. And he saith unto them,
Draw one now, and bear unto the governor of the feast. And
they bare it. When the ruler of the feast had tasted the water
that was made wine, and knew not whence it was (but the
servants which drew the water knew), the governor of the feast
called the bridegroom, and saith unto him, Every man at the
beginning doth set forth good wine ; and when men have well
drunk, then that which is worse; but thou hast kept the good
wine until now. This beginning of miracles did Jesus in Cana
of Galilee, and manifested forth his glory; and his disciples
believed on him.” Johnii., 7 to 11.
286. —“And Jesus said unto the centurion, Go thy way;
and as thou hast believed, so be it done unto thee. And his
�ANALYSED.
33
servant was healed in the selfsame hour. And when Jesus
was come into Peter’s house, he saw his wife’s mother laid,
and sick of a fever. And he touched her hand, and the fever
left her; and she arose, and ministered unto them.” Matt,
viii., 13, 14, 15.
28*7.—“And when he was entered into a ship, his disciples
followed him. And behold, there arose a great tempest in the
sea, insomuch that the ship was covered with the waves; but
he was asleep. And his disciples came to him, and awoke him,
saying, Lord, save us, we perish. And he saith unto them,
Why are ye fearful, O ye of little faith ? Then he arose, and
rebuked the winds and the sea; and there was a great calm.”
Matt, viii., 23 to 26.
288. —“And in the fourth watch of the night Jesus went
unto them, walking on the sea. And when the disciples saw
him walking on the sea, they were, troubled, saying, It is a
spirit; and they cried out for fear. But straightway Jesus
spake unto them, saying, Be of good cheer! it is I; be not
afraid. And Peter answered him, and said, Lord, if it be thou,
bid me come unto thee on the water. And he said, Come. And
when Peter was come down out of the ship, he walked on the
water, to go to Jesus.” Matt, xiv., 25 to 29.
289. —“ And Jesus arose and followed him, and so did his
disciples. And when Jesus came into the ruler’s house, and
saw the minstrels and the people making a noise, he said unto
them, Give place, for the maid is not dead, but sleepeth; and
they laughed him to scorn. But when the people were put
forth, he went in, and took her by the hand, and the maid
arose.” Matt, ix., 19, 23, 24, 25.
290. —“ And behold, a woman, which was diseased with an
issue of blood twelve years, came behind him, and touched
the hem of his garment. For she said within herself, if I may
but touch his garment, I shall be whole. But Jesus turned
him about, and when he saw her he said, Daughter, be of good
comfort; thy faith hath made thee whole. And the woman
was made whole from that hour.” Matt, ix., 20, 21, 22.
291. —“ And when he had thus spoken, he cried with a loud,
voice, Lazarus, come forth. And he that was dead came forth,
bound hand and foot with grave-clothes, and his face was
bound about with a napkin. Jesus saith unto them, Loose
him and let him go.” John xi., 43, 44.
292. —“And when the day began to wear away, then came
the twelve and said unto him, Send the multitude away, that
they may go into the towns and country round about, and
lodge, and get victuals; for we are here in a desert place. But
he said unto them, give ye them to eat; and they said, we
have no more but five loaves and two fishes; except we should
go and buy meat for all this people. For they were about five
thousand men. And he said to his disciples, make them sit
down by fifties in a company. And they did so, and made
them all sit down. Then he took the five loaves and two fishes,
and looking up to heaven he blessed them, and brake, and
�34
THE HOLY SCRIPTURES
gave to the disciples to set before the multitude. And they
did eat and were all filled, and there were taken up of frag
ments that remained to them twelve baskets.” Luke ix., 12
to 17.
293. —“And, when the day of Pentecost was fully come,
they were all with one accord in one place. And suddenly
there came a sound from heaven, as of a rushing mighty wind,
and it filled all the house where they were sitting. And there
appeared unto them cloven tongues, like as of fire, and it sat
upon each of them. And they were filled with the Holy Ghost,
and began to speak, with other tongues, as the spirit gave
them utterance.” Acts ii., 1 to 4.
294. —“ And he (Moses) was there with the Lord forty days
and forty nights; he did neither eat bread nor drink water;
and he wrote upon the tables the words of the covenant, the
ten commandments.” Exodus xxxiv., 28.
295. —“ And the angel of the Lord came again the second
time, and touched him, and said, Arise and eat, because the
journey is too great for thee. And he arose, and did eat and
drink, and went in the strength of that meat forty days and
forty nights, unto Horeb the mount of God.” 1 Kings xix.,
7, 8.
296. —“Moreover he said unto me, Son of man, eat that thou
findest; eat this roll (of a book), and go speak unto the house
of Israel. So I opened my mouth, and he caused me to eat
that roll. And he said unto me, Son of man, cause thy belly
to eat, and fill thy bowels with this roll that I give thee. Then
did I eat it, and it was in my mouth as honey for sweetness.”
Ezekiel iii., 1 to 3.
297. —“And when the ass saw the angel of the Lord, she
fell down under Balaam; and Balaam’s anger was kindled, and
he smote the ass with a staff. And the Lord opened the mouth
of the ass, and she said unto Balaam, What have I done unto
thee, that thou hast smitten me these three times ? ” Num,
xxii., 27, 28.
298. —“ And I beheld, and lo, the eagle rose upon her talons,
and spake to her feathers, saying, Watch not all at once:
sleep every one in his own place, and watch by course. Then
1 heard a voice, which said unto me, Look before thee, and
consider the thing that thou seest. And I beheld, and lo, as it
were a roaring lion chased out of the wood ; and I saw that he
sent out a man’s voice unto the eagle, and said, Hear thou, I
will talk with thee, and the highest shall say unto thee,” etc.
2 Esdras xi., 7, 8, and 36, 37, 38.
299. —“ But let man and beast be covered with sackcloth,
and cry mightily unto God; yea, let them turn every one from
his evil way, and from the violence that is in their hands.”
Jonah iii., 8.
300. —“ And I took it and drank; and when I had drank of it,
my heart uttered understanding, and wisdom grew in my breast,
for my spirit strengthened my memory.” 2 Esdras xiv., 40.
SOI.—“ In the lips of him that hath understanding wisdom is
�ANALYSED.
35
found; but a rod is for the back of him that is void of under
standing.” Proverbs x., 13.
302. —“ Jesus answered and said unto them, Verily I say unto
you, if ye have faith, and doubt not, ye shall not only do this
which is done to the fig tree, but also, if ye shall say unto this
mountain, be thou removed, and be thou cast into the sea, it
shall be done.” Matthew xxi., 21.
303. —“And the Lord said, If ye had faith as a grain of
mustard seed, ye might say unto this sycamine tree, Be thou
plucked up by the root, and be thou planted in the sea; and it
should obey you.” Luke xvii., 6.
304. —“Therefore I say unto you, what things soever ye
desire, when ye pray, believe that ye receive them, and ye shall
have them.” Mark xi., 24.
305. —“ Who is the image of the invisible God, the first-born
•of every creature.” Colossians i., 15.
306. —“ While we look not at the things which are seen, but
at the things which are not seen; for the things which are ceen
are temporal, but the things which are not seen are eternal.”
2 Corinthians iv., 18.
307. —“And it came to pass, as he was alone praying, his
disciples were with, him; and he asked them, saying, Whom
•say the people that I am ? ” Luke ix., 18.
308. —“ I and my father are one.” John x., 30.
308 [2],—“For there are three that bear record in heaven,
the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost; and these three
are one.” 1 John v., 7.
309. —“And David danced before the Lord with all his might;
and David was girded with a linen ephod.” 2 Samuel vi., 14.
310. —“ And all the host of heaven shall be dissolved, and the
heavens shall be rolled together as a scroll; and all their host
shall fall down as the leaf falleth off from the vine, and as a
falling fig from the fig tree.” Isaiah xxxiv., 4.
311. —“ And I saw a new heaven and a new earth ; for the
first heaven and the first earth were passed away; and there
was no more sea.” Revelation xxi., 1.
312. —-“Then said the Lord unto Moses, Behold I will rain
bread from heaven for you; and the people shall go out and
gather a certain rate every day, that I may prove them, whether
they will walk in my law or no. And they gathered it every
morning, every man according to his eating; and when the
Sun waxed hot it melted.” Exodus, xvi., 4, 21.
313. —“And it came to pass as they fled from before Israel,
and were in the going down to Beth-horon, that the Lord cast
down great stones from heaven upon them unto Azekah, and
they died; they were more which died with hail-stones than
they whom the children of Israel slew with the sword.”
Joshua x., 11.
314. —“Then the Lord rained upon Sodom, andupon Gomorrah
brimstone and fire from the Lord out of heaven.” Genesisxix., 24.
315. —“ And Elijah answered and said to the captain of fifty,
if I be a man of God, then let fire come down from heaven, and
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THE HOLY SCRIPTURES
consume thee and thy fifty, and there came down fire from
heaven and consumed him and his fifty.” 2 Kings i., 10.
316. —“And then the Lord’s wrath be kindled against you,
and he shut up the heaven that there be no rain, and that the
land yield not her fruit, and lest ye perish quickly from off the
good land which the Lord giveth you.” Deuteronomy xi., 17.
317. —“ When heaven is shut up, and there is no rain, because
they have sinned against thee; if they pray towards this place,
and confess thy name, and turn from their sin, when thou
afflictest them.” 1 Kings viii., 35.
318. —“I knew a man in Christ above fourteen years ago
(whether in the body, I cannot tell; or whether out of the
body, I cannot tell; God knoweth) such an one caught up to
the third heaven.” 2 Corinthians xii., 2.
319. —“ And when he had opened the seventh seal, there was
silence in heaven about the space of half an hour.” Lev. viii., 1.
320. —“ After this I looked; and behold, a door was opened
in heaven ; and the first voice which I heard was as it were of
a trumpet talking with me ; which said, come up hither, and I
will show the things which must be hereafter. And immediately
I was in the spirit; and behold a throne was set in heaven, and
one sat on the throne; and he that sat was to look upon like a
jasper, and a sardine stone ; and there was a rainbow round
about the throne, in sight like unto an emerald. And round
about the throne were four-and-twenty seats ; and upon the
seats I saw four-and-twenty elders sitting, clothed in white
raiment, and they had on their heads crowns of gold. And out
of the throne proceeded lightnings, and thunderings, and voices,
and there were seven lamps of fire burning before the throne,
which are the spirits of God. And before the throne there was
a sea of glass like unto crystal: and in the midst of the throne,
and round about the throne, were four beasts full of eyes before
. and behind. And the first beast was like a lion, and the second
beast like a calf, and the third beast had a face as a man, and
the fourth beast was like a flying eagle. And the four beasts
had each of them six wings about him, and they were full of
eyes within; and they rest not day and night saying, Holy,
holy, holy, Lord God Almighty, which was, and is, and is to
come.” Revelation iv., 1—8.
321. —“And, when they shall have finished their testimony
the beast that ascendeth out of the bottomless pit shall make
war against them, and shall overcome them, and kill them.”
Revelation xi., 7.
Also 30.
PASSAGES CONTRADICTORY.
322.—“ And he shall judge among many people, and rebuke
strong nations afar off; and they shall beat their swords into
ploughshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nationshall
�ANALYSED.
37
not lift up a sword against nation, neither shall they learn war
any more.” Micah iv., 3.
323.—‘ ‘ Beat your ploughshares into swords, and your pruning
-hooks into spears; let the weak say I am strong.” Joel iii., 10.
324. —“ Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels,
and have not charity, I am become as sounding brass, or a tink
ling cymbal. And though I have the gift of prophecy, and
understand all mysteries, and all knowledge, and though I have
all faith, so that I could remove mountains, and have not charity,
I am nothing.” 1 Corinthians xiii., 1, 2.
325. —“ As we said before, so say I now again, if any man
preach any other gospel unto you, than that ye have received,
let him be accursed.” Galatians i., 9.
326. —“ Whosoever hateth his brother is a murderer; and ye
know that no murderer hath eternal life abiding in him.”
1 John iii., 15.
327. —“ If any man come to me, and hate not his father, and
mother, and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters, yea,
and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple.” Luke xiv., 26.
328. —“ Then said Jesus unto them, put up again thy sword
into its place ; for all they that take the sword shall perish with
the sword.” Matthew xxvi., 52.
329. —“ Then he said unto them, but now he that hath a purse,
let him take it, and likewise his scrip; and he that hath no sword
let him sell his garment and buy one.” Luke xxii., 36.
330. —“ But I say unto you, that ye resist not evil; but who
soever shall smite thee on the right cheek, turn to him the other
also.” Matthey v., 39.
331. —“ Whoso sheddeth man’s blood, by man shall his blood
be shed; for in the image of God made he man.” Gen. ix., 6.
332. —“But I say unto you, love your enemies, bless them
that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for
them that despitefully use you, and persecute you.” Matthew
v., 44.
333. —“Then said he unto the disciples, it is impossible but
that offences will come; but woe unto him through whom they
come.” Luke xvii., 1.
334. —“ And whosoever shall not receive you, nor hear your
words, when ye depart out of that house, or city, shake off the
dust of your feet.” Matthew x., 14.
335. —Christ says, “ Whosoever shall say, thou fool, shall be
in danger of hell-fire.” Matthew v., 22.
336. —And yet he exclaims, “ Ye fools and blind, for whether
is greater, the gold, or the temple that sanctifieth the gold.”
Matthew xxiii., 17.
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THE HOLY SCRIPTURES
337. —“Thou shalt have no other gods before me.” Exodus
xx., 3.
338. —“ And God said, Let us make man in our image, after
our likeness; and let them have dominion over the fish of the
sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over
all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon
the earth.” Genesis i., 26.
339. “ Thou shalt not bow down thyself to the-m, nor serve
them; for I the Lord thy God am a jealous God, visiting the
iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and
fourth generation of them that hate me.” Exodus xx., 5.
340. “The soul that sinneth it shall die; the son shall not
bear the iniquity of the father, neither shall the father bear the
iniquity of the son ; the righteousness of the righteous shall be
upon him, and the wickedness of the wicked shall be upon
him.” Ezekiel xviii., 20.
341. —“ But the children of the murderers he slew not ac
cording unto that which is written in the book of the law of
Moses, wherein the Lord commanded saying, The fathers shall
not be put to death for the children, nor the children be put to
death for the fathers; but every man shall be put to death for
his own sin.” 2 Kings xiv., 6.
342. —“ Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days
shalt tnou labor, and do all thy work. But the seventh day is
the sabbath of the Lord thy God; in it thou shalt not do any
work, thou nor thy son, nor thy daughter, thy man-servant, nor
thy maid-servant, nor thy cattle, nor the stranger that is within
thy gate.” Exodus xx., 8, 9, 10.
343. —“ And he entered again into the synagogue; and therewas a man there which had a withered hand. And they watched
him, whether he would heal him on the sabbath day: that they
might accuse him. And he saith unto the man which had the
withered hand, Stand forth. And he saith unto them, Is it law
ful to do good on the sabbath days, or to do evil ? to save life
or to kill ? but they held their peace. And when he had looked
round about on them with anger, being grieved for the hard
ness of their hearts, he saith unto the man, Stretch forth thine
hand. And he stretched it out, and his hand was restored
whole as the other.” Mark iii., 1—5.
344. —“ Honor thy father and thy mother; that thy days may
be long upon the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee.”
Exodus xx., 12.
345. —“ If any man come to me, and hate not his father, and
his mother, and wife, and children, and brethren and sisters,
yea, and his own life also, he- cannot be my disciple.” Luke
xiv., 26.
346.—“ Thou shalt not kill.”
Exodus xx., 13.
�ANALYSED.
39
347. —“ But those mine enemies, which would not that I
should reign over them, bring hither and slay them before me.”
Luke xix., 27.
348. —“ And he said unto them, Thus saith the Lord God of
Israel, Put every man his sword by his side, and go in and out
from gate to gate throughout the camp, and slay every man
his brother, and every man his companion, and every man his
neighbor.” Exodus xxxii., 27.
349. —“ Thou shalt not commit adultery.” Exodus xx., 14.
350. —“Now the birth of Jesus Christ was on this wise;
when as his mother Mary was espoused to Joseph, before they
came together, she was found with child of the Holy Ghost.”
Matthew i., 18.
351. —“Thou shalt not steal.” Exodus xx., 15.
352. —“And I will give this people favor in the sight of the
Egyptians; and it shall come to pass, that when ye go, ye shall
not go empty. But every woman shall borrow of her neigh
bor, and of her that sojourneth in her house, jewels of silver
and jevels of gold, and raiment; and ye shall put them upon
your sons and upon your daughters; and ye shall spoil the
Egyptians.” Exodus iii., 21, 22.
Vide Note 137.
353. —“The Lord is good to all; and his tender mercies are
over al his works.” Psalms cxlv., 9.
354. —“ Thus saith the Lord of hosts, I remember that which
Amalel did to Israel, how he laid wait for him in the way
when le came up from Egypt. Now go and smite Amalek,
and uterly destroy all that they have, and spare them not;
but sla; both man and woman, infant and suckling, ox and
sheep, <amel and ass.” 1 Samuel xv., 2, 3.
355. —“ The Lord is gracious and full of compassion; slow
to ange* and of great mercy.” Psalms cxlv., 8.
356. —“ And he smote the men of Beth-Shemesh, because
they hal looked into the ark of the Lord, even he smote of the
people ifty thousand and three score and ten men: and the
people amented, because the Lord had smitten many of the
people nth a great slaughter.” 1 Samuel vi., 19.
v
•
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357. —“ Who is a God like unto thee, that pardoneth iniquity,
and paseth by the transgression of the remnant of his heri
tage ? h retaineth not his anger for ever, because he delighteth
in mere}” Micah vii., 18.
358. —‘And when the Lord thy God shall deliver them be
fore the; thou shalt smite them and utterly destroy them; thou
shalt maeno covenant with them, nor show mercy unto them.”
Deut. vi, 2.
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THE HOLY SCRIPTURES
359. “The Lord is slow to anger and great in power, and
will not at all acquit the wicked; the Lord hath his way in the
whirlwind and in the storm, and the clouds are the dust of his
feet.” Nahum i., 3.
360. —“So shall it be at the end of the world : the angels
shall come forth, and sever the wicked from among the just,
and shall cast them into the furnace of fire : there shall be
wailing and gnashing of teeth.” Matthew xiii., 49, 50.
361. —“ And they shall teach no more every man his neighbor
and every man his brother, saying, Know the Lord ; for they
shall all know me, from the least of them unto the greatest of
them, saith the Lord : for I will forgive their iniquity, and I
will remember their sin no more.” Jeremiah xxxi., 34.
362. —“ Behold, all souls are mine, as the soul of the father,
so also. the soul of the son is mine: the soul that sinneth it
shall die.” Ezekiel xviii., 4.
363. —“And rend your heart and not your garments, and
turn unto the Lord your God ; for he is gracious and nerciful,
siow to anger, and of great kindness, and repenteth bin of the
evil.” Joel ii., 13.
364. —“ And I will bring distress upon men, that they shall
walk like blind men, because they have sinned against the
Lord; and their blood shall be poured out as dust, and their
flesh as the dung.” Zephaniah i., 17.
.—------- —
/
365. —“ The Lord is not slack concerning his pronise (as
some men count slackness), but is long-suffering to is-ward,
not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to
repentance.” 2 Peter iii., 9.
366. —“ The Lord hath made all things for himsel ; yea,
even the wicked for the day of evil.” Proverbs xvi., 4.
367. —“ For thou lovest all the things that are, and a&horrest
nothing which thou hast made; for never wouldst thi>u have
made anything if thou hadst hated it.” Wisdom of Solomon
xi., 24.
368. —“ For God loveth none but him that dwelljth with
wisdom.” Wisdom of Solomon vii., 28.
369. —“For this is good and acceptable in the sight of God
our Savior. Who will have all men to be saved, andto come
unto the knowledge of the truth.” 1 Timothy ii., 3, 4
370. —“ And for this cause God shall send then strong
delusion, that they should believe a lie.” 2 Thessalonians
ii., 11.
I
371.—“Yet saith the house of Israel, the way of tl Lord is
not equal, O house of Israel, are not my ways equal are not
your ways unequal ? ” Ezekiel xviii., 29.
�ANALYSED.
41
372. —“ For thou art an holy people unto the Lord thy God:
the Lord thy God hath chosen thee to be a special people unto
himself above all people that are upon the face of the earth.”
Deuteronomy vii., 6.
373. —“Lying lips are abominations to the Lord; but they
that deal truly are his delight.” Proverbs xii., 22.
374. —“ Now, therefore, behold, the Lord hath put a lying
spirit in the mouth of all these thy prophets, and the Lord hath
spoken evil concerning thee.” 1 Kings xxii., 23.
375. —“For God sent not his Son into the world to condemn
the world; but that the world through him might be saved.”
John iii., 17.
376. —“ Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I
came not to send peace, but a sword. For I am come to set a
man at variance against his father, and the daughter against
her mother, and the daughter-in-law against her mother-inlaw.” Matthew x., 34, 35.
Also 182 and 183.
377. —“Wisdom is the principal thing; therefore get wisdom;
and with all thy getting, get understanding.” Proverbs vi., 7.
378. —“For in much wisdom is much grief; and he that
increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow.” Ecclesiastes i., 18.
379. —“Behold, I send you forth as sheep in the midst of
wolves; be ye therefore wise as serpents, and harmless as
doves.” Matthew x., 16.
380. —“For it is written, I will destroy the wisdom of the
wise, and will bring to nothing the understanding of the
prudent.” 1 Cor. i., 19.
381. —“The righteous shall flourish like the palm tree; he
shall grow like a cedar in Lebanon.” Psalms xcii., 12.
382. —“The righteous perisheth, and no man layeth it to
heart; and merciful men are taken away, none considering
that the righteous is taken away from the evil to come.” Isaiah
lvii., 1.
383. —“As it is written, There is none righteous, no, not
one.” Romans iii., 10.
384. —“ Confess your faults one to another, and pray one for
another, that ye may be healed. The effectual fervent prayer
of a righteous man availeth much.” James v., 16.
385. —“ Pray without ceasing.” 1 Thessalonians v., 17.
386. —“ And when ye spread forth your hands, I will hide
mine eyes from you; yea, when ye make many prayers I will
not hear; your hands are full of blood.” Isaiah i., 15.
387. —“Therefore we conclude, that a man is justified by
faith without the deeds of the law.” Romans iii., 28.
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THE HOLY SCRIPTURES
388. —“ Ye see then how that by works a man is justified,
and not by faith only.” James ii., 24.
389. —“ For by grace are ye saved, through faith, and that
not of yourselves ; it is the gift of God.” Ephesians ii., 8.
390. —“But wilt thou know, O vain man, that faith without
works is dead.” James ii., 20.
391. —“ As the cloud is consumed and vanisheth away; so he
that goeth down to the grave shall come up no more.” Jobvii., 9.
392. —“And the graves were opened; and many bodies of
the saints which slept arose, and came out of the graves after
his resurrection and went into the holy city, and appeared unto
many.” Matthew xxvii., 52, 53.
Also 268, 269, 270 and 271.
393. —“In the beginning God created the heaven and the
earth.” Genesis i., 1.
394. —And the earth was without form and void.” Genesis
i., 2.
395. —“ And God saw the light, that it was good; and God
divided the light from the darkness.” Genesis i., 4. (This
was on the first day.)
396. —“ And God made two great lights ; the greater light
to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night; he made
the stars also.” Genesis i., 16. (This was on the fourth day.)
397. —“ And God saw everything that he had made, and
behold it was very good. And the evening and the morning
were the sixth day.” Genesis i., 31.
398. —“ The earth also was corrupt before God, and the
earth was filled without violence.” Genesis vi., 11.
399. —“Behold, he putteth no trust in his saints; yea, the
heavens are not clean in his sight.” Job xv., 15.
400. —“ All things were made by him; and without him was
not anything made that was made.” John i., 3.
401. —“ For by him were all things created that are in heaven,
and that are in earth, visible and invisible, whether they be
thrones, or dominions, or principalities, or powers; all things
were created by him, and for him.” Colossians i., 16.
402. —“For God made not death; neither hath he pleasure
in the destruction of the living.” Wisdom of Solomon i., 13.
403. —“ For God is not the author of confusion, but of peace,
as in all churches of the saints.” 1 Corinthians xiv., 33.
404. —“ One generation passeth away, and another generation
cometh; but the earth abideth for ever.” Ecclesiasticus i., 4.
405. —“All these things live and remain for ever, for all
uses, and they are all obedient.” Ecclesiasticus xiii., 23.
�ANALYSED.
43
406. —“So shall it be at the end of the world; the angels
shall come forth, and sever the wicked from among the just.”
Matthew xiii., 49.
407. —“But the day of the Lord will come as a thief in the
night; in the which the heavens shall pass away with a great
noise, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat, the earth
also, and the works that are therein shall be burnt up.”
2 Peter iii., 10.
Also 311.
408. —“ For his anger endureth but a moment; in his favor
is life ; weeping may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the
morning.” Psalms xxx., 5.
409. —“ And the Lord’s anger was kindled against Israel, and
he made them wander in the wilderness forty years, until all
the generation that had done evil in the sight of the Lord was
consumed.” Numbers xxxii., 13.
410. —“Let no man say when he is tempted, I am tempted
of God; for God cannot be tempted with evil, neither tempteth
he any man.” James i., 13.
411. —“ And it came to pass after these things, that God did
tempt Abraham, and said unto him, Abraham, and he said,
Behold, here I am.” Genesis xxii., 1.
412. —“ And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from
evil: for thine is the kingdom, the power, and the glory, for
ever. Amen.” Matthew vi., 13.
413. —“ And no man hath ascended up to heaven, but he that
came down from heaven, even the Son of Man which is in
heaven.” John iii., 13.
414. —“And it came to pass, as they still went on and talked,
that behold, there appeared a chariot of fire, and horses of fire,
and parted them both asunder; and Elijah went up by a whirl
wind into heaven.” 2 Kings ii., 11.
415-—“ And I (Jesus) say unto you, my friends, be not afraid
• of them that kill the body, and after that have no more that
they can do.” Luke xii., 4.
416.—“ After these things Jesus walked in Galilee; for he
would not walk in Jewry, because the Jews sought to kill him ”
John vii., 1.
417. —“ For there are three that bear record in heaven, the
Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost; and these three are
one.” lJohnv.,7.
418. “ And the Lord God said, Behold the man is become
as one of us, to know good and evil; and now, lest he put forth
his hand, and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live for
ever.” Genesis iii,, 22.
419. —“There is one body, and one spirit, even as ye are
�44
THE HOLY SCRIPTURES
called in one hope of your calling; One Lord, one faith, one
baptism; One God and father of all, who is above all, and
through all, and in you all.” Ephesians iv., 4—6.
420. —“For there is one God, and one mediator between God
and men, the man Christ Jesus.” 1 Timothy ii., 5.
421. —“Remember the former things of old ; for I am God,
and there is none else; I am God; and there is none like me.”
Isaiah xlvi., 9.
422. —“ I and my father are one.” John x., 30.
423. —“ But if I do, though ye believe not me, believe the
works; that we may know and believe that the Father is in
me and I in him.” John x., 38.
424. —“I am the true vine, and my Father is the husband
man.” John xv., 1.
425. —-“And the father himself, which hath sent me, hath
borne witness of me. Ye have neither heard his voice at any
time, nor seen his shape.” John v., 37.
426. —“ The Father loveth the Son, and hath given all things
into his hand.” John iii., 35.
427. —■“ No man hath seen God at any time; the only begotten
Son, which is in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared
him.” Johni., 18.
428. —“Who only hath immortality, dwelling in the light
which no man can approach unto, whom no man hath seen,
nor can see; to whom be honor and power everlasting.” 1 Tim.
vi., 16.
429. —“And the Lord spake unto Moses face to face, as a
man speaketh unto his friend.” Exodus xxxiii., 11.
430. —“Then went up Moses and Aaron, Nadab and Abihu,
and seventy of the elders of Israel: And they saw the God of
Israel; and there was under his feet as it were a paved work of
a sapphire-stone, and as it were the body of heaven in In's
clearness.” Exodus xxiv., 9, 10.
Also 17, 128, 129, 130, 131, 132.
431. —“ And he said, Thou canst not see my face; for there
shall no man see me, and live.” Exodus xxxiii., 20.
432. —“ And Jacob called the name of the place Peniel; for I
have see God face to face, and my life is preserved.” Genesis
xxxii., 30.
Also 429.
433. —“Marvel not at this, for the hour is coming in the
which all that are in the graves shall hear his voice, and shall
come forth, they that have done good, unto the resurrection
of life; and they that have done evil unto the resurrection of
damnation.” John v., 28, 29.
434. —“And I saw the dead, small and great, stand before
God; and the books were opened; and another book was opened,
�ANALYSED.
45
which is the book of life; and the dead were judged out of
those things which were written in the books, according to
their works.” Rev. xx., 12.
435,—“ For that which befalleth the sons of men befalleth
beasts; even one thing befalleth them; as the one dieth, so
dieth the other; yea, they have all one breath; so that a man
hath no pre-eminence above a beast: for all is vanity. All go
unto one place : all are of the dust, and all turn to dust again.
Who knoweth the spirit of man that goeth upward, and the
spirit of the beast that goeth downward to the earth ! Where
fore I perceive that there is nothing better than that a man
should rejoice in his own works, for that is his portion ; for
who shall bring him to see what shall be after him ? ” Eccles,
iii., 19—22.
Also 391.
436. —“ The Father loveth the Son, and hath given all things
into his hand.” John iii., 35.
437. —“ For though he (the Son) was crucified through weak
ness, yet he liveth by the power of God. For we also are weak
in him, but we shall live with him by the power of God toward
you.” 2 Corinthians xiii., 4.
438. —“ And he (Judas) cast down the pieces of silver in the
temple, and departed, and went and hanged himself.” Mat
thew xxvii., 5.
439. —“Now this man (Judas) purchased a field with the re
ward of iniquity; and falling headlong, he burst asunder in
the midst, and all his bowels gushed out.” Acts i., 18.
440. —“And Jesus saith unto them, How many loaves have
ye ? and they said, Seven, and a few little fishes. And he took
the seven loaves and the fishes and gave thanks, and brake
them, and gave to his disciples, and the disciples to the multi
tude. And they did all eat, and were filled ; and they took up
of the broken meat that was left seven baskets full. And they
that did eat were four thousand men, beside women and
children.” Matthew xv., 34, 36, 37, 38.
441. —“But he said unto .them, Give ye them to eat. And
they said, We have no more but five loaves and two fishes;
except we should go and buy meat for all this people. For
they were about five thousand men. And he said to his dis
ciples, Make them sit down by fifties in a company. Then he
took the five loaves and the two fishes, and looking up to
heaven, he blessed them, and brake, and gave to the disciples
to set before the multitude. And they did eat, and were all
filled; and there was taken up of fragments that remained to
them twelve baskets.” Luke ix., 13, 14, 16, 17.
Vide 292.
�46
THE HOLY SCBIPTURES
442. —“ And set np over his head, his accusation written,
This is Jesus the King of the Jews.” Matthew xxvii., 37.
443. —“ And the superscription of his accusation was written
over, The King of the Jews.” Mark xv., 26.
444. —“And a superscription also was written over him, in
letters of Greek, and Latin, and Hebrew, This is the King of
the Jews.” Luke xxiii., 28.
445. —“And Pilate wrote a title, and put it on the cross.
And the writing was, Jesus of Nazareth the King of the Jews.”
John xix., 19.
446.—“ But while he thought on these things, behold the
angel of the Lord appeared unto him (Joseph) in a dream, say
ing, Joseph, thou son of David, fear not to take unto thee
Mary thy wife; for that which is conceived in her is of the
Holy Ghost.” Matthew i., 20.
In 448 the angel is represented not as appearing unto Joseph,
but unto Mary, his wife.
448.—“And the angel said unto her, fear not, Mary; for
thou hast found favor with God. And behold, thou shalt con
ceive in thy womb, and bring forth a son, and shalt call his
name Jesus. Then said Mary unto the angel, How shall this
be, seeing I know not a man. And the angel answered and
said unto her, The Holy Ghost shall come upon thee, and the
power of the Highest shall overshadow thee; therefore also
that holy thing which shall be born of thee shall be called the
Son of God.” Luke i., 30, 31, 34, 35.
449.—“ In the end of the sabbath, as it began to dawn to
wards the first day of the week, came Mary Magdelene, and
the other Mary, to see the sepulchre.” Matthew xxviii., 1.
450—“ And when the Sabbath was past, Mary Magdalene,
and Mary the mother of James, and Salome, had bought sweet
spices, that they might come and anoint him. And very early
in the morning of the first day of the week they came into the
sepulchre at the rising of the sun.” Mark xvi., 1, 2.
451.—“The first day of the week cometh Mary Magdalene
early, when it was yet dark, unto the sepulchre, and seeth the
stone taken away from the sepulchre.” John xx., 1.
452.—“Now upon the first day of the week, very early in the
morning, they came unto the sepulchre, bringing the spices which
they had prepared and certain others with them. ” Luke xxiv., 1.
The individuals coming to the sepulchre are Mary Magda
lene, and Joanna, and Mary the mother of James, and other
women. Verse 10.
In 450 it was Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James
and Salome that came; in 449 it was only Mary Magdalene
and the other Mary; and in 451 it was only Mary Magdalene.
453.—“And, behold, there was a great earthquake; for the
�ANALYSED.
47
angel of the Lord descended from heaven, and came and rolled
back the stone from the door and sat upon it.” Matthew
xxviii., 2.
454.—“And they said among themselves, Who shall roll us
away the stone from the door of the sepulchre ? And when
they looked they saw that the stone was rolled away, for it was
very great. And entering into the sepulchre, they saw a young
man sitting on the right side, clothed in a long white garment;
and they were affrighted.” Mark xvi., 3, 4, 5.
In 453 the angel is represented as sitting outside the sepulchre
upon the stone which he rolled from the door, and in 454 as
sitting within the sepulchre on the right side.
455.—“ And they entered in, and found not the body of the
Lord Jesus. And it came to pass, as they were much perplexed
thereabout, behold, two men stood by them in shining**
ments.” Luke xxiv., 3, 4.
1
In 453, 454, and 456, the angels are represented nc
standing, but as sitting.
1
456.—“But Mary stood without at the sepulchre, weepl
and as she wept she stooped down, and looked into the sepull
and seeth two angels in white, sitting, the one at the ha
and the other at the feet, where the body of Jesus had lai
John xx., 11, 12.
I
In this and 455 there are represented as being two angl
while according to 453, 454, there was only one. In this Ml
merely looked into the sepulchre; while in 454 she and thl
who accompanied her went into it.
457. —“And the angel answered and said unto the womtW
Fear not ye ; for I know that ye seek Jesus, which was crucifkfig
He is not here ; for he is risen, as he said : Come, see the plaM
where the Lord lay.” Matthew xxviii., 5, 6.
k
458. —“ And when she had thus said, she turned herself bac®
and saw Jesus standing, and knew not that it was Jesus. JesiB
saith unto her, Woman, why weepest thou ? whom seekestthouB
She, supposing him to be the gardener, saith unto him, Sir, B
thou have borne him hence, tell me where thou hast laid hinl
and I will take him away. Jesus saith unto her, Mary. Shi
turned herself, and saith unto him, Rabboni; which is to sal
Master. Jesus saith unto her; Touch me not; for I am not y 1
ascended to my Father; but go to my brethren, and say un B
them, I ascend unto my Father and your Father, and to ml
God and your God.” John xx., 14-17.
1
In 457 the angel is represented as telling the women or]
woman of Christ’s rising from the dead; in 458 Christ is re-'
presented as telling them himself.
j
�48
THE HOLY SCRIPTURES ANALYSED.
4a9.—“ And go quickly, and tell his disciples that he is risen
fropa the dead; and, behold, he goeth before you into Galilee ;
there shall ye see him; lo, I have told you. Then the eleven
disciples went away into Gallilee, into a mountain where Jesus
had appointed them. And when they saw him, they worshipped
him ; but some doubted.” Matthew xxviii., 7, 16, 17.
460. “And they rose up the same hour, and returned to
Jerusalem, and found the eleven gathered together and them
that were with them, saying, The Lord is risen indeed, and hath
appeared to Simon. And they told what things were done in
the way, and how he was known of them in breaking of bread.
And as they thus spake, Jesus himself stood in the midst of
them, and saith unto them, Peace be unto you.” Luke xxiv
33-36.
’
•
/
---------
( In 459 the eleven disciples went to Galilee to meet Jesus
according to appointment, where they saw him and worshipped
460 they did no such thing> but Jesus appeared unto
' „
quite unexpectedly, as they were assembled together at
thou salem.
ceive
_____
nami
he, sll>—“So then after the Lord had spoken unto them (the
said en apostles that were sat at meat), he was received up to
powven, and sat on the right hand of God.” Mark xvi., 19.
thaf62.—“ And he led them (the eleven apostles) out as far as to
Sonluiny; and he lifted up his hands and blessed them. And
lame to pass, while he blessed them, he was parted from
4<m, and carried up into heaven.” Luke xxiv., 50, 51.
Christ ascended into heaven from the place where the
the08?!68 were sa4 a4 meat, after he had done speaking to them;
4d in 462 he first led them out to Bethany, and then hisascenan(jn took place.
spi
in
sei
ea
st'
n
tl
k
W'
a
iijb
�
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The Holy scriptures analysed or: Passages inconsistent with the attributes generally ascribed to the Deity by the Christian world
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Edition: [2nd ed.]
Place of publication: [Manchester]
Collation: 48 p. ; 18 cm.
Notes: Last page torn. Introductory sketch of the life of Robert Cooper / Charles Bradlaugh (p.[1]-2) -- A vindication written for the second edition after the work had been specially attacked by the Bishop of Exeter in the House of Lords / Robert Cooper (p.[3]-8) -- The Holy Scriptures analysed (p.[9]-48). Publisher and place of publication from British Library. "Vindication" dated Manchester, July 1840. Part of the NSS pamphlet collection.
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Cooper, Robert [1819-1868]
Bradlaugh, Charles [1833-1891]
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[Published by Jas. Cooper]
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1840
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Bible
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Bible-Criticism
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/
NATIONAL SECULAR SOCIETY
LITERATURE & DOGMA
�‘ La tendance a Tordre ne peut-elle faire tine partie essentielle
de nos inclinations, de notre instinct, coniine la tendance a la
conservation, d la reproduction V
Senancour.
(‘May not the tendency to conduct form an essential part
of our inclinations, of our instinct, like the tendency to self
preservation, to the reproduction of the species?’)
�LITERATURE & DOGMA
AN ESSAY TOWARDS
A BETTER APPREHENSION OF THE BIBLE
BY
MATTHEW ARNOLD
FORMERLY PROFESSOR OF POETP.Y IN THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD
AND FELLOW OF ORIEL COLLEGE
[PUBLISHED FOR THE RATIONALIST PRESS ASSOCIATION, LIMITED]
LONDON
WATTS & CO.
17 JOHNSON'S COURT, FLEET STREET
1902
[All rights reserved]
��PREFACE
TO
POPULAR
When I praise cheap books and insist on
the need for them, people turn round
upon me and say, '■Physician, heal thyself!
nobody’s books are dearer than your own.’
Whether his books shall be cheap or not,
does not depend wholly upon the author;
and I might urge, besides, that in fore
telling a success for cheap books, I was
thinking of books by authors more popular
than I am. A volume of my verse, how
ever, at a comparatively cheap price, has
been in circulation for some time, and
I have long had the wish to try the
experiment of bringing out one of my
prose books at a price yet cheaper. That
wish I fulfil by the publication of the
present volume. The book chosen has
been more in demand than any other of
my prose writings, and it lent itself to my
purpose, further, by admitting of consider
able condensation. The argument of the
work is more readily followed, and for the
general reader it probably gains in force,
by the suppression of a good deal of the
apparatus of citation and illustration from
Scripture which originally accompanied
it. The public to which the book was in
the first instance addressed was one which
expects, with a work of this kind, such an
apparatus. But to the general public its
fulness is not so well suited, and, for them,
its reduction probably improves the book
at the same time that it shortens it.
I do not, however, choose for the
experiment of a popular edition this
book, merely because it admits of being
EDITION (1883)
shortened, or because it has been much
in demand. I choose it far more for the
reason that I think it, of all my books in
prose, the one most important (if I may
say so) and most capable of being useful.
Ten years ago, when it was first published,
I explained my design in writing it. No
one who has had experience of the
inattention and random judgments of
mankind will be very quick to cry out
because a serious design is not fairly and
fully apprehended. Literature and Dogma,
however, has perhaps had more than its
due share of misrepresentation.
The sole notion of Literature and
Dogma, with many people, is that it is a
book containing an abominable illustra
tion, and attacking Christianity. It may
be regretted that an illustration likely to
be torn from its context, to be improperly
used, and to give pain, should ever have
been adopted. But it was not employed
aggressively or bitterly; on the contrary,
it was part of a plea for treating popular
religion with gentleness and indulgence.
Many of those who have most violently
protested against the illustration resent it,
no doubt, because it directs attention to
that extreme licence of affirmation about
God which prevails in our popular re
ligion ; and one is not the easier forgiven
for directing attention to error, because
one marks it as an object for indulgence.
To protesters of this sort I owe no de
ference and make no concessions. But
the illustration has given pain, I am told,
�6
LITERATURE AND DOGMA
in a quarter where my deference, and the
deference of all who can appreciate one
of the purest careers and noblest characters
of our time, is indeed due • and finding
that in that quarter pain has been given
by the illustration, I do not hesitate to
expunge it.
The illustration, then, disappears; let
me add a word or two as to the notion
that Literature and Dogma is an attack
upon Christianity. It is not even an
attack upon the errors of popular Chris
tianity. Those errors are very open to
attack; they are much attacked already,
and in a fashion, often, which I dislike
and condemn; they will certainly be at
tacked more and more, until they perish.
But it is not the object of Literature and
Dogma to attack them. Neither, on the
other hand, is it the object of Literature
and Dogma to contend with the enemies
and deniers of Christianity, and to con
vince them of their error. Sooner or
later, indeed, they will be convinced of it,
but by other agencies and through a quite
other force than mine ; it is not the object
of Literature and Dogma to confute them.
The object of Literature and Dogma is
to re-assure those who feel attachment
to Christianity, to the Bible, but who
recognise the growing discredit befalling
miracles and the supernatural. Such
persons are to be re-assured, not by dis
guising or extenuating the discredit which
has befallen miracles and the supernatural,
but by insisting on the natural truth of
Christianity. That miracles have fallen
into discredit is to be frankly admitted ;
that they have fallen into discredit justly
and necessarily, and through the very
Same natural and salutary process which
had previously extinguished our belief in
witchcraft, is to be frankly admitted also.
Even ten years ago, when Literature and
Dogma was first published, lucidity on
his matter was, on the whole, not danger
ous but expedient; it is even yet more
expedient to-day. It has become even
yet more manifest that by the sanction of
miracles Christianity can no longer stand;
it can stand only by its natural truth.
Of course, to pass from a Christianity
relying on its miracles to a Christianity
relying on its natural truth is a great
change. It can only be brought about by
those whose attachment to Christianity is
such, that they cannot part with it, and
yet cannot but deal with it sincerely.
This was the case with the Germanic
nations who brought about that former
great change, the Reformation. Probably
the abandonment of the tie wfith Rome
was hardly less of a change to the
Christendom of the sixteenth century,
than the abandonment of the proof from
miracles is to the Christendom of to-day.
Yet the Germanic nations broke the tie
with Rome, because they loved Chris
tianity well enough to deal sincerely with
themselves as to clericalism and tradition.
The Latin nations did not break their tie
with Rome. This was not because they
loved Rome more, or because they less
saw the truth as to clericalism or tradition
—a truth which had become evident
enough then, as the truth about miracles
has become now.
But they did not
really care enough about Christianity (I
speak of the nations, not, of course, of
individuals) to feel compelled to deal
sincerely with themselves about it. The
heretical Germanic nations, who re
nounced clericalism and tradition, proved
their attachment to Christianity by so
doing, and preserved for it that serious
hold upon men’s minds which is a great
and beneficent force to-day, and the
force to which Literature and Dogma
makes appeal. Miracles have to go the
same way as clericalism and tradition ;
and the important thing is, not that the
world should be acute enough to see this
�PREFACE TO POPULAR EDITION
7
(there needs, indeed, no remarkable the subject of the New, Righteousness by
acuteness to see it), but that a great and Jesus Christ, are, in positive strict truth,
progressive part of the world should be man’s most momentous matters of concern.
capable of seeing this and of yet holding The command of the Old Testament,
‘Fear God and keep his commandments,’
fast to Christianity.
To assist those called to such an put into other words, what is it but this :
endeavour, is the object, I repeat, of ‘Reverently obey the eternal power moving
Literature and Dogma. It is not an us to fulfil the true law of our being ; ’—•
attack upon miracles and the super and when shall that command be done
natural. It unreservedly admits, indeed, away ? The command of the New Testa
that the belief in them has given way ment : ‘ Watch that ye may be counted
and cannot be restored, it recommends worthy to stand before the Son of Man,’
entire lucidity of mind on this subject, put into other words, what is it ? It is
it points out certain characters of weak this : ‘ So live, as to be worthy of that
ness in the sanction drawn from miracles, high and true ideal of man and of man’s
even while the belief in them lasted. Its life, which shall be at last victorious.’
real concern, however, is not with miracles, All the future is there.
Jesus himself, as he appears in the
but with the natural truth of Christianity.
It is after this that, among the more Gospels, and for the very reason that he
serious races of the world, the hearts of is so manifestly above the heads of his
men are really feeling; and what really reporters there, is, in the jargon of modern
furthers them is to establish it. At philosophy, an absolute ; we cannot explain
present, reformers in religion are far too him, cannot get behind him and above
negative, spending their labour, some of him, cannot command him. He is there
them, in inveighing against false beliefs fore the perfection of an ideal, and it is as
which are doomed, others, in contending an ideal that the divine has its best worth
about matters of discipline and ritual which and reality. The unerring and consum
are indifferent. Popular Christianity de mate felicity of Jesus, his prepossessing
rived its power from the characters of ness, his grace and truth, are, moreover,
certainty and of grandeur which it wore ; at the same time the law for right perform
these characters do actually belong to ance on all man’s great lines of endeavour,
Christianity in its natural truth, and to although the Bible deals with the line of
show them there should be our object. conduct only.
Even those corrections, and they are
This alone is really important.
And shown they can be. Certainty and many and grave, which will have to be
grandeur are really and truly characters applied to popular Christianity, are to
of Christianity. Theologians and popular be drawn from Christianity itself. The
religion have given a wrong turn to it all, materialistic future state, the materialistic
and present it to us in a form which is kingdom of God, of our popular religion,
fantastic and false ; but the firm founda will dissolve ‘ like some insubstantial
tion for human life is to be found in it, vision faded.’ But they will dissolve
and the true source for us of strength, through the action, through the gradually
joy, and peace. Sine vid non itur, and increasing influence, of other and pro
Christianity can be shown to be mankind’s founder texts of Scripture than the
indispensable way. The subject of the popular texts on which they base them
Old Testament, Salvation by righteousness, selves. Using the language of accom-^
�8
LITERATURE AND DOGMA
modation to the ideas current amongst
his hearers, Jesus talked of drinking wine
and sitting on thrones in the kingdom of
God; and texts of this kind are what
popular religion promptly seized and built
upon. But other profounder texts mean
while there were, which remained, one
may say, in shadow. ‘This is life eternal,
to know thee, the only true God, and
Jesus Christ whom thou hast sent;’—
‘The kingdom of God is righteousness,
and peace, and joy in the Holy Spirit.’
These deeper texts will gradually come
more and more into notice and prominence
and use, as it becomes evident that the
future state built on the language of
accommodation has no reality.
The
teachers of religion will more and more
bring these texts forward and develop
them. And as, from being everywhere
preached and believed, the illusory future
state gained power and apparent substance,
so, too, by coming to be more and more
dwelt upon and to possess men’s minds
more and more, the true ideal will ac
quire, in its turn, a fulness and force
which no isolated endeavours can give
to it.
This is but another way of saying,
what is perfectly true, that not only is
Christianity necessary, but the Church
also. The Church is necessary, the
clergy are necessary; the future of
Christianity is hardly conceivable without
them. But as lucidity is a condition
from which the Christianity of the future
cannot escape, so is it a condition from
which the Church and the clergy cannot
escape either. At present they seem
scarcely to comprehend this. Archdeacon
Norris labours with all his might to clear
the so-called Athanasian Creed from the
reproach of over-harshness, not seeing
that the really fatal defect of that docu
ment is not its over-harshness but its
futility. The Guardian proclaims ‘ the
miracle of the Incarnation ’ to be ‘ the
fundamental truth ’ for Christians. How
strange that on me should devolve the
office of instructing the Guardian that
the fundamental thing for Christians is
not the incarnation but the imitation of
Christ 1 In insisting on ‘ the miracle of
the Incarnation,’ the Guardian insists
on just that side of Christianity which
is perishing. Christianity is immortal;
it has eternal truth, inexhaustible value,
a boundless future. But our popular
religion at present conceives the birth,
ministry, and death of Christ, as alto
gether steeped in prodigy, brimful of
miracle ;—and miracles do not happen.
�PREFACE
(■S73)
An inevitable revolution, of which we all
recognise the beginnings and signs, but
which has already spread, perhaps, farther
than most of us think, is befalling the
religion in which we have been brought
up. In those countries where religion
has been most loved, this revolution will
be felt the most keenly; felt through all
its stages and in all its incidents. In
no country will it be more felt than in
England. This cannot be otherwise. It
cannot be but that the revolution should
come, and that it should be here felt
passionately, profoundly, painfully. In
regard to it, how’ever, there is incumbent
on everyone the utmost duty of con
siderateness and caution. There can be
no surer proof of a narrow and illinstructed mind, than to think and up
hold that what a man takes to be the
truth on religious matters is always to be
proclaimed. Our truth on these matters,
and likewise the error of others, is some
thing so relative, that the good or harm
likely to be done by speaking ought
always to be taken into account. ‘ I keep
silence at many things,’ says Goethe, ‘ for
I would not mislead men, and am well
content if others can find satisfaction in
what gives me offence.’ The man who
believes that his truth on religious matters
is so absolutely the truth, that say it when,
and where, and to whom he will, he
cannot but do good with it, is in our day
almost always a man whose truth is half
blunder, and wholly useless.
To be convinced therefore that our
current theology is false, is not necessarily
a reason for publishing that conviction.
The theology may be false, and yet one
may do more harm in attacking it than
by keeping silence and waiting. To judge
rightly the time and its conditions is the
great thing; there is a time, as the
Preacher says, to speak, and a time to
keep silence. If the present time is a
time to speak, there must be a reason
why it is so.
And there A a reason; and it is this.
Clergymen and ministers of religion are
full of lamentations over what they call
the spread of scepticism, and because of
the little hold which religion now has
on the masses of the people—the lapsed
masses, as some call them. Practical
hold on them it never, perhaps, had very
much, but they did not question its truth,
and they held it in considerable awe. As
the best of them raised themselves up out
of a merely animal life, religion attracted
and engaged them. But now they seem
to have hardly any awe of it at all, and
they freely question its truth. And many
of the most successful, energetic, and
ingenious of the artisan class, who are
steady and rise, are now found either of
themselves rejecting the Bible altogether,
or following teachers who tell them that
the Bible is an exploded superstition.
Let me quote from the letter of a working
man—a man, himself, of no common
intelligence and temper—a passage that
�IO
LITERATURE AND DOGMA
sets this forth very clearly. ‘ Despite the
efforts of the churches,’ he says, ‘ the
speculations of the day are working their
way down among the people, many of
whom are asking for the reason and
authority for the things they have been
taught to believe. Questions of this kind,
too, mostly reach them through doubtful
channels ; and owing to this, and to their
lack of culture, a discovery of imperfection
and fallibility in the Bible leads to its
contemptuous rejection as a great priestly
imposture. And thus those among the
working class, who eschew the teachings
of the orthodox, slide off towards, not the
late Mr. Maurice, nor yet Professor Huxley,
but towards Mr. Bradlaugh.’
Despite the efforts of the churches, the
writer tells us, this contemptuous rejection
of the Bible happens. And we regret
the rejection as much as the clergy and
ministers of religion do. There may be
others who do not regret it, but we
do. All that the churches can say about
the importance of the Bible and its
religion, we concur in. And it is the
religion of the Bible that is professedly
in question with all the churches, when
they talk of religion and lament its pro
spects. With Catholics as well as Protes
tants, and with all the sects of Protestant
ism, this is so ; and from the nature of
the case it must be so. What the religion
of the Bible is, how it is to be got at, they
may not agree ; but that it is the religion
of the Bible for which they contend, they
all aver. ‘The Bible,’ says Cardinal
Newman, ‘ is the record of the whole
revealed faith ; so far all parties agree.’
Now, this religion of the Bible we say
they cannot value more than we do. If
we hesitate to adopt strictly their language
about its aZZ-importance, that is only
because we take an uncommonly large
view of human perfection, and say, speak
ing strictly, that there go to this certain
things—art, for instance, and science—
which the Bible hardly meddles with.
The difference between us and them,
however, is more a difference of theoretical
statement than of practical conclusion.
Speaking practically, and looking at the
very large part of human life engaged by
the Bible, at the comparatively small part
unengaged by it, we are quite willing, like
the churches, to call the Bible and its
religion aZZ-important.
All this agreement there is, both in
words and in things, between us and the
churches. And yet, when we behold the
clergy and ministers of religion lament
the neglect of religion and aspire to
restore it, how must we feel that to
restore religion as they understand it, to
re-inthrone the Bible as explained by our
current theology, whether learned or popu
lar, is absolutely and for ever impossible !
—as impossible as to restore the feudal
system, or the belief in witches. Let us
admit that the Bible cannot possibly die;
but then the churches cannot even con
ceive the Bible without the gloss which
they at present put upon it, and this gloss,
as certainly, cannot possibly live. And it
is not a gloss which one church or one sect
puts upon the Bible and another does not;
it is the gloss they all put upon it, calling
it the substratum of belief common to
all Christian churches, and largely shared
with them even by natural religion. It
is this so-called axiomatic basis which
must go, and it supports all the rest. If
the Bible were really inseparable from
this and depended upon it, then Mr.
Bradlaugh would have his way and the
Bible would go too ; since this basis is
inevitably doomed. For whatever is to
stand must rest upon something which
is verifiable, not unverifiable. Now, the
assumption with which all the churches
and sects set out—that there is ‘ a Great
Personal First Cause, the moral and
�PREFACE
intelligent Governor of the universe,’ and
that from him the Bible derives its
authority—cannot, at present, at any rate,
be verified.
Those who ‘ ask for the reason and
authority for the things that they have
been taught to believe,’ as the people, we
are told, are now doing, will begin at the
beginning. Rude and hard reasoners as
they are, they will never consent to admit,
as a self-evident axiom, the preliminary
assumption with which the churches start.
So, if the people are to receive a religion
of the Bible, we must find for the Bible
some other basis than that which the
churches assign to it, a verifiable basis
and not an assumption. This new reli
gion of the Bible the people may receive ;
the version now current of the religion of
the Bible they will not receive.
Here, then, is the problem ; to find,
for the Bible, for Christianity, for our
religion, a basis in something which can
be verified, instead of in something which
has to be assumed. So true and prophetic
are Vinet’s words: ‘ We must] he said,
‘make it our business to bring forward
the rational side of Christianity, and to
show that for thinkers, too, it has a right
to be an authority.’ Yes, and the pro
blem we have stated must be the first
stage in the business. With this problem
unsolved, all other religious discussion is
idle trifling.
This is why Dissent, as a religious
movement of our day, would be almost
droll, if it were not, from the tempers and
actions it excites, so extremely irreligious.
But what is to be said for men, aspiring
to deal with the cause of religion, who
either cannot see that what the people
now require is a religion of the Bible
quite different from that which any of the
churches or sects supply ; or who, seeing
this, spend their energies in fiercely bat
tling as to whether the Church should be
ii
a national institution or no ? The ques
tion, at the present juncture, is in itself so
absolutely unimportant! The thing is,
to recast religion. If this is done, the
new religion will be the national one; if
it is not done, the separating the nation,
in its collective and corporate character,
from religion, will not do it. It is as if
men’s minds were much unsettled about
mineralogy, and the teachers of it were at
variance, and no teacher was convincing,
and many people, therefore, were disposed
to throw the study of mineralogy over
board altogether. What would naturally
be the first business for every friend of
the study? Surely, to establish on safe
grounds the value of the study, and to put
its claims in a new light where they could
no longer be denied. But if he acted as
our Dissenters act in religion, what would
he do ? - Give himself, heart and soul, to
a furious crusade against keeping the
Government School of Mines 1
Meanwhile, however, there is now an
end to all fear of doing harm by gainsay
ing the received theology of the churches
and sects. For this theology is itself now
a hindrance to the Bible rather than a
help. Nay, to abandon it, to put some
other construction on the Bible than this
theology puts, to find some other basis for
the Bible than this theology finds, is
indispensable, if we would have the Bible
reach the people. And this is the aim of
the following essay: to show that, when
we come to put the right construction on
the Bible, -we give to the Bible a real
experimental basis, and keep on this basis
throughout; instead of any basis of unverifiable assumption to start with, followed
by a string of other unverifiable assump
tions of the like kind, such as the re
ceived theology necessitates.
And this aim we cannot seek without
coming in sight of another aim too, which
we have often and often pointed out, and
�12
LITERATURE AND DOGMA
tried to recommend: culture, the acquaint
ing ourselves with the best that has been
known and said in the world, and thus
with the history of the human spirit.
One cannot go far in the attempt to bring
in, for the Bible, a right construction,
without seeing how necessary is some
thing of culture to its being admitted and
used. The correspondent whom we have
above quoted notices how the lack of
culture disposes the masses to conclude
at once, from any imperfection or falli
bility in the Bible, that it is a priestly
imposture. To a certain extent this is
the fault, not of the people’s want of
culture, but of the priests and theologians
themselves, who for centuries have kept
assuring men that perfect and infallible
the Bible is. Still, even without this con
fusion added by his theological instruc
tors, the homo unius libri, the man of no
range in his reading, must almost inevita
bly misunderstand the Bible, cannot treat
it largely enough, must be inclined to
treat it all alike, and to press every word.
To understand that the language of the
Bible is fluid, passing, and literary, not
rigid, fixed, and scientific, is the first step
towards a right understanding of the
Bible. But to take this very first step,
some experience of how me n have thought
and expressed themselves, and some flexi
bility of spirit, are necessary ; and this
is culture. After all, the Bible is not a
talisman, to be taken and used literally;
neither is any existing Church a talisman,
whatever pretensions of the sort it may
make, for giving the right interpretation
of the Bible. But only true culture can
give us this interpretation; so that if con
duct is, as it is, inextricably bound up
with the Bible and the right interpretation
of it, then the importance of culture
becomes unspeakable. For if conduct is
necessary (and there is nothing so neces
sary), culture is necessary.
And the poor require it as much as the
rich; and at present their education, even
when they get education, gives them
hardly anything of it. Yet hardly less of
it, perhaps, than the education of the rich
gives to the rich. For when we say that
culture is, To know the best that has been
thought and said in the world, we imply
that, for culture, a system directly tending
to this end is necessary in our reading.
Now, there is no such system yet present
to guide the reading of the rich any more
than of the poor. Such a system is
hardly even thought of; a man who wants
it must make it for himself. And our
reading being so without purpose as it is,
nothing can be truer than what Butler
says, that really, in general, no part of our
time is more idly spent than the time
spent in reading.
Still, culture is indispensably neces
sary, and culture is reading', but reading
with a purpose to guide it, and with
system. He does a good work who does
anything to help this; indeed, it is the
one essential service now to be rendered
to education. And the plea, that this or
that man has no time for culture, will
vanish as soon as we desire culture so
much that we begin to examine seriously
our present use of our time. It has often
been said, and cannot be said too often:
Give to any man all the time that he now
wastes, not only on his vices (when he
has them), but on useless business, weari
some or deteriorating amusements, trivial
letter-writing, random reading, and he will
have plenty of time for culture. ‘ Die
Zeit ist unendlich lang,' says Goethe; and
so it really is. Some of us waste all of it,
most of us waste much, but all of us
waste some.
�CONTENTS
FAGS
CHAPTER
INTRODUCTION
I.
.
RELIGION GIVEN
.
s,
.
.
,
. ................................................................. 15
..............................................................................................................................18
II.
ABERGLAUBE INVADING..................................................................................................................... 35
III.
RELIGION NEW-GIVEN............................................................................................................................ 41
IV.
THE PROOF FROM PROPHECY............................................................................................................ 50
V.
THE PROOF FROM MIRACLES............................................................................................................... 53
VI.
THE NEW TESTAMENT RECORD.......................................................................................................... 64
VII.
THE TESTIMONY OF JESUS TO HIMSELF................................................................................ 70
VIII.
IX.
FAITH IN CHRIST
................................................................................................................................ 77
ABERGLAUBE RE-INVADING....................................................................................................... 81
X.
OUR ‘MASSES’ AND THE BIBLE............................................................................................... 93
XI.
THE TRUE GREATNESS OF THE OLDTESTAMENT.........................................................103
XII.
THE TRUE GREATNESS OF CHRISTIANITY.................................................................................. Ill
CONCLUSION
................................................................................................................................................ 117
��LITERATURE & DOGMA
INTROD UCTION
Lord Beaconsfield, treating Hellenic
things with the scornful negligence natural
to a Hebrew, said in a well-known book
that our aristocratic class, the polite
flower of the nation, were truly Hellenic
in this respect among others,—that they
cared nothing for letters and never read.
Now, there seems to be here some in
accuracy, if we take our standard of what
is Hellenic from Hellas at its highest
pitch of development. For the latest
historian of Greece, Dr. Curtius, tells us
that in the Athens of Pericles ‘read
ing was universally diffused ; ’ and again,
that ‘what more than anything distin
guishes the Greeks from the Barba
rians of ancient and modern times, is
the idea of a culture comprehending body
and soul in an equal measure.’ And I
have myself called our aristocratic class
Barbarians, which is the contrary of
Hellenes, from this very reason : because,
with all their fine, fresh appearance, their
open-air life, and their love of field-sports,
for reading and thinking they have in
general no great turn. But no doubt
Lord Beaconsfield was thinking of the
primitive Hellenes of North-Western
Greece, from among whom the Dorians of
Peloponnesus originally came, but who
•themselves remained in their old seats and
did not migrate and develop like their
more famous brethren. And of these
primitive Hellenes, of Greeks like the
Chaonians and Molossians, it is probably
a very just account to give, that they
lived in the open air, loved field-sports,
and never read. And, explained in this
way, Lord Beaconsfield’s parallel of our
aristocratic class with what he somewhat
misleadingly calls the old Hellenic race
appears ingenious and sound. To those
lusty northerners, the Molossian or Chaonian Greeks,—Greeks untouched by the
development which contradistinguishes
the Hellene from the Barbarian,—our
aristocratic class, as he exhibits it, has a
strong resemblance. At any rate, this
class,—which from its great possessions,
its beauty and attractiveness, the admira
tion felt for it by the Philistines or middle
class, its actual power in the nation, and
the still more considerable destinies to
which its politeness, in Mr. Carlyle’s
opinion, entitles it, cannot but attract our
notice, pre-eminently,—shows at present
a great and genuine disregard for letters.
And perhaps, if there is any other body
of men which strikes one, even after look
ing at our aristocratic class, as being in
the sunshine, as exercising great attraction,
as. being admired by the Philistines or
middle-class, and as having before it a
future still more brilliant than its present,
it is the friends of physical science. Now,
their revolt against the tyranny of letters
is notorious. To deprive letters of the
too great place they have hitherto filled in
men’s estimation, and to substitute other
studies for these, is the object of a sort
of crusade with a body of people impor
tant in itself, but still more important
because of the gifted leaders who march
at its head.
Religion has always hitherto been a
great power in England; and on this
account, perhaps, whatever humiliations
may be in store for religion in the future,
the friends of physical science will not
object to our saying, that, after them and
�i6
LITERATURE AND DOGMA
the aristocracy, the leaders of the religious
world fill a prominent place in the public
eye even now, and one cannot help noticing
what their opinions and likings are. And
it is curious how the feeling of the chief
people in the religious world, too, seems
to be just now against letters, which they
slight as the vague and inexact instrument
of shallow essayists and magazine-writers ;
and in favour of dogma, of a scientific
and exact presentment of religious things,
instead of a literary presentment of them.
‘ Dogmatic theology,’ says the Guardian,
speaking of our existing dogmatic theo
logy,—‘ Dogmatic theology, that is,
precision and definiteness of religious
thought.’ ‘ Maudlin sentimentalism,’ says
the Dean of Norwich, ‘ with its miserable
disparagements of any definite doctrine ; a
nerveless religion, without the sinew and
bone of doctrine.’ The distinguished
Chancellor of the University of Oxford
thought it needful to tell us on a public
occasion lately, that ‘ religion is no more
to be severed from dogma than light from
the sun.’ .Everyone, again, remembers
the Bishops of Winchester 1 and Glouces
ter making in Convocation their remark
able effort ‘ to do something,’ as they
said, ‘ for the honour of Our Lord’s God
head,’ and to mark their sense of ‘that
infinite separation for time and for eternity
which is involved in rejecting the Godhead
of the Eternal Son.’ In the same way:
‘To no teaching,’says one champion of
dogma, ‘ can the appellation of Christian
be truly given which does not involve the
idea of a Personal God.’ Another lays
like stress on correct ideas about the
Personality of the Holy Ghost. ‘ Our
Lord unquestionably,’ says a third, ‘ an
nexes eternal life to a right knowledge
of the Godhead,’—that is, to a right
speculative, dogmatic knowledge of it. A
fourth appeals to history and human
nature for proof that ‘an undogmatic
Church can no more satisfy the hunger
of the soul, than a snowball, painted to
look like fruit, •would stay the hunger of
the stomach.’ And all these friends of
theological science are, lil^ the friends of
physical science, though from another
1 The late Bishop Wilberforce.
cause, severe upon letters. Attempts
made at a literary treatment of religious
history and ideas they call ‘ a subverting
of the faith once delivered to the saints.’
Those who make them they speak of as
‘ those who have made shipwreck of the'
faith ; ’ and when they talk of ‘ the poison
openly disseminated by infidels,’ and de
scribe the ‘progress of infidelity,’ which
more and more, according to their
account, ‘ denies God, rejects Christ, and
lets loose every human passion,’ though
they have the audaciousness of physical
science most in their eye, yet they have a
direct aim, too, at the looseness and
dangerous temerity of letters.
Keeping in remembrance what Scrip
ture says about the young man who had
great possessions, to be able to work a
change of mind in our aristocratic class
we never have pretended, we never shall
pretend. But to the friends of physical
science and to the friends of dogma we
do feel emboldened, after giving our best
consideration to the matter, to say a few
words on behalf of letters, and in depre
cation of the slight which, on different
grounds, they both put upon them. But
particularly in reply to the friends of
dogma do we wish to insist on the case
for letters, because of the great issues
which seem to us to be here involved.
Therefore of the relation of letters to
religion we are going now to speak ; of
their effect upon dogma, and of the con
sequences of this to religion. And so the
subject of the present volume will be
literature and dogma.
2.
It is clear that dogmatists love religion;
for else why do they occupy themselves
with it so much, and make it, most of
them, the business, even the professional
business, of their lives ? And clearly
religion seeks man’s salvation. How dis
tressing, therefore, must it be to them to
think that ‘salvation is unquestionably
annexed to a right knowledge of the God
head,’ and that a right knowledge of the
Godhead depends upon reasoning, for
�INTRODUCTION
which so many people have not much
aptitude ; and upon reasoning from ideas
or terms such as substance, idehtity,
causation, design, about which there is
endless disagreement! It is true, a right
knowledge of geometry also depends
upon reasoning, and many people never
get it ; but then, in the first place, salva
tion is not annexed to a right knowledge of
geometry ; and in the second, the ideas
or terms such as point, line, angle, from
which we reason in geometry, are terms
about which there is no ambiguity or
disagreement. But as to the demonstra
tions and terms of theology we cannot
comfort ourselves in this manner. How
must this thought mar the Archbishop of
York's enjoyment of such a solemnity as
that in which, to uphold and renovate
religion, he lectured lately to Lord Harrowby, Dean Payne Smith, and other
kindred souls, upon the theory of causa
tion ! And what a consolation to us,
who are so perpetually being taunted with
our known inaptitude for abstruse reason
ing, if we can find that for this great
concern of religion, at any rate, abstruse
reasoning does not seem to be the ap
pointed help ; and that as good or better
a help—for indeed there can hardly, to
judge by the present state of things, be a
worse—may be something which is in an
ordinary man’s power !
For the good of letters is, that they
require no extraordinary acuteness such
as is required to handle the theory of
causation like the Archbishop of York,
or the doctrine of the Godhead of the
Eternal Son like the Bishops of Win
chester and Gloucester. The good of
letters maybe had without skill in arguing,
or that formidable logical apparatus, not
unlike a guillotine, which Professor Huxley
speaks of somewhere as the young man’s
best companion ;—and so it would be his
best companion, no doubt, if all wisdom
were come at by hard reasoning. In that
case, all who could not manage this
apparatus (and only a few picked crafts
men can manage it) would be in a pitiable
condition.
But the valuable thing in letters—that
J7
is, in the acquainting oneself with the
best which has been thought and said in
the world—is, as we have often remarked,
the judgment which forms itself insensibly
in a fair mind along with fresh knowledge;
and this judgment almost anyone with a
fair mind, who will but trouble himself to
try and make acquaintance with the best
which has been thought and uttered in
the world, may, if he is lucky, hope to
attain to.
For this judgment comes
almost of itself, and what it displaces it
displaces easily and naturally, and without
any turmoil of controversial reasonings.
The thing comes to look differently to
us, as we look at it by the light of fresh
knowledge. We are not beaten from our
old opinion by logic, we are not driven
off our ground; our ground itself changes
with us.
Far more of our mistakes come from
want of fresh knowledge than from want
of correct reasoning; and, therefore, letters
meet a greater want in us than does logic.
The idea of a triangle is a definite and
ascertained thing, and to deduce the
properties of a triangle from it is an affair
of reasoning. There are heads unapt for
this sort of work, and some of the blun
dering to be found in the world is from
this cause. But how far more of the
blundering to be found in the world
comes from people fancying that some
idea is a definite and ascertained thing,
like the idea of a triangle, when it is not;
and proceeding to deduce properties from
it, and to do battle about them, when
their first start was a mistake ! And how
liable are people with a talent for hard,
abstruse reasoning, to be tempted to this
mistake I And what can clear up such
a mistake except a wide and familiar
acquaintance with the human spirit and
its productions, showing how ideas and
terms arose, and what is their character?
and this is letters and history, not logic.
So that minds w’ith small aptitude for
abstruse reasoning may yet, through letters,
gain some hold on sound judgment and
useful knowledge, and may even clear up
blunders committed, out of their very
excess of talent, by the athletes of logic.
B
�18
LITERATURE AND DOGMA
CHAPTER I
RELIGION GIVEN
I have said elsewhere1 how much it has
contributed to the misunderstanding of
St. Paul, that terms like grace, new birth,
justification —which he used in a fluid and
passing way, as men use terms in common
discourse or in eloquence and poetry, to
describe approximately, but only approxi
mately, what they have present before
their mind but do not profess that their
mind does or can grasp exactly or ade
quately—that such terms people have
blunderingly taken in a fixed and rigid
manner, as if they were symbols with as
definite and fully grasped a meaning as
the names line or angle, and proceeded
to use them on this supposition. Terms,
in short, which with St. Paul are literary
terms, theologians have employed as if
they were scientific terms.
But if one desires to deal with this
mistake thoroughly, one must observe it
in that supreme term with which religion
is filled—the term God. The seemingly
incurable ambiguity in the mode of em
ploying this word is at the root of all
our religious differences and difficulties.
People use it as if it stood for a perfectly
definite and ascertained idea, from which
we might, without more ado, extract
propositions and draw inferences, just as
we should from any other definite and
ascertained idea. For instance, I open a
book which controverts what its author
thinks dangerous views about religion,
and I read : ‘Our sense of morality
tells us so-and-so; our sense of God, on
the other hand, tells us so-and-so.’ And
again, ‘ the impulse in man to seek God ’
is distinguished, as if the distinction were
self-evident and explained itself, from ‘ the
impulse in man to seek his highest perfec
tion.’ Now, morality represents for every
body a thoroughly definite and ascertained
idea—the idea of human conduct regu
lated in a certain manner. Everybody,
again, understands distinctly enough what
1 Culture and Anarchy, p. 160.
is meant by man’s perfection—his reach
ing the best which his powers and
circumstances allow him to reach. And
the word ‘ God ’ is used, in connection
with both these words, morality and
perfection, as if it stood for just as definite
and ascertained an idea as they do; an
idea drawn from experience, just as the
ideas are which they stand for; an idea
about which everyone was agreed, and from
which we might proceed to argue and to
make inferences, with the certainty that,
as in the case of morality and perfection,
the basis on which we were going every
one knew and granted. But, in truth,
the word ‘ God ’ is used in most cases as
by no means a term of science or exact
knowledge, but a term of poetry and
eloquence, a term thrown out, so to speak,
at a not fully grasped object of the
speaker’s consciousness, a literary term,
in short; and mankind mean different
things by it as their consciousness differs.
The first question, then, is, how people
are using the word; whether in this
literary way, or in a scientific way. The
second question is, what, supposing them
to use the term as one of poetry and
eloquence, and to import into it, therefore,
a great deal of their own individual
feelings and character, is yet the common
substratum of idea on which, in using it,
they all rest. For this will then be for
them, and for us in dealing with them, the
real sense of the word ; the sense in which
we can use it for purposes of argument
and inference without ambiguity.
Strictly and formally the word ‘ God,’
so some philologists tell us, means, like
its kindred Aryan words, Theos, Deus,
and Deva, simply shining or brilliant.
In a certain narrow way, therefore, this
would be (if the etymology is right) the
one exact and scientific sense of the word.
It was long thought, however, to mean
good, and so Luther took it to mean the
best that man knows or can know ; and in
this sense, as a matter of fact and history,
�RELIGION GIVEN
mankind constantly use the word. This
is the common substratum of idea on
which men in general, when they use the
word God, rest; and we can take this as
the word’s real sense fairly enough, only it
does not give us anything very precise.
But then there is also the scientific
sense held by theologians, deduced from
the ideas of substance, identity, causation,
design, and so on ; hut taught, they say,
or at least implied, in the Bible, and on
which all the Bible rests. According to
this scientific and theological sense—which
has all the outward appearances, at any
rate, of great precision—God is an infinite
and eternal substance, and at the same
time a person, the great first cause, the
moral and intelligent governor of the
universe; Jesus Christ is consubstantial
with him; and the Holy Ghost is a person
proceeding from the other two. This is
the sense for which, or for portions of
which, the Bishops of Winchester and
Gloucester are so zealous to do some
thing.
Other people, however, who fail to
perceive the force of such a deduction
from the abstract ideas above mentioned,
who indeed think it quite hollow, but who
are told that this sense is in the Bible,
and that they must receive it if they
receive the Bible, conclude that in that
case they had better receive neither the
one nor the other. Something of this
sort, it was, no doubt, which made
Professor Huxley tell the London School
Board lately, that ‘if these islands had
no religion at all, it would not enter into
his mind to introduce the religious idea
by the agency of the Bible.’ Of such
people there are now a great many ; and
indeed there could hardly, for those who
value the Bible, be a greater example of
the sacrifices one is sometimes called
upon to make for the truth, than to find
that for the truth as held by the Bishops
of Winchester and Gloucester, if it is the
truth, one must sacrifice the allegiance of
so many people to the Bible.
But surely, if there be anything with
which metaphysics have nothing to do,
and where a plain man, without skill to
walk in the arduous paths of abstruse
19
reasoning, may yet find himself at home,
it is religion. For the object of religion
is conduct; and conduct is really, however
men may overlay it with philosophical
disquisitions, the simplest thing in the
world. That is to say, it is the simplest
thing in the world as far as tinderstanding
is concerned; as regards doing, it is the
hardest thing in the world. Here is the
difficulty,—to do what we very well know
ought to be done ; and instead of facing
this, men have searched out another with
which they occupy themselves by pre
ference,—the origin of what is called
the moral sense, the genesis and physio
logy of conscience, and so on. No one
denies that here, too, is difficulty, or that
the difficulty is a proper object for the
human faculties to be exercised upon ;
but the difficulty here is speculative. It
is not the difficulty of religion, which is a
practical one; and it often tends to
divert the attention from this. Yet surely
the difficulty of religion' is great enough
by itself, if men would but consider it, to
satisfy the most voracious appetite for
difficulties. It extends to rightness in
the whole range of what we call conduct;
in three-fourths, therefore, at the very
lowest computation, of human life. The
only doubt is whether we ought not to
make the range of conduct wider still,
and to say it is four-fifths of human life,
or five-sixths. But it is better to be under
the mark than over it; so let us be con
tent with reckoning conduct as threefourths of human life.
And to recognise in what way conduct
is this, let us eschew all school-terms, like
moral sense, and volitional, and altruistic,
which philosophers employ, and let us
help ourselves by the most palpable and
plain examples. When the rich man in
the Bible-parable says : ‘ Soul, thou hast
much goods laid up for many years ; take
thine ease, eat, drink, and be merry ! ’1—
those goods which he thus assigns as the
stuff with which human life is mainly
concerned (and so in practice it really is),
—those goods and our dealings with
them,—our taking our ease, eating, drink1 Luke, xii, 19.
B2
�20
LITERATURE AND DOGMA
ing, being merry, are the matter of conduct, true or false, there the impulses con
the range where it is exercised. Eating, fessedly now are, and the business of
drinking, ease, pleasure, money, the inter conduct is to deal with them. But it is
course of the sexes, the giving free swing evident, if conduct deals with these, both
to one’s temper and instincts—these are how important a thing conduct is, and
the matters with which conduct is con how simple a thing. Important, because
cerned, and with which all mankind know it covers so large a portion of human life,
and the portion common to all sorts of
and feel it to be concerned.
Or, when Protagoras points out of what people; simple, because, though there
things we are, from childhood till we die, needs perpetual admonition to form con
being taught and admonished, and says duct, the admonition is needed not to
(but it is lamentable that here we have determine what we ought to do, but to
not at hand Mr. Jowett, who so excellently make us do it.
And as to this simplicity, all moralists
introduces the enchanter Plato and his
personages, but must use our own w’ords) : are agreed. ‘ Let any plain honest man,’
‘ From the time he can understand what says Bishop Butler, ‘ before he engages in
is said to him, nurse, and mother, and any course of action ’ (he means action of
teacher, and father too, are bending their the very kind we call conduct}, ‘ask him
efforts to this end—to make the child self : Is this I am going about right or is
good; teaching and showing him, as to it wrong ? is it good or is it evil ? I do not
everything he has to do or say, how this in the least doubt but that this question
is right and that not right, and this is would be answered agreeably to truth and
honourable and that vile, and this is holy virtue by almost any fair man in almost
and that unholy, and this do and that do any circumstance.' And Bishop Wilson
not; ’ Protagoras, also, when he says this, says : ‘ Look up to God ’ (by which he
bears his testimony to the scope and means just this : Consult your conscience)
nature of conduct, tellg us what conduct is. ‘ at all times, and you will, as in a glass,
Or, once more, when M. Littre (and we discover what is fit to be done.’ And the
hope to make our peace with the Comtists Preacher’s well-known sentence is exactly
by quoting an author of theirs in pre to the same effect : ‘ God made man up
ference to those authors whom all the right; but they have sought out many
British public is now reading and quoting) inventions,’1—or, as it more correctly is,
—when M. Littrd in a most ingenious ‘ many abstruse reasonings.' Let us hold
essay on the origin of morals, traces up, fast to this, and we shall find we have a
better, perhaps, than anyone else, all our stay by the help of which even poor weak
impulses into two elementary instincts, the men, with no pretensions to be logical
instinct of self-preservation and the repro athletes, may stand firmly.
ductive instinct—then we take his theory
And so, when we are asked, what is the
and we say, that all the impulses which object of religion ?—let us reply : Con
can be conceived as derivable from the duct. And when we are asked further,
instinct of self-preservation in us and what is conduct ?—let us answer : Threefrom the reproductive instinct, these terms fourths of life.
being applied in their ordinary sense, are
the matter of conduct. It is evident this
2.
includes, to say no more, every impulse
And certainly we need not go far about
relating to temper, every impulse relating to prove that conduct, or ‘ righteousness,’
to sensuality; and we all know how which is the object of religion, is in
much that is.
a special manner the object of Bible
How we deal with these impulses is religion. The word ‘ righteousness ’ is
the matter of conduct,—how we obey, the master-word of the Old Testament.
regulate, or restrain them ; that, and Keep judgment and do righteousness!
nothing else. Not whether M. Littr^’s
1 Ecclesiastes, vii, 29.
theory is true or false; for whether it be
�RELIGION GIVEN
Cease to do evil, learn to do well! 1 these
words being taken in their plainest sense
of conduct. Offer the sacrifice, not of
victims and ceremonies, as the way of the
world in religion then was, but: Offer the
sacrifice of righteousness I2 The great
concern of the New Testament is likewise
righteousness, but righteousness reached
through particular means, righteousness
by the means of Jesus Christ. A sen
tence which sums up the New Testament
and assigns the ground whereon the
Christian Church stands, is, as we have
elsewhere said,3 this : Let every one that
nameth the name of Christ depart from
iniquity !4 If we are to take a sentence
which in like manner sums up the Old
Testament, such a sentence is this : O ye
that love the Eternal, see that ye hate the
thing which is evilI to him that ordereth
his conversation right shall be shown the
salvation of GodP
But instantly there will be raised the
objection that this is morality, not religion;
morality, ethics, conduct, being by many
people, and above all by theologians,
carefully contradistinguished from religion,
which is supposed in some special way to
be connected with propositions about the
Godhead of the Eternal Son, or proposi
tions about the personality of God, or
about election, or justification. Religion,
however, means simply either a binding to
righteousness, or else a serious attending
to righteousness and dwelling upon it.
Which of these two it most nearly means,
depends upon the view we take of the word’s
derivation; but it means one of them,
and they are really much the same. And
the antithesis between ethical and religious
is thus quite a false one. Ethical means
practical, it relates to practice or conduct
passing into habit or disposition. Reli
gious also means practical, but practical in
a still higher degree; and the right anti
thesis to both ethical and religious, is the
same as the right antithesis to practical:
namely, theoretical.
1 Isaiah, lvi, I ; i, l6, 17.
2 Psalm iv, 5.
8 St. Paul and Protestantism, p. 159.
4 II Timothy, ii, 19.
5 Ps. xcvii, 10; 1, 23.
21
Now, propositions about the Godhead
of the Eternal Son are theoretical, and
they therefore are very properly opposed
to propositions which are moral or ethical;
but they are with equal propriety opposed
to propositions which are religious. They
differ in kind from what is religious, while
what is ethical agrees in kind with it. But
is there, therefore, no difference between
what is ethical or morality, and religion ?
There is a difference; a difference of
degree. Religion, if we follow the inten
tion of human thought and human lan
guage in the use of the word, is ethics
heightened, enkindled, lit up by feeling ;
the passage from morality to religion is
made when to morality is applied emo
tion. And the true meaning of re
ligion is thus, not simply morality, but
morality touched by emotion. And this
new elevation and inspiration of morality
is well marked by the word ‘righteous
ness.’ Conduct is the word of common
life, morality is the word of philosophical
disquisition, righteousness is the word of
religion.
Some people, indeed, arc for calling all
high thought and feeling by the name of
religion; according to that saying of
Goethe : ‘ He who has art and science,
has also religion.’ But let us use words
as mankind generally use them. We may
call art and science touched by emotion
religion, if we will; as we may make the
instinct of self-preservation, into which
M. Littrd traces up all our private affec-l
tions, include the perfecting ourselves by
the study of what is beautiful in art ; and
the reproductive instinct, into which he
traces up all our social affections, include
the perfecting mankind by political
science. But men have not yet got to
that stage, when we think much of either
their private or their social affections at
all, except as exercising themselves in
conduct; neither do we yet think of
religion as otherwise exercising itself.
When mankind speak of religion, they
have before their mind an activity en-l
gaged, not with the whole of life, but with
that three-fourths of life which is conduct.
This is wide enough range for one word,
surely; but at any rate, let us at present
�22
LITERATURE AND DOGMA
limit ourselves in the use of the word
religion as mankind do.
And if some one now asks: But what is
this application of emotion to morality,
and by what marks may we know it ?—we
can quite easily satisfy him; not, indeed,
by any disquisition of our own, but in a
much better way, by examples. ‘ By the
dispensation of Providence to mankind,’
says Quintilian, ‘ goodness gives men
most satisfaction.’1 That is morality.
‘ The path of the just is as the shining
light which shineth more and more unto
the perfect day.’1 That is morality touched
2
with emotion, or religion. ‘ Hold off
from sensuality,’ says Cicero; ‘for, if you
have given yourself up to it, you will find
yourself unable to think of anything else.’ 3
That is morality. ‘ Blessed are the pure in
heart,’ says Jesus Christ; ‘for they shall
see God.’4 That is religion. ‘We all
want to live honestly, but cannot,’ says
the Greek maxim-maker.5 That is moral
ity. ‘ O wretched man that I am, who
shall deliver me from the body of this
death ? ’ says St. Paul.6 That is religion.
‘Would thou wert of as good conversa
tion in deed as in word ! ’7 is morality.
‘ Not every one that saith unto me, Lord,
Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of
Heaven, but he that doeth the will of my
lather which is in Heaven,’8 is religion.
| Live as you were meant to live ! ’9 is
morality. ‘ Lay hold on eternal life ! ’10 is
religion.
Or we may take the contrast within
the bounds of the Bible itself. ‘Love
not sleep, lest thou come to poverty,’ is
morality. But : ‘ My meat is to do the
will of him that sent me, and to finish his
work,’ is religion.11 Or we may even
1 Dedit hoc Providentia' hominibus munus, ut
honesta magis juvarent.
2 Proverbs, iv, 18.
3 Sis a venereis amoribus aversus ; quibus si te
dedideris, non aliud quidquam possis cogitare
quam illud quod diligis.
4 Matthew, v, 8.
5 ©eAojUtr xaXws tfjv travres, aXA’ ov SuvapeOa.
6 Romans, vii, 24.
5 Etfl’ 4tr0a
epya rois Xbyois ftra.
8 Matthew, vii, 21.
9 Zijtrop Kara <bv<w>,
10 I Tim., vi, 12.
n Prov., xx. 13 ; John, iv, 34.
observe a third stage between these two
stages, which shows to us the transition
from one to the other. ‘ If thou givest
thy soul the desires that please her, she
will make thee a laughing stock to thine
enemies ; ’ 1—that is morality. ‘ He that
resisteth pleasure crowneth his life ; ’2—
that is morality with the tone heightened,
passing, or trying to pass, into religion.
‘ Flesh and blood cannot inherit the king
dom of God ; ’3—there the passage is
made, and we have religion. Our religious
examples are here all taken from the
Bible, and from the Bible such examples
can best be taken ; but we might also
find them elsewhere. ‘Oh that my lot
might lead me in the path of holy inno
cence of thought and deed, the path which
august laws ordain, laws which in the
highest heaven had their birth, neither
did the race of mortal man beget them,
nor shall oblivion ever put them to sleep;
the power of God is mighty in them, and
groweth not old 1 ’ That is from So
phocles, but it is as much religion as any
of the things which we have quoted as
religious. Like them, it is not the mere
enjoining of conduct, but it is this enjoin
ing, touched, strengthened, and almost
transformed, by the addition of feeling.
So what is meant by the application of
emotion to morality has now, it is to be
hoped, been made clear. The next ques
tion will probably be : But how does one
get the application made? Why, how
does one get to feel much about any
matter whatever? By dwelling upon it,
by staying our thoughts upon it, by having
it perpetually in our mind. The very
words mind, memory, remain, come,
probably, all from the same root, from
the notion of staying, attending. Pos
sibly even the word man comes from
the same; so entirely does the idea
of humanity, of intelligence, of looking
before and after, of raising oneself out
of the flux of things, rest upon the idea
of steadying oneself, concentrating one
self, making order in the chaos of one’s
impressions, by attending to one impres’ Ecclesiasticus, xviii, 31,
2 Ecclesiasticus, xix, 5.
* I Corinthians, xv, 50.
�RELIGION GIVEN
23
to his own death ; ’ ‘ The way of trans
gressors is hard ; ’ nobody will deny that
those texts may stand for the fundamental
and ever-recurring idea of the Old Testa
ment.1 No people ever felt so strongly
as the people of the Old Testament, the
Hebrew people, that conduct is threefourths of our life and its largest concern.
No people ever felt so strongly that suc
ceeding, going right, hitting the mark in
this great concern, was the way of peace,
the highest possible satisfaction. ‘ He
that keepeth the law, happy is he ; its
ways are ways of pleasantness, and all its
paths are peace ; if thou hadst walked in
its ways thou shouldst have dwelt in peace
for ever ! ’2 Jeshurun, one of the ideal
names of their race, is the upright; Israel,
the other and greater, is the wrestler with
God, he who has known the conten
tion and strain it costs to stand upright.
That mysterious personage by whom their
history first touches the hill of Sion, is
Melchisedek, the righteous king. Their
holy city, Jerusalem, is the foundation, or
vision, or inheritance, of that which right
eousness achieves—peace. The law of
righteousness was such an object of atten
tion to them, that its words were to ‘ be
in their heart, and thou shalt teach them
diligently unto thy children, and shalt
talk of them when thou sittest in thine
house, and when thou walkest by the way,
and when thou liest down, and when thou
risest up.’3 That they might keep them
ever in mind, they wore them, went about
with them, made talismans of them:
‘ Bind them upon thy fingers, bind them
about thy neck; write them upon the
table of thine heart! ’4 ‘ Take fast hold
of her,’ they said of the doctrine of con-]
duct, or righteousness, ‘ let her not go
keep her, for she is thy life ! ’ 5
3People who thus spoke of righteousness
Only with one people—the people from could not but have had their minds long
whom we get the Bible—these distractions and deeply engaged with it; much more
than the generality of mankind, who have
did not so much happen.
The Old Testament, nobody will ever nevertheless, as we saw, got as far as the
deny, is filled with the word and thought
’ Prov., xii, 28 ; xi, 19; xiii, 15.
of righteousness. ‘ Ip the way of right
2 Prov., xxix, 18; iii, 17. Baruch, iii, 13.
eousness is life, and in the pathway thereof
8 Deuteronomy, vi, 6, 7.
is no death ; ’ ‘ Righteousness tendeth to
4 Prov., vii, 3 ; iii, 3.
4 Prov., iv, 13.
life; ’ ‘ He that pursueth evil pursueth it
sion rather than the other. The rules of
conduct, of morality, were themselves,
philosophers suppose, reached in this
way ;—the notion of a whole self as op
posed to a partial self, a best self to an
inferior self, to a momentary self a per
manent self requiring the restraint of
impulses a man would naturally have in
dulged ;—because, by attending to his life,
man found it had a scope beyond the
wants of the present moment. Suppose
it was so ; then the first man who, as ‘ a
being,’ comparatively, ‘ of a large dis
course, looking before and after,’ con
trolled the native, instantaneous, me
chanical impulses of the instinct of self
preservation, controlled the native, instan
taneous, mechanical impulses of the re
productive instinct, had morality revealed
to him.
But there is a long way from this to
that habitual dwelling on the rules thus
reached, that constant turning them over
in the mind, that near and lively experi
mental sense of their beneficence, which
communicates emotion to our thought of
them, and thus incalculably heightens
their power. And the more mankind
attended to the claims of that part of our
nature which does not belong to conduct
or morality, properly so called (and we
have seen that, after all, about one-fourth
of our nature is in this case), the more
they would have distractions to take off
their thoughts from those moral conclu
sions which all races of men, one may say,
seem to have reached, and to prevent
these moral conclusions from being quick
ened by emotion, and thus becoming
religious.
�24
LITERATURE AND DOGMA
notion of morals or conduct. And, if live.’1 And we may well give ourselves,
they were so deeply attentive to it, one in grateful and devout self-surrender, to
thing could not fail to strike them. It is that by which we are thus visited. So
this : the very great part in righteousness much is there incalculable, so much that
which belongs, we may say, to not our belongs to not ourselves, in conduct ; and
selves. In the first place, we did not the more we attend to conduct, and the
make ourselves and our nature, or con more we value it, the more we shall feel
duct as the object of three-fourths of that this.
The not ourselves, which is in us and in
nature; we did not provide that happi
ness should follow conduct, as it unde the world around us, has almost every
niably does; that the sense of succeeding, where, as far as we can see, struck the
going right, hitting the mark, in conduct, minds of men as they awoke to conscious
should give satisfaction, and a very high ness, and has inspired them with awe.
satisfaction, just as really as the sense of Everyone knows how the mighty natural
doing well in his work gives pleasure to a objects which most took their regards
poet or painter, or accomplishing what became the objects to which this awe
he tries gives pleasure to a man who is addressed itself. Our very word God is, per
learning to ride or to shoot; or as satisfy haps, a reminiscence of these times, when
ing his hunger, also, gives pleasure to a men invoked ‘ The Brilliant on high,’
sublime hoc candens quod invocent omnes
man who is hungry.
All this we did not make; and, in the Jovem, as the power representing to them
next place, our dealing with it at all, when that which transcended the limits of their
it is made, is not wholly, or even nearly narrow selves, and by which they lived
wholly, in our own power. Our conduct and moved and had their being. Every
is capable, irrespective of what we can one knows of what differences of opera
ourselves certainly answer for, of almost tion men’s dealing with this power has in
infinitely different degrees of force and different places and times shown itself
energy in the performance of it, of lucidity capable ; how here they have been moved
and vividness in the perception of it, of by the not ourselves to a cruel terror, there
fulness in the satisfaction from it; and to a timid religiosity, there again to a play
these degrees may vary from day to day, of imagination ; almost always, however,
and quite incalculably. Facilities and connecting with it, by some string or other,
felicities—whence do they come ? sugges conduct.
But we are not writing a history of
tions and stimulations—where do they
tend? hardly a day passes but we have religion ; we are only tracing its effect on
some experience of them. And so Henry the language of the men from whom we
More was led to say, that ‘there was get the Bible. At the time they produced
something about us that knew better, those documents which give to the Old
often, what we would be at than we our Testament its power and its true character,
selves.’ For instance : everyone can under the not ourselves which weighed upon the
stand bow health and freedom from pain mind of Israel, and engaged its awe, was
may give energy for conduct, and how a the not ourselves by which we get the sense
neuralgia, suppose, may diminish it. It for righteousness, and whence we find the
does not depend on ourselves, indeed, help to do right. This conception was
whether we have the neuralgia or not, but indubitably what lay at the bottom of that
we can understand its impairing our spirit. remarkable change which under Moses, at
But the strange thing is, that with the same a certain stage of their religious history,
neuralgia we may find ourselves one day befell the Hebrew people’s mode of nam
without spirit and energy for conduct, and ing God.2 This was what they intended
another day with them. So that we may in that name, which we wrongly convey,
most truly say, with the author of the
’ Relicti mergimur et perimus, visitati vero
Imitation : ‘ Left to ourselves, we sink and erigimur et vivimus.
perish ; visited, we lift up our heads and
* See Exodus, iii, 14.
�RELIGION GIVEN
25
Eternal; the Eternal wliatl The Eternal
cause ? Alas, these poor people were not
Archbishops of York. They meant the
Eternal righteous, who loveth righteous
ness. They had dwelt upon the thought
of conduct, and of right and wrong, until
the not ourselves, which is in us and all
around us, became to them adorable
eminently and altogether as a power which
makes for righteousness ; which makes for
it unchangeably and eternally, and is there
fore called The Eternal.
There is not a particle of metaphysics
in their use of this name, any more than
in their conception of the not ourselves to
which they attached it. Both came to
them not from abstruse reasoning but
from experience, and from experience in
the plain region of conduct. Theologians
with metaphysical heads render Israel’s
Eternal by the selfexistent, and Israel’s
not ourselves by the absolute, and attribute
to Israel their own subtleties. According
to them, Israel had his head full of the
necessity of a first cause, and therefore
said, The Eternal; as, again, they imagine
him looking out into the world, noting
everywhere the marks of design and adap
tation to his wants, and reasoning out and
inferring thence the fatherhood of God.
All these fancies come from an excessive
turn for reasoning, and from a neglect of
observing men’s actual course of thinking
and way of using words. Israel, at this
stage when The Eternal was revealed to
him, inferred nothing, reasoned out no
thing ; he felt and experienced. When he
begins to speculate, in the schools of
Rabbinism, he quickly shows how much
less native talent than the Bishops of Win
chester and Gloucester he has for this
perilous business. Happily, when The
Eternal was revealed to him, he had not
yet begun to speculate.
Israel personified, indeed, his Eternal,
for he was strongly moved, he was an
orator and poet. Man never knows how
anthropomorphic he is, says Goethe; and
so man tends always to represent every
thing under his own figure. In poetry
and eloquence man may and must follow
1 ‘ Qu’est-ce que la nature ?’ says Pascal; ‘pentetre une premitre coutume, comme la coutume est this tendency, but in science it often leads
him astray. Israel, however, did not
une seconde nature.’
either without translation, by Jehovah,
which gives us the notion of a mere
mythological deity, or by a wrong transla
tion, Lord, which gives us the notion of a
magnified and non-natural man. The
name they used was : The Eternal.
Philosophers dispute whether moral
ideas, as they call them, the simplest ideas
of conduct and righteousness which now
seem instinctive, did not all grow, were
not once inchoate, embryo, dubious, un
formed.1 That may have been so; the
question is an interesting one for science.
But the interesting question for conduct
is whether those ideas are unformed or
formed now. They are formed now ; and
they were formed when the Hebrews
named the power, not of their own mak
ing, which pressed upon their spirit : The
Eternal. Probably the life of Abraham,
the friend of God, however imperfectly the
Bible traditions by themselves convey it
to us, was a decisive step forwards in the
development of these ideas of righteous
ness.
Probably this was the moment
when such ideas became fixed and ruling
for the Hebrew people, and marked it
permanently off from all other peoples
who had not made the same step. But
long before the first beginnings of recorded
history, long before the oldest word of
Bible literature, these ideas must have
been at work. We know it by the result,
although they may have for a long while
been but rudimentary. In Israel’s earliest
history and earliest utterances, under the
name of Eloah, Elohim, The Mighty,
there may have lain and matured, there
did lie and mature, ideas of God more as
a moral power, more as a power connected,
above everything, with conduct and right
eousness, than were entertained by other
races. Not only can we judge by the
result that this must have been so, but we
can see that it w'as so. Still their name,
The Mighty, does not in itself involve any
41 true and deep religious ideas, any more
than our Aryan name, Deva, Deus, The
Shining. With The Eternal it is other
wise. For what did they mean by the
�LITERATURE AND DOGMA
26
scientifically predicate personality of God;
he would not even have had a notion what
was meant by it. He called him the
maker of all things, who gives drink to all
out of his pleasures as out of a river; but
he was led to this by no theory of a first
cause. The grandeur of the spectacle given
by the world, the grandeur of the sense of
its all being not ourselves, being above and
beyond ourselves and immeasurably dwarf
ing us, a man of imagination instinctively
personifies as a single, mighty, living and
productive power; as Goethe tells us that
the words which rose naturally to his lips,
when he stood on the top of the Brocken,
were: ‘Lord, what is man, that thou
mindest him, or the son of man, that thou
makest account of him ? ’1 But Israel’s
confessing and extolling of this power
came not even from his imaginative feel
ing, but came first from his gratitude for
righteousness. To one who knows what
conduct is, it is a joy to be alive; and the
not ourselves, which by bringing forth for
us righteousness makes our happiness,
working just in the same sense, brings
forth this glorious world to be righteous
in. That is the notion at the bottom of
a Hebrew’s praise of a Creator; and if
we attend, we can see this quite clearly.
Wisdom and understanding mean, for
Israel, the love of order, of righteousness.
Righteousness, order, conduct, is for Israel
at once the source of all man’s happiness
and at the same time the very essence
of The Eternal. The great work of the
Eternal is the foundation of this order in
man, the implanting in mankind of his
own love of righteousness, his own spirit,
his own wisdom and understanding;
and it is only as a farther and natural
working of this energy that Israel con
ceives the establishment of order in the
world, or creation. ‘To depart from evil,
that is understanding ! Happy is the man
that findeth wisdom, and the man that
getteth understanding ! The Eternal by
wisdom hath founded the earth, by under
standing hath he established the heavens', ’2
and so the Bible-writer passes into the
account of creation. It all comes to him
from the idea of righteousness.
1 Ps. cxlix, 3.
2 Prov., iii, 13-20.
I
And it is the same with all the language
our Hebrew religionist uses. God is a
father, because the power in and around
us, which makes for righteousness, is
indeed best described by the name of this
authoritative but yet tender and protect
ing relation. So, too, with the intense fear
and abhorrence of idolatry. Conduct,
righteousness, is, above all, a matter of
inward motion and rule. No sensible
forms can represent it, or help us to it ;
such attempts at representation can only
distract us from it. So, too, with the sense
of the oneness of God. ‘ Hear, O Israel 1
The Lord our God is one Lord.’1 People
think that in this unity of God,—this
monotheistic idea, as they call it,—they have
certainly got metaphysics at last. They have
got nothing of the kind. The monotheistic
idea of Israel is simply seriousness. There
are, indeed, many aspects of the not our
selves ; but Israel regarded one aspect of it
only, that by which it makes for righteous
ness. He had the advantage, to be sure, that
with this aspect three-fourths of human life
is concerned. But there are other aspects
which may be set in view. ‘ Frail and
striving mortality,’ says the elder Pliny in
a noble passage, ‘mindful of its own
weakness, has distinguished these aspects
severally, so as for each man to be able to
attach himself to the divine by this or that
part, according as he has most need.’2
That is an apology for polytheism, as
answering to man’s many-sidedness. But
Israel felt that being thus many-sided
degenerates into an imaginative play, and
bewilders what Israel recognised as our sole
religious consciousness,—the consciousness
of right. ‘ Let thine eyelids look right on,
and let thine eyelids look straight before
thee; turn not to the right hand nor to
the left; remove thy foot from evil! ’3
For does not Ovid say,4 in excuse for
1 Deut., vi, 4.
2 Fragilis et laboriosa mortalitas in partes ista
digessit, infirmitatis suae memor, ut portionibus
coleret quisque, quo maxime indigeret. Nat.
Hist., ii, 5.
3 Prov., iv, 25, 27.
4 Tristia, ii. 287 :—
Quis locus est templis augustior ? haec quoque vitet,
In culpam si qua est ingeniosa suam.
See the whole passage.
�RELIGION GIVEN
27
the immorality of his verses, that the sight
and mention of the gods themselves,—the
rulers of human life,—often raised im
moral thoughts? And so the sight and
mention of all aspects of the not ourselves
must. Yet how tempting are many of
these aspects ! Even at this time of day
the grave authorities of the University of
Cambridge are so struck by one of them,
that of pleasure, life and fecundity,—of the
hominum divomque voluptas, alma Venus,
—that they set it publicly up as an object
for their scholars to fix their minds upon,
and to compose verses in honour of. That
is all very well at present; but with this
natural bent in the authorities of the
University of Cambridge, and in the IndoEuropean race to which they belong,
where would they be now if it had not
been for Israel, and for the stern check
which Israel put upon the glorification and
divinisation of this natural bent of man
kind, this attractive aspect of the not our
selves! Perhaps going in procession,
Vice-Chancellor, bedels, masters, scholars,
and all, in spite of their Professor of Moral
Philosophy, to the temple of Aphrodite!
Nay, and very likely Mr. Birks himself, his
brows crowned with myrtle and scarcely
a shade of melancholy on his counte
nance, would have been going along with
them ! It is Israel and his seriousness
that have saved the authorities of the
University of Cambridge from carrying
their divinisation of pleasure to these
lengths, or from making more of it,
indeed, than a mere passing intellectual
play; and even this play Israel would
have beheld with displeasure, saying : O
turn away mine eyes lest they behold vanity,
but quicken Thou me in Thy way! 1 So
earnestly and exclusively were Israel’s
regards bent on one aspect of the not
ourselves : its aspect as a power making
for conduct, for righteousness. Israel’s
Eternal was the Eternal which says : ‘ Be
ye holy,-fox I am holy 1 ’ Now, as righte
ousness is but a heightened conduct, so
holiness is but a heightened righteous
ness; a more finished, entire, and awefilled righteousness.
It was such a
righteousness which was Israel’s ideal;
and therefore it was that Israel said,
not indeed what our Bibles make him
say, but this: ‘Hear, O Israel! The
Eternal is our God, The Eternal alone.'
And in spite of his turn for personifi
cation, his want of a clear boundary-line
between poetry and science, his inaptitude
to express even abstract notions by other
than highly concrete terms,—in spite of
these scientific disadvantages, or rather,
perhaps, because of them, because he had
no talent for abstruse reasoning to lead
him astray,—the spirit and tongue of
Israel kept a propriety, a reserve, a sense
of the inadequacy of language in convey
ing man’s ideas of God, which contrast
strongly with the licence of affirmation in
our Western theology. ‘The high and
holy One that inhabiteth eternity, whose
name is holy,’1 is far more proper and
felicitous language than ‘ the moral and
intelligent Governor of the universe,’ just
because it far less attempts to be precise,
but keeps to the language of poetry and
does not essay the language of science.
As he had developed his idea of God
from personal experience, Israel knew
what we, who have developed our idea
from his words about it, so often are
ignorant of: that his words were but
thrown out at a /vast object of conscious
ness, which he could not fully grasp, and
which he apprehended clearly by one
point alone,—that it made for the great
concern of life, conduct. How little we
know of it besides, how impenetrable is
the course of its ways with us, how we
are baffled in our attempts to name and
describe it, how, when we personify it and
call it ‘ the moral and intelligent Governor
of the universe,’ we presently find it not
to be a person as man conceives of per
sons, nor moral as man conceives of
moral, nor intelligent as man conceives of
intelligent, nor a governor as man conceives
of governors,—all this, which scientific
theology loses sight of, Israel, who had
but poetry and eloquence, and no system,
and who did not mind contradicting him
self, knew. ‘ Is it any pleasure to the
1 Ps. cxix, 37.
’ Ps., lvii, 15.
�28
LITERATURE AND DOGMA
Almighty, that thou art righteous?’1
What a blow to our ideal of that magnified
and non-natural man, ‘ the moral and in
telligent Governor’ ! Say what we can
about God, say our best, we have yet,
Israel knew, to add instantly : ‘ Lo, these
are fringes of his ways ; but how little a
portion is heard of him !’2 Yes, indeed,
Israel remembered that, far better than
our bishops do. ‘ Canst thou by search
ing find out God; canst thou find out
the perfection of the Almighty? It is
more high than heaven, what canst thou
do ? deeper than hell, what canst thou
know ? ’3
Will it be said, experience might also
have shown to Israel a not ourselves which
did not make for his happiness, but rather
made against it, baffled his claims to it?
But'no man, as I have elsewhere re
marked,4 who simply follows his own
consciousness, is aware of any claims, any
rights, whatever ; what he gets of good
makes him thankful, what he gets of ill
seems to him natural. His simple spon
taneous feeling is well expressed by that
saying of Izaak Walton: ‘ Every misery
that I miss is a new mercy, and therefore
let us be thankful.’ It is true, the not
ourselves of which we are thankfully con
scious we inevitably speak of and speak to
as a man ; for ‘ man never knows how
anthropomorphic he is.’ And as time
proceeds, imagination and reasoning keep
working upon this substructure, and
build from it a magnified and non-natural
man. Attention is then drawn, afterwards,
to causes outside ourselves which seem to
make for sin and suffering; and then
either these causes have to be reconciled
by some highly ingenious scheme with the
magnified and non-natural man’s power,
or a second magnified and non-natural
man has to be supposed, who pulls the
contrary way to the first. So arise Satan
and his angels. But all this is secondary,
and comes much later. Israel, the founder
of our religion, did not begin with this.
He began with experience. He knew
from thankful experience the not our
1 Job, xxii, 3.
2 Job, xxvi, 14.
8 Job, xi, 7.
4 Culture and Anarchy, p. 192.
selves which makes for righteousness, and
knew how little we know about God
besides.
4.
The language of the Bible, then, is
literary, not scientific language; language
thrown out at an object of consciousness
not fully grasped, which inspired emotion.
Evidently, if the object be one not fully to
be grasped, and one to inspire emotion,
the language of figure and feeling will
satisfy us better about it, will cover more
of what we seek to express, than the
language of literal fact and science. The
language of science about it will be below
what we feel to be the truth.
The question however has risen and
confronts us : what was the scientific
basis of fact for this consciousness ?
When we have once satisfied ourselves
both a? to the tentative, poetic way in
which the Bible-authors used language,
and also as to their having no pretensions
to metaphysics at all, let us, therefore,
when there is this question raised as to
the scientific account of what they had
before their minds, be content with a very
unpretending answer. And in this way
such a phrase as that which I have
formerly used concerning God, and have
been much blamed for using,—the phrase,
namely, that, ‘for science, God is simply
the stream of tendency by which all things
seek to fulfil the law of their being]—may
be allowed, and may even prove useful.
Certainly it is inadequate; certainly it is
a less proper phrase than, for instance :
‘Clouds and darkness are round about
him, righteousness and judgment are the
habitation of his seat.’1 But then it is,
in however humble a degree and with
1 Ps. xcvii, 2. It has been urged that if the
personifying mode of expression is more proper,
it must, also, be more scientifically exact. But
surely it will on reflection appear that this is by
no means so. Wordsworth calls the earth ‘ the
mighty mother of mankind,’ and the geographers
call her ‘ an oblate spheroid ; ’ Wordsworth’s ex
pression is more proper and adequate to convey
what men feel about the earth, but it is not
therefore the more scientifically exact.
�RELIGION GIVEN
however narrow a reach, a scientific defini
tion, which the other is not. 1 he phrase,
‘A personal First Cause, the moral,and
intelligent Governor of the universe,’ has
also, when applied to God, the character,
no doubt, of a scientific definition. But
then it goes far beyond what is admittedly
certain and verifiable, which is what we
mean by scientific. It attempts far too
much. If we want here, as we do want,
to have what is admittedly certain and
verifiable, we must content ourselves with
very little. No one will say, that it is
admittedly certain and verifiable, that
there is a personal first cause, the .moral
and intelligent governor of the universe,
whom we may call God if we will. But
that all things seem to us to have what we
call a law of their being, and to tend to
fulfil it, is certain and admitted ; though
whether we will call this God or not, is a
matter of choice. Suppose, however, we
call it God, we then give the name of
God to a certain admitted reality; this, at
least, is an advantage.
And the notion of our definition does,
in fact, enter into the term God, in men’s
common use of it. To please God, to
serve God, to obey God’s will, means- to
follow a law of things which is found in
conscience, and w’hich is an indication,
irrespective of our arbitrary wish and fancy,
of what we ought to do. There is, then,
a real power which makes for righteous
ness ; and it is the greatest of realities for
us.1 When St. Paul says, that our business
is ‘ to serve the spirit of God,’ ‘ to serve
the living and true God ; ’1 and when
2
Epictetus says: ‘What do I want?—to
acquaint myself with the natural order of
things, and comply with it,’3 they both
1 Prayer, about which so much has often been
said unadvisedly and ill, deals with this reality.
All good and beneficial prayer is in truth, how
ever men may describe it, at bottom nothing else
than an energy of aspiration towards the eternal
not ourselves that makes for righteousness,—of
aspiration towards it, and of co-operation with it.
Nothing, therefore, can be more efficacious, more
right, and more real. •
2 Philippians, iii, 3 (in the r.eadin.g of the
Vatican manuscript) ; I Thessalonians, i, 9. ,
3 t( £ovAojuai; KaTajuaflui'
/cat ravry
Cirtaflai.
29
mean, so far, the same, in that they both
mean we should obey a tendency, which
is not ourselves, but which appears in our
consciousness, by which we and other
things fulfil the real law of our being.
It is true, the not ourselves, by which
things fulfil the real law of their being,
extends a great deal beyond that sphere
where alone we usually think of it. That
is, a man may disserve God, disobey
indications, not of our own making, but
which appear, if we attend, in our con
sciousness—he may disobey, I say, such
indications of the real law of our being,
in other spheres besides the sphere of
conduct. He does disobey them, when
he sings a hymn like : My Jesus to know,
and feel his blood flow—ox, indeed, like
nine-tenths of our hymns—or when he
frames and maintains a blundering and
miserable, constitution of society, as well
as when he commits some plain breach of
the moral law. That is, he may disobey
them in art and science as well as in con
duct. But he attends, and the generality
of men attend, almost solely to the indi
cations of a true law of our being as to
conduct 5 and hardly at all to indications,
though they as really exist, of a true law
of our being on its aesthetic and intelligential side. The reason is, that the
moral side, though not more real, is so
much larger; taking in, as we have said,
at least three-fourths of life. Now, the
indications on this moral side of that
tendency, not of our making, by which
things fulfil the law of their being, we do
very much mean to denote and to sum up
when we speak of the will of God, pleasing
God, serving God. Let us keep firm
footing on this basis of plain fact, narrow
though it may be.
To feel that one is fulfilling in any
way the law of one’s being, that one is
succeeding and hitting the mark, bring’,
as we know, happiness ; to feel this in
regard to so great a thing as conduct,
brings, of course, happiness proportionate
to the thing’s greatness. We have already
had Quintilian’s witness, how right con
duct gives joy. Who could value know
ledge more than Goethe ? but he marks it
as being without question a lesser source
�30
LITERATURE AND DOGMA
of joy than conduct. Conduct he ranks
with health as beyond all compare primary.
‘Nothing, after health and •virtue,1 he
says, ‘can give so much satisfaction as
learning and knowing.’ Nay, and Bishop
Butler, at the view of the happiness from
conduct, breaks free from all that hesi
tancy and depression which so commonly
hangs on his masterly thinking. ‘Selflove, methinks, should be alarmed 1 May
she not pass over greater pleasures than
those she is so wholly taken up with ? ’
And Bishop Wilson, always hitting the
right nail on the head in matters of this
sort, remarks that, ‘ if it were not for the
practical difficulties attending it, virtue
zvould hardly be distinguishable from a kind
of sensuality.1 The practical difficulties
are, indeed, exceeding great. Plain as is
the course and high the prize, we all
find ourselves daily led to say.with the
Imitation-. ‘Would that for one single
day we had lived in this world as we
ought! ’ Yet the course is so evidently
plain, and the prize so high, that the
same Imitation cries out presently : ‘ If a
man would but take notice, what peace
he brings to himself, and what joy to
others, merely by managing himself right!’
And for such happiness, since certainly
we ourselves did not make it, we instinc
tively feel grateful; according to that
remark of one of the wholesomest and
truest of moralists, Barrow : ‘ He is not a
man, who doth not delight to make some
returns thither whence he hath found
great kindness.’
And this sense of
gratitude, again, is itself an addition to
our happiness ! So strong, altogether, is
the witness and sanction happiness gives
to going right in conduct, to fulfilling, so
far as conduct is concerned, the law
indicated to us of our being. Now, there
can be no sanction to compare, for force,
with the strong sanction of happiness, if
it be true what Bishop Butler, who is
here but the mouthpiece of humanity
itself, says so irresistibly : ‘ It is manifest
that nothing can be of consequence to
mankind, or any creature, but happiness.’
But we English are taunted with our
proneness to an unworthy eudaemonism,
and an Anglican bishop may perhaps be
a suspected witness. Let us call, then, a
glorious father of the Catholic Church,
the great Augustine himself. Says St.
Augustine : ‘ Act we must in pursuance of
what .gives us most delight; quod amplius
nos delectat, secundum id operemur necesse
est.’
And now let us see how exactly Israel’s
perceptions about God follow and confirm
this simple line, which we have here
reached quite independently. First: ‘ It
is joy to the just to do judgment.’1 Then:
‘It becometh well the just to be thankful.1*
Finally : ‘ A pleasant thing it is to be
thankful.’3 What can be simpler than
this, and at the same time more solid?
But again : ‘ The statutes of the Eternal
rejoice the heart.’4 And then: ‘I will
give thanks unto thee, O Eternal, with
my whole heart; at midnight will I rise
to give thanks unto thee because of thy
righteous judgments I ’5 And lastly : ‘ It
is a good thing to give thanks unto the
Eternal; it is a good thing to sing
praises unto our God 1 ’6 Why, these are
the very same propositions as the pre
ceding, only with a power and depth of
emotion added !
Emotion has been
applied to morality.
God or Eternal'^ here really, at bottom,
nothing but a deeply moved way of saying
‘ the power that makes for conduct or.
righteousness.1 ‘Trust in God1 is, in a
deeply moved way of expression, the trust
in the law of conduct ; ‘ delight in the
Eternal1 is, in a deeply moved way of
expression, the happiness we all feel to
spring from conduct. Attending to con
duct, to judgment, makes the attender
feel that it is joy to do it. Attending to
it more still, makes him feel that it is the
commandment of the Eternal, and that
the joy got from it is joy from fulfilling
the commandment of the Eternal. The
thankfulness for this joy is thankfulness
to the Eternal ; and to the Eternal, again,
is due that further joy which comes from
this thankfulness.
‘ The fear of the
Eternal, that is wisdom; and to depart
1 Prov., xxi, 15.
2 Ps. xxxiii, I.
8 Ps. cxlvii, 1.
4 Ps. xix, 8.
8 Ps. cxxxviii, I ; cxix, 62.
6 Ps. xcii, 1 ; cxlvii, 1.
�RELIGION GIVEN
from evil, that is understanding.’1 ‘ The
fear of the Eternal' and ‘ To depart from
evil' here mean, and are put to mean, and
by the very laws of Hebrew composition
which make the second phrase in a
parallelism repeat the first in other words,
they must mean, just the same thing.
Yet, what man of soul, after he had once
risen to feel that to depart from evil was
to walk in awful observance of an endur
ing clue, within us and without us, which
leads to happiness, but would prefer to
say, instead of ‘ to depart from evil,’ ‘ the
fear of the Eternal ’ ?
Henceforth, then, Israel transferred to
this Eternal all his obligations. Instead
of saying: ‘ Whoso keepeth the com
mandment keepeth his own soul,’2 he
• rather said, ‘ My soul, wait thou only
upon God, for of him cometh my salva
tion ! ’ 3 Instead of saying : ‘ Bind them
(the laws of righteousness) continually
upon thine heart, and tie them about thy
neck!’4 he rather said, ‘Have I not
remembered Thee on my bed, and
thought upon Thee when I was waking?’5
The obligation of a grateful and devout
self-surrender to the Eternal replaced all
sense of obligation to one’s own better
self, one’s own permanent interest. The
moralist’s rule : ‘ Take thought for your
permanent, not your momentary, well
being,’ became now: ‘ Honour the Eternal,
not doing thine own ways, nor finding
thine own pleasure, nor speaking thine own
words.’6 That is, with Israel religion
replaced morality.
It is true, out of the humble yet divine
ground of attention to conduct, of care for
what in conduct is right and good, grew
morality and religion both; but, from the
time when the soul felt the motive of
religion, it dropped and could not but
drop the other. And the motive of doing
right, to a sincere soul, is now really no
longer his own welfare, but to please God;
and it bewilders his consciousness if you
tell him that he does right out of self-love.
So that, as we have said that the first man
who, as ‘a being of a large discourse,
1 Job, xxviii, 28.
s Ps. lxii, 5, 1.
4 Ps. lxiii, 7.
2 Prov., xix, 16.
4 Prov., vi, 2.
6 Is. lviii, 13.
3i
looking before and after,’ controlled the
blind momentary impulses of the instinct
of self-preservation, and controlled the
blind momentary impulses of the sexual
instinct, had morality revealed to him ; so
in like manner we may say, that the first
man who was thrilled with gratitude,
devotion, and awe, at the sense of joy and
peace, not of his own making, which
followed the exercise of this self-control,
had religion revealed to him. And, for
us at least, this man was Israel.
Now here, as we have already pointed
out the falseness of the common antithesis
between ethical and religious, let us an
ticipate the objection that the religion
here spoken of is but natural religion, by
pointing out the falseness of the common
antithesis, also, between natural and
revealed. For that in us which is really
natural is, in truth, revealed. We awake
to the consciousness of it, we are aware
of it coming forth in our mind; but we
feel that we did not make it, that it is dis
covered to us, that it is what it is whether
we will or no. If we are little concerned
about it, we say it is natural; if much,
we say it is revealed. But the difference
between the two is not one of kind, only
of degree. The real antithesis, to natural
and revealed alike, is invented, artificial.
Religion springing out of an experience
of the power, the grandeur, the necessity
of righteousness, is revealed religion,
whether we find it in Sophocles or in
Isaiah. ‘The will of mortal men did not
beget it, neither shall oblivion ever put it
to sleep.’ A system of theological notions
about personality, essence, existence, consubstantiality, is artificial religion, and is
the proper opposite to revealed; since it
is a religion which comes forth in no one’s
consciousness, but is invented by theo
logians—able men with uncommon talents
for abstruse reasoning. This religion is
in no sense revealed, just because it is in
no sense natural. And revealed religion
is properly so named, just in propor
tion as it is in a pre-eminent degree
natural.
The religion of the Bible, therefore,
is well said to be revealed, because the
great natural truth, that ‘ righteousness
�LITERATURE AND DOGMA
33
tendeth to life'1 is seized and exhibited
there with such incomparable force and
efficacy. All, or very nearly all, the nations
of mankind have recognised the import
ance of conduct, and have attributed to
it a natural obligation. They, however,
looked at conduct, not as something full
of happiness and joy, but as something
one could not manage to do without.
But : ‘ Sion heard of it and rejoiced, and
the daughters of Judah were glad, because
of thy judgments, O Eternal ! ’ 2 Happi
ness is our being’s end and aim, and no one
has ever come near Israel in feeling, and
in making others feel, that to righteousness
belongs happiness ! The prodigies and
the marvellous of Bible-religion are com
mon . to it with all religions ; the love
of righteousness, in this eminency, is its
own.
5The real germ of religious conscious
ness, therefore, out of which sprang Israel’s
name for God, to which the records of his
history adapted themselves, and which
came to be clothed upon, in time, with a
mighty growth of poetry and tradition,
was a consciousness of the not ourselves
which makes for righteousness. And the
way to convince oneself of this is by
studying the Bible with a fair mind, and
with the tact which letters, surely, alone
can give. For the thing turns upon under
standing the manner in which men have
thought, their way of using words, and
what they mean by them. And by know
ing letters, by becoming conversant with
the best that has been thought and said
in the world, we become acquainted not
only with the history, but also with the
scope and powers, of the instruments
which men employ in thinking and speak
ing. And this is just what is sought for.
And with the sort of experience thus
gained of the history of the human spirit,
objections, as we have said, will be found
not so much to be refuted by reasoning
as to fall away of themselves. It is
objected : ‘ Why, if the Hebrews of the
1 Prov., xi, 19.
2 Ps. xcvii, 8.
Bible had thus eminently the sense for
righteousness, does it not equally dis
tinguish the Jews now?’ But does not
experience show us, how entirely a change
of circumstances may change a people’s
character; and have the modern Jews lost
more of what distinguished their ancestors,
or even so much, as the modern Greeks
of what distinguished theirs? Where
is now, among the Greeks, the dignity of
life of Pericles, the dignity of thought and
of art of Phidias and Plato ? It is objected
that the Jews’ God was not the enduring
power that makes for righteousness, but
only their tribal God, who gave them the
victory in the battle and plagued them
that hated them. But how, then, comes
their literature to be full of such things
as : ‘ Show me thy ways, O Eternal, and
teach me thy paths; let integrity and
uprightness preserve me, for I put my
trust in thee ! if I incline unto wickedness
with my heart, the Eternal will not hear
me.’1 From the sense that with men
thus guided and going right in goodness
it could not but be well, that their leaf
could not wither and that whatsoever they
did must prosper,2 would naturally come
the sense that in their wars with an
enemy the enemy should be put to con
fusion and they should triumph. But
how, out of the mere sense that their
enemy should be put to confusion and
they should triumph, could the desire for
goodness come ?
It is objected, again, that their ‘ law
of the Lord ’ was a positive traditionary
code to the Hebrews, standing as a
mechanical rule which held them in awe;
that their ‘fear of the Lord’ was super
stitious dread of an assumed magnified
and non-natural man. But why, then,
are they always saying ‘ Teach me thy
statutes, Teach me thy way, Show thou
me the way that I shall walk in, Open
mine eyes, Make me to understand wisdom
secretly !’3 if all the law they were think
ing of stood, stark and written, before
their eyes already ? And what could they
mean by : ‘ I will love thee, O Eternal,
1 Ps. xxv, 4, 21 ; lxvi, 18.
2 Ps. i, 3.
3 Ps. cxix, 12 ; lxxxvi, Il ; cxliii, 8 ; cxix, 18 ;
li, 6.
v
�RELIGION GIVEN
33
rfty strength ! ’1 if the fear they meant the reality and naturalness of that sense
was not the awe-filled observance from Clearly, unless a sense or endowment of
deep attachment, but a servile terror ? It human nature, however in itself real and
is objected, that their conception of beneficent, has some signal representative
righteousness was a narrow and rigid one, among mankind, it tends to be pressed
centring mainly in what they called judg upon by other senses and endowments, to
ment : ‘ Hate the evil and love the good, suffer from its own want of energy, and to
and establish judgment in the gate ! ’2 so be more and more pushed out of sight.
that ‘ evil,’ for them, did not take in all Anyone, for instance, who will go to the
faults whatever of heart and conduct, but Potteries, and will look at the tawdry,
meant chiefly oppression, graspingness, glaring, ill-proportioned ware which is
a violent, mendacious tongue, insolent being made there for certain American
and riotous excess. True; their con and colonial markets, will easily convince
ception of righteousness was much of himself how, in our people and kindred,
this kind, and it was narrow. But who the sense for the arts of design, though
ever sincerely attends to conduct, along it is certainly planted in human nature,
however limited a line, is on his way to might dwindle and sink to almost nothing,
bring under the eye of conscience all if it were not for the witness borne to this
conduct whatever; and already, in the sense, and the protest offered against its
Old Testament, the somewhat monotonous extinction, by the brilliant aesthetic endow
inculcation of the social virtues of judg ment and artistic work of ancient Greece.
ment and justice is continually broken And one cannot look out over the world
through by deeper movements of personal without seeing that the same sort of thing
religion. Every time that the words con might very well befall conduct, too, if it were
trition or humility drop from the lips of not for the signal witness borne by Israel.
Then there is the practical force of their
prophet or psalmist, Christianity appears.
It is objected, finally, that even their example ; and this is even more important.
own narrow conception of righteousness Everyone is aware how those, who want
this people could not follow, but were to cultivate any sense or endowment in
perpetually oppressive, grasping, slander themselves, must be habitually conversant
ous, sensual. Why, the very interest and with the works of people who have been
importance of their witness to righteous eminent for that sense, must study them,
ness lies in their having felt so deeply the catch inspiration from them. Only in this
necessity of what they were so little able way, indeed, can progress be made. And
to accomplish ! They had the strongest as long as the world lasts, all who want to
impulses in the world to violence and make progress in righteousness will come
excess, the keenest pleasure in gratifying to Israel for inspiration, as to the people
these impulses. And yet they had such who have had the sense for righteousness
a sense of the natural necessary connexion most glowing and strongest ; and in hear
between conduct and happiness, that they ing and reading the words Israel has
kept always saying, in spite of themselves : uttered for us, carers for conduct will find a
To him that ordereth his conversation right glow and a force they could find nowhere
else. As well imagine a man with a sense
shall be shown the salvation of God!3
Now manifestly this sense of theirs has for sculpture not cultivating it by the help
a double force for the rest of mankind,— of the remains of Greek art, or a man with
an evidential force and a practical force. a sense for poetry not cultivating it by the
Its evidential force is in keeping before help of Homer and Shakespeare, as a man
men’s view, by the example of the signal with a sense for conduct not cultivating
apparition, in one branch of our race, of it by the help of the Bible 1 And this
the sense for conduct and righteousness, sense, in the satisfying of which we come
naturally to the Bible, is a sense which
the generality of men have far more
1 Ps. xviii, I.
4 Amos, v, 15.
decidedly than they have the sense for
3 Ps. 1, 23.
c
�34
LITERATURE AND DOGMA
art or for science. At any rate, whether
this or that man has it decidedly or not,
it is the sense which has to do with threefourths of human life.
This does truly constitute for Israel a
most extraordinary distinction. In spite
of all which in them and in their character
is unattractive, nay, repellent,—in spite of
their shortcomings even in righteousness
itself and their insignificance in everything
else,—this petty, unsuccessful, unamiable
people, without politics, without science,
without art, without charm, deserve their
great place in the world’s regard, and are
likely to have it more, as the -world goes
on, rather than less. It is secured to
them by the facts of human nature, and
by the unalterable constitution of things.
‘ God hath given commandment to bless,
and he hath blessed, and we cannot reverse
it ; he hath not seen iniquity in Jacob, and
he hath not seen perverseness in Israel;
the Eternal, his God, is with him ! ’1
Anyone does a good deed who removes
stumbling blocks out of the way of our
feeling and profiting by the witness left
by this people. And so, instead of making
our Hebrew speakers mean, in their use
of the word God, a scientific affirmation
which never entered into their heads, and
about which many will dispute, let us
content ourselves with making them
mean, as a matter of scientific fact and
experience, what they really did mean as
such, and what is unchallengeable. Let
us put into their ‘ Eternal ’ and ‘ God ’ no
more science than they did :—the enduring
power, not ourselves, which makes for
righteousness. They meant more by these
names, but they meant this; and this they
grasped fully. And the sense which this
will give us for their words is at least
solid ; so that we may find it of use as a
guide to steady us, and to give us a
constant clue in following what they say.
And is it so unworthy? It is true,
unless we can fill it with as much feeling
as they did, the mere possessing it will
not carry us far. But matters are not at
all mended by taking their language of
approximate figure and turning it into
the language of scientific definition ; or
by crediting them with our own dubious
science, deduced from metaphysical ideas
which ‘they never had. A better way than
this, surely, is to take their fact of experi
ence, to keep it steadily for our basis in
using their language, and to see whether
from using their language with the ground
of this real and firm sense to it, as they
themselves did, somewhat of their feeling,
too, may not grow upon us. At least we
shall know what we are saying ; and that
what we are saying is true, however in
adequate.
But is this confessed inadequateness of
our speech, concerning that which we will
not call by the negative name of the
unknown and unknowable, but rather by
the name of the unexplored and inex
pressible, and of which the Hebrews
themselves said : It is more high than
heaven, what canst thou dot deeper than
hell, what canst thou knowT—is this
reservedness of affirmation about God
less worthy of him, than the astounding
particularity and licence of affirmation of
our dogmatists, as if he were, a man in
the next street ? Nay, and nearly all the
difficulties which torment theology,—as
the reconciling God’s justice with his
mercy and so on,—come from this licence
and particularity ; theologians having pre
cisely, as it would often seem, built up a
wall first, in order afterwards to run their
own heads against it.
This, we say, is what comes of too
much talent for abstract reasoning. One
cannot help seeing the theory of causation
and such things, when one should only
see a far simpler matter : the power, the
grandeur, the necessity of righteousness.
To be sure, a perception of these is at
the bottom of popular religion, under
neath all the extravagances theologians
have taught people to utter, and makes
the whole value of it. For the sake of
this true practical perception one might
be quite content to leave at rest a matter
where practice, after all, is everything,
and theory nothing. Only, when religion
is called in question because of the ex-
1 Numbers, xxiii, 20, 21.
1 Job, xi, 7.
�ABERGLAUBE INVADING
travagances of theology being passed off
as religion, one disengages and helps
religion by showing their utter delusive
ness. They arose out of the talents of
able men for reasoning, and their want
(not through lack of talent, for the thing
needs none: it needs only time, trouble,
good fortune, and a fair mind; but
through their being taken up with their
reasoning power), their want of literary
experience. By a sad mishap for them,
35
the sphere where they show their talents
is one for literary experience rather than
for reasoning. This mishap has at the
very outset,—in the dealings of theologians
with that starting-point in our religion,
the experience of Israel as set forth in the
O d Testament,—been the cause, we have
seen, of great confusion. Naturally, as
we shall hereafter see, the confusion
becomes worse confounded as they pro
ceed.
CHAPTER II
ABERGLAUBE INVADING
When people ask for our attention be plain, solid, and experimental sense they
cause of what has passed, they say, ‘in attached to them at bottom; and in
the Council of the Trinity,’ and been pro attaching it they were on sure ground of
mulgated, for our direction, by ‘a Personal fact, where we can all go with them.
First Cause, the moral and intelligent Their words, we shall find, taken in this
Governor of the universe,’ it is certainly sense, have quite a new force for us, and
open to any man to refuse to hear them, an indisputable one. It is worth while
on the plea that the very thing they start accustoming ourselves to use them thus,
with they have no means of proving. in order to bring out this force and to see
And we see that many do so refuse their how real it is, limited though it be, and
attention; and that the breach there is, insignificant as it may appear. The very
for instance, between popular religion and substitution of the word Eternal for the
what is called science, comes from this word Lord is something gained in this
cause. But it is altogether different when direction. The word Eternal has less of
people ask for our attention on the particularity and palpability for the imagi
strength of this other first principle : ‘To nation, but what it does affirm is some
righteousness belongs happiness;’ or this: thing real and verifiable.
Let us fix firmly in our minds, with this
‘ There is an enduring power, not our
selves, which makes for righteousness.’ limited but real sense to the words we
The more we meditate on this starting employ, the connexion of ideas which was
ground of theirs, the more we shall find ever present to the spirit of the Hebrew
that there is solidity in it, and the more people. In the way of righteousness is life,
we shall be inclined to go along with and in the pathway thereof is no death ;
as righteousness tendeth to life, so he that
them and to see what will come of it.
And herein is the advantage of giving pursueth evil, pursueth it to his own death;
this plain, though restricted, sense to the as the whirlwind passeth, so is the wicked
Bible-phrases : ‘ Blessed is the man that no more, but the righteous is an everlasting
feareth the Eternal!’and : ‘Whoso trusteth foundation;—here is the ground idea.1
in the Eternal, happy is he ! ’1 By tradi Yet there are continual momentary sug
tion, emotion, imagination, the Hebrews, gestions which make for gratifying our
no doubt, came to attach more than this apparent self, for unrighteousness ; never
plain sense to these phrases. But this theless, what makes for our real self, for
1 Ps. cxii, I; Prov., xvi, 20.
1 Prov., xii, 28 ; xi, 19 ; x, 25.
C 2
�LITERATURE AND DOGMA
righteousness, is lasting, and holds good
in the end. Therefore : Twist in the
Eternal with all thine heart, and lean not
unto thine own understanding ; there is no
wisdom, nor understanding, nor counsel
against the Eternal; there is a way that
seemeth right unto a man, but the end thereof
are the ways of death; there are many
devices in a man's heart, nevertheless, the
counsel of the Eternal, that shall standi
To follow this counsel of the Eternal is
the only true wisdom and understanding.
The fear of the Eternal, that is wisdom,
and to depart from evil, that is understand
ing? It is also happiness. Blessed is
everyone that feareth the Eternal, that
walketh in his ways; happy shall he be,
and it shall be well with him ! 3 O taste
and see how gracious the Eternal is 1
blessed is the man that trusteth in him?
Blessed is the man whose delight is in the
law of the Eternal; his leaf shall not
wither, and whatsoever he doeth, it shall
prosper? And the more a man walks in
this way of righteousness, the more he
feels himself borne by a power not his
own : Not by might and not by power, but
by my spirit, saith the Eternal? O
Eternal, I know that the way of man is
not in himself! all things come of thee ; in
thy light do we see light; man's goings are
of the Eternal; the Eternal ordereth a
good man's going, and maketh his way
acceptable to himself.1 But man feels, too,
how far he always is from fulfilling or
even from fully perceiving this true law of
his being, these indications of the Eternal,
the way of righteousness. He says, and
must say: I am a stranger upon earth,
Oh, hide not thy commandments from me!
Enter not into judgment with thy servant,
O Eternal, for in thy sight shall no man
living be justified!3 Nevertheless, as a
man holds on to practice as well as he
can, and avoids, at any rate, ‘presump
tuous sins,’ courses he can clearly see to1
3
2
1 Prov., iii, 5 ; xxi, 30; xiv, 12; xix, 21.
2 Job, xxviii, 28.
3 Ps. cxxviii, 1.
4 Ps. xxxiv, 8.
5 Ps. i, 1, 2, 3.
6 Zechariah, iv, 6.
2 Jeremiah, x, 23 ; I Chronicles, xxix, 14; Ps.
Xxxvi, 9 ; Prov., xx, 24 ; Ps. xxxvii, 23.
8
cxix, 89; exliii, 2.
be wrong, films fall away from his eyes,
the indications of the Eternal come out
more and more fully, we are cleansed
from faults which were hitherto secret to
us. Examine me, O God, and prove me,
try out my reins and my heart; look well
if there be any way of wickedness in me,
and lead me in the way everlasting!1 O
cleanse thou me from my secretfaults ! thou
hast proved my heart, thou hast visited me
in the night, thou hast tried me and shalt
find nothing? And the more we thus get
to keep innocency, the more we wonder
fully find joy and peace. O how plentiful
is thy goodness which thou hast laid up for
them that far thee! thou shalt hide them
in the secret of thy presence from the pro
voking of men? Thou wilt show me the
path of life, in thy presence is the fulness of
joy, at thy right hand there are pleasures
for evermore? More and more this dwell
ing oruthejoyand peace from righteous
ness, and on the power which makes for
righteousness, becomes a man’s consola
tion and refuge. Thou art my hiding
place, thou shalt preserve me from trouble ;
if my delight had not been in thy law, 1
should have perished in my trouble? In
the day of my trouble I sought the Eternal;
a refuge from the storm, a shadow from the
heat!3 O lead me to the rock that is
higher than I! 7 The name of the Eternal
is as a strong tower, the righteous runneth
into it and is safe? And the more we
experience this shelter, the more we come
to feel that it is protecting even to tender
ness. Like as a father pitieth his own
children, even so is the Eternal merciful
unto them that fear him? Nay, every
other support, we at last find, every other
attachment may fail us ; this alone fails
not. Can a woman forget her sucking
child, that she should not have compassion
on the son of her womb I Yea, they may
forget, yet will I not forget thee ! 10
All this, we say, rests originally upon
1 Ps.
2 Ps.
8 Ps.
5 Ps.
e Ps.
’ Ps.
8 Ps.
xix, 13 ; cxxxix, 23, 24.
xix, 12 ; xvii, 3.
xxxi, 19, 20.
4 Ps. xvi, II.
xxxii, 7 ; cxix, 92.
lxxvii, 2 ; Is., xxv, 4.
lxi, 2.
8 Prov., xviii, IO.
ciii, 13.
” Is., x'.ix, 15,
�ABERGLAUBE INVADING
*•
the simple but solid experience : ‘ Con
duct brings happiness] or, ‘ Righteousness
tendeth to life]1 And, by making it
again rest there, we bring out in a new
but most real and sure way its truth and
its power.
For it has not always continued to rest
there, and in popular religion now, as we
manifestly see, it rests there no longer.
It is important to follow the way in which
this change gradually happened, and the
thing ceased to rest there. Israel’s original
perception was true : Righteousness tendeth
to life! 2 It was true, that the workers*of
righteousness have a covenant with the
Eternal, that their work shall be blessed
and blessing, and shall endure for ever.
But what apparent contradictions was this
true original perception destined to meet
with I What vast delays, at any rate,
were to be interposed before its truth
could become manifest! And how in
structively the successive documents of
the Bible, which popular religion treats as
if it were all of one piece, one time, and
one mind, bring out the effect on Israel
of these delays and contradictions I What
a distance between the eighteenth Psalm
and the eighty-ninth ; between the Book
of Proverbs and the Book of Ecclesiastes!
A time some thousand years before Christ,
the golden age of Israel, is the date to
which the eighteenth Psalm and the chief
part of the Book of Proverbs belong.
This is the time in which the sense of the
necessary connexion between righteous
ness and happiness appears with its full
simplicity and force. The ughteous shall
be recompensed in the earth, much more the
wicked and the sinner! is the constant
burden of the Book of Proverbs ; the evil
bow before the good, and the wicked at the
gates of the righteous !3 And David, in
the eighteenth Psalm, expresses his con
viction of the intimate dependence of
happiness upon conduct, in terms which,
though they are not without a certain
crudity, are yet far more edifying in their
truth and naturalness than those morbid
sentimentalities of Protestantism about
1 Prov., xi, 19.
2 Prov., xi, 19.
• Prov., xi. 31 ; Pr;v., xiv, 19.
37
man’s natural vileness and Christ’s imputed
righteousness, to which they are dia
metrically opposed. ‘ I have kept the
ways of the Eternal,’ he says; ‘ I wa|
also upright before him, and I kept my
self from mine iniquity ; therefore hath
the Eternal rewarded me according to
my righteousness, according to the clean
ness of my hands hath he recompensed
me; great prosperity showreth he unto his
king, and showeth lovingkindness unto
David his anointed, and unto his seed for
evermore.’ That may be called a classic
passage for the covenant Israel always
thinks and speaks of as made by God
with his servant David, Israel’s second
founder. And this covenant was but a re
newal of the covenant made with Israel’s
first founder, God’s servant Abraham,
that ‘ righteousness shall inherit a blessing]
and that ‘ in thy seed all nations of the
earth shall be blessed] 1
But what a change in the eighty-ninth
Psalm, a few hundred years later ! ‘ Eter
nal, where are thy former lovingkindnesses
which thou swarest unto David ? thou
hast abhorred and forsaken thine an
ointed, thou hast made void the cove
nant ; O remember how short my time
is ! ’2 ‘ The righteous shall be recompensed
in the earth ! the speaker means ; ‘ my
death is near, and death ends all; where,
Eternal, is thy promise ? ’
Most remarkable, indeed, is the inward
travail to which, in the six hundred years
that followed the age of David and Solo
mon, the many and rude shocks befalling
Israel’s fundamental idea, Righteousness
tendeth to life and he that pursueth evil
pursueth it to his own death, gave occasion.
‘ Wherefore do the wicked live,’ asks Job,
‘become old, yea, are mighty in power?
their houses are safe from fear, neither is
the rod of God upon them.’3 Job him
self is righteous, and yet: ‘ On mine eye
lids is the shadow of death, not for any
injustice in mine hands.’4 All through
the Book of Job the question, how this
can be, is over and over again asked and
never answered ; inadequate solutions are
1 I Peter, iii, 9; Genesis, xxvi, 4.
2 Ps. lxxxix, 49, 38, 39, 47.
* Job, xxi, 7, 9.
4 Job, xvi, i6, 17.
�38
LITERATURE AND DOGMA
offered and repelled, but an adequate
solution is never reached. The only
solution reached is that of silence before
the insoluble : ‘ I will lay mine hand upon
my mouth.’1
The two perceptions,
Righteousness tendeth to life, and, ‘ The
ungodly prosper in the world] are left
confronting one another like Kantian
antinomies.1 ‘ The earth is given unto the
2
hand of the wicked ! ’ and yet: ‘ The coun
sel of the wicked is far from me ; God
rewardeth him and he shall know it! ’ 3
And this last, the original perception,
remains indestructible. The Book of
Ecclesiastes has been called sceptical,
epicurean; it is certainly without the
glow and hope which animate the Bible
in general. It belongs, probably, to the
fourth century before Christ, to the latter
and worse days of the Persian rule ; with
difficulties pressing the Jewish community
on all sides, with a Persian governor lord
ing it in Jerusalem, with resources light
and taxes heavy, with the cancer of
poverty eating into the mass of the people,
with the rich estranged from the poor and
from the national traditions, with the
priesthood slack, insincere and worthless.
Composed under such circumstances, the
book has been said, and with justice, to
breathe resignation at the grave of Israel.
Its author sees ‘the tears of the oppressed,
and they had no comforter, and on the
side of their oppressors there was power;
wherefore I praised the dead which are
already dead more than the living which
are yet alive.’4 He sees ‘ all things come
alike to all, there is one event to the
righteous and to the wicked.’5 Attempts
at a philosophic indifference appear, at a
sceptical suspension of judgment, at an
easy ne quid nimis : ‘Be not righteous
overmuch, neither make thyself overwise !
why shouldst thou destroy thyself?’6
Vain attempts, even at a moment which
favoured them ! shows of scepticism, van
ishing as soon as uttered before the in
tractable conscientiousness of Israel 1 For
1 Job, xl, 4.
2 Prov., xi, 19; Ps. Ixxiii, 12.
8 Job, ix, 24 ; xxi, 16, 19.
4 'Eccles., iv, I, 2.
8 Eccles., ix, 2.
6 Eccles., vii, 16.
the Preacher makes answer against him
self : ‘ Though a sinner do evil a hundred
times and his days be prolonged, yet
surely I know that it shall be well with
them that fear God; but it shall not be
well with the wicked, because he feareth
not before God.’1
_ Malachi, probably almost contemporary
with the Preacher, felt the pressure of
the same circumstances, had the same
occasions of despondency. All around
him people were saying : ‘ Everyone
that doeth evil is good in the sight of
the Eternal, and he delighteth in them ;
w’here is the God of judgment? it is vain
to serve God, and what profit is it that we
have kept his ordinance?’2 What a
change from the clear certitude of the
golden age : ‘As the whirlwind passeth, so
is the wicked no more ; but the righteous
is an everlasting foundation 1 ’3 But yet,
wi.th all the certitude of this happier past,
Malachi answers on behalf of the Eternal:
‘Unto you that fear my name shall the
sun of righteousness arise with healing in
his wings I’4
Many there were, no doubt, who had
lost all living sense that the promises w’ere
made to righteousness; wrho took them
mechanically, as made to them andassured
to them because they were the seed of Abra
ham, because they were, in St. Paul’s words:
‘Israelites, to whom pertain the adop
tion and the glory and the covenants and
the giving of the law and the service of
God, and whose are the fathers.’5 These
people were perplexed and indignant when
the privileged seed became unprosperous;
and they looked for some great change to
be wrought in the fallen fortunes of Israel,
wrought miraculously and materially. And
these were, no doubt, the great majority ;
and of the mass of Jewish expectation
concerning the future they stamped the
character. With them, however, our in
terest does not so much lie ; it lies rather
with the prophets and those whom the
prophets represent. It lies with the con
tinued depositaries of the original revela1 Eccles., viii, 12, 13.
2 Malachi, ii, 17 ; iii, 14.
8 Prov., x, 25.
4 Malachi, iv, 2.
* Roni., ix, 4, 5.
�ABERGLA UBE INVADING
tion to Israel, Righteousness tendeth to life-,
who saw clearly.enough that the promises
were to righteousness, and that what tend
eth to life was not the seed of Abraham
taken in itself, but righteousness. With
this minority, and with its noble repre
sentatives the prophets, our present inter
est lies ; the further development of their
conviction about righteousness is what it
here imports us to trace. An indestructi
ble faith that the righteous is an everlasting
foundation they had : yet they too, as we
have seen, could not but notice, as time
went on, many things which seemed ap
parently to contradict this their belief. In
private life, there was the frequent pro
sperity of the sinner. In the life of nations
there was the rise and power of the great
unrighteous kingdoms of the heathen,
the unsuccessfulness of Israel ; although
Israel was undoubtedly, as compared with
the heathen, the depositary and upholder
.of the idea of righteousness. Therefore
prophets and righteous men also, like the
unspiritual crowd, could not but look
ardently and expectantly to the future, to
some great change and redress in store.
At the same time, although their ex
perience that the righteous were often
afflicted, and the wicked often pro
sperous, could not but perplex pious
Hebrews ; although their conscience felt,
and could not but feel, that, compared
with the other nations with whom they
came in contact, they themselves and
their fathers had a concern for righteous
ness, and an unremitting sense of its
necessity, which put them in covenant
with the Eternal who makes for righteous
ness, and which rendered the triumph of
other nations over them a triumph of
people who cared little for righteousness
over people who cared for it much, and a
cause of perplexity, therefore, to men’s
trust in the Eternal,—though their con
science told them this, yet of their own
shortcomings and perversities it told
them louder still, and that their sins had
in truth been enough to break their cove
nant with the Eternal a thousand times
over, and to bring justly upon them all
the miseries which they suffered. To
enable them to meet the terrible day,
39
when the Eternal would avenge him -of
his enemies and make up his jewels, they
themselves needed, they knew, the voice
of a second Elijah, a change of the inner
man, repentance.1
2.
And then, with Malachi’s testimony
on its lips to the truth of Israel’s ruling
idea, Righteousness tendeth to life! died
prophecy. Through some four hundred
years the mind of Israel revolved those
wonderful utterances, which, even now,
on the ear of even those who only half
understand them and who do not at all
believe them, strike with such strange,
incomparable power—the promises of
prophecy. Through four hundred years,
amid distress and humiliation, the Hebrew
race pondered those magnificent assur
ances that ‘ the Eternals arm is not
shortened,' that ‘ righteousness shall be for
ever] 2 and that the future would prove
this, even if the present did not. ‘The
Eternal fainteth not, neither is weary ; he
giveth power to the faint.3 They that
wait on the Eternal shall renew their
strength ; the redeemed of the Eternal
shall return and come with singing to
Zion, and everlasting joy shall be upon
their head; they shall repair the old
wastes, the desolations of many genera
tions; and I, the Eternal, will make an
everlasting covenant with them.4 The
Eternal shall be thine everlasting light,
and the days of thy mourning shall be
ended; the Gentiles shall come to thy
light, and kings to the brightness of thy
rising, and my salvation shall be for
ever, and my righteousness shall not be
abolished.’5
The prophets themselves, speaking
when the ruin of their country was im-j
pending, or soon after it had happened/
had for the most part had in prospect the
actual restoration of Jerusalem, the sub-j
1 Mai., iii, 17 ; iv, 5.
2 Is., lix, I; li, 8.
3 Is., xl, 28, 29.
4 Is., xl, 31; xxxv, 10; lxi, 4, 8.
6 Is., lx, 20, 3 ; li, 6.
�40
LITERATURE AND DOGMA
mission of the nations around, and the
empire of David and Solomon renewed.
But as time went on, and Israel’s return
from captivity and resettlement of Jeru
salem by no means answered his glowing
anticipations from them, these anticipa
tions had more and more a construction
put upon them which set at defiance the
unworthiness and infelicities of the actual
present, which filled up what prophecy
left in outline, and which embraced the
world. The Hebrew Amos, of the eighth
century before Christ, promises to his
hearers a recovery from their ruin in
which they shall possess the remnant of
Edom ; the Greek or Aramaic Amos of
the Christian era, whose words St. James
produces in the conference at Jerusalem,
promises a recovery for Israel in which
the residue of men shall seek the Eternal.1
This is but a specimen of what went
forward on a large scale. The redeemer,
whom the unknown prophet of the captivity
foretold to -Zion,2 has, a few hundred
years later, for the writer whom we call
Daniel and for his contemporaries, be
come the miraculous agent of Israel’s new
restoration, the heaven-sent executor of
the Eternal’s judgment, and the bringerin of the kingdom of righteousness—the
Messiah, in short, of our popular religion.
‘ One like the Son of Man came with the
clouds of heaven, and came to the Ancient
of Days, and there was given him do
minion and glory, and a kingdom, that
all people, nations, and languages should
serve him; and the kingdom and do
minion shall be given to the people of the
saints of the Most High.’3 An impar
tial criticism will hardly find in the
Old Testament writers before the times of
the Maccabees (and certainly not in the
passages usually quoted to prove it) the
set doctrine of the immortality of the soul
or of the resurrection of the dead. But
by the time of the Maccabees, when this
passage of the Book of Daniel was written,
in the second century before Christ, the
Jews have undoubtedly become familiar,
not indeed with the idea of the immortality
1 Am., ix, 12; Acts, xv. ’72 Is., lix, 20.
’ Paq., yii, 13, 14, 27.
of the soul as philosophers like Plato con
ceived it, but with the rjotion of a resur
rection of the dead to take their trial
for acceptance or rejection in the Most
High’s judgment and kingdom.
To this, then, has swelled Israel’s
original and fruitful thesis :—Righteous
ness tendeth to life! as the whirlwind
passeth, so is the wicked no more, but the
righteous is an everlasting foundation ! 1
The phantasmagories of more prodigal
and wild imaginations have mingled with
the product of Israel’s own austere spirit;
Babylon, Persia, Egypt, even Greece, have
left their trace there; but the unchange
able substructure remains, and on that
substructure is everything built which
comes after.
In one sense, the lofty Messianic idea
of ‘ the great and notable day of the
Eternal,’ ‘ the consolation of Israel,’
‘ the restitution of all things,’ 2 are
even more important than the solid
but humbler idea, righteousness tend
eth to life, out of which they arose.
In another sense they are much less
important. They are more important,
because they are the development of this
idea and prove its strength. It might
have been crushed and baffled by the
falsification events seemed to delight in
giving it; that instead of being crushed
and baffled, it took this magnificent flight,
shows its innate power. And they also in
a wonderful manner attract emotion to the
ideas of conduct and morality, attract it
to them and combine it with them. On
the other hand, the idea that righteousness
tendeth to life has a firm, experimental
ground, which the Messianic ideas have
not. And the day comes when the pos
session of such a ground is invaluable.
That the spirit of man should entertain
hopes and anticipations, beyond what it
actually knows and can verify, is quite
natural. Human life could not have the
scope, and depth, and progress it has,
were this otherwise. It is natural, too, to
make these hopes and anticipations give
in their turn support to the simple and
* Prov., xi, 19 ; x, 25.
2 Acts, ii, 2Q 5 Lqke, ji, 25; Acts, iii,
�RELIGION NEW-GIVEN
humble experience which was their original
ground. Israel, therefore, who originally
followed righteousness because he felt that
it tended to life, might and did naturally
come at last to follow it because it would
enable him to stand before the Son of
Man at his coming, and to share in the
triumph of the saints of the Most High.
But this latter belief has not the same
character as the belief which it is thus
set to confirm. It is a kind of fairy-tale,
which a man tells himself, which no one,
we grant, can prove impossible to turn out
true, but which no one also can prove
certain to turn out true. It is exactly
what is expressed by the German word
‘ Aberglaube,’ extra-belief, belief beyond
what is certain and verifiable. Our word
‘superstition’ had by its derivation this
same meaning, but it has come to be used
4i
in a merely bad sense, and to mean a
childish and craven religiosity. With the
German word it is not so; therefore
Goethe can say with propriety and truth :
‘ Aberglaube is the poetry of life—der
Aberglaube ist die Poesie des lebensl It is
so. Extra-belief, that which we hope,
augur, imagine, is the poetry of life, and
has the rights of poetry. But it is not
science; and yet it tends always to
imagine itself science, to substitute itself
for science, to make itself the ground of
the very science out of which it has
grown. The Messianic ideas, which were
the poetry of life to Israel in the age
when Jesus Christ came, did this ; and it
is the more important to mark that they
did it, because similar ideas have so
signally done the same thing with popular
Christianity.
CHAPTER III
RELIGION NEW-GIVEN
Jesus Christ was undoubtedly the very
last sort of Messiah that the Jews expected.
Christian theologians say confidently that
the characters of humility, obscureness,
and depression, were commonly attributed
to the Jewish Messiah ; and even Bishop
Butler, in general the most severely exact
of writers, gives countenance to this error.
What is true is, that we find these
characters attributed to some one by the
prophets ; that we attribute them to Jesus
Christ ; that Jesus is for us the Messiah,
and that Jesus they suit. But for the
prophets themselves, and for the Jews
who heard and read them, these characters
of lowliness and depression belonged to
God’s chastened servant, the idealised
Israel. When Israel had been purged
and renewed by these, the Messiah was
to appear ; but with glory and power for
his attributes, not humility and weakness.
It is impossible to resist acknowledging
this, if we read the Bible to find from it
what really those who wrote it intended
to think and say, and not to put into
it what we wish them to have thought
and said. To find in Jesus the genuine
Jewish Messiah, or to find in him the Son
of Man of Daniel, one coming with the
clouds of heaven and having universal
daminion given him, must certainly, to a
Jew, have been extremely difficult.
Nevertheless, there is undoubtedly in the
Old Testament the germ of Christianity.
In developing this germ lay the future of
righteousness itself, of Israel’s primary
and immortal concern ; and the incom
parable greatness of the religion founded
by Jesus Christ comes from his having
developed it. Jesus Christ is not the
Messiah to whom the hopes of his nation
pointed; and yet Christendom with perfect
justice has made him the Messiah, because
he alone took, when his nation was on
another and a false track, a way obscurely
indicated in the Old Testament, and the
�42
LITERATURE AND DOGMA
one only possible and successful way, for
the accomplishment of the Messiah’s
function—to bring in everlasting righteous
ness.1 Let us see how this was so.
Religion in the Old Testament is a
matter of national and social conduct
mainly. First, it consists in devotion to
Israel’s God, the Eternal who loveth right
eousness, and of separation from other
nations whose concern for righteousness
was less fervent than Israel’s—of abhor
rence of their idolatries which were sure
to bewilder and diminish this fervent
concern. Secondly, it consists in doing
justice, hating all wrong, robbery and
oppression, abstaining from insolence,
lying, and slandering. The Jews’ polity,
their theocracy, was of such immense
importance, because religion, when con
ceived as having its existence in these
national and social duties mainly, requires
a polity to put itself forth in ; and the
Jews’ polity was adapted to religion so
conceived. But this religion, as it de
veloped itself, was by no means fully
worthy of the intuition cut of which it
had grown. We have seen how, in its
intuition of God—of that ‘ not ourselves ’
of which all mankind form some concep
tion or other—as the Eternal that makesfor
righteousness, the Hebrew race found the
revelation needed to breathe emotion into
the laws of morality, and to make morality,
religion. This revelation is the capital
fact of the Old Testament, and the source
cf its grandeur and power. But it is
evident that this revelation lost, as time
went on, its nearness and clearness ; and
that for the mass of the Hebrews their
God came to be a mere magnified and
non-natural man, like the God of our
popular religion now, who has commanded
certain courses of conduct and attached
certain sanctions to them.
And though prophets and righteous
men, among the Hebrews, might preserve
always the immediate and truer appre
hension of their God as the Eternal zvho
makes for righteousness, they in vain tried
to communicate this apprehension to the
mass of their countrymen. They had,
1 Dan., ix, 24.
indeed, special difficulty to contend with
in communicating it; and the difficulty
was this. Those courses of conduct
which Israel’s intuition of the Eternal had
originally touched with emotion and made
religion, lay chiefly, we have seen, in the
line of national and social duties. By
reason of the stage of their own growth
and the world’s, at which this revelation
found the Hebrews, the thing could not
well be otherwise. And national and social
duties are peculiarly capable of a mechani
cal exterior performance, in which the
heart has no share. One may observe
rites and ceremonies, hate idolatry, abstain
from murder and theft and false witness,
and yet have one’s inward thoughts bad,
callous and disordered. Then even the
admitted duties themselves come to be
ill-discharged or set at nought, because
the emotion which was the only certain
security for their good discharge is want
ing. The very power of religion, as we have
seen, lies in its bringing emotion to bear
On our rules of conduct, and thus making
us care for them so much, consider them
so deeply and reverentially, that we sur
mount the great practical difficulty of
acting in obedience to them, and follow
them heartily and easily. Therefore the
Israelites, when they lost their primary
intuition and the deep feeling which went
with it, were perpetually idolatrous, per
petually slack or niggardly in the service
of Jehovah, perpetually violators of judg
ment and justice.
The prophets earnestly reminded their
nation of the superiority of judgment and
justice to any exterior ceremony like
sacrifice. But judgment and justice them
selves, as Israel in general conceived them,
have something exterior in them ; now,
what was wanted was more inwardness,
more feeling. This was given by adding
mercy and humbleness to judgment and
justice. Mercy and humbleness are some
thing inward, they are affections of the
heart. And even in the Proverbs these
appear : ‘ The merciful man doeth good
to his own soul; ’ ‘ He that hath mercy
on the poor, happy is he ; ’ ‘ Honour
shall uphold the humble in spirit; ’ ‘ When
• pride cometh, shame cometh, but with
�RELIGION NEW-GIVEN
43
the lowly is wisdom.’1 And the prophet the development and of the cardinal
Micah asked his nation : ‘ What doth the points of his teaching we shall have to
Eternal require of thee, but to do justly, speak more at length by-and-by; all we
and to love mercy, and to walk humbly have to do here is to pass them in a rapid
with thy God ? ’—adding mercy and preliminary review. Israel had said : ‘ To
humility to the old judgment and justice.1 him that ordereth his conversation right
2
But a farther development is given to shall be shown the salvation of God.’1
humbleness, when the second Isaiah adds And Jesus said : ‘ Except your righteous
contrition to it: ‘ I ’ (the Eternal) ‘ dwell ness exceed the righteousness of the
with him that is of a contrite and humble Scribes and Pharisees,’—that is of the
spirit ; ’3 or when the Psalmist says, very people who then passed for caring
‘ The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit-, .most about righteousness and practising
a broken and a conirite heart, O God, it most rigidly,—‘ye shall in no wise enter
into the kingdom of heaven.’2 But
thou wilt not despise ! ’4
This is personal religion ; religion con righteousness had by Jesus Christ’s time
sisting in the inward feeling and disposition lost, in great measure, the mighty impulse
of the individual himself, rather than in which emotion gives; and in losing this,
the performance of outward acts towards had lost also the mighty sanction which
religion or society. It is the essence of happiness gives. ‘The whole head was
Christianity, it is what the Jews needed, sick and the whole heart faint ; ’3 the
it is the line in which their religion was glad and immediate sense of being in the
ripe for development. And it appears right way, in the way of peace, was gone;
in the Old Testament. Still in the Old the sense of being wrong and astray, of
Testament it by no means comes out sin, and of helplessness under sin, was
fully. The leaning, there, is to make oppressive. The thing was, by giving a
religion social rather than personal, an fuller idea of righteousness, to re-apply
affair of outward duties rather than of emotion to it, and by thus re-applying
inward dispositions. Soon after the very emotion, to disperse the feeling of being
words wre have just quoted from him, amiss and helpless, to give the sense of
the second Isaiah adds: ‘ If thou take being right and effective ; to restore, in
away from the midst of thee the yoke, short, to righteousness the sanction of
the putting forth of the finger and speak happiness.
But this could only be done by attend
ing vanity, and if thou draw out thy soul
to the hungry, and satisfy the afflicted ing to that inward world of feelings and
soul, then shall thy light rise in obscurity dispositions which Judaism had too much
and thy darkness be as the noonday, and neglected. The first need, therefore, for
the Eternal shall guide thee continually Israel at that time, was to make religion
and make fat thy bones.’5 This stands, cease to be mainly a national and social
or at least appears to stand, as a full matter, and become mainly a personal
description of righteousness; and as such, matter. ‘ Thou blind Pharisee, cleanse
first the inside of the cup, that the outside
it is unsatisfying.
may be clean also ! ’4—this was the very
ground-principle in Jesus Christ’s teach
£•
ing. Instead of attending so much to
What was wanted, then, was a fuller your outward acts, attend, he said, first
description of righteousness. Now, it is of all to your inward thoughts, to the state
clear that righteousness, the central ob of your heart and feelings. This doctrine
ject of Israel’s concern, was the central has perhaps been overstrained and mis
object of Jesus Christ’s concern also. Of applied by certain people since; but it
was the lesson which at that timewas above
1 Prov., xi, 17 ; xiv, 21 ; xxix, 23 ; xi, 2.
2 Micah, vi, 8.
3 Is., lvii, 15.
4 Ps. li, 17.
8 Is., Iviii, 9-11.
1 Ps. 1, 23.
8 Is., i, 5.
2 Matth., v, 20.
4 Matth., xxiii, 26.
�44
LITERATURE AND DOGMA
all needed. It is a great progress beyond
even that advanced maxim of pious Jews :
‘To do justice and judgment is more
acceptable than sacrifice.’1 For to do
justice and judgment is still, as we have
remarked, something external, and may
leave the feelings untouched, uncleared,
dead. What was wanted was to plough
up, clear, and quicken the feelings them
selves. And this is what Jesus Christ
did.
‘ My son, give me thy heart!'1 says the
teacher of righteousness in the golden
age of Israel.2 And when Israel had the
Eternal revealed to him, and founded our
religion, he gave his heart. But the time
came when this direct vision ceased, and
Israel’s religion was a mere affair of
tradition, and of doctrines and rules
received from without. Then it might
be truly said of this professed servant of
the Eternal : ‘ This people honour me
with their lips, but have removed their
heart far from me, and their fear toward
me is taught by the precept of men.’3
With little or no power of distinguishing
between what was rule of ceremonial and
what was rule of conduct, they followed
the prescriptions of their religion with a
servile and sullen mind, ‘ precept upon
precept, line upon line, here a little and
there a little,’4 and no end to it all.
What a change since the days when it
was joy to the just to do judgment!5
The prophets saw clearly enough the
evil, nay, they could even point to the
springs which must be touched in order
to work a cure. But they could not press
these springs steadily enough or skilfully
enough to work the cure themselves.
Jesus Christ’s new and different way of
putting things was the secret of his succeed
ing where the prophets failed. And this
new way he had of putting things is what
is indicated by the expression epieikeia,—
an expression best rendered, as I have
elsewhere said,6 by the phrase : ‘ sweet
reasonableness.’ For that which is epieikes
is that which has an air of truth and like1 Prov., xxi, 3.
2 Prov., xxiii, 26.
3 Is., xxix, 13.
4 Is., xxviii, 13.
4 Prov., xxi, 15.
6 St. Paul and Protestantism, preface, p. xix.
Jihood ; and that which has an air of truth
and likelihood is prepossessing. Now,
never were there utterances concerningconduct and righteousness,—Israel’s master
concern, and the master topic of the New
Testament as well as of the Old,—which
so carried with them an air of consummate
truth and likelihood as Jesus Christ’s did ;
and never, therefore, were any utterances
so irresistibly prepossessing. He put
things in such a way that his hearer was
led to take each rule or fact of conduct
by its inward side, its effect on the heart
and character; then the reason of the
thing, the meaning of what had been
mere matter of blind rule, flashed upon
him.
The hearer could distinguish
between what was only ceremony, and
what was conduct-, and the hardest rule
of conduct came to appear to him infinitely
reasonable and natural, and therefore
infinitely prepossessing. A return upon
themselves, and a consequent intuition of
the truth and reason of the matter of
conduct in question, gave to men for
right action the clearness, spirit, energy,
happiness, they had lost.
This power of returning upon them
selves, and seeing by a flash the truth and
reason of things, his disciples learnt of
Jesus. They learnt too, from observing
him and his example, much which, with
out perhaps any conscious process of
being apprehended in its reason, was dis
cerned instinctively to be true and life
giving as soon as it was recommended
in Christ’s words and illustrated by Christ’s
example. Two lessons in particular they
learnt in this way, and added them to the
great lesson of self-examination and appeal
to the inner man, with which they started.
‘ Whoever will come after me, let him
renounce himself and take up his cross
daily and follow me ! he that will save
his life shall lose it, he that will lose his
life shall save it? 1 This was one of the
two. ‘ Learn of me that I am mild and
lowly in heart, and ye shall find rest unto
your souls ! ’2 was the other. Jesus made
his followers first look within and examine
themselves ; he made them feel that they
1 Luke, ix, 23, 24.
2 Matth., xi, 29.
�RELIGION NEW-GIVEN
had a best and real self as opposed to
their ordinary and apparent one, and that
their happiness depended on saving this
best self from being overborne. Then to
find his own soul,' his true and permanent
self, became set up in man’s view as his
chief concern, as the secret of happiness ;
and so it really is. ‘ How is a man ad
vantaged if he gain the whole world and
forfeit himself I''1 was the searching ques
tion which Jesus made men ask them
selves. And by recommending, and still
more by himself exemplifying in his own
practice, by showing active in himself,
with the most prepossessing pureness,
clearness, and beauty, the two qualities
by which our ordinary self is indeed most
essentially counteracted, self-renouncement
and mildness, he made his followers feel
that in these qualities lay the secret of
their best self ; that to attain them was in
the highest degree requisite and natural,
and that a man’s whole happiness depended
upon it.
Self-examination,
self-renouncement,
and mildness, were, therefore, the great
means by which Jesus Christ renewed
righteousness and religion. All these
means are indicated in the Old Testa
ment. : God requireth truth in the inzvard
parts ! Not doing thine own ways, norfind
ing thine own pleasure! Seek meekness ! 3
But how far more strongly are they forced
upon the attention in the New Testament,
and set up clearly as the central mark for
our endeavours! Thou blind Pharisee,
cleanse first the inside of the cup that the
outside may be clean also!4 Whoever will
come after me, let him renounce himself and
take up his cross daily and follow me !5
Learn of me that I am mild and lowly in
heart, and ye shall find rest unto your
souls /6 So that, although personal re
ligion is clearly recommended in the Old
Testament, nevertheless these injunctions
of the New Testament effect so much
more for the extrication and establish
ment of personal religion than the general
exhortations in the Old to offer the sacn'
2
♦
•
Matth., xvi, 25.
2 Luke, ix, 25.
Ps. li, 6; Is., lviii, 13 ; Zephaniah, ii, 3.
Matth., xxiii, 26.
4 Luke, ix, 23.
Matth., xi, 29.
45
fice of righteousness, to do judgment4 that,
comparatively with the Old, the New
Testament may be said to have really
founded inward and personal religion.
While the Old Testament says : Attend to
conduct! the New Testament says : Attend
to the feelings and dispositions whence
conduct proceeds ! And as attending to
conduct had very much degenerated into
deadness and formality, attending to the
springs of conduct was a revelation, a
revival of intuitive and fresh perceptions,
a touching of morals with emotion, a
discovering of religion, similar to that
which had been effected when Israel,
struck with the abiding power not of
man’s causing which makes for righteous
ness, and filled with joy and awe by it,
had in the old days named God the
Eternal. Man came under a new dis
pensation, and made with God a second
covenant.
3-
To rivet the attention on the indications
of personal religion furnished by the Old
Testament; to take the humble, inward,
and suffering ‘ servant of God ’ of the
prophets, and to elevate this as the
Messiah, the seed of Abraham and of
David, in whom all nations should be
blessed, whose throne should be as the
days of heaven, who should redeem his
people and restore the kingdom to Israel
—was a work of the highest originality.
It cannot, as we have seen, be said, that
by the suffering servant of God, and by
the triumphant Messiah, the prophets
themselves meant one and the same
person. But language of hope and as
piration, such as theirs, is in its very
nature malleable. Criticism may and
must determine what the original speakers
seem to have directly meant. But the
very nature of their language justifies any
powerful and fruitful application of it;
and every such application may be said,
in the words of popular religion, to have
been lodged there from the first by the
spirit of God. Certainly it was a some1 Ps. iv. 5; Is., h i, 1.
�46
LITERATURE AND DOGMA.
what violent exegetical proceeding, to
fuse together into one personage Daniel’s
Son of Man coming with the clouds of
heaven, the first Isaiah’s ‘ Branch out of
the root of Jesse,’ who should smite the
earth with the rod of his mouth and reign
in glory and peace and righteousness,
and the second Isaiah’s meek and afflicted
Servant of God charged with the precious
message of a golden future—to fuse
together in one these three by no means
identical personages ; to add to them the
sacrificial lamb of the passover and of
the temple-service, which was constantly
before a Jew’s eyes ; to add, besides, the
Prophet like to himself whom Moses
promised to the children of Israel; to
add, further, the Holy One of Israel and
Redeemer, who for the prophets was the
Eternal himself; and then to say, that
the combination thence resulting was the
Messiah or Christ whom all the prophets
had meant and predicted, and that Jesus
was this Messiah. To us, who have been
formed and fashioned by a theology whose
set purpose is to efface all the difficulties
in such a combination, and to make it
received easily and unhesitatingly, it may
appear natural. In itself, and with the
elements of which it is composed viewed
singly and impartially, it cannot but be
pronounced violent.
But the elements in question have their
chief use and value, wTe repeat, not as
objects of criticism ; they belong of right
to whoever can best possess himself of
them for practice and edification. Simply
of the Son of Man coming in the clouds, of
the branch of Jesse smiting the earth with
the rod of his mouth, slaying the wicked
with his breath, and re-establishing in un
exampled splendour David's kingdom,
nothing could be made. With such a
Messiah filling men’s-thoughts and hopes,
the real defects of Israel still remained,
because these chiefly proceeded from
Israel’s making his religion too much a
national and social affair, too little a
personal affair. But a Messiah who did
not strive nor cry, who was oppressed and
afflicted without opening his mouth, who
worked inwardly, obscurely, and patiently,
yet failed not nor was discouraged until
his doctrine made its way and transformed
the world—this was the Messiah whom
Israel needed, and in whom the lost great
ness of Israel could be restored and
culminate. For the true greatness of
Israel was righteousness ; and only by an
inward personal religion could the sense
revive of what righteousness really was—
revive in Israel and bear fruit for the
world.
Instead, then, of ‘the Root of Jesse
who should set up an ensign for the
nations and assemble the outcasts of
Israel,’1 Jesus Christ took from prophecy
and made pre-eminent ‘the Servant whom
man despiseth and the people abhorreth,’
but ‘ who bringeth good tidings, who publisheth peace, publisheth salvation.’2 And
instead of saying like the prophets : ‘ This
people must mend, this nation must do so
and so, Israel must follow such and such
ways,’ Jesus took the individual Israelite
by himself apart, made him listen for the
voice of his conscience, and said to him
in effect: ‘ If every one would mend one,
we should have a new world.’ So vital
for the Jews was this change of character
in their religion, that the Old Testament
abounds, as we have said, in pointings
and approximations to it; and most truly
might Jesus Christ say to his followers,
that many prophets and righteous men
had desired, though unavailingly, to see
the things which they, the disciples, saw
and heard.3
The desire felt by pious Israelites for
some new aspect of religion such as Jesus
Christ presented, is, undoubtedly, the
best proof of its timeliness and salutari
ness. Perhaps New Testament evidence
to prove the workings of this desire may
be received with suspicion, as having
arisen after the event and when the new
ideal of the Christ had become estab
lished. Otherwise, John the Baptist’s
characterisation of the Messiah as ‘the
Lamb of God that taketh away the sins of
the w’orld,’4 and the bold Messianic turn
given in the twelfth chapter of St. Matthew
to the prophecy there quoted from rhe
1 Is., xi, IO, 12.
8 Matth., xiii, 17.
2 Is., xlix, 7 ; lii, 7.
4 John, i, 29.
�RELIGION NEW-GIVEN
forty-second chapter of Isaiah, would be
evidence of the highest importance. ‘A
bruised reed breaketh he not,’ says Isaiah
of the meek servant and messenger of
God, ‘ and a glimmering wick quencheth
he not; he declareth judgment with truth;
far lands wait for his doctrine.’1 ‘A
bruised reed shall he not break,’ runs the
passage in St. Matthew, ‘and smoking
flax shall he not quench, until he send
forth judgment unto victory: in his name
shall the Gentiles trust.’2 The words,
until he send forth judgment unto victory,
words giving a clear Messianic stamp to
the personage described, are neither in
the original Hebrew nor in the Greek of
the Septuagint. Where did the Gospel
writer find them ? If, as is possible, they
were in some version then extant, they
prove in a striking way the existence and
strength of the aspiration which Jesus
Christ satisfied by transforming the old
popular ideal of the Messiah. But there
are in any case signs of the existence of
such an aspiration, since a Jewish com' mentator, contemporary, probably, with
the Christian era, but not himself a
Christian, assigns to this very prophecy
a Messianic intention. And, indeed, the
rendering of the final words, in his name
shall the Gentiles trustj which is in the
Greek of the Septuagint as well as in that
of St. Matthew, shows a similar leaning in
the Jews of Alexandria some two centuries
before Christ.
Signs there are then, without doubt, of
others, besides Jesus Christ, trying to
identify the Messiah of popular Jewish
hope—the triumphant Root of David, the
mystic son of man—with an ideal of
meekness, inwardness, patience, and self
denial. And well might reformers try to
effect this identification, for the true line
of Israel’s progress lay through it! But
not he who tries makes an epoch, but he
who effects ; and the identification which
was needed Jesus Christ effected. Hence
1 Is., xlii, 3, 4.
2 Matth., xii, 20, 21.
3 These words are imported from an un
doubtedly Messianic passage, the famous pre
diction of the ‘rod out of the stem of Jesse’ in
the eleventh chapter of Isaiah. Compare, in the
Septuagint, Is., xi, 10, with Is., xlii, 4.
47
forth the true Israelite was, undoubtedly,
he who allied himself with this identifica
tion ; who perceived its incomparable
fruitfulness, its continuance of the real
tradition of Israel, its correspondence
with the ruling idea of the Hebrew spirit:
Through righteousness to happiness! or, in
Bible-words: To him that ordereth his
conversation right shall be shown the salva
tion of God!1 That the Jewish nation at
large, and its rulers, refused to accept the
identification, shows simply that want of
power to penetrate through wraps and
appearances to the essence of things,
which the majority of mankind always
display. The national and social character
of their theocracy was everything to the
Jews, and they could see no blessings in
a revolution which annulled it.
It has often been remarked that the
Puritans are like the Jews of the Old
Testament; and Mr. Froude thinks he
defends the Puritans by saying that they,
like the Jews of the Old Testament, had
their hearts set on a theocracy, on a
fashioning of politics and society to suit
the government of God. How strange
that he does not perceive that he thus
passes, and with justice, the gravest con
demnation on the Puritans as followers of
Jesus Christ ! At the Christian era the
time had passed, in religion, for outward
adaptations of this kind, and for all care
about establishing or abolishing them.
The time had come for inwardness and
self-reconstruction,—a time to last till the
self-reconstruction is fully achieved. It
was the error of the Jews that they did
not perceive this; and the old error of
the Jews the Puritans, without the Jews’
excuse, faithfully repeated. And the blun
der of both had the same cause,—a want
of tact to perceive what is really most
wanted for the attainment of their own
professed ideal, the reign of righteousness.
When Jesus appeared, his disciples
were those who did not make this blunder.
They were, in general, simple souls, with
out pretensions which Jesus Christ’s new
religious ideal cut short, or self-conse
quence which it mortified. And any
1 Ps. 1, 23.
�LITERATURE AND DOGMA
Israelite who was, on the one hand, not
warped by personal pretensions and self
consequence, and on the other, not dull
of feeling and gross of life like the com
mon multitude, might well be open to the
spell which, after all, was the great con
firmation of Christ’s religion, as it was the
great confirmation of the original religion
of Israel—the spell of its happiness. ‘ Be
glad, O ye righteous, and rejoice in the
Eternal,’—the old and lost prerogative of
Israel,—Christianity offered to make again
a living and true word to him.1
happy again. The prophets all point to
such a saviour, and he is the Messiah,
and the promised happiness to Israel is
in him and in his reign. He is, in the
exalted language of prophecy, the holy
one of God, the son of God, the beloved
of God, the chosen of Godj the anointed
of God, the son of man in an eminent
and unique sense, the Messiah and Christ.
In plainer language he is ‘a man who
tells you the truth which he has heard of
God; ’ who came not of himself and
speaks not of himself, but who ‘came
forth from God,’—from the original God
of Israel’s worship, the God of righteous
ness, and of happiness joined to righteous
4ness,—‘and is come to you.’1 Israelis
For we have already remarked how it perpetually talking of God and calling
is the great achievement of the Israel of him his Father ; and ‘ everyone,’ says
the Old Testament, happiness being man Jesus Christ, ‘who hears the Father,
kind’s confessed end and aim, to have comes to me, for I know him, and know
more than anyone else felt, and more His will, and utter His word.’2 God’s
than anyone else succeeded in making will and word, in the Old Testament, was
others feel, that to righteousness belongs righteousness. In the New Testament, it
happiness. Now, it will be denied by no is righteousness explained to have its
one that Jesus, in his turn, was eminently essence in inwardness, mildness, and self
characterised by professing to bring, and renouncement. This is, in substance, the
by being felt to bring, happiness. All the word of Jesus which he who hears ‘ shall
words that belong to his mission,—gospel, never see death; ’ of which he who follows
kingdom of God, saviour, grace, peace, living it ‘ shall know by experience whether it be
'water, bread oflife,—are brimful of promise of God.’ 3
and of joy. ‘ I am come,’ he said, ‘ that
But as the Israel of the Old Testament
ye might have life, and that ye might have did not say or feel that he followed
it more abundantly ; ’ ‘ Come to me, and righteousness by his own power, or out
ye shall find rest unto your souls; ’ ‘ I of self-interest and self-love, but said and
speak, that my disciples may have my joy felt that he followed it in thankful self
fulfilled in themselves? 2
surrender to ‘ the Eternal who loveth
You can see, says Jesus to his followers, righteousness,’ and that ‘ the Eternal
you can see the leading religionists of the ordereth a good man’s going and maketh
Jewish nation, with the current notions his way acceptable to Himself—so, in the
about righteousness, God’s will, and the restoration effected by Jesus, the motive
meaning of prophecy, you can see them which is of force is not the moral motive
saying and not doing, full of fierce temper, that inwardness, mildness, and self-re
pride, and sensuality;—this shows they nouncement make for man’s happiness,
can be but blind guides for you. The but a far stronger motive, full of ardent
saviour of Israel is he who makes Israel affection and gratitude, and which, though
use his conscience simply and sincerely, it really has its ground and confirmation
who makes him change and sweeten his in the fact that inwardness, mildness, and
temper, conquer and annul his sensuality. self-renouncement do make for man’s
Such a saviour will make unhappy Israel
1 Ps. xxxii, 11 ; xcvii, 12.
2 John, x, io; Matth., xi, 28, 29 ; John, xvii,
13-
1
*
•
4
John, viii, 40, 42 ; xvi, 27, 28.
John, vi, 45 ; viii, 29, 16.
John, viii, 51 ; vii, 17.
Ps. xi, 7; xxxvii, 23.
�RELIGION NEW-GIVEN
happiness, yet keeps no consciousness of
this as its ground. For it acquired a far
surer ground in personal devotion to
Jesus Christ, who brought the doctrine
to his disciples and made a passage for it
into their hearts ; in believing that he
was indeed the Christ come from God; in
following him, loving him, And in the
happiness which thus believing in Jesus
Christ, following him, and loving him, gives,
it found the mightiest of sanctions.
5-
And thus was the great doctrine of the
Old Testament: To righteousness belongs
happiness I made a true and potent word
again. Jesus Christ was the Messiah to
restore the all things of Israel,1—righteous
ness, and happiness with righteousness;
to bring light and recovery after long
days of darkness and ruin, and to make
good the belief written on Israel’s heart:
The righteous is an everlasting foundation ! 1
2
But we have seen how in the hopes of
the nation and in the promises of prophecy
this true and vital belief of Israel was
mixed with a, quantity of what we have
called Aberglaube or extra-belief, adding
all manner of shape and circumstance to
the original thought. The kingdom of
David and Solomon was to be restored
on a grander scale, the enemies of Israel
were to lick the dust, kings were to bring
gifts ; there was to be the Son of Man
coming in the clouds, judgment given to
the saints of the Most High, and an
eternal reign of the saints afterwards.
Now, most of this has a poetical value,
some of it has a moral value. All of it is,
in truth, a testimony to the strength of
Israel’s idea of righteousness. For the
order of its growth is, as we have seen,
this : ‘ To righteousness belongs happiness ;
but this sure rule is often broken in the
state of things which now is; there must,
therefore, be in store for us, in the future,
a state of things where it will hold good.’
But none of it has a scientific value, a
1 Matth., xvji, II ; Acts, iii, 21.
2 Prov., x, 25.
49
certitude arising from proof and experi
ence. And indeed it cannot have this,
for it professes to be an anticipation of a
state of things not yet actually experienced.
But human nature is such, that the
mind easily dwells on an anticipation of
this kind until we come to forget the
order in which it arose, place it first when
it is by rights second, and make it support
that by which it is in truth supported.
And so there had come to be many
Israelites,—most likely they were the great
majority of their nation,—who supposed
that righteousness was to be followed, not
out of thankful self-surrender to ‘ the
Eternal who loveth righteousness,’1 but
because the Ancient of Days was to sit
before long, and judgment was to be given
to the saints, and they were to possess the
kingdom, and from the kingdom those
who did not follow righteousness were to
be excluded. From this way of conceiving
religion came naturally the religious con
dition of the Jews as Jesus at his coming
found it; and from which, by his new
and living way of presenting the Messiah,
he sought to extricate the whole nation,
and did extricate his disciples. He did
extricate these, in that he fixed their
thoughts upon himself and upon an ideal
of inwardness, mildness, and self-renounce
ment, instead of a phantasmagory of out
ward grandeur and self-assertion. But
at the same time the whole train of an
extra-belief, or Aberglaube, which had
attached itself to Israel’s old creed : The
righteous is an everlasting foundation!
transferred itself to the new creed brought
by Jesus. And there arose, accordingly,
a new Aberglaube like the old. The mild,
inward, self-renouncing and sacrificed
Servant of the Eternal, the new and
better Messiah, was yet, before the present
generation passed, to come on the clouds
of heaven in power and glory like the
Messiah of Daniel, to gather by trumpetcall his elect from the four winds, and to
set his apostles on twelve thrones judging
the twelve tribes of Israel. The motive
of Christianity,—which was, in truth, that
pure souls ‘knew the voice’2 of Jesus as
1 Ps. xi, 7.
* John, x, 4.
D
�5°
LITERATURE AND DOGMA
sheep know the voice of their shepherd,
and felt, after seeing and hearing him,
that his doctrine and ideal was what
they wanted, that he was ‘indeed the
saviour of the world,’1—this simple motive
became a mixed motive, adding to its first
contents a vast extra-belief of a phan
tasmagorical advent of Jesus Christ, a
resurrection and judgment, Christ’s ad
herents glorified, his rejectors punished
everlastingly.
And when the generation, for which
this advent was first fixed, had passed
away without it, Christians discovered by
a process of criticism common enough in
popular theology, but by which, as Bishop
Butler says of a like kind of process,
‘anything may be made out of anything,’
—they discovered that the advent had
never really been fixed for that first
generation by the writers of the New
Testament, but that it was foretold, and
certainly in store, for a later time. So
the Aberglaube was perpetuated, placed
out of reach of all practical tests, and
made stronger than ever. With the
multitude, this Aberglatibe, or extra-belief,
inevitably came soon to surpass the
original conviction itself in attractiveness
and seeming certitude. The future and
the miraculous engaged the chief atten
tion of Christians; and, in accordance
with this strain of thought, they more and
more rested the proof of Christianity, not
on its internal evidence, but on prophecy
and miracle.
CHAPTER IV
THE PROOF FROM PROPHECY
1Abergla ube is the poetry of life.’ That himself in his conduct by taking an object
men should, by help of their imagination, of hope and presentiment as if it were an
take short cuts to what they ardently object of certainty, he may even be said
desire, whether the triumph of Israel or to gain thereby an advantage.
the triumph of Christianity, should tell
And yet there is always a drawback to
themselves fairy-tales about it, should make a man’s advantage in thus treating, when
these fairy tales the basis for what is far he deals with religion and conduct, what
more sure and solid than the fairy-tales, is extra-belief and not certain as if it were
the desire itself—all this has in it, we matter of certainty, and in making it his
repeat, nothing which is not natural, no ground of action. He pays for it. The
thing blameable. Nay, the region of our time comes when he discovers that it is
hopes and presentiments extends, as we not certain ; and then the whole certainty
have also said, far beyond the region of of religion seems discredited, and the
what we can know with certainty. What basis of conduct gone. This danger at
we reach but by hope and presentiment tends the reliance on prediction and
may yet be true ; and he would be a miracle as evidences of Christianity.
narrow reasoner who denied, for instance,
They have been attacked as a part of
all validity to the idea of immortality, the ‘ cheat ’ or ‘ imposture ’ of religion and
because this idea rests on presentiment of Christianity. For us, religion is the
mainly, and does not admit of certain solidest of realities, and Christianity the
demonstration. In religion, above all, greatest and happiest stroke ever yet made
extra-belief is in itself no matter, as for human perfection. Prediction and
suredly, for blame. The object of re miracle were attributed to it as its sup
ligion is conduct; and if a man helps ports because of its grandeur, and because
of the awe and admiration which it in
1 John, iv, 42.
spired. Generations of men have helped
�THE PROOF FROM PROPHECY
51
themselves to hold firmer to it, helped
themselves in conduct, by the aid of these
supports. ‘ Miracles prove] men have
said and thought, ‘ that the order of
physical nature is not fate, nor a mere
material constitution of things, but the
subject of a free, omnipotent Master.
Prophecy fulfilled proves that neither fate
nor man are masters of the world.’1
And to take prophecy first. ‘ The con
ditions,’ it is said, ‘ which form the true
conclusive standard of a prophetic inspira
tion are these : That the prediction be
known to have been promulgated before
the event; that the event be such as
could not have been foreseen, when it
was predicted, by an effort of human
reason; and that the event and the pre
diction correspond together in a clear
accomplishment. There are prophecies
in Scripture answering to the standard
of an absolute proof. Their publication,
their fulfilment, their supernatural pre
science, are fully ascertained.’1 On this
2
sort of ground men came to rest the proof
of Christianity.
tions and that they must be in the Bible,
enhanced, certainly, this look; but the
look, even without these aids, was suffi
ciently striking.
Yes, that Jacob on his death-bed should
two thousand years before Christ have
‘been enabled,’ as the phrase is, to fore
tell to his son Judah that ‘the sceptre
shall not depart from Judah until Shiloh
(or the Messiah) come, and unto him shall
the gathering of the people be,’1 does
seem, when the explanation is put with it
that the Jewish kingdom lasted till the
Christian era and then perished, a miracle
of prediction in favour of our current
Christian theology. That Jeremiah should
during the captivity have ‘ been enabled |
to foretell, in Jehovah’s name : ‘ The
days come that I will raise unto David
a righteous Branch; in his days Judah
shall be saved, and Israel shall dwell
safely; and this is his name whereby he
shall be called, the lord our righteous
ness ! ’2—does seem a prodigy of predic
tion in favour of that tenet of the Godhead
of the Eternal Son, for which the Bishops
of Winchester and Gloucester are so
anxious to do something. For unquesJ
2.
tionably, in the prophecy here given, the
Branch of David, the future Saviour of
Now, it may be said, indeed, that a Israel, who was Jesus Christ, appears to
prediction fulfilled, an exhibition of super be expressly identified with the Lord God,
natural prescience, proves nothing for or with Jehovah. Again, that David should
against the truth and necessity of conduct say : ‘ The Lord said unto my Lord, Sit
and righteousness. But it must be allowed, thou on my right hand until I make thine
notwithstanding, that while human nature enemies thy footstool,’3 does seem a pro
is what it is, the mass of men are likely digy of prediction to the same effect.
to listen more to a teacher of righteous And so long as these prophecies stand as
ness, if he accompanies his teaching by they are here given, they no doubt bring
an exhibition of supernatural prescience. to Christianity all the support (and with
And what were called the ‘ signal predic the mass of mankind this is by no means
tions ’ concerning the Christ of popular inconsiderable) which it can derive from
theology, as they stand in our Bibles, had the display of supernatural prescience.
and have undoubtedly a look of super
But who will dispute that it more and
natural prescience. The employment of more becomes known, that these pro
capital letters, and other aids, such as the phecies 4 cannot stand as we have here
constant use of the future tense, naturally
and innocently adopted by interpreters
1 Gen., xlix, 10.
2 Jen, xxiii, 5, 6.
who were profoundly convinced that
* Ps. ex, 1.
4 A real predicti'on of Jesus Christ’s Godhead, of
Christianity needed these express predic
1 Davison’s Discourses
course ii, Part 2.
2 Discourses ix and xii.
on
Prophecy;
Dis
the kind that popular religion desires, is to be
found in Benjamin’s prophecy of the coming, in
the last days, of the King of Heaven to judge
I Israel, ‘ because when God came to them in the
d 2
�52
LITERATURE AND DOGMA
given them ? Manifestly, it more and
more becomes known, that the passage
from Genesis, with its mysterious Shiloh
and the gathering of the people to him,
is rightly to be rendered as follows : ‘ The
pre-eminence shall not depart from Judah
so long as the people resort to Shiloh (the
national sanctuary before Jerusalem was
won) ; and the nations (the heathen
Canaanites) shall obey him? We here
purposely leave out of sight any such
consideration as that our actual books of
the Old Testament came first together
through the instrumentality of the house
of Judah, and when the destiny of Judah
was already traced; and that to say roundly
and confidently : '‘Jacob was enabled to
foretell, The sceptre shall not depart from
Judah,’ is wholly inadmissible. For this
consideration is of force, indeed, but it is
a consideration drawn from the rules of
literary history and criticism, and not
likely to have weight with the mass of
mankind. Palpable error and mistrans
lation are what will have weight with
them.
And what, then, will they say as they
come to know (and do not and must not
more and more of them come to know it
every day ?) that Jeremiah’s supposed
signal identification of Jesus Christ with
the Lord God of Israel : ‘ I will raise to
David a righteous Branch, and this is the
name whereby he shall be called, the
Lord our righteousness,’ runs really:
‘ I will raise to David a righteous branch ;
in his days Judah shall be saved and
Israel shall dwell safely ; and this is the
name whereby they shall call themselves :
The Eternal is our righteousness ! ’ The
prophecy thus becomes simply one of the
many promises of a successor to David
under whom the Hebrew people should
trust in the Eternal and follow righteous
ness ; just as the prophecy from Genesis
is one of the many prophecies of the
enduring continuance of the greatness
flesh they did not believe in him as their deliverer.’
But this prediction occurs in an apocryphal
Christian writing of the end of the first century,
the 7iestaments op the Twelve Patriarchs. See
Fabricius, Codex Pseudep-'grafhus Veteris Testavienti, vol. ii, p. 745.
of Judah. ‘The Lord said unto my
Lord,’ in like manner ;—will not people
be startled when they find that it ought
instead to run as follows : ‘ The Eternal
said unto my lord the king,’—a simple
promise of victory to a royal leader of
God’s chosen people ?
3Leslie, in his once famous Short and
Easy Methods with the Deists, speaks of
the impugners of the current evidences
of Christianity as men who consider the
Scripture histories and the Christian
religion ‘ cheats and impositions of cun
ning and designing men upon the cre
dulity of simple people.’ Collins, and
the whole array of writers at whom Leslie
aims this, greatly need to be re-surveyed
from the point of view of our own age.
Nevertheless, we may grant that some of
them, at any rate, conduct their attacks
on the current evidences for Christianity
in such a manner as to give the notion
that in their opinion Christianity itself,
and religion, is a cheat and an imposture.
But how far more prone will the mass of
mankind be to hearken to this opinion, if
they have been kept intent on predictions
such as those of which we have just given
specimens; if they have been kept full
of the great importance of this line of
mechanical evidence, and then suddenly
find that this line of evidence gives way
at all points ? It can hardly be gainsaid,
that, to a delicate and penetrating criti
cism, it has long been manifest that the
chief literal fulfilment by Jesus Christ of
things said by the prophets was the fulfil
ment such as would naturally be given
by one who nourished his spirit on the
prophets, and on living and acting their
words. The great prophecies of Isaiah
and Jeremiah are, critics can easily see,
not strictly predictions at all; and predic
tions which are strictly meant as such,
like those in the Book of Daniel, are an
embarrassment to the Bible rather than
a main element of it. The ‘Zeit-Geist,’
and the mere spread of what is called
enlightenment, superficial and barren as
�THE PROOF FROM MIRACLES
53
this often is, will inevitably, before long, power to promise and to threaten by rising
make this conviction of criticism a popular from the dead and ascending into heaven,
opinion, held far and wide. And then, is certainly not the guide whom lovers of
what will be their case, who have been Christianity, if they could discern what it
so long and sedulously taught to rely is that he really expects and aims at, and
on supernatural predictions as a main what it is which they themselves really
desire, would think it wise to follow.
stay?
But the subject of miracles is a very
The same must be said of miracles.
The substitution of some other proof of great one; it includes within itself, indeed,
Christianity for this accustomed proof is the whole question about ‘ supernatural
now to be desired most by those who prescience,’ which meets us when we deal
most think Christianity of importance. with prophecy. And this great subject
That old friend of ours on whom we requires, in order that we may deal with
have formerly commented,1 who insists it properly, some little recapitulation of
upon it that Christianity is and shall be our original design in this essay, and of
nothing else but this, ‘ that Christ promised the circumstances in which the cause of
Paradise to the saint and threatened the religion and of the Bible seems to be at
worldly man with hell-fire, and proved his this moment placed.
CHAPTER V
THE PROOF FROM MIRACLES
We have seen that some new treatment or
other the religion of the Bible certainly
seems to require, for it is attacked on all
sides, and the theologians are not so suc
cessful as one might wish in defending it.
One critic says, that if these islands had
no religion at all it would not enter into
his mind to introduce the religious and
ethical idea by the agency of the Bible.
Another, that though certain common
places are common to all systems of
morality, yet the Bible-way of enunciating
these commonplaces no longer suits us.
And we may rest assured, he adds, that
by saying what we think in some other,
more congenial, language, we shall really
be taking the shortest road to discovering
the new doctrines which will satisfy at
once our reason and our imagination.
Another critic goes farther still, and calls
Bible-religion not only destitute of a
modern and congenial way of stating its
commonplaces of morality, but a defacer
and disfigurer of moral treasures which
were once in better keeping. The more
1 See St. Paul and Protestantism, p. 157.
one studies, the more, says he, orie is
convinced that the religion which calls
itself revealed contains, in the way of
what is good, nothing which is not the
incoherent and ill-digested residue of the
wisdom of the ancients. To the same
effect the Duke of Somerset—who has
been affording proof to the world that our
aristocratic class are not, as has been said,
inaccessible to ideas and merely polite,
but that they are familiar, on the con
trary, with modern criticism of the most
advanced kind—the Duke of Somerset
finds very much to condemn in the Bible
and its teaching; although the soul, he
says, has (outside the Bible, apparently)
one unassailable fortress to which she may
retire—faith in God.
All this seems to threaten to push
Bible-religion from the place it has long
held in our affections. And even what
the most modern criticism of all some
times does to save it and to set it up
again, can hardly be called very flattering
to it. For whereas the Hebrew race
imagined that to them were committed
the oracles of God, and that their God,
�54
LITERATURE AND DOGMA
‘ the Eternal who loveth righteousness,’1
was the God to whom ‘ every knee shall
bow and every tongue shall swear,’2 there
now comes M. Emile Burnouf, the
accomplished kinsman of the gifted
orientalist Eugene Burnouf, and will
prove to us in a thick volume3 that the
oracles of God wrere not committed to a
Semitic race at all, but to the Aryan;
that the true God is not Israel’s God at
all, but is ‘the idea of the absolute’
which Israel could never properly master.
This ‘ sacred theory of the Aryas,’ it
seems, passed into Palestine from Persia
and India, and got possession of the
founder of Christianity and of his greatest
apostles St. Paul and St. John ; becoming
more perfect, and returning more and
more to its true character of a ‘ transcen
dent metaphysic,’ as the doctors of the
Christian Church developed it. So that
we Christians, who are Aryas, may have
the satisfaction of thinking that ‘ the
religion of Christ has not come to us
from the Semites,’ and that ‘ it is in the
hymns of the Veda, and not in the Bible,
that we are to look for the primordial
source of our religion.’ The theory of
Christ is accordingly the theory of the
Vedic Agni, or fire. The Incarnation
represents the Vedic solemnity of the
production of fire, symbol of force' of
every kind, of all movement, life, and
thought. The Trinity of Father, Son,
and Spirit is the Vedic Trinity of Sun,
Fire, and Wind ; and God, finally, is ‘ a
cosmic unity.’
Such speculations almost take away the
breath of a mere man of letters. What
one is inclined to say of them is this.
Undoubtedly these exploits of the Aryan
genius must be gratifying to us members
of the Aryan race. The original God of
the Hebrews, M. Burnouf says expressly,
‘ was not a cosmic unity; ’ the religion of
the Hebrews ‘had not that transcendent
metaphysic which the genius of the Aryas
requires; ’ and, ‘ in passing from the Aryan
race to the inferior races, religion under
went a deterioration due to the physical
. Rs. xi, 7.
* Is., xlv, 23.
La Science des Religions-, Paris, 1872.
and moral constitution of these races.’
For religion, it must be remembered, is, in
M. Burnouf’s view, fundamentally a science;
‘a metaphysical conception, a theory, a
synthetic explanation of the universe.’
Now, ‘the perfect Arya is capable of a
great deal of science; the Semite is in
ferior to him.’ As Aryas or Aryans, then,
wTe ought to be pleased at having vindi
cated the greatness of our race, and having
not borrowed a Semitic religion as it stood,
but transformed it by importing our own
metaphysics into it.
And this seems to harmonise very well
with what the Bishops of Winchester and
Gloucester say about ‘doing something
for the honour of Our Lord’s Godhead,’
and about ‘ the infinite separation for time
and for eternity which is involved in
rejecting the Godhead of the Eternal Son,
Very God of Very God, Light of Light;’
and also with the Athanasian Creed gene
rally, and with what the clergy write to
the Guardian about ‘ eternal life being
unquestionably annexed to a right know
ledge of the Godhead.’ For all these
have in view high science and meta
physics, worthy of the Aryas. But to
Bible-religion, in the plain sense of the
w’ord, it is not flattering; for it throws
overboard almost entirely the Old Testa
ment, and makes the essence of the New
to consist in an esoteric doctrine not very
visible there, but more fully developed
outside of it. The metaphysical element
is made the fundamental element in reli
gion. But, ‘ the Bible-books, especially
the more ancient of them, are destitute of
metaphysics, and consequently of method
and classification in their ideas.’ Israel,
therefore, instead of being a light of the
Gentiles and a salvation to the ends of the
earth, falls to a place in the world’s reli
gious history behind the Arya. He is
dismissed as ranking anthropologically
between the Aryas and the yellow men ;
as having frizzled hair, thick lips, small
calves, flat feet, and belonging, above all,
to those ‘ occipital races ’ whose brain
cannot grow above the age of sixteen ;
whereas the brain of a theological Arya,
such as one of our bishops, may go on
growing all his life.
�THE PROOF FROM MIRACLES
But we, who think that the Old Testa
ment leads surely up to the New, who
believe that, indeed, ‘ salvation is of the
Jews,’1 and that, for what concerns con
duct or righteousness (that is, for what
concerns three-fourths of human life),
they and their documents can no more
be neglected by whoever would make
proficiency in it, than Greece can be
neglected by anyone who would make
proficiency in art, or Newton’s discoveries
by whoever would comprehend the world’s
physical laws,—we are naturally not satis
fied with this treatment of Israel and the
Bible. And admitting that Israel shows
no talent for metaphysics, we say that his
religious greatness is just this, that he does
not found religion on metaphysics, but on
moral experience, which is a much simpler
matter; and that, ever since the apparition
of Israel and the Bible, religion is no
longer what, according to M. Burnouf, to
our Aryan forefathers in the valley of the
Oxus it was,—and what perhaps it really
was to them,—metaphysical theory, but is
what Israel has made it.
And what Israel made, and how he
made it, we seek to show from the Bible
itself. Thus we hope to win for the Bible
and its religion, which seem to us so in
dispensable to the world, an access to
many of those who now neglect them.
For there is this to be said against M.
Burnouf’s metaphysics : no one can allege
that the Bible has failed to win access for
want of metaphysics being applied to it.
Metaphysics are just what all our theology
runs up into, and our bishops, as we
know, are here particularly strong. But
we see every day that the making religion
into metaphysics is the weakening of
religion ; now, M. Burnouf makes religion
into metaphysics more than ever. Yet
evidently the metaphysical method lacks
power for laying hold on people, and
compelling them to receive the Bible
from it; it is felt to be inconclusive as
thus employed, and its inconclusiveness
tells against the Bible. This is the case
with the old metaphysics of our bishops,
and it will be the case with M. Burnouf’s
’-John, iv, 22.
55
new metaphysics also. They will be
found, we fear, to have an inconclusive
ness in their recommendation of Chris
tianity. To very many persons, indeed
to the great majority, such a method, in
such a matter, must be inconclusive.
2.
Therefore we would not allow ourselves
to start with any metaphysical conception
at all, not with the monotheistic idea, as
it is styled, any more than with the pan
theistic idea ; and, indeed, we are quite
sure that Israel himself began with no
thing of the kind. The idea of God, as it
is given us in the Bible, rests, we say,
not on a metaphysical conception of the
necessity of certain deductions from our
ideas of cause, existence, identity, and the
like ; but on a moral perception of a rule
of conduct not of our own making, into
which we are born, and which exists
whether we will or no; of awe at its
grandeur and necessity, and of gratitude
at its beneficence. This is the great
original revelation made to Israel, this is
his ‘ Eternal.’
Man, however, as Goethe says, never
knows how anthropomorphic he is. Israel
described his Eternal in the language of
poetry and emotion, and could not thus
describe him but with the characters of a
man. Scientifically he never attempted
to describe him at all. But still the
Eternal was ever at last reducible, for
Israel, to the reality of experience out of
which the revelation sprang ; he was ‘ the
righteous Eternal who loveth righteous
ness.’ They who ‘ seek the Eternal,’ and
they who ‘ follow after righteousness,’ were
identical; just as, conversely, they who
‘fear the Eternal,’and they who ‘depart
from evil,’ were identical.1 Above all:
'■Blessed is the man that feareth the
Eternal; ’ ‘ it is joy to the just to do
judgment; ’ ‘ righteousness tendeth to
life-,' ‘the righteous is an everlasting
foundation.'2
1 Is., li, I ; Prov., iii, 7.
2 Ps. cxii, I; Prov., xxi, 15 ; xi, 19; x, 25.
�LITERATURE AND DOGMA
56
But, as time went on, facts seemed, we
saw, to contradict this fundamental belief,
to refute this faith in the Eternal; material
forces prevailed, and God appeared, as
they say, to be on the side of the big
battalions. The great unrighteous king
doms of the world, kingdoms which cared
far less than Israel for righteousness and
for the Eternal who makes for righteous
ness, overpowered Israel. Prophecy as
sured him that the triumph of the
Eternal’s cause and people was certain :
Behold the Eternal's hand is not shortened,
that it cannot save.1 The triumph was
but adjourned through Israel’s own sins :
Your iniquities have separated between you
and your God.2 Prophecy directed its
hearers to the future, and promised them
a new, everlasting kingdom, under a
heaven-sent leader. The characters of
this kingdom and leader were more
spiritualised by one prophet, more ma
terialised by another. As time went
on, in the last centuries before our era,
they became increasingly turbid and
phantasmagorical. In addition to his
original experimental belief in the
Almighty Eternal who makes for right
eousness, Israel had now a vast Aber
glaube, an after or extra-belief, not ex
perimental, in an approaching kingdom
of the saints, to be established by an
Anointed, a Messiah, or by ‘one like
the Son of Man,’ commissioned from the
Ancient of Days and coming in the
clouds of heaven.
Jesus came, calling himself the Messiah,
the Son of Man, the Son of God ; and
the question is, what is the true meaning
of these assertions of his, and of all his
teaching ? It is the same question we
had about the Old Testament. Is the
language scientific, or is it, as we say,
literary!—that is, the language of poetry
and emotion, approximative language,
thrown out, as it were, at certain great
objects which the human mind augurs
and feels after, but not language accurately
defining them? Popular religion says,
we know, that the language is scientific ;
that the God of the Old Testament is a
* Is., lix, I.
» Is., ix, 2.
great Personal First Cause, who thinks
and loves (for this too, it seems, we ought
to have added), the moral and intelligent
Governor of the universe. Learned re
ligion, the metaphysical theology of our
bishops, proves or confirms the existence
of this personal God by abstruse reason
ing from our ideas of cause, design,
existence, identity, and so on. Popular
religion rests it altogether on revelation
and miracle. The God of Israel, for
popular religion, is a magnified and nonnatural man who has really worked
stupendous miracles, whereas the Gods of
the heathen were vainly imagined to be
able to work them, but could not, and
had therefore no real existence. Of this
God, Jesus for popular religion is the Son.
He came to appease God’s wrath against
sinful men by the sacrifice of himself;
and he proved his Sonship by a course of
stupendous miracles, and by the wonder
ful accomplishment in him of the super
natural Messianic predictions of prophecy.
Here, again, learned religion elucidates
and develops the relation of the Son to
the Father by a copious exhibition of
metaphysics; but for popular religion the
relationship, and the authority of Jesus
which derives from it, is altogether estab
lished by miracle.
Now, we have seen that our bishops
and their metaphysics are so little con
vincing, that many people throw the
Bible quite aside and will not attend to it,
because they are given to understand that
the metaphysics go necessarily along with
it, and that one cannot be taken without
the other. So far, then, the talents of the
Bishops of Winchester and Gloucester,
and their zeal to do something for the
honour of the Eternal Son’s Godhead,
may be said to be actual obstacles to the
receiving and studying of the Bible. But
the same may now be also said of the
popular theology which rests the Bible’s
authority and the Christian religion on
miracle. To a great many persons this is
tantamount to stopping their use of the
Bible and of the Christian religion ; for
they have made up their minds that what
is popularly called miracle never does
really happen, and that the belief in it
�THE PROOF FROM MIRACLES
arises out of either ignorance or mistake.
To these persons we restore the use of the
Bible, if, while showing them that the
Bible-language is not scientific, but the
language of common speech or of poetry
and eloquence, approximative language
thrown out at certain great objects of
consciousness which it does not pretend
to define fully, we convince them at the
same time that this language deals with
facts of positive experience, most moment
ous and real.
We have sought to do this for the Old
Testament first, and we now seek to do
it for the New. But our attempt has in
view those who are incredulous about the
Bible and inclined to throw it aside,
not those who at present receive it on
the grounds supplied either by popular
theology or by metaphysical theology.
For persons of this kind, what we say
neither will have, nor seeks to have, any
constraining force at all ; only it is ren
dered necessary by the want of constrain
ing force, for others than themselves, in
their own theology. How little constrain
ing force metaphysical dogma has, we
all see. And we have shown, too, how
the proof from the fulfilment in Jesus
Christ of a number of detailed predictions,
supposed to have been made with super
natural prescience about him long before
hand, is losing, and seems likely more
and more to lose, its constraining force.
It is found that the predictions and their
fulfilment are not what they are said
to be.
Now we come to miracles, more specially
so called. And we have to see whether
the constraining force of this proof, too,
must not be admitted to be far less than
it used to be, and whether some other
source of authority for the Bible is not
much to be desired.
3-
That miracles, when fully believed, are
felt by men in general to be a source of
authority, it is absurd to deny. One may
say, indeed: Suppose I could change the
pen with which I write this into a pen
57
wiper, I should not thus make what I
write any the truer or more convincing.
That may be so in reality, but the mass
of mankind feel differently. In the judg
ment of the mass of mankind, could I
visibly and undeniably change the pen
with which I write this into a penwiper,
not only would this which I write acquire
a claim to be held perfectly true and
convincing, but I should even be entitled
to affirm, and to be believed in affirming,
propositions the most palpably at war
with common fact and experience. It is
almost impossible to exaggerate the prone
ness of the human mind to take miracles
as evidence, and to seek for miracles as
evidence ; or the extent to which religion,
and religion of a true and admirable kind,
has been, and is still, held in connection
with a reliance upon miracles. This
reliance will long outlast the reliance on
the supernatural prescience of prophecy,
for it is not exposed to the same tests.
To pick Scripture miracles one by one to
pieces is an odious and repulsive task ;
it is also an unprofitable one, for what
ever we may think of the affirmative
demonstrations of them, a negative
demonstration of them is, from the cir
cumstances of the case, impossible. And
yet the human mind is assuredly passing
away, however slowly, from this hold of
reliance also; and those who make it
their stay will more and more find it
fail them, will more and more feel them
selves disturbed, shaken, distressed, and
bewildered.
For it is what we call the Time- Spirit
which is sapping the proof from miracles
—it is the ‘Zeit-Geist’ itself. Whether
we attack them, or whether we defend
them, does not much matter.
The
human mind, as its experience widens, is
turning away from them. And for this
reason : it sees, as its experience widens,
how they arise. It sees that under certain
circumstances, they always do arise ; and
that they have not more solidity in one
case than another. Under certain cir|
cumstances, wherever men are found,
there is, as Shakespeare says :—
No natural exhalation in the sky,
No scape of nature, no distemper’d day,
�58
LITERATURE AND DOGMA
No common wind, no customed event,
But they will pluck away his natural cause,
And call them meteors, prodigies, and signs,
Abortives, presages, and tongues of heaven.
Imposture is so far from being the general
rule in these cases that it is the rare
exception. Signs and wonders men’s
minds will have, and they create them
honestly and naturally ; yet not so but
that we can see how they create them.
Roman Catholics fancy that Bible
miracles and the miracles of their
Church form a class by themselves;
Protestants fancy that Bible-miracles,
alone, form a class by themselves. This
was eminently the posture of mind of
the late Archbishop Whately :—he held
that all other miracles would turn out to
be impostures, or capable of a natural
explanation, but that Bible-miracles would
stand sifting by a London special jury or
by a committee of scientific men. No
acuteness can save such notions, as our
knowledge widens, from being seen to be
mere extravagances, and the Protestant
notion is doomed to an earlier ruin than
the Catholic. For the Catholic notion
admits miracles—so far as Christianity,
at least, is concerned—in the mass; the
Protestant notion invites to a criticism by
which it must before long itself perish.
When Stephen was martyred, he looked
up into heaven, and saw the glory of God
and Jesus standing on the right hand of
God. That, says the Protestant, is solid
fact. At the martyrdom of St. Fructuosus
the Christian servants of the Roman
governor, Babylas and Mygdone, saw the
heavens open, and the saint and his
deacon Eulogius carried up on high with
crowns on their heads. That is, says the
Protestant, imposture or else illusion. St.
Paul hears on his way to Damascus the
voice of Jesus say to him : ‘Saul, Saul,
why persecutest thou me ? ’ That is solid
fact. The companion of St. Thomas
Aquinas hears a voice from the crucifix
say to the praying saint: ‘ Thou hast
written well of me, Thomas ; what recompence dost thou desire ? ’ That is impos
ture or else illusion. Why ? It is im
possible to find any criterion by which
one of these incidents may establish its
claim to a solidity which we refuse to the
others.
One of two things must be made out
in order to place either the Bible-miracles
alone, or the Bible-miracles and the
miracles of the Catholic Church with
them, in a class by themselves. Either
they must be shown to have arisen in a
time eminently unfavourable to such a
process as Shakespeare describes, to ampli
fication and the production of legend ; or
they must be shown to be recorded in
documents of an eminently historical
mode of birth and publication. But
surely it is manifest that the Bible
miracles fulfil neither of these condi
tions. It was said that the waters of
the Pamphylian Sea miraculously opened
a passage for the army of Alexander the
Great. Admiral Beaufort, however, tells
us that, ‘ though there are no tides in this
part of the Mediterranean, a considerable
depression of the sea is caused by longcontinued north winds, and Alexander,
taking advantage of such a moment, may
have dashed on without impediment.’1
And we accept the explanation as a
matter of course. But the waters of the
Red Sea are said to have miraculously
opened a passage for the children of
Israel; and we insist on the literal truth
of this story, and reject natural explana
tions as impious. Yet the time and cir
cumstances of the flight from Egypt were
a thousand times more favourable to the
rise of some natural incident into a
miracle, than the age of Alexander.
They were a time and circumstances of
less broad daylight. It was said, again,
that during the battle of Leuctra the
gates of the Heracleum at Thebes sud
denly opened, and the armour of Hercules
vanished from the temple, to enable the
god to take part with the Thebans in
the battle. Probably there was some real
circumstance, however slight, which gave
a foundation for the story. But this is
the utmost we think of saying in its
favour ; the literal story it never even
occurs to one of us to believe. But that
the walls of Jericho literally fell down at
1 Beaufort’s Karamania, p. n6.
�THE PROOF FROM MIRACLES
the sound of the trumpets of Joshua, we
are asked to believe, told that it is im
pious to disbelieve it. Yet which place
and time were most likely to generate a
miraculous story with ease—Hellas and
the days of Epaminondas, cr Palestine
and the days of Joshua? And of docu
mentary records, which are the most
historical in their way of being generated
and propagated, which the most favour
able for the admission of legend and
miracle of all kinds—the Old Testa
ment narratives with their incubation of
centuries, and the New Testament narra
tives with their incubation of a century
(and tradition active all the while), or the
narratives, say, of Herodotus or Plutarch ?
None of them are what we call critical.
Experience of the history of the human
mind, and of men’s habits of seeing,
sifting, and relating, convinces us that the
miraculous stories of Herodotus or Plu
tarch do grow out of the process described
by Shakespeare. But we shall find our
selves inevitably led, sooner or later, to
extend the same rule to all miraculous
stories; nay, the considerations which
apply in other cases, apply, we shall most
surely discover, with even greater force in
the case of Bible miracles.
4-
This being so, there is nothing one
would more desire for a person or docu
ment one greatly values, than to make
them independent of miracles. And with
regard to the Old Testament we have
done this ; for we have shown that the
essential matter in the Old Testament is
the revelation to Israel of the immeasur
able grandeur, the eternal necessity, the
priceless blessing of that with which not
less than three-fourths of human life is
indeed concerned—-righteousness. Ar.d it
makes no difference to the preciousness
of this revelation, whether we believe that
the Red Sea miraculously opened a
passage to the Israelites, and the walls of
Jericho miraculously fell down at the blast
of Joshua’s trumpet, or that these stories
arose in the same way as other stories of
59
the kind. Eut in the New Testament the
essential thing is the revelation of Jesus
Christ. For this too, then, if one values
it, one’s great wish must in like manner
be to make it independent of miracle, if
miracle is a stay which one perceives, as
more and more we are all coming to per
ceive it, to be not solid.
Now, it may look at first sight a strange
thing to say, but it is a truth which we
will make abundantly clear as we go on,
that one of the very best helps to prepare
the way for valuing the Bible and be
lieving in Jesus Christ, is to convince
oneself of the liability to mistake in the
Bible writers. Our popular theology sup
poses that the Old Testament writers were
miraculously inspired, and could make no
mistakes; that the New Testament writers
were miraculously inspired, and could
make no mistakes ; and that there this
miraculous inspiration stopped, and all
writers on religion have been liable to
make mistakes ever since. It is as if a
hand had been put out of the sky pre
senting us with the Bible, and the rules
of criticism which apply to other books
did not apply to the Bible. Now, the
fatal thing for this supposition is, that its
owners stab it to the heart the moment
they use any palliation or explaining away,
however small, of the literal words of the
Bible; and some they always use. For
instance, it is said in the eighteenth Psalm
that a consuming fire went out of the
mouth of God, so that coals were kindled
at it. The veriest literalist will cry out:
Everyone knows that this is not to be
taken literally ! The truth is, even he
knows that this is not to be taken literally ;
but others know that a great deal more is
not to be taken literally. He knows very
little; but, as far as his little knowledge
goes, he gives up his theory, which is, of
course, palpably hollow. For indeed jt is
only by applying to the Bible a criticism,
such as it is, that such a man makes
out that criticism does not apply to the
Bible.
There has grown up an irresistible
sense that the belief in miracles was due
to man’s want of experience, to his igno
rance, agitation, and helplessness. And
�6o
LITERATURE AND DOGMA
it will not do to stake all truth and
value of the Bible upon its having been
put out of the sky, upon its being guaran
teed by miracles, and upon their being
true. If we present the Bible in this
fashion, then the cry, Imposture / will
more and more, in spite of all we can do,
gather strength, and the book will be
thrown aside more and more.
But when men come to see, that, both
in the New Testament and in the Old,
what is given us is words thrown out at
an immense reality not fully or half fully
grasped by the writers, but, even thus,
able to affect us with indescribable force;
when we convince ourselves that, as in the
Old Testament we have Israel’s inadequate
yet inexhaustibly fruitful testimony to the
Eternal that makes for righteousness, so
we have in the New Testament a report
inadequate, indeed, but the only report
we have, and therefore priceless, by men,
some more able and clear, others less
able and clear, but all full of the influences
of their time and condition, partakers
of some of its simple or its learned ig
norance—inevitably, in fine, expecting
miracles and demanding them—a report,
I say, by these men of that immense
reality not fully or half fully grasped by
them, the mind of Christ—then we shall
be drawn to the Gospels with a new zest
and as by a fresh spell. We shall throw
ourselves upon their narratives with an
ardour answering to the value of the pearl
of great price they hold, and to the diffi
culty of reaching it.
So, to profit fully by the New Testa
ment, the first thing to be done is to
make it perfectly clear to oneself that its
reporters both could err and did err. For
a plain person, an incident in the report
of St. Paul’s conversion—which comes
into our minds the more naturally as this
incident has been turned against some
thing we have ourselves said 1 —would,
one would think, be enough. We had
spoken of the notion that St. Paul’s mi
raculous vision at his conversion proved
the truth of his doctrine. We related a
vision which converted Sampson Stani1 St. Paul and Protestantism, p. 54.
forth, one of the early Methodists; and
we said that just so much proving force
and no more, as Sampson Staniforth’s
vision had to confirm the truth of anything
he might afterwards teach, St. Paul’s vision
had to establish his subsequent doctrine.
It was eagerly rejoined that Staniforth’s
vision was but a fancy of his own, whereas
the reality of Paul’s was proved by his
companions hearing the voice that spoke
to him. And so in one place of the Acts
we are told they did; but in another plaze
of the Acts we are told by Paul himself
just the contrary : that his companions
did not hear the voice that spoke to him.
Need we say that the two statements have
been ‘ reconciled ’ ? They have over and
over again ; but by one of those processes
which are the opprobrium of our Bible
criticism, and by which, as Bishop Butler
says, anything can be made to mean any
thing. There is between the two state
ments a contradiction as clear as can be.
The contradiction proves nothing against
the good faith of the reporter, and St.
Paul undoubtedly had his vision ; he had
it as Sampson Staniforth had his. What
the contradiction proves is the incurable
looseness with which the circumstances
of what is called and thought a miracle
are related; and that this looseness the
Bible relaters of a miracle exhibit, just
like other people. And the moral is : what
an unsure stay, then, must miracles be !
But, after all, that there is here any
contradiction or mistake, some do deny;
so let us choose a case where the mistake
is quite undeniably clear. Such a case
we find in the confident expectation and
assertion, on the part of the New Testa
ment writers, of the approaching end of
the world. Even this mistake people try
to explain away; but it is so palpable
that no words can cloud our perception
of it. The time is short. The Lord is at
hand. The end of all things is at hand.
Little children, it is the final time. The
Lord's coming is at hand; behold, the judge
standeth before the door.x Nothing can
1 1 Cor., vii, 29 ; Philibp.,ve, 5 : 1 Pet., iv, 7 ;
I John, ii, 18 ; Tames, v, 8, 9. We have here
the express declarations of St. Paul, St. Peter,
St. John, and St. James.
�THE PROOF FROM MIRACLES
61
really obscure the evidence furnished by argument of the same kind. Habit makes
such sayings as these. When Paul told us so lend ourselves to their way of speak
the Thessalonians that they and he, at ing, that commonly nothing checks us;
the approaching coming of Christ, should but, the moment we begin to attend, we
have their turn after, not before, the faith perceive how much there is which ought
ful dead :—‘ For the Lord himself shall to check us. Take the famous allegation
descend from heaven with a shout, with of the parted clothes but lot-assigned coat
the voice of the archangel and with the of Christ, as fulfilment of the supposed
trump of God, and the dead in Christ shall prophecy in the Psalms : ‘ They parted
rise first, then we which are alive and re my garments among them, and for my
main shall be caught up together with vesture did they cast lots.’1 The words
them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in of the Psalm are taken to mean contrast,
the air,’1—when he said this, St. Paul was when they do in truth mean identity.
in truth simply mistaken in his notion of According to the rules of Hebrew poetry,
what was going to happen. This is as for my vesture they did cast lots is merely a
repetition, in different words, of they parted
clear as anything can be.
And not only were the New Testament my garments among them, not an antithesis
writers thus demonstrably liable to com to it. The alleged ‘prophecy’ is, there
mit, like other men, mistakes in fact; they fore, due to a dealing with the Psalmist’s
were also demonstrably liable to commit words which is arbitrary and erroneous.
mistakes in argument. As before, let us So, again, to call the words, a bone of him
take a case which will be manifest and shall not be brokenp a prophecy of Christ,
palpable to everyone. St. Paul, arguing fulfilled by his legs not being broken on
to the Galatians that salvation was not by the cross, is evidently, the moment one
the Jewish law but by Jesus Christ, proves considers it, a playing with words which
his point from the promise to Abraham nowadays we should account childish.
having been made to him and his seed, not For what do the words, taken, as alone
seeds. The words are not, he says, ‘ seeds, words can rationally be taken, along with
as of many, but as of one; to thy seed, their context, really prophesy? The
which is Christ.’2 Now, as to the point entire safety of the righteous, not his
to he proved, we all agree with St. Paul; death. Many are the troubles of the right
but his argument is that of a Jewish eous, but the Eternal delivereth him out
Rabbi, and is clearly both fanciful and of all; he keepeth all his bones, so that not
false. The writer in Genesis never in one of them is broken? Worse words,
tended to draw any distinction between therefore, could hardly have been chosen
one of Abraham’s seed, and Abraham’s from the Old Testament to apply in that
seed general. And even if he had ex connexion where they come ; for they
pressly meant, what Paul says he did not are really contradicted by the death of
mean, Abraham’s seed in general, he Christ, not fulfilled by it.
It is true, this verbal and unintelligent
would still have said seed, and not seeds.
This is a good instance to take, because use of Scripture is just what was to be
the Apostle’s substantial doctrine is here expected from the circumstances of the
not at all concerned. As to the root of New Testament writers. It was inevita
the matter in question, we are all at one ble for them; it was the sort of trifling
with St. Paul. But it is evident how he which then, in common Jewish theology,
could, like the rest of us, bring forward a passed for grave argument and made a
quite false argument in support of a quite serious impression, as it has in common
Christian theology ever since. But this
true thesis.
And the use of prophecy by the writers does not make it the less really trifling ;
of the New Testament furnishes really, or hinder one nowadays from seeing it to
almost at every turn, instances of false
1 I Thess., iv, 16, 17.
2 GW., iii, 16.
1 Ps. xxii, 18.
1 See John, xix, 36.
8 Ps. xxxiv, 19, 20.
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LITERATURE AND DOGMA
be trifling, directly we examine it. The
mistake made will strike some people
more forcibly in one of the cases cited,
some in another, but in one or other of
the cases the mistake will be visible to
everybody.
Now, this recognition of the liability of
the New Testament writers to make mis
takes, both of fact and of argument, will
certainly, as we have said, more and more
gain strength, and spread wider and
wider. The futility of their mode of
demonstration from prophecy, of which
we have just given examples, will be more
and more felt. The fallibility of that
demonstration from miracles to which
they and all about them attached such
preponderating weight, which made the
disciples of Jesus believe in him, which
made the people believe in him, will be
. more and more recognised.
Reverence for all, who in those first
dubious days of Christianity, chose the
better part, and resolutely cast in their
lot with ‘the despised and rejected of
men ’ 1 Gratitude to all, who, while the
tradition was yet fresh, helped by their
writings to preserve and set clear the
precious record of the words and life of
Jesus ! And honour, eternal honour, to
the great and profound qualities of soul
and mind which some of these writers
display ! But the writers are admirable
for what they are, not for what, by the
nature of things, they could not be. It
was superiority enough in them to attach
themselves firmly to Jesus; to feel to the
bottom of their hearts that power of his
words, which alone held permanently—
held, when the miracles, in which the
multitude believed as well as the disciples,
failed to hold. The good faith of the
Bible-writers is above all question, it
speaks for itself; and the very same
criticism, which shows us the defects of
their exegesis and of their demonstrations
from miracles, establishes their good faith.
But this could not, and did not, prevent
them from arguing in the methods by
which everyone around them argued, and
from expecting miracles where everybody
else expected them.
In one respect alone have the miracles
recorded by them a more real ground
than the mass of miracles of which we
have the relation. Medical science has
never gauged—never, perhaps, enough
set itself to gauge—the intimate con
nexion between moral fault and disease.
To what extent, or in how many cases,
what is called illness is due to moral
springs having been used amiss—whether
by being over-used or by not being used
sufficiently—we hardly at all know, and
we far too little inquire. Certainly it is
due to this very much more than we
commonly think; and the more it is due
to this, the more do moral therapeutics
rise in possibility and importance.1 The
bringer of light and happiness, the calmer
and pacifier, or invigorator and stimulator,
is one of the chiefest of doctors. Such a
doctor was Jesus; such an operator, by an
efficacious and real, though little observed
and little employed agency, upon what we,
in the language of popular superstition,
call the unclean spirits, but which are to
be designated more literally and more
correctly as the uncleared, unpurified
spirits, which came raging and madding
before him. This his own language
shows, if we know how to read it.
‘ What does it matter whether I say, Thy
sins are forgiven thee I or whether I say,
Arise and zvalkV2 And again: ‘ Thou
art made whole; sin no more, lest a worse
thing befall thee.'3 His reporters, we
must remember, are men who saw thau
maturgy in all that Jesus did, and who
saw in all sickness and disaster visitations
from God, and they bend his language
accordingly. But indications enough re
main to show the line of the Master, his
perception of the large part of moral
cause in many kinds of disease, and his
method of addressing to this part his
cure.
It would never have done, indeed, to
have men pronouncing right and left that
this and that was a judgment, and how,
and for what, and on whom. And so,
1 Consult the Charmides of Plato (cap. v.) for a
remarkable account of the theory of such a treat
ment, attributed by Socrates to Zamolxis, the godking of the Thracians.
2 Matth., ix, 5.
8 John, v, 14..
�THE PROOF FROM MIRACLES
63
when the disciples, seeing an afflicted ever have thought differently.
Discre
person, asked whether this man had done pancies which we now labour with such
sin or his parents, Jesus checked them honest pains and by such astonishing
and said : ‘ Neither the one nor the other, methods to explain away,—the voice at
but that the works of God might be made Paul’s conversion, heard by the bystanders
manifest in him.’1 Not the less clear is according to one account, not heard by
his own belief in the moral root of much them according to another ; the Holy
physical disease, and in moral therapeu Dove at Christ’s baptism, visible to John
tics; and it is important to note well the the Baptist in one narrative, in two others
instances of miracles where this belief to Jesus himself, in another, finally, to all
comes in. For the action of Jesus in the people as well; the single blind man
these instances, however it may be ampli in one relation, growing into two blind
fied in the reports, was real; but it is men in another ; the speaking with
not, therefore, as popular religion fancies, tongues, according to St. Paul a sound
thaumaturgy,—it is not what people are without meaning, according to the Acts
fond of calling the supernatural, but what an intelligent and intelligible utterance,—
is better called the non-natural. It is, on all this will be felt to require really no
the contrary, like the grace of Raphael, explanation at all, to explain itself, to be
or the grand style of Phidias, eminently natural to the whole class of incidents to
natural ; but it is above common, low’- w’hich these miracles belong, and the
pitched nature. It is a line of nature not inevitable result of the looseness with
yet mastered or followed out.
which the stories of them arise and are
Its significance us a guarantee of the propagated.
authenticity of Christ’s mission is trivial,
And the more the miraculousness of
however, compared with the guarantee the story deepens, as after the death of
furnished by his sayings. Its importance Jesus, the more does the texture of the
is in its necessary effect upon the incidents become loose and floating, the
beholders and reporters. This element more does the very air and aspect of
of what was really wonderful, unprece things seem to tell us we are in wonder
dented, and unaccountable, they had land. Jesus after his resurrection not
actually before them ; and we may known by Mary Magdalene, taken by her
estimate how it must have helped and for the gardener; appearing in another
seemed to sanction that tendency which form, and not known by the two disciples
in any case would have carried them, going with him to Emmaus and at supper
circumstanced as they were, to find all with him there; not known by his most
the performances and career of Jesus intimate apostles on the borders of the
miraculous.
Sea of Galilee ;—and presently, out of
But, except for this, the miracles related these vague beginnings, the recognitions
in the Gospels will appear to us more and getting asserted, then the ocular demon
more, the more our . experience and strations, the final commissions, the
knowledge increases, to have but the ascension;—one hardly knows which of
same ground which is common to all the two to call the most evident here,
miracles, the ground indicated by Shake the perfect simplicity and good faith of
speare ; to have been generated under the narrators, or the plainness with which
the same kind of conditions as other they themselves really say to us: Behold
miracles, and to follow the same laws. a legend growing under your eyes !
When once the ‘Zeit-Geist’ has made us
And suggestions of this sort, with
entertain the notion of this, a thousand respect to the whole miraculous side of
things in the manner of relating will the New Testament, will meet us at every
strike us which never struck us before, turn; we here but give a sample of them.
and will make us wonder how we could It is neither our wish nor our design to
accumulate them, to marshal them, to
1 John, ix, 3.
insist upon them, to make their force felt.
�64
LITERATURE AND DOGMA
Let those who desire to keep. them at
arm’s length continue to do so, if they
can, and go on placing the sanction of
the Christian religion in its miracles.
Our point is that the objections to
miracles do, and more and more will,
without insistence, without attack, with
out controversy, make their own force
felt; and that the sanction of Chris
tianity, if Christianity is not to be lost
along with its miracles, must be found
elsewhere.
CHAPTER VI
THE NEW TESTAMENT RECORD
Now, then, will be perceived the bearing phecy : The Eternal keepeth all the hones
and gravity of what I some little way back of the righteous, so that not one of them is
said, that the more we convince ourselves broken;1 who proves salvation to be by
of the liability of the New Testament Christ alone, from the promise to Abra
writers to mistake, the more we really ham being made to seed in the singular
bring out the greatness and worth of the number, not the plural. If, therefore, the
New Testament. For the more the re human mind is now drawing away from
porters were fallible and prone to delusion, reliance on miracles, coming to perceive
the more does Jesus become independent the community of character which per
of the mistakes they made, and unaffected vades them all, to understand their natural
by them. We have plain proof that here laws, so to speak—their loose mode of
was a very great spirit; and the greater he origination and their untrustworthiness—
was, the more certain were his disciples to and is inclined rather to distrust the dealer
misunderstand him. The depth of their in them than to pin its faith upon him;
misunderstanding of him is really a kind then it is good for the authority of Jesus,
of measure of the height of his superiority. that his reporters are evidently liable to
And this superiority is what interests us ignorance and error. He is reported to
in the records of the New Testament; for deal in miracles, to be above all a thauthe New Testament exists to reveal Jesus maturgist. But the more his reporters
Christ, not to establish the immunity of were intellectually men of their nation and
its writers from error.
time, and of its current beliefs—the more,
Jesus himself is not a New Testament that is, they were open to mistakes—the
writer ; he is the object of description and more certain they were to impute miracles
comment to the New Testament writers. to a wonderful and half-understood per
As the Old Testament speaks about the sonage like Jesus, whether he would or
Eternal and bears an invaluable witness to no. He himself may, at the same time,
him, without yet ever adequately in words have had quite other notions as to what
defining and expressing him ; so, and even he was doing and intending.
yet more, do the New Testament writers
Again, the mistake of imagining that
speak about Jesus and give a priceless the world was to end, as St. Paul an
record of him, without adequately and nounces, within the lifetime of the first
accurately comprehending him. They are Christian generation, is palpable. But the
altogether on another plane from Jesus, reporters of Jesus make him announcing
and their mistakes are not his. It is not just the same thing: ‘This generation
Jesus himself who relates his own miracles shall not pass away till they shall see the
to us; who tells us of his own apparitions Son of Man coming in the clouds with
after his death; who alleges his crucifixion
and sufferings as a fulfilment cf the pro
1 Ps. xxxiv, 20.
�THE NEW TESTAMENT RECORD
great power and glory, and then shall he
send his angels and gather his elect from
the four winds.’1 Popular theology can
put a plain satisfactory sense upon this,
but, as usual, through that process de
scribed by Butler by which anything can
be made to mean anything; and from
this sort of process the human mind is
beginning to shrink. A more plausible
theology will say that the words are an
accommodation; that the speaker lends
himself to the fancies and expectations of
his hearers. A good deal of such accom
modation there is in this and other say
ings of Jesus; but accommodation to the
full extent here supposed would surely
have been impossible. To suppose it, is
most violent and unsatisfactory. Either,
then, the words were, like St. Paul’s an
nouncement, a mistake, or they are not
really the very words Jesus said, just as he
said them. That is, the reporters have
given them a turn, however slight, a tone
and a colour, a connexion, to make them
comply with a fixed idea in their own
minds, which they unfeignedly believed
was a fixed idea with Jesus also. Now,
the more we regard the reporters of Jesus
as men liable to err, full of the turbid
Jewish fancies about ‘ the grand consum
mation ’ which were then current, the
easier we can understand these men in
evitably putting their own eschatology into
the mouth of Jesus, when they had to
report his discourse about the kingdom of
God and the troubles in store for the
Jewish nation, and the less need have we
to make Jesus a co-partner in their escha
tology.
Again, the futility of such demonstrations
from prophecy as those of which I have
quoted examples, and generally of all that
Jewish exegesis, based on a mere unintel
ligent catching at the letter of the Old
Testament, isolated from its context and
real meaning, of which the New Testament
writers give us so much, begins to discon
cert attentive readers of the Bible more
and more, and to be felt by them as an
embarrassment to the cause of Jesus, not
a support. Well, then, it is good for the
1 Matth., xxiv, 30, 31, 34.
65
authority of Jesus, that those who esta
blish it by arguments of this sort should be
clearly men of their race and time, not
above its futile methods of reasoning and
demonstration. The more they were this,
and the more they were sure to mix up
much futile logic and exegesis with their
presentation of Jesus, the less is Jesus
himself responsible for such logic and
exegesis, or at all dependent upon it. He
may himself have rated such argumentation
at precisely its true value, and have based
his mission and authority upon nogrounds
but solid ones. Whether he did so or not,
his hearers and reporters were sure to base
it on their own fantastic grounds also, and
to credit Jesus with doing the same.
In short, the more w« conceive Jesus as
almost as much over the heads of his dis
ciples and reporters then, as he is over the
heads of the mass of so-called Christians
now, and the more we see his disciples to
have been, as they were, men raised by a
truer moral susceptiveness above their
countrymen, but in intellectual conceptions
and habits much on a par with them, all
the more do we make room, so to speak,
for Jesus to be a personage immensely
great and wonderful; as wonderful as any
thing his reporters imagined him to be,
though in a different manner.
2.
We make room for him to be this, and
through the inadequate reporting of his
followers there breaks and shines, and will
more and more break and shine the more
the matter is examined, abundant evidence
that he was this. It is most remarkable,
and the best proof of the simplicity, seri
ousness, and good faith, which intercourse
with Jesus Christ inspired, that witnesses
with a fixed prepossession, and having no
doubt at all as to the interpretation to be
put on his acts and career, should yet
admit so much of what makes against
themselves and their own power of inter
preting. For them, it was a thing beyond
all doubt, that by miracles Jesus mani
fested forth his glory, and induced the
faithful to believe in him. Yet what
E
�66
LITERATURE AND DOGMA
checks to this paramount and all-governing lyptic pictures of the Book of Daniel and
belief of theirs do they report from Jesus the Book of Enoch, and a transference of
himself! Everybody will be able to them to Jesus Christ and his kingdom.
recall such checks, although he may never It is not surprising, certainly, that men
yet have been accustomed to consider with the mental range of their time, and
their full significance. Except ye see signs with so little flexibility of thought, that,
and wonders, ye will not believe ! 1—as when Jesus told them to beware of ‘the
much as to say: ‘ Believe on right leaven of the Pharisees,’1 or when he
grounds you cannot, and you must needs called himself ‘ the bread of life ’ and
believe on wrong!’ And again : ‘Believe said, He that eateth me shall live by me,2
me that I am in the Father and the Father they stuck hopelessly fast in the literal
in me ; or else believe for the very works' meaning of the words, and were accordingly
sake ! ’2—as much as to say : ‘ Acknow puzzled or else offended by them,—it is
ledge me on the ground of my healing not surprising that these men should have
and restoring acts being miraculous, if been incapable of dealing in a large spirit
you must; but it is not the right ground.’ with prophecies like those of Daniel, that
No, not the right ground; and when they should have applied them to Jesus
Nicodemus came and would put belief in narrowly and literally, and should there
Christ on this ground (‘We know that fore have conceived his kingdom uninthou art a teacher come from God, for no telligently. This is not remarkable; what
one can do the miracles that thou doest is remarkable is, that they should them
except God be’with him'), Jesus rejoined : selves supply us with their Master’s blame
‘ Verily, verily, I say unto thee, except a of their too literal criticism, his famous
man be born from above, he cannot see the sentence : ‘ The kingdom of God is within
kingdom of God ! ’ thus tacitly changing you ! ’3 Such an account of the kingdom
his disciple’s ground and correcting him.3 of God has more right, even if recorded
Even distress and impatience at this false only once, to pass with us for Jesus Christ’s
ground being taken is visible sometimes : own account, than the common materialis
‘ Jesus groaned in his spirit and said, Why ing accounts, if repeated twenty times;
doth this generation ask for a sign? for it was manifestly quite foreign to the
Verily I say unto you, there shall no sign disciples’ own notions, and they could
be given to this generation !’4 Who does never have invented it. Evidence of the
not see what double and treble import same kind, again,—evidence borne by the
ance these checks from Jesus to the reporters themselves against their own
reliance on miracles gain, through their power of rightly understanding what their
being reported by those who relied on Master, on this topic of the kingdom of
miracles devoutly? Who does not see God and its coming, meant to say,—is
what a clue they offer as to the real mind Christ’s warning to his Apostles, that the
of Jesus? To convey at all to such subject of final things was one where they
hearers of him that there was any objec were all out of their depth : ‘ It is not for
tion to miracles, his own sense of the you to know the times and seasons which
objection must have been profound ; and the Father hath put in his own power.’4
to get them, who neither shared nor'
So, too, with the use of prophecy and
understood it, to repeat it a few times, he of the Old Testament generally. A very
must have repeated it many times.
small experience of Jewish exegesis will
Take, again, the eschatology of the convince us that, in the disciples, their
disciples, their notion of the final things, catching at the letter of the Scriptures,
Of the approaching great judgment and and mistaking this play with words for
end of the world. This consisted mainly serious argument, was nothing extraordi
in a literal appropriation of the apoca nary. The extraordinary thing is that
1 John, iv, 48.
1 John, iii, 2, 3.
2 John, xiv, 11.
4 Mark, viii, 12.
* Matth., xvi, 6-12.
3 Luke, xvii, 21.
2 John, vi, 48, 57.
4 Ads, i, 7.
�The new testament record
Jesus, even in the report of these critics,
uses Scripture in a totally different manner;
he wields it as an instrument of which he
truly possesses the use. Either he puts
prophecy into act, and by the startling
point thus made he engages the popular
imagination on his side, makes the popu
lar familiarity with prophecy serve him;
as when he rides into Jerusalem on an
ass, or clears the Temple of buyers and
sellers. Or else he applies Scripture in
what is called ‘a superior spirit,’ to make
it yield to narrow-minded hearers a lesson
of wisdom ; as, for instance, to rebuke a
superstitious observance of the Sabbath
he employs the incident of David’s
taking the shewbread. His reporters, in
short, are the servants’ of the Scripture
letter, Jesus is its master; and it is from
the very men who were servants to it
themselves, that we learn that he was
master of it. How signal, therefore,
must this mastery have been ! how emi
nently and strikingly different from the
treatment known and practised by the
disciples themselves !
Finally, for the reporters of Jesus the
rule was, undoubtedly, that men ‘ believed
on Jesus when they saw the miracles which
he did.’1 Miracles were in these re
porters’ eyes, beyond question, the evi
dence of the Christian religion. And
yet these same reporters indicate another
and a totally different evidence offered for
the Christian religion by Jesus Christ
himself. Every one that heareth and
learneth from the Father, cometh unto me.2
As the Father hath taught me, so I speak ; 3
he that is of God heareth the words of
God; 4 if God was your Father, ye would
have loved me 1 5 This is inward evidence,
direct evidence.
From that previous
knowledge of God, as ‘the Eternal that
loveth righteousness,’ which Israel pos
sessed, the hearers of Jesus could and
should have concluded irresistibly, when
they heard his words, that he came from
God. Now miracles are outward evidence,
indirect evidence, not conclusive in this
fashion. To walk on the sea cannot
1 John, ii, 23.
2 John, vi, 45.
* John, viii, 28.
4 John, viii, 47.
5 John, viii, 42.
67
really prove a man to proceed from the
Eternal that loveth righteousness; although
undoubtedly, as we have said, a man who
walks on the sea will be able to make the
mass of mankind believe about him
almost anything he chooses to say. But
there is, after all, no necessary connexion
between walking on the sea and proceed
ing from the Eternal that loveth righteous
ness. Jesus propounds, on the other
hand, an evidence of which the whole
force lies in the necessary connexion
between the proving matterand the power
that makes for righteousness. This is
his evidence for the Christian religion.
His disciples felt the force of the
evidence, indeed. Peter’s answer to the
question, ‘ Will ye also go away ? ’—‘ To
whom should we go ? thou hast the words
of eternal life ! ’1 proves it. But feeling the
force of a thing is very different from
understanding and possessing it. The
evidence, which the disciples were con
scious of understanding and possessing,
was the evidence from miracles. And
yet, in their report, Jesus is plainly shown
to us insisting on a different evidence, an
internal one. The character of the re
porters gives to this indication a para
mount importance. That they should
indicate this internal evidence once, as
the evidence on which Jesus insisted,
is more significant, we say, than their
indicating, twenty times, the evidence
from miracles as the evidence naturally
convincingto mankind, and recommended,
as they thought, by Jesus. The notion
of the one evidence they would have of
themselves; the notion of the other they
could only get from a superior mind. This
mind must have been full of it to induce
them to feel it at all; and their exhibition
of it, even then, must of necessity be
inadequate and broken.
But is it possible to overrate the value
of the ground thus gained for showing the
riches of the New Testament to those
who, sick of the popular, arguments from
prophecy, sick of the popular arguments
from miracles, are for casting the New
Testament aside altogether? The book
1 John, vi, 68.
E2
�LITERATURE AND DOGMA
contains all that we know of a wonderful
spirit, far above the heads of his reporters,
still farther above the head of our popular
theology, which has added its own mis
understanding of the reporters to the
reporters’ misunderstanding of Jesus.
And it was quite inevitable that anything
so superior and so profound should be
imperfectly understood by those amongst
whom it first appeared, and for a very
long time afterwards ; and that it should
come at last gradually to stand out clearer
only by time,—Time, as the Greek maxim
says, the wisest of all things, for he is the
unfailing discoverer.
Yet, however much is discovered, the
object of our scrutiny must still be beyond
us, must still transcend our adequate
knowledge, if for no other reason, because
of the character of the first and only
records of him. But in the view now
taken we have,—even at the point to
which we have already come,—at least a
wonderful figure transcending his time,
transcending his disciples, attaching them
but transcending them; in very much
that he uttered going far above their
heads, treating Scripture and prophecy
like a master while they treated it like
children, resting his doctrine on internal
evidence while they rested it on miracles;
and yet, by his incomparable lucidity and
penetrativeness, planting his profound
veins of thought in their memory along
with their own notions and prepossessions,
to come out all mixed up together, but
still distinguishable one day and separable
—and leaving his word thus to bear fruit
for the future.
3Truly, then, some one will exclaim, we
may say with the Imitation : Magna ars
est scire conversari cum fesu 1 And so it
is. To extract from his reporters the true
Jesus entire, is even impossible ; to extract
him in considerable part is one of the
highest conceivable tasks of criticism.
And it is vain to use that favourite argu
ment of popular theology that man could
never have been left by Providence in
difficulty and obscurity about a matter of
so much importance to him. Such an
argument we are not bound to notice.
For the cardinal rule of our present in
quiry is that rule of Newton’s : Hypotheses
non fingo-, and this argument of popular
theology rests on the eternal hypothesis of
a magnified and non-natural man at the
head of mankind’s and the world’s affairs.
And as to the argument itself, even if we
deal with it, we may say that the course
of things, so far as we can see, is not so ;
things do not proceed in this fashion.
Because a man has frequently to make
sea-passages, he is not gifted with an
immunity from sea-sickness; because a
thing is of the highest interest and im
portance to know, it is not, therefore, easy
to know; on the contrary, in general, in
proportion to its magnitude it is difficult,
and requires time.
But the right commentary on the sen
tence of the Imitation is given by the
Imitation itself in the sentence following:
Esto humilis etpacificus eterit tecum Jesus!
What men could take at the hands of
Jesus, what they could use, what could
save them, he made as clear as light; and
Christians have never been able, even if
they would, to miss seeing it. No,never;
but still they have superadded to it a vast
Aberglaube, an after or extra-belief of their
own ; and the Aberglaube has pushed on
one side, for very many, the saving doc
trine of Jesus, has hindered attention from
being riveted on this and on its line of
growth and working, has nearly effaced it,
has developed all sorts of faults contrary
to it. This Aberglaube has sprung out of
a false criticism of the literary records in
which the doctrine is conveyed ; what is
called ‘ orthodox divinity’ is, in fact, an
immense literary misapprehension. Hav
ing caused the saving doctrines enshrined
in these records to be neglected, and
having credited the records with existing
for the sake of its own Aberglaube, this
blunder now threatens to cause the
records themselves to be neglected by all
those (and their numbers are fast increas
ing) whom its own Aberglaube fills with
impatience and aversion. Therefore it is
needful to show the line of growth of this
�THE NEW TESTAMENT RECORD
Aberglaube, and its delusiveness ; to show,
and with more detail than we have
admitted hitherto, the line of growth of
Jesus Christ’s doctrine, and the farreaching sanctions, the inexhaustible
attractiveness, the grace and truth, with
which he invested it. The doctrine itself
is essentially simple ; and what is difficult,
—the literary criticism of the documents
containing the doctrine,—is not the
doctrine.
This literary criticism, however, is ex
tremely difficult. It calls into play the
highest requisites for the study of letters ;
great and wide acquaintance with the
history of the human mind, knowledge of
the manner in which men have thought,
of their way of using words and of what
they mean by them, delicacy of perception
and quick tact, and besides all these, a
favourable moment and the ‘ Zeit-Geist.’
And yet everyone among us criticises the
Bible, and thinks it is‘of the essence of
the Bible that it can be thus criticised
with success ! And the Four Gospels,
the part of the Bible to which this sort of
criticism is most applied and most con
fidently, are just the part which for
literary criticism is infinitely the hardest,
however simple they may look, and how
ever simple the saving doctrine they con
tain really is. For Prophets and Epistlers
speak for themselves : but in the Four
Gospels reporters are speaking for Jesus,
who is far above them.
Now, we all know what the literary
criticism of the mass of mankind is. To
be worth anything, literary and scientific
criticism require, both of them, the finest
heads and the most sure tact; and they
require, besides, that the world and the
world’s experience shall have come some
considerable way. But, ever since this
last condition has been fulfilled, the finest
heads for letters and science, the surest
tact for these, have turned themselves in
general to other departments of work than
criticism of the Bible, this department
being occupied already in such force of
numbers and hands, if not of heads, and
there being so many annoyances and even
dangers in freely approaching it. As our
Reformers were to Shakespeare and Bacon
69
in tact for letters and science, or as Luther,
even, was to Goethe in this respect, such
almost has on the whole been, since the
Renascence, the general proportion in rate
of power for criticism between those who
have given themselves to secular letters
and science, and those who have given
themselves to interpreting the Bible, and
who, in conjunction with the popular
interpretation of it both traditional and
contemporary, have made what is called
‘ orthodox theology.’ It is as if some
simple and saving doctrines, essential for
men to know, were enshrined in Shake
speare’s Hamlet or in Newton’s Principia
(though the Gospels are really a far more
complex and difficult object of criticism
than either); and a host of second-rate
critics, and official critics, and what is
called ‘ the popular mind ’ as well, threw
themselves upon Hamlet and the Prin
cipia, with the notion that they could and
should extract from these documents, and
impose on us for our belief, not only the
saving doctrines enshrined there, but also
the right literary and scientific criticism of
the entire documents. A pretty mess
they would make of it! and just this sort
of mess is our so-called orthodox theo
logy. And its professors are nevertheless
bold, overweening, and even abusive, in
maintaining their criticism against all
questioners ; although really, if one thinks
seriously of it, it was a kind of imper
tinence in such professors to attempt any
such criticism at all.
Happily, the faith that saves is attached
to the saving doctrines in the Bible, which
are very simple; not to its literary and
scientific criticism, which is very hard.
And no man is to be called ‘ infidel ’ for
his bad literary and scientific criticism of
the Bible; but if he were, how dreadful
would the state of our orthodox theo
logians be ! They themselves freely fling
about this word infidel at all those who
reject their literary and scientific criticism,
which turns out to be quite false. It
would be but just to mete to them with
their own measure, and to condemn them
by their own rule; and, when they air
their unsound criticism in public, to cry
indignantly : The Bishop of So-and-so, tht
�LITERATURE AND DOGMA
70
Dean of So-and-so, and other infidel lec
turers of the presen t day ! or : That ram
pant infidel, the Archdeacon of So-and-so,
in his recent letter on the Athanasian
Creed! or: ‘The Rock,’.‘The Church
Times,’ and the rest of the infidel press /
or : The torrent of infidelity which pours
every Sunday from otir pulpits ! Just
would this be, and by no means inurbane;
but hardly, perhaps, Christian. Therefore
we will not permit ourselves to say it;
but it is only kind to point out, in pass
ing, to these loud and rash people, to
what they expose themselves at the hands
of adversaries less scrupulous than we
are.
CHAPTER VII
THE TESTIMONY OF JESUS TO HIMSELF
In our third chapter we passed in brief
review the teaching of Jesus. But there
the objection met us, that what attested
Jesus Christ was miracles, and the preter
natural fulfilment in him of certain detailed
predictions made about him long before.
We had to pause and deal with this
objection. And now, as it disperses, we
come in full view of our old point again :—
that what did attest Jesus Christ, was his
restoration of the intuition. Jesus Christ
found Israel all astray, with an endless
talk about God, the law, righteousness,
the kingdom, everlasting life,—and no real
hold upon any one of them. Israel’s old,
sure proof of being in the right way, his test
which anybody could at once apply,—the
sanction of joy and peace,—was plainly
wanting. ‘ O Eternal, blessed is the man
that putteth his trust in thee,’1 was a
corner-stone of Israel’s religion. Now,
the Jewish people, however they might
talk about putting their trust in the
Eternal, were evidently, as they stood
there before Jesus, not blessed at all; and
they knew it themselves as well as he did.
‘ Great peace have they who love thy law,’2
was another corner-stone. But the Jewish
people had at that time in its soul as little
peace as it had joy and blessedness ; it
was seething with inward unrest, irritation,
and trouble. Yet the way of the Eternal
was most indubitably a way of peace and
joy; so, if Israel felt no peace and no
joy, Israel could not be walking in the
* Ps, Ixxxiv, jj.
2 Ps. cxix, 165.
way of the Eternal. Here we have the
firm, unchanging ground, on which the
operations of Jesus both began and always
proceeded.
And it is to be observed that Jesus by
no means gave a new, more precise,
scientific definition of God, but took up
this term just as Israel used it, to stand
for the Eternal that loveth righteousness.
If therefore this term was, in Israel’s use
of it, not a term of science, but, as we say,
a term of common speech, of poetry and
eloquence, thrown out at a vast object of
consciousness not fully covered by it, so
it was in Jesus Christ’s use of it also.
And if the substratum of real affirmation
in the term was, with Israel, not the
affirmation of ‘ a great Personal First
Cause, the moral and intelligent Governor
of the universe,’ but the affirmation of ‘an
enduring Power, not ourselves, that makes
for righteousness,’ so it remained with
Jesus Christ likewise. He set going a
great process of searching and sifting;
but this process had for its direct object
the idea of righteousness, and only touched
the idea of God through this, and not
independently of this and immediately.
If the idea of righteousness was changed,
this implied, undoubtedly, a correspond
ing change in the idea of the Power that
makes for righteousness; but in this
manner only, and to this extent, does the
teaching of Jesus re-define the idea of
God.
But search and sift and renew the idea
of righteousness Jesus did. And though
�THE TESTIMONY OF JESUS TO HIMSELF
the work of Jesus, like the name of God,
calls up in the believer a multitude of
emotions and associations far more than
any brief definition can cover, yet, remem
bering Jeremy Taylor’s advice to avoid
exhortations to get Christ, to be in Christ,
and to seek some more distinct and practi
cal way of speaking of him, we shall not do
ill, perhaps, if we summarise to our own
minds his work by saying, that he restored
the intuition of God through transforming
the idea of righteousness ; and that, to do
this, he brought a method, and he brought
a secret. And of those two great words
which fill such a place in his gospel,
repentance and peace,—as we see that his
Apostles, when they preached his gospel,
preached ‘Repentance unto life’1 and
‘Peace through Jesus Christ,’2—of these
two great words, one, repentance, attaches
itself, we shall find, to his method, and the
other, peace, to his secret.
There was no question between Jesus
Christ and the Jews as to the object to
aim at. ‘ If thou wouldst enter into life,
keep the commandments,’ said Jesus.3
And Israel, too, on his part, said: ‘ He
that keepeth the commandments keepeth
his own soul.’4 But what command
ments ? The commandments of God ;
about this, too, there was no question.
But: ‘ Leaving the commandment of
God, ye hold the tradition of men; ye
make the commandment of God of none
effect by your tradition ; ’ said Jesus.5
Therefore the commandments which Israel
followed were not those commandments
of God by which a man keeps his own
soul, enters into life. And the practical
proof of this was, that Israel stood before
the eyes of the world manifestly neither
blessed nor at peace ; yet these characters
of bliss and peace the following of the
real commandments of God was confessed
to give. So a rule, or method, was
wanted, by which to determine on what
the keeping of the real commandments of
God depended.
And Jesus gave one: ‘ The things that
1 Acts, xi, 18.
2 Acts, x, 36.
8 Matth., xix, 17.
4 Prov., xix, 16.
4 Mark, vii, 9, 13.
7l
come from within a man's heart, they it is
which defile him ! ’1
We have seen what an immense matter
conduct is;—that it is three-fourths of
life. We have seen how plain and simple
a matter it is, so far as knowledge is
concerned. We have seen how, more
over, philosophers are for referring all
conduct to one or other of man’s two
elementary instincts,—the instinct of self
preservation and the reproductive instinct.
It is the suggestions of one or other of
these instincts, philosophers say, which
call forth all cases in which there is scope
for exercising morality, or conduct. And
this does, we saw, cover the facts well
enough. For we can run up nearly all
faults of conduct into two classes,—faults
of temper and faults of sensuality; to be
referred, all of them, to one or other of
these two instincts. Now, Jesus not only
says that things coming from within a
man’s heart defile him, he adds expressly
what these things that, coming from
within a man, defile him, are. And what
he enumerates are the following : ‘ Evil
thoughts, adulteries, fornications, murders,
stealings, greeds, viciousnesses, fraud, dis
soluteness, envy, evil-speaking, pride,
folly.’2 These fall into two groups: one,
of faults of self-assertion, graspingness and
violence, all of which we may call faults
of temper; and the other, of faults of
sensuality. And the two groups, between
them, do for practical purposes cover all
the range of faults proceeding from these
two sources, and therefore all the range of
conduct. So the motions or impulses to
faults of conduct were what Jesus said the
real commandments of God are con
cerned with. And it was plain what such
faults are; but, to make assurance more
sure, he went farther and said what they
are. But no outward observances were
conduct, were that keeping of the com
mandments of God which was the keeping
of a man’s own soul and made him enter
into life. To have the A?ar/and thoughts
in order as to certain matters, was
conduct.
1 Matth., xv, 18 ; Mark, vii, 20, 21.
2 Mark, vii, 21, 22.
�LITERATURE AND DOGMA
72
This was the ‘method’ of Jesus: the
setting up a great unceasing inward move
ment of attention and verification in
matters which are three-fourths of human
life, where to see true and to verify is not
difficult, the difficult thing is to care and
to attend. And the inducement to attend
was because joy and peace, missed on
every other line, were to be reached on
this.
2.
bined stress of evidence for it, and may
be taken as so eminently his. And no
wonder. For the maxim contains his
secret, the secret by which, emphatically,
his gospel ‘brought life and immortality
to light.’1 Christ’s method directed the
disciple’s eye inward, and set his con
sciousness to work; and the first thing
his consciousness told him was, that he
had two selves pulling him different ways.
Till we attend, till the method is set at
work, it seems as if ‘ the wishes of the
flesh and of the current thoughts ’2 were
to be followed as a matter of course ; as
if an impulse to do a thing must mean
that we should do it. But when we
attend, we find that an impulse to do a
thing is really in itself no reason at all
why we should do it; because impulses
proceed from two sources, quite different,
and of quite different degrees of authority.
St. Paul contrasts them as the inward man,
and the man in our members ; the mind
of the flesh, and the spiritual mind.3
Jesus contrasts them as life, properly so
named, and life in this world.* And the
moment we seriously attend to conscience,
to the suggestions which concern practice
and conduct, we can see plainly enough
from which source a suggestion comes,
and that the suggestions from one source
are to overrule those from the other.
But this is a negative state of things, a
reign of check and constraint, a reign,
merely, of morality. Jesus changed it
into what was positive and attractive,
lighted it up, made it religion, by the
idea of two lives. One of them life,
properly so called, full of light, endur
ance, felicity, in connexion with the higher
and permanent self; and the other of
them life improperly so called, in con
nexion with the lower and transient self.
The first kind of life was already a che
rished ideal with Israel (‘ Thou wilt show
But for this world of busy inward move
ment created by the method of Jesus, a
rule of action was wanted; and this rule
was found in his secret. It was this
of which the Apostle Paul afterwards
possessed himself with such energy, and
called it ‘ the word of the cross,’ 1 or,
necrosis, ‘ dying.’ The rule of action St.
Paul gave was : ‘ Always bearing about in
the body the dying of Jesus, that the life
also of Jesus may be made manifest in
our body 1 ’2 In the popular theurgy,
these words are commonly referred to
what is called ‘ pleading the blood of the
covenant,’—relying on the death and
merits of Christ (in pursuance of the
contract originally passed in the Council
of the Trinity) to satisfy God’s wrath
against sinners and to redeem us. But
they do really refer to words of Jesus,
often and often repeated, and of which
the following may very well stand as pre
eminently representative : ‘ He that will
save his life shall lose it; he that will lose
his life shall save it. He that loveth his
life shall lose it, and he that hateth his life
in this world shall keep it unto life eternal.
Whosoever will come after me, let him
renounce himself and take up his cross
daily, and follow me.' 3
These words, or words like them, were
repeated again and again, so that no
reporter could miss them. No reporter
did miss them. We find them, as we
1 II Tim., i, 10.
find the method of conscience, in all the
2 Ta fleA^/xara ttjs capKbs Kai rwv Siavoiwv.—
four Gospels. Perhaps there is no other Ephesians, ii, 3.
3 Rom., chap. viii.
maxim of Jesus which has such a com* 'O XJ-yos 6 rov ffravpov.—I Cor., i, 18.
2 II Cor., iv, io.
• Luke, ix, 24; John, xii, 25; Luke, ix, 23.
4 John, xii, 25. The strict grammatical and
logical connexion of the words iv rip Kiirp.<p rovrtp
is with 0 p.i<rwv, but the sense and effect is as given
above.
�THE TESTIMONY OF JESUS TO HIMSELF
73
'me the path of life ! ’);1 and a man person of the Trinity approving the
might be placed in it, Jesus said, by dy Second, because he stands to the con
ing to the second. For it is to be noted tract already in the Council of the Trinity
that our common expression, ‘ deny him passed. But what it really means is, that
self,’ is an inadequate and misleading the joy of Jesus, of this ‘ Son of Peace,’1
version of the words used by Jesus. the ‘joy’ he was so desirous that his
To deny one’s self is commonly under disciples should find ‘fulfilled in them
stood to mean that one refuses one’s self selves,’ 2 was due to his having himself
something. But what Jesus says is : ‘ Let followed his own secret. And the great
a man disown himself, renounce himself, counterpart to : A life-giving change of the
die as regards his old self, and so live.’ inner man,—the promise : Peace through
Himself the old man, the life in this world, Jesus Christ!3—his peace through this
meant following those ‘ wishes of the flesh secret of his.
and of the current thoughts ’ which Jesus
Now, the value of this rule that one
had, by his method, already put his dis should die to one’s apparent self, live to
ciples in the way of sifting and scrutinis one’s real self, depends upon whether it is
ing, and of trying by the standard of true. And true it certainly is;—a pro
conformity to conscience.
found truth of what our scientific friends,
Thus, after putting him by his method who have a systematic philosophy and a
in the way to find what doing righteous nomenclature to match, and who talk of
ness was, by his secret Jesus put his Egoism and Altruism, would call, per
disciple in the way of doing it. For the haps, psycho-physiology. And we may
breaking the sway of what is commonly trace men’s experience affirming and con
called one's self, ceasing our concern with firming it, from a very plain and level
it and leaving it to perish, is not, Jesus account of it to an account almost as
said, being thwarted or crossed, but living. high and solemn as that of Jesus. That
And the proof of this is that it has the an opposition there is, in all matter of
characters of life in the highest degree,— what we call conduct, between a man’s
the sense of going right, hitting the mark, first impulses and what he ultimately
succeeding. That is, it has the characters finds to be the real law of his being; that
of happiness; and happiness is, for Israel, a man accomplishes his right function as
the same thing as having the Eternal with a man, fulfils his end, hits the mark, in
us, seeing the salvation of God. ‘The giving effect to the real law of his being ;
tree,’ as Jesus said, and as men’s common and that happiness attends his thus hitting
sense and proverbial speech say with him, the mark,—all good observers report. No
‘is known by its fruits2 and Jesus, statement of this general experience can
then, was to be received by Israel as be simpler or more faithful than one given
sent from God, because the secret of us by that great naturalist, Aristotle.4 ‘ In
Jesus leads to the salvation of God, all wholes made up of parts,’ says he,
which is what Israel most desired. The ‘ there is a ruler and a ruled; throughout
word of the cross, in short, turned out to nature this is so; we see it even in things
be at the same time the word of the king without life, they have their harmony or
dom? And to this experimental sanction law. The living being is composed of
of his secret, this sense it gives of having soul and body, whereof the one is
the Eternal on our side and approving us, naturally ruler and the other ruled. Now
Jesus appealed when he said of himself: what is natural we are to learn from what
‘ Therefore doth my Father love me, be fulfils the law of its nature most, and not
cause I lay down my life, that I may take from what is depraved. So we ought to
it again.’4 This, again, in our popular take the man who has the best disposition
theurgy, is materialised into the First of body and soul; and in him we shall
1 Ps. xvi, II.
2 Matth., xii, 33.
8 'O AJyos ttjs PacriXtias.—Matth., xiii, 19.
4 John, x, 17.
1 Luke, x, 6.
8 Acts, xi, 18; x, 36.
2 John, xvii, 13.
4 Politics, i, 5.
�LITERATURE AND DOGMA
74
find that this is so ; for in people that are
grievous both to others and to themselves
the body may often appear ruling the
soul, because such people are poor
creatures and false to nature.’ And
Aristotle goes on to distinguish between
the body, over which, he says, the rule of
the soul is absolute, and the movement of
thought and desire, over which reason
has, says he, ‘a constitutional rule,’ in
words which exactly recall St. Paul’s
phrase for our double enemy : ‘ the flesh
and the current thoughts.' So entirely
are we here on ground of general ex
perience. And if we go on and take
this maxim from Stobaeus : ‘ All fine
acquirement implies a foregoing effort of
self-control; ’1 or this from Horace:
‘ Rule your current self or it will rule>wz 1
bridle it in and chain it down ! ’1 or this
2
from Goethe’s autobiography: ‘ Every
thing cries out to us that we must re
nounce ; ’3 or still more this from his
Faust: ‘ Thou must go without, go with
out \ that is the everlasting song which
every hour, all our life through, hoarsely
sings to us ! ’4—then we have testimony
not only to the necessity of this natural
law of rule and suppression, but also to
the strain and labour and suffering which
attend it. But when we come a little
further and take a sentence like this of
Plato : ‘ Of sufferings and pains cometh
help, for it is not possible by any other
way to be ridded of our iniquity ; ’5 then
we get a higher strain, a strain like St.
Peter’s : ‘ He that hath suffered in the
flesh hath ceased from sin ; ’6 and we are
brought to see, not only the necessity of
the law of rule and suppression, not only
the pain and suffering in it, but also its
1 nwrbs
koAou KTf]/j.aTOS irAvos ‘irpoyyeirai i tear'
eyicpdreiav.
2 . . . Animum rege, qui nisi paret
Imperat; hunc fraenis, hunc tu compesce
catcnis.
3 Alles ruft uns zu, dass wir entsagen sollen.
4 Ensbehren sollst du ! sollst entbehren I
Das ist der ewige G esang,
Den unser ganzes Lebcn lang
Uns heiser jede Stunde singt.
5 A? a\yr]3dv<av Kai o^vvSiv yiyyerai i) utplXtta,
ov yap oT6y re &X\ais aSinlas wrraK\d.TTeff9ai.
6 I Pet., iv, I.
beneficence. And this positive sense of
beneficence, salutariness, and hope, come
out yet more strongly when Wordsworth
says to Duty : ‘ Nor know we anything so
fair as is the smile upon thy face;’ or
when Bishop Wilson says: ‘ They that
deny themselves will be sure to find their
strength increased, their affections raised,
and their inward peace continually aug
mented ; ’ and most of all, perhaps, when
we hear from Goethe : ‘ Die and come to
life ! for so long as this is not accom
plished thou art but a troubled guest
upon an earth of gloom ! ’1 But this is
evidently borrowed from Jesus, and by
one whose testimony is of all the more
weight, because he certainly would not
have become thus a borrower from Jesus,
unless the truth had compelled him.
And never certainly was the joy, which
in self-renouncement underlies the pain,
so brought out as when Jesus boldly
called the suppression of our first impulses
and current thoughts : life, real life, eternal
life. So that Jesus not only saw this
great necessary truth of there being, as
Aristotle says, in human nature a part to
rule and a part to be ruled ; he saw it so
thoroughly, that he saw through the suffer
ing at its surface to the joy at its centre,
filled it with promise and hope, and made
it infinitely attractive. As Israel, there
fore, is ‘the people of righteousness,’
because, though others have perceived
the importance of righteousness, Israel,
above everyone, perceived the happiness
of it; so self-renouncement, the main
factor in conduct or righteousness, is ‘ the
secret of Jesus,’ because, although others
have seen that it was necessary, Jesus,
above everyone, saw that it was peace, joy,
life.
Now, we may observe, that even Aristotle
(and it is a mark of his greatness) does
not, in the passage we have quoted from
him, begin with a complete system of
psycho-physiology, and show us where
and how and why in this system the rule
of renouncement comes in, and draw out
1 Stirb und werde !
Denn, so lang du das nicht hast,
Bist du nur ein triiber Gast
Auf der dunkeln Erde !
�THE TESTIMONY OF JESUS TO HIMSELF
for us definitively the law of our being
towards which this rule leads up. He
says that the rule exists, that it is ancillary
to the law of our being, and that we are
to study the best men, in whom it most
exists, to make us see that it is thus
ancillary. He here appeals throughout
to a verifying sense, such as we have said
that everyone in this great but plain
matter of conduct really has; he does
not appeal to a speculative theory of the
system of things, and deduce conclusions
from it. And he shows his greatness in
this, because the law of our being is not
something which is already definitively
known and can be exhibited as part of a
speculative theory of the system of things ;
it is something which discovers itself and
becomes, as we follow (among other things)
the rule of renouncement. What we can
say with most certainty about the law of
our being is, that we find the rule of
renouncement practically lead up to it.
In matters of practice and conduct, there
fore, an experience like this is really a far
safer ground to insist on than any specu
lative theory of the system of things. And
to a theory of such sort Jesus never ap
peals. Here is what characterises his teach
ing, and distinguishes him, for instance,
from the author of the Fourth Gospel.
This author handles what we may call
theosophical speculation in a beautiful
and impressive manner; the introduction
to his Gospel is undoubtedly in a very
noble and profound strain. But it is
theory; externally it seems, at any rate,
to deliver, with the forms of science, a
theosophy not controllable by experience.
And therefore it is impossible even to
conceive Jesus himself uttering the intro
duction to the Fourth Gospel; because
theory Jesus never touches, but bases
himself invariably on experience. True,
the experience must, for philosophy, have
its place in a theory of the system of
human nature, when the theory is at last
ready and perfect; but the point is, that
the experience is ripe and solid, and fit to
be used safely, long before the theory.
And it was the experience which Jesus
always used.
Undoubtedly, however, attempts may
75
not improperly be made, even now,—by
those, at least, who have a talent for these
matters,—to exhibit the experience, with
what leads to it and what derives from it,
in a system of psycho-physiology. And
then, perhaps, it will be found to be con
nected with other truths of psycho-physio
logy, such as the unity of life, as it is
called, and the impersonality of reasonj
Only, thus exhibited, it will be philosophy,
mental exercitation, and will concern us
as a matter of science, not of conduct.
And, as the discipline of conduct is threefourths of life, for our aesthetic and intel
lectual disciplines, real as these are, there
is but one-fourth of life left; and if we let
art and science divide this one-fourth fairly
between them, they will have just oneeighth of life each.
So the exhibition of the truth : ‘ He that
loveth his life shall lose it, and he that
hateth his life in this world shall keep it
unto life eternal,' in its order and place as
a truth of psycho-physiology, concerns
one-eighth of our life and no more. But
Jesus, we say, exhibited nothing for the
benefit of this one-eighth of us; this is
what distinguishes him from all moralists
and philosophers, and even from the
greatest of his own disciples. How he
reached a doctrine we cannot say; but he
always exhibited it as an intuition and
practical rule, and a practical rule which,
if adopted, would have the force of an
intuition for its adopter also. This is
why none of his doctrines are of the
character of that favourite doctrine of our
theologians, ‘ the blessed truth that the
God of the universe is a Person; ’ because
this doctrine is incapable of application as
a practical rule, and can never come to
have the force of an intuition. But what
we call the secret of Jesus: ‘He that
loveth his life shall lose it, and he that
hateth his life in this world shall keep it
unto life eternal,' was a truth of which he
could say: ‘ It is so; try it yourself and
you will see it is so, by the sense of going
right, hitting the mark, succeeding, living,
which you will get.’
And the same with the commandment,
‘ Love one another]1 which is the positive
1 John, xiii, 34.
�76
LITERATURE AND DOGMA
side of the commandment, '■Renounce thy
self' 1 and, like this, can be drawn out as
a truth of psycho-physiology. Jesus ex
hibited it as an intuition and a practical
rule; and as what, by being practised,
would, through giving happiness, prove its
own truth as a rule of life. This, we say,
is of the very essence of his secret of self
renouncement, as of his method of inward
ness ;—that its truth will be found to com
mend itself by happiness, to prove itself
by happiness. And of the secret more
especially is this true. And as we have
said, that though there gathers round the
word ‘God’ very much besides, yet we
shall in general, in reading the Bible, get
the surest hold on the word ‘God’ by
giving it the sense of the Eternal Power,
not ourselves, which makes for righteous
ness, so we shall get the best hold on
many expressions of Jesus by referring
them, though they include more, yet
primarily and pointedly to his ‘ secret ’
and to the happiness which this contained.
Bread of life, living water, these are, in
general, Jesus, Jesus in his whole being
and in his total effect; but in especial
they are Jesus as offering his secret. And
when Jesus says: ‘ He that eateth me
shall live by me! ’2 we shall understand
the words best if we think of his secret.
And so again with the famous words
to the woman by the well in Samaria:
‘Whosoever drinketh of this water shall
thirst again, but whosoever drinketh of
the water that I shall give him shall never
thirst, but the water that I shall give him
shall be in him a spring of water welling
up unto everlasting life.’3 These words,
how are we to take them, so as to reach
their meaning best? What distinctly is
this ‘water that I shall give him’? Jesus
himself and his word no doubt; yet so
we come but to that very notion, which
Jeremy Taylor warns us against as vague,
of getting Christ. The Bishop of Glou
cester will tell us, perhaps, that it is ‘ the
blessed truth that the Creator of the uni
verse is a Person,’ or the doctrine of the
1 ‘ We know that we have passed from death to
life,’—how? ' because we love the brethren.''—See
I John, iii, 14.
2 John, vi, 57.
* John, iv, 13, 14..
consubstantiality of the Eternal Son.
But surely it would be a strong figure of
speech to say of these doctrines, that a
man, after receiving them, could never
again feel thirsty ? See, on the contrary,
how the words suit the secret: ‘ He that
loveth his life shall lose it, and he that
hateth his life in this world shall keep it
unto life eternal.’ This ‘ secret of Jesus,’
as we call it, will be found applicable to
all the thousand problems which the
exercise of conduct daily offers ; it alone
can solve them all happily, and may
indeed be called ‘ a spring of water
welling up unto everlasting life.’ And, in
general, wherever the words life and death
are used by Jesus, we shall do well to
have his ‘ secret ’ at hand; for in his
thoughts, on these occasions, it is never
far off.
And now, too, we can see why it is a
mistake, and may lead to much error, to
exhibit any series of maxims, like those
of the Sermon on the Mount, as the ulti
mate sum and formula into which Chris
tianity may be run up. Maxims of this
kind are but applications of the method
and the secret of Jesus; and the method
and secret are capable of yet an infinite
number more of such applications. Chris
tianity is a source-, no one supply of water
and refreshment that comes from it can be
called the sum of Christianity.
3-
A method of inwardness, a secret of
self-renouncement;—but can any statement
of what Jesus brought be complete, which
does not include that temper of mildness
and sweetness in which both of these
worked ? To the representative texts
already given there is certainly to be
added this other : ‘ Learn of me that lam
wild and lowly in heart, and ye shall find
rest unto your souls ! ’1 Shall we attach
mildness to the method, because, without
it, a clear and limpid view inwards is
impossible ? Or shall we attach it to the
secret"}—the dying to faults of temper is
• Matth,, xi, 29.
�FAITH IN CHRIST
a. part, certainly, of dying to one’s ordinary
self, one’s life in this world. Mildness,
however, is rather an element in which,
in Jesus, both method and secret worked;
the medium through which both the
method and the secret were exhibited.
We may think of it as perfectly illustrated
and exemplified in his answer to the foolish
question, Who is the greatest in the kingdom
of heaven 1—when, taking a little child
and setting him in the midst, he said:
‘ Whosoever receives the kingdom of God
as a little child,the same is the greatest in
it.’1 Here are both inward appraisal and
self-renouncement; but what is most ad
mirable is the sweet reasonableness, the
exquisite, mild, winning felicity, with
which the renouncement and the inward
appraisal are applied and conveyed. And
the conjunction of the three in Jesus,—the method of inwardness, and the secret
of self-renouncement, working in and
through this element of mildness, —
produced the total impression of his
‘ epieikeia,’ or sweet reasonableness ;
a total impression ineffable and inde
scribable for the disciples, as also it
was irresistible for them, but at which
their descriptive words, words like this
‘ sweet reasonableness,1 and like '‘full of
grace and truth,' are thrown out and
aimed.1
2
And this total stamp of ‘grace and
truth,’ this exquisite conjunction and
balance, in an element of mildness, of a
method of inwardness perfectly handled
and a self-renouncement perfectly kept,
77
was found in Jesus alone. What are the
method of inwardness and the secret of
self-renouncement without the sure balance
of Jesus, without his epieikeial Much,
but very far indeed from what he showed
or what he meant; they come to be used
blindly, used mechanically, used amiss,
and lead to the strangest aberrations.
St. Simeon Stylites on his column, Pascal
girdled with spikes, Lacordaire flogging
himself on his death-bed, are what the
secret by itself produces. The method by
itself gives us our political Dissenter,
pluming himself on some irrational ‘ con
scientious objections,’ and not knowing,
that with conscience he has done nothing
until he has got to the bottom of con
science, and made it tell him right.
Therefore the disciples of Jesus were not
told to believe in his method, or to believe
in his secret, but to believe in him ; they
were not told to follow the method or to
follow the secret, but they were told:
‘ Follow me ! ’ For it was only by fixing
their heart and mind on Jesus that they
could learn to use the method and secret
right; by '•believing in him,’ 'feeding on
him ; ’ by, as he often said, ‘ remaining in
him.’
But this is just what Israel had been
told to do as regards the Eternal himself.
‘ I have set the Eternal always before me; ’
‘ Mine eyes are ever tozvard the Eternal; ’
‘ The Eternal is the strength of my life; ’
‘ Wait, I say, on the Eternal ’1 Now,
then, let us go back again for a little to
Israel, and to Israel’s belief.
CHAPTER VIII
FAITH IN CHRIST
As the Jews were always talking about the
Messiah, so they were always talking, we
know, about God. And they believed in
God’s Messiah after their notion of him,
1 Matth., xviii, 1-4 ; Mark, ix, 15.
2 Bossuet calls him le debonnaire fesus ; Cowper
speaks of his questioning the disciples going to
Emmaus ‘ with a kind, engaging air.’
because they believed in God after their
notion of him-,—but both notions were
wrong. All their aspirations were now
turned towards the Messiah; whoever
would do them good, must first change
their ideal of the Messiah. But their
Ps. xvi, 8; xxv, 15 ; xxvii, I, 14.
�?8
LITERATURE AND DOGMA
ideal of God’s Messiah depended upon
their notion of God. This notion was
now false, like their ideal of the Messiah ;
but once it had been true, or, at least, true
comparatively;—once Israel had had the
intuition of God as the Eternal that loveth
righteousness. And the intuition had never
been so lost but that it was capable of be
ing revived. To change their dangerous
and misleading ideal of God’s Messiah,
therefore, and to make the Jews believe in
the true Messiah, could only be accom
plished by bringing them back to a truer
notion of God and his righteousness. By
this it could, perhaps, be accomplished,
but by this only.
And this is what Jesus sought to do.
He sought to do it in the way we have
seen, by his ‘ method ’ and his ‘ secret.’
First, by his ‘ method ’ of a change of the
inner man. ‘ Do not be all abroad, do not
be in the air,'1 he said to his nation.
‘ You look for the kingdom of God. The
kingdom of God is the reign of righteous
ness, God’s will done by all mankind.
Well, then, seek the kingdom of God !
the kingdom of God is within you ! ’2 And,
next, by his ‘secret’ of peace. ‘ Renounce
thyself, and take up thy cross daily and
follow me!3 He that loveth his life shall
lose it, and he that hateth his life in this
world shall keep it unto life eternal.'4 And
the revolution thus made was so immense,
that the least in this new kingdom of
heaven, this realm of the ‘ method ’ and
the ‘ secret,’ was greater, Jesus said, than
one who, like John the Baptist, was even
greatest in the old realm of Jewish re
ligion.5 And those who obeyed the
gospel of this new kingdom came to the
light p they had joy -f they entered into
peace p they ceased to thirst-, the word
became in them a spring of water welling
up unto everlasting life? But these were
the admitted tests of righteousness, of
obeying the voice of the Eternal who
loveth righteousness. ‘ There ariseth light
for the righteous, and gladness for the
1
2
4
6
8
Luke, xvii, 21.
John, xii, 25.
John, iii, 21.
John, xvi, 33.
Luke, xii, 29.
3 Luke, ix, 23.
8 Matth., xi, 11.
7 John, xvii, 13.
8 John, iv, 14.
upright in heart;1 he that feareth the
Eternal, blessed is he 1 ’2
Now, the special value of the Fourth
Gospel is, not that it exhibits the method
and secret of Jesus,—for all the Gospels
exhibit them,—but that it exhibits the
establishment of them by means of Israel’s
own idea of God, cleared and re-awakened.
The argument is : ‘ You arealways talking
about God, God’s word, righteousness;
always saying that God is your Father,
and will send his Messiah for your salva
tion. Well, he who receives me shows
that he talks about God with a knowledge
of what he is saying ; he sets to his seal
that God is true.3 He who is of God
heareth the words of God p every one that
heareth and learneth of the Father cometh
unto mep andye have not his word abiding in
you, because, whom he hath sent, him ye
believe not; 6 if any one will do God's will
he shall know of the doctrine, whether it be
of God.'7 This, therefore, is what Jesus
said :—‘ I, whose message of salvation is :
If a man keep my word he shall never see
death !8 am sent of God ; because he,
who obeys my saying : Renounce thyself
and follow me ! 9 shall feel that he truly
lives, and that he is following, therefore,
Israel’s God of whom it is said: Thou wilt
show me the path of life.'10
The doctrine therefore is double :—
Renounce thyself, the secret of Jesus, in
volving a foregoing exercise of his method ;
and, Follow me, who am sent from God !
That is the favourite expression :—Sent
from God. ‘ I come forth from the
Father; the Father hath sent me : God
hath sent me.’11 Now this identified
Jesus and his salvation with the Messiah
whom, with his salvation, the Jews were
expecting. For his disciples therefore,
and for Christendom after them, Jesus was
and is the Messiah or Christ.
Meanwhile, as with the word God, so
with the word Christ. Jesus did not give
1 Ps. xcvii, 11.
2 Ps. cxii, 1.
4 John, viii, 47.
8 John, iii, 33.
8 John, v, 38.
8 John, vi, 45.
8 John, viii, 51.
7 John, vii, 17.
10 Ps. xvi, II.
9 Matth., xvi, 24.
11 John, xvi, 27, 23, 30; vi, 57; vii, 29; viii,
42; xvii, 8.
�FAITH IN CHRIST
any scientific definition of it,—such as,
for instance, that Christ was the Logos.
He took the word Christ as the Jews used
it, as he took the word God as the Jews
used it. And as he amended their notion
of God, the Eternal who loveth righteous
ness, by showing what righteousness really
was, so he amended their notion of the
Messiah, the chosen bringer of God's salva
tion, by showing what salvation really was.
And though his own application of terms
to designate himself is not a matter where
we can perfectly trust his reporters (as it
is clear, for instance, that the writer of the
Fourth Gospel was more metaphysical
than Jesus himself),1 yet there is no
difficulty in supposing him to have applied
to himself each and all of the terms which
the Jews in any way used to describe
the Messiah, — Messiah or Christ, God’s
Chosen or Beloved or Consecrated or
Glorified One, the Son of God, the Son
of Man ; because his concern, as we have
said, was with his countrymen’s idea of
salvation, not with their terms for desig
nating the bringer of it. But the simplest
term, the term which gives least open
ing into theosophy,—Son of Man,—he
certainly preferred. So, too, he loved
the simple expressions, ‘ God sent me,’
‘The Father hath sent me;’ and he
chose so often to say, in a general manner,
‘ I am Hefi* rather than to say positively,
‘ I am the Christ.'
And evidently this mode of speaking
struck his hearers. We find the Jews
saying : ‘ How long dost thou make us to
doubt! if thou be the Christ, tell us
plainly.’3 And even then Jesus does not
answer point-blank, but prefers to say : ‘I
have told you, and ye believe not.’ Yet
this does not imply that he had the least
doubt or hesitation in naming himself the
1 It is to be remembered too, that whereas
Jesus spoke in Aramaic, the most concrete and
unmetaphysical of languages, he is reported in
Greek, the most metaphysical. What, in the
mouth of Jesus, was the word which comes to us
as fjLovoyevIjs {only begotten} ? Probably the simple
Aramaic word for unique, only. And yet, in the
Greek record, even the word p.ovoyevi)s is not,
like only begotten in our translation, reserved for
Christ; see Luke, vii, 12 ; viii, 42 ; ix, 38.
2 John, iv, 26 ; viii, 24, 28.
3 John, x, 24.
Messiah, the Son of God ; but only that
his concern was, as we have said, with
God’s righteousness and Christ’s salvation,
and that he avoided all use of the names
God and Christ, which might give an
opening into mere theosophical specula
tion. And this is shown, moreover, by
the largeness and freedom,—almost, one
may say, indifference,—of his treatment of
both names ; as names, in using which,
his hearers were always in danger of going
off into a theosophy that did them no
good and had better occupy them as little
as possible. ‘ I and my Father are one !'1
he w’ould say at one time; and, ‘ My
Father is greater than I!'1 at another.
2
When the Jew’s were offended at his call
ing himself the Son of God, he quotes
Scripture to show that even mere men
were in Scripture called Gods; and for
you, he says, who go by the letter of
Scripture, surely this is sanction enough
for calling anyone, whom God sends, the
Son of God ! 3 He did not at all mean,
that the Messiah was a son of God merely
in the sense in which any great man might
be so called ; but he meant that these
questions of theosophy were useless
for his hearers, and that they puzzled
themselves with them in vain. All they
were concerned with was, that he was the
Messiah they expected, sent to them with
salvation from God.
It is the same when Jesus says: ‘Before
Abraham was, lam!’4 He was baffling
his countrymen’s theosophy, showing them
how little his doctrine was meant to offer
a field for it. ‘Life,’ he means, ‘the life
of him who lays down his life that he may
take it again? is not what you suppose.
Your notions of life and death are all
false, and with your present notions you
cannot discuss theology with me ; follow
me ! ’ So, again, to the Jews in the rut
of their traditional theology, and haggling
about the Son of DavidJesus, they
insisted, could not be the Christ, because
the Christ was the Son of David. Jesus
answers them by the objection that in
the Psalms (and the Scripture cannot be
1 John, x, 30.
2 John, xiv, 28.
» John, x, 34-36.
4 John, viii, 58.
5 John, x, 17.
�8o
LITERATURE AND DOGMA
broken !) David calls the Christ his Lord ;
and ‘ if he call him Lord, how is he then
his son ? ’1 The argument as a serious
argument is perfectly futile. The king of
God’s chosen people is going out to war,
and what the Psalmist really sings is :
‘The Eternal saith unto the king’s majesty,
Thou shalt conquer!’ St. Peter in the
Acts gravely uses the same verse to prove
Jesus to be Christ: ‘ God,’ says he, ‘tells
my Lord, Sit thou tipon my right hand!
Yet David never went up into heaven.’2
Now, this is exactly of a piece with St.
Paul’s proving salvation to be by Christ
alone, from seed, in the promise to Abra
ham, being in the singular not the plural.3
It is merely false criticism of the Old
Testament, such as the Jews were full of,
and of which the Apostles retained far
too much. But the Jews were full of it,
and therefore the objection of Jesus was
just such an objection as the Jews would
think weighty. He used it as he might
have used a crux about personality or
consubstantiality with the Bishops of Win
chester or Gloucester ;—to baffle and put
to rout their false dogmatic theology, to
disenchant them with it and make them
cast it aside and come simply to him.
‘See,’ he says to the Jewish doctors,
‘ what a mess you make of it with your
learning, and evidences, and orthodox
theology ; with the wisdom of your wise
men and the understanding ofyour prudent
men! You can do nothing with them,
your arms break in your hands. Fling
the rubbish away, cease from your own
wisdom? and throw yourselves upon my
method and secret,—upon me ! Believe
that the Father hath sent me; he that
receiveth me receiveth Him that sent me.
Jf any man will do His will, he shall know
of the doctrine whether it be of God, or
whether I have invented it 1 ’5
And no grand performance or discovery
of a man’s own to bring him thus to joy
and peace, but an attachment ! the in
fluence of One full of grace and truth !
An influence, which we feel we know not
how, and which subdues us we know
1 Matth., xxii, 42-45.
2 Acts, ii, 34.
8 Gat., iii, 16.
4 Prov., xxiii, 4.
8 John, xii, 44; xiii, 20; vii, 17.
not when ; which, like the wind, breathes
where it lists, passes here, and does not
pass there 1 Once more, then, we come
to that root and ground of religion, that
element of awe and gratitude which fills
religion with emotion, and makes it other
and greater than morality,—the not our
selves. We did not make the order of
conduct, or provide that happiness should
belong to it, or dispose our hearts to it.
Man's goings are of the Eternal, as Israel
said • Eternal, I know that the way of
man is not in himself! Neither did we
invent Jesus, or make the ‘grace and
truth’ of Jesus, or provide that happiness
should belong to feeling them, or dispose
our hearts to feel them. No man can
come to me, as Jesus said, except the Father
which sent me draw him! So the revela
tion of Jesus Christ in the New Testament
is like the revelation of the God of Israel
in the Old, in being the revelation of
‘the Eternal not ourselves which makes
for righteousness.’ It is like it, and has
the same power of religion in it.
2.
Thus, then, did Jesus seek to transform
the immense materialising Aberglaube,
into which the religion of Israel had
fallen, and to spiritualise it at all points ;
while in his method and secret he supplied
a sure basis for practice. But to follow
him entirely there was needed an epieikeia,
an unfailing sweetness and unerring per
ception, like his own. It was much if
his disciples got firm hold on his method
and his secret; and if they transmitted
fragments enough of his lofty spiritualism
to make it in the fulness of time dis
cernible, and to make it at once and from
the first in a large degree serviceable.
Who can read in% the Gospels the com
ments preserved to us, both of disciples
and of others, on what he said, and not
feel that Jesus must have known, while
he nevertheless persevered in saying them,
how things like: ‘ Before Abraham was,
Iam] 3 or : 11 will not leave you comfort1 Prov., xx, 24; Jer., x, 23.
2 John, vi, 44.
8 John, viii, 58.
�ABERGLAUBE RE-INVADING
less, I will come unto you,'1 would be
misapprehended by those who heard
them ?
But, indeed, Jesus himself tells us that
he knew and foresaw this. With the
promise of the Spirit of truth which
should, after his departure, work in his
disciples first, then in the world, and
which should convince the world of sin,
of righteousness, and of judgment, and
finally transform it, we are all familiar.
But we do not enough remark the impres
sive words, uttered to the crowd around
him only a little while before, and of
far wider application than the reporter
imagined. ‘ Yet a little while is the light
with you; walk while ye have the light,
lest the darkness overtake you unawares !' 2
The real application cannot have been to
the unconverted only ; a call to the un
converted to make haste because their
chance of conversion would soon, with
Christ’s departure, be gone. No, converts
81
came in far thicker after Christ’s depar
ture than in his life. The words are for
the converted also. It is as if Jesus fore
saw the want of his sweet reasonableness,
which he could not leave, to help his
method and his secret, which he could
leave ; as if he foresaw his words mis
construed, his rising to eternal life turned
into a physical miracle, the advent of the
Spirit of truth turned into a scene of
thaumaturgy, Peter proving his Master’s
Messiahship from a Psalm that does not
prove it, the great Apostle of the Gentiles
word-splitting like a pedantic Rabbi, the
most beautiful soul among his own re
porters saddling him with metaphysics ;
—foresaw the growth of creeds, the
growth of dogma, and so through all the
confusion worse confounded of councils,
schoolmen, and confessions of faith, down
to our own two bishops bent on ‘doing
something’ for the honour of the Godhead
of the Eternal Son !
CHAPTER IX
ABERGLAUBE RE-INVADING
Miracles, and, above all, the crowning
miracles of the Resurrection and Ascen
sion to be followed by the second Advent,
were from the first firmly fixed as parts of
the disciples’ belief. ‘ Behold, he cometh
with clouds; and every eye shall see him,
and they also which pierced him, and all
kindreds of the earth shall wail because of
him / ’3 As time went on, and Chris
tianity spread wider and wider among the
multitudes, and with less and less of con
trol from the personal influence of Jesus,
Christianity developed more and more its
side of miracle and legend; until to
believe Jesus to be the Son of God meant
to believe the points of the legend,—his
preternatural conception and birth, his
miracles, his descent into hell, his bodily
resurrection, his ascent into heaven, and
his future triumphant return to judgment.
1 John, xiv, 18.
2 John, xii, 35.
’ Revelation, i, 7.
And these and like matters are what
popular religion drew forth from the re
cords of Jesus as the essentials of belief,
These essentials got embodied in a short
formulary; and so the creed which is
called the Apostles’ Creed came together.
It is not the apostles’ creed, for it took
more than five hundred years to grow to
maturity. It was not the creed of any
single doctor or body of doctors, but it
was a sort of summary of Christiauity
which the people, the Church at large,
would naturally develop; it is the popular
science of Christianity. Given the alleged
charge : ‘ Go ye and teach all nations,
baptizing them in the name of the Father,
the Son, and the Holy Spirit,’1 and the
candidate for baptism would naturally
come to have a profession of faith to make
respecting that whereinto he was baptized ;
f , *■
1 Matth., xxviii, 19.
r
�82
LITERATURE AND DOGMA
this profession of faith would naturally
become just such a summary as the
Apostles’ Creed. It contains no mention
of either the ‘ method ’ or the ‘ secret,’ it
is occupied entirely with external facts ;
and it may be safely said, not only that
such a summary of religious faith could
never have been delivered by Jesus, but it
could never have been adopted as ade
quate by any of his principal Apostles, by
Peter, or Paul, or John. But it is, as we
have said, the popular science of Chris
tianity.
Years proceeded. The world came in
to Christianity ; the world, and the world’s
educated people, and the educated peo
ple’s Aryan genius with its turn for making
religion a metaphysical conception; and
all this in a time of declining criticism, a
time when the possibility of true scientific
criticism, in any direction whatever, was
lessening rather than increasing. The
popular science was found not elaborate
enough to satisfy. Ingenious men took
its terms and its data, and applied to
them, not an historical criticism showing
how they arose, but abstruse metaphysical
conceptions. And so we have the socalled Nicene Creed, which is the learned
science of Christianity, as the Apostles’
Creed is the popular science.
Now, how this sort of learned science
is related to the Bible we shall feel, if we
compare the religious utterances of its
doctors with the religious utterances of
the Bible. Suppose, for instance, we
compare with the Psalms the Soliloquies of
St. Augustine, a truly great and religious
man ; and of St. Augustine, not in school
and controversy, but in religious soliloquy.
St. Augustine prays : ‘ Come to my help,
thou one God, one eternal true substance,
where is no discrepancy, no confusion, no
transience, no indigency, no death ; where
is supreme concord, supreme evidence,
supreme constancy, supreme plenitude,
supreme life; where nothing is lacking,
nothing is over and above ; where he who
begets and he who is begotten of him
are one; God, above whom is nothing,
outside whom is nothing, without whom
is nothing ; God, beneath whom is the
whole, in whom is the whole, with
whom is the whole ! ’ And a further
Book of Soliloquies, popularly ascribed to
St. Augustine and printed with his works,
but probably of a later date and author,
shows the full-blown development of all
this, shows the inevitable results of bring
ing to the idea of God this play of intel
lectual fancy so alien to the Bible. The
passages we will quote take evidently their
inspiration from the words of St. Augustine
just given, and even retain in some degree
his forms of expression : ‘ Holy Trinity,
superadmirable Trinity, and superinenarrable, and superinscrutable, and superinaccessible, superincomprehensible, su
perin telligible, superessential, superessentially surpassing all sense, all reason,
all intellect, all intelligence, all essence
of supercelestial minds; which can neithei
be said, nor thought, nor understood, noi
known even by the eyes of angels 1 ’ And
again, more practically, but still in the
same style : ‘ O three co-equal and co
eternal Persons, one and true God, Father
and Son and Holy Ghost, who by thyself
inhabitest eternity and light inaccessible,
who hast founded the earth in thy power,
and rulest the world by thy prudence,
Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord God of Sabaoth,
terrible and strong, just and merciful,
admirable, laudable, amiable, one God,
three persons, one essence, power, wisdom,
goodness, one and undivided Trinity, open
unto me that cry unto Thee the gates of
righteousness 1 ’
And now compare this with the Bible:—•
Teach me to do the thing thatpleaseth thee,
for thou art my God! let thy loving spirit
lead me forth into the land of righteous
ness ! 1 That is Israel’s way of praying 1
that is how a poor ill-endowed Semite,
belonging to the occipital races, unhelped
by the Aryan genius and ignorant that
religion is a metaphysical conception,
talks religion ! and we see what a different
thing he makes of it.
But, finally, the original Semite fell
more and more into the shade. The
Aryans came to the front, the notion of
religion being a metaphysical conception
prevailed. But the doctors differed in
1 Ps. exliii, io.
�ABERGLAUBE RE-INVADING
their metaphysics ; and the doctors who
conquered enshrined their victorious form
of metaphysics in a creed, the so-called
Creed of St. Athanasius, which is learned
science like the Nicene Creed, but learned
science which has fought and got ruffled
by fighting, and is fiercely dictatorial now
that it has won; learned science with a
strong dash of violent and vindictive
temper. Thus we have the three Creeds :
the so-called Apostles’ Creed, popular
science; the Nicene Creed, learned
science; the Athanasian Creed, learned
science with a strong dash of temper.
And the two latter are founded on the
first, taking its data just as they stand, but
dressing them metaphysically.
Now this first Creed is founded on a
supposed final charge from Jesus to his
Apostles: ‘ Go ye and teach all nations,
baptizing them in the name of the Father,
the Son, and the Holy Ghost 1 ’1 It ex
plains and expands what Jesus here told
his Apostles to baptize the world into.
But we have already remarked the differ
ence in character between the narrative,
in the Gospels, of what happened before
Christ’s death, and the narrative of what
happened after it. For all words of Jesus
placed after his death, the internal evi
dence becomes pre-eminently important.
He may well have said words attributed
to him, but not then. So the speech to
Thomas, ‘ Because thou hast seen me
thou hast believed ; blessed are they who
have not seen and yet have believed 1 ’2
may quite well have been a speech of
Jesus uttered on some occasion during his
life, and then transferred to the story of
the days after his resurrection and made
the centre of this incident of the doubt of
Thomas. On the other hand, again, the
prophecy of the details of Peter’s death 3
is almost certainly an addition after the
event, because it is not at all in the man
ner of Jesus. What is in his manner, and
what he had probably at some time said,
are the words given elsewhere : ‘ Whither
I go thou canst not follow me now, but
thou shalt follow me afterwards.’4 So,
1 Matth., xxviii, 19.
8 John, xxi, 18.
2 John, xx, 29.
4 John, xiji, 36.
83
too, it is extremely improbable that Jesus
should have ever charged his Apostles to
‘ baptize all nations in the name of the
Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost.’
There is no improbability in his investing
them with a very high commission. He
may perfectly well have said : ‘ Whose-I
soever sins ye remit, they are remitted J
whosesoever sins ye retain, they are re
tained.’ 1 But it is almost impossible he
can have given this charge to baptize in
the name of the Father, the Son, and the
Holy Ghost; it is by far too systematic
and what people are fond of calling an
anachronism. It is not the least like
what Jesus was in the habit of saying, and
it is just like what would be attributed to
him as baptism and its formula grew in
importance. The genuine charge of Jesus
to his Apostles was, almost certainly : ‘ As
my Father sent me, even so send I you,’2
and not this. So that our three Creeds,
and with them the whole of our so-called
orthodox theology, are founded upon
words which Jesus in all probability
never uttered.
2.
We may leave all questions about the
Church, its rise, and its organisation, out
of sight altogether. Much as is made of
them, they are comparatively unimportant,
Jesus never troubled himself with what
are called Church matters at all ; his
attention was fixed solely upon the
individual. His Apostles did what was
necessary, as such matters came to require
a practical notice and arrangement but
to the Apostles, too, they were still quite
secondary. The Church grew into some
thing quite different from what they or"
Jesus had, or could have had, any thought
of. But this was of no importance in
itself; and how believers should organise
their society as circumstances changed,
circumstances themselves might very well
decide.
The one important question was and is,
how believers laid and kept hold on
the revelations contained in the Bible I
* John, xx, 23.
2 John, xx, 22.
F 2
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LITERATURE AND DOGMA
because for the sake of these it con logical, will mean merely, that, having
fessedly is, that every church exists. accustomed ourselves to look at things
Even the apostles, we have seen, did not through a glass of a certain colour, we see
lay hold on them perfectly. In their them always of that colour. What the
attachment to miracles, in the prominence science of Bible-criticism, like all other
they gave to the crowning miracles of science, needs, is a very wide experience
Christ’s bodily resurrection and second from comparative observation in many
advent, they went aside from the saving directions, and a very slowly acquired habit
doctrine of Jesus themselves, and were of mind. All studies have the benefit of
sure,—which was worse,—to make others these guides, when they exist, and one
go aside from it ten thousand times more. isolated study can never have the benefit
But they were too near to Jesus not to have of them by itself. There is a common
been able to preserve the main lines of his order, a general level, a uniform possibility,
teaching, to preserve his way of using words; for these things. As were the geography,
history, physiology, cosmology, of the men
and they did, in fact, preserve them.
But at their death the immediate who developed dogma, so was also their
remembrance of Jesus faded away, and faculty for a scientific Bible-criticism, such
whatever Aberglaube the Apostles them as dogma pretends to be. Now we know
selves had had and sanctioned was left what their geography, history, physiology,
to w’ork without check. And, at the cosmology, were. Cosmas Indicopleustes,
same time, the world and society pre a Christian navigator of Justinian’s time,
sented conditions constantly less and less denies that the earth is spherical, and asserts
favourable to sane criticism. And it was it to be a flat surface with the sky put over
then, and under these conditions, that it like a dish-cover. The Christian meta
the dogma which is now called orthodox, physics of the same age applying the ideas
and which our dogmatic friends imagine of substance and identity to what the
to be purely a methodical arrangement of Bible says about God, Jesus, and the
the admitted facts of Christianity, grew Holy Spirit, are on a par with this natural
up. We have shown from the thing itself, philosophy.
And again, as one part of their scientific
by putting the dogma in comparison with
the genuine teaching of Jesus, how little Bible-criticism, so the rest. We have
it is this; but it is well to make clear to seen in the Bible-writers themselves a
oneself, also (for one can), from the quite uncritical use of the Old Testament
circumstances of the case, that it could and of prophecy. Now, does this become
less in the authors of our dogmatic
not be this.
For dogmatic theology is, in fact, an theology,—a far more pretentious effort
attempt at both literary and scientific of criticism than the Bible-writers ever
criticism of the highest order ; and the made,—or does it become greater? It
age which developed dogma had neither becomes a thousand times greater. Not
the resources nor the faculty for such a only are definite predictions found where
criticism. It is idle to talk of the they do not exist,—as, for example, in
theological instinct, the analogy of faith, Isaiah’s I will restore thy judges as at the
as if by the mere occupation with a limited first,x is found a definite foretelling of the
subject-matter one could reach the truth Apostles,—but in the whole Bible a secret
about it. It is as if one imagined that allegorical sense is supposed, higher than
by the mere study of Greek we could the natural sense; so that Jerome calls
reach the truth about the origin of Greek tracing the natural sense an eating dust
words, and dogmatise about them ; and like the serpent, in rnodum serpentis terram
could appeal to our supposed possession, comedere. Therefore, for one expounder,
through our labours, of the philological Isaiah’s prophecy against Egypt : The
instinct, the analogy of language, to make Eternal rideth upon a light cloud, and
our dogmatism go down. In general such shall come into Egyptp is the flight into
an instinct, whether theological or philo
1 Is., i, 26.
2 Js., xix, 1.
�ABERGLAUBE RE-INVADING
Egypt of the Holy Family, and the light
cloud is the virgin-born body of Jesus;
for another, The government shall be ztpon
his shoulder,1 is Christ’s carrying upon his
shoulder the cross; for another, The lion
shall eat straw like the ox,2 is the faithful
and the wicked alike receiving the body
of Christ in the Eucharist.
These are the men, this is the critical
faculty, from which our so-called orthodox
dogma proceeded. The worth of all the
productions of such a critical faculty is
easy to estimate, for the worth is nearly
uniform.
When the Rabbinical ex
pounders interpret: Woe unto them that
lay field to field / 3 as a prophetic curse on
the accumulation of Church property, or:
Woe unto them that rise up early in the
morning that they may follow strong
drink /4 as a prediction of the profligacy
of the Church clergy, or: Woe unto them
that draw iniquity with cords of vanity / 5
as God’s malediction on Church bells,
we say at once that such critics thus give
their measure as interpreters of the true
sense of the Bible. The moment we
think seriously and fairly, we must see
that the patristic interpretations of
prophecy give, in like manner, their
authors’ measure as interpreters of the
true sense of the Bible. Yet this is what
the dogma of the Nicene and Athanasian.
Creeds professes to be, and must be if it
is to be worth anything,—the true sense
xtracted from the Bible; for, ‘ the Bible
is the record of the whole revealed faith,’
says Cardinal Newman. But we see how
impossible it is that this true sense the
dogma of these Creeds should be.
Therefore it is, that it is useful to give
signal instances of the futility of patristic
and mediaeval criticism ; not to raise an
idle laugh, but because our whole dog
matic theology has a patristic and
mediaeval source, and from the nullity
of the deliverances of this criticism,
where it can be brought manifestly to
book, may be inferred the nullity of its
deliverances, where, from the impalpable
and incognisable character of the subjects
1 Is., ix, 6.
* Is., v, 8.
2 Is., lxv, 25.
4 Is., v, 11.
* Is., v, 18.
85
treated, to bring it manifestly to book is
impossible.
In the account of the
Creation, in the first chapter of Genesis,
‘ the greater light to rule the day,’ is the
priesthood ; ‘ the lesser light to rule the
night,’1 borrowing its beams from the
greater, is the Holy Roman Empire.
When the disciples of Jesus produced two
swords and Jesus said: ‘It is enough,’2
he meant, .we are told, the temporal and
the spiritual power, and that both were
necessary and both at the disposal of the
Church ; but by saying afterwards to
Peter, after he had cut off the ear of
Malchus : ‘ Put- up thy sword into the
sheath,’3 he meant that the Church was
not to wield the temporal power itself,
but to employ the secular government to
wield it. Now, this is the very same
force of criticism which in the Athanasian
Creed ‘ arranged, sentence after sen
tence,’ that doctrine of the Godhead of
the Eternal Son for which the Bishops of
Winchester and Gloucester are so anxious
to ‘ do something.’
The Schoolmen themselves are but the
same false criticism developed, and clad
in an apparatus of logic and system. In
that grand and instructive repertory
founded by the Benedictines, the Histoire
Litteraire de la France, we read that in;
the theological faculty of the University
of Paris, the leading mediaeval university,
it was seriously discussed whether Jesus
at his ascension had his clothes on or not...
If he had not, did he appear before his
Apostles naked ? if he had, what became
of the clothes ? Monstrous / everyone
will say.4 Yes, but the very same criti-j
cism, Only full-blown, which produced:
‘Neither confounding the Persons nor
dividing the Substance.’ The very same
criticism, which originally treated terms
as scientific which were not scientific!
which, instead of applying literary and
1 Gen., i, 16.
2 Luke, xxii, 38.
8 John, xviii, 11.
4 Be it observed, however, that there is an
honest scientific effort in the Schoolmen, and that
to this sort of thing one really does come, when
one fairly sets oneself to treat miracles literally
and exactly; but most of us are content to leave
them in a half light.
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LITERATURE AND DOGMA
historical criticism to the data of popular
Aberglaube, took these data just as they
stood and merely dressed them scien
tifically.
Cataolic dogma itself is true, urges,
however, Cardinal Newman, because inf telligent Catholics have dropped errors
and absurdities like the False Decretals
or the works of the pretended Dionysius
the Areopagite, but have not dropped
dogma. This is only saying that men
drop the more palpable blunder before
the less palpable. The adequate criticism
of the Bible is extremely difficult, and
slowly does the ‘Zeit-Geist’ unveil it.
Meanwhile, of the premature and false
criticism to which we are accustomed, we
drop the evidently weak parts first; we
retain the rest, to drop it gradually and
piece by piece as it loosens and breaks up.
But it is all of one order, and in time it
will all go. Not the Athanasian Creed’s
damnatory clauses only, but the whole
Creed; not this one Creed only, but the
three Creeds,—our whole received appli
cation of science, popular or learned, to the
Bible. For it was an inadequate and
false science, and could not, from the
nature of the case, be otherwise.
3And now we see how much that clergy
man deceives himself, who writes to the
Guardian: ‘ The objectors to the Atha
nasian Creed at any rate admit, that its
doctrinal portions are truly the carefully
distilled essence of the scattered intima
tions of Holy Scripture on the deep
mysteries in question,—priceless dis
coveries made in that field.’ When one
has travelled to the Athanasian Creed
along the gradual line of the historical
development of Christianity, instead of
living stationary all one’s life with this
Creed blocking up the view, one is really
tempted to say, when one reads a deliver
ance like that of this clergyman : Sancta
simplicitas / It is just because the
Athanasian Creed pretends to be, in its
doctrine, ‘the carefully distilled essence
of the scattered intimations of Holy
Scripture,’ and is so very far from it, that
it is worthless. It is ‘ the carefully dis
tilled essence of the scattered intimations
of Holy Scripture ’ just as that allegory
of the two swords was. It is really a
mixture,—for true criticism, as it ripens,
it is even a grotesque mixture,—of learned
pseudo-science with popular Aberglaube.
But it cannot be too carefully borne in
mind that the real ‘essence of Holy
Scripture,’ its saving truth, is no such
criticism at all as the so-called orthodox
dogma attempts and attempts unsuccess
fully. No, the real essence of Scripture
is a much simpler matter. It is, for the
Old Testament : To him that ordereth his
conversation right shall be shozvn the salva
tion of God I—and for the New Testament:
Follow Jesus ! This is Bible-dogma, as
opposed to the dogma of our formularies.
On this Bible-dogma if Churches were
founded, and to preach this Bible-dogma
if ministers were ordained, Churches and
ministers would have all the dogma to
which the Bible attaches eternal life.
Plain and precise enough it is, in all
conscience; with the advantage of being
precisely right, whereas the dogma of our
formularies is precisely wrong. And if
anyone finds it too simple, let him
remember that its hardness is practical,
not speculative. It is a rule of conduct-,
let him act it, and he will find it hard
enough.
Utinarn per unum diem bene
essemtis conversati in hoc mtindo ! But as
a matter of mere knowledge it is very
simple, it lies on the surface of the Bible
and cannot be missed.
And the holders of ecclesiastical dogma
havealways, we must repeat and remember,
held and professed this Bible-dogma too.
Their ecclesiastical dogma may have pre
vented their attending closely enough to
the Bible-dogma, may have led them often
to act false to it; but they have always
held it. The method and the secret of
Jesus have been always prized. The
Catholic Church from the first held aloft
the secret of Jesus ; the monastic orders
were founded, we may say, in homage to
it. And from time to time, through the
course of ages, there have arisen men
who threw themselves on the method and
�ABERGLAURE RE-INVADING
secret of Jesus with extraordinary force,
with intuitive sense that here was
salvation; and who really cared for
nothing else, though ecclesiastical dogma,
too, they professed to believe, and
sincerely thought they did believe,—but
their heart was elsewhere. These are
they who ‘ received the kingdom of God
as a little child,’ who perceived how simple
a thing Christianity was, though so
inexhaustible, and who are therefore ‘ the
greatest in the kingdom of God.’ And
they, not the theological doctors, are the
true lights of the Christian Church ; not
Augustine, Luther, Bossuet, Butler, but
the nameless author of the Imitation, but
Tauler, but St. Francis of Sales, Wilson of
Sodor and Man. Yet not only these men,
but the whole body of Christian churches
and sects always, have all at least professed
the method and secret of Jesus, and to some
extent used them. And whenever these
were used, they have borne their natural
fruits of joy and life ; and this joy and
this life have been taken to flow from the
ecclesiastical dogma held along with them,
and to sanction and prove it. And people,
eager to praise the bridge which carried
them over from death to life, have taken
this dogma for the bridge, or part of the
bridge, that carried them over, and have
eagerly praised it. Thus religion has been
made to stand on its apex instead of its
base. Righteousness is supported on eccle
siastical dogma, instead of ecclesiastical
dogma being supported on righteousness.
But in the beginning it was not so.
Because righteousness is eternal, necessary,
life-giving, therefore the mighty ‘ not our
selves which makes for righteousness ’ was
the Eternal, Israel’s God; was all-powerful,
all-merciful; sends his Messiah, elects
his people, establishes his kingdom, re
ceives into everlasting habitations. But
gradually this petrifies, gradually it is
more and more added to; until at last,
because righteousness was originally per
ceived to be eternal, necessary, life-giving,
we find ourselves ‘ worshipping One God
in Trinity and Trinity in Unity, neither
confounding the Persons nor dividing the
Substance.’ And then the original order
is reversed. Because there is One God
87
in Trinity and Trinity in Unity, who
receives into everlasting habitations,
establishes his kingdom, elects his people,
sends his Messiah, is all-merciful, allpowerful, Israel’s God, the Eternal,—
therefore righteousness is eternal, neces
sary, life-giving. And shake the belief
in the One God in Trinity and Trinity
in Unity, the belief in righteousness is
shaken, it is thought, also. Whereas
righteousness and the God of righteous
ness, the God of the Bible, are in truth
quite independent of the God of eccle
siastical dogma, the work of critics of the
Bible,—critics understanding neither what
they say nor whereof they affirm.
4-
Nor did even the Reformation and
Protestantism much mend the work of
these critics; the time was not yet ripe
for it. Protestantism, nevertheless, was a
strenuous and noble effort at improve
ment ; for it was an effort of return to the
‘method’ of Jesus,—that leaven which
never, since he set it in the world, has
ceased or can cease to work. Catholicism,
we have said, laid hold on the ‘ secret ’ of
Jesus, and strenuously, however blindly,
employed it; this is the grandeur and the
glory of Catholicism. In like manner
Protestantism laid hold on his ‘ method,’
and strenuously, however blindly, em
ployed it; and herein is the greatness of
Protestantism. The preliminary labour
of inwardness and sincerity in the con
science of each individual man, which
was the method of Jesus and his indis
pensable discipline for learning to employ
his secret aright, had fallen too much out o.f
view; obedience had in a manner superseded
it. Protestantism drew it into light and
prominence again ; was even, one may
say, over absorbed by it, so as to leave too
much out of view the ‘ secret.’ This, if
one would be just both to Catholicism and
to Protestantism, is the thing to bear in
mind :—Protestantism had hold of Jesus
Christ’s ‘ method ’ of inwardness and sin
cerity, Catholicism had hold of his ‘ secret ’
of self-renouncement. The chief word
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LITERATURE AND DOGMA
with Protestantism is the word of the Joseph de Maistre calls it, is in truth but
method : repentance, conversion. The chief the necessary ‘method,’ the eternally
word with Catholicism is the word of the incumbent duty, imposed by Jesus him
secret: peace, joy.
self, when he said : ‘Judge righteous
And since, though the method and the judgment.’1 ‘ Judge righteous judgment ’
secret are equally indispensable, the is, however, the duty imposed ; and the
secret may be said to have in it more of duty is not, whatever many Protestants
practice and conduct, Catholicism may may seem to think, fulfilled if the judg
claim perhaps to have more of religion. ment be wrong. But the duty of in
On the other hand, Protestantism has wardly judging is the very entrance into
more light: and, as the method of in the way and walk of Jesus.
wardness and sincerity, once gained, is of
Luther, then, made an inward verifying
general application, and a power for all movement, the individual conscience,
the purposes of life, Protestantism, we once more the base of operations; and
can see, has been accompanied by most he was right. But he did so to the
prosperity. And here is the answer to following extent only. When he found
Mr. Buckle’s famous parallel between the priest coming between the individual
Spain and Scotland, that parallel which believer and his conscience, standing to
everyone feels to be a sophism. Scotland him in the stead of conscience, he
has had, to make her different from pushed the priest aside and brought the
Spain, the ‘method’ of Jesus; and believer face to face with his conscience
though, in theology, Scotland may have again. This explains, of course, his
turned it to no great account, she has battle against the sale of indulgences and
found her account in it in almost every other abuses of the like kind ; but it ex
thing else. Catholicism, again, has had, plains also his treatment of that cardinal
perhaps, most happiness. When one point in the Catholic religious system, the
thinks of the bitter and contentious mass. He substituted for it, as the car
temper of Puritanism,—temper being, dinal point in the Protestant system, justifi
nevertheless, such a vast part of conduct,— cation by faith. The miracle of Jesus Christ’s
and then thinks of St. Theresa and her atoning sacrifice, satisfying God’s wrath,
sweetness, her never-sleeping hatred of and taking off the curse from mankind, is
‘ detraction,’ one is tempted almost to say, the foundation both of the mass and of the
that there was more of Jesus in St. famous Lutheran tenet. But, in the mass,
Theresa’s little finger than in John Knox’s the priest makes the miracle over again,
whole body.
Protestantism has the and applies its benefits to the believer.
method of Jesus with his secret too much In the tenet of justification, the believer
left out of mind; Catholicism has his is himself in contact with the miracle of
secret with his method too much left Christ’s atonement, and applies Christ’s
out of mind. Neither has his unerring merits to himself. The conscience is thus
balance, his intuition, his sweet reasonable brought into direct communication with
ness. But both have hold of a great truth, Christ’s saving act; but this saving act is
and get from it a great power.
still taken,—just as popular religion con
And many of the reproaches cast by ceived it, and as formal theology adopted
one on the other are idle. If Catholicism it from popular religion,—as a miracle, the
is reproached with being indifferent to miracle of the Atonement. This popular
much that is called civilisation, it must be and imperfect conception of the sense of
answered: So was Jesus. If Protestantism, Christ’s death, and in general the whole
with its private judgment, is accused of inadequate criticism of the Bible involved
opening a wide field for individual fancies in the Creeds, underwent at the Reforma
and mistakes, it must be answered : So tion no scrutiny and no change. Luther’s
did Jesus when he introduced his method. actual application, therefore, of the
Private judgment, 1 the fundamental and ‘ method ’ of Jesus to that inner body of
insensate doctrine of Protestantism? as
1 John, vii, 24.
�ABERGLAUBE RE-INVADING
dogma, developed as we have seen, which
he found regnant, proceeded no farther
than this.
And justification by faith., our being
saved by ‘giving our hearty consent to
Christ’s atoning work on our behalf/ by
‘ pleading simply the blood of the
covenant/ Luther made the essential
matter not only of his own religious
system but of the entire New Testament.
We must be enabled, he said, and we are
enabled, to distinguish among the books
of the Bible those which are the best;
now, those are the best which show
Christ, and teach what would be enough
for us to know even if no other parts of
the Bible existed. And this evangelical
element, as it has been called, this funda
mental thought of the Gospel, is, for
Luther, our ‘ being justified by the alone
merits of Christ.’ This is the doctrine of
‘ passive or Christian righteousness/ as
Luther is fond of naming it, which con
sists in ‘ doing nothing, but simply know
ing and believing that Christ is gone to
the Father and we see him no more !
that he sits in Heaven at the right hand
of the Father, not as our judge, but made
unto us by God wisdom, righteousness,
sanctification, and redemption ;1 in sum,
that he is our high-priest making inter
cession for us.’ Everyone will recognise
the consecrated watchwords of Protestant
theology.
Such is Luther’s criticism of the New
Testament, of its fundamental thought.
And he picks out, as the kernel and
marrow of the New Testament, the
Fourth Gospel and the First Epistle by
the author of this Gospel, St. Paul’s
Epistles,—in especial those to the
Romans, Galatians, and Ephesians,—and
the First Epistle of St. Peter. Now, the
common complaint against Luther is on
the score of his audacity in thus venturing
to. make a table of precedence for the
equally inspired books of the New Testa
ment. Yet in this he was quite right,
and was but following the method of
Jesus, if the good news conveyed in the
whole New Testament is, as it is, some
thing definite, and all parts do not convey
1 I Cor., i, 30.
89
it equally. Where he was wrong, was
in his delineation of this fundamental
thought of the New Testament, in his
description of the good news; and few,
probably, who have followed us thus far,
will have difficulty in admitting that he
was wrong here, and quite wrong. And
this has been the fault of Protestantism
generally : not its presumption in inter
preting Scripture for itself,—for the
Church interpreted it no better, and
Jesus has thrown on each individual the
duty of interpreting it for himself,—but
that it has interpreted it wrong, and no
better than the Church. ‘ Calvinism has
borne ever an inflexible front to illusion
and mendacity/ says Mr. Froude. Surely
this is but a flourish of rhetoric ! for the
Calvinistic doctrine is in itself, like the
Lutheran doctrine, and like Catholic
dogma, a false criticism of the Bible,
an illusion. And the Calvinistic and
Lutheran doctrines both of them sin in
the same way; not by using a method
which, after all, is the method of Jesus,
but by not using the method enough, by
not applying it to the Bible thoroughly,
by keeping too much of what the tradi
tions of men chose to tell them.
5-
The time was not then ripe for doing
more; and we, if we can do more, have
the fulness of time to thank for it, not
ourselves. Yet it needs all one’s sense
of the not ourselves in these things, to
make us understand how doctrines,
supposed to be the essence of the Bible
by great Catholics and by great Pro
testants, should ever have been supposed
to be so, and by such men.
To take that chief stronghold of ecclesiasticism and sacerdotalism, the insti
tution of the Eucharist. As Catholics
present it, it makes the Church indis
pensable, with all her apparatus of
an apostolical succession, an authorised
priesthood, a power of absolution. Yet,
as Jesus founded it, it is the most antiecclesiastical of institutions, pulverising
alike the historic churches in their beauty
�90
LITERATURE AND DOGMA
and the dissenting sects in their unloveli
ness ;—it is the consecration of absolute in
dividualism. ‘ This cup is the new covenant
in my blood which is shed for you.’1 When
Jesus so spoke, what did he mean, what
was in his mind? Undoubtedly these
words of the prophet Jeremiah : ‘Behold
the days come, saith the Eternal, that I
will make a new covenant with the house
of Israel, not according to the covenant
that I made w’ith their fathers, which
covenant they brake; but this shall be
the covenant that I will make with the
house of Israel: After those days, saith
the Eternal, I will put my law in their
irewardparts, and write it in their hearts,
and they shall teach no more every man his
neighbour and every man his brother, say
ing : Know the Eternal! for they shall
all know me, from the least to the
greatest.’2 No more scribes, no more
doctors, no more priests ! the crowning
act in the ‘secret’of Jesus seals at the
same time his ‘ method,’—his method of
pure inwardness, individual responsibility,
personal religion.
Take, again, the Protestant doctrine of
Justification; of trusting in the alone
merits of Christ, pleading the Blood of
the Covenant, imputed righteousness. In
our railway stations are hung up, as every
one knows, sheets of Bible-texts to catch
the passer’s eye; and very profitable
admonitions to him they in general are.
It is said that the thought of thus exhi
biting them occurred to Dr. Marsh, a
venerable leader of the so-called Evan
gelical party in our Church, the party
which specially clings to the special
Protestant doctrine of justification ; and
that he arranged the texts which we daily
see. And there is one which we may all
remember to have often seen. Dr. Marsh
asks the prophet Micah’s question:
‘Wherewith shall I come before the Lord,
and bow myself before the high God ? ’3
and he answers it with one short sentence
from the New Testament: ‘ With the
precious blood of Christ.’ This is pre
cisely the popular Protestant notion of the
Gospel; and we are all so used to it that
Dr. Marsh’s application of the text has
probably surprised no one. And yet, if
one thinks of it, how astonishing an
application it is! For even the Hebrew
Micah, some seven or eight centuries
before Christ, had seen that this sort of
gospel, or good news, was none at all; for
even he suggests this always popular
notion of atoning blood, only to reject it,
and ends: ‘ He hath showed thee, O
man, what is good; and what doth the
Eternal require of thee, but to do justly,
and to love mercy, and to walk humbly
with thy God ? ’ So that the Hebrew
Micah, nearly three thousand years ago,
under the old dispensation, was far in
advance of this venerable and amiable
coryphaeus of our Evangelical party now,
under the Christian dispensation !
Dr. Marsh and his school go wrong, it
will be said, through their false criticism of
the New Testament, and we have our
selves admitted that the perfect criticism of
the New Testament is extremely difficult.
True, the perfect criticism; but not such
an elementary criticism of it as shows the
gospel of Dr. Marsh and of our so called
Evangelical Protestants to be a false one.
For great as their literary inexperience
may be, and unpractised as is their tact
for perceiving the manner in which men
use words and what they mean by them,
one would think they could understand
such a plain caution against mistaking
Christ’s death for a miraculous atonement
as St. Paul has actually given them. For
St. Paul, who so admirably seized the
secret of Jesus, who preached Christ
Crucified,1 but who placed salvation in
being able to say, I am crucified with
Christ !2—St. Paul warns us clearly, that
this word of the cross, as he calls it, is so
simple, being neither miracle nor meta
physics, that it would be thought foolish
ness. The Jews want miracle, he says,
and the Greeks want metaphysics, but I
preach Christ crucified 13—that is, the
‘secret ’ of Jesus, as we call it. The Jews
want miracle !—that is a warning against
* Luke, xxii, 20.
2 Jer., xxxi, 31,
2 Micah, vi, 6.
1 I Cor., i, 23.
2 Gal., ii, 20.
8 I Cor., i, 23.
�ABERGLAUBE RE-INVADING
Dr. Marsh’s or Mr. Spurgeon’s doctrine,
against Evangelical Protestantism’s phantasmagories of the ‘ Contract in the
Council of the Trinity,’ the ‘Atoning
Blood,’ and ‘ Imputed Righteousness.’
The Greeks want metaphysics /—that is a
warning against the Bishops of Winches
ter and Gloucester, with their Aryan
genius (if so ill-sounding a word as Aryan,
spell it how one may, can ever be pro
perly applied to our bishops, and one
ought not rather to say Indo-European),
dressing the popular doctrine out with
fine speculations about the Godhead of
the Eternal Son, his Consubstantiality
with the Father, and so on. But we
preach, says St. Paul, Christ crucified !—
to Mr. Spurgeon and to popular religion
a stumbling-block, to the bishops and to
learned religion foolishness ; but, to them
that are called, Christ the power of God
and the wisdom of God. That is, we
preach a doctrine, not thaumaturgical and
not speculative, but practical and experi
mental ; a doctrine which has no meaning
except in positive application to conduct,
but in this application is inexhaustible.
6.
So false, so astoundingly false (thus one
is inclined to say by the light which the
‘ Zeit-Geist ’ is beginning to throw over
them) are both popular and learned
science in their criticism of the Bible.
And for the learned science one feels no
tenderness, because it has gone wrong
with a great parade of exactitude and
philosophy ; whereas all it really did was
to take the magnified and non-natural
Man of popular religion as God, and to
take Jesus as his son, and then to state
the relations between them metaphysically.
No difficulties suggested by the popular
science of religion has this learned science
ever removed, and it has created plenty
of its own.
But for the popular science of religion
one has, or ought to have, an infinite
tenderness. It is the spontaneous work
of nature. It is the travail of the human
mind to adapt to its grasp and employ
ment great ideas of which it feels the
91
attraction, but for which, except as given
to it by this travail, it would have been
immature. The imperfect science of
the Bible, formulated in the so-called
Apostles’ Creed, was the only vehicle by
which, to generation after generation of
men, the method and secret of Jesus
could gain any access; and in this sense
we may even call it, taking the point of
view of popular theology, providential.
And this rude criticism is full of poetry,
and in this poetry we have been all
nursed. To call it, as many of our
philosophical Liberal friends are fond of
calling it, ‘a degrading superstition,’ is
as untrue, as it is a poor compliment to
human nature, which produced this criti
cism and used it. It is an Aberglaube, or
extra-belief and fairy-tale, produced by
taking certain great names and great pro
mises too literally and materially; but it
is not a degrading superstition.
Protestants, on their part, have no
difficulty in calling the Catholic doctrine
of the mass ‘ a degrading superstition.’ It
is indeed a rude and blind criticism of
Jesus Christ’s words: He that eateth me
shall live by me. But once admit the
miracle of the ‘atoning sacrifice,’ once
move in this order of ideas, and what can
be more natural and beautiful than to
imagine this miracle every day repeated,
Christ offered in thousands of places,
everywhere the believer enabled to enact
the work of redemption and unite himself
with the Body whose sacrifice saves him ?
And the effect of this belief has been no
more degrading than the belief itself. The
fourth book of the Imitation, which treats
of The Sacrament of the Altar, is of later
date and lesser merit than the three books
which precede it; but it is worth while to
quote from it a few words for the sake of
the testimony they bear to the practical
operation, in many cases at any rate, of
this belief. ‘To us in our weakness thou
hast given, for the refreshment of mind
and body, thy sacred Body. The devout
communicant thou, my God, raisest from
the depth of his own dejection to the hope
of thy protection, and with a hitherto
unknown grace renewest him and enlightenest him within; so that they who
�LITERATURE AND DOGMA
92
at first, before this Communion, had felt
themselves distrest and affectionless, after
the refreshment of this meat and drink
from heaven find themselves changed to
a new and better man.
For this most
high and worthy Sacrament is the saving
health of soul and body, the medicine of
all spiritual languor; by it my vices are
cured, my passions bridled, temptations are
conquered or diminished, a larger grace is
infused, the beginnings of virtue are made
to grow, faith is confirmed, hope strength
ened, and charity takes fire and dilates into
flame? So little is the doctrine of the
mass to be hastily called ‘ a degrading
superstition,’ either in its character or in
its working.
But it is false ! sternly breaks in the
Evangelical Protestant. O Evangelical
Protestant, is thine own doctrine, then,
so true? As the Romish doctrine of
the mass, ‘the Real Presence,’ is a rude
and blind criticism of, TA that eateth me
shall live by me f so the Protestant tenet
of justification, ‘pleading the blood of the
Covenant,’ is a rude and blind criticism
of, The Son of Man came to give his life a
ransom for many.2 It is a taking of the
words of Scripture literally and unintelligently. And our friends, the philosophical
Liberals, are not slow to call this, too, a
degrading superstition, just as Protest
ants call the doctrine of the mass a
degrading superstition. We say, on the
contrary, that a degrading superstition
neither the one nor the other is. In
imagining a sort of supernatural man, a
man infinitely magnified and improved,
with a race of vile offenders to deal with,
whom his natural goodness would incline
him to let off, only his sense of justice
will not allow it; then a younger super
natural man, his son, on the scale of his
father and very dear to him, who might
live in grandeur and splendour if he liked,
but who prefers to leave his home, to go
and live among the race of offenders, and
to be put to an ignominious death, on
condition that his merits shall be counted
against their demerits, and that his father’s
goodness shall be restrained no longer
1 John, vi, 57.
* Matth., xx, 28.
from taking effect, but any offender shall
be admitted to the benefit of it on simply
pleading the satisfaction made by the son ;
—and then, finally, a third supernatural
man, still on the same high scale, who
keeps very much in the background, and
works in a very occult manner, but very
efficaciously nevertheless, and who is busy
in applying everywhere the benefits of
the son’s satisfaction, and the father’s
goodness ;—in an imagination, I say, such
as this, there is nothing degrading, and
this is precisely the Protestant story of
Justification. And how awe of the first of
these supernatural persons, gratitude and
love towards the second, and earnest co
operation with the third, may fill and rule
men’s hearts so as to transform their con
duct, we need not go about to show, for we
have all seen it with our eyes. Therefore in
the practical working of this tenet there is
nothing degrading; any more than there
is anything degrading in the tenet as an
imaginative conception. And looking to
the infinite importance of getting right
conduct,—three-fourths of human life,—
established, and to the inevitable anthro
pomorphism and extra-belief of men in
dealing with ideas, one might well hesitate
to attack an anthropomorphism or an
extra-belief by which men helped them
selves in conduct, merely because an
anthropomorphism or an extra-belief it
is, so long as it served its purpose, so long
as it was firmly and undoubtingly held, and
almost universally prevailing.
But, after all, the question sooner or
later arises in respect to a matter taken
for granted, like the Catholic doctrine of
the Mass or the Protestant doctrine of
Justification : Is it sure ? can what is here
assumed be verified! And this is the real
objection both to the Catholic and to the
Protestant doctrine as a basis for conduct;
—not that it is a degrading superstition,
but that it is not sure; that it assumes
what cannot be verified.
For a long time this objection occurred
to scarcely anybody. And there are still,
and for a long time yet there will be, many
to whom it does not occur. In particular,
on those ‘ devout women ’ who in the
history of religion have continually played
�OUR ‘MASSES’ AND THE BIBLE
a part in many respects so beautiful but in
some respects so mischievous,—on them,
and on a certain number of men like them, it
has and can as yet have, so far as one can
see, no effect at all. Who that watches
the energumens during the celebration
of the Communion in some Ritualistic
church, their gestures and behaviour, the
floor of the church strewn with what seem
to be the dying and the dead, progress
to the altar almost barred by forms
suddenly dropping as if they were shot
in battle,—who that observes this de
lighted adoption of vehement rites, till
yesterday unknown, adopted and prac
tised now with all that absence of tact,
measure, and correct perception in things
of form and manner, all that slowness to
see when they are making themselves
ridiculous, which belongs to the people of
our English race,—who, I say, that marks
this can doubt, that for a not small portion
of our religious community a difficulty to
93
the intelligence will for a long time yet be
no difficulty at all? With their mental
condition and habits, given a story to
which their religious emotions can attach
themselves, and the famous Credo quia
ineptum will hold good with them still.
To think they know what passed in the
Council of the Trinity is not hard to
them ; they could easily think they even
knew what were the hangings of the
Trinity’s council-chamber.
Arbitrary and unsupported, however,
as the story they have taken up with may
be, yet it puts them in connexion with the
Bible and the religion of the Bible,—that
is, with righteousness and with the method
and secret of Jesus. These are so clear
in the Bible that no one who uses it can
help seeing them there; and of these
they do take for their use something,
though on a wrong ground. But these,
so far as they are taken into use, are
saving.
CHAPTER X
OUR ‘ MASSES ’ AND THE BIBLE
Many, however, and of a much stronger
and more important sort, there now are,
who will not thus take on trust the story
which is made the reason for putting our
selves in connexion with the Bible and
learning to use its religion; be it the
story of the divine authority of the Chui vh,
as in Catholic countries, or,—as generally
with us,—the story of the three super
natural persons standing on its own merits.
Is what this story asserts true, they are
beginning to ask ; can it be verified ?—
since experience proves, they add, that what
ever for man is true, man can verify. And
certainly the fairy-tale of the three super
natural persons no man can verify. They
find this to be so, and then they say :
The Bible takes for granted this story
and depends on the truth of it; what,
then, can rational people have to do
with the Bible ? So they get rid, to be
sure, of a false ground for using the Bible,
but they at the same time lose the Bible
itself, and the true religion of the Bible :
righteousness, and the method and secret
of Jesus.
And those who lose this
are the masses, as they are called; or
rather they are what is most strenuous,
intelligent, and alive among the masses,
and what will give the signal for the rest
to follow.
This is what everyone sees to constitute
the special moral feature of our times :
the masses are losing the Bible and its
religion. At the Renascence, many culti
vated wits lost it; but the great solid mass
of the common people kept it, and brought
the world back to it after a start had
seemed to be made in quite another
direction. But now it is the people which
is getting detached from the Bible. The
masses can no longer be relied on to
�LITERATURE AND DOGMA
94
counteract what the cultivated wits are
doing, and stubbornly to make clever
men’s extravagances and aberrations, if
about the Bible they commit them, of no
avail. When our philosophical Liberal
friends say, that by universal suffrage,
public meetings, Church-disestablishment,
marrying one’s deceased wife’s sister,
secular schools, industrial development,
man can very well live; and that if he
studies the writings, say, of Mr. Herbert
Spencer into the bargain, he will be
perfect, he ‘ will have in modern and con
genial language the truisms common to
all systems of morality,’ and the Bible is
become quite old-fashioned and super
fluous for him;—when our philosophical
friends now say this, the masses, far from
checking them, are disposed to applaud
them to the echo. Yet assuredly, of
conduct, which is more than three-fourths
of human life, the Bible, whatever people
may thus think and say, is the great
inspirer; so that from the great inspirer
of more than three-fourths of human life
the masses of our society seem now to be
cutting themselves off. This promises,
certainly, if it does not already constitute,
a very unsettled condition of things. And
the cause of it lies in the Bible being
made to depend on a story, or set of
asserted facts, which it is impossible to
verify; and which hard-headed people,
therefore, treat as either an imposture, or
a fairy-tale that discredits all which is
found in connexion with it.
•
2.
Now if we look attentively at the
story, or set of asserted but unverified
and unverifiable facts, which we have
summarised in popular language above,
and which is alleged as the basis of the
Bible, we shall find that the difficulty
really lies all in one point. The whole
difficulty is with the infinitely magnified
man who is the first of the three super
natural persons of our story. If he could
be verified, the data we have are, possibly,
enough to warrant our admitting the truth
of the rest of the story. It is singular
how few people seem to see this, though
it is really quite clear. The Bible is
supposed to assume a great Personal
First Cause, who thinks and loves, the
moral and intelligent Governor of the
Universe. This is the God, also, of
natural religion, as people call it; and
this supposed certainty learned reasoners
take, and render it more certain still by
considerations of causality, identity, exist
ence, and so on. These, however, are
not found to help the certainty much;
but a certainty in itself the Great Personal
First Cause, the God of both natural and
revealed religion, is supposed to be.
Then, to this given beginning, all that
the Bible delivers has to fit itself on.
And so arises the account of the God of
the Old Testament, and of Christ and of
the Holy Ghost, and of the incarnation
and atonement, and of the sacraments,
and of inspiration, and of the church, and
of eternal punishment and eternal bliss,
as theology presents them. But difficul
ties strike people in this or that of these
doctrines. The incarnation seems incred
ible to one, the vicarious atonement to
another, the real presence to a third,
inspiration to a fourth, eternal punishment
to a fifth, and so on. And they set to
work to make religion more pure and
rational, as they suppose, by pointing out
that this or that of these doctrines is false,
that it must be a mistake of theologians ;
and by interpreting the Bible so as to show
that the doctrine is not really there. The
Unitarians are, perhaps, the great people
for this sort of partial and local rationalis
ing of religion ; for taking what here and
there on the surface seems to conflict
most with common sense, arguing that it
cannot be in the Bible and getting rid of
it, and professing to have thus relieved
religion of its difficulties. And now, when
there is much loosening of authority and
tradition, much impatience of what con
flicts with common sense, the Unitarians
are beginning confidently to give them
selves out as the Church of the Future.
But in all this there is in reality a good
deal of what we must call intellectual
shallowness. For, granted that there are
things in a system which are puzzling, yet
�OUR ‘MASSES’ AND THE BIBLE
they belong to a system ; and it is childish
to pick them out by themselves and re
proach them with error, when you leave
untouched the basis of the system where
they occur, and indeed admit it for sound
yourself. The Unitarians are very loud
about the unreasonableness and unscripturalness of the common doctrine of the
Atonement. But in the Socinian Catech
ism it stands written : ‘ It is necessary for
salvation to know that God is; and to
know that God is, is to be firmly persuaded
that there exists in reality some One, who
has supreme dominion over all things.’
Presently afterwards it stands written,
that among the testimonies to Christ are,
‘ miracles very great and immense,’ miracula
admodum magna et immensa. Now, with
the One Supreme Governor, and miracles,
given to start with, it may fairly be urged
that that construction put by common
theology on the Bible-data, which we call
the story of the three supernatural men,
and in which the Atonement fills a pro
minent place, is the natural and legitimate
construction to put on them, and not unscriptural at all. Neither is it unreason
able ; in a system of things, that is, where
the Supreme Governor and miracles, or
even where the Supreme Governor with
out miracles, are already given.
And this is Butler’s great argument
in the Analogy. You all concede, he
says to his deistical adversaries, a Supreme
Personal First Cause, the almighty and
intelligent Governor of the universe;
this, you and I both agree, is the system
and order of nature. But you are offended
at certain things in revelation ;—that is, at
I things, Butler means, like a future life with
rewards and punishments, or like the doc
trine of the Trinity as theology collects
it from the Bible. Well, I will show you,
he says, that in your and my admitted
system of nature there are just as great
difficulties as in the system of revelation.
And he does show it; and by adversaries
such as his, who grant what the Deist or
Socinian grants, he never has been an
swered, he never can be answered. The
spear of Butler’s reasoning will even follow
and transfix the Duke of Somerset, who
finds so much to condemn in the Bible,
95
but ‘ retires into one unassailable fortress,
—faith in God.’
The only question, perhaps, is, whether
Butler, as an Anglican bishop, puts an
adequate construction upon what Bible
revelation, this basis of the Supreme
Personal First Cause being supposed,
may be allowed to be ; whether Catholic
dogma is not the truer construction to put
upon it. Cardinal Newman urges, fairly
enough: Butler admits, analogy is in
some sort violated by the fact of revela
tion ; only, with the precedent of natural
religion given, we have to own that the
difficulties against revelation are not
greater than against this precedent, and
therefore the admission of this precedent
of natural religion may well be taken to
clear them. And must we not go farther
in the same way, asks Cardinal Newman,
and own that the precedent of revelation,
too, may be taken to cover more than
itself; and that as, the Supreme Governor
being given, it is credible that the Incarna
tion is true, so, the Incarnation being
true, it is credible that God should not
have left the world to itself after Christ
and his Apostles disappeared, but should
have lodged divine insight in the Church
and its visible head ? So pleads Cardi
nal Newman ; and if it be said that
facts are against the infallibility of the
Church, or that Scripture is against it, yet
to wide, immense things, like facts and
Scripture, a turn may easily be given
which makes them favour it; and so an
endless field for discussion is opened, and
no certain conclusion is possible. For,
once launched on this line of hypothesis
and inference, with a Supreme Governor
assumed, and the task thrown upon us of
making out what he means us to infer and
what we may suppose him to do and to
intend, one of us may infer one thing and
another of us another, and neither can
possibly prove himself to be right or his
adversary to be wrong.
Only, there may come some one, who
says that the basis of all our inference,
the Supreme Personal First Cause, the
moral and intelligent Governor, is not the
order of nature, is an assumption, and not
a fact; and then, if this is so, our whole
�96
LITERATURE AND DOGMA
superstructure falls to pieces like a house
of cards.
And this is just what is
happening at present. The masses, with
their rude practical instinct, go straight to
the heart of the matter. They are told
there is a great Personal First Cause,
who thinks and loves, the moral and
intelligent Author and Governor of the
universe; and that the Bible and Bible
righteousness come to us from him. Now,
they do not begin by asking, with the
intelligent Unitarian, whether the doctrine
of the Atonement is worthy of this moral
and intelligent Ruler; they begin by
asking what proof we have of him at all.
Moreover, they require proof which is
clear and certain ; demonstration, or else
plain experimental proof, such as that fire
burns them if they touch it. If they are
to study and obey the Bible because it
comes from the Personal First Cause who
is Governor of the universe, they require
to be able to ascertain that there A this
Governor, just as they are able to ascer
tain that the angles of a triangle are equal
to two right angles, or that fire burns.
And if they cannot ascertain it, they will
let the intelligent Unitarian perorate for
ever about the Atonement if he likes, but
they themselves pitch the whole Bible to
the winds.
Now, it is remarkable what a resting
on mere probabilities, or even on less than
probabilities, the proof for religion comes,
in the hands of its great apologist, Butler,
to be, even after he has started with the
assumption of his moral and intelligent
Governor. And no wonder ; for in the
primary assumption itself there is and can
be nothing demonstrable or experimental,
and therefore clearly known. So that of
Christianity, as Butler grounds it, the
natural criticism would really be in these
words of his own : ‘ Suppositions are not
to be looked upon as true, because not
incredible.’ However, Butler maintains
that in matters of practice, such as religion,
this is not so. In them it is prudent, he
says, to act on even a supposition, if it is
not incredible. Even the doubting about
religion implies, he argues, that it may be
true. Now, in matters of practice we are
bound in prudence, he says, to act upon
what may be a low degree of evidence;
yes, ‘ even though it be so low as to leave
the mind in very great doubt what is the
truth.'.
Was there ever such a way of establish
ing righteousness heard of? And suppose
we tried this with rude, hard, downright
people, with the masses, who for what is
told them want, above all, a plain ex
perimental proof, such as that fire will
burn you if you touch it. Whether in
prudence they ought to take the Bible
and religion on a low degree of evidence,
or not, it is quite certain that on this
ground they never will take them. And
it is quite certain, moreover, that never
on this ground did Israel, from whom we
derive our religion, take it himself or
recommend it. He did not take it in
prudence, because he found at any rate a
low degree of evidence for it; he took it
in rapture, because he found for it an evi
dence irresistible. But his own words are
the best: ‘ Thou, O Eternal, art the thing
that I long for, thou art my hope even
from my youth : through thee have I been
holden up ever since I was born.1 The
statutes of the Eternal rejoice the heart;
more desirable they are than gold, sweeter
than honey; in keeping of them there is
great reward.2 The Eternal is my strength,
my heart hath trusted in him and I am
helped ; therefore my heart danceth for
joy, and in my song will I praise him.’3
That is why Israel took his religion.
3-
But if Israel spoke of the Eternal thus,
it was, we say, because he had a plain
experimental proof of him. God was to
Israel neither an assumption nor a meta
physical idea; he was a power that can be
verified as much as the power of fire to
burn or of bread to nourish : the power,
not ourselves, that makes for righteousness.
And the greatness of Israel in religion, the
reason why he is said to have had religion
revealed to him, to have been entrusted
with the oracles of God, is because he had
1 Ps. Ixxi, 5, 6.
2 Ps. xix, 8, io, ii,
s Ps. xxviii, 7.
�OUR ‘MASSES’ AND THE BIBLE
97
in such extraordinary force and vividness gives to the famous argument from design
the perception of this power. And he or to the doctrine of creation as opposed
communicates it irresistibly because he to evolution. And it is none at all.
feels it irresistibly; that is why the Bible
Free as is his use of anthropomorphic
is not as other books that inculcate language, Israel had, as we have remarked
righteousness. Israel speaks of his in already, far too keen a sense of reality not
tuition still feeling it to be an intuition, to shrink, when he comes anywhere near
an experience ; not as something which to the notion of exact speaking about God,
others have delivered to him, nor yet as from affirmation, from professing to know
a piece of metaphysical notion-building. a whit more than he does know. ‘ Lo,
Anthropomorphic he is, for all men are, these are skirts of his ways,’ he says of
and especially men not endowed with the what he has experienced, ‘ but how little a
Aryan genius for abstraction; but he portion is known of him ! ’1 And again :
does not make arbitrary assertions which ‘ The secret things belong unto the Eternal
can never be verified, like our popular our God-, but the revealed things belong
religion, nor is he ever pseudo-scientific, unto us and to our children for ever : that
we may do all the words of this law.’2
like our learned religion.
He is credited with the metaphysical How different from our licence of full and
ideas of the personality of God, of the particular statement: ‘ A Personal First
unity of God, and of creation as opposed Cause, who thinks and loves, the moral
to evolution ; ideas depending, the first and intelligent Governor of the universe 1 ’
two of them, on notions of essence, Israel knew, concerning the eternal not
existence, and identity, the last of them ourselves, that it was ‘ a power that made
on the notion of cause and design. But for righteousness.’ This was revealed to
he is credited with them falsely.. All the Israel and his children, and through them
countenance he gives to the metaphysical to the world; all the rest about the
idea of the personality of God is given by eternal not ourselves was this power’s own
his anthropomorphic language, in which, secret. And all Israel’s language about
being a man himself, he naturally speaks this power, except that it makes for right
of the Power, with which he is concerned, eousness, is approximate language,—the
as a man also. So he says that Moses language of poetry and eloquence, thrown
saw God’s hinder parts;1 and he gives out at a vast object of our consciousness
just as much countenance to the scientific not fully apprehended by it, but extending
assertion that God has hinder parts, as to infinitely beyond it.
77/A, however, was ‘a revealed thing,’
the scientific assertion of God’s personality.
That is, he gives no countenance at all to Israel said, to him and to his children:
either. As to his asserting the unity of God ‘ the Eternal not ourselves that makes for
the case is the same. He would give, righteousness.’ And now, then, let us go
indeed, his heart and his worship to no to the masses with what Israel really did
manifestation of power, except of the power say, instead of what our popular and our
which makes for righteousness ; but he learned religion may choose to make him
affords to the metaphysical idea of the unity say. Let us announce, not: ‘ There rules a
of God no more countenance than this, and Great Personal First Cause, who thinks and
this is none at all. Then, lastly, as to the loves, the moral and intelligent Governor
idea of creation. He viewed, indeed, all of the universe, and therefore study your
order as depending on the supreme order Bible and learn to obey this ! ’ No ; but
of righteousness, and all the fulness and let us announce : ‘ There rules an enduring
beauty of the world as a boon added to Power, not ourselves, which makes for
the stock of that holder of the greatest of righteousness, and therefore study your
all boons already, the righteous. This, Bible and learn to obey this.’ For if we
however, is as much countenance as he announce the other instead, and they
1 Ex., xxxiii, 23.
1 Job, xxvi, 14.
2 Deut., xxix, 29.
G
�98
literature and dogma
reply: ‘ First let us verify that there rules
a Great Personal First Cause, who thinks
and loves, the moral and intelligent
Governor of the universe,’—what are we
to answer? We cannot answer.
But if, on the other hand, they ask :
‘ How are we to verify that there rules an
enduring Power, not ourselves, which
makes for righteousness?’—we may an
swer at once : ‘How? why as you verify
that fire burns,—by experience 1 It is
so ; try it! you can try it; every case of
conduct, of that which is more than threefourths of your own life and of the life of
all mankind, will prove it to you ! Dis
believe it, and you will find out your
mistake as surely as, if you disbelieve that
fire burns and put your hand into the fire
you will find out your mistake 1 Believe
it, and you will find the benefit of it 1 ’
This is the first experience.
But then the masses may go on, and
say : ‘ Why, however, even if there is an
enduring Power, not ourselves, that makes
for righteousness, should we study the
Bible that we may learn to obey him ?—
will not other teachers or books do as
well ? ’ And here again the answer is :
‘ Why ?—why, because this Power is
revealed in Israel and the Bible, and not
by other teachers and books ! that is,
there is infinitely more of him there, he
is plainer and easier to come at, and in
comparably more impressive. If you
want to know plastic art, you go to the
Greeks; if you want to know science, you
go to the Aryan genius. And why ?
Because they have the specialty for these
things ; for making us feel what they are
and giving us an enthusiasm for them.
Well, and so have Israel and the Bible a
specialty for righteousness, for making us
feel what it is and giving us an enthusiasm
for it. And here again it is experience
that we invoke : try it 1 Having convinced
yourself that there is an enduring Power,
not ourselves, that makes for righteous
ness, set yourself next to try to learn more
about this Power, and to feel an enthu
siasm for it. And to this end, take a
course of the Bible first, and then a
course of Benjamin Franklin, Horace
Greeley, Jeremy Bentham, and Mr.
Herbert Spencer; see which has most
effect, which satisfies you most, which
gives you most moral force. Why, the
Bible is of such avail for teaching
righteousness, that even to those who
come to it with all sorts of false notions
about the God of the Bible, it yet does
teach righteousness, and fills them with
the love of it; how much more those
who come to it with a
notion about
the God of the Bible ! ’ And this is the
second experience.
Now here, at the beginning of things,
is the point, we say, where to apply
correction to our current theology, if we
are to bring the religion of the Bible
home to the masses. It is of no use
beginning lower down, and amending this
or that ramification, such as the Atonement, or the Real Presence, or Eternal
Punishment, when the root from which
all springs is unsound. Those whom it
most concerns us to teach will never
interest themselves at all in our amended
religion, so long as the whole thing
appears to them unsupported and in the
air.
Yet that original conception of God,
on which all our religion is and must be
grounded, has been very little examined,
and very few of the controversies which
arise in religion go near it. Religious
people say solemnly, as if we doubted it,
that ‘ he that cometh to God must
believe that He A, and that He is a
rewarder of them that seek him; ’1 and
that ‘a man who preaches that Jesus
Christ is not God is virtually out of the
pale of Christian communion.’
We
entirely agree with them ; but we want to
know what they mean by God. Now on
this matter the state of their thoughts is,
to say the truth, extremely vague; but
what they really do at bottom mean by
God is, in general : the best one knows.
And this is the soundest definition they
will ever attain ; yet scientifically it is not
a satisfying definition, for clearly the best
1 Heb.) xi, 6.
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�OUR 1 MASSES' AND THE BIBLE
99
one knows differs for everybody. So they lator, suggests that the Hebrew religion
have to be more precise ; and when they was so unlike that of any other Semitic
collect themselves a little, they find that people because of the simple and austere
they mean by God a magnified and non- life led by the Beni-Israel as nomads of
natural man. But this, again, they can the desert; or because they did not, like
hardly say in so many words. Therefore other Semitic people, put a feminine
at last, when they are pressed, they divinity alongside of their masculine
collect themselves all they can, and make divinity, and thus open the way to all
a great effort, and out they come with sorts of immorality. But many other
their piece of science : God is a Great tribes have had the simple and austere
Personal First Cause, who thinks and life of nomads of the desert, without its
loves, the moral and intelligent Governor bringing them to the religion of Israel.
of the universe. But this piece of science And, if the Hebrews did not put a femi
of theirs we will have nothing to say to, nine divinity alongside of their masculine
for we account it quite hollow; and we divinity, while other Semitic people did,
say, and have shown (we think), that the surely there must have been something to
Bible, rightly read, will have nothing to cause this difference ! and what we want
say to it either. Yet the whole pinch of to know is this something.
the matter is here; and till we are agreed
And to this something, we say, the
as to what we mean by God, we can ‘ Zeit-Geist,’ and a prolonged and large
never, in discussing religious questions, experience of men’s expressions and how
understand one another or discuss they employ them, leads us. It was be
seriously. Yet, as we have said, hardly cause, while other people, in the operation
any of the discussions which arise in of that mighty not ourselves which is in us
religion turn upon this cardinal point. and around us, saw this thing and that
This is what cannot but strike one in that thing and many things, Israel saw in it
torrent of petitiones principii (for so we one thing only :—that it made for conduct,
really must call them) in the shape of for righteousness. And it docs ; and con
theological letters from clergymen, which duct is the main part of human life. And
pours itself every week through the hence, therefore, the extraordinary reality
columns of the Guardian. They all and power of Israel’s God and of Israel’s
employ the word God with such extra religion. And the more we strictly limit
ordinary confidence! as if ‘a Great ourselves, in attempting to give a scientific
Personal First Cause, who thinks and account of God, to Israel’s authentic in
loves, the moral and intelligent Governor tuition of him, and say that he is ‘the
of the universe,’ were a verifiable fact Eternal Power, not ourselves, that makes
given beyond all question; and we had for righteousness,’ the more real and pro
now only to discuss what such a Being found will Israel’s words about God be
would naturally think about Church vest come to us, for we can then verify his
ments and the use of the Athanasian words as we use them.
Eternal, thou hast been our refuge from
Creed. But everything people say, under
these conditions, is in truth quite in the one generation to another !x If we define
air.
the Eternal to ourselves, ‘ a Great Personal
Even those who have treated Israel First Cause, who thinks and loves, the
and his religion the most philosophically, moral and intelligent Governor of the
seem not to have enough considered that universe,’ we can never verify that this
so wonderful an effect must have had has from age to age been a refuge to men.
some cause to account for it, other than But if we define the Eternal, ‘ the endur
any which they assign. Professor Kuenen, ing Power, not ourselves, that makes for
whose excellent History of the Religion righteousness,’ then we can know and
of Israel1 ought to find an English trans- till the Downfall of the Jewish State) ; Haarlem.
1 De Godsdienst van Israel tot den Ordergang
Van den foodschen Staat (The Religion of Israel
An English translation has now appeared.
1 Ps. xc, I. G2
�ICO
literature am> dogma
feel the truth of what we say when we
declare : Eternal^ thou hast been our refuge
from one generation to another 1 For in
all the history of man we can verify it.
Righteousness has been salvation ; and
to verify the God of Israel in man’s long
history is the most animating, the most
exalting and the most pure of delights.
Blessed is the nation whose God is the
Eternal /1 is a text, indeed, of which the
world offers to us the most inexhaustible
and the most marvellous illustration.
Nor is the change here proposed, in
itself, any difficult or startling change in
our habits of religious thought, but a
very simple one. Nevertheless, simple as
may be this change which is to be made
high up and at the outset, it undeniably
governs everything farther down. Jesus
is the Son of God; the Holy Spirit is the
Spirit of truth that proceeds from God.
What God? ‘A Great Personal First
Cause, who thinks and loves, the moral
and intelligent Governor of the Universe? ’
—to whom Jesus and the Holy Spirit are
related in the way described in the Athana
sian Creed, so that the operations of the
three together produce what the West
minster divines call ‘ the Contract passed
in the Council of the Trinity,’ and what
we, for plainness, describe as the fairy-tale
of the three supernatural men ? This is
all in the air, but in the air it all hangs
together. There stand the Bible words!
how you construe them depends entirely
on what definition of God you start with.
If Jesus is the Son of ‘a Great Personal
First Cause,’ then the words of the Bible,
literally taken, may well enough lend
themselves to a story like that of the three
supernatural men. The story can never
be verified; but it may nevertheless be
what the Bible has to say, if the Bible
have started, as theology starts, with the
‘ Great Personal First Cause.’ And the
story may, when it comes to be examined,
have many minor difficulties, have things
to baffle us, things to shock us; but still
it may be what the Bible has to say.
However, the masses will get rid of all
minor difficulties in the simplest manner,
1 Ts. xxxiii, 12.
by rejecting the Bible altogether on ac
count of the major difficulty,—its starting
with an assumption which cannot possibly
be verified.
But suppose the Bible is discovered,
when its expressions are rightly understood,
to start with an assertion which can be
verified : the assertion, namely, not of ‘ a
Great Personal First Cause,’ but of ‘an
enduring Power, not ourselves, that
makes for righteousness.’ Then by the
light of this discovery we read and under
stand all the expressions that follow.
Jesus comes forth from this enduring
Power that makes for righteousness, is
sent by this Power, is this Power’s Son;
the Holy Spirit proceeds from this same
Power, and so on.
Now, from the innumerable minor
difficulties which attend the story of the
three supernatural men, this right con
struction, put on what the Bible says of
Jesus, of the Father, and of the Holy
Spirit, is free. But it is free from the
major difficulty also; for it neither de
pends upon what is unverifiable, nor is
it unverifiable itself. That Jesus is the
Son of a Great Personal First Cause is
itself unverifiable; and that there is a
Great Personal First Cause is unverifiable
too. But that there is an enduring Power,
not ourselves, which makes for righteous
ness, is verifiable, as we have seen, by
experience; and that Jesus is the off
spring of this Power is verifiable from
experience also. For God is the author
of righteousness; now, Jesus is the Son
of God because he gives the method and
secret by which alone is righteousness
possible. And that he does give this, we
can verify, again, from experience. It is
so! try, and you will find it to be so 1
Try all the ways to righteousness you can
think of, and you will find that no way
brings you to it except the way of Jesus,
but that this way does bring you to it!
And, therefore, as we found we could say
to the masses: ‘Attempt to do without
Israel’s God that makes for righteousness,
and you will find out your mistake ! ’ so
we find we can now proceed farther, and
say : ‘ Attempt to reach righteousness by
any way except that of Jesus, and you will
�OUR 1 MASSES' AND THE BIBLE
find out your mistake ! ’ This is a thing
that can prove itself, if it is so ; and it will
prove itself, because it is so.
Thus, we have the authority of both
Old and New Testament placed on just
the same solid basis as the authority of
the injunction to take food and rest:
namely, that experience proves we cannot
do without them. And we have neglect
of the Bible punished just as putting one’s
hand into the fire is punished : namely,
by finding we are the worse for it. Only,
to attend to this experience about the
Bible, needs more steadiness than to
attend to the momentary impressions of
hunger, fatigue, and pain; therefore it is
called faith, and counted a virtue. But
the appeal is to experience in this case just
as much as in the other; only to ex
perience of a far deeper and greater kind.
ioi
for us to make out ours,—is by reason and
experience. ‘ Even such as are readiest,’!
says Hooker very well, ‘ to cite for one
thing five hundred sentences of Scripture,
what warrant have they that any one of
them doth mean the thing for which it is
alleged ? ’
They can have none, he
replies, but reasoning and collection ; and
to the same effect Butler says of reason,
that ‘ it is indeed the only faculty we have
wherewith to judge concerning anything,
even revelation itself.’ Now it is simply
from experience of the human spirit and
its productions, from observing as widely
as we can the manner in which men have
thought, their way of using words and what
they mean by them, and from reasoning
upon this observation and experience,
that we conclude the construction theo
logians put upon the Bible to be false,
and ours to be the truer one.
In the first place, from Israel’s master
feeling, the feeling for righteousness, the
5predominant sense that men are, as St.
So there is no doubt that we get a Paul says, ‘created unto good works
much firmer, nay an impregnable, ground which God hath prepared beforehand that
for the Bible, and for recommending it to we should walk in them,’1 we collect the
the world, if we put the construction on it origin of Israel’s conception of God,—of
which we propose. The only question that mighty ‘not ourselves’ which more
is: Is this the right construction to put or less engages all men’s attention,—as the
on it ? is it the construction which properly Eternal Power that makes for righteous
belongs to the Bible? And here, again, ness. This we do, because the more we
our appeal is to the same test which we come to know how ideas and terms arise,
have employed throughout, the only and what is their character, the more this
possible test for man to employ,—the test explanation of Israel’s use of the word
of reason and experience. Given the ‘ God ’ seems the true and natural one.
Bible-documents, what, it is inquired, is Again, the construction we put upon the
the right construction to put upon them ? doctrine and work of Jesus is collected in
Is it the construction we propose ? or is the same way. From the data we have,
it- the construction of the theologians, and from comparison of these data with
according to which the dogmas of the what we have besides of the history of
Trinity, the Incarnation, the Atonement, ideas and expressions, this construction
and so on, are presupposed all through seems to us the true and natural one.
the Bible, are sometimes latent, sometimes The Gospel-narratives are just that sort of
come more visibly to the surface, but are account of such a work and teaching as
always there ; and to them every word in the work and teaching of Jesus Christ,
according to our construction of it, was,
the Bible has reference, plain or figured ?
Now, the Bible does not and cannot which would naturally have been given by
tell us itself, in black and white, what is devoted followers who did not fully
the right construction to put upon it; we understand it. And understand it fully
have to make this out. And the only they then could not, it was so very new,
possible way to make it out,—for the dog
ii, IQ,
matists to make out their construction, or
�102
LITERATURE AND DOGMA
great, and profound; only time gradually
brings its lines out more clear.
On the other hand, the theologians’
notion of dogmas presupposed in the
Bible, and of a constant latent reference
to them, we reject, because experience is
against it. The more we know of the
history of ideas and expressions, the more
we are convinced that this account is not
and cannot be the true one; that the
theologians have credited the Bible with
this presupposition of dogmas and this
constant latent reference to them, but
that they are not really there. ‘The
Fathers recognised] says Cardinal New
man, ‘ a certain truth lying hid under the
tenor of the sacred text as a whole, and
showing itself more or less in this verse
or that, as it might be. The Fathers
might have traditionary information of the
general drift of the inspired text which we
have not.’ Born into the world twenty
years later, and touched with the breath
of the ‘ Zeit-Geist,’ how would this
exquisite and delicate genius have been
himself the first to feel the unsoundness
of all this ! that we have heard the like
about other books before, and that it
always turns out to be not so, that the
right interpretation of a document, such
as the Bible, is not in this fashion. Homer’s
poetry was the Bible of the Greeks,
however strange a one ; and just in the
same way there grew up the notion of a
mystical and inner sense in the poetry of
Homer, underlying the apparent sense,
but brought to light by the commen
tators ; perhaps, even, they might have
traditionary information of the drift of
the Homeric poetry which we have not;
—who knows ? But, once for all, as our
literary experience widens, this notion of
a secret sense in Homer proves to be a
mere dream. So, too, is the notion of a
secret sense in the Bible, and of the
Fathers’ disengagement of it.
Demonstration in these matters is im
possible. It is a maintainable thesis that
the allegorising of the Fathers is right,
and that this is the true sense of the
Bible. It is a maintainable thesis that the
theological dogmas of the Trinity, the
Incarnation, and the Atonement, underlie
the whole Bible. It is a maintainable
thesis, also, that Jesus was himself
immersed in the Aberglaube of his nation
and time, and that his disciples have
reported him with absolute fidelity;
in this case we should have, in our
estimate of Jesus, to make deductions for
his Aberglaube, and to admire him for the
insight he displayed in spite of it. This
thesis, we repeat, or that thesis, or another
thesis is maintainable, as to the construc
tion to be put on such a document as the
Bible. Absolute demonstration is im
possible, and the only question is : Does
experience, as it widens and deepens,
make for this or that thesis, or make
against it? And the great thing against
any such thesis as either of the two wTe
have just mentioned is, that the more we
know of the history of- the human spirit
and its deliverances, the more we have
reason to think such a thesis improbable,
and it loses its hold on our assent more.
On the other hand, the great thing, as we
believe, in favour of such a construction
as we put upon the Bible is, that
experience, as it increases, constantly
confirms it; and that, though it cannot
command assent, it will be found to win
assent more and more.
�THE TRUE GREATNESS QF THE OLD TESTAMENT
CHAPTER XI
THE TRUE GREATNESS OF THE OLD TESTAMENT
Win assent in the end the new construction
will, but not at once ; and there will be a
passage-time of confusion first. It is not
for nothing, as we have said, that people
take short cuts and tell themselves fairy
tales, because the immense scale of the
history of ‘ bringing in everlasting right
eousness,’ is too much for their narrow
minds. It is not for nothing; they pay for
it. It is not for nothing that they found
religion on prediction and miracle,
guarantee it by preternatural interventions
and the coming of the Son of Man in the
clouds, consummate Jt by a banquet with
Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, in a city
shining with gold and precious stones.
They are like people who have fed their
minds on novels or their stomachs on
opium; the reality of things is flat and
insipid to them, although it is in truth far
grander than the phantasmagorical world
of novels and of opium. But it is long
before the novel-reader or the opium-eater
can rid himself of his bad habits, and
brace his nerves, and recover the tone of
his mind enough to perceive it. Distress
and despair at the loss of his accustomed
stimulant are his first sensations.
Miracles, the mainstay of popular
religion, are touched by Ithuriel’s spear.
They are beginning to dissolve ; but what
are we to expect during the process of
dissolution ? Probably, amongst many
religious people, vehement efforts at re
action, a recrudescence of superstition ;
the passionate resolve to keep hold on
what is slipping away from them by giving
up more and more the use of reason in
religion, and by resting more and more on
authority. The Church of Rome is the
great upholder of authority as against
reason in religion; and it will be strange
if in the coming time of transition the
Church of Rome does not gain.
But for many more than those whom
Rome attracts there will be an interval,
between the time when men accepted the
religion of the Bible as a thaumaturgy and
the time when they perceive it to be some
thing different, in which they will be prone
to throw aside the religion of the Bible
altogether as a delusion. And this, again,
will be mainly the fault,—if fault that can
be called which was an inevitable error, —3
of the religious people themselves, who,
from the time of the Apostles downwards,
have insisted upon it that religion shall be
a thaumaturgy or nothing. For very
many, therefore, when it cannot be a
thaumaturgy, it will be nothing. And
very likely there will come a day when
there will be less religion than even now]
For the religion of the Bible is so simple
and powerful, that even those who make
the Bible a thaumaturgy get hold of
the religion, because they read the Bible |
but, if men do not read the Bible, they
cannot get hold of it. And then will be
fulfilled the saying of the prophet Amos 1
‘ Behold, the days come, saith the Eternal,
that I will send a famine in the land, not’
a famine of bread, nor a thirst for water,
but of hearing the words of the Eternal;
and they shall wander from sea to sea,
and from the north even to the east they
shall run to and fro to seek the word of
the Eternal, and shall not find it.’1
Nevertheless, as after this mournful
prophecy the herdsman of Tekoah goes
on to say: ‘ There shall yet not the least
grain of Israel fall to the earth / ’2 To
the Bible men will return; and why?
Because they cannot do without it.
Because happiness is our being’s end and
aim, and happiness belongs to righteous
ness, and righteousness is revealed in the
Bible. For this simple reason men will
return to the Bible, just as a man who tried
to give up food, thinking it was a vain thing
and he could do without it, would return to
* Am., viii, II, 12.
2 Am., ix, 9.
�io4
LITERATURE AND DOGMA
food ; or a man who tried to give up sleep,
thinking it was a vain thing and he could
do without it, would return to sleep.
Then there will come a time of recon
struction ; and then, perhaps, will be the
moment for labours, like this attempt of
ours, to be found useful. For though
everyone must read the Bible for himself,
and the perfect criticism of it is an
immense matter, and it may be possible
to go much beyond what we here achieve
or can achieve, yet the method for reading
the Bible we, as we hope and believe, here
give. And although, in this or that detail,
the construction we put upon the Bible
may be wrong, yet the main lines of the
construction will be found, we hope and
believe, right ; and the reader who has
the main lines may easily amend the
details for himself.
instance. The non-Christian religions are
not to the wise man mere monsters ; he
knows they have much good and truth in
them. He knows that Mahometanism,
and Brahminism, and Buddhism, are not
what the missionaries call them; and he
knows, too, how really unfit the mission
aries are to cope with them. For any
one who weighs the matter well, the mis
sionary in clerical coat and gaiters whom
one sees in wood-cuts preaching to a
group of picturesque Orientals, is, from
the inadequacy of his criticism both of
his hearers’ religion and of his own, and
his signal misunderstanding of the very
Volume he holds in his hand, a hardly
less grotesque object in his intellectual
equipment for his task than in his outward
attire. Yet everyone allows that this
strange figure carries something of what
is called European civilisation with him,
and a good part of this is due to Chris
2.
tianity. But even the Christianity itself
that he preaches, imbedded in a false
Meanwhile to popular Christianity, theology though it be, cannot but contain,
from those who can see its errors, is due in a greater or lesser measure as it may
an indulgence inexhaustible, except where happen, these three things: the all-im
limits are required to it for the good of ! portance of righteousness, the method of
religion itself. Two considerations make Jesus, the secret of Jesus. No Chris
this indulgence right. One is, that the tianity that is ever preached but manages
language of the Bible being,—which is to carry something of these along with it.
the great point a sound criticism establishes
And if it carries them to Mahometan
against dogmatic theology,—approximate, ism, they are carried where of the all
not scientific, in all expressions of religious importance of righteousness there is a
feeling approximate language is lawful, knowledge, but of the method and secret
and indeed is all we can attain to. It of Jesus, by which alone is righteousness
cannot be adequate, more or less proper possible, hardly any sense at all. If it
it can be ; but, in general, approximate carries them to Brahminism, they are
language consecrated by use and religious carried where of the all-importance of
feeling acquires therefrom a propriety of righteousness, the foundation of the whole
its own. This is the first consideration. matter, there is a wholly insufficient
The second is, that on both the ‘method’ sense; and where religion is, above all,
and the ‘ secret ’ of Jesus popular Chris that metaphysical conception, or meta
tianity in no contemptible measure both physical play, so dear to the Aryan genius
can and does, as we have said, lay hold, and to M. Emile Burnouf. If it carries
in spite of its inadequate criticism of the them to Buddhism, they are carried
Bible. Now, to lay hold on the method to a religion to be saluted with respect,
and secret of Jesus is a very great thing; indeed; for it has not only the sense for
an inadequate criticism of the Bible is a righteousness, it has, even, the secret of
comparatively small one.
Jesus. But it employs the secret ill,
Certainly this consideration should because greatly wanting in the method,
govern our way of regarding many things because utterly wanting in the sweet
in popular Christianity;—its missions, for reasonableness, the unerring balance, the
�THE TRUE GREATNESS OF THE OLD TESTAMENT
epieikeia. Therefore to all wfiom it visits,
the Christianity of our missions, inade
quate as may be its criticism of the
Bible, brings what may do them good.
And if it brings the Bible itself, it brings
what may not only help the good preached,
but may also with time dissipate the
erroneous criticism which accompanies
this and impairs it. All this is to be said
for popular religion; and it all makes in
favour of treating popular religion ten
derly, of sparing it as much as possible,
of trusting to time and indirect means to
transform it, rather than to sudden,
violent changes.
3-
Learned religion, however, the pseudo
science of dogmatic theology, merits no
such indulgence. It is a separable ac
cretion, which never had any business to
be attached to Christianity, never did it
any good, and now does it great harm,
and thickens an hundredfold the religious
confusion in which we live. Attempts to
adopt it, to put a new sense into it, to
make it plausible, are the most misspent
labour in the world. Certainly no reli
gious reformer who tries it, or has tried
it, will find his work live.
Nothing is more common, indeed,
than for religious writers, who have a
strong sense of the genuine and moral
side of Christianity, and who much en
large on the pre-eminence of this, to put
themselves right, as it were, with dogmatic
theology, by a passing sentence expressing
profound belief in its dogmas, though in
discussing them, it is implied, there is
little profit. So Mr. Erskine of Linlathen,
that unwearying and much-revered ex
ponent of the moral side of the Bible:
‘ It seems difficult,’ he says, ‘ to conceive
that any man should read through the
New Testament candidly and attentively,
without being convinced that the doctrine
of the Trinity is essential to and implied
in every part of the system.’ Even already
many readers of Mr. Erskine feel, when
they come across such a sentence as that,
as if they had suddenly taken gravel or
105
sand into their mouth. Twenty years
hence this feeling will be far stronger ;
the reader will drop the book, saying that
certainly it can avail him nothing. So,
also, Bunsen was fond of maintaining,
putting some peculiar meaning of his
own into the words, that the whole of
Christianity was in the Lutheran doctrine
of justification by faith. Thus, too, the
Bishop of Exeter chooses to say that his
main objection to keeping the Athanasian
Creed is, that it endangers the doctrine
of the Trinity, which is so important.
Mr. Maurice, again, that pure and devout
spirit,—of whom, however, the truth must
at last be told, that in theology he passed
his life beating the bush with deep
emotion and never starting the hare,—
Mr. Maurice declared that by reading
between the lines he saw in the Thirtynine Articles and the Athanasian Creed
the altogether perfect expression of the
Christian faith.
But all this is mischievous as well as
vain. It is vain, because it is meant to
conciliate the so-called orthodox, and it
does not conciliate them. Of his attach
ment to the doctrine of the Trinity the
Bishop of Exeter may make what pro
testations he will, Archdeacon Denison
will still smell a rat in them ; and the
time has passed when Bunsen’s Evangeli
cal phrases could fascinate the Evangeli
cals. Such language, however, does also
actual harm, because it proceeds from a
misunderstanding and prolongs it. For
it may be well to read between the lines
of a man labouring with an experience
he cannot utter ; but to read between the
lines of a notion-work is absurd, for it is
of the essence of a notion-work not to
need it. And the Athanasian Creed is
a notion-work, of which the fault is that
its basis is a chimaera. It is an applica
tion of the terms of Greek logic to a
chimaera, its own notion of the Trinity,
a notion unestablished, not resting on
observation and experience, but assumed
to be given in Scripture, yet not really
given there. Indeed the very expression,
the Trinity, jars with the whole idea and
character of Bible-religion. But, lest the
Unitarian should be unduly elated at
�ip6
LITERATURE AND DOGMA
hearing this, let us hasten to add that
so too, and just as much, does the ex
pression, a Great Personal First Cause.
Learned pseudo-science applied to the
data of the Bible is best called plainly
what it is,—utter blunder; criticism of the
same order, and of which the futility will
one day be just as visible, as that criticism
about the two swords which some way
back we quoted. To try to tinker such
criticism only makes matters worse. The
best way is to throw it aside altogether, and
forget it as fast as possible. This is Avhat
the good of religion demands, and what
all the enemies of religion would most
deprecate. The hour for softening down,
and explaining away, is passed ; the whole
false notion-work has to go. Mild de
fences of it leave on the mind a sense
of the defender’s hopeless inability to
perceive our actual situation ; violent de
fences read, alas ! only like ‘ a tale told by
an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying
nothing.'
4-
But the great work to be done for the
better time which will arrive, and for the
time of transition which will precede it, is
not a work of destruction, but to show that
the truth is really, as it is, incomparably
higher, grander, more wide and deep
reaching, than the Aberglaube and false
science which it displaces.
The propounders of ‘The Great Per
sonal First Cause, who thinks and loves,’
are too modest when they sometimes say,
taking their lesson from the Bible, that,
after all, man can know next to nothing
of the Divine nature. They do them
selves signal injustice; they themselves
know, according to their own statements,
a great deal, far too much. They know so
much, that they make of God a magnified
and non-natural man; and when this
leads them into difficulties, and they
think to escape from these by saying that
God’s ways are not man’s ways, they do
not succeed in making their God cease to
resemble a man, they only make him re
semble a man puzzled. But the truth is,
that one may have a great respect for man, i
and yet be permitted, even however much
he be magnified, to imagine something
far beyond him. And this is the good of
such an unpretending definition of God
as ours : the Eternal Power, not ourselves,
that. makes for righteousness;—it leaves
the infinite to the imagination, and to the
gradual efforts of countless ages of men,
slowly feeling after more of it and finding
it. Ages and ages hence, no such ade
quate definition of the infinite not our
selves will yet be possible, as any sciolist
of a theologian will now pretend to rattle
you off in a moment. But on one point
of the operation of this not ourselves we
are clear: that it makes for conduct, for
righteousness. So far we know God, that
he is ‘the Eternal that lovcth righteous
ness ; ’ and the farther we go in righteous
ness, the more we shall know him.
And as this true and authentic God
of Israel is far grander than the God of
popular religion, so is his real affirmation
of himself in human affairs far grander
than that poor machinery of prediction
and miracle, by which popular religion
imagines that he affirms himself. The
greatness of the scale on which he operates
makes it hard for men to follow him; but
the greatness of the scale, too, makes the
grandeur of the operation. Take the
Scripture-promises and their accomplish
ment. As the whirlwind passeth, so is the
wicked no more; but the righteous is an
everlastingfoundation.1 And again : They
shall call Jerusalem the throne of the
Eternal, and all the nations shall be
gathered unto it.'2. It is objected that this
is not fulfilled. It is not fulfilled yet,
because the whole career of the human
race has to bring out its fulfilment, and
this career is still going forward. ‘ Men
are impatient, and for precipitating things,’
says Butler; and Davison, whom on a
former occasion I quoted to differ from
him,—Davison, not the least memorable
of that Oriel group, whose reputation I,
above most people, am bound to cherish,
—says withaweighty and noble simplicity
worthy of Butler: ‘ Conscience and the
present constitution of things are not
1 Prov., x, 25.
2 Jer. iii, 17.
�TIIEHRUE GREATNESS OF THE OLD TESTAMENT
corresponding terms; it is conscience
and the issue of things which go together.’
It is so ; and this is what makes the
spectacle of human affairs so edifying
and so sublime. Give time enough for
the experience, and experimentally and
demonstrably it is true, that ‘the path
of the just is as the shining light which
shineth more and more unto the perfect
day.’1 Only, the limits for the experience
are wider than people commonly think.
‘Yet a little while, and the ungodly shall
be clean gone 1 ’2 but ‘ a little while ’
according to the scope and working of
that mighty Power to which a thousand
years are as one day. The world goes
on, nations and men arrive and depart,
with varying fortune, as it might seem,
with time and chance happening unto all.
Look a little deeper, and you will see that
one strain runs through it all: nations
and men, whoever is shipwrecked, is ship
wrecked on conduct. It is the God of
Israel steadily and irresistibly asserting
himself; the Eternal that loveth righteous
ness.
In this sense we should read the
Hebrew prophets. They did not foresee
and foretell curious coincidences, but
they foresaw and foretold this inevitable
triumph of righteousness. First, they
foretold it for all the men and nations of
their own day, and especially for those
colossal unrighteous kingdoms of the
heathen world, which looked everlasting ;
then, for all time. ‘ As the whirlwind
passeth, so is the wicked no more; ’—•
sooner or later it is, it must be, so.
Hebrew prophecy is never read aright
until it is read in this sense, which indeed
of itself it cries out for; it is, as Davison,
again, finely says, impatient for the larger
scope. How often, throughout the ages,
how often, even, by the Hebrew prophets
themselves, has some immediate visible
interposition been looked for ! ‘I looked,’
they make God say, ‘ and there was no
man to help, and I wondered that there
was none to uphold; therefore mine own
arm brought salvation unto me. The day
of vengeance is in mine heart, the year of
1 Prov., iv, 18.
2 Ps. xxxvii, IO.
IOfl
my redeemed is come.’1 O long-delaying
arm of might, will the Eternal never put
thee forth, to smite these sinners who go
on as if righteousness mattered nothing ?
There is no need ; they are smitten. Down
they come, one after another; Assyria falls,
Babylon, Rome; they all fall for want
of condzict, righteousness. ‘ The heathen
make much ado, and the kingdoms are
moved; but God hath showed his voice,
and the earth doth melt away.’2
Nay, but Judaea itself, the Holy Land,
the land of God’s Israel, perishes too,—
and perishes for want of righteousness
Yes, Israel’s visible Jerusalem is in ruins ;
and how, then, shall men ‘call Jerusalem
the throne of the Eternal, and all the
nations shall be gathered unto it ’ ? But
the true Israel was Israel the bringer in
and defender of the idea of conduct, Israel
the lifter-up to the nations of the banner
of righteousness. The true Jerusalem was
the city of this ideal Israel. And this
ideal Israel could not and cannot perish,
so long as its idea, righteousness and its
necessity, does not perish, but prevails.
Now, that it does prevail, the whole
course of the world proves, and the fall
of the actual Israel is of itself witness.
Thus, therefore, the ideal Israel for ever
lives and prospers; and its city is the city
whereunto all nations and languages, after
endless trials of everything else except
conduct, after incessantly attempting to
do without righteousness and failing, are
slowly but surely gathered.
To this Israel are the promises, and
to this Israel they are fulfilled. ‘ The
nation and kingdom that will not serve
thee shall perish, yea, those nations shall(
be utterly wasted.’3 It is so; since all
history is an accumulation of experiences
that what men and nations fall by is want
of conduct. To call it by this plain name
is often not amiss, for the thing is never
more great than when it is looked at in
its simplicity and reality. Yet the true
name to touch the soul is the name Israel
gave : righteousness. And to Israel, as
the representative of this imperishable
and saving idea of righteousness, all the
1 Is., lxiii, 4, 5.
- Ps. xlvi, 6.
3 Is., lx, 12.
�108
LITERATURE AND DOGMA
promises come true, and the language of
none of them is pitched too high. The
Eternal, Israel says truly, is on my sidel
‘ Fear not, thou worm Jacob, and thou
handful Israel 1 I will help thee, saith the
Eternal. Behold, I have graven thee
upon the palms of my hands, thy walls
are continually before me. The Eternal
hath chosen Zion ; O pray for the peace
of Jerusalem ! they shall prosper that love
thee. Men shall call Jerusalem the throne
of the Eternal, and all the nations shall
be gathered unto it. And he will destroy
in this mountain the face of the covering
cast over all people, and the veil that is
spread over all nations ; he will swallow
up death in victory. And it shall be said
in that day : Lo, this is our God I this is
the Eternal, we have waited for him, we
will be glad and rejoice in his salvation.’2
5And if Assyria and Babylon seem too
remote, let us look nearer home for tes
timonies to the inexhaustible grandeur
and significance of the Old Testament
revelation, according to that construction
which we here put upon it.
Every
educated man loves Greece, owes grati
tude to Greece. Greece was the lifter-up
to the nations of the banner of art and
science, as Israel was the lifter-up of the
banner of righteousness. Now, the world
cannot do without art and science. And
the lifter-up of the banner of art and
science was naturally much occupied with
them, and conduct was a homely plain
matter. Not enough heed, therefore, was
given by him to conduct. But conduct,
plain matter as it is, is six-eighths of life,
while art and science are only two-eighths.
And this brilliant Greece perished for
lack of attention enough to conduct; for
want of conduct, steadiness, character.
And there is this difference between
Greece and Judaea : both were custodians
of a revelation, and both perished ; but
Greece perished of iwr-fidelity to her
1 Ps. cxviii, 6.
2 Is., xli, 14; xlix, 16; Ps. cxxxii, 13 ;
cxxii, 6 ; Jer., iii, 17 ; Is., xxv, 7, 8, 9.
revelation, and Judaea perished of underfidelity to hers. Nay, and the victorious
revelation now, even now,—in this age
when more of beauty and more of know
ledge are so much needed, and knowledge,
at any rate, is so highly esteemed,—the
revelation which rules the world even
now, is not Greece’s revelation, but
Judaea’s; not the pre-eminence of art
and science, but the pre-eminence of
righteousness.
It reminds one of what is recorded of
Abraham, before the true inheritor of the
promises, the humble and homely Isaac,
was born. Abraham looked upon the
vigorous, bold, brilliant young Ishmael,
and said appealingly to God : ‘ Oh that
Ishmael might live before thee 1 ’1 But
it cannot be; the promises are to conduct,
conduct only. And so, again, we in like
manner behold, long after Greece has
perished, a brilliant successor of Greece,
the Renascence, present herself with high
hapes. The preachers of righteousness,
blunderers as they often were, had for
centuries had it all their own way. Art
and science had been forgotten, men’s
minds had been enslaved, their bodies
macerated. But the gloomy, oppressive
dream is now over. ‘ Let us return to
Nature ! ’ And all the world salutes with
pride and joy the Renascence, and prays
to Heaven : ‘ Oh that Ishmael might live
before thee 1 ’ Surely the future belongs
to this brilliant new-comer, with his
animating maxim: Let us return to
Nature! Ah, what pitfalls are in that
word Nature ! Let us return to art and
science, which are a part of Nature ; yes.
Let us return to a proper conception of
righteousness, to a true use of the method
and secret of Jesus, which have been all
denaturalised ; yes. But, ‘ Let us return
to Nature; ’—do you mean that we are
to give full swing to our inclinations, to
throw the reins on the neck of our senses,
of those sirens whom Paul the Israelite
called ‘ the deceiving lusts,’2 and of
following whom he s^id, ‘ Let no man
beguile you with vain words, for because
of these things cometh the wrath of God
1 Gen., xvij, 18.
a Epli., iv, 22.
�THE TRUE GREATNESS OF THE OLD TESTAMENT
upon the children of disobedience ’ ? 1
Do you mean that conduct is not threefourths of life, and that the secret of
Jesus has no use? And the Renascence
did mean this, or half meant this; so
disgusted was it with the cowled and
tonsured Middle Age. And it died of it,
this brilliant Ishmael died of it 1 it died
of provoking a conflict with the homely
Isaac, righteousness. On the Continent
came the Catholic re-action ; in England,
as we have said elsewhere, ‘ the great
middle class, the kernel of the nation,
entered the prison of Puritanism, and had
the key turned upon its spirit there for
two hundred years.’ After too much
glorification of art, science, and culture,
too little ; after Rabelais, George Fox.
France, again, how often and how
impetuously for France has the prayer
gone up to Heaven : ‘ Oh that Ishmael
might live before thee ! ’ It is not enough
perceived what it is which gives to France
her attractiveness for everybody, and her
success, and her repeated disasters.
France is Phomme sensuel moyen, the
average sensual man; Paris is the city of
Phomme sensuel moyen. This has an
attraction for all of us. We all have in
us this homme sensuel, the man of the
‘ wishes of the flesh and of the current
thoughts;’ but we develop^him under
checks and doubts, and unsystematically
and often grossly. France, on the other
hand, develops him confidently and
harmoniously. She makes the most of
him, because she knows what she is about
and keeps in a mean, as her climate is in
a mean, and her situation. She does not
develop him with madness, into a mon
strosity, as the Italy of the Renascence
did; she develops him equably and
systematically.
And hence she does
not shock people with him but attracts
them; she names herself the France
of tact and measure, good sense, logic.
In a way, this is true. As she develops
the senses, the apparent self, all round, in
good faith, without misgivings, without
violence, she has much reasonableness
and clearness in all her notions and
1 Ep>h , v, 6.
109
arrangements; a sort of balance even in
conduct ; as much art and science, and it
is not a little, as goes with the ideal of
I'homme sensuel moyen. And from her
ideal of the average sensual man France
has deduced her famous gospel of the
Rights of Man, which she preaches with
such an infinite crowing and self-admira
tion. France takes ‘the wishes of the
flesh and of the current thoughts ’ for a
man’s rights ; and human happiness, and
the perfection of society, she places in
everybody’s being enabled to gratify these
wishes, to get these rights, as equally as
possible and as much as possible. In
Italy, as in ancient Greece, the satisfying
development of this ideal of the average
sensual man is broken by the imperious
ideal of art and science disparaging it; in
the Germanic nations, by the ideal of
morality disparaging it. Still, whenever,
as often happens, the pursuers of these
higher ideals are a little weary of them, or
unsuccessful with them, they turn with a
sort of envy and admiration to the ideal
set up by France,—so positive, intelligible,
and, up to a certain point, satisfying.
They are inclined to try it instead of their
own, although they can never bring them
selves to try it thoroughly, and therefore
well. But this explains the great attrac
tion France exercises upon the world. AU
of us feel, at some time or other in our
lives, a hankering after the French ideal,
a disposition to try it. More particularly
is this true of the Latin nations; and there
fore everywhere, among these nations, you
see the old indigenous type of city dis
appearing, and the type of modern Paris,
the city of Phomme sensuel moyen, re
placing it. La Boheme, the ideal, free,
pleasurable life of Paris, is a kind of
Paradise of Ishmaels. And all this assent
from every quarter, and the clearness and
apparent reasonableness of their ideal
besides, fill the French with a kind of
ecstatic faith in it, a zeal almost fanatical
for propagating what they call French
civilisation everywhere, for establishing its
predominance, and their own predomi
nance along with it, as of the people
entrusted with an oracle so showy and
taking. Oh that Ishmael might live before
�literature and dogma
I IO
thee! Since everybody has something
which conspires with this -Ishmael, his
success, again and again, seems to be
certain. And again and again he seems
drawing near to a worldwide success,
nay, to have succeeded 1—but always, at
this point, disaster overtakes him, he sig
nally breaks down. At this crowning
moment, when all seems triumphant with
him, comes what the Bible calls a crisis or
judgment. Now is the judgment of this
world ! now shall the prince of this world
he cast out!1 Cast out he is, and always
must be, because his ideal, which is also
that of France in general, however she
may have noble spirits who contend
against it and seek a better, is after all a
false one. Plausible and attractive as it
may be, the constitution of things turns
out to be somehow or other against it.
And why ? Because the free development
of our senses all round, of our apparent
self, has to undergo a profound modifica
tion from the law of our higher real self,
the law of righteousness; because he,
whose ideal is the free development of
the senses all round, serves the senses, is a
servant. But the servant abideth not in
the house for ever; the son abideth for
ever?
Is it possible to imagine a grander
testimony to the truth of the revelation
committed to Israel? What miracle of
making an iron axe-head float on water,
what successful prediction that a thing
should happen just so many years and
months and days hence, could be really
half so impressive ?
6.
So that the whole history of the world
to this day is in truth one continual
establishing of the Old Testament revela
tion : ‘ O ye that love the Eternal, see that
ye hate the thing that is evil! to him that
ordereth his conversation right, shall be
shown the salvation of GodM And whether
we consider this revelation in respect to
human affairs at large, or in respect to
’ John, xii, 31.
2 John, viii, 35.
3 Ps. xcvii, 10; 1, 23.
individual happiness, in either case its
importance is so immense, that the people
to whom it was given, and whose record is
in the Bible, deserve fully to be singled
out as the Bible singles them. ‘ Behold,
darkness doth cover the earth, and gross
darkness the nations; but the Eternal
shall arise upon thee, and his glory shall
be seen upon thee ! ’1 For, while other
nations had the misleading idea that this
or that, other than righteousness, is saving,
and it is not; that this or that, other than
conduct, brings happiness, and it does
not; Israel had the true idea that right
eousness is saving, that to conduct belongs
happiness.
Nor let it be said that other nations,
too, had at least something of this idea.
They had, but they were not possessed
with it; now, to feel it enough to make
the world feel it, it was necessary to be
possessed with it. It is not sufficient to
have been visited by such an idea at
times, to have had it forced occasionally
on one’s mind by the teaching of ex
perience. No ; he that hath the bride is
the bridegroom;2 the idea belongs to
him who has most loved it. Common
prudence can say : Honesty is the best
policy; morality can say : To conduct
belongs happiness. But Israel and the
Bible are filled with religious joy, and rise
higher and say : ‘ Righteousness is salva
tion !’—and this is what is inspiring. ‘ I
have 5/zzcZ’unto thy testimonies 1 Eternal,
what love have I unto thy law ! all the day
long is my study in it. Thy testimonies
have I claimed as mine heritage for ever,
and why? they are the very joy of my
heart !’ 3 This is why the testimonies of
righteousness are Israel’s heritage for ever,
because they were the very joy of his heart.
Herein Israel stood alone, the friend and
elect of the Eternal. 1 He showeth his
word unto facob, his statutes and ordi
nances unto Israel. He hath not dealt
so with any nation, neither have the
heathen knowledge of his laws.’ 4
Poor Israel ! poor ancient people !5 It
was revealed to thee that righteousness is
1 Is., lx, 2.
2 John, iii, 29.
8 Ps. cxix, 31, 97, III.
4 Ps. cxlvii, 19, 20.
5 Is., xliv, 7.
�TttE TRUE GREATNESS OF CHRISTIANITY
salvation ;the question, what righteousness
is, was thy stumbling-stone. Seer of the
vision of peace, that yet couldst not see the
things which belong unto thy peace 1 with
that blindness thy solitary pre-eminence
ended, and the new Israel, made up out of
all nations and languages, took thy room.
But, thy visitation complete, thy temple
in ruins, thy reign over, thine office done,
thy children dispersed, thy teeth drawn,
thy shekels of silver and gold plundered,
did there yet stay with thee any remem
brance of thy primitive intuition, simple
and sublime, of the Eternal that loveth
righteousness ? Perhaps not; the Tal
mudists were fully as well able to efface it
as the Fathers. But if there did, what
punishment can have been to thee like the
Hi
punishment of watching the performances
of the Aryan genius upon the foundation
which thou hadst given to it ?—to behold
this terrible and triumphant philosopher,
with his monotheistic idea and his meta
physical Trinity, ‘ neither confounding the
Persons nor dividing the Substance ’ ? Like!
the torture for a poet to hear people laying
down the law about poetry who have not
the sense of what poetry is,—a sense with
which he was born ! like the affliction to
a man of science to hear people talk of
things as proved who do not even know
what constitutes a fact!
From the
Council of Nicaea down to Convocation
and our two bishops ‘ doing something |
for the Godhead of the Eternal Son, what
must thou have had to suffer !
CHAPTER XII
THE TRUE GREATNESS OF CHRISTIANITY
No ; the mystery hidden from ages and
generations,1 which none of the rulers of
this world knew,2 the mystery revealed
finally by Jesus Christ and rejected by the
Jews, was not the doctrine of the Trinity,
gior anything speculative. It was the method
and the secret of Jesus. Jesus did not
change the object for men,—righteousness.
He made clear what it was, and that it
was for all men, and that it was this :—
his method and his secret, in union with his
temper.
This was the mystery, and the Apostles
had still the consciousness that it was.
To ‘ learn Christ,’ to ‘ be taught the truth
as it is in Jesus,’ was not, with them, to
acquire certain tenets about One God in
Trinity and Trinity in Unity. It was, 'to
be renewed in the spirit ofyour mind, and
to put on the new man which after God is
Treated in righteousness and true holiness? 3
And this exactly amounts to the method
and secret of Jesus.
For Catholic and for Protestant theo
Col., i, 26.
2 I Cor., ii, 8.
3 Eph., v, 23, 24.
logy alike this consciousness, which the
Apostles had still preserved, was lost.
For Catholic and Protestant theology
alike, the truth as it is in Jesus, the
mystery revealed in Christ, meant some
thing totally different from his method and
secret. But they recognised, and indeed
the thing was so plain that they could not
well miss it, they recognised that on all
Christians the method and secret of Jesus
were enjoined. So to this extent the
method and secret of Jesus were preached
and had their effect. To this extent true
Christianity has been known, and to the
extent before stated it has been neglected.]
Now, as we say that the truth and gran
deur of the Old Testament most comes
out experimentally,—that is, by the whole
course of the world establishing it, and
confuting what is opposed to it—so it is
with Christianity. Its grandeur and truth
are far best brought out experimentally',
and the thing is, to make people see this.
But there is this difference between
the religion of the Old Testament and
Christianity. Of the religion of the Old
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113
Testament we can pretty well see to the
end, we can trace fully enough the experi
mental proof of it in history. But of
Christianity the future is as yet almost
unknown. For that the world cannot get
on without righteousness we have the clear
experience, and a grand and admirable
experience it is. But what the world will
become by the thorough use of that which
is really righteousness, the method and
the secret and the sweet reasonableness of
Jesus, we have as yet hardly any experience
at all. Therefore we, who in this essay
limit ourselves to experience, shall speak
here of Christianity and of its greatness
very soberly. Yet Christianity is really
all the grander for that very reason which
makes us speak about it in this sober
manner, —that it has such an immense
development still before it, and that it has
as yet so little shown all it contains, all it
can do. Indeed, that Christianity has
already done so much as it has, is a wit
ness to it; and that it has not yet done
more, is a witness to it too. Let us
observe how this is so.
2.
Few things are more melancholy than
to observe Christian apologists taunting
the Jews with the failure of Hebraism to
fulfil the splendid promises of prophecy,
and Jewish apologists taunting Christen
dom with the like failure on the part of
Christianity. Neither has yet fulfilled
them, or could yet have fulfilled them.
Certainly the restoration by Cyrus, the
Second Temple, the Maccabean victories,
are hardly more than the shadows of a
fulfilment of the magnificent words: ‘The
sons of them that afflicted thee shall
come bending unto thee, and all they
that despised thee shall bow themselves
down at the soles of thy feet; thy gates
shall not be shut day nor night, that men
may bring unto thee the treasures of the
Gentiles, and that their kings may be
brought.’1 The Christianisation of all
the leading nations of the world is, it is
1 Is., lx, 14, ii.
said, a much better fulfilment of that
promise. Be it so. Yet does Christen
dom, let us ask, offer more than a shadow
of the fulfilment of this: ‘ Violence shall
no more be heard in thy land; the vile
person shall no more be called noble, nor
the worker of mischief worthy; thy people
shall be all righteous; they shall all know
me, from the least to the greatest; I will
put my law in their inward parts, and
write it in their hearts; the Eternal shall
be thine everlasting light, and the days of
thy mourning shall be ended ’ ? 1 Mani
festly it does not. Yet the two promises
hang together: one of them is not truly
fulfilled unless the other is.
The promises were made to righteous
ness, with all which the idea of righteousness
involves. And it involves Christianity.
They were made on the immediate pro
spect of a small triumph for righteous
ness, the restoration of the Jews after the
captivity in Babylon : but they are not
satisfied by that triumph. The prevalence
of the profession of Christianity is a
larger triumph: yet in itself it hardly
satisfies them any better. What satisfies
them is the prevailing of that which
righteousness really is, and nothing else
satisfies them. Now, Christianity is that
which righteousness really is. Therefore,
if something called Christianity prevails,
and yet the promises are not satisfied,
the inference is that this something is not
that which righteousness really is, and
therefore not really Christianity. And as
the course of the world is perpetually
establishing the pre-eminence of righteous
ness, and confounding whatever denies
this pre-eminence, so, too, the course of
the world is for ever establishing what
righteousness really is,—that is to say,
true Christianity,—and confounding what
ever pretends to be true Christianity and
is not.
Now, just as the constitution of things
turned out to be against the great un
righteous kingdoms of the heathen world,
and against all the brilliant Ishmaels we
have seen since, so the constitution of
things turns out to be against all false
1 Is., lx, 18 ; xxxii, 5; lx, 21; Jcr., xxxi,
33> 34 5 Is-, Ix, 20.
�THE TRUE GREATNESS OF CHRISTIANITY
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presentations of Christianity, such as the
theology of the Fathers or Protestant
theology. They do not work successfully,
they do not reach the aim, they do not
bring the w°rid to the fruition of the
promises made to righteousness. And
the reason is, because they substitute for
what is really righteousness something
else. Catholic dogma or Lutheran justi-
1 fication by faith they substitute for the
I method and secret and temper of Jesus.
Nevertheless, as all Christian Churches
do recommend the method and the secret
of Jesus, though not in the right way or
in the right eminency, still the world is
| made partially acquainted with what
righteousness really is, and the doctrine
produces some effect, although the full
effect is much thwarted and deadened by
I
the false way in which the doctrine is
I
presented. However, the effect produced
i
is great. For instance, the sum of individual happiness that has been caused by
Christianity is, anyone can see, enormous.
But let us take the effect of Christianity
on the world. And if we look at the
■ thing closely, we shall find that its effect
has been this: Christianity has brought
the world, or at any rate all the leading
part of the world, to regard righteousness
as only the Jews regarded it before the
coming of Christ. The world has accepted,
so far as profession goes, that original
revelation made to Israel: the pre-eminence
of righteousness. The infinite truth and
attractiveness of the method and secret
and character of Jesus, however falsely
surrounded, have prevailed with the world
so far as this. And this is an immense
gain, and a signal witness to Christianity.
The world does homage to the pre-emi
nence of righteousness; and here we
have one of those fulfilments of prophecy which are so real and so glorious.
‘Glorious things are spoken of thee, O
City of God ! I will make mention of
Egypt and Babylon as of them that know
■ me! behold, the Philistines also, and
”3
writeth up the people : This man was
born there / ’1 That prophecy is at the
present day abundantly fulfilled. The
world’s chief nations have now all come,
we see, to reckon and profess themselves
born in Zion,—born, that is, in the
religion of Zion, the city of righteousness.
But there remains the question : what
righteousness really is. The method and
secret and sweet reasonableness of Jesus.
But the world does not see this ; for it
puts, as righteousness, something else first
and this second. So that here, too, as to
seeing what righteousness really is, the
world now is much in the same position
in which the Jews, when Jesus Christ
came, were. It is often said : ‘ If Jesus
Christ came now, his religion would be
rejected.’ And this is only another way of
saying that the world now, as the Jewish
people formerly, has something which
thwarts and confuses its perception of
what righteousness really is. It is so;
and the thwarting cause is the same now
as then :—the dogmatic system current,
the so-called orthodox theology. This
prevents now, as it did then, that which
righteousness really is, the method and
secret and temper of Jesus, from being
rightly received, from operating fully, and
from accomplishing its due effect.
So true is this, that we have only to
look at our own community to see the
almost precise parallel, so far as religion
is concerned, to the state of things pre
sented in Judaea when Jesus Christ came.
The multitudes are the same everywhere.
The chief priests and elders of the people,
and the scribes, are our bishops and
dogmatists, with their pseudo-science of
learned theology blinding their eyes, and
always,—whenever simple souls are dis
posed to think that the method and secret
of Jesus is true religion, and that the
Great Personal First Cause and the God
head of the Eternal Son have nothing to
do with it,—eager to cry out: This people
that knoweth not the law are cursed! 2
The Pharisees, with their genuine concern
for religion, but total want of perception
of what religion really is, and by their
1 Ps. Ixxxvii, 3-6.
2 John, vii, 49.
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�LITERATURE AND DOGMA
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temper, attitude, and aims doing their
best to make religion impossible, are the
Protestant Dissenters. The Sadducees
are our friends the philosophical Liberals,
who believe neither in angel nor spirit
but in Mr. Herbert Spencer. Even the
Roman governor has his close parallel in
bur celebrated aristocracy, with its super
ficial good sense and good nature, its
complete inaptitude for ideas, its profound
helplessness in presence of all great spiri
tual movements. And the result is, that
the splendid promises to righteousness
made by the Hebrew prophets, claimed
by the Jews as the property of Judaism,
claimed by us as the property of Chris
tianity, are almost as ludicrously inappli
cable to our religious state now, as to
theirs then.
And this, we say, is again a signal
witness to Christianity. Jesus Christ
came to reveal what righteousness, to
which the promises belong, really is;
and so long as this, though shown by
Jesus, is not recognised by us, we may
call ourselves Christendom as much as
we please, the true character of a Christen
dom will be wanting to us, because the
great promises of prophecy will be still
without their fulfilment. Nothing will
do, except righteousness ; and no other
conception of righteousness will do, ex
cept Jesus Christ’s conception of it :—
his method, his secret, and his temper.
3-
Yes, the grandeur of Christianity and
the imposing and impressive attestation
of it, if we could but worthily bring the
thing out, is here : in that immense ex
perimental proof of the necessity of it,
which the whole course of the world has
steadily accumulated, and indicates to us
as still continuing and extending. Men
will not admit assumptions, the popular
legend they call a fairy-tale, the metaphy
sical demonstrations do not demonstrate,
nothing but experimental proof will go
down ; and here is an experimental proof
which never fails, and which at the same
time is infinitely grander, by the vastness
of its scale, the scope of its duration, the
gravity of its results, than the machinery,
of the popular fairy-tale. Walking on the
water, multiplying loaves, raising corpses,
a heavenly judge appearing with trumpets
in the clouds while we are yet alive,—■
what is this compared to the real expe-*
rience offered as witness to us by Christi
anity? It is like the difference between
the grandeur of an extravaganza and the
grandeur of the sea or the sky,—immense
objects which dwarf us, but where we are
in contact with reality, and a reality of
which we can gradually, though very
slowly, trace the laws.
The more we trace the real law of
Christianity’s action the grander it willseem. Certainly in the Gospels there
is plenty of matter to call out our feelings.
But perhaps this has been somewhat over
used and mis-used, applied, as it has been,
chiefly so as to be subservient to what wre
call the fairy-tale of the three supernatural
men,—a story which we do not deny to
have, like other products of the popular
imagination, its pathos and power, but
which we have seen to be no solid foun
dation to rest our faith in the Bible on.
And perhaps, too, we do wrong, and
inevitably fall into what is artificial and
unnatural, in labouring so much to pro
duce in ourselves now, as the one impulse
determining us to use the method and
secret and temper of Jesus, that conscious
ardent sensation of personal love to him,
which we find the first generation of
Christians feeling and professing, and
which was the natural motor for those
who were with him or near him, and,
so to speak, touched him ; and in making
this our first object. At any rate, mis
employed as this motor has often been,
it might be well to forego or at least sus
pend its use for ourselves and others for
a time, and to fix our minds exclusively
on the recommendation given to the
method and secret of Jesus by their
being true, and by the whole course of
things proving this.
Now, just as the best recommendation
of the oracle committed to Israel, Righted
ousness is salvation, is found in our more
and more discovering, in our own history
�THE TRUE GREATNESS OF CHRISTIANITY
and in the whole history of the world, that
it is so, so we shall find it to be with the
method and secret of Jesus. That this
is the righteousness which is salvation,
that the method and secret of Jesus, that
is to say, conscience and self-renounce
ment, with the temper of Jesus, are
righteousness, bring about the kingdom
of God or the reign of righteousness,—
this, which is the Christian revelation and
what Jesus came to establish, is best
impressed, for the present at any rate, by
experiencing and showing again and again,
in ourselves and in the course of the world,
that it is so ; that this is the righteousness
which is saving, and that none other saves.
Let us but well observe what comes, in
ourselves or the world, of trying any
other, of not being convinced that this is
righteousness, and this only; and we shall
find ourselves more and more, as by
irresistible viewless hands, caught and
drawn towards the Christian revelation,
and made to desire more and more to
serve it. No proof can be so solid as this
experimental proof; and none, again, can
be so grand, so fitted to fill us with awe,
admiration, and gratitude. So that feeling
and emotion will now well come in after
it, though not before it. For the whole
course of human things is really, accord
ing to this experience, leading up to the
fulfilment of Jesus Christ’s promise to his
disciples : Fear not, little flock / for it is
wour Father's good pleasure to give you the
kingdom? And thus that comes out,
after all, to be true, which St. Paul
announced prematurely to the first genera
tion of Christians : When Christ, who is
our life, shall appear, then shall ye also
appear with hint in glory.2 And the
author of the Apocalypse, in like manner,
foretold : The kingdom of the world is
become the kingdom of our Lord and his
Christ? The kingdom of the Lord the
world is already become, by its chief
nations professing the religion of righteous
ness. The kingdom of Christ the world
will have to become, it is on its way
to become, because the profession of
1 Luke, xii, 32.
2 Cot., iii, 4.
3 Rev., xi, 15. The Alexandrian manuscript
is followed.
”5
righteousness, except as Jesus Christ
interpreted righteousness, is vain. We
can see the process, we are ourselves part
of it, and can in our measure help forward
or keep back its completion.
When the prophet, indeed, says to
Israel, on the point of being restored by
Cyrus: ‘ The nation and kingdom that
will not serve thee shall perish ! ’1 the
promise, applied literally, fails. But ex
tended to that idea of righteousness, of
which Israel was the depositary and in
which the real life of Israel lay, the
promise is true, and we can see it fulfilled.
In like manner, when the Apostle says
to the Corinthians or to the Colossians,
instructed that the second advent would
come in their own generation : ‘ We must
all appear before the judgment-seat of
Christi'2—1 When Christ, who is our life,
shall appear, then shall ye also appear
with him in glory ! ’3 the promise, applied
literally as the Apostle meant it and his
converts understood it, fails. But divested
of this Aberglaube or extra-belief, it is
true; if indeed the world can be shown,—■
and it can,—to be moving necessarily
towards the triumph of that Christ in
whom the Corinthian and Colossian
disciples lived, and whose triumph is the
triumph of all his disciples also.
4-
Let us keep hold of this same experi
mental process in dealing yvith the promise
of immortality; although here, if anywhere,
Aberglaube, extra-belief, hope, anticipa
tion, may well be permitted to come in.
Still, what we need for our foundation is
not Aberglaube, but Glaube ; not extra
belief in what is beyond the range of
possible experience, but belief in what
can and should be known to be true.
By what futilities the demonstration
of our immortality may be attempted, is
to be seen in Plato’s Phcedo. Man’s
natural desire for continuance, however
little it may be worth as a scientific proof
of our immortality, is at least a proof a
1 Is., Ix, 12.
* II Cor., v, 10.
* Col., iii, 4.
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LITERATURE AND DOGMA
thousand times stronger than any such
demonstration. The want of solidity in
such argument is so palpable, that one
scarcely cares to turn a steady regard upon
it at all. And even of the common
Christian conception of immortality the
want of solidity is, perhaps, most con
clusively shown, by the impossibility of so
framing it as that it will at all support a
steady regard turned upon it. In our
English popular religion, for instance, the
common conception of a future state of
bliss is just that of the Vision of Mirza :
‘Persons dressed in glorious habits with
garlands on their heads, passing among
the trees, lying down by the fountains, or
resting on beds of flowers, amid a con
fused harmony of singing birds, falling
waters, human voices, and musical instru
ments.’ Or, even, with many, it is that
of a kind of perfected middle-class home,
with labour ended, the table spread, good
ness all around, the lost ones restored,
hymnody incessant. ‘ Poor fragments all
of this low earth U Keble might well
say. That this conception of immortality
cannot possibly be true, we feel, the
moment we consider it seriously. And
yet who can devise any conception of a
future state of "bliss, which shall bear close
examination better?
Here, again, it is far best to take what
is experimentally true, and nothing else, as
our foundation, and afterwards to let hope
and aspiration grow, if so it may be, out
of this. Israel had said : ‘ In the way of
righteousness is life, and in the pathway
thereof there is no death.’1 He had
said : ‘The righteous hath hope in his
death.’2 He had cried to his Eternal
that loveth righteousness : ‘ Thou wilt not
leave my soul in the grave, neither wilt
thou suffer thy faithful servant to see cor
ruption ! thou wilt show me the path of
life ! ’3 And by a kind of short cut to
the conclusion thus laid down, the Jews
constructed their fairy-tale of an advent,
judgment, and resurrection, as wre find it
in the Book of Daniel. Jesus, again, had
said : ‘ If a man keep my word, he shall
1 Prov., xii, 28.
2 Prov., xiv, 32.
* Ps. xvi, 10, 11.
never see death.’1 And by a kind of short
cut to the conclusion thus laid down,
Christians constructed their fairy-tale of
the second advent, the resurrection of the
body, the New Jerusalem. But instead
of fairy-tales, let us begin, at least, with
certainties.
And a certainty is the sense of life, of
being truly alive, which accompanies righte
ousness. If this experimental sense does
not rise to be stronger in us, does not rise
to the sense of being inextinguishable, that
is probably because our experience of
righteousness is really so very small. Here,
therefore, we may well permit ourselves
to trust Jesus, whose practice and intuition
both of them went, in these matters, so far
deeper than ours. At any rate, we have
in our experience this strong sense of Zyfc
from righteousness to start with; capable
of being developed, apparently, by pro
gress in righteousness into something im
measurably stronger. Here is the true
basis for all religious aspiration after im
mortality. And it is an experimental
basis; and therefore, as to grandeur, it is
again, when compared with the popular
Aberglaube, grand with all the superior
grandeur, on a subject of the highest
seriousness, of reality over fantasy.
At present, the fantasy hides the
grandeur of the reality. But when all
the Aberglaube of the second advent, with
its signs in the sky, sounding trumpets
and opening graves, is cleared away, then
and not till then will come out the pro
found truth and grandeur of words of
Jesus like these: ‘The hour is coming,
when they that are in the graves shall
hear the voice of the Son of God ; and
they that hear shall live.'2
5-
Finally, and above all. As, for the
right inculcation of righteousness, we
need the inspiring words of Israel’s love
for it, that is, we need the Bible ; so, for
the right inculcation of the method and
secret of Jesus, we need the efieikeia, the
1 John, viii, 51.
2 John, v, 25.
�the true greatness of Christianity
sweetBreasonableness, of Jesus. That is,
in other words again, we need the Bible;
for only through the Bible-records of Jesus
can we get at his epieikeia. Even in these
records, it is and can be presented but
imperfectly ; but only by reading and
re-reading the Bible can we get at it at
all.
Now, greatly as the failure, from the
stress laid upon the pseudo-science of
Church-dogma, to lay enough stress upon
the method and secret of Jesus, has kept
Christianity back from showing itself in its
full power, it is probable that the failure
to apply to the method and secret of Jesus,
so far as these have at any rate been used,
his sweet reasonableness or epieikeia.,—his
temper,—has kept it back even more.
And the infinite of the religion of Jesus,
—its immense capacity for ceaseless
progress and farther development,—lies
principally, perhaps, in the line of dis
engaging and keeping before our minds,
more and more, his temper, and applying
it to our use of his method and secret.
For it is obvious from experience how
much our use of Jesus Christ’s method
and secret requires to be guided and
governed by his temper of epieikeia.
Indeed, without this, his method and
secret seem of almost no use at all. The
Flagellants imagined that they were
employing his secret; and the Dissenters,
with their ‘spirit of watchful jealousy,’
imagine that they are employing his
method. To be sure, Mr. Bradlaugh
imagines that the method and the secret
of Jesus, nay, and Jesus himself too, are
all baneful, and that the sooner we get
rid of them the better. So far, then, the
Flagellants and the Dissenters are in
advance of Mr. Bradlaugh: they value
Christianity, and they profess the method
and secret of Jesus. But they employ
them so ill, that one is tempted to say
they might nearly as well be without them.
And this is because they are wholly
without his temper of sweet reasonable
ness, or epieikeia. Now this can only be
got, first, by knowing that it is in the
Bible, and looking for it there ; and then,
by reading and re-reading the Gospels
continually, until we catch something of it.
This, again, is an experimental process.
That the epieikeia or sweet reasonableness
of Jesus may be brought to govern our
use of his method and secret, and that it
can and will make our use of his method
and secret quite a different thing, is
proved by our actually finding this to be
so when we try. So that the culmination
of Christian righteousness, in the applying,
to guide our use of the method and secret
of Jesus, his sweet reasonableness or
epieikeia, is proved from experience. We
end, therefore, as we began,—by ex
perience. And the whole series of
experiences, of which the survey is thus
completed, rests, primarily, upon one
fundamental fact,—itself, eminently, a
fact of experience: the necessity of righte
ousness.
CONCLUSION.
But now, after all we have been saying
of the pre-eminency of righteousness, we
remember what we have said formerly in
praise of culture and of Hellenism, and
against too much Hebraism, too exclusive
a pursuit of the ‘ one thing needful,’ as
people call it. And we cannot help
wondering whether we shall not be
reproached with inconsistency, and told
that we ought at least to sing, as the
Greeks said, a palinode ; and whether it
may not really be so, and we ought. And,
certainly, if we had ever said that Hellen
ism was three-fourths of human life, and
conduct or righteousness but one-fourth,
a palinode, as well as an unmusical man
may, we would sing. But we have never
said it. In praising culture, we have
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LITERATURE ANU UOGMA
never denied that conduct, not culture, is
three-fourths of human life.
Only it certainly appears, when the
thing is examined, that conduct comes to
have relations of a very close kind with
culture. And the reason seems to be
given by some words of our Bible, which,
though they may not be exactly the right
rendering of the original in that place, yet
in themselves they explain the connexion
of culture with conduct very well. ‘ I
have seen the travail,’ says the Preacher,
‘which God hath given to the sons of
men to be exercised in it; he hath made
everything beautiful in his time ; also, he
hath set the world in their heart.’1 He
hath set the world in their heart!—that is
why art and science, and what we call
culture, are necessary. They may be
only one-fourth of man’s life, but they are
there, as well as the three-fourths which
conduct occupies. ‘He hath set the
world in their heart.’ And, really, the
reason which we hence gather for the
close connexion between culture and
conduct, is so simple and natural that
we are almost ashamed to give it;
but we have offered so many simple and
natural explanations in place of the
abstruse ones which are current, that our
hesitation is foolish.
Let us suggest then, that, having this
one fourth of their nature concerned with
art and science, men cannot but somehow
employ it. If they think that the threefourths of their nature concerned with
conduct are the whole of their nature,
and that this is all they have to attend to,
still the neglected one-fourth is there, it
ferments, it breaks wildly out, it employs
itself all at random and amiss. And
hence, no doubt, our hymns and our
dogmatic theology. What is our dog
matic theology, except the mis-attribution
to the Bible,—the Book of conduct,—of a
science and an abstruse metaphysic which
is not there, because our theologians have
in themselves a faculty for science, for it
makes one-eighth of them ? But they do
not employ it on its proper objects ; so it
invades the Bible, and tries to make the
1 Ecclesiastes, iii, io, 11.
Bible what it is not, and to put into it
what is not there. And this prevents
their attending enough to what is in the
Bible, and makes them battle for what is
not in the Bible, but they have put
it there!—battle for it in a manner
clean contrary, often, to the teaching
of the Bible. So has arisen, for in
stance, all religious persecution. And
thus, we say, has conduct itself become
impaired.
So that conduct is impaired by the
want of science and culture; and our
theologians really suffer, not from having
too much science, but from having too
little. Whereas, if they had turned their
faculty for abstruse reasoning towards
the proper objects, and had given them
selves, in addition, a wide and large
acquaintance with the productions of the
human spirit and with men’s way of think
ing and of using words, then, on the one
hand, they would not have been tempted
to misemploy on the Bible their faculty
for abstruse reasoning, for they would
have had plenty of other exercise for it;
and, on the other hand, they would have
escaped that literary inexperience which
now makes them fancy that the Bible
language is scientific, and fit matter for
the application of their powers of abstruse
reasoning to it, when it is no such thing.
Then they would have seen the fallacy of
confounding the obscurity attaching to
the idea of God,—that vast not ourselves
which transcends us,—with the obscurity
attaching to the idea of their Trinity, a
confused metaphysical speculation which
puzzles us. The one, they would have
perceived, is the obscurity of the im
measurable depth of air, the other is the
obscurity of a fog. And fog, they would
have known, has no proper place in our
conceptions of God ; since whatever our
minds can possess of God they know
clearly, for no man, as Goethe says,
possesses what he does not understand;
but they can possess of Him but a very
little. All this our dogmatic theologians
would have known, if they had had more
science and more literature. And there
fore, simple as the Bible and conduct are,
still culture seems to be required for them,
�CONCLUSION
k—required *to prevent our mis-handling
and sophisticating them.
2.
Culture, then, and science and litera
ture are requisite, in the interest of religion
itself, even when, taking nothing but
conduct into account, we rightly make the
God of the Bible, as Israel made him, to be
simply and solely ‘ the Eternal Power, not
ourselves, that makes for righteousness}
For we are not to forget, that, grand as
this conception of God is, and well as it
meets the wants of far the largest part of
our being, of three-fourths of it, yet there
is one-fourth of our being of which it
does not strictly meet the wants, the part
which is concerned with art and science ;
or, in other wrords, with beauty and exact
knowledge.
For the total man, therefore, the truer
conception of God is as ‘the Eternal
Power, not ourselves, by which all things
fulfil the law of their being ; ’ by which,
therefore, we fulfil the law of our being so
far as our being is aesthetic and intellective,
as well as so far as it is moral. And it is
evident, as we have before now remarked,
that in this wider sense God is displeased
and disserved by many things which
be said, except by putting a strain
displease and disserve him
ghteousness. He is disby men uttering
as : Sing glory, glory,
I Triune ! and : Out
glory to
Til raise ! and :
of my
, and feel his blood flora,
My Jesus
'tis "life everlasting, 'Us heaven below !—■
or by theologians uttering such pseudo
science as their blessed truth that the God
of the universe is a person. But it would
be harsh to give, at present, this turn to
our employment of the phrases, pleasing
God, displeasing God.
And yet, as man makes progress, we
shall surely come to doing this. For, the
clearer our conceptions in science and art
become, the more will they assimilate
themselves to the conceptions of duty in
conduct, will become practically stringent
H9
like rules of conduct, and will invite the
same sort of language in dealing with them.
And so far let us venture to poach on M.
Emile Burnouf’s manor, and to talk about
the Aryan genius, as to say, that the love
of art and science, and the energy and
honesty in the pursuit of art and science,
in the best of the Aryan races do seem to
correspond in a remarkable way to the
love of conduct, and the energy and
honesty in the pursuit of conduct, in the
best of the Semitic. To treat science
and art with the same kind of seriousness
as conduct, does seem, therefore, to be a
not impossible thing for the Aryan genius
to come to.
But for all this, however, man is
hardly yet ripe. For our race, as we see
it now and as ourselves we form a part
of it, the true God is and must be pre
eminently the God of the Bible, the
Eternal who makes for righteousness, from
whom Jesus came forth, and whose Spirit
governs the course of humanity. Only,
we see that even for apprehending this
God of the Bible rightly and not wrongly,
science, and what so many people now
disparage, letters, and what we call, in
general, culture, seem to be necessary.
And meanwhile, to prevent our at all
pluming ourselves on having apprehended
what so much baffles our dogmatic friends
(although indeed it is not so much we
who apprehend it as the ‘ Zeit-Geist ’ who
discovers it to us), what a chastening and
wholesome reflexion for us it is, that it if
only to our natural inferiority to the^.
ingenious men that we are indebted for our
advantage over them ! For while they
were born with talents for metaphysical
speculation and abstruse reasoning, we are
so notoriously deficient in everything of
that kind, that our adversaries often taunt
us with our weakness, and have held us
up to public ridicule as being ‘ without a
system of philosophy based on principles
interdependent, subordinate, and co
herent.’ And so we were thrown on
letters; thrown upon reading this and
that,—which anybody can do,—and thus
gradually getting a notion of the history
of the human mind, which enables us
(the ‘Zeit-Geist’ favouring) to correct, in
�120
Literature
reading the Bible, some of the mistakes into
which men of more metaphysical talents
than literary experience have fallen.
Cripples in like manner have been known,
now and then, to be cast by their very
infirmity upon some mental pursuit which
has turned out happily for them; and a
good fortune of this kind has perhaps
been ours.
But we do not forget that this good
fortune we owe to our weakness, and that
the natural superiority remains with our
adversaries. And some- day, perhaps, the
and dogma
nature of God may be as well known as
the nature of a cone or a triangle ; and
then our two bishops may deduce its pro
perties with success, and make their
brilliant logical play about it,—rightly,
instead of as now, wrongly; and will
resume all their advantage. But this will
hardly be in our time. So that the
superiority of this pair of distinguished
metaphysicians will never perhaps, after
all, be of any real advantage to them, but
they will be deluded and bemocked by it
until they die.
/attaching to
At not ourselves
nth the obscurity
jjkjI their Trinity, a
( speculatiqs _ they w
>Yity
printed ev
SFOTTISWOODE AND CO. LTD., NE'.V STREET SQUARE
LONDON
1
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Dublin Core
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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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Conway Hall Library & Archives
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2018
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Conway Hall Ethical Society
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Pamphlet
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The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Literature & dogma : an essay towards a better apprehension of the Bible
Creator
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Arnold, Matthew [1822-1888]
Description
An account of the resource
Place of publication: London
Collation: 6-120 p. ; 22 cm.
Notes: Printed in double columns. Published for the Rationalist Press Association. Part of the NSS pamphlet collection.
Publisher
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Watts & Co.
Date
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1902
Identifier
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RA1566
N048
RA1804
Subject
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Bible
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<img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /><br /><span>This work (Literature & dogma : an essay towards a better apprehension of the Bible), identified by </span><span><a href="https://conwayhallcollections.omeka.net/items/show/www.conwayhall.org.uk">Humanist Library and Archives</a></span><span>, is free of known copyright restrictions.</span>
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application/pdf
Type
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Text
Language
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English
Bible as Literature
Bible-Criticism
NSS