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A
CHRISTIAN
CATECHISM
BY
ROBERT G. INGERSOLL
PRICE
SIXPENCE
London :
THE PIONEER PRESS, 2 NEWCASTLE STREET,
I903
E.C.
�WORKS BY COL. R. G. INGERSOLL
Ant and Morality. 2d.
Christ and Miracles. Id.
Christian Catechism, A. 6d.
Creeds and Spirituality. Id.
Crimes against Criminals. 3d.
Do I Blaspheme ? 2d.
Ernest Renan. 2d.
Faith and Fact. Reply to Rev. Dr. Field. 2d.
God and Man. Second Reply to Dr. Field. 2d.
God and the State. 2d.
House of Death. . Being Funeral Oration and Ad
dresses on various occasions. Is.
Is Suicide a Sin ? 2d.
Live Topics. Id.
Love the Reedeemer. A Reply to Count Tolstoy’s
“ Kreutzer Sonata.” 2d.
Marriage and Divorce.
An Agnostic’s View. 2d.
Id.
Myth and Miracle.
3d.
Oration on Lincoln.
Oration on the Gods.
Oration on Voltaire.
Paine the Pioneer.
Real Blasphemy.
6d.
3d.
2d.
Id.
Reply to Gladstone.
With Biography by J. M.
Wheeler. 4d.
Rome or Reason P
A Reply to Cardinal Manning.
3d.
Shakespeare.
Skulls.
2d.
A Lecture.
6d.
�N 22-4-
NATIONAL SECULAR SOCIETY
A
CHRISTIAN CATECHISM
BY
ROBERT G. INGERSOLL
London :
The Pioneer Press, 2 Newcastle Street, E.C.
1903
�PRINTED BY THE PIONEER PRESS
AT
2 NEWCASTLE-STREET, FARRINGDON-STREET, LONDON, E.C.
�INTRODUCTION.
Many of the late Colonel Ingersoll’s productions have been
published in England during the past twenty years, but this
Catechism has been overlooked, although it is one of the most
brilliant and useful things he ever did. It originated in this way.
Twenty years ago, when Ingersoll was at the top of his powers, he
was replied to in six sermons by the famous Dr. Talmage. The
Presbyterian preacher was not worth troubling about except for
his position in the religious world, and Ingersoll’s friends advised
him to treat the “ great divine ” with silent contempt. But the
“ great infidel ” saw an opportunity of doing a good turn to
Freethought. Talmage was strictly orthodox, and his view of the
Bible was old-fashioned. He gave himself away on every side.
To answer him was easy. Ingersoll, however, did more than
that; he broke Talmage to pieces and ground him to dust, dialec
tically ; and left him, personally, a laughing-stock to American
readers. This was done in “ Six Interviews ” stenographically
reported by I. Newton Baker and published by C. P. Farrell. At
the end of these Interviews there was printed “ The Talmagean
Catechism,” written with Ingersoll’s own hand. It was facetiously
intended for “ the young ” and for “ use in Sunday-schools,” and
to set forth the pith and marrow of what Talmage had been
pleased to say. in the form of a Shorter Catechism. Now I have
ventured to have this exquisite document reprinted as “ A
Christian Catechism.” Talmage was only the occasion of the
moment, and he may be dropped now. The Catechism is of far
broader scope and application ; and, to make it obviously so, only
two strokes of the pen were necessary. The first Ansiver read
“ Jehovah, the original Presbyterian.” I have let it read simply
11 Jehovah.” I have also substituted “Christian” for “Presby
terian ” before the word “ God ” at the bottom of page 39. These
are the only alterations I have made; and they leave the
Catechism a splendid undenominational exposure of Chris
tianity, in a form at once instructive and entertaining. In
this form I trust it will enjoy a wide circulation in England ; and,
to that end, I beg all Freethinkers into whose hands it may come
to pass it (or other copies) into the hands of their friends and
acquaintances, and especially to bring it to the attention of young
enquiring minds.
G. W. FOOTE.
October, 1903,
�A CHRISTIAN CATECHISM
As Mr. Talmage delivered the series of sermons referred to in these
interviews for the purpose of furnishing arguments to the
young, so that they might not be misled by the sophistry of
modern infidelity, I have thought it best to set forth, for use
in Sunday-schools, the pith and marrow of what he has been
pleased to say in the form of a Shorter Catechism.
-------- ♦---------
Question. Who made you ?
Answer. Jehovah.
What else did he make ?
Answer. He made the world and all things.
Question. Did he make the world out of nothing ?
Answer. No.
Question. What did he make it out of ?
Answer. Out of his “ omnipotence.” Many infidels
have pretended that if God made the universe, and if
there was nothing until he did make it, he had nothing
to make it out of. Of course this is perfectly absurd
when we remember that he always had his “ omnipo
tence ” ; and that is, undoubtedly, the material used.
Question. Did he create his own “ omnipotence ” ?
A nswer. Certainly not, he was always omnipotent.
Question. Then if he always had “ omnipotence,” he
did not “ create ” the material of which the universe is
made ; he simply took a portion of his “ omnipotence ”
and changed it to “ universe ” ?
Answer. Certainly, that is the way I understand it.
Question. Is he still omnipotent, and has he as much
“ omnipotence ” now as he ever had ?
Answer. Well, I suppose he has.
�A CHRISTIAN CATECHISM
5
Question. How long did it take God to make the universe ?
Answer. Six “ good-whiles.”
Question. How long is a “ good-while ” ?
Answer. That will depend upon the future discoveries
of geologists. “ Good-whiles ” are of such a nature that
they can be pulled out, or pushed up ; and it is utterly
impossible for any infidel, or scientific geologist, to make
any period that a “ good-while ” won’t fit.
Question. What do you understand by “the morning
and evening of a “ good while ” ?
_
Answer. Of course the words “ morning and evening”
are used figuratively, and mean simply the beginning
and the ending of each “ good-while.”
Question. On what day did God make vegetation ?
Answer. On the third day.
Question. Was that before the sun was made ?
Answer. Yes ; a “ good while ” before.
Question. How did vegetation grow without sunlight ?
Answer. My own opinion is that it was either “nou
rished by the glare of volcanoes in the moon ”; or “ it
may have gotten sufficient light from rivers of molten
granite
or “ sufficient light might have been emitted
by the crystallisation of rocks.” It has been suggested
that light might have been furnished by fireflies and
phosphorescent bugs and worms, but this I regard as
going too far.
Question. Do you think that light emitted by rocks
would be sufficient to produce trees ?
Answer. Yes, with the assistance of the “Aurora
Borealis, or even the Aurora Australis”; but with both,
most assuredly.
Question. If the light of which you speak was sufficient,
why was the sun made ?
Answer. To keep time with.
Question. What did God make man of ?
Answer. He made man of dust and “ omnipotence.”
Question. Did he make a woman at the same time that
he made a man ?
Answer. No; he thought at one time to avoid the
necessity of making a woman, and he caused all the
animals to pass before Adam, to see what he would call
them, and to see whether a fit companion could be found
for him. Among them all, not one suited Adam, and
�A CHRISTIAN CATECHISM
Jehovah immediately saw that he would have to make a
help-meet on purpose.
Question. What was woman made of?
. Answer. She was made out of “man’s side, out of his
right side,” and some more “ omnipotence.” Infidels
say that she was made out of a rib, or a bone, but that
is because they do not understand Hebrew.
Question. What was the object of making woman out
of man’s side ?
Answer. So that a young man would think more of a
neighbor’s girl than of his own uncle or grandfather.
Question. What did God do with Adam and Eve after
he got them done ?
A nswer. He put them in a garden to see what they
would do.
Question. Do we know where the Garden of Eden was,
and have we ever found any place where a “ river parted
and became into four heads ?”
Answer. We are not certain where this garden was,
and the river that parted into four heads cannot at
present be found. Infidels have had a great deal to say
about these four rivers, but they will wish they had even
one, one of these days.
Question. What happened to Adam and Eve in the
garden ?
Answer. They were tempted by a snake who was an
exceedingly good talker, and who probably came in
walking on the end of his tail. This supposition is
based upon the fact that, as a punishment, he was con
demned to crawl on his belly. Before that time, of
course, he walked upright.
Question. What happened then ?
. Answer. Our first parents gave way, ate of the for
bidden fruit, and, in consequence, disease and death
entered the world. Had it not been for this, there
would have been no death and no disease. Suicide
would have been impossible, and a man could have been
blown into a thousand atoms by dynamite, and the pieces
would immediately have come together again. Fire
would have refused to burn, and water to drown ; there
could have been no hunger, no thirst ; all things would
have been equally healthy.
Question. Do you mean to say that there would have
�A CHRISTIAN CATECHISM
7
been no death in the world, either of animals, insects, or
persons ?
Answer. Of course.
Question. Do you also think that all briers and thorns
sprang from the same source, and that, had the apple
not been eaten, no bush in the world would have had a
thorn, and brambles and thistles would have been un
known ?
Answer. Certainly.
Question. Would there have been no poisonous plants,
no poisonous reptiles ?
Answer. No, sir ; there would have been none; there
would have been no evil in the world if Adam and Eve
had not partaken of the forbidden fruit.
Question. Was the snake, who tempted them to eat,
evil ?
Answer. Certainly.
Question. Was he in the world before the forbidden
fruit was eaten ?
• Answer. Of course he was ; he tempted them to eat
it.
Question. How, then, do you account for the.fact that,
before the forbidden fruit was eaten, an evil serpent
was in the world ?
Answer. Perhaps apples had been eaten in other
worlds.
Question. Is it not wonderful that such awful con
sequences flowed from so small an act ?
Answer. It is not for you to reason about it; you
should simply remember that God is omnipotent. There
is but one way to answer these things, and that is to
admit their truth. Nothing so puts the Infinite out of
temper as to see a human being impudent enough to
rely upon his reason. The moment we rely upon our
reason, we abandon God, and try to take care of our
selves. Whoever relies entirely upon God, has no need
of reason, and reason has no need of him.
Question. Were our first parents under the immediate
protection of an infinite God ?
Awsw/. They were.
Question. Why did he not protect them ? Why did
he not warn them of this snake ? Why did he not put
them on their guard ? Why did he not make them so
�g
A CHRISTIAN CATECHISM
sharp, intellectually, that they could not be deceived ?
Why did he not destroy that snake ; or how did he come
to make him ; what did he make him for ?
Answer. You must remember that, although God
made Adam and Eve perfectly good, still he was very
anxious to test them. He also gave them the power of
choice, knowing at the same time exactly what they
would choose, and knowing that he had made them so
that they must choose in a certain way. A being of
infinite wisdom tries experiments. Knowing exactly
what will happen, he wishes to see if it will.
Question. What punishment did God inflict upon Adam
and Eve for the sin of having eaten the forbidden fruit ?
Awszwr. He pronounced a curse upon the woman,
saying that in sorrow she should bring forth children, and
that her husband should rule over her; that she, having
tempted her husband, was made his slave ; and through
her, all married women have been deprived of their
natural liberty. On account of the sin of Adam and
Eve, God cursed the ground, saying that it should bring
forth thorns and thistles, and that man should eat his
bread in sorrow, and that he should eat the herb of the
field.
Question. Did he turn them out of the garden because
of their sin ?
Answer. No. The reason God gave for turning them
out of the garden was : “ Behold the man is become as
one of us, to know good and evil; and now, lest he put
forth his hand and take of the tree of life and eat and
live forever, therefore, the Lord God sent him forth from
the Garden of Eden to till the ground from whence he
was taken.”
Question. If the man had eaten of the tree of life, would
he have lived forever ?
Answer. Certainly.
Question. Was he turned out to prevent his eating ?
Answer. He was.
Question. Then the Old Testament tells us how we
lost immortality, not that we are immortal, does it ?
Answer. Yes ; it tells us how we lost it.
Question. Was God afraid that Adam and Eve might
get back into the garden, and eat of the fruit of the tree
of life ?
�A CHRIS^iAN CATECHISM
9
Answer. I suppose he was, as he placed “ cherubims
and a flaming sword, which turned every way, to guard
the tree of life.”
Question. Has anyone ever seen any of these cheru
bims ?
Answer. Not that I know of.
Question. Where is the flaming sword now ?
Answer. Some angel has it in heaven.
Question. Do you understand that God made coats of
skins, and clothed Adam and Eve when he turned them
out of the garden ?
Answer. Yes, sir.
Question. Do you really believe that the infinite God
killed some animals, took their skins from them, cut out
and sewed up clothes for Adam and Eve ?
Answer. The Bible says so ; we know that he had
patterns for clothes, because he showed some to Moses
on Mount Sinai.
Question. About how long did God continue to pay
particular attention to his children in this world ?
Answer. For about fifteen hundred years ; and some
of the people lived to be nearly a thousand years of age.
Question. Did this God establish any schools or institu
tions of learning ? Did he establish any church ? Did
he ordain any ministers, or did he have any revivals ?
Answer. No; he allowed the world to go on pretty
much in its own way. He did not even keep his own
boys at home. They came down and made love to the
daughters of men, and finally the world got exceedingly
bad.
Question. What did God do then ?
Answer. He made up his mind that he would drown
them all. You see, they were all totally depraved—in
every joint and sinew of their bodies, in every drop of
their blood, and in every thought of their brains.
Question. Did he drown them all ?
Answer. No, he saved eight, to start with again.
Question. Were these eight persons totally depraved ?
Answer. Yes.
Question. Why did he not kill them, and start over
again with a perfect pair ? Would it not have been
better to have had his flood at first, before he made any
body, and drowned the snake ?
�IS
A CHRISTIAN CATECHlSNf
Answer. “ God’s ways are not our ways
and besides,
you must remember that “ a thousand years are as one
day ” with God.
Question. How did God destroy the people ?
Answer. By water; it rained forty days and forty nights,
and “ the fountains of the great deep were broken up.”
How deep was the water ?
Answer. About five miles.
Question. How much did it rain each day ?
Answer. About eight hundred feet; though the better
opinion now is that it was a local flood. Infidels have
raised objections and pressed them to that degree that
most orthodox people admit that the flood was rather
local.
Question. If it was a local flood, why did they put
birds of the air into the ark ? Certainly, birds could
have avoided a local flood ?
Answer. If you take this away from us, what do you
propose to give us in its place ? Some of the best
people of the world have believed this story. Kind
husbands, loving mothers, and earnest patriots have
believed it, and that is sufficient.
Question. At the time God made these people did he
know that he would have to drown them all ?
Answer. Of course he did.
Question. Did he know when he made them that they
would all be failures ?
Answer. Of course.
Question. Why, then, did he make them ?
Answer. He made them for his own glory, and no man
should disgrace his parents by denying it.
Question. Were the people after the flood just as bad
as they were before ?
Answer. About the same.
Question. Did they try to circumvent God ?
Answer. They did.
Question. How ?
Answer. They got together for the purpose of building
a tower, the top of which should reach to heaven, so
that they could laugh at any future floods, and go to
heaven at any time they desired.
Question. Did God hear about this ?
Answer. He did.
�A CHRISTIAN CATECHISM
It
Question. What did he say ?
Answer. He said: “ Go to; let us go down,” and see
what the people are doing; I am satisfied they will
succeed.
Question. How were the people prevented from suc
ceeding ?
Answer. God confounded their language, so that the
mason on top could not cry “mort’! ” to the hod
carrier below ; he could not think of the word to use, to
save his life, and the building stopped.
Question. If it had not been for the confusion of
tongues at Babel, do you really think that all the people
in the world would have spoken just the same language,
and would have pronounced every word precisely the
same ?
Answer. Of course.
Question. If it had not been, then, for the confusion of
languages, spelling books, grammars, and dictionaries,
would have been useless ?
Answer. I suppose so.
Question. Do any two people in the whole world
speak the same language now ?
Answer. Of course they don’t, and this is one of the
great evidences that God introduced confusion into the
languages. Every error in grammar, every mistake in
spelling, every blunder in pronunciation, proves the
truth of the Babel story.
Question. This being so, this miracle is the best
attested of all ?
Answer. I suppose it is.
Question. Do you not think that a confusion of tongues
would bring men together instead of separating them ?
Would not a man unable to converse with his fellow
feel weak instead of strong ; and would not people
whose language had been confounded cling together for
mutual support ?
Answer. According to nature, yes ; according to
theology, no ; and these questions must be answered
according to theology. And right here, it may be well
enough to state, that in theology the unnatural is the
probable, and the impossible is what has always
happened. If theology were simply natural, anybody
could be a theologian.
�II
À CHRISTIAN CATECHISM
Question. Did God ever make any other special efforts
to convert the people, or to reform the world ?
Answer. Yes, he destroyed the cities of Sodom and
Gomorrah with a storm of fire and brimstone.
Question. Do you suppose it was really brimstone ?
Answer. Undoubtedly.
Question. Do you think this brimstone came from the
clouds ?
Answer. Let me tell you that you have no right to
examine the Bible in the light of what people are pleased
to call “science.” The natural has nothing to do with
the supernatural. Naturally there would be no brim
stone in the clouds, but supernaturally there might be.
God could make brimstone out of his “ omnipotence.”
We do not know really what brimstone is, and nobody
knows exactly how brimstone is made. As a matter of
fact, all the brimstone in the world might have fallen at
that time.
Question. Do you think that Lot’s wife was changed
into salt ?
Answer. Of course she was. A miracle was performed.
A few centuries ago, the statue of salt made by changing
Lot’s wife into that article, was standing. Christian
travellers have seen it.
Question. Why do you think she was changed into salt ?
Answer. For the purpose of keeping the event fresh in
the minds of men.
Question. God having failed to keep people innocent in
a garden; having failed to govern them outside of a
garden ; having failed to reform them by water; having
failed to produce any good result by a confusion of
tongues ; having failed to reform them with fire and
brimstone, what did he then do ?
Answer. He concluded that he had no time to waste
on them all, but that he would have to select one tribe,
and turn his attention to just a few folks.
Question. Whom did he select ?
Answer. A man by the name of Abram.
Question. What kind of man was Abram ?
Answer. If you wish to know, read the twelfth chapter
of Genesis ; and if you still have any doubts as to his
character, read the twentieth chapter of the same book,
and you will see that he was a man who made merchan
�A CHRISTIAN CATECHISM
13
dise of his wife’s body. He had had such good fortune
in Egypt, that he tried the experiment again on Abimelech.
Question. Did Abraham show any gratitude ?
Answer. Yes; he offered to sacrifice his son, to show
his confidence in Jehovah.
What became of Abraham and his people ?
Answer. God took such care of them, that in about two
hundred and fifteen years they were all slaves in the land
of Egypt.
gwsAow. How long did they remain in slavery ?
Answer. Two hundred and fifteen years.
Question. Were they the same people that God had
promised to take care of ?
They were.
Question. Was God, at that time, in favor of slavery ?
Answer. Not at that time. He was angry at the
Egyptians for enslaving the Jews, but he afterwards
authorised the Jews to enslave other people.
Question. What means did he take to liberate the Jews ?
He sent his agents to Pharaoh, and demanded
their freedom ; and, upon Pharaoh’s refusing, he afflicted
the people, who had nothing to do with it, with various
plagues—killed children, and tormented and tortured
beasts.
Question. Was such conduct Godlike ?
Answer. Certainly. If you have anything against your
neighbor, it is perfectly proper to torture his horse, or
torment his dog. Nothing can be nobler than this.
You see it is much better to injure his animals than to
injure him. To punish animals for the sins of their
owners must be just, or God would not have done it.
Pharaoh insisted on keeping the people in slavery, and
therefore God covered the bodies of oxen and cows with
boils. He also bruised them to death with hailstones.
From this we infer that ■“ the loving kindness of God is
over all his works.”
Question. Do you consider such treatment of animals
consistent with divine mercy ?
Answer. Certainly. You know that under the Mosaic
dispensation, when a man did a wrong, he could settle
with God by killing an ox, or a sheep, or some doves.
If the man failed to kill them, of course God would kill
them. It was upon this principle that he destroyed the
�14
A CHRISTIAN CATECHISM
animals of the Egyptians. They had sinned, and he
merely took his pay.
Question. How was it possible, under the old dispen
sation, to please a being of infinite kindness ?
Answer. All you had to do was to take an innocent
animal, bring it to the altar, cut its throat, and sprinkle
the altar with its blood. Certain parts of it were to be
given to the butcher' as his share, and the rest was to be
burnt on the altar. When God saw an animal thus
butchered, and smelt the warm blood mingled with the
odor of burning flesh, he was pacified, and the smile of
forgiveness shed its light upon his face. Of course,
infidels laugh at these things ; but what can you expect
of men who have not been “ born again ? ” “ The
carnal mind is enmity with God.”
Question. What else did God do in order to induce
Pharaoh to liberate the Jews?
Answer. He had his agents throw down a cane in the
presence of Pharaoh and thereupon Jehovah changed
this cane into a serpent.
Question. Did this convince Pharaoh ?
Answer. No ; he sent for his own magicians.
Question. What did they do ?
Answer. They threw down some canes, and they also
were changed into serpents.
Question. Did Jehovah change the canes of the
Egyptian magicians into snakes ?
Answer. I suppose he did, as he is the only one
capable of performing such a miracle.
Question. If the rod of Aaron was changed into a ser
pent in order to convince Pharaoh that God had sent
Aaron and Moses, why did God change the sticks of
the Egyptian magicians into serpents—why did he dis
credit his own agents, and render worthless their only
credentials ?
Answer. Well, we cannot explain the conduct of
Jehovah ; were are perfectly satisfied that it was for the
best. Even in this age of the world God allows infidels
to overwhelm his chosen people with arguments; he
allows them to discover facts that his ministers cannot
answer, and yet we are satisfied that in the end God
will give the victory to us. All these things are tests of
faith. It is upon Ahis principle that God allows geology
�A CHRISTIAN CATECHISM
1$
to laugh at Genesis, that he permits astronomy appar
ently to contradict his holy word.
Question. What did God do with these people after
Pharaoh allowed them to go ?
Answer. Finding that they were not fit to settle a new
country, owing to the fact that when hungry they longed
for food, and sometimes when their lips were cracked
with thirst insisted on having water, God in his infinite
mercy had them marched round and round, back and
forth, through a barren wilderness, until all, with the
exception of two persons, died.
Question. Why did he do this ?
Answer. Because he had promised these people that
he would take them “to a land flowing with milk and
honey.’’
Question. Was God always patient and kind and mer
ciful toward his children while they were in the wilderness ?
Answer. Yes, he always was merciful and kind and
patient. Infidels have taken the ground that he visited
them with plagues and disease and famine ; that he had
them bitten by serpents, and now and then allowed the
ground to swallow a few thousands of them, and in other
ways saw to it that they were kept as comfortable and
happy as was consistent with good government; but all
these things were for their good ; and the fact is, infidels
have no real sense of justice.
Question. How did God happen to treat the Israelites
in this way, when he had promised Abraham that he
would take care of his progeny, and when he had pro-,
mised the same to the poor wretches while they were
slaves in Egypt ?
Answer. Because God is unchangeable in his nature,
and wished to convince them that every being should be
perfectly faithful to his promise.
Question. Was God driven to madness by the conduct
of his chosen people ?
Almost.
Question. Did he know exactly what they would do
when he chose them ?
Araswz. Exactly.
Question. Were the Jews guilty of idolatry?
Answer. They were. They worshipped other gods—•
gods made of wood and stone,
�16
A CHRISTIAN CATECHISM
Question. Is it not wonderful that they were not con
vinced of the power of God by the many miracles
wrought in Egypt and in the wilderness ?
Answer. Yes, it is very wonderful; but the Jews, who
must have seen bread rained down from heaven ; who
saw water gush from the rocks and follow them up hill
and down ; who noticed that their clothes did not wear
out, and did not even get shiny at the knees, while the
elbows defied the ravages of time, and their shoes
remained perfect for forty years ; it is wonderful that
when they saw the ground open and swallow their com
rades ; when they saw God talking face to face with
Moses as a man talks with his friend ; after they saw the
cloud by day and the pillar of fire by night—it is abso
lutely astonishing that they had more faith in a golden
calf that they made themselves, than in Jehovah.
Question. How is it that the Jews had no confidence in
these miracles ?
Answer. Because they were there and saw them.
Question. Do you think that it is necessary for us to
believe all the miracles of the Old Testament in order to
be saved ?
Answer. The Old Testament is the foundation of the
New. If the Old Testament is not inspired, then the
New is of no value. If the Old Testament is inspired,
all the miracles are true ; and we cannot believe that
God would allow any errors, or false statements, to
creep into an inspired volume, and to be perpetuated
through all these years.
Question. Should we believe the miracles, whether they
are reasonable or not ?
Answer. Certainly. If they were reasonable, they
would not be miracles. It is their unreasonableness
that appeals to our credulity and our faith. It is im
possible to have theological faith in anything that can
be demonstrated. It is the office of faith to believe, not
only without evidence, but in spite of evidence. It is
impossible for the carnal mind to believe that Samson’s
muscle depended upon the length of his hair. “ God
has made the wisdom of this world foolishness.”
Neither can the unconverted believe that Elijah stopped
at a hotel kept by ravens. Neither can they believe
that a barrel would in and of itself produce meal, or that
�A CHRISTIAN CATECHISM
17
an earthen pot could create oil. But to a Christian, in
order that a widow might feed a preacher, the truth of
these stories is perfectly apparent.
Question. How should we regard the wonderful stories
of the Old Testament ?
Answer. They should be looked upon as “types”
and “ symbols.” They all have a spiritual significance.
The reason I believe the story of Jonah is, that Jonah is
a type of Christ.
Question. Do you believe the story of Jonah to be a
true account of a literal fact ?
Answer. Certainly. You must remember that Jonah
was not swallowed by a whale. God “ prepared a great
fish ” for that occasion. Neither is it by any means
certain that Jonah was in the belly of this whale. “ He
probably stayed in his mouth.” Even if he was in his
stomach, it was very easy for him to defy the ordinary
action of gastric juice by rapidly walking up and
down.
Question. Do you think that Jonah was really in the
whale’s stomach ?
Answer. My own opinion is that he stayed in his
mouth. The only objection to this theory
that it is
more reasonable than the other and requires less faith.
Nothing could be easier than for God to make a fish
large enough to furnish ample room for one passenger in
his mouth. I throw out this suggestion simply that you
may be able to answer the objections of infidels who are
always laughing at this story.
Question. Do you really believe that Elijah went to
heaven in a chariot of fire, drawn by horses of fire ?
Answer. Of course he did.
What was this miracle performed for ?
Answer. To convince the people of the power of God.
Question. Who saw the miracle ?
Answer. Nobody but Elisha.
Question. Was he convinced before that time ?
Answer. Oh, yes ; he was one of God’s prophets.
Question. Suppose that in these days two men should
leave a town together, and after a while one of them
should come back having on the clothes of the other,
and should account for the fact that he had his friend’s
clothes by saying that while they were going along the
�A CHRISTIAN CATECHISM
road together a chariot of fire came down from heaven
drawn by fiery steeds, and thereupon his friend got into
the carriage, threw him his clothes, and departed—would
you believe it ?
Answer. Of course things like that don’t happen in
these days; God does not have to rely on wonders now.
Do you mean that he performs no miracles
at the present day ?
Answer.
cannot say that he does not perform
miracles now, but we are not in position to call attention
to any particular one. Of course he supervises the
affairs of nations and men, and does whatever in his
judgment is necessary.
Question. Do you think that Samson’s strength depended
on the length of his hair ?
Answer. The Bible so states, and the Bible is true. A
physiologist might say that a man could not use the
muscle in his hair for lifting purposes, but these same
physiologists could not tell you how you move a finger,
nor how you lift a feather; still, actuated by the
pride of intellect, they insist that the length of a
man’s hair could not determine his strength. God says
it did; the physiologist says that it did not; we
cannot hesitate whom to believe. For the purpose of
avoiding eternal agony I am willing to believe anything :
I am willing to say that strength depends upon the
length of hair, or faith upon the length of ears. I am
perfectly willing to believe that a man caught three
hundred foxes, and put fire brands between their tails ;
that he slew thousands with a bone, and that he made
a bee hive out of a lion. I will believe, if necessary,
that when this man’s hair was short he hardly had
strength enough to stand, and that when it was long,
he could carry away the gates of a city, or overthrow a
temple filled with people. If the infidel is right, I will
lose nothing by believing, but if he is wrong, I shall
gain an eternity of joy. If God did not intend that we
should believe these stories, he never would have told
them, and why should a man put his soul in peril by
trying to disprove one of the statements of the Lord ?
Question. Suppose it should turn out that some of
these miracles depend upon mistranslations of the
original Hebrew, should we still believe them ?
�A CHRISTIAN CATECHISM
19
Answer. The safe side is the best side. It is far
better to err on the side of belief, than on the side of
infidelity. God does not threaten anybody with eternal
punishment for believing too much. Danger lies on
the side of investigation, on the side of thought. The
perfectly idiotic are absolutely safe. As they diverge
from that point—as they rise in the intellectual scale, as
the brain develops, as the faculties enlarge, the danger
increases. I know that some Biblical students now take
the ground that Samson caught no foxes—that he only
took sheaves of wheat that had been already cut and
bound, set them on fire, and threw them into the grain
still standing. If this is what he did, of course there is
nothing miraculous about it, and the value of the story
is lost. So, others contend that Elijah was not fed by
the ravens, but by the Arabs. They tell us that the
Hebrew word standing for “ Arab ” also stands for
“ bird,” and that the word really means “ migratory—
going from place to place—homeless.” But I prefer
the old version. It certainly will do no harm to believe
that ravens brought bread and flesh to a prophet of God.
Where they got their bread and flesh is none of my
business; how they knew where the prophet was, and
recognised him; or how God talks to ravens, or how he
gave them directions. I have no right to inquire. I
leave these questions to the scientists, the blasphemers,
and thinkers. There are many people in the Church
anxious to get the miracles out of the Bible, and thou
sands, I have no doubt, would be greatly gratified to
learn that there is, in fact, nothing miraculous in
Scripture ; but when you take away the miraculous,
you take away the supernatural; when you take away
the supernatural, you destroy the ministry ; and when
you take away the ministry, hundreds of thousands of
men will be left without employment.
Question. Is it not wonderful that the Egyptians were
not converted by the miracles wrought in their country ?
Answer. Yes, they all would have been, if God had not
purposely hardened their hearts to prevent it. Jehovah
always took great delight in furnishing the evidence, and
then hardening the man’s heart so that he would not
believe it. After all the miracles that had been per
formed in Egypt—the most wonderful that were ever
�20
A CHRISTIAN CATECHISM
done in any country—the Egyptians were as unbelieving
as at first; they pursued the Israelites, knowing that
they were protected by an infinite God, and, failing to
overwhelm them, came back and worshipped their own
false gods just as firmly as before. All of which shows
the unreasonableness of a Pagan, and the natural
depravity of human nature.
Question. How did it happen that the Canaanites were
never convinced that the Jews were assisted by Jehovah ?
Answer. They must have been an exceedingly brave
people to contend so many years with the chosen people
of God. Notwithstanding all their cities were burned
time and again ; notwithstanding all the men, women,
and children were put to the edge of the sword ; not
withstanding the taking of all their cattle and sheep, they
went right on fighting just as valiantly and desperately
as ever. Each one lost his life many times, and was
just as ready for the next conflict. My own opinion is
that God kept them alive by raising them from the dead
after each battle, for the purpose of punishing the Jews.
God used his enemies as instruments for the civilisation
of the Jewish people. He did not wish to convert them,
because they would give him much more trouble as Jews
than they did as Canaanites. He had all the Jews he
could conveniently take care of. He found it much easier
to kill a thousand Canaanites than to civilise one Jew.
Question. How do you account for the fact that the
heathen were not surprised at the stopping of the sun
and moon ?
/
Answer. They were so ignorant that they had not the
slightest conception of the real cause of the phenomenon.
Had they known the size of the earth, and the relation
it sustained to the other heavenly bodies ; had they
known the magnitude of the sun, and the motion of the
moon, they would, in all probability, have been as
greatly astonished as the Jews were; but being densely
ignorant of astronomy, it must have produced upon them
not the slightest impression. But we must remember
that the sun and moon were not stopped for the pur
pose of converting these people, but to give Joshua more
time to kill them. As soon as we see clearly the pur
pose of Jehovah, we instantly perceive how admirable
were the means adopted.
I
�A CHRISTIAN CATECHISM
21
Question. Do you not consider the treatment of the
Canaanites to have been cruel and ferocious ?
Answer. To a totally depraved man, it does look cruel;
to a being without any good in him—to one who has
inherited the rascality of many generations, the murder
of innocent women and little children does seem horrible;
to one who is “ contaminated in all his parts,” by
original sin—who was “conceived in sin, and brought
forth in iniquity,” the assassination of men, and the
violation of captive maidens, do not seem consistent
with infinite goodness. But when one has been “born
again,” when “ the love of God has been shed abroad
in his heart,” when he loves all mankind, when he
“overcomes evil with good,” when he “prays for those
who despitefully use him and persecute him —to such
a man the extermination of the Canaanites, the viola
tion of women, the slaughter of babes, and the destruc
tion of countless thousands, is the highest evidence of
the goodness, the mercy, and the long-suffering of God.
When a man has been “ born again,” all the passages
of the Old Testament that appear so horrible and so
unjust to one in his natural state, become the dearest,
the most consoling, and the most beautiful of truths.
The real Christian reads the accounts of these ancient
battles with the greatest possible satisfaction. To one
who really loves his enemies, the groans of men, the
shrieks of women, and the cries of babes, make music
sweeter than the zephyr’s breath.
Question. In your judgment, why did God destroy the
Canaanites ?
To prevent their contaminating the chosen
people. He knew that if the Jews were allowed to
live with such neighbors, they would finally become
as bad as the Canaanites themselves. He wished to
civilise his chosen people, and it was therefore necessary
for him to destroy the heathen.
Question. Did God succeed in civilising the Jews after
he had “ removed ” the Canaanites ?
tItzsw/. Well, not entirely.
He had to allow the
heathen he had not destroyed to overrun the whole land
and make captives of the Jews. This was done for the
good of his chosen people.
Question, Did he then succeed in civilising them ?
�22
A CHRISTIAN CATECHISM
Answer. Not quite.
Question. Did he ever quite succeed in civilising them ?
Answer. Well, we must admit that the experiment never
was a conspicuous success. The Jews were chosen by
the Almighty 430 years before he appeared to Moses on
Mount Sinai. He was their direct Governor. He
attended personally to their religion and politics, and
gave up a great part of his valuable time for about two
thousand years to the management of their affairs; and
yet, such was the condition of the Jewish people, after
they had had all these advantages, that when there arose
among them a perfectly kind, just, generous, and honest
man, these people, with whom God had been laboring
for so many centuries, deliberately put to death that good
and loving man.
Question. Do you think that God really endeavored to
civilise the J ews ?
Answer. This is an exceedingly hard question. If he
had really tried to do it, of course he could have done it.
We must not think of limiting the power- of the infinite.
But you must remember that if he had succeeded in civi
lising the Jews, if he had educated them up to the plane
of intellectual liberty, and made them just and kind and
merciful, like himself, they would not have crucified
Christ, and you can see at once the awful condition in
which we would all be to-day. No atonement could
have been made; and if no atonement had been made,
then, according to the Christian system, the whole world
would have been lost. We must admit that there was
no time in the history of the Jews from Sinai to Jerusalem,
that they would not have put a man like Christ to death.
Question. So you think that, after all, it was not God’s
intention that the Jews should become civilised ?
Answer. We do not know. We can only say that
“ God’s ways are not our ways.” It may be that God
took them in his special charge, for the purpose of
keeping them bad enough to make the necessary sacri
fice. That may have been the divine plan. In any
event, it is safer to believe the explanation that is the
most unreasonable.
Question. Do you think that Christ knew the Jews
would crucify him ?
ztawr. Certainly.
�A CHRISTIAN CATECHISM
23
Question. Do you think that when he chose Judas he
knew that he would betray him ?
Answer. Certainly.
Question. Did he know when Judas went to the chief
priest and made the bargain for the delivery of Christ ?
Answer. Certainly.
Question. Why did he allow himself to be betrayed, if
he knew the plot ?
Answer. Infidelity is a very good doctrine to live by,
but you should read the last words of Paine and Voltaire.
Question. If Christ knew that Judas would betray him,
why did he choose him ?
Answer. Nothing can exceed the atrocities of the
French Revolution—when they carried a woman
through the streets and worshipped her as the Goddess
of Reason.
Question. Would not the mission of Christ have been
a failure had no one betrayed him ?
Answer. Thomas Paine was a drunkard, and recanted
on his death-bed, and died a blaspheming infidel besides.
Question. Is it not clear that an atonement was neces
sary; and is it not equally clear that the atonement
could not have been made unless somebody had betrayed
Christ; and unless the Jews had been wicked and
orthodox enough to crucify him ?
Answer. Of course the atonement had to be made.
It was a part of the “ divine plan ” that Christ should
be betrayed, and that the Jews should be wicked enough
to kill him. Otherwise, the world would have been
lost.
Question. Suppose Judas had understood the divine
plan, what ought he to have done ? Should he have
betrayed Christ, or let somebody else do it; or should
he have allowed the world to perish, including his own
soul ?
Answer. If you take the Bible away from the world,
“ how would it be possible to have witnesses sworn in
courts;” how would it be possible to administer justice ?
Question. If Christ had not been betrayed and cruci
fied, is it true that his own mother would be in perdition
to-day ?
Answer. Most assuredly. There was but one way by
which she could be saved, and that was by the death of
�24
A CHRISTIAN CATECHISM
her son—through the blood of the atonement. She was
totally depraved through the sin of Adam, and deserved
eternal death. Even her love for the infant Christ was,
in the sight of God—that is to say, of her babe—wicked
ness. It cannot be repeated too often that there is only
one way to be saved, and that is, to bgjjeve in the Lord
Jesus Christ.
Question. Could Christ have prevented the Jews from
crucifying him ?
Answer. He could.
Question. If he could have saved his life, and did not,
was he not guilty of suicide ?
Atzsow. No one can understand these questions who
has not read the prophecies of Daniel, and has not a
clear conception of what is meant by “ the fullness of
time.”
Question. What became of all the Canaanites, the
Egyptians, the Hindus, the Greeks and Romans and
Chinese ? What became of the billions who died before
the promise was made to Abraham ; of the billions and
billions who never heard of the Bible, who never heard
the name, even, of Jesus Christ—never knew of “ the
scheme of salvation”? What became of the millions
and billions who lived in this hemisphere, and of whose
existence Jehovah himself seemed perfectly ignoront ?
Qnswer. They were undoubtedly lost. God, having
made them, had a right to do with them as he pleased.
They are probably all in hell to-day, and the fact that
they are damned only adds to the joy of the redeemed.
It is by contrast that we are able to perceive the infinite
kindness with which God has treated us.
Question. Is it not possible that something can be
done for a human soul in another world as well as in
this ?
Answer. No; this is the only world in which God even
attempts to reform anybody. In the other world,
nothing is done for the purpose of making anybody
better. Here in this world, where man lives but a few
days, is the only opportunity for moral improvement.
A minister can do a thousand times more for a soul than
its creator; and this country is much better adapted to
moral growth than heaven itself. A person who lived
on this earth a few years, and died without having been
�A CHRISTIAN CATECHISM
converted, has no hope in another world. The moment
he arrives at the judgment seat, nothing remains but to
damn him. Neither God, nor the Holy Ghost, nor
Jesus Christ, can have the least possible influence with
him there.
When God created each human being, did he
know exactly wlJft would be his eternal fate ?
Qnswer. Most assuredly he did.
Question. Did he know that hundreds and millions and
billions would suffer eternal pain ?
Answer. Certainly. But he gave them freedom of
choice between good and evil.
Question. Did he know exactly how they would use
that freedom ?
Answer. Yes,
Question. Did he know that billions would use it
wrong ?
Answer. Yes.
Question. Was it optional with him whether he should
make such people or not ?
Answer. Certainly.
Question. Had these people any option as to whether
they would be made or not ?
Answer. No.
Question. Would it not have been far better to leave
them unconscious dust ?
Answer. These questions show how foolish it is to
judge God according to a human standard. What to us
seems just and merciful, God may regard in an exactly
opposite light; and we may hereafter be developed to
such a degree that we will regard the agonies of the
damned as the highest possible evidence of the goodness
and mercy of God.
Question. How do you account for the fact that God
did not make himself known except to Abraham and his
descendants ? Why did he fail to reveal himself to the
other nations—nations that, compared with the Jews,
were learned, cultivated, and powerful? Would you
regard a revelation now made to the Esquimaux as
intended for us; and would it be a revelation of which
we would be obliged to take notice ?
Answer. Of course, God could have revealed himself,
not only to all the great nations, but to each individual,
�26
A CHRISTIAN CATECHISM
He could have had the Ten Commandments engraved
on every heart and brain ; or he could have raised up
prophets in every land ; but he chose, rather, to allow
countless millions of his children to wander in the dark
ness and blackness of Nature; chose, rather, that they
should redden their hands in each oth^Fs blood ; chose,
rather, that they should live withom light, and die
without hope ; chose, rather, that they should suffer,
not only in this world, but forever in the next. Of
course we have no right to find fault with the choice
of God.
Question. Now you can tell a sinner to “ believe on
the Lord Jesus Christwhat could a sinner have been
told in Egypt, three thousand years ago; and in what
language would you have addressed a Hindu in the
days of Buddha—the “ divine scheme ” at that time
being a secret in the divine breast ?
Answer. It is' not for us to think upon these questions.
The moment we examine the Christian system, we
begin to doubt. In a little while, we will be infidels,
and will lose the respect of those who refuse to
think. It is better to go with the majority. These
doctrines are too sacred to be touched. You should be
satisfied with the religion of your father and your
mother. “ You want some book on the centre-table,”
in the parlour ; it is extremely handy to have a Family
Record; and what book, other than the Bible, could a
mother give a son as he leaves the old homestead ?
Question. Is it not wonderful that all the writers of
the four Gospels do not give an account of the ascension
of Jesus Christ ?
This question has been answered long ago,
time and time again.
Question. Perhaps it has, but would it not be well
enough to answer it once more ? Some may not have
seen the answer ?
Answer. Show me the hospitals that infidels have
built; show me the asylums that infidels -have founded.
Question. I know you have given the usual answer ;
but after all, is it not singular that a miracle so wonder
ful as the bodily ascension of a man should not have
been mentioned by all the writers of that man’s life ?
Is it not wonderful that some of them said that he did
�A CHRISTIAN CATECHISM
27
ascend, and others that he agreed to stay with his
disciples always ?
Answer. People acquainted with the Hebrew can
have no conception of these things. A story in. plain
English, does not sound as it does in Hebrew. Miracles
seem altogether jjjjre credible, when told in a dead
language.
What, in your judgment, became of the
dead who were raised by Christ ? Is it not singular
that they were never mentioned afterward ? Would
not a man who had been raised from the dead naturally
be an object of considerable interest, especially to his
friends and acquaintances ? And is it not also won
derful that Christ, after having wrought. so many
miracles, cured so many lame and halt and blind, fed so
many thousands miraculously, and after having entered
Jerusalem in triumph as a conqueror and king, had to
be pointed out by one of his own disciples who was
bribed for the purpose ?
Answer. Of course, all these things are exceedingly
wonderful, and if found in any other book would be
absolutely incredible ; but we have no right to apply the
same kind of reasoning to the Bible that we apply to the
Koran or to the sacred books of the Hindus. For the
ordinary affairs of this world God has .given us reason,
but in the examination of religious questions we should
depend upon credulity and faith.
Question. If Christ came to offer himself a sacrifice,
for the purpose of making atonement for the sins of
such as might believe on him, why did he not make this
fact known to all of his disciples ?
Answer. He did. This was, and is, the Gospel.
Question. How is it that Matthew says nothing about
“ salvation by faith,” but simply says that God will be
merciful to the merciful, that he will forgive the forgiving,
and says not one word about the necessity of believing
anything ?
Answer. But you will remember that Mark says in the
last chapter of his Gospel that “ whoso believeth not
shall be damned.”
Question. Do you admit that Matthew says nothing on
the subject ?
Answer. Yes, I suppose I must.
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A CHRISTIAN CATECHISM
-Question. Is not that passage in Mark generally ad
mitted to be an interpolation ?
ylwswr. Some Biblical scholars say that it is.
Question. Is that portion of the last chapter of Mark
found in the Syriac version of the Bible ?
Answer. It is not.
Question. If it was necessary tj^elieve on Jesus
Christ, in order to be saved, how is it that Matthew
failed to say so ?
Answer. “ There are more copies of the Bible printed
to-day than of any other book in the world, and it is
printed in more languages than any other book.”
Question. Do you consider it necessary to be “ regene
rated ”—to be “ born again ”—in order to be saved ?
Answer. Certainly.
Question. Did Matthew say anything on the subject of
“ regeneration ” ?
Answer. No.
Question. Did Mark ?
Answer. No.
Question. Did Luke ?
Answer. No.
Question. Is Saint John the only one who speaks of the
necessity of being “ born again ” ?
Answer. He is.
Question. Do you think that Matthew, Mark, and
Luke knew anything about the necessity of “ regene
ration ” ?
Ansiver. Of course they did.
Question. Why did they fail to speak of it ?
Answer. There is no civilisation without the Bible.
The moment you throw away the sacred Scriptures you
are all at sea—you are without an anchor and without a
compass.
Question. You will remember that, according to Mark,
Christ said to his disciples : “ Go ye into all the world,
and preach the Gospel to every creature.” Did he refer
to the Gospel set forth by Mark ?
Answer. Of course he did.
Question. Well, in the Gospel set forth by Mark there
is not a word about “ regeneration,” and no word about
the necessity of believing anything—except in an inter
polated passage, Would it not seem from this that
�A CHRISTIAN CATECHISM
¿9
“ regeneration ” and a “ belief in the Lord Jesus Christ
are no part of the Gospel ?
Answer. Nothing can exceed in horror the last moments
of the infidel; nothing can be more terrible than the
death of the doubter. When the glories of this world
fade from the vision; when ambition becomes an empty
name; when wea’ftR turns to dust in the palsied hand of
death, of what use is philosophy then ? Who cares then
for the pride of intellect ? In that dread moment man
needs something to rely on, whether it is true or not.
Question. Would it not have been more convincing if
Christ, after his resurrection, had shown himself to his
enemies as well as to his friends? Would it not have
greatly strengthened the evidence in the case if he had
visited Pilate; had presented himself before Caiaphas,
the high priest; if he had again entered the temple, and
again walked the streets of Jerusalem ?
Answer. If the evidence had been complete and over
whelming there would have been no praiseworthiness in
belief; even publicans and sinners would have believed
if the evidence had been sufficient. The amount of evi
dence required is the test of the true Christian spirit.
Question. Would it not also have been better had the
ascension taken place in the presence of unbelieving
thousands ? It seems such a pity to have wasted such
a demonstration upon those already convinced.
Answer. These questions are the natural fruit of the
carnal mind, and can be accounted for only by the doctrine
of total depravity. Nothing has given the Church more
trouble than just such questions. Unholy curiosity, a
disposition to pry into the divine mysteries, a desire to
know, to investigate, to explain—in short, to under
stand, are all evidences of a reprobate mind.
Qriestion. How can we account for the fact that Mat
thew alone speaks of the wise men of the East coming
with gifts to the infant Christ; that he alone speaks
of the little babes being killed by Herod ? Is it pos
sible that the other writers never heard of these things ?
Answer. Nobody can get any good out of the Bible
by reading it in a critical spirit. The contradictions
and discrepancies are only apparent, and melt away
before the light of faith. That which in other books
would be absolute and palpable contradiction, is, in the
�30
A CHRISTIAN CATECHISM
Bible, when spiritually discerned, a perfect and beautiful
harmony. . My own opinion is, that seeming contradic
tions are in the Bible for the purpose of testing and
strengthening the faith of Christians, and for the further
purpose of ensnaring infidels, “ that they might believe
a lie and be damned.”
Question. Is it possible that a goad God would take
pains to deceive his children ?
.Answer. The Bible is filled with instances of that
kind, and all orthodox ministers now know that fossil
animals—that is, representations of animals in stone,
were placed in the rocks on purpose to mislead men like
Darwin and Humboldt, Huxley and Tyndall. It is also
now known that God, for the purpose of misleading the
so-called men of science, had hairy elephants preserved
in ice, made stomachs for them, and allowed twigs of
trees to be found in these stomachs, when, as a matter of
fact, no such elephants ever lived or ever died. These
men who are endeavoring to overturn the Scriptures with
the lever of science will find that they have been de
ceived. Through all eternity they will regret their
philosophy. They will wish, in the next world, that
they had thrown away geology and physiology and all
other “ologies” except theology. The time is coming
when Jehovah will “ mock at their fears and laugh at
their calamity.”
■Question. If Joseph was not the father of Christ, why'
was his genealogy given to show that Christ was of the
blood of David ; why would not the genealogy of any
other Jew have done as well ?
Answer. That objection was raised and answered hun
dreds of years ago.
Question. If they wanted to show that Christ was of
the blood of David, why did they not give the genealogy
of his mother if Joseph was not his father ?
Answer. That objection was answered hundreds of
years ago.
Question. How was it answered ?
Answer. When Voltaire was dying, he sent for a priest.
Question. How does it happen that the two genealogies
given do not agree ?
Answer. Perhaps they were written by different
persons.
�A CHRISTIAN CATECHISM
31
Question. Were both these persons inspired by the
same God ?
Of course.
Question. Why were the miracles, recorded in the New
Testament performed ?
Answer. The miracles were the evidence relied on to
prove the supernatural origin and the divine mission of
Jesus Christ.
Question. Aside from the miracles, is there any evidence
to show the supernatural origin or character of Jesus
Christ ?
Answer. Some have considered that his moral pre
cepts are sufficient, of themselves, to show that he was
divine.
Question. Had all of his moral precepts been taught
before he lived ?
Answer. The same things had been said, but they did
not have the same meaning.
Question. Does the fact that Buddha taught the same
tend to show that he was of divine origin ?
Answer. Certainly not. The rules of evidence applic
able to the Bible are not applicable to other books. We
examine other books in the light of reason ; the Bible is
the only exception. So we should not judge of Christ as
we do of any other man.
Question. Do you think that Christ wrought many
of his miracles because he was good, charitable, and
filled with pity?
Answer. Certainly.
Question. Has he as much power now as he had when
on earth ?
Qnswer. Most assuredly.
Auestion. Is he as charitable and pitiful now as he was
then ?
Answer. Yes.
Question. Why does he not now cure the lame and the
halt and the blind ?
Answer. It is well known that when Julian the Apos
tate was dying, catching some of his own blood in his
hand, and throwing it into the air, he exclaimed:
“ Galileean, thou hast conquered ! ”
Question. Do you consider it our duty to love our
neighbor ?
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A CHRISTIAN CATECHISM
Answer. Certainly.
Question. Is virtue the same in all worlds ?
Answer. Most assuredly.
Question. Are we under obligation to render good for
evil, and to “pray for those who despitefully use us?”
Answer. Yes.
Question. Will Christians in heaven love their neigh
bors ?
Answer. Yes ; if their neighbors are not in hell.
Do good Christians pity sinners in this
world ?
Answer. Yes.
Question. Why ?
Answer. Because they regard them as being in great
danger of the eternal wrath of God.
Question. After these sinners have died, and been sent
to hell, will the Christians in heaven then pity them ?
Answer. No. Angels have no pity.
Question. If we are under obligation to love our
enemies, is not God under obligation to love his ? If
we forgive our enemies, ought not God to forgive his ?
If we forgive those who injure us, ought not God to
forgive those who have not injured him ?
Answer. God made us, and he has therefore the right
to do with us as he pleases. Justice demands that he
should damn all of us, and the few that he will save will
be saved through mercy and without the slightest
respect to anything they may have done themselves.
Such is the justice of God, and those in hell will have
no right to complain, and those in heaven will have no
right to be there. Hell is justice, and salvation is
charity.
Question. Do you consider it possible for a law to be
justly satisfied by the punishment of an innocent person ?
Answer. Such is the scheme of the atonement. As
man is held responsible for the sin of Adam, so he will
be credited with. the virtues of Christ; and you can
readily see that one is exactly as reasonable as the
other.
Question. Suppose a man honestly reads the New Tes
tament, and honestly concludes that it is not an inspired
book; suppose he honestly makes up his mind that the
miracles are not true ; that the Devil never really carried
�A CHRISTIAN CATECHISM
33
Christ to the pinnacle of the temple; that devils were
really never cast out of a man and allowed to take
refuge in swine—I say, suppose that he is honestly
convinced that these things are not true, what ought he
to say ?
Answer. He ought to say nothing.
Question. Suppose that the same man should read the
Koran, and come to the conclusion that it is not an
inspired book ; what ought he to say ?
Answer. He ought to say that it is not inspired; his
fellow-men are entitled to his honest opinion, and it is
his duty to do what he can do to destroy a pernicious
superstition.
Question. Suppose, then, that a reader of the Bible,
having become convinced that it is not inspired—honestly convinced—says nothing—keeps his conclusion
absolutely to himself, and suppose he dies in that belief,
can he be saved ?
Answer. Certainly not.
Question. Has the honesty of his belief anything to do
with his future condition ?
Answer. Nothing whatever.
Question. Suppose that he tried to believe, that he
hated to disagree with his friends and with his parents,
but that in spite of himself he was forced to the con
clusion that the Bible is not the inspired word of God,
would he then deserve eternal punishment ?
Answer. Certainly he would.
Question. Can a man control his belief ?
Answer. He cannot—except as to the Bible.
Question. Do you consider it just in God to create a
man who cannot believe the Bible, and then damn him
because he does not ?
Answer. Such is my belief.
Question. Is it your candid opinion that a man who
does not believe the Bible should keep his belief a secret
from his fellow-men ?
Answer. It is.
Question. How do I know that you believe the Bible ?
You have told me that if you did not believe it, you would
not tell me ?
Answer. There is no way for you. to ascertain, except
by taking my word for itt
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A CHRISTIAN CATECHISM
Question. What will be the fate of a man who does not
believe it, and jet pretends to believe it ?
Answer. He will be damned.
Question. Then hypocrisy will not save him ?
Answer. No.
Question. And if he does not believe it, and admits that
he does not believe it, then his honesty will not save
him ?
Answer. No. Honesty on the wrong side is no better
than hypocrisy on the right side.
Question. Do we know who wrote the Gospels ?
Answer. Yes, we do.
Question. Are we absolutely sure who wrote them ?
Answer. Of course; we have the evidence as it has
come to us through the Catholic Church.
Question. Can we rely upon the Catholic Church now ?
Answer. No; assuredly no! But we have the testi
mony of Polycarp and Irenseus and Clement, and others
of the early fathers, together with that of the Christian
historian, Eusebius.
Question. What do we really know about Polycarp ?
Answer. We know that he suffered martyrdom under
Marcus Aurelius, and that for quite a time the fire
refused to burn his body, the flames arching over him,
leaving him in a kind of fiery tent; and we also know
that from his body came a fragrance like frankincense,
and that the Pagans were so exasperated at seeing the
miracle, that one of them thrust a sword through the
body of Polycarp ; that the blood flowed out and extin
guished the flames, and that out of the wound flew the
soul of the martyr in the form of a dove.
Question. Is that all we know about Polycarp ?
Answer. Yes, with the exception of a few more like
incidents.
Question. Do we know that Polycarp ever met St.
John ?
Answer. Yes; Eusebius says so.
Question. Are we absolutely certain that he ever lived ?
Answer. Yes, or Eusebius could not have written about
him.
Question. Do we know anything of the character of
Eusebius ?
Answer. Yes; we know that he was untruthful only
�A CHRISTIAN CATECHISM
35
when he wished to do good. But God can use even
the dishonest. Other books have to be substantiated by
truthful men, but such is the power of God, that he can
establish the inspiration of the Bible by the most un
truthful witnesses. If God’s witnesses were honest,
anybody could believe, and what becomes of faith, one
of the greatest virtues ?
Question. Is the New Testament now the same as it
was in the days of the early fathers ?
Answer. Certainly not. Many books now thrown out,
and not esteemed of Divine origin, were esteemed Divine
by Polycarp and Irenaeus and Clement and many of the
early Churches. These books are now called “apocry
phal.”
Question. Have you not the same witnesses in favor
of their authenticity, that you have in favor of the
Gospels ?
Answer. Precisely the same. Except that they were
thrown out.
Question. Why were they thrown out ?
Answer. Because the Catholic Church did not esteem
them inspired.
Question Did the Catholics decide for us which are
the true Gospels and which are the true Epistles ?
Answer. Yes. The Catholic Church was then the
only Church, and consequently must have- been the true
Church.
Question. How did the Catholic Church select the
true books ?
Answer. Councils were called, and votes were taken,
very much as we now pass resolutions in political
meetings.
Question. Was the Catholic Church infallible then?
Answer. It was then, but it is not now.
Question. If the Catholic Church at that time had
thrown out the Book of Revelation, would it now be our
duty to believe that book to have been inspired ?
Answer. No, I suppose not.
Question. Is it not true that some of these books were
adopted by exceedingly small majorities ?
Answer. It is.
Question. If the Epistle to the Hebrews and to the
Romans and the Book of Revelation had been thrown
�36
A CHRISTIAN CATECHISM
out, could a man now be saved who honestly believes
the rest of the books ?
Answer. This is doubtful.
Question. Were the men who picked out the inspired
books inspired ?
Answer. "\Nq cannot tell, but the probability is that
they were.
Question. Do we know that they picked out the right
ones ?
Answer. Well, not exactly, but we believe that they did.
(Jwszfow. Are we certain that some of the books that
were thrown out were not inspired ?
Answer. Well, the only way to tell is to read them
carefully.
If upon reading these apocryphal books a
man -concludes that they are not inspired, will he be
damned for that reason ?
Answer. No. Certainly not.
Question. If he concludes that some of them are
inspired, and believes them, will he then be damned for
that belief ?
Awswr. Oh, no! Nobody is ever damned for believing
too much.
Question. Does the fact that the books now comprising
the New Testament were picked out by the Catholic
Church prevent their being examined now by an honest
man, as they were examined at the time they were picked
out ?
Answer. No ; not if the man comes to the conclusion
that they are inspired ?
Question. Does the fact that the Catholic Church
picked them out and declared them to be inspired render
it a crime to examine them precisely as you would
examine the books that the Catholic Church threw out
and declared were not inspired ?
Answer. I think it does.
Question. At the time the Council was held in which it
was determined which of the books of the New Testa
ment are inspired, a respectable minority voted against
some that were finally decided to be inspired. If they
were honest in the vote they gave, and died without
changing their opinions, are they now in hell ?
Answer. Well, they ought to be.
�A CHRISTIAN CATECHISM
37
Question. If those who voted to leave the book of Reve
lation out of the canon, and the Gospel of Saint John
out of the canon, believed honestly that these were not
inspired books, how should they have voted ?
Answer. Well, I suppose a man ought to vote as he
honestly believes—except in matters of religion.
Question. If the Catholic Church was not infallible, is
the question still open as to what books are, and what
are not, inspired ?
Answer. I suppose the question is still open—but it
would be dangerous to decide it.
Question. If, then, I examine all the books again, and
come to the conclusion that some that were thrown out
were inspired, and some that were accepted were not
inspired, ought I to say so ?
Answer. Not if it is contrary to the faith of your father,
or calculated to interfere with your own political pro
spects.
Question. Is it as great a sin to admit into the Bible
books that are uninspired as to reject those that are
inspired ?
Answer. Well, it is a crime to reject an inspired book,
no matter how unsatisfactory the evidence is for its
inspiration, but it is not a crime to receive an uninspired
book. God damns nobody for believing too much. An
excess of credulity is simply to err in the direction of
salvation.
Question. Suppose a man disbelieves in the inspiration
of the New Testament—believes it to be entirely the
work of uninspired men ; and suppose he also believes—
but not from any evidence obtained in the New Testa
ment—that Jesus Christ was the son of God, and that
he made atonement for his soul, can he then be saved
without a belief in the inspiration of the Bible ?
Answer. This has not yet been decided by our Church,
and I do not wish to venture an opinion.
Questeon. Suppose a man denies the inspiration of the
Scriptures ; suppose that he also denies the divinity of
Jesus Christ; and suppose, further, that he acts pre
cisely as Christ is said to have acted; suppose he loves
his enemies, prays for those who despitefully use him,
and does all the good he possibly can, is it your opinion
that such a man will be saved ?
�A CHRISTIAN CATECHlSNf
Answer. No, sir. There is “none other name given
under heaven and among men,” whereby a sinner can
be saved, but the name of Christ.
Question. Then it is your opinion that God would save
a murderer who believed in Christ, and would damn
another man, exactly like Christ, who failed to believe
in him ?
Answer. Yes ; because we have the blessed promise
that, out of Christ, “ our God is a consuming fire.”
Question. Suppose a man read the Bible carefully and
honestly, and was not quite convinced that it was true,
and that, while examining the subject, he died ; what
then ?
Answer. I do not believe that God would allow him to
examine the matter in another world, or to make up his
mind in heaven. Of course, he would eternally perish.
Question. Could Christ now furnish evidence enough
to convince every human being of the truth of the Bible ?
Answer. Of course he could, because he is infinite.
Question. Are any miracles performed now ?
Azzsw/. Oh, no !
Question. Have we any testimony, except human testi
mony, to substantiate any miracle ?
Answer. Only human testimony.
Question. Do all men give the same force to the same
evidence ?
Answer. By no means.
Question. Have all honest men who have examined
the Bible believed it *to be inspired ?
Answer. Of course they have. Infidels are not honest.
Question. Could any additional evidence have been
furnished ?
Answer. With perfect ease.
Question. Would God allow a soul to suffer eternal
agony rather than furnish evidence of the truth of his
Bible ?
Answer. God has furnished plenty of evidence, and
altogether more than was necessary. We should read
the Bible in a believing spirit.
Question. Are all parts of the inspired books equally
true ?
Answer. Necessarily.
Question. According to Saint Matthew, God promises
�A CHRISTIAN CATECHISM
39
to forgive all who will forgive others; not one word is
said about believing in Christ, or believing in the
miracles, or in any Bible; did Matthew tell the truth ? .
Answer. The Bible must be taken as a whole, and if
other conditions are added somewhere else, then you
must comply with those other conditions. Matthew
may not have stated all the conditions.
Question. I find in another part of the New Testa
ment that a young man came to Christ and asked him
what was necessary for him to do in order that he might
inherit eternal life. Christ did not tell him that he must
believe the Bible, or that he must believe in him, or that
he must keep the Sabbath day; was Christ honest with
that young man ?
Answer. Well, I suppose he was.
Question. You will also recollect that Zaccheus said to
Christ that where he had wronged any man he had made
restitution, and further, that half his goods he had given
to the poor ; and you will remember that Christ said to
Zaccheus : “ This day hath salvation come to thy house.”
Why did not Christ tell Zaccheus that he “must be
born again”; that he must “believe on the Lord Jesus
Christ ” ?
Answer. Of course there are mysteries in our holy
religion that only those who have been “ born again
can understand. You must remember that “ the carnal
mind is at enmity with God.
Question. Is it not strange that Christ, in his Sermon
on the Mount, did not speak of “ regeneration,” or of the
“ scheme of salvation ” ?
Answer. Well, it may be.
Question. Can a man be saved now by living exactly
in accordance with the Sermon on the Mount ?
Answer. He cannot.
Question. Would, then, a man,, by following the course
of conduct prescribed by Christ in the Sermon on the
Mount, lose his soul ?
Answer. He most certainly would, because there is not
one word in the Sermon on the Mount about believing
on the Lord Jesus Christ; not one word about believing
in the Bible ; not one word about the “ atonement
not
one word about “regeneration.” So that, if the Chris
tian Church is right, it is absolutely certain that a
�46
A CHRISTIAN. CATECHISM.
man might follow the teachings of the Sermon on the
Mount, and live in accordance with its every word, and
yet deserve and receive the eternal condemnation of
God. But we must remember that the Sermon on the
Mount was preached before Christianity existed. Christ
was talking to Jews.
Question. Did Christ write anything himself in the N ew
Testament ?
Answer. Not a word.
Question. Did he tell any of his disciples to write any
of his words ?
Answer. There is no account of it, if he did.
Question. Do we know whether any of the disciples
wrote anything ?
Answer. Of course they did.
Question. How do you know ?
Answer. Because the Gospels bear their names.
Are you satisfied that Christ was absolutely
God ?
Of course he was. We believe that Christ
and God and the Holy Ghost are all the same, that the
three form one, and that each one is three.
Question. Was Christ the God of the universe at the
time of his birth ?
Answer. He certainly was.
Question. Was he the infinite God, creator, and con
troller of the entire universe, before he was born ?
Answer. Of course he was. This is the mystery of
“ God manifest in the flesh.” The infidels have pre
tended that he was like any other child, and was, in fact,
supported by Nature instead of being the supporter of
Nature. They have insisted that, like other children, he
had to be cared for by his mother. Of course he appeared
to be cared for by his mother. It was a part of the plan
that in all respects he should appear to be like other chil
dren.
Question. Did he know just as much before he was born
as after ?
Answer. If he was God, of course he did.
Question. How do you account for the fact that Saint
Luke tells us, in the last verse of the second chapter
of his gospel, that “ Jesus increased in wisdom and
stature ”?
�A CMRiSTiAN CATECHISM
4i
Answer. That, I presume, is a figure of speech;
because, if he was God, he certainly could not have
increased in wisdom. The physical part of him could
increase in stature, but the intellectual part must have
been infinite all the time.
Question. Do you think that Luke was mistaken ?
Answer. No ; I believe what Luke said. If it appears
lintrue, or impossible, then I know that it is figurative
or symbolical.
Question. Did I understand you to say that Christ was
actually God ?
Answer. Of course he was.
Question. Then why did Luke say, in the same verse
of the same chapter, that “ Jesus increased in favor with
God ”?
Answer. I dare you to go into a room by yourself and
read the fourteenth chapter of Saint John !
Question. Is it necessary to understand the Bible in
order to be saved ?
Answer. Certainly not; it is only necessary that you
believe it.
Question. Is it necessary to believe all the miracles ?
Answer. It may not be necessary, but as it is impossible
to tell which ones can safely be left out, you had better
believe them all.
Question. Then you regard belief as the safe way ?
Answer. Of course it is better to be fooled in this
world than to be damned in the next.
Question. Do you think there are any cruelties on
God’s part recorded in the Bible ?
Answer. At first flush many things done by God him
self, as well as by his prophets, appear to be cruel; but
if we examine them closely, we will find them to be
exactly the opposite.
Question. How do you explain the story of Elisha and
the children—where the two she-bears destroyed fortytwo children on account of their impudence ?
Answer. This miracle, in my judgment, establishes
two things: i. That children should be polite to
ministers; and 2. That God is kind to animals—“giving
them their meat in due season.” These bears have
been great educators—they are the foundation of the
respect entertained by the young for theologians.
�4-2
A CHRISTIAN CATECHISM
No child ever sees a minister now without thinking of
a bear.
Question. What do you think of the story of Daniel—
you no doubt remember it ? Some men told the king
that Daniel was praying contrary to law, and thereupon
Daniel was cast into a den of lions ; but the lions could
not touch him, their mouths having been shut by angels.
The next morning the king, finding that Daniel wras
intact, had him taken out; and then, for the purpose of
gratifying Daniel’s God, the king had all the men who
had made the complaint against Daniel, and their wives
and their little children, brought and cast into the lions’
den. According to the account, the lions were so
hungry that they caught these wives and children as
they dropped, and broke all their bones to pieces before
they had even touched the ground. Is it not wonderful
that God failed to protect these innocent wives and
children ?
Answer. These wives and children were heathen; they
were totally depraved. And besides, they were used as
witnesses. The fact that they were devoured with such
quickness shows that the lions were hungry. Had it
not been for this, infidels would have accounted for the
safety of Daniel by saying that the lions had been fed.
Question. Do you believe that Shadrach, Meshach, and
Abednego were cast “ into a burning fiery furnace,
heated one seven times hotter than it was wont to be
heated,” and that they had on “ their coats, their hosen,
and their hats,” and that when they came out “not a
hair of their heads was singed, nor was the smell of fire
upon their garments ? ”
Answer. The evidence of this miracle is exceedingly
satisfactory. It resulted in the conversion of Nebuchad
nezzar.
Question. How do you know he was converted ?
Answer. Because immediately after the miracle the
king issued a decree that “ every people, nation, and
language that spoke anything amiss against the God of
Shadrach and Company should be cut in pieces.” This
decree shows that he had become a true disciple and
worshipper of Jehovah.
Question. If God in those days preserved from the fury
of the fire men who were true to him and would not
�A CHRISTIAN CATECHISM
43
deny bis name, why is it that he has failed to protect
thousands of martyrs since that time ?
Answer. That is one of the Divine mysteries. _ God
has in many instances allowed his enemies to kill his
friends. I suppose this was allowed for the good of his
enemies, that the heroism of the martyrs might convert
them.
Question. Do you believe all the miracles ?
Answer. I believe them all, because I believe the Bible
to be inspired.
Question. What makes you think it is inspired ? .
Answer. I have never seen anybody who knew it was
not; besides, my father and mother believed it.
Question. Have you any other reasons for believing it
to be inspired ?
Answer. Yes ; there are more copies of the Bible printed
than of any other book ; and it is printed in more lan
guages. And besides, it would be impossible to get
along without it.
Question. Why could we not get along without it ?
Answer. We would have nothing to swear witnesses
by ; no book in which to keep the family record ; nothing
for a centre-table, and nothing for a mother to. give her
son. No nation can be civilised without the Bible.
Question. Did God always know that a Bible was
necessary to civilise a country ?
Certainly he did.
Question. Why did he not give a Bible to the Egyptians,
the Hindus, the Greeks, and the Romans ?
Awsw/. It is astonishing what perfect fools infidels are.
Question. Why do you call infidels “ fools ” ?
Answer. Because I find in the fifth chapter of the
Gospel according to Matthew the following: “ Whoso
ever shall say Thou fool! shall be in danger of hell fire.”
Question. Have I the right to read the Bible ?
Answer. Yes. You not only have the right, but it is
your duty.
Question. In reading the Bible, the words make certain
impressions on my mind. These impressions depend
upon my brain—upon my intelligence. Is not this true ?
Answer. Of course, when you read the Bible, impres
sions are made upon your mind.
Question. Can I control these impressions ?
�44
'
A CHRISTIAN CATECHISM
Answer. I do not think you can, as long as you remain
in a sinful state.
Question. How am I to get out of this sinful state ?
Answer. You must believe on the Lord Jesus Christ,
and you must read the Bible in a prayerful spirit, and
with a believing heart.
Question. Suppose that doubts force themselves upon
my mind ?
yfwswr. Then you will know that you are a sinner,
and that you are depraved.
Question. If I have the right to read the Bible, have I
the right to try to understand it ?
Answer. Most assuredly.
Question. Do you admit that I have the right to reason
about it and to investigate it ?
Answer. Yes, I admit that. Of course you cannot help
reasoning about what you read.
Question. Does the right to read a book include the
right to give your opinion as to the truth of what the
book contains ?
Answer. Of course—if the book is not inspired.
Infidels hate the Bible because it is inspired, and Chris
tians know that it is inspired because infidels say that it
is not.
Question. Have I the right to decide for myself whether
or not the book is inspired ?
Answer. You have no right to deny the truth of God’s
Holy Word.
Question. Is God the author of all books ?
Answer. Certainly not.
Question. Have I the right to say that God did not
write the Koran ?
Answer. Yes.
Question. Why ?
Answer. Because the Koran was written by an im
postor.
Question. How do you know ?
Answer. My reason tells me so.
Question. Have you the right to be guided by your
reason ?
yBwzwr. I must be.
Question. Have you the same right to follow your
reason after reading the bible ?
�A CHRISTIAN CATECHISM
45
Answer. No. The Bible is the standard of reason.
The Bible is not to be judged or corrected by your
reason. Your reason is to be weighed and measured
by the Bible. The Bible is different from other books
and must not be read in the same critical spirit, nor
judged by the same standard.
Question. What did God give us reason for ?
Answer. So that we might investigate other religions,
and examine other so-called sacred books.
Question. If a man honestly thinks that the Bible is
not inspired, what should he say ?
Answer. He should admit that he is mistaken.
Question. When he thinks he is right ?
Answer. Yes. The Bible is different from other books.
It is the master of reason. You read the Bible, not to
see if that is wrong, but to see whether your reason is
right. It is the only book about which a man has no
right to reason. He must believe. The Bible is ad
dressed, not to the reason, but to the ears : “ He that
hath ears to hear, let him hear.”
Question. Do you think we have the right to tell what
the Bible means—what ideas God intended to convey,
or has conveyed to us, through the medium of the Bible ?
Answer. Well, I suppose you have that right. Yes,
that must be your duty. You certainly ought to tell
others what God has said to you.
Question. Do all men get the same ideas from the
Bible ?
Answer. No.
Question. How do you account for that ?
Answer. Because all men are not alike ; they differ in
intellect, in education, and in experience.
Question. Who has the right to decide as to the real
ideas that God intended to convey ?
Answer. I am a Protestant, and believe in the right of
private judgment. Whoever does not is a Catholic.
Each man must be his own judge, but God will hold
him responsible.
Question. Does God believe in the right of private
judgment ?
Answer. Of course he does.
Question. Is he willing that I should exercise my judg
ment in deciding whether the Bible is inspired or not ?
�46
A CHRISTIAN CATECHISM
Answer. No. He believes in the exercise of private
judgment only in the examination and rejection of other
books than the Bible.
Question. Is he a Catholic ?
Answer. I cannot answer blasphemy ! Let me tell
you that God will “ laugh at your calamity, and will
mock when your fear cometh.” You will be accursed.
Question. Why do you curse infidels ?
Answer. Because I am a Christian.
Question. Did not Christ say that we ought to “ bless
those who curse us,” and that we should “ love our
enemies ” ?
Answer. Yes, but he cursed the Pharisees, and called
them “ hypocrites ” and “ vipers.”
Question. How do you account for that ?
Answer. It simply shows the difference between theory
and practice.
Question. What do you consider the.best way to answer
infidels ?
Answer. The old way is the best. You should say
that their arguments are ancient, and have been answered
over and over again. If this does not satisfy your
hearers, then you should attack the character of the
infidel—then that of his parents—then that of his chil
dren.
Question. Suppose that the infidel is a good man ; how
will you answer him then ?
Answer. But an infidel cannot be a good man. Even
if he is, it is better that he should lose his reputation
than that thousands should lose their souls. We know
that all infidels are vile and infamous. We may not
have the evidence, but we know that it exists.
Question. How should infidels be treated ? Should
Christians try to convert them ?
Answer. Christians should have nothing to do with
infidels. It is not safe even to converse with them.
They are always talking about reason and facts and
experience. They are filled with sophistry, and should
be avoided.
Question. Should Christians pray for the conversion of
infidels ?
dnsrn. Yes ; but such prayers should be made in
public, and the name of the infidel should be given, and
�A CHRISTIAN CATECHISM
47
his vile and hideous heart portrayed, so that the young
may be warned.
.
Question. Whom do you regard as mfidels .
Answer. The scientists—the geologists, the astro
nomers, the naturalists, the philosophers. No one can
overestimate the evil that has been wrought by La Flace,
Humboldt, Darwin, Huxley, Haeckel, Renan, Emerson,
Strauss, Buchner, Tyndall, and their wretched followers.
These men pretended to know more than Moses and the
prophets. They were “dogs baying at the moon.”
They were “wolves” and “fools.” They tried to
“assassinate God,” and, worse than all, they actually
laughed at the clergy.
.
Question. Do you think they did, and are doing, great
harm ?
„ ,
•
-r
Answer. Certainly. Of what use are all the sciences it
you lose your own soul ? People in hell will care nothing
about education. The rich man said nothing about
science, he wanted water. Neither will they care about
books and theories in heaven. If a man is perfectly
happy, it makes no difference how ignorant he is.
Question. But how can he answer these scientists ?
Answer. Well, my advice is to let their arguments
alone. Of course, you will deny all their facts, but the
most effective way is to attack their character.
Question. But suppose they are good men—what
then?
Answer. The better they are, the worse they are. We
cannot admit that the infidel is really good. He may
appear to be good, and it is our duty to strip the mask o
appearance from the face of unbelief. If a man is not a
Christian, he is totally depraved, and why should we
hesitate to make a misstatement about a man whom God
is going to make miserable forever ?
Question. Are we not commanded to love our enemies ?
Answer. Yes ; but not the enemies of God.
Question. Do you fear the final triumph of.infidelity ?
Answer. No. We have no fear. We believe that the
Bible can be revised often enough to agree with any
thing that may really be necessary to the preservation of
the Church. We can always rely upon revision. Let
me tell you that the Bible is the most peculiar of books.
At the time God inspired his holy prophets to write it, he
�48
A CHRISTIAN CATECHISM
knew exactly what the discoveries and demonstrations
of the future would be, and he wrote his Bible in such a
way that the words could always be interpreted in accor
dance with the intelligence of each age, and so that the
words used are capable of several meanings, so that, no
matter what may hereafter be discovered, the Bible will
be found to agree with it—for the reason that the know
ledge of Hebrew will grow in the exact proportion that
discoveries are made in other departments of knowledge.
You will therefore see, that all efforts of infidelity to
destroy the Bible will simply result in giving a better
translation.
Question. What do you consider is the strongest
argument in favor of the inspiration of the Scriptures ?
Answer. The dying words of Christians.
Question. What do you consider the strongest argu
ment against the truth of infidelity ?
Answer. The dying words of infidels. You know how
terrible were the death-bed scenes of Hume, Voltaire,
Paine, and Hobbes, as described by hundreds of persons
who were not present; while all Christians have died
with the utmost serenity, and with their last words have
testified to the sustaining power of faith in the goodness
of God.
Question. What were the last words of Jesus Christ?
Answer. “ My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken
me ?”
THE END.
�WORKS BY COL. R. G. INGERSOLL (continued)
Social Salvation. 2d.
Some Mistakes of Moses. Only Complete Edition
in England. 136 pp. Cloth, 2s. 6d.; paper, Is.
Ditto. Abridged edition. 16 pp. Id.
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The Christian Religion. 3d.
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The Household of Faith. 2d.
The Limits of Toleration. A Discussion with
the Hon. F. D. Courdert and Gov. S. L. Woodford. 2d.
The Three Philanthropists. 2d.
What Is Religion? (Col. Ingersoll’s last Lecture) 2d.
Wooden God, A.
Id.
INGERSOLL
GEMS
ONLY A FEW LEFT.
LIFE.
A Beautiful Prose Poem, with a fine Portrait
of Ingersoll and his infant Granddaughter.
THE CREED OF SCIENCE.
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Inger
soll’s noble Freethought Poem.
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Ingersoll’s signature.
Price Sixpence Each.
Postage One Penny Each.
The Freethought Publishing Co., Ltd., 2 Newcastle-street,
Farringdon-street, E.C.
�SOME WORKS BY G. W. FOOTE.
Bible and Beer.
Showing the absurdity of basing
Teetotalism on the Christian Scriptures. 4d.
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Cloth, 2s.; paper, Is.
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Id.
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paper, Is.
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Crimes of Christianity. Cloth, 2s. 6d.
Darwin on God. 6d.
Dropping the Devil. 2d.
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Second series, cloth, 2s. 6d.
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Coronation Notes. 2d.
Grand Old Book, The. A Reply to the Grand Old
Man. Cloth, Is. 6d. ; paper, Is.
Infidel Death-Beds. Cloth, Is. 3d.; paper, 8d.
Ingersollism Defended Against Archdeacon Farrar.
2d.
Letters to the Clergy. Is.
Philosophy of Secularism. 3d.
Reminiscences of Charles Bradlaugh. 6d.
Rome or Atheism ? The Great Alternative. 3d.
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What is Agnosticism ? With a Defence of Atheism.
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�
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A Christian catechism
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Ingersoll, Robert Green [1833-1899]
Foote, G. W. (George William) [1850-1915]
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Place of publication: London
Collation: 48 p. ; 19 cm.
Notes: "...a splendid undenominational exposure of Christianity, in a form at once instructive and entertaining."--Introd. Publisher's lists inside front and back covers, and on back cover. First published in Six interviews with Robert G. Ingersoll on six sermons by the Rev. T. De Witt Talmage, to which is added A Talmagian catechism (Washington, DC: C.P. Farrell, 1882). No. 75g in Stein checklist. Part of the NSS pamphlet collection.
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A
REVIEW OF A PAPER
{Written by the Archbishop of Canterbury in 1 Good Words,'1 May, 1875)
CALLED
“THE FALLACIES OF UNBELIEF.”
BY
WALTER LACY ROGERS.
PUBLISHED BY THOMAS SCOTT,
NO. 11 THE TERRACE, FARQUHAR ROAD, UPPER NORWOOD,
LONDON, S.E.
1875.
'Price Fmtrpence.
�LONDON :
PRINTED BY C. W. BEYNBLL, LITTLE PULTENEY-STBEET,
HAYMARKET, W.
�A REVIEW .OF A PAPER
CALLED
“THE FALLACIES OF UNBELIEF.”
,HE Archbishop of Canterbury is well-known as
§
a man of ability and attainments, and still
more so as one of a liberal understanding, which
early training and professional associations have failed
to obscure, though they may occasionally bias. Any
arguments, therefore, of his in defence of the Church
over which he so judiciously presides must be full, not
only of interest, but of influence. It is, indeed, only
to be wished that a few more of those whom the
Church has a right to look upon as her champions
would, in an equally courageous manner, enter the
lists of a public magazine in defence of doctrines
which they affect to consider of more than vital
importance, and not confine themselves to empty and
unanswerable denunciations in coterie or church.
The Archbishop begins by giving a list of fallacies
by which, as he affirms, sceptics have ended in unbe
lief. These he puts into the syllogistic form, and
attempts to show where each fails, either through
what is called “ begging the question,” or the use of
an equivocal term, e.g.,
“ Nothing is to be believed which is contrary to
experience.
Miracles are contrary to experience.
Therefore miracles are not to be believed.”
Of this the Archbishop says, “Whether or no they
be contrary to the large experience of the history of
all times is the very question at issue, and is denied
by all who believe in them.”
B
�6
A Review of a Paper called
Well, but it is not denied, except as to the miracles
of our own Church. On the contrary, the premiss is
admitted by the votaries of every religion, but in
each case with an exception. The Archbishop would
not condescend to discuss the subject of winking
Virgins or St. Januarius’s blood. He would say such
things are contrary to all experience. Our Church
discountenances relics of all kinds ; but why ? Might
not the bones of a mediaeval saint have as much power
as the bones of Elisha ? Our Church declares that
miracles ended with the Apostolic Eathers, and have
not occurred since; but why? Cardinal Manning
would say, “ that is the very question at issue, and is
denied by all true believers.”
Again. “ Miracles are so unlikely that it is far
more likely that those who report them have made
some mistake than that the evidence for them should
be sound. This is the very point in dispute. The
evidence may be so strong that we can have no ground
for denying its accuracy.”
Of course it may be so strong as to overbear the
conflicting argument of inherent improbability, but is
this the case as to the miracles related in the Old or
Hew Testament ? The Archbishop does not say it
is, and shows his wisdom by refraining from doing
so. Ko evidence has yet been considered sufficiently
strong to establish a miracle. The stories of the
blind man cured by Vespasian, of the hundreds of
our countrymen cured by the King’s touch, are far
better authenticated than any miracles said to have
been worked by Jesus; and yet in such stories we
believe the narrators to have been wholly mistaken.
“Nothing is to be believed which is incapable
of scientific proof.
Christianity is not capable of scientific proof.
Therefore Christianity is not to be believed.”
Here the Archbishop points out the equivocal term
is “ scientific proof,” and goes on to say that if by
�The Fallacies of Unbelief.”
7
scientific proof is meant mathematical proof, nothing
but pure mathematics is capable of it, and that, unless
we acted every hour of our life upon probabilities,
the whole business of the world must stand still. Of
course this is perfectly true, but then he adds that, as
compared with the certainty attained by experiments
relating to physical science,
“The proof offered for the truth of the Christian
religion, when examined in all its details, produces
in like manner the highest moral certainty which
the subject admits, and therefore there is no real
difference in kind between the arguments on which
the conclusions of physical science are based and that
result of all our examination of Christian evidence
which pronounces the religion to be divine.”
This is a bold, straightforward challenge. It will
be observed that it does not put the claims of Chris
tianity so high as some of its professors would like.
It does not rely on inspiration, it attributes no merit
to a childlike faith, it implies no denunciation of
the iniquity of doubt—but says fairly and openly,
“ Feel, touch, and examine for yourself without pre
judice, make fair allowances and look at the question
from a broad point of view, and then I believe you
will come to the conclusion that Christianity is a
religion that a man of intellect may be proud to
belong to.” To this we shall reply later on.
But before he enters upon the task of proving the
position he has taken up, the Archbishop, with less
than his accustomed honesty and candour, goes out of
his way to attack arguments, which lead to a total
disbelief in the existence of a God, or the human
soul. These may or may not be fallacies, but they
are not arguments against Christianity—any more
than they are against Mohammedanism—and we pre
sume the Archbishop is not prepared to defend all
religions against the “ fallacies of Unbelief.” It is,
therefore, unworthy of him to say that “ it is as easy
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A Review of a Paper called
to conceive that the words of the Homeric poems
jumped together accidentally and formed the tale of
Troy, as that the plan of all this spacious universe,
with its millions of adaptations for great and bene
ficent ends, has never had a planner.”
It is the appreciation of “the plan of all this
spacious universe ” which travelling, and history, and
science have given to this generation, that has made
it so incredulous as to the story of its Great Creator,
degrading Himself to play in an obscure corner
of His dominions, and for an insignificant portion
of His subjects, an unrecognised and unsuccessful
part.
Reverting to the subject of miracles and dealing
with the so-called fallacy that “God acts by-fixed
laws, and therefore miracles are out of the question,”
the Archbishop takes the opportunity of defining the
miracle of inspiration:—
“ When He wishes to produce some great results in
the education and history of the human race, He does
so by raising up from time to time great men of high
intellectual or moral power, of commanding will or
deep spiritual insight. Such men, of course, do not
grow at random ; neither are they the product of any
fixed physical laws which we can unfold. ... It
seems that to send forth His messengers at intervals
is an observed part of God’s regular working, and it
is maintained that there is the strictest analogy or
even resemblance between such common commissions
from God as bear about them the marks merely of a
superior secular intelligence, and those other com
missions of a spiritual nature, which characterise the
inspired preachers of Revelation. Inspiration then
may be a miracle, but it is such a miracle as is per
fectly consistent with the higher laws by which the
Great Moral Author of nature may be expected to
act, and by which all experience proves that He is
constantly acting.”
�“ The Fallacies of UnbeliefT
9
By thus propounding a theory of Inspiration which
will include Pythagoras and Plato, Faraday and
Darwin, the Archbishop endeavours to disarm
opposition. But if we admit the truth of all this,
we must not forget that it is totally irrelevant. The
fallacy lies in the meaning of the word “ Inspiration,”
—and what the Archbishop means by it, is quite
different from what the Church means by it. The
former means nothing more than “ genius,” which
certainly does “ not grow at random,” neither is it
“ the product of any fixed physical laws which we
can unfold.” The latter means that God for the pur
poses of His Gospel did not “ raise up men of high
intellectual or moral power, of commanding will or
deep spiritual insight,” but men especially wanting in
these characteristics, with which, however, they were
subsequently and miraculously inspired, in complete
antagonism to their natural character. Jesus espe
cially thanked his Father that he had not revealed
his great truths to the wise, but to the simple; and
surely no description could be more unsuitable to
those whom Jesus selected as his immediate followers,
than calling them “ great men of high intellectual or
moral power, of commanding will, or deep spiritual
insight.” They are acknowledged in all accounts to
have been simple peasants, not only unlearned, but
incapable of being taught by the ordinary operations
of the senses what they had to learn. They lived
on terms of the closest intimacy with the Incarnate
God, they witnessed the most prodigious miracles
occurring over and over again, they listened while
Jesus spake in public as never man spake, triumphed
over all opposition, and put his adversaries to silence,
—they had the “mysteries of the kingdom of
Heaven ” explained to them in private by God
Himself—and yet at the end of three years they
had no idea of the real character of their Master,
no confidence in the Power which they had seen
�io
A Review of a Paper called
so often and so easily exerted. No human im
postor, no unsuccessful pretender in history, was ever
so absolutely abandoned by his followers as Jesus was
by the cowardly dullards with whom he had associated
during his ministry. That these men should after
wards learn truths which the evidence of their senses
had failed to teach them—that they should become
martyrs for a Sentiment, long after they had des
paired of the Reality,—that some of them should be
able to relate with unerring precision occurrences
which years before had made little or no impression
upon them,—that is the miracle of inspiration, as
defined by every party of the Christian Church.
Believe it or not, but we defy any one to say that it is
overstated,—and we hardly think it is one “ perfectly
consistent with the higher laws by which the Great
Moral Author of nature may be expected to act, and
by which all experience proves that he is continually
acting.”
So far from being the theory of inspiration held
by the Church, that propounded by the Archbishop is
directly antagonistic to it. For, if the writer of the
book of Joshua was inspired (as the Church says he
was), so also was Galileo (according to the Arch
bishop), and then we have the absurd spectacle of
one inspired preacher flatly contradicting another
inspired preacher. It is necessary to reject the
Archbishop’s theory, for upon this comprehensive
and charitable basis he proceeds to rear a fallacy
grosser than any he has attempted to refute.
“ Further, if inspiration thus holds its ground,
being we grant a miracle in as far as though
analogous to God’s ordinary manner of working, it
pre-supposes His direct interference for the spiritual
edification of His people, what shall we say of
other miracles—are they, a priori, probable or im
probable ? ”
So that if we acknowledge the inventions of Watt
�“ The Fallacies of UnbeliefT
11
and Arkwright, we are bound to admit the miracles
of Cana and of Bethany! To do the Archbishop
justice his own reasoning does not impose upon him
self, for, directly he begins to apply it, the weakness
becomes too apparent and he changes his ground
with awkward rapidity :—
“ Or, again, we would take the one particular
miracle on which all Christianity rests—the resur
rection of Jesus Christ. On the hypothesis that
God, acting in his usual way, desired above and
beyond all former precedent to instruct and elevate
mankind by the mission of the Incarnate Son, thus
giving a revelation of Himself similar in kind but
far higher in degree than any He had hitherto com
municated through mere human agents—such a
messenger with a miraculous commission must have
been in His whole history unlike the common sons
of men; for the reason of the case, quite inde
pendently of experience, would, we maintain, have
led us to expect that death could not triumph over
Him, therefore the consequent resurrection of Christ
and the miracles of His life were to be expected.”
Yes,—but if all Christianity (as the Archbishop
says) rests upon this miracle, it will hardly do to
rest the miracle upon a hypothetical Christianity.
This is arguing in a circle with a vengeance! As
this concludes the defence of the miracles, let us see
again what it amounts to. The Archbishop first
dilutes the theory of Inspiration so as to make it
applicable to matters of common experience. He
then dilutes the theory of Miracles till he brings it
down to the level of Inspiration, and thereby proves
that there is a sort of miracle which is not contrary
to experience. This may do for a certain class of
marvels which are not only superfluous to Christianity
but even obstacles to belief; but obviously it will not
do for those great miracles “ upon which all Chris
tianity rests,” because, if the foundation be explained
�12
A Review of a Paper called
away, what becomes of the superstructure ? So the
Archbishop gives up his former method of explana
tion, which, if true, should be universally true (for
there can be no grade in miracles), and by pre
supposing Christianity, argues that such miracles are
its natural effect. And concludes :
££ Thus we approach the positive historical evidences
for the truth of the Christian revelation and other
miracles from a vantage ground, assured that whereas
the fallacy we have been treating of takes for granted
that they are impossible, all reason and all experience
of God’s mode of dealing with mankind leads us to
believe that they are on the hypothesis a priori
probable.”
Next the Archbishop deals with the direct internal
evidences of Christianity, and states fairly enough
the objections of his opponents.
“ Many human systems abound in maxims of
pure morality,
Christianity abounds in these maxims,
Therefore Christianity may be human.”
But, says the Archbishop, Christianity not only
abounds in these maxims, but Christianity acts up to
them, and other religions do not. The writings of
Seneca abound in such maxims. Buddhism and
other Oriental Creeds vaunt the purity of their pre
cepts. But compare the civilisation of the present
day with that of Rome in the days of Nero the
pupil of Seneca, Europe with Asia, Christianity with
Mohammedanism, and see the difference ! This is a
very specious argument, and up to a certain age in a
man a conclusive one. Its strength lies in its appeal
to our self-conceit. Our blood, our climate, our har
bours, our coal, or other circumstances to which
natural philosophers attribute the superiority of
Christendom are advantages which confer no merit
upon ourselves. But if we have achieved our pre
eminence by the deliberate adoption, and shall main
�li The Fallacies of UnbeliefF
T3
tain it by the preservation, of certain religious
opinions, we have every motive that self-complacency
and patriotism can supply for adhering to the faith of
our fathers. But the day comes when the argument
is seen to be an illusion. Immorality has flourished
in high places at Rome and elsewhere, as rampantly
in Christian as in Pagan times. Even of the third
century, Mosheim, on the authority of Cyprian, Origen,
and Eusebius, says of the Christian Ecclesiastics that
“ though several continued to exhibit to the world
illustrious examples of primitive piety and Christian
virtue ” (as did several Roman Emperors), “ yet
many were sunk in luxury and voluptuousness, puffed
up with vanity, arrogance, and ambition, possessed
with a spirit of contention and discord, and addicted
to many other vices that cast an undeserved reproach
upon the holy religion of which they were the
unworthy professors and ministers.” Eccl. Hist,
cent. iii. Part II., chap. ii.
Later on, we may add, the maxims of Christ had
as much effect upon his infallible Vicar, Alexander
VI., as those of Seneca had had upon Nero. And as
for the comparison between Europe and Asia, Chris
tianity and Mohammedanism, if it proves anything,
it proves too much. If the divine origin of the reli
gion has made Europe strong, why did it not make
Asia strong ? The religion is Asiatic by birth, it had
at one time far more votaries there than in Europe,
and yet it yielded to the human institutions of
Mahomet. And why ? Because to other causes,
“We may add the bitter dissensions and cruel
animosities that reigned among the Christian Sects,
particularly the Greeks, Nestorians, Eutychians, and
Monophysites, dissensions that filled a great part of
the East with carnage, assassinations, and such detest
able enormities as rendered the very name of Chris
tianity odious to many.” (Mosheim’s Eccl. His.
cent. vii. Part I., chap, ii.)
�14
A Review of a Paper called
So that if Mohammedanism makes Asiatics weak,
Christianity must have made them weaker still, or
they could not have been conquered by Mahomet.
If any result is to come from such comparisons, it
must be by comparing contemporaneous events and
persons. Compare Constantine the Convert with
Julian the Apostate, and see which was the finer and
purer and nobler character of two men, each of whom,
in the early days of Christianity, made religion a
motive cause of their acts and conduct ? The Chris
tians complained of being persecuted by the Pagans.
As soon as the Pagans ceased to be strong enough to
do so, did not the Christians persecute one another
with ten times the cruelty and virulence which Pagan
ism ever exerted against Christianity ? Has any
religion shed so much blood as Christianity? Was
there in any Mahommedan or Pagan country in the
fourteenth and fifteenth centuries so cruel and wicked
an institution as the Holy Inquisition ? And, lastly,
are the converts to Christianity (when the mission
aries make one) in India, or elsewhere, better or only
more hypocritical than the unconverted natives ?
But, not content with refuting the fallacies of his
opponents, the Archbishop goes on to establish the
positive evidences upon which Christianity rests, and
these he affects to divide into two parts:—
I. The History of the Religion.
II. The History of the Books of the Hew Tes
tament.
[There is no valid reason for this division, because
the history of the religion is written in the books of
the New Testament, and nowhere else.]
“All the fundamental facts and doctrines which
constitute Christianity are to be found embodied in
the Apostles’ Creed, and this was the religion whose
professors Nero tortured in the Amphitheatre, and
about whom Pliny consulted Trajan.”
Surely this is a most unwarrantable assumption.
�“ The Fallacies of UnbeliefF
15
The only real authority for the torturing of the Chris
tians at Rome by Nero is the disputed passage in
Tacitus—and if this be admitted as genuine it will be
clear that the Apostles’ Creed had nothing to do with
the persecution. Pliny’s letter is still more question
*
able ; and the passage in Josephus (which would really
be most valuable) is not even claimed as evidence by
the Archbishop. Where, then, do we get any trace
of the “facts and fundamental doctrines of the
Apostles’ Creed ” at this time ? And it must not be
forgotten that the Romans did not in the days of the
early Emperors (if ever) persecute for religious
opinions. On the contrary, every form of religion was
represented and practised without molestation at Rome.
By the time of Decius, Christianity had become the
badge of a political party.
“ No one nowadays, I suppose, will doubt that
Christ lived and died, and that his followers imme
diately afterwards spread throughout the Roman
Empire that Christianity of which the basis is the
doctrine, life, and influence of one Jesus who was
dead, but whom they affirmed to be alive. So that
in the lifetime of those who had been companions of
Christ you have Christianity fully equipped in all its
simplicity and its fullness just as we have it now, and
we defy all adverse critics to give any other satisfac
tory account of its origin than that which assumes
its truth. This is what we mean by the historical
evidence for the truth of Christianity independently
of any critical examination of its books.”
But with all deference to the Archbishop, this is
not “historical evidence for the truth of Christianity.”
It is simply the witness which Christianity bears of
itself, and that we know, on authority older than the
* It may be said that this passage in Tacitus is confirmed by one
in Suetonius (Nero 16.) But this latter is of still more doubtful
character, and only says of the doctrine of Christianity that it was a
“ mischievous superstition.” What is there to prove that this meant
the Apostles’ Creed ?
�16
A Review of a Paper called
Archbishop’s, is not to be trusted. So far we have
not advanced a step on this branch of the subject,
which, as we said before, cannot be divided. Nor
has it been really divided, for all now depends upon
the authenticity of the books of the New Testament;
if this can be proved by internal testimony, the battle
may still be won. How does the Archbishop do it ?
“ There are twenty-seven books in the New Testa
ment ; there is not one of them that does not teach
distinctly or by direct implication the Christianity of
the Apostles’ Creed. If any one of them, therefore,
can be proved to be genuine and authentic, we have
the historical basis which we desire. Christ rose
from the dead and is now living in heaven according
to every one of them.”
Perhaps so, but the Apostles’ Creed is a good deal
more than this; and as to the twenty-seven books, if
any one can be proved to be authentic, we shall have
the historical basis which we desire of the contents of
that book, but of no more. The meaning of the next
paragraph we are wholly at a loss to understand :—
“ God has indeed given us many books in the Sacred
Canon for our greater security and for the more com
plete enforcement of the truth ; but if He had given
us only one we should have been in much the same
condition as to our faith which we now occupy.”
This would seem to assert that, if all the Canon
of the New Testament had either not been written or
not come down to us, with the exception of (let us
say) the Epistle of Jude or of James, we should have
our Christian religion, including the Nicene and
Athanasian Creeds, as we have it now. Surely the
Archbishop cannot mean this; but we can suggest
no other explanation.
Finally, with a view to establish the historical
basis which we desire, he recommends any person to
study the subject for himself, and, “ taking Paley or
Gardner for his guide ” (that is with a foregone con-
�“ The Fallacies of Unbelief.”
17
elusion in view), commence with the Epistles to the
Corinthians and so go on from book to book until he
at last finds that the cable of proof consists of
twenty-seven separate cords, every one of which is
sufficient in itself, and all of which together produce
a chain which cannot be broken. If this would be
the result it would be entirely owing to the guidance
of Paley or Lardner. For if an impartial student
undertakes the investigation, beginning with the two
Epistles to the Corinthians and that to the Galatians
(which all allow to be equally genuine), he will find
no recognition of the Gospel histories as we have
them, no mention, indeed, of any incident in the life
of Jesus before the institution of the Supper. No
marvellous birth, no miracles, indeed, of any sort.
The Resurrection of the Epistles is quite a different
thing from the Return to Life of the Gospels. The
former is only the logical conclusion of the doctrine
of the immortality of the soul (such as most people
accept) and was proved by the visionary Appearances,
one of which was to Paul himself. Most people say
of a beloved friend who has died that “ he has gone
to Heaven,” and occasionally they fancy that he has
“ appeared ” again on earth. So Paul says (1 Cor.
xv. 16), “If the dead rise not again, neither has
Christ risen.” There is no carnal resurrection implied
in one case more than the other. It is impossible to
believe that Paul knew of the story as told in the
Gospels, the whole of which was material to the
doctrine he was preaching, when he never alludes to
it. And as of the life after the Crucifixion, so also
of the life before it: if Paul knew the Gospels, and
thought the story immaterial, why should it be
material now ? Christianity as written to the Corin
thians is a simple creed enough, and we defy the
most acute theologian to prove the Apostles’ Creed
from it.
We need not go over the oft-trodden ground of
�18
A Review of a Paper called
comparison between the Epistle to the Galatians and
the Acts of the Apostles. Not only are the statements
of the one as to the conversion of Paul contradictory
of those in the other (and Paul in his own account
takes a solemn oath of the truth of what he says),
but the state of the early Church is quite different in
the two accounts. In one, Paul is the humble
assistant, whereas, according to the Epistle, he boasts
of his own independence. Here, too, if Paul had
ever heard of the Gospels or the stories told in the
Gospels, how can we account for his impiety and
presumption in withstanding to the face the Rock
which Christ had selected to build His Church upon,
and sneering at the Beloved Disciple and the Lord’s
Brother (Gal. ii. 6). Surely he never could have
known these men’s histories, or the grandeur which
was in store for them—that they had lived in
intimate companionship for three years with the Incar
nate God, an experience which must have ever made
them infinitely his superiors in their common
Master’s business—and that in the day of judgment
they would sit on thrones judging Paul’s countrymen,
and perhaps Paul himself.
So far, then, from finding that the admission of the
truth of one or two books solves the whole difficulty,
we are obliged to confess that it is only then that
the difficulty becomes insuperable; and that if we
intend to believe the New Testament as a whole,
we must not acknowledge any book in particular to
be genuine or authentic. And this is the only way in
which the belief of thinking, reading people is main
tained. They find contradictory accounts in different
books of the Canon—if any one were proved to be
genuine and authentic, of course the others would be
pro tanto untrue, and the writers untrustworthy. But
until this proof has been effected, the readers are not
bound to disbelieve any, and can fancy they believe
them all.
�el The Fallacies of UnbeliefF
19 •
As a building cannotsafely be erected exceeding in its
upper stories the area of its foundation, so it is impos
sible to build the Gospels upon the narrower area of the
Epistles to the Corinthians. Suppose it be proved,
that Rome was at one time governed by kings, and
that Tarquinius Superbus is a historical character,
are we, therefore, to believe in Romulus and Remus ?
And here we may return to the argument that because
Christianity is incapable of scientific proof, therefore
it is not to be believed, and endeavour to show what
that argument (if such an argument ever was used)
means. We cannot suppose the Archbishop has
invented it, but he certainly has misstated it. We
believe the meaning to be this. Every theory which
claims our belief, must stand examination by the most
critical tests that the science of the day can apply to
the class of theories to which it belongs. Thus the
statement that the two sides of a triangle are greater
than the thirdis an abstract one, and capable of absolute
demonstration, andupon such alone it is to be accepted.
That the circumference of a circle bears a given pro
portion to the four sides of the greatest square that
can be inscribed in it, is highly probable, and is con
trary to no known conclusion, but until it can be
proved mathematically it must remain a theory.
Mechanical theories are capable of proof up to a
certain point, but due allowances must be made for
the imperfection of materials, atmospheric influence,
Ac. Lower down still, the guilt or innocence of a
prisoner always depends upon probability. It is not
possible to prove to demonstration that the witnesses
are not wholly mistaken or perjured. And, there
fore, in such cases our sense of justice is satisfied by
probability, when that probability amounts to a certain
standard, which is said to carry with it moral con
viction. In the history of events long past even this
moral conviction is always difficult and sometimes
impossible to establish, and to properly sift and
�20
A Review of a Paper called
arrange his materials so as to get nearest to it, is the
duty of an historian, and the value of every history
depends upon the way in which this duty is performed.
No one ever supposed the doctrines of Christianity
capable of mathematical demonstration; no one ever
supposed them capable of the amount of proof attained
by mechanical experiments. But the story of Chris
tianity professes to be an historical fact, and before it
be accepted it must stand the test of historical
criticism. Its inherent probability upon which the
Archbishop of Canterbury lays so much stress is the
inherent probability of an incarnation of Vishnu
and no more. The wonders might have been done in
India as well as in Palestine, as they might have
been done in Tyre and Sidon, instead of Bethsaida
and Chorazin. But the man Jesus, of wonderful
birth, of marvellous power, of astounding eloquence,
and of miraculous end, claims to be an historical
character, and we are not bound to accept about him.
stories upon less evidence than we should the same
stories about Julius Caesar. Our materials are ample
enough. We have four more or less complete
biographies, and these profess to be by contemporary
writers, who had the very best opportunities of seeing
and knowing all that they record.
Now there are certain rudimentary canons of
internal evidence by which the credibility of all history
is judged, and by which alone it can be fairly judged.
I. The historian should feel and show that he looks
upon in a different light:
(a) Events which he had witnessed himself.
(/3) Events of which he had heard immediately
after they had happened from those who
had seen them.
(y) Events which he had taken from some other
account, or derived from far-fetched tra
dition.
II. In every series of events there are certain
�“ The Fallacies of Unbelief”
21
features more material than the rest, and however
often the story be told these would never be omitted.
III. But in all histories of the same events each
historian would make a point of relating what passed
under his own eyes exclusively, and also what he
alone had some exceptional opportunities of knowing
from other sources.
Where either or both of the first two canons is or
are found to be violated, the critic concludes that the
history is not authentic; and, if the last be not
observed, that the history is not genuine.
Now to apply these tests to the Gospels:—
I. The stories of the Baptist’s nativity, the dream
which sent the Magi home, the Temptation in the
Wilderness, the speeches of members of the Sanhe
drim, the conversation between Jesus and Pilate, the
message from Pilate’s wife, are told in exactly the
same tone as the public discourses or open-air miracles.
II. By far the most striking miracle worked by
Jesus was that of raising Lazarus from the dead. It is
most material to the story because his career turns upon
it. From that time the ecclesiastical authorities made
up their minds that he should die. It was looked upon
by Jesus himself as the great miracle of his career.
Formerly, when-his mother had suggested a display
of his power, he had rebuked her; but now his hour
was come. On this occasion only he prepared the
spectators for the result. He began by offering a
prayer, simply to create an effect, and then worked
the miracle in a purposely theatrical manner. And
why not ? If his power and nature were to be proved
by works of this sort, one can understand their being
done in as public and effective a style as possible, so as to
reach and convince the greatest numbers. But so little
did three of the Evangelists think of the performance
or their Master’s motives that they never mentioned
the miracle ! The Incarnation and Godhead of Christ
depend upon the circumstances attending the Concep-
�22
A Review of a Paper called
tion. How can we account for two of the Evange
lists omitting them altogether ?
III. There were Apostles present on certain occa
sions when there were no other witnesses, for instance,
at the grand climax of the visible Ascension. The
event taking place either from Bethany or the Mount
of Olives, within three miles of the scene of Jesus’s
degradation and death, was the most complete evi
dence of his triumph, not only over the grave, but
over enmity and misrepresentation of all kinds. All
the Apostles were present, and the evidence of their
eyes was confirmed by the appearance and address of
two supernatural messengers who appeared for the
express purpose of assuring them not only of the
reality of their loss, but of the eventual triumph of
all true believers by the return of Jesus from Heaven.
Two of these eye-witnesses wrote Gospels, and
neither mentions the Ascension ! It is impossible to
suppose that Matthew considered the Resurrection
conclusive, because he expressly says it was not
(Matthew xxviii. 17). Again, there was an inner knot
of three select Apostles, who, on three celebrated
occasions, viz., the raising of Jairus’s daughter, the
Transfiguration, and the Agony in the Garden, were
allowed to be present to the exclusion of the larger
body. One of these select witnesses wrote a Gospel,
and in that Gospel alone is there no mention of any
one of those three scenes ! Lastly, there was one
Evangelist who had exceptional opportunities of
hearing all the history of the nativity and childhood,
from the only person competent to give it, and
that was the disciple, who, from the hour of the Cru
cifixion, took Jesus’s mother to his own home. How
can we account for his silence on these subjects ? Is
it conceivable, that after the death of him, whose
memory formed so close andbindingatie between these
two, his wonderful birth and boyhood should not
have been the topics of frequent conversation ? The
�“ The Fallacies of UnbeliefT
23
importance of the Mother of Jesus was a plant of
post-Evangelistic growth, but it is surprising to find
her adopted son knowing and saying nothing of her.
It is now universally believed that her name was
Mary. Surely John ought to have known what her
name was. But he never calls her by any, and
implies that her name was something else, for he
says that her sister was called Mary (John xix. 25),
We have thus endeavoured to show what is meant
by saying that Christianity is incapable of scientific
proof. It is apprehended that no evidence could
survive such a failure under tests which, in any
similar case, would be considered indispensable ; but
it may be added that, when more closely examined,
these four independent biographies turn out to be
merely disjointed statements (unsupported by exoteric
testimony or any sort of evidence beyond that con
tained in their own records) written we know not
when, by whom, or in what language. In some
places these histories agree so exactly that it is
impossible not to believe that they have been copied
from one another or from some common source. In
others they disagree so entirely that it is impossible
but that some of them must be false. They contain
statements of history that are not true, predictions
which have not been fulfilled. The writers of them
believed that the course of events was ordered by
Providence so that certain old prophecies (many of
which they misunderstood) might be fulfilled. They
never claim for themselves the credit of eye-witnesses,
*
and when they refer to any authority at all, it is
merely that of oral tradition. The belief in miracles
held by them is not merely in miracles worked
by an instrument of God for a limited period and a
special purpose, but in thaumaturgical exploits by
* It is hardly necessary to point out that in John xix. 35 andxxi. 24,
the claim is not made by the writer. Indeed the abrupt change of
persons proves the passage in each case to be a clumsy interpolation.
�24
il 'The Fallacies of Unbelief. ”
casual performers for purposes utterly out of propor
tion to the power exhibited. They lived and wrote
in an age which abounded, in what is now called
literary forgery; and works on the same subject as
their own, written in the same style, and containing
much of the same matter, have always been considered
spurious, and are not supposed to possess a word of
independent authenticity.
The Archbishop of Canterbury is the representative
of a numerous class of persons who try sohard to believe,
because they are persuaded that with Christianity
(be it ever so little true) is involved all that is good
and noble in the world. They are men of little faith
who cannot understand that He who created the
Universe may very safely be left to take care of it,
and that His ends cannot be forwarded by our little
fables, however good may be their moral. The world
goes forward—slowly it may be, but surely—getting
wiser, and therefore better ; while Christianity clings
like a fly to its wheel, sometimes at the top, some
times at the bottom, but always believing itself to be
the propelling power of the whole machinery. The
reverse of this, however, is true. As the Man is, so
is his Religion. Where men are totally uneducated,
Christianity is a mere fetish worship of crosses and
relics, and, as the intellectual power of its votaries
rises, Christianity is found to discard one absurdity
after another, until it emerges at last a pure Theism,
the love of One Father by all the members of one
Family.
PRINTED BY C. W. REYXEI.I., LITTLE PULTENET STREET, HAYMARKET.
�
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A review of a paper (written by the Archbishop of Canterbury in 'Good Words', May, 1875) called "The Fallacies of Unbelief."
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Rogers, Walter Lacy
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Place of publication: London
Collation: 24 p. ; 18 cm.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references. From the library of Dr Moncure Conway. Printed by C.W. Reynell, London.
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Thomas Scott
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Archibald Campbell Tait
Christianity-Controversial Literature
Conway Tracts
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ct
AN ADDRESS
TO
ALL
EARNEST CHRISTIANS.
BY
T. LUMISDEN STRANGE,
LATE JUDGE OF THE HIGH COURT OF MADRAS.
AUTHOR OF “THE BIBLE, IS IT 4 THE WORD OF GOD, * ” “THE SPEAKER’S
COMMENTARY. REVISED,” “ A CRITICAL CATECHISM,” ETC.
PUBLISHED BY THOMAS SCOTT,
NO. 11, THE TERRACE, FARQUHAR ROAD,
UPPER NORWOOD, LONDON, S.E.
�AN ADDRESS
TO ALL
EARNEST CHRISTIANS.
The Christian Evidence Society maintain their posi
tion, such as it is, in seeming composure. They have
a world of their own, and abstract themselves from
what is outside their circle. They are at sea, aware
of the storm blowing around them, but prefer the
shelter of their cabins to facing the troublesome
elements. They have nailed their colours to the
masthead ; the old vessel tumbles about sadly, and
creaks in all its timbers; but it still floats, and they
trust will continue to do so. They wish not to
alarm the crew with the revelation of what is assailing
them. They keep them, therefore, battened down
under the hatches. Mr Scott and his writers habit
ually knock at their doors, but they are not to be
disturbed. His personal appeal to them, made two
years ago, has met with no attention. Mine, of April
last, remains similarly unnoticed. We appear to have
been addressing “watchmen,” such as those of old,
who are “ all dumb dogs,” and “cannot bark
and
are allowed to roam about, unscathed, like the relent
less Philistines, when the chosen people, in the time
of their first king, hid themselves in holes, conscious
�3
that they had not a weapon among them wherewith
to face the enemy.
The Christian Evidence Society are not the only
persons guilty of evading their opponents. There are
multitudes bound up in the same cause, provided also
with a host of professional standard bearers. Many
of these are continually appealed to, and in vain.
It ’ is sad, but true, that those professing to have
divine truth on their side hesitate to have it examined
by the light of the present day. With indifference
we cannot charge them. Many of them abound in
zeal, doubtless; but it is a zeal so tempered with
caution, as to be practically, on such occasions as I
speak of, inoperative. We doubt not that they would
match themselves with us were they reasonably con
fident of the results. It is just, we must conclude,
the apprehension that the issue might be otherwise
than favourable that deters them from incurring the
venture. This is neither manly nor honest. Nor
can it avert the threatening danger. In the confid
ence of the power of insubvertible truth, we advance
openly and boldly, fearing no adversaries. The day
is our own, but as yet only in the distance. We
earnestly desire to hasten the march of that enlighten
ment which has visited ourselves. We have a duty
to perform towards those still shrouded in darkness.
We should be untrue to them, as well as to ourselves,
were we to be guilty of retaining in silence the sense
we have of the prevailing error. We know its
potency, and how it enslaves the understanding and
debases the thoughts and sentiments. We know of
the miserable dominion of fear it establishes, and of
the forbidding nature of the representation it makes
to mankind at large of the author of their beings. To
be silent would be to leave the erroi' to free currency.
�4
We should be maintaining a forced indifference to its
prevalence such as we do not feel. We therefore
speak out with what power of expression we can
command. We are called destructors, and. should be
so had we no better thing to offer than the scheme
we denounce.
I have personally had considerable experience of
both elements. I lived for years upon the food
presented by the religious system I have turned from.
I thought its records came from the source of all
truth, had been uttered by instruments divinely
inspired, and contained all that was to govern me in
this life, and fit me for the life that has to come. I
fervently and undoubtingly believed, and strove to
conform myself in all respects to what was thus put
before me. And when facts and considerations, too
plain to be misunderstood, presented themselves to
disturb my faith in the sources of my dependence, I
struggled for years before the strands were severed
which bound me to my past convictions. Now I am
willing to be tested in every way by those remaining
in the position I have left, and for whom I have in
truth the deepest sympathies. If any one of them
will open a correspondence with me, he has my per
mission to probe my present faith to the utmost. I
should be glad, at the same time, if not too painful to
his feelings, to be allowed to make some searching
inquiries connected with the foundations of his frith.
Either side should be at liberty at the close of the
correspondence to publish the results.
T. L. STRANGE.
. Great Malvern,
September 1873.
�
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A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
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2018
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Conway Hall Ethical Society
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Title
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An address to all earnest Christians
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Strange, Thomas Lumisden
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Place of publication: London
Collation: 4 p. ; 18 cm.
Notes: From the library of Dr Moncure Conway.
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Thomas Scott
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1873
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CT97
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Christianity
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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 (An address to all earnest Christians), 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
Christianity-Controversial Literature
Christians
Conway Tracts
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CT 4oq
CHRISTIANITY:
Viewed in the Light of our Present Knowledge
and Moral Sense.
Part
Part
I.—RELIGION : PRIMITIVE, AND AMONG
THE LOWEST RACES.
II.—THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION.
By CHARLES BRAY,
AUTHOR OF THE “PHILOSOPHY OF NECESSITY: ” “ A MANUAL OF ANTHROPOLOGY,
OR SCIENCE OF SIAN,” ETC.
PUBLISHED BY THOMAS SCOTT,
NO. 11, THE TERRACE, FARQUHAR ROAD,
UPPER NORWOOD, LONDON, S.E,
Price One Shilling.
��CHRISTIANITY.
PAET I.
RELIGION : PRIMITIVE AND AMONG THE LOWEST RACES.
“ Everything that exists depends upon the Past, prepares the
Future, and is related to the whole.”—Oersted.
“ I view all beings, not as special creations, but as the lineal de
scendants of some few beings which lived before the first bed of the
Silurian system was deposited.”—Origin of Species, C. Darwin,
first Edition, pp. 488-9.
“ Psychology will be based on a new foundation, that of the
necessary acquirement of each mental power and capacity by gra
dation.”—Ibid., p. 488.
“ The variation of human thought proceeds in a continuous man
ner, new ideas springing out of old ones, either as corrections or
developments, but never spontaneously originating. With them
as with organic forms, each requires a germ or seed. The intel
lectual phase of humanity, observed at any moment, is therefore
an embodiment of many different things. It is connected with the
past, is in unison with the present, and contains the embryo of the
future.”—Intellectual Development of Europe. J. W. Draper,
vol. ii. p. 109.
HESE views embody the philosophy of the present
day,
a
less interesting than
Tstudy toand it is thenoevidence in the works profitable
follow
of Lubbock,
Tylor, Draper, Darwin, Wallace, Spencer, and others,
upon which these truths are founded. By slow and
gradual, and probably unbroken links, the whole physi
cal world has been evolved, and this is no less true of
the world of mind. There has been nothing spon
taneous, nothing supernatural, but everything that
exists in the growth of mind, as in the physical world,
�4
Primitive Religion.
depends upon the past, prepares the future, and is
related to the whole. We must go hack to pre-historie
times to explain the thoughts and feelings, the aptitudes
and prejudices, the customs and languages of the present.
Many things otherwise utterly incomprehensible are
“survivals” of primaeval barbaric life and thought.
Customs differ widely according to climate and the
world’s age. There is no telling in what form they
may come down to us, but they are evidence that one
human nature is common to all the races and tribes
scattered over the habitable globe. The world, at the
present time, furnishes illustrations of all the forces
that have been at work in its original formation both
physical and mental. Heat and water, certainly, are a
little moderated in their action, but as rude savages as the
world has ever known still continue to exist, and the ex
tremes of civilization are as great now as at any previous
era. In the north, where the cold imposes considerable
limitation to the pleasures of life, the Esquimau
enters his house by the chimney, the occupants passing
in and out “ by means of a strong pole notched deep
enough to afford a little holding for a toe” (“Pre-his
toric Man,” p. 393, by Sir John Lubbock). A more
civilized person would no doubt prefer a ladder, and
perhaps a different place of entrance, but this mode of
ingress and egress may have conveniences that are not
at once obvious to a European. In the midst of all
the ice and snow in these regions, the great want is
water. The houses being built of ice and snow, a tem
perature above 32 degrees would make them what
would be considered unpleasantly damp to a European.
But fortunately for this phase of domestic comfort they
have no wood, but use blubber and oil to keep up a
tolerable temperature. They use lamps outside and
consume an immense quantity of blubber inside. The
temperature of their bodies is about the same as our
own! they are heated from within by the slow com
bustion—the union of carbon and oxygen—of what
�Primitive Religion.
5
thus constitutes both food and fuel. The heat is sus
tained by thick skins. The inhabitant of Central
Africa, on the contrary, enters his house, very much of
the same shape, by a hole at the bottom, through which
he crawls on his hands and knees. The Fuegians of
the Antarctic region are a much lower race than their
Esquimaux brethren of the Arctic, and the Australians,
Papuans, and Fijians are lower still. The Fuegians,
when hard pressed for food in severe winters, kill an
old woman, and when asked why they did not kill
their dogs, they said “ Dog catch ioppo” (i.e.) otters.
We should justly consider this a rather narrow view
of utilitarianism, and the conscience does not appear to
speak very loud in this stage of civilization: all doubtless
have their ideas of right and wrong, slightly varying,
however, in their significance: thus a savage explained
that if anybody took away his wife that was bad, but if he
took another man’s that would be good (Tylor, vol. ii.,
p. 289). The marriage ceremony among the Bushmen
of Australia is very simple and inexpensive. The man
selects his lady-love, knocks her down with a club, and
drags her to his camp. In South Africa, in the British
settlement of Natal, the natives are beginning to show
marked evidence of civilization. Mr Froude tells us
that a young Zulu, by hiring himself out at six shil
lings a day, soon finds himself in a position to buy a
couple of wives; he makes them work for him as well
as for their own living, and he thus sets up as a
gentleman for life, and a very troublesome one we are
told.
An interesting question has, however, arisen in Dutch
Borneo as to the extent of the duty a wife owes to her
husband. The circumstances, as detailed in a letter
written from Bandjermassin, and published in a Java
paper, are as follows:—“ It seems that a fugitive rebel
chief, who is now well stricken in years, has lately
with commendable prudence been making arrangements
as to the disposition of his property after his departure
�6
Primitive Religion.
from this life. Among other directions he has given
orders that immediately on his decease his two youngest
wives shall he killed in order that they may accompany
him to the next world. The two ladies for whom this
honour is designed strangely enough fail to appreciate it,
and have fled to the Dutch fort on the Tewch, where they
have put themselves under the protection of the com
mandant. The venerable chief is naturally incensed at
their having taken this ill-advised step, and has expressed
his intention of compelling the fugitives to return to their
domestic duties without further nonsense. His indigna
tion is shared by his family, friends, and followers, who
have rallied round him in his trouble, and by the latest
accounts he was preparing to attack the fort where his
wives had taken refuge. In the meantime, the govern
ment steamer ‘ Baritoy’ had been despatched to the
assistance of the commandant, with a reinforcement of
twenty-five soldiers; and a howitzer, with artillerymen,
had also arrived at the fort. This painful family dif
ference has naturally created a profound sensation in
the colony, and it is to be hoped that it will be satis
factorily arranged without a recourse to arms.”-—Pall
Mall Gazette.
The conventional practices and views of etiquette of
what we call savages differ considerably from our own ;
thus, with us, to pull a man’s nose is not considered
polite, whereas the Esquimaux pull noses as a mark of
respect (“ Pre-historic Man,” p. 456). Among them
also the temporary loan of a wife is considered a mark
of peculiar friendship (“ Primitive Culture,” vol. ii.,
p. 136). Civilization borrows the wife without the
consent of the husband.
The inhabitants of the Eastern Archipelago are of
increasing interest as our intercourse with them
extends. Little, however, comparatively, is yet known
of the natives of New Guinea and the neighbour
ing islands, and that little certainly does not reveal
them to us as a very interesting people. The principal
�Primitive Religion.
7
supply of meat is from human flesh, and that not
always from the bodies of their enemies, for Mr Kiehl
tells us, in an article read before the London Anthropo
logical Society, that the people 11 of the Solomon Archi
pelago are obliged to build their houses in the most
inaccessible spots on the rocks, even to the very sum
mit of the peak on Eddystone Island, to prevent being
treacherously killed at night and eaten by the very
friends with whom they feasted the day before on a
roasted enemy’s body, or perhaps on a raw one ; those of
Vaati, who, as late as 1849, were yet all cannibals, pre
ferring children to adults, and girls to boys.” Mr
Kiehl thinks it by no means a sufficient excuse for
this that other animal food is scarce, for although there
are neither cattle nor sheep, still there are plenty of
dogs, fowls, pigeons, and fish. When we consider, he
says, how many Hindoos live altogether without animal
food, “ the Papuans must be a desperately wicked people.”
Their social customs are certainly unpleasant. “ What
good,” he says, “ can be said of such people as the
natives of Vaati, whose custom it is, when they wish
to make peace, to kill one or more of their own people,
and send the bodies to those with whom they have
been fighting, to eat 1 On the death of chiefs it is the
frequent custom among them to kill two, three, or
more men, to make a feast for the mourners. When
parents are unwilling to bear the fatigue of rearing their
children, or when they find them a hindrance to their
work, they often bury them alive.” As these interest
ing creatures are near relations to the Fijians, who are
about to become British subjects, it is as well to know
something about their habits, and it is pleasing to think
also, that they are “ beginning to find out that trading
with the white men is more advantageous than killing
and eating them.” Commerce is everywhere the great
civiliser. Mr Kiehl says, “ I regret not to know any
thing about the religion of the Papuans. The practice
of circumcision seems to point to at least some form of
�8
Primitive Religion.
religious observances.” Unless eating their fellows is
another form, we certainly cannot say much for their
devotional aspirations.
I mention those things to show that the savages now
in the world are as primitive and varied in their indi
vidual habits and customs as in pre-historic times, and
that we may probably learn as much, by the study of their
interesting ways, of the origin of many of our own
modes of thought and action as by going far back into
the past.
It is a question whether all our altered customs are
improvements. Thus at Tahiti and some other islands,
tattooing was almost universal, and a person not
properly tattooed would be as much reproached and
shunned, as if with us he should go about the streets
naked (“Primitive Culture,”p. 377), and the Pijian fully
believed that a woman who was not tattooed in an
orthodox manner during life, could not possibly hope
for happiness after death (Idem, p. 459). This mode of
painting our clothes upon our bodies would certainly
save much thought and time that might be devoted to
more useful purposes, and it would probably save many
of those colds that are caught by going about only
half-naked, when people are in what they call fulldress.
But it is the religions of the world that furnish the
largest amount and best illustration of “ survivals.”
The ideas upon which they are mainly founded have
been thousands of years forming, and the question
immediately presents itself how far opinion and con
duct based on such ideas are in conformity with modern
knowledge, or only with such knowledge as was available
in the earlier and ruder stages of culture ? Upon in
vestigation, it is evident that the religious opinions of
the present day are results adopted from previous
systems which have come down from the earliest age,
and that they could not otherwise have found accept
ance now. We should shrink with horror from our
�Primitive Religion.
9
present theological creeds, if they had not come down
to us from a thousand generations of the past.
The deities of savages are evil, not good; they may
be forced into compliance with the wishes of man;
they require bloody, and rejoice in human, sacrifices;
they are mortal, not immortal; a part, not the author
of, nature ; they are to be approached by dances rather
than by prayers ; and often approve what we call vice,
rather than what we esteem a virtue (“ The Origin
of Civilisation,” by Sir John Lubbock, p. 195). For
like ourselves, “ they think the blessings come of them
selves, and attribute all evil to the interference of
malignant beings” {Idem, p. 196).
“ They have much clearer notions of an evil than of a
good Deity, whom they fear, believing him to be the
occasion of sickness, death, thunder, and every calamity
that befalls them” {Idem, p. 212).
The Tartars of Katschiutze (like our Pessimists) con
sider the evil spirit to be more powerful than the good.
{Idem, p. 213).
All religion is originally based on fear—love does
not enter till long after—fear of the invisible and
unknown, and all cause at first is invisible and un
known. Darwin in “Expressions and Emotions in
Men and Animals,” p. 144, speaking of the effect of
fear among some of the larger baboons, says of one of
them (Cynopetheius Niger) that “ when a turtle was
placed in its compartment, this monkey moved its lips
in an odd, rapid, jabbering manner, which the keeper
declared was meant to conciliate and please the turtle.”
Here we have probably the origin of what is now called
Divine Service. “Id awe,”Tylor tells us, “the Philippine
Islanders, when they saw an alligator, prayed him with
great tenderness to do them no harm, and to this end
offered him whatever they had in their boats, casting it
into the water” (“Primitive Culture,” p. 209). “Primos
in orbe deos fecit timor.” “As an object of worship,
the serpent is pre-eminent among animals. Not only
�io
Primitive Religion.
is it malevolent and mysterious, but its bite—so trifling
in appearance, and yet so deadly, producing fatal
effects rapidly, and apparently by no adequate means—
suggests to the savage almost irresistibly the notion of
something divine, according to his notions of divinity ”
(Sir John Lubbock). “All things that are able to do
them hurt beyond their prevention/’ says Tylor, “ the
primitive man adores” (“Primitive Culture,” p. 340).
The first idea of God is almost always as an evil spirit,
and among the savages of the present day, religion is
anything but an ennobling sentiment.
Thus the
Caffres believe in the existence of a heaven for those
only who had killed and eaten many of their enemies,
while those who were effeminate would be compelled
to dwell with Aygnan, their devil (“ Pre-historic Man,”
p. 469).
The Maories were perpetually at war during life, and
hoped to continue so after death. They believed in a
spirit named Atona. When any one was ill, Atona
was supposed to be devouring his inside, and their
religious service was curses and threats, on some
occasions attended with human and other sacrifices in
the hope of appeasing his wrath. The New Zealanders
believed that the greater number of human bodies they
eat, the higher would be their position in the world to
come. Under such a creed, we are told there is a
certain diabolical nobility about the habit, which is,
at any rate, far removed from the grovelling sensuality
of a Fijian. . Certainly to qualify yourself to go to
heaven by eating your fellow-creatures, is much more
spiritual than to eat them from mere gluttony.
The Dayaks considered that the owner of every
human head they could procure would serve them in
the next world, where indeed a man’s rank would be
according to the number of heads in this ; a young man
might not marry till he had procured a head. Way
laying and murdering men for their heads was the
Dayak’s religion. To be an acknowledged murderer is
�Primitive Religion.
11
the object of the Fijian’s restless ambition. Even
among the women there were few, who, in some way,
had not been murderers. To this they were trained
from their infancy. One of the first lessons taught an
infant, is to strike its mother. Mr Ellis tells ns that
no portion of the human race was ever perhaps sunk
lower in brutal licentiousness, than this isolated people.
Certainly their customs and conscience differed a little
from our own, but notwithstanding, we are told that
Captain Cook and his officers lived with the natives
“in the most cordial friendship,” and took leave of
them with great regret, and Mr Ellis says, they showed
great anxiety to possess copies of the Bible, when it
was translated into their language. “ They were,” he
says, “ deemed by them more precious than gold—yea,
than much fine gold;” no doubt being very discriminat
ing as to the quality of gold, and able also to appreciate
the dealings of God’s chosen people with the Canaan
ites, in which the inhabitants of whole cities were
murdered in cold-blood—men, women, and children,
ruthlessly slaughtered-—more highly than we should.
Among most savages it was considered the right
thing, and there was no resisting public opinion, that
wives, friends and slaves, should accompany their chiefs
into the next world. By some they were strangled, by
others buried alive. “The Gauls in Caesar’s time,” Tylor
tells us, “burned at the dead man’s sumptuous funeral,
whatever was dear to him, animals also, and much-loved
slaves and clients (“Primitive Culture,” vol. i. p. 419).
The ancient Gauls had also a convenient custom of
transferring to the world below the repayment of loans.
Even in comparatively modern times, the Japanese
would borrow money in this life, to be repaid with
heavy interest in the next [Idem, p. 443). When a
New Zealand chief died, the mourning family gave his
chief widow a rope to hang herself with in the woods,
and so rejoin her husband. In Cochin China, the
common people object to celebrating their feast of the
�12
•
Primitive Religion.
dead on the same day with the upper classes, for this
excellent reason, that the aristocratic souls might Bake
the servants’ souls carry their presents for them—
which presents were given with the most lavish ex
travagance {Idem, p. 441). As to what became of
the objects sacrificed for the dead—strangled wives,
servants, golden vessels, gay clothes or jewels—although
they rot in the ground, or are consumed on the pile,
they nevertheless come into the possession of the dis
embodied souls they are intended for, not the material
things themselves, but phantasmal shapes corresponding
to them {Idem, p. 439).
The native Australian goes gladly to be hanged, in the
belief that he would ‘‘jump up whitefellow, and have
plenty of sixpences;” and the West African negroes
commit suicide when in distant slavery, that they may
revive in their own land {Idem, vol. ii. p. 5).
Souls are supposed to appear in the other world in
the same age and condition as they leave this, conse
quently true religion, and the liveliest filial piety
require that parents should be dispatched before they
get too old. They are generally, where this belief
obtains, buried alive, with their own joyous consent.
The Fijians consider the gods as beings of like
passions with themselves. They love and hate; they
are proud and revengeful, and make war, and kill and
eat each other; yet they look upon the Samoans with
horror, because they have no religion, and no belief in
any such deities. “It has been asserted,” says Sir John
Lubbock over and over again, “ that there is no race of
men so degraded as to be entirely without a religion—
without some idea of a Deity. So far,” he says, “from
this being true, the very reverse is the case ” {Idem, p.
467). Let us hope so!
Primitive men, as mankind do now, worshipped Un
known Cause—the powers of nature ; every tree, spring,
river, mountain, grotto, had its divinity; the sun, the
moon, the stars, had each their spirit. The names of
�Primitive Religion.
13
the Semitic deities, Max Muller tells us (Fraser,
June 1870), are mostly words expressive of moral
qualities, they mean the strong, the exalted, the Lord,
the King; and they grow but seldom into divine
personalities. The Aryan race are recognised every
where, in the valleys of India, in the forests of Germany,
by the common names of their deity, all originally ex
pressive of natural powers, thousands of years before
Homer or the Veda, worshipping an unseen being
Under the self-same name, the best, the most exalted
name they could find in their vocabulary. The popular
worship of ancient China was, Max Miiller says, a
worship of single spirits, of powers, we might almost
say of names ; the names of the most prominent powers
of nature which are supposed to exercise an influence
for good or evil on the life of man. If the presence of
the divine was perceived in the strong wind, the strong
wind became its name; if its presence was perceived
in the earthquake and the fire, they became its name ;
“wherever in other religions we should expect the
name of the Supreme Deity, whether Jupiter or Allah,
we find in Chinese the name of Tien or Sky.” “Do
we still wonder,” he says, “at polytheism or mythology ?”
No doubt the first religious worship was of the
powers of Nature or Spirits—a sort of deprecation of
their evil influence, and of their power to hurt. But
whence came man’s knowledge of spirits ? From his
own supposed double nature. When a man died, he
felt that with the life something had left the dead upon
which life and consciousness, i.e., all the difference
between life and death, depended. This he called his
soul or spirit. In sleep, he often dreamed of distant
places, and he thought his spirit went there ; in dreams
also his dead comrades often appeared to him, and he
thought therefore they continued to exist somewhere.
Out of this dream has grown the popular religion in
all times and in all countries; Man has an instinctive
love of life and dread of death, and he thinks he must
�14
Primitive Religion,
live again somewhere, because he wishes to do so,
accordingly the somewhere was soon found—a place
above for the good, and below for the bad, where
people would be rewarded or punished as they might
behave themselves here. No one liked to part for ever
with his parents, children, and friends, and if there
was not a place where the bereaved could meet them
again, why, there ought to be, and that soon settled it.
A place was wanted also for the naughty people, and
the people we did not like, to go to. The primitive
notions of this Future State differed considerably from
our own, only the worst part of it has come down to
us—an eternity of torture for the great majority?
Of the locality of this Future State, Herbert Spencer
says, 11 The general conclusion to which we are led is,
that the ideas of another world pass through stages of
development. The habitat of the dead, originally con
ceived as coinciding with that of the living, generally
diverges—here to the adjacent forest, and elsewhere to
distant hills and mountains. The belief that the dead
rejoin their ancestors, leads to further divergences which
vary according to the traditions. Stationary descend
ants of troglodytes think they return to a subterranean
other world, whence they emerged; while immigrant
races have for their other-worlds, the abodes of their
fathers, to which they journey after death, over land,
down a river, or across the sea, as the case may be.
Societies consisting of conquerors and conquered,
having separate traditions of origin, have separate other
worlds, which differentiate into superior and inferior
places, in correspondence with the respective positions
of the two races. Conquests of these mixed people
by more powerful immigrants, bring further complica
tions—additional other worlds, more or less unlike in
their characters. Finally, where the places for the
departed, or for superior classes of beings, are mountain
tops, there is a transition to an abode in the heavens ;
which, at first near and definite, passes into the remote
�Primitive Religion.
i5
and indefinite, so that the supposed residence of the
dead, coinciding at first with the residence of the
living, is little by little removed in thought: distance
and direction grow increasingly vague, and finally the
localization disappears in space.” (“ The Principles of
Sociology,” p. 232.)
This dream of a double self—of a living soul and
spirit, the cause of life and all mental action, if it has
done good, has also done infinite mischief in the world.
On the one side it is true that children in many cases
would scarcely have been induced to take care of their
parents in old age, if it had not been from fear of their
ghosts when they were dead, and on the other, in
China, ancestor worship is the dominant religion of
the land, and it has had more to do with checking
civilization there, than anything else. The Chinese
look backwards, not forwards, and “ for thousands of
years this great people have been seeking the living
among the dead.” It is the ghosts of their fathers
and mothers that they are always thinking of, and of
the harm that they may do them, every unknown
cause with them being a spirit. This is why mines
cannot be worked, or railways made, lest these inter
esting relics should be disturbed, and this insult to the
remains of the dead visited upon the living : and after
the birth of a Chinese baby, it is customary to hang
up its father’s trousers in the room, wrong way up,
that all such evil influences may enter into them,
instead of into the child. All diseases are supposed to
come from such source, or from some tormenting,
offended deity, the latter being most easily appeased
by the offer of a hog ; in the same way as the Negroes
of Sierra Leone sacrifice an ox when they want “ to
make God glad very much, and do Kroomen good.”
At the present day when an affectionate wife says
to a sneezing husband, “Bless you, my dear,” the ex
pression comes from the time when sneezing was
thought to indicate “ possession ” by an ancestral
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Primitive Religion.
spirit; and the Hindu when he gapes still snaps his
thumb and finger, and repeats the name of some god—
Rama, to prevent an evil spirit going down his throat.
It has been in this kind of chaotic superstitious
atmosphere, in which everything was supposed to be
brought about by spirits, that what are called our
religious instincts, were originally formed. This is
the soil in which even our present ideas of God, the
Soul, and Immortality first took root.
Mr Tylor says (vol. ii. p. 286) “ Conceptions originat
ing under rude and primitive conditions of human
thought, suffer in the course of ages the most various
fates. Yet the philosophy of modern ages still, to a
remarkable degree, follows the primitive courses of
savage thought.” This is true as regards our philo
sophy, but it is still more true with respect to our
religion, for ancestor-worship in the saints, and inter
cession to them and to the “ mother of God, the Queen of
heaven,” and anxiety for the future condition of this
dream-created soul, still rule the mind of Christendom.
Propitiation and sacrifice form the substance of all
religions in their earliest stages. Man first of all, and
above all, fears the spirits and gods that his imagination
has created, and he offers up to them what he most
values, and which he thinks, therefore, they will most
value—his finest fruit, the firstling of the flock, even
his own children. An only son was thought to be the
greatest and most acceptable sacrifice. When the Carthagenians got into trouble, three hundred children of the
first people of the city were offered up in the fire to their
God; so willing has man always been to cast upon
another the burden of his own misdeeds. The religion
of the present day is little more than a “survival” of the
past, and “throughout the rituals of Christendom stands
an endless array of supplications unaltered in principle
from savage times—that the weather may be adjusted
to our local needs, that we may have the victory over
all our enemies, and that life, and health, and wealth, and
�Primitive Religion.
17
happiness, may be ours.” (“Primitive Culture,” vol. ii. p.
336).
We are told that man is especially distinguished by
the possession of a conscience which, like a heavenly
messenger, guides him in his choice in the immutable
and eternal distinctions between right and wrong. If
this be so, it is in a very incipient state in primitive
man, and this guide itself seems to require educating and
guiding quite as much as any other of his faculties.
Thus Dr Seeman tells us of the Fijians, that “ in any
transaction where the national honour had to be
avenged, it was incumbent on the king and principal
chiefs—in fact a duty they owed their exalted station,
to avenge the insult offered to the country, by eating
the perpetrators of it.” He adds, “ I am convinced,
however, that there was a religious, as well as a political
aspect of this custom.” No doubt conscience gave them
a high sense of their social, political, and religious
duties, only they differed slightly from us, as to the
mode in which they should be carried out. So also
of the practice, where from a religious sense of duty,
children eat their parents, when they got old and in
firm, waiting however, till the season when salt and
limes were at the cheapest.
The savage theory of the universe refers its pheno
mena to the action of pervading personal spirits, similar
to what in dreams they have made out their own spirits
to be; the powers of nature are everywhere spiritual
ized and personified. With increasing knowledge unity
is given to these powers, and we have a God One and
Indivisible : at least this becomes the creed of the
highest minds, the multitude still continue to find a
separate God in everything, and for everything. (An
excellent account of how these so-called religious ideas
of the existence of the “ double ” or soul, of a future
state, and another world, arise in the minds of savages,
from which they have come down to us, changed from
a very definite and material conception to a very indefi
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Primitive Religion.
nite and immaterial one, is to be found in Mr Herbert
Spencer’s “Principles of Sociology,” now publishing.)
From this point, says Dr J. W. Draper, that is, from
the very earliest ages when the comparative theology
of India was inaccessible, “ there are two well-marked
steps of advance. The first reaches the consideration
of material nature : the second, which is very grandly
and severely philosophical, contemplates the universe
under the conceptions of space and force alone. The
former is exemplified in the Vedas and Institutes of
Menu, the latter in Buddhism. In neither of these
stages do the ideas lie idle as mere abstractions ; they
introduce a moral plan, and display a constructive
power not equalled even by the Italian Papal system.
They take charge not only of the individual, but regu
late society, and show their influence in accomplishing
political organizations, commanding our attention from
their prodigious extent, and venerable for their anti
quity.
“ I shall, therefore, briefly refer, first, to the elder,
Vedaism, and then to its successor Buddhism. The
Vedas, which are the Hindu Scriptures, are asserted to
have been revealed by Brahma. They are based upon
an acknowledgment of a universal spirit pervading all
things: £ There is in truth but one Deity, the
Supreme Spirit, the Lord of the Universe, whose work
is the Universe.’ ‘ The God above all Gods, who
created the earth, the heavens, and the waters.’ The
world, thus considered as an emanation of God, is
therefore a part of him ; it is kept in a manifest state
by his energy, and would instantly disappear if that
energy were for a moment withdrawn. Even as it is, it
is undergoing unceasing transformations, everything be
ing in a transitory condition. The moment a given phase
is reached, it is departed from or ceases. In these per
petual movements, the present can scarcely be said to
have any existence, for as the past is ending, the future
has begun.
�Primitive Religion.
19
“ In such a never-ceasing career all material things are
urged, their forms continually changing, and returning,
as it were, through revolving cycles to similar states. . .
“ In this doctrine of universal transformation there is
something more than appears at first. The theology
of India is underlaid with Pantheism. “God is One
because he is All.’ The Vedas in speaking of the rela
tion of nature to God, make use of the expression that
he is the Material as well as the Cause of the Universe,
1 the Clay as well as the Potter.’ They convey the
idea that while there is a pervading spirit existing
everywhere of the same nature as the soul of man,
though differing from it infinitely in. degree, visible
nature is essentially and inseparably connected there
with : that as in man the body is perpetually undergo
ing change, perpetually decaying and being renewed,
or, as in the case of the whole human species, nations
come into existence and pass away, yet still there con
tinues to exist what may be termed the universal human
mind, so for ever associated and for ever connected are
the material and the spiritual. And under this aspect
we must contemplate the Supreme Being, not merely as
a presiding intellect, but as illustrated by the parallel
case of man, whose mental principle shows no tokens ex
cept through its connections with the body ; so matter,
or nature, or the visible universe, is to be looked upon
as the corporeal manifestation of God.
“We must continually bear in mind that matter ‘has
no essence, independent of mental perception ; that ex
istence and perceptibility are convertible terms; that
external appearances and sensations are illusory, and
would vanish into nothing if the divine energy which
alone sustains them were suspended but for a moment.”
— ( “ The Intellectual Development of Europe,” Vol. i.
pp. 54, 55, 56.) Truly, there is nothing new under the
sun. Here we have the most advanced Pantheistic
Theology of the present day, and being given some two
thousand years before the Christian era it would seem
B
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Primitive Religion.
almost as if the Vedas were inspired. Here also, we
have the Idealism that constitutes the creed of so many
of our most cultivated philosophers. However pure a
doctrine may be at its source, as it comes from the
highest minds, it is soon perverted to suit the lowest, and
high and simple and true as it seems to me this doctrine
is, it was soon twisted into every possible form of error
and superstition that was best calculated to give the
Brotherhood command over the ignorant multitude.
■ It soon needed Reforming, and Buddhism came before
the world as that Reformation.
Buddhism most probably dates from about 1000 years
before Christ, and Draper says it is now professed by a
greater numberof the human race than any other religion.
“ The fundamental principle of Buddhism is that there
is a supreme power, but no Supreme Being. . . It is a
rejection of the idea of Being, an acknowledgment of that
of Force. If it admits the existence of God, it declines
him as a Creator. It asserts an impelling power in the
universe, a self-existent and plastic principle, but not a
self-existent, an eternal, a personal God. It rejects
inquiry into first causes as being unphilosophical, and
considers that phenomena alone can be dealt with by
our finite minds. . . . Gotama contemplates the exis
tence of pure force without any association of Substance.
He necessarily denies the immediate interposition of any
such agency as Providence, maintaining that the system
of nature, once arising, must proceed irresistibly accord
ing to the laws which brought it into being, and that
from this point of view the universe is merely a gigantic
engine. Equally does Gotama deny the existence of
chance, saying that that which we call chance is nothing
but the effect of an unknown, unavoidable cause.’' (“ In
tellectual Development of Europe,” vol. i. p. 65.) I
scarcely need point out the similarity existing between
this creed and that of the leading physicists of the present
day.
■ “ As to the external world, we cannot tell how far it
�Primitive Religion.
21
is a phantasm, how far a reality, for our senses possess
no reliable criterion of truth. They convey to the mind
representations of what we consider to be external things
by which it is furnished with materials for its various
operations; but unless it acts in conjunction with the
senses, the operation is lost, as in that absence which
takes place in deep contemplation. It is owing to our
inability to determine what share these internal and ex
ternal conditions take in producing a result, that the
absolute or actual state of nature is incomprehensible to
us. Nevertheless, conceding to our mental infirmity the
idea of a real existence of visible nature, we may con
sider it as offering a succession of impermanent forms,
and as exhibiting an orderly series of transmutations, in
numerable universes in periods of inconceivable time
emerging one after another, and creations and extinc
tions of systems of worlds taking place according to a
primordial law.
“ Of the nature of man, Gotama tells us that there is
no such thing as individuality or personality—that the
Ego is altogether a nonentity. In these profound con
siderations he brings to bear his conception of force, in
the light thereof asserting that all sentient beings are
homogeneous. . . . Each one must however work out
his own salvation, when, after many transmigrations, life
may come to an end. That end he calls Nirwana-—•
Nirwana, the end of successive existences. It is the
supreme end, Nonentity. The attaining of this is the
object to which we ought to aspire. . . . The panthe
istic Brahman expects absorption in God; the Buddhist,
having no God, expects extinction.
“India has thus given to the world two distinct
philosophical systems —Vedaism, which makes its
resting-point the existence of matter, and Buddhism, of
which the resting-point is force. The philosophical
ability displayed in the latter is very great; indeed, it
may be doubted whether Europe has produced its meta
physical equivalent.” (Idem, 66, 67, 68.)
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Primitive Religion.
It need scarcely excite our surprise then if our
Christian missionaries make but little progress in India.
It is worthy of note with reference to those who assert
that the “ Immortality of the Soul ” is among the unextinguishable instincts of our nature, that in the two
religions of the world—if we must call them two—
which contain the greatest number of adherents, not
Immortality is sought, but absorption in God, or Nirwana, both of which include the extinction of the
individual. The Lazarist Hue testifies that they die
with incomparable tranquillity, and adds, they are what
many in Europe are wanting to be. It is worthy of
note also how much there is in each system in accord
ance with the most advanced modern thought: the one
as Idealism, the other as represented by the recent dis
covery of the Persistence and Correlation of Force. For
if Vedaism connects itself with Matter, it is Matter as
regarded only as “the corporeal manifestation of God,”
and I have endeavoured to show elsewhere how and
where, as so regarded, Materialism and Absolute Idealism
meet. (“ Illusion and Delusion,’’ published by T. Scott.)
In my work also “ On Force, and its Mental Correlates”
(Longmans & Co.), I have endeavoured to illustrate
and enforce the following propositions :—
There is but one Reality in the universe, which
Physical Philosophers call “ Force; ” and Metaphy
sicians “Noumenon.” It is the “Substance” of
Spinoza, and the “ Being ” of Hegel.
Everything around us results from the mode of
action or motion, or correlation of this one force, the
different Forms of which we call Phenomena.
The difference in the mode of action depends upon
the difference in the structure it passes through ; such
Structure consisting of concentrated Force, or centres
of Force, and has been called Matter. “ Every form is
force visible; a form of rest is a balance of forces; a
form undergoing change is the predominance of one
over others.”—Huxley.
�Primitive Religion.
23
Heat, Light, Magnetism, Electricity, Attraction, Re
pulsion, Chemical Affinity, Life, Mind, or Sentience,
are modes of action or manifestations of Force, and die
or cease to exist, when the Force passes on into other
forms.
Cause and Effect is this sequence or correlation; and
each cause and effect is a new Life and a new Death :
each new form being a new creation, which dies and
passes away, never to return, for “ nothing repeats
itself, because nothing can be placed again in the same
condition : the past being irrevocable.”—W. R. Grove.
“ There is no death in the concrete, what passes away
passes away into its own self—only the passing away
passes away.”-—-Hegel.
Force passing through a portion of the structure of
the brain creates the “ World” of our intellectual con
sciousness, with the “Ego ” or sense of personal identity;
passing through other portions the world of our likes
and antipathies—called the moral world: Good and
Evil being purely subjective.
The character and direction of Volition depend upon
the Persistent Force and the structure through which
it passes. Every existing state, both bodily and
mental, has grown out of the preceding, and all its
Forces have been used up in present phenomena. Thus,
“ everything that exists depends upon the past, pre
pares the future, and is related to the whole.”—
Oersted.
As no force acts singly, but is always combined with
other forces or modes of action to produce some given
purpose or particular result, we infer that Force is not
blind but intelligent. As Force is intelligent and One,
it would be more properly called Being—possessing
personality ; and that being we have called God. “ He
is the universal Being of which all things are the mani
festations.”-—-Spinoza.
All power is Will power,—the will of God. “ Caus
ation is the will, Creation the act of God.”—W. R.
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The Christian Religion.
Grove. The will which originally required a distinct
conscious volition for each act has passed, in the ages,
generally into the unconscious or automatic state, con
stituting the fixed laws and order of nature.
PAET II.
THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION.
“ The ultimate result of shielding men from the effects of folly, is
to fill the world with fools.”—Herbert Spencer.
We in this Christian country are brought up in the
belief that the Jews were chosen by God to perpetuate
a worthy representation of Himself in a Pagan world
given up wholly to Idolatry : that the character and
attributes of the Creator, as given to man in the books
of the Old Testament, are a Revelation from God Him
self. On examination this turns out to be by no means
the case. The Hebrew god is made entirely after the
likeness of man ; wiser and more powerful, but with all
his vices as well as his virtues greatly exaggerated—a
conception fitted only for a barbarous age and a bar
barous people; and notwithstanding some sublime
poetical passages of the later prophets, altogether in
ferior to that formed by the wise men of other Eastern
nations. To Jewish conception, even to the last, the
Creator of the Universe was the family God of the
Patriarchs—the God of Abraham, of Isaac, and of
Jacob, the. titular or national God of the Hebrews, and
it was not till after the Babyionic captivity that the
“ chosen people” abandoned altogether other supposed
protecting deities, and became confirmed monotheists.
Thus the religious history of the Jewish people in the
historical books of the Old Testament, presents a series
of vacillations between the worship of Jehovah and that
�The Christian Religion.
25
of the gods of the surrounding nations ; the people
serving that god who they think will afford them the
most powerful protection.
Hence the jealousy of
Jehovah, and the term the living God, and the First
Commandment, “ Thou shalt have no other gods but
me.’’ It will be necessary to show this, as Christianity
is based on Judaism, and the orthodox theology of the
present day is derived more from the Old Testament
than the New. I shall let the Bible speak for itself.
And God said, let us make man in our own image,
after our likeness.”-—Gen. i. 26.
“ And on the seventh day God ended His work
which He had made, and he rested on the seventh day
from all His work which He had made.”—Gen. ii. 2.
“ And they (Adam and Eve) heard the voice of the
Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day.”
-—Gen. iii. 8.
Cain and Abel from the very first make offering unto
the Lord of fruit and flesh, and “ of the fat thereof,”
and they are accepted by him.”—Gen. iv. 3, 4, 5.
And the Lord appeared unto him (Abraham) in the
plains of Mamre accompanied by two angels, and they
eat of a calf that was “ tender and good,” and the Lord
said unto Abraham Wherefore does Sarah laugh, &c.,
and the Lord went his way as soon as he had left com
muning with Abraham.”—Gen. xviii. 1, 7, 8, 13.
The Lord also afterwards appeared unto Moses, on
his desiring to see the glory of God. And he (Moses)
said, I beseech thee show me thy glory. And he (the
Lord) said, I will make all my goodness pass before thee,
and I will proclaim the name of the Lord before thee ;
and I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and
will show mercy on whom I will show mercy. And He
said Thou canst not see my face: for there shall no man
see me and live. And the Lord 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 cleft of the rock, and will cover
�26
The Christian Religion.
thee with my hand while I pass by: and I will take
away my hand, and thou shalt see my back parts: but
my face shall not be seen.”—Gen. xxxiii. 18-23.
And the Lord said unto Noah, come thou and all
thy house into the ark, and the Lord shut him in.”—
Gen. vii. 1, 16.
“ And when Noah came out of the ark he builded an
altar unto the Lord; and took of every clean beast, and
of every clean fowl, and offered burnt offerings 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.
“ And the Lord came down to see the city and the
tower which the children of men builded,” and the
Lord said, “ Go to, let us go down and there confound
their language, that they may not understand one
another’s speech.”—Gen. xiv. 5, 7.
“ It repenteth the Lord that he had made man upon
the earth, and it grieved him in his heart.”—Gen. vi. 6.
“ And God heard the voice of the lad : and the angel
of God called to Hagar out of heaven.”—Gen. xxi. 17.
“ And Pharaoh said, Who is the Lord, that I should
obey his voice, and let Israel go ? I know not the
Lord (Jehovah) neither will I let Israel go. And they
said, The God of the Hebrews hath met us, let us go
three days’ journey into the desert, and sacrifice unto
the Lord our God : lest He fall upon us with pestilence
or with the sword.”—Exod. v. 2, 3.
“ 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.”—Exod. vii. 3, 5.
“ And I (Jehovah) will give the people favour 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 neighbour, and of her that sojourneth
in her house, jewels of silver and jewels of gold, and
raiment: and ye shall put them upon your sons, and
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27
Upon your daughters ; and ye shall spoil the Egyptians.”
—Exod. iii. 21, 22.
“ And the Lord gave the people favour in the sight
of the Egyptians, so that they lent them such things as
they required, and they spoiled the Egyptians.”—Exod.
xii. 36.
When “ wrath is gone out from the Lord, and the
plague is begun, Aaron put on incense, and made an
atonement, and the plague- was stayed” (Num. xvi.
4648.)
God’s promise to Abram. “ Thou art the Lord
God, who didst choose Abram, and brought him
forth out of Ur of the Chaldees, and gavest him the
name of Abraham, and foundest his heart faithful
before Thee, and mad’st a covenant with him to give
the lands of the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Amorites,
and the Perizzites, and the Jebusites, and the Girgashites to give it, I say to his seed, and hast per
formed Thy words: for Thou art righteous” (Nell. ix. 7-8).
Of how this promise was kept we need give only one
illustration.
And the Lord spake unto Moses, saying, avenge
the children of Israel of the Midianites. And they
warred against the Midianites, as the Lord commanded
Moses ; and slew all the males. And Moses was wroth,
and ordered every male among the little ones to be killed
in cold-blood, and every woman that had known man :
“ but all the women children that have not known a
man by lying with him, keep alive for yourselves.”
“And there were 32,000 persons in all, of women that
had not known man by lying with him ” (Num. xxxi.
1, 2, 7, 14,17, 18, 35.)
“ Eighteous ” is not perhaps exactly the word which
we should now apply to such dealings ! And the childten of Israel said to Samuel, “ Cease not to cry unto the
Lord our God for us, that He will save us out of the
hands of the Philistines.” And Samuel took a sucking
lamb, and offered it for a burnt-offering wholly unto the
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The Christian Religion.
Lord: and Samuel cried unto the Lord for Israel; and
the Lord heard him. And as Samuel was offering up
the burnt-offering, the Philistines drew near to battle
against Israel: but the Lord thundered with a great
thunder on that day upon the Philistines, and discom
fited them ; and they were smitten before Israel (Sam
uel, 1 Book, vii. 8, 9, 10.)
The Lord fights for Israel, and casts down hailstones
from heaven ; “ they were more which died with hail
stones than they which the children of Israel slew with
the sword; ” and he makes the sun and moon to stand
still until the people are avenged. “ Then spake Joshua
to 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. So the sun
stood still in the midst of heaven, and hasted not to go
down about a whole day. And there was no day like
that before it or after it, that the Lord hearkened unto
the voice of a man; for the Lord fought for Israel.
(Num. x. 8, 14.)
Then God sent an evil spirit between Abimelech and
the men of Shechem; and the men of Shechem dealt
treacherously with Abimelech (Judges ix. 23.) Who
shall persuade Ahab, that he may go up and fall at
Ramoth-Gilead 1 and one said in this manner, and
another said in that manner. And there came forth a
spirit, and stood before the Lord, and said, I will per
suade him. And the Lord said unto him, wherewith 1
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 prevail also ; go forth,
and do so. Now therefore, behold the Lord hath put
a lying spirit in the mouth of all these thy prophets
(1 Kings xxii. 20, 23.)
God’s throne is in heaven. “The Lord hath pre
�The Christian Religion.
29
pared His throne in the heavens; and His kingdom
ruleth over all (Ps. ciii. 19.)
I saw also the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and
lifted up, and His train filled the temple. Above it
stood the seraphims: each one had six wings; with
twain he covered his face, and with twain he covered
his feet, and with twain he did fly. And one cried
unto another, and said, holy, holy, holy, is the Lord of
hosts : the whole earth is full of His glory (Isaiah vi.
1, 3.)
For I know that the Lord is great, and that our Lord
is above all gods (Ps. cxxxv.)
He that sitteth in the heavens shall laugh (Ps. ii. 4.)
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.
(Mai. iii. 16.)
In every place incense shall be offered unto my
name, and a pure offering: for my name shall be great
among the heathen, saith the Lord of hosts (Mai. i. 11. )
I saw the Lord sitting upon His throne, and all the
host of heaven standing by Him on His right hand,
and on His left (Micaiah.)
Every beast of the forest is mine, and the cattle upon
a thousand hills (Ps. i. 7, 15.)
The earth is the Lord’s, and the fulness thereof; the
world and they that dwell therein. For He hath founded
it upon the seas, and established it upon the floods.
(Ps. xxiv. 1-2.)
The chariots of God are twenty thousand, even
thousands of angels (Ps. lxxiii. 17.J
After the Chaldean captivity, when it was thought
to be beneath the dignity of God to appear personally,
these angels are very active and much more plentiful.
Then the Lord employs his destroying angel to slay
185,000 men in the Assyrian camp. David also sees
an angel.
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The Christian Religion.
So the Lord sent pestilence upon Israel: and there
fell of Israel seventy thousand men. And God sent an
angel unto Jerusalem to destroy it: and as he was
destroying, the Lord beheld, and he repented him of
the evil, and said to the angel that destroyed, it is
enough, stay now thine hand. And the angel of the
Lord stood by the threshingfloor of Oman the Jebusite.
And David lifted up his eyes, and saw the angel of the
Lord stand between the earth and the heaven, having
a drawn sword in his hand stretched out over Jerusalem
(1 Chron. xxi. 14, 16.)
Here is Daniel’s description of the angel Gabriel:—
11 A man clothed in linen, whose loins were girded with
fine gold of Uphaz: his body also was like the beryl,
and his face as the appearance of lightning, and his
eyes as lamps of fire, and his arms and his feet like in
colour to polished brass, and the voice of his words
like the voice of a multitude. (Dan. x. 5-6.)
This God of the Hebrews is certainly not a very sub
lime conception, and it is difficult to say in what it differs
from that of other primitive savages. He shows bimself in bodily presence as a man to Adam and to Abram,
walks in the cool of the evening, shows his parts behind
to Moses, comes down to prevent a tower being built up
into heaven, spoils the Egyptians, utterly exterminating
the Canaanites, man and woman, infant and suckling,
ox and sheep, camel and ass, that he may give their
land to his chosen people, sending lying spirits into his
prophets, and in fact possessing all man’s greatest vices
greatly exaggerated.
He is angry, furious, cruel,
vindictive, jealous, treacherous, partial, and by the
smell of a sweet savour of poor innocent slaughtered
beasts and birds, and by incense and sackcloth and
ashes is turned from his purpose and repents. The
Hebrew God is everywhere represented as delighting in
blood, requiring the first-born of both man and beast
to be offered up to him, and a lamb to be supplied to
him both night and morning throughout the year. Is
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it not strange that this barbarous conception of a blood
thirsty people should have been chosen by the modern
World as the foundation of its religion, and can we
wonder that the picture of such a Being, painted as we
are told by himself, should have had a most deleterious
effect on the moral sense of all who have been intro
duced to it, or that those who prefer to believe in no
God at all, rather than in such a God, should increase
daily ?
The Jews have continued to “ spoil the Egyptians,”
that is, all the nations among whom they are thrown,
until this day, and this spoiling the Egyptians is quoted
as a precedent for every kind of cheating and dis
honesty among all who are disposed to prey by false
pretence upon their fellow creatures. The religion of
the Hebrews was like that of every savage nation. It
consisted of Prayer and Supplication and Sacrifice. All
unusual and extraordinary phenomena, all good gifts
and evil fortune came direct from God, and they sought
by gifts to him of what they thought he would like
best, and by praise and adulation which they knew they
most liked, to propitiate him, and win his favour.
This was accomplished by a Priesthood who made it
difficult to approach him except through themselves,
and who claimed a reversionary interest in all gifts
offered to him.
It is true that more refined notions of deity prevailed
among “ God’s chosen people,” as civilization advanced,
and after they had spent seventy years in captivity in
Babylon, and had become acquainted with the much
higher “ revelation ” of Zoroaster.
Still their most
sublime and poetical conception never rose above that
of a mighty magician, speaking the word of power ; the
heaven his throne, and the earth his footstool; to
whom belonged,—not the countless worlds of which they
had no idea, but the cattle upon a thousand hills ; rid
ing upon the wings of the wind; governing the world
by his angels, and in whose name every possible atrocity
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is committed : to whom such men as Jacob, David, and
that wisest of all men, Solomon, with his three hundred
wives, and nine hundred concubines, are represented as
especially acceptable and favoured, but who show an
utter indifference to any moral law whatever. Notwith
standing this, we have that good man, the late Dr Norman
Macleod, telling us almost with his last words, that “ The
Bible practically says to all seekers after God, ‘Whom
ye ignorantly worship, Him declare I unto you.’ It
professes to give a true history, in harmony with reason,
conscience and experience, of God’s revelation of Him
self during past ages, culminating in Jesus Christ, and
continued in the Church by His Holy Spirit.’—Good
Words, June 1875, p. 420.
Hear also His Grace the Archbishop of Canterbury,
the highest authority of all. He says, “ Good Words,”
May 1875, “As to morality, upholding as we do the
immutable and eternal distinction between right and
wrong, and thankful that in all but degraded specimens
of the human race there is a conscience capable of
learning these distinctions. ... We believe that the
Great Being who controls the universe is in Himself
the very good, and very right.” Now as His Grace
identifies the Great Being who controls the universe with
the Hebrew God of the Bible, and as we cannot certainly
classify His Grace among “ the degraded specimens of
the human race,” we are obliged to conclude that his
conscience has yet something to learn. An aged and
much respected dissenting Minister tells me that “ The
Bible will treat you as you treat it,” that is, you may
find whatever you are looking for, and only nineteenth
century ideas are looked for ; we look for a reformed
God, and a reformed religion, and this is the only way I
can account for the judgments of the good men I have
quoted above, and also for the fact that such chapters
as Gen. xix., xxxvii., Jud. xix., 2 Sam. ix., xiii., &c.,
are allowed to be retained, although they would not
obtain admission into any book in the present day in
any refined and civilized community.
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But even among those who reject Revelation as a
revelation, the deistic conception of God as a governing
power outside the universe is probably as childish as
the original one conceived in the childhood of the
world, when all the earth was supposed to be filled
with his glory.
The cosmogony of the Hebrews, as might be expected,
is exactly upon a par with their Theology. The earth,
according to their revelation, was the centre of all
things ■, it was flat, founded upon the seas, and could
not be moved. The sun, and moon, and stars, are so
many lamps placed in the firmament to give light to
the earth. The firmament or sky is a solid structure,
and supports a great ocean like that upon which the
earth rests, in which are little windows through which
pour the waters of this upper ocean—under the earth
is the land of graves, called sheol, and is the hell, to
which it is said, Christ descended.* Above the waters
of the firmament is heaven, where Jehovah reigns,
surrounded by hosts of angels. It is to this heaven
that Christians say Christ ascended, his disciples and
a vast multitude having seen him go up, where he sitteth
on the right hand of God. There is some little
discrepancy as to whether Christ is sitting or standing,
as St Stephen saw him standing, and we might well
believe it was “ sometimes one and sometimes the
other,’’ if the Athanasian creed, supported by the
church, did not say that we shall be damned if we do
not believe he is sitting. Between the firmament and
the earth is the air, which is the habitation of evil
spirits, and properly belongs to Satan, the “ prince of
* Mr George Smith, informs the Daily Telegraph that some
of the Assyrian tablets discovered by Mr Smith and presented
by the proprietors of the Telegraph to the British Museum,
contain a much longer and fuller account of the creation and
fall of man than the Book of Genesis. In particular, the fall
of Satan, which in the Bible is only assumed, is in these
records reported at length, and the description of this being is
characterized by Mr Smith as “ really magnificent.”
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the powers of the air.” As to the order of creation, the
sun is made on the fourth day, the changes of day and
night preceding it. The sun and moon are subordinate
to the earth. It took no less than five days to create
the earth, while for the sun, the whole starry host, and
the planets it took only one day, but then they were
made just to light up the earth. It was for professing
some little doubt as to the accuracy of this plan of the
universe that poor Galileo was persecuted and imprisoned,
and the special charge against Giordano Bruno was that
he had taught the plurality of worlds, a doctrine, it was
said, repugnant to the whole tenor of Scriptures, and
inimical to revealed religion, especially as regards the
plan of salvation. For this he was to be punished as
mercifully as possible, and “ without the shedding of
blood,” the horrible formula for burning people alive.
It was this adoption of the Jewish sacred writings as
the standard of all knowledge, this conflict between
religion and science, this attempt to put the Cosmos
into a quart pot, that has put a logger on science, even
up to the present day. The so-called revelation now
stands in the way of mental science as it formally did
in the way of physics ; but as our astronomy has come
from science and not from revelation, so also must our
mental and moral philosophy.
Mohammedanism
released the people of Asia, Africa, and the Continent of
Europe, from those narrow and erroneous scriptural
dogmas, and the thick darkness of papal Eome, and left
science free; and the lamp of discovery was kept burning
through Arabian learning, and the highest civilization
we have yet reached, that of the Moors in Spain. We
are evidently approaching another Reformation in which
Science not in one department only, but in all, shall be
left entirely free. The intellectual development of
Europe has reached that stage where Arabism left us in
the 10th and 11th centuries. Through the influence of
Eome the world then took the wrong way; had it
adopted Averhoism, which was rejected only by a
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small majority, we should have been then where we
are now.
But if the Jewish conception of God was a most
unworthy one, what must we say of that of the orthodox
Christian? Why, that it is infinitely worse. With
both he is the Creator of all things, therefore, of
evil and good, but with the former evil is confined to
time and this world, while with the. latter it is absolute
and endless. Thus, according to the orthodox creed
the Almighty and All-wise, with a perfect knowledge
therefore of what he was doing, and full power to do
otherwise, made our first parents, Adam and Eve, and
put them into Paradise, with the full knowledge that
they would get themselves immediately turned out for
a single act of disobedience. They were not to eat of
a certain magic tree, for if they did so on that day they
should surely die. But our poor inexperienced mother
Eve, not knowing even what death was, was beguiled
by a talking serpent, into eating, and Adam, like a
gentleman, determined to share the consequences with
his wife : and if they had merely died on that day they
would only have been where they were before they
were made. But did God keep His word ? No, they
did not die that day, but aftdr cursing the earth for
their sake, they were kept alive to fill it with their
children, all of whom, with themselves, were condemned
to everlasting torture for this single act of disobedience.
But God had already arranged a scheme by which the
world might be saved; He would give His only be
gotten Son; Christ was to die for our salvation, an
innocent person for the guilty ; but the conditions
were such that God in His infinite fore-knowledge knew
perfectly well they would not be accepted, and that the
great majority would be damned, notwithstanding this
infinite loving kindness, and awful sacrifice. From the
“Westminster Confession of Faith,” we learn that by the
decree of God, for the manifestation of His ylory, some
c
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men and angels are predestinated unto everlasting life,
and others fore-ordained to everlasting death.
“Those angels and men, thus predestinated and fore
ordained, are particularly and unchangeably designed ;
and their number is so certain and definite, that it
cannot be either increased or diminished.”
“ The rest of mankind, God was pleased, for the
glory of His sovereign power over His creatures, to
pass by, and to ordain them to dishonour and wrath for
their sin, to the praise of His glorious justice.” Glorious
justice indeed ! an infinite punishment for a finite sin,
or rather for no sin at all, for if the causes that pro
duced the act had not been adequate to the result, God
could not have foreseen it.
“ Our first parents, we are told, on the same authority,
being seduced by the subtlety and temptation of Satan,
sinned in eating the forbidden fruit. This their sin
God was pleased, according to His wise and holy
council, to permit, having purposed to order it to His
own glory.” Thus He permitted a subtle and powerful
being to tempt our first parents, knowing full well the
result, and having already prepared a place of eternal
torment, that he might “ order it to His own glory.”
J. S. Mill says (“Autobiography,” p. 41.) “I have
a hundred times heard him (his father) say, that all
ages and nations have represented their gods as wicked,
in a constantly increasing progression; that mankind
have gone on adding trait after trait till they reached
the most perfect conception of wickedness which the
human mind can devise, and have called this God, and
prostrated themselves before it. This ne plus ultra of
wickedness he considered to be embodied in what is
commonly presented to mankind as the creed of Chris
tianity.”
The Rev. Dr Norman Macleod, however, says, “ God
has manifested in humanity the same kind of joy He
Himself had in beholding the works which He had made
very good, and in which. He rested and reposed”
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(“Good Words,” June 1875, p. 421.) Fancy such a
work being “ very good / but we trust the Doctor did not
believe it, any more than we do ourselves. He may, how
ever, possibly have held with Luther, that it is by faith
we are saved and Luther says, “ it is the highest degree
of faith to believe Him merciful, who saves so few and
damns so many: to believe him just who of his own
will makes us necessarily damnable.” However laud
able such a degree of faith may be, we must confess
ourselves unequal to it, for it points to a devil, not a
god, and one wonders how such a horrid conception
could ever get into people’s heads, and ever form the
faith of a civilised people. It has taken ages of “ sur
vivals ” of hideous barbarism from the earliest ages to
put the idea together, and ages of transmission to
propagate the faith. No one coming fresh to it could
entertain it for a moment. It is absurd to say that
God’s original intentions were frustrated with respect
to man ; it is a contradiction to suppose that anything
can take place contrary to the will and wish of Almighty
power and wisdom. The “Spectator,” (Nov. 7, 1874),
however, regards it “ as a higher act of power to create
free beings, and therefore beings liable to sin on their
own responsibility, than to create only those whose
natures are for ever fixed in the grooves of good; ” that
is, it may be a much higher act of power to create
beings capable of damning themselves to all eternity,
than to create them so good that they could not do it;
granted, but then what shall we say of the wisdom j
We very much doubt, however, whether omnipotence
itself could create a free, that is self-originating, un
caused act of any kind ; it is very certain it never has.
It is wonderful that it never seems to occur to the ortho
dox school, that if God had kept His word, and Adam
had really died, and another pair had been created, less
“ free ” to damn themselves and all their posterity, how
much trouble might have been spared. There would
have been no necessity then to “ keep a devil,” or a
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place of eternal torment, and the Son of God need not
have died, and this, as it appears to poor human reason,
might have been turned equally to God’s glory. “ If
Christ, as St John writes, appeared on earth to destroy
the works of the devil, He might have been dispensed
with if no devil had existed” (Strauss.)
This doctrine of the atonement, of sacrificing an
innocent 'person for a guilty one, and that in Christ’s
case only for an elect few: for although “many are called
few are chosen ”—must have come down from the very
earliest times. “ Without shedding of blood there is
no remission of sins” (Heb. ix. 22) must be a “sur
vival ” from pre-historic men and the most barbarous
races. The law of vengeance, life for life, blood for
blood, was the savage law; and what was thus acceptable
to man was thought to be the most acceptable to his
Deity that he wanted to propitiate. Hence human
sacrifices.- An only son being the dearest to man was
thought to be most acceptable to God. At length
animals were substituted for human beings, as in Abra
ham’s case, the ram for his only son Isaac, and the
first-born among the Hebrews ceased in time to be
sacrificed according to primitive barbaric custom, and
was redeemed by a ram or a lamb. In Exodus and
Leviticus we have a whole ceremonial worship based
upon sacrifices, as we are told, by divine command.
“ Thou shalt offer every day a bullock for a sin-offering
for atonement” (Ex. xxix. 36, &c.) The Jewish ritual
is full of bloody sacrifices, and Paul, not Christ, has
made it the key-stone of the Christian system, in the
blood of God’s only begotten and beloved Son. This
doctrine of propitiation by blood—of being washed
clean in blood, could never have entered a civilised
man’s head or heart; we have gradually been ac
customed to it from the earliest times, until like the
sun’s rising, it excites no wonder.
That all should fall for the sin of one—of Adam, and
all be saved by the sacrifice of an innocent person, is so
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great a breach of all moral law that we rather wonder
how the Archbishop of Canterbury reconciles it with
“ the immutable and eternal distinctions between right
and wrong.” There can be little doubt that the con
founding of all moral distinctions in the “ spoiling of
the Egyptians,” and the sacrifice of the innocent for the
guilty as a plan of salvation, must have had a most
deleterious influence upon the conscience of all who
have believed in them, as part of the direct ordinances
of God. “ The covenant of grace in which the guilty
are pardoned through the agony of the just—and a God
kept holy in His own eyes by the double violation of
His own standard of rectitude,” can in no way be re
conciled with the intellect or our moral sense.
But these dire chimeras, these awful and blasphem
ous slanders upon the character of God, are silently
dying out before the gradually increasing intelligence of
the age, as witchcraft has done before. We no longer
burn thousands of old women for having personal inter
course and dealing with the “ prince of the powers of the
air,” and theological dogma is giving place, even in the
church itself, to practical religion. There are still,
however, many good people who think it desirable to
retain these horrible lies and libels upon our Creator, in
order to frighten men into being good, and the hope of
an immortality attended, with such results is thought to
be a high and ennobling sentiment. At the present
time (June 1875) a case is going through the Court of
Arches, Jenkins v. Cook, in which the Rev. F. Cook
refuses to allow Mr Jenkins to partake of “ the body
and blood of Christ,” which, as the Church Catechism
tells us, ££ is verily and indeed taken and received by
the faithful at the Lord’s Supper,” with his fellow
communicants, because he had expressed doubts about
the verbal inspiration of the Bible and the personality
of Satan; he had even gone the length of supposing
that there were parts of “ God’s Holy Word” that
were better left out, and he had prepared a selec-
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tion for his young family. On the other hand, we
have an article in the “ Contemporary,” for May, by Prof.
J. B. Mayor, in which he says, 11 reason and conscience
inevitably revolt against such a gospel as this (that
hopeless misery is the destiny of the larger propor
tion of created souls), yet how are those who believe
in the inspiration of the Bible to avoid accepting it ?
Accept this or give up Christianity is the alternative
presented to many minds at the present day—an alter
native enforced with equal vehemence by the extremists
on either side. It is this which is the great stum
bling-block ;■ not, how can I believe in this miracle or
that miracle ? but how can I accept a revelation which
appears to me to contradict the first and deepest of all
revelations, God is just, and God is good? He who
would solve this problem and justify to man the
ways of God, as revealed in Scripture, would, indeed,
do a great and excellent work. Maurice did some
thing by calling attention to the distinction between
endless and eternal.”
A great many equally good and learned men, in the
interests, as they believe it to be, of religion, are making
similar useless distinctions, straining at a gnat and
swallowing a camel, and by taking things in a non
natural sense, the spiritual instead of the literal mean
ing, by turning affirmed facts into allegory, &c., are
earnestly striving to make black appear white and save
their livings; the church, as they believe, being much
better reformed from within than from without. The
question which is really interesting and pressing,
according to Principal Tulloch, is not how to get out
side the church, but how to enlarge and make room in
side it for varieties of Christian intelligence and culture.
But we may read the signs of the times when the
“ Edinburgh Review,” not now the organ of advanced
but of conservative liberalism, is disposed to go much
further than “ the distinction between endless and
eternal,” and to throw over the Old Testament alto
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gether and much even of the New (Oct. 1873, on Dr
Strauss). “We are not Jews/’ it says, “and there is
no reason in the world why we should be weighted
with the burden of understanding and defending at all
risks the Jewish Scriptures.” It also says, “ Is it
right, is it truthful, is it any longer possible, in the
face of all that is now known upon the subject, to pretend
that legendary matter has not intruded itself into the
Eew Testament as well as into the Old?” Still the
writer contends for the precious truths which notwith
standing this lie enshrined in “ Oriental metaphor”
and “ Mediaeval dogma,” and accuses Strauss of “ igno
rant blasphemy or hypocritical sarcasm,” for professing
to understand these things literally, and to believe that
they form any part of Christianity. This is the attitude
that is now assumed by those who do not wish to give
up the Bible altogether. They fall back upon what
they call Christianity, by which they mean the example
and moral teaching of Christ, as far as that can be
ascertained. It is very difficult to ascertain what
Christ did, and still more to say what he taught. We
have the fourth Gospel, and the Epistles of Paul, and
of Peter, James, and Jude, all of which have added to
and differ from what Christ himself taught. The
theologic system that has come down to us is in reality
not Christianity, but much has been added to it
which Christ himself, as a religious reformer, strongly
protested against. The bloody doctrine of sacrifice and
atonement, which had been derived from a primitive
savage state, was re-introduced and made the corner
stone of the new faith ; in fact, orthodox Christianity
is more indebted to Paul and the Alexandrine School,
as represented in St John’s Gospel, than to its putative
founder.
In the midst of the myths and legends that have
surrounded Christ, it is very difficult to say who and
what he was. Without believing at all in the super
natural, I yet believe that he wrought most of the
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miracles that are ascribed to him, and that this appa
rently miraculous power deceived him and his disciples
and ourselves. This power was not peculiar to Christ,
for a power of curing many kind of diseases has attended,
and still attends, many individuals. One of the best
known cases on record is that of Valentine Greatrakes,
an Irish gentleman, but no saint, born in 1628. He
was invited by the King to London, whither he went,
curing very many by the way. There the Royal
Society, then young, investigated the matter, publish
ing some of his cures in their Transactions, and account
ing for them as produced by “ a sanative contagion in
Mr Greatrakes’ body, which had an antipathy to some
particular diseases and not to others.” We are told
by a contemporary writer, Henry More, what particular
diseases this sanative contagion had an antipathy to,
viz., “ cancers, scrofula, deafness, king’s evil, headache,
epilepsy, fevers (though quartian ones), leprosy, palsy,
tympany, lameness, numbness of limbs, stone, convul
sions, ptysick, sciatica, ulcers, pains of the body, nay,
blind and dumb in some measure, and I know not but
he cured the gout.” Now if we leave out the cures
that were said to be wrought by Christ that the pro
phecies might be fulfilled, we have here most of the
diseases that he was able to cure, for we must not forget
that people’s want of faith prevented his being success
ful in all times and all places. He knew also when
“ virtue,” this sanitary power, went out of him, as when
touched by the woman with the issue. We may doubt
as to the source of this power, but that it exists there
can be no doubt. I have seen six cases, including
toothache, lameness, and rheumatism cured or relieved
in less than a quarter of an hour by the simple contact
or laying on of hands, and I have carefully watched
many permanent cures by the same person, by what
appeared to me an excess of vital power or of the “ vis
medecatrix.” Now if Jesus of Nazareth, the carpenter’s
son, found himself possessed of such a power, he would
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of course ascribe it to Divine origin and believe that he
was intended by the Almighty for some special mission,
most probably the Messiah, which all the Jews were
expecting, to deliver them from the Roman yoke and
to place them in the exalted position which had been
promised to the seed of Abraham, and to which there
had been already several pretenders.
He himself
does not appear to be quite certain as to the character
of his mission, for when sent to by John, asking, “ Art
thou he that should come, or do we look for another ?”
he replied, “ Go and show John again those things
which ye do hear and see, the blind receive their sight
and the lame walk, the leapers are cleansed and the
deaf hear, the dead are raised up, and the poor have
the gospel preached to them,” intimating that this was
all he knew. There is little doubt, I think, that on
his entry into Jerusalem he expected a rising of the
people in his favour, and probably divine assistance in
that direction, as he daily received it, as he thought,
in others. When that did not take place, and he saw
that a revolt against the Roman power was vain and
hopeless, he did not the less doubt his own Divine
mission, of which he received daily proofs in the
miracles which he wrought; but he began to see that
the promised kingdom was not to be of this world,
but upon a second coming, which was to take place
even in that generation, and when he should be accom
panied by such divine power as would establish this
Heavenly Kingdom for ever. In the meantime he
began to prepare for that martyrdom that had always
attended all the great prophets and all previous
claims to the Messiahship. He prayed that this might
pass from him; but was nobly prepared to meet it if
such was God’s will, and never once does he seem to
have doubted that he was under God’s special care for
a special purpose, except in his own most pathetic and
despairing cry upon the cross, “ My God, my God, why
hast thou forsaken me !” Christ died as a rebel to the
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Roman Empire, and in the full persuasion that on his
second coming, then near at hand, all things would be
made subservient to himself and to his followers, and
that the Jewish nation especially should have the pre
eminence that had been promised to them. In this
belief, his disciples, who had daily witnessed his appa
rently miraculous power, joined him, and expected to
sit on twelve, thrones, judging the twelve tribes of
Israel.
It is impossible not to feel love for Christ, especially
when we think of the horrid suffering to which he was
subjected by his fellow-creatures, and to feel respect
for him as the most amiable and greatest of our moral
and social reformers, but I cannot look upon him as a
perfect character, or his example as one that could be
followed in the entirely altered conditions we have now.
There is much in the spirit of Christ’s character that is
most loveable and estimable, but to attempt to follow
his example would as certainly bring us within the
power of the police, as it did him in his day. In all
the phases of social life, as a son, as a celebate, as a
producer or worker, his example is certainly one that
cannot be followed. As Strauss says, we must have
a definite conception of him whom we are to imitate as
an exemplar of moral excellence, and there are not such
essential facts in the life of Jesus firmly established;
neither are we clearly cognizant of his aims, nor the
mode and degree in which he hoped for their reali
zation. It is in the spirit of his doctrine only, that he
can be held up as an exemplar, and that certainly,
excellent as it is in many points, would not tend to the
full development of all our faculties.
But whence did Christ get his knowledge, which seems
greatly to have exceeded that of his time, and most cer
tainly that of his condition as a carpenter’s son ? What
sources were open to him ? Was he one of those seers
or clairvoyants which the world has occasionally known,
and in that sense inspired ? The power of healing and of
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this kind of intuitional knowledge, are seldom found
together. It is very difficult to ascertain what Christ
really did teach. There were no short-hand writers in
those days, and the traditional reports we have, would
come to us strained through, and coloured hy, the much
lower minds of his followers. We must therefore take
the spirit of his teaching, and not take it literally ; and
we must recollect that much of what he taught was
under the firm conviction that the world was coming
to an end, probably in that generation. The morality
of the New Testament, to which the Broad Church is
now driven, giving up the conventional theological
creed, furnishes no system of morals, or one upon which
a science of mental and moral philosophy can be based.
The sun still goes round the earth in the mental science
of the New Testament, as much as it did in the physics
of the Old, for of course there can be no science of
mind, if the mind obeys no law, and it has power to
resist the strongest motives, as the advocates of Free
Will affirm. If, on the contrary, the mind necessarily
obeys its own laws, then we require a re-modelling of
the whole of Christ’s morality, as it must be based upon
a different idea of responsibility to that which he taught;
for the whole tendency of Christianity is to separate
conduct from its immediate and natural consequences,
and to place such consequences far away, or even in
some distant world; whereas the only divine judgment
or responsibility which science can admit, is that only
“ which fulfils itself hour by hour, and day by day.”
Thus Christ taught, as his especial doctrine, the
Fatherhood of God; now in the sense that God ever
interferes with natural law in our favour, this is not
true, and if not true, however comforting such a doctrine
of a Heaven-Father, or Father in Heaven, may be to
weak people, it had better be given up, as the truth
must always serve us best. God has put everything we
require within our reach, and has appointed a way by
which it may be attained, and has lent us his power to
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act for ourselves, and after that we have no right to
expect he will interfere personally in our behalf, and if
he did, it could only be to our injury, by weakening
that self-reliance upon which certainly all progress, if
not our very existence, depends. If we do not take
this natural course towards the object of our desires,
we are punished in the consequences, and as such
punishment is for our good, God never injures us by
forgiving bur sins.
And this is what I have principally to say against
Christianity. It has attempted to come between man
and the natural consequences of his actions; it has
filled the world with eleemosynary charity, and has thus
weakened his most important springs of action.
Here we have the orthodox creed on this subject,
“ If man is compelled to distinguish between right and
wrong, he is a responsible agent, subject to penalties
for the misuse, &c., of his moral powers. He must be
responsible to some one. That some one must be
omniscient and omnipotent (or little less) in order to
act as Judge of humanity, and to mete out adequate
rewards and punishments. As these adequate rewards
and punishments do not follow in this life, there must
be a future state. If not, there would exist in man a
whole class of moral faculties which seem to find in the
present state of things an appropriate field for their
exercise, but which man is under no necessity of using.”
(The Dean of Canterbury on “ Science and Revelation ”).
Now it is the consequences of man’s actions that enable
him to distinguish between right and wrong, and at
the same time mete out an adequate reward and punish
ment. He is judged at once, and by an infallible judge,
and where the rewards and punishments, the pains
and pleasures attending his actions, may be of some use
to him and not carried on to some future state or other
world, where the conditions being different, they can be
of no use whatever. Man is responsible to himself, and
to the society of which he forms a member. This idea
�The Christian Religion.
47
of vengeance, this notion that has come down from
savage life of apportioning a certain amount of useless
suffering to a certain amount of sin, pervades the whole
of the Bible. We are told also that man is endowed
with certain faculties for the exercise of which no
proper field has been furnished him by natural means,
and that therefore it requires a supernatural interposi
tion to provide him with one. We know of no faculties
that man possesses, that are not brought into daily use,
that he could live without, or which are not active in
providing an improved state of things here in this
world, for himself and fellows.
The two great commandments of Christianity are
that we should “ Love God with all our hearts, and our
neighbour as ourselves.” Now is this possible 1 If not,
is it not time that we should give up pretending that
it is ? Can we love the God of the Hebrews who puts
whole towns to the sword, men, women, and little
children, and every living thing, and who throws great
stones out of heaven upon the retreating hosts, and who
kills more in that way, than are killed by the sword 1
Can we love the God of the Christians who' has ordained
an eternity of torture for the majority of his weak and
erring creatures, having full power to save them or not
to have created them ? It is true we can make an idol
of all the ’highest attributes with which we are
acquainted and give it a personality after our own image,
and love that, but that is not God. Can we love the
Great Unknown ? We may love goodness and beauty,
but they must take some form to enable us to do so,
we cannot love a mere abstraction. The Universal
Father works for the good of all, and does not recognise
individuals. Love is a human feeling applicable to our
fellow creatures, and is not applicable, as it appears to
me, to the All Supreme, which supports the Universe,
or rather which is the Universe. We cannot know
enough of this power to make it an object of love,
however much it may create a feeling of reverence and
�48
The Christian Religion.
awe, and this idea and feeling increase the higher our
conception rises of the Great Supreme. We may love
Christ as the highest manifestation of God we may
know, but this is a very different and inferior feeling to
that which we have for the Great All. As to “ loving
our neighbour as ourselves ” that is neither possible
nor desirable. Suppose my neighbour is a nasty sneak,
a mere animal, full of low and vicious propensities, why
should I love him ? I am not called upon to love vice
in any form, although it is my neighbour, and to do so,
as man’s conduct is governed by the consequences,
would be holding ‘out a premium for vice. Let my
neighbour make himself loveable, and I cannot help
loving him. On principle I may do him all the good I
can—getting him hanged perhaps being the greatest
good I can do him—but as to loving him, I must
decline. We can only love what is loveable, and believe
what is credible. It is true that orthodoxy professes
to love the Being who may send themselves or their
best and dearest friend to spend an eternity in “ ever
lasting fire prepared for the devil and his angels,” and
as to belief, it thinks that any fool can believe what
is credible, but that that only is a saving and justifying
faith which believes what is incredible. If all that it
is meant to inculcate is a settled principle of good-will
to all men, that certainly is a most desirable feeling to
encourage, even towards the unworthy. The same may
be said about loving our enemies. Why should we love
our enemies? The interests of the community, and
therefore of morality, do not require it. We cannot do
more for our friends. It is true we may bless them that
curse, do good to them that hate us, and pray for them
that despitefully use us and persecute us, and we can do
what pious people are very fond of doing, pray for
our enemies; but as to loving them! when by doing
them all the good we can, if they deserve it, we have
made them our friends, then we may love them.
Does God love his enemies when he exacts an infinite
�The Christian Religion.
49
penalty for a finite fault, or is it not true that he pre
pares an eternity of torment for them ? “ They shall
drink,” John says, “ the wine of the wrath of God
which is poured out without mixture into the cup of
his indignation,, and they shall be tormented with fire
and brimstone in the presence of the holy angels, and
in the presence of the Lamb, and the smoke of their
torment ascendeth up for ever and ever.” How the
holy angels must enjoy the sight ! we are told also on
the same ‘ loving ’ authority, 1 they have no rest day
nor night, they shall desire to die, and death shall flee
from them, they blaspheme God, they gnaw their tongues
for pain.’ ” Moses says, “ Slay every man his brother,”
rather than allow the existence of heretics, but Moses
did not believe in a future state, and therefore he could
not damn them as well. Christ says, “ He that believeth not in me the wrath of God abideth on him ”—■
“He that believeth not shall be damned,” and Paul says of
the unbelievers in his day, “ God shall send them strong
delusion (as he had previously done to Pharaoh and to
Ahab), that they should believe a lie, that they may all
be damned.”
All that can come of setting up a false standard, and
professing to love our enemies, is a pharisaical hypocrisy.
What we have to do is to love the true, the good, and
the beautiful; to stand up for the right regardless of
consequences, and to maintain an unending battle
against evil in all its forms. This may be done in all
kindness, and in the full conviction that “ Society
prepares crime, and the guilty are only the instruments
by which it is executed.”—Quetelet. It is justice that
ought to rule the world. We are governed by the con
sequences of our actions, and if we can get love without
being loveable, and good for evil, the chief motives to
be good and loveable are taken away. The same reason
ing applies to the whole doctrine of the non-resistance of
evil. Not to resist evil is to encourage it. If a man
smite us unjustly on one cheek, and turning the other
to be smitten would prevent its recurrence, let us do it.
�50
The Christian Religion.
With a good man it might do so, hut with the great
majority it would only encourage them to further
aggression. To give a man my cloak who had taken
my coat would he a premium for robbery; and to give
to him that asketh, and from him that would borrow
of me not to turn away, as a rule, would be equally a
premium for improvidence. So also to take no thought
for the morrow, to trust to God to clothe us as he does
the lilies of the field, would sap self-reliance and self
dependence, the foundation of all morality. No society
that ever existed in Christ’s time or since could hold
together on such principles, translate them into what
ever transcendental or aesthetic language we may.
As to the golden rule, which is not peculiar to
Christianity, viz., “ that we should do as we would be
done by,” it can only be received in spirit, in a very broad
and general application, for people differ so in bodily
and mental constitution that what suits one person by
no means suits another. It is not at all safe to judge
of other people by ourselves. Not to do to others what
we would not like to have done to ourselves is a much
safer way of putting it.
We must notice also, it is that we may be rewarded,
not that we may do right, is the inducement every
where held out.
With reference to prayer, Christ says, “ when thou
prayest, enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut
thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret; and
thy Father which seeth in secret shall reward thee
openly.” We are expressly told that we are not to
pray standing in the synagogues, that we may be seen
of men; that we are not to use vain repetitions and
much speaking, for that our Father knoweth what
things we have need of, before we ask Him. The
whole of Christendom has systematically set these
injunctions at defiance, for there would be little use
for the priests were they carried out, and with one sex
at least, church-going would be less popular if they were
�The Christian Religion.
5i
hot to be “ seen of men.” The last new bonnet is a
great stimulant to devotion. The great majority of
Christians, who believe their saints to be ubiquitous, or
omniscient, and who pray to those who are always
listening, to intercede with the Mother of God, to
petition her Son, to ask his Father, can have little
faith that the “Father knows what things we have need
of, before we ask Him,” or that if he does, he is
very hard to persuade to let us have them. His Holi
ness, the Pope, in his Encyclical, recently issued, enjoins
incessant prayer, employing a Mediatrix with Him, the
Virgin Mary, Mother of God, who sits, he says, as a
queen upon the right hand of her only begotten Son,
our Lord Jesus Christ, in a golden vestment, clothed
around with various adornments. There is nothing she
cannot obtain from him.
Now is it likely that God will be constantly altering the
course he has appointed for our well-being at our ignor
ant intercession ? Surely he knows what is right, and
will do it, without our asking him or constantly re
minding him! No amount of toadying, which we call
worship, or serving him, will induce him to do other
wise than what is right, or prevent him from doing it,
whether “ we praise him,” or “ acknowledge him to
be the Lord,” or not. The savage with the noise of
pots and pans tries to prevent an eclipse, that is, to
prevent the sun eating up the moon, or vice versa, and
the noises we make in the churches to bring or prevent
rain, or in any way to alter the course of natural law,
may be expected to be equally efficacious. The whole
tendency of modern research goes to show that if law
is anywhere, it is everywhere.
The Kyoungtha of Chittagong are Buddhists. Their
village temples contain a small stand of bells and an
image of Buddha, which the villagers generally worship,
morning and evening, first ringing the bells to let him
know that they are there (Sir John Lubbock’s “Origin
of Civilisation,” p. 220). This is no more than polite or
D
�52
The Christian Religion.
politic; we ring our bells merely to call the people
together, thinking God is always ready to listen to
petitions, to do for us what he has given us full power
to do for ourselves, or simply perhaps, to reverse the
order of nature, upon the invariability of which the
good of all depends. Surely it is better that all people
should know that miracles will not be constantly worked
on their behalf. It is true that by the laws of the
mind, prayer often answers itself, and we get what we
ask for, but should we mock God that we may be so
benefited? No man prays for the success of his
chemical experiments, neither will he for moral results
when he knows as much of the likes and antipathies of
human beings, as he does of the attractions and repul
sions of atoms. Our present practice is a “ survival ”
of primitive barbarous times, when all evil was supposed
to come directly from spirits, or from the gods, and
prayer was the only means supposed capable of averting
such evils. We certainly have no right to reflect on
less civilised times and nations for their superstition, so
long as we expect the ordinary course of nature to be
altered in our behalf whenever we choose to ask it.
It never seems to occur to those who pray without
ceasing, to ask the question that if in answer to their
repeated importunity, God delivers them from evil,
why an infinitely powerful, good, and benevolent being
does not deliver all from evil, without asking. If it
were right in their case it would be right in all; but it
would be not right. Any interference with the estab
lished order of nature would render both reason and
instinct useless, and would weaken those springs of
action on which all progress depends.
The late Rev. Charles Kingsley, says, speaking of
Atheism ;—11 Has every suffering, searching soul, which
ever gazed up into the darkness of the unknown, in
hopes of catching even a glimpse of a divine eye,
beholding all, and ordering all, and pitying all, gazed
up in vain ?............. Oh! my friends, those who
�The Christian Religion.
53
believe or fancy that they believe such things, must be
able to do so only through some peculiar conformation,
either of brain or heart. Only want of imagination to
conceive the consequences of such doctrines can enable
them, if they have any love and pity for their fellow
men, to preach those doctrines without pity and horror.
They know not, they know not, of what they rob a
mankind already but too miserable by its own folly and
its own sin, a mankind which, if it have not hope in
God and in Christ, is truly—as Homer said of old—
more miserable than the beasts of the field. If their
unconscious conceit did not make them unintentionally
cruel, they would surely be more silent for pity’s sake ;
they would let men go on in the pleasant delusion that
there is a living God, and a Word of God who has
revealed him to men, and would hide from their fellow
creatures the dreadful secret which they think they
have discovered—that there is none that heareth prayer,
and therefore to him need no flesh come.”
No doubt this is very eloquent, but if such eloquence
were compatible with reason, I should ask, who is it
that professes to have discovered “the dreadful secret,”
that the majority after a moment spent here, are con
signed to endless torments, where there “ is none that
heareth prayer, and therefore to Him need no flesh
come.” Surely Atheism is better than this orthodox
belief, and if any have discovered that it is a blasphem
ous libel upon our Creator, the sooner they proclaim
it the better. The good, most loving, and gentle
Cowper, the Poet, not having felt, as he and his Par
son thought, sufficient evidence of conversion, lived
year after year in the full belief that God had utterly
rejected him, and on his death-bed exclaimed, “I feel
■unutterable despair.” The self-righteous people who
feel so certain of their own salvation, forget, or more
probably selfishly disregard, the numberless cases of
this kind, of sensitive people being driven, as poor
■Cowper was, to despair; they think it so hard that
�54
The Christian Religion.
any should be deprived of the comforting notion. It
is a great mystery, they say, but it is one of their own
making: they first make it dark, and then complain
that they cannot see.
I need not say any more, I think, to show that the
Christianity of Christ, however much of excellence there
is in it, is not up to the thought and moral sense of our
time. Great efforts are being made to adapt it to thealtered conditions by new and forced meanings, and by
dropping, what no forcing can adapt, as not abiding
principles intended for our times. So far as attempts
have been made to put Christianity systematically intopractice, they have been failures.
The early Christians were communists—they had all
things in common j and no doubt it is better adapted tosuch a social system than to any other. When all are
dependent upon each and each upon all; when all have
a direct and immediate interest in the well-being,
physical, moral, and intellectual of every member of
the community, when conscience or the sense of duty
is as strong a feeling as hunger and pride and vanity are
now, when the unselfish feelings shall decidedly pre
dominate, then some form of Christianity will be practi
cable. But society in no country has ever yet approached
such a state. Communism is still, and may continue
so for ages, the great Socialist Utopia.
Where Christianity has been attempted to be carried
out as a system of theological belief; where he “ whobelieveth shall be saved and he who believeth not shall
be damned,” the burnings of millions of people have not
brought us any nearer to it in practice. People will con
tinue to believe that what appears to them to be black and
not white, is black, whether they are to be burned here
and hereafter for it or not; and as to “ renouncing the
devil and all his works,” and burning some nine millions
of poor old women and others for supposed personal deal
ings with him, the devil, or at least the principle of evilr
is nearly as rampant as ever. It would have been much
�The Christian Religion.
55'
more convincing if those who burned others for want
of faith, had exhibited a proper evidence of their own,
which they never did. “ And these signs shall follow
them that believe
says Mark xvi. 17, 18, 19, “ In my
name shall they cast out devils; they shall speak with new
tongues ; they shall take up serpents ; and if they drink
any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them; they shall
lay hands on the sick, and they shall recover.” But
such is the perversity of human nature, that had such
powers attended their faith, they would probably havebeen burned for witchcraft. “ So then^ Mark goes on
to say, xvi. 20, “ after the Lord had spoken unto them
he was received up into heaven, and sat on the right
hand of God.”
The asceticism, which is a part of Christianity, has
done the world infinite mischief, if it were only in
depriving it of the offspring of so many of its highest
minds, who were either imprisoned, burnt, or voluntarily
retired from it. What wise man had time to marry
when he had an eternity to prepare for ? what good man
would run the risk of introducing beings to a life of
everlasting torment ? The stake was so great, that no
wonder that among those who were not good utter sel
fishness prevailed, and men thought only of then’ own
salvation. The soul was the only thing to be thought
of, the body was despised, mortified, degraded, and
neglected.
Monks, nuns, and hermits were the
only sensible people. Prayer was the only occupation
in which a man could profitably engage, and conse
quently no more attention was given to the body than
its natural wants absolutely required. This absurd de
preciation of the body, the sole instrument of thought,
has continued to the present time.
It is absurd to say that we owe modem civilization
to Christianity. Islamism was a real reform on the
state of society induced by the Christianity of that day,
and carried willingly all the East and the great cities of
its birth along with it; and when it had reduced Europe
�$6
The Christian Religion.
to the (lark ages, we were saved again by the Moors
and Saracens, and a return to Greece and Rome. The
Greek and Roman philosophers aim at the perfect de
velopment of the individual man—mind and body—
and of the individual state. “ Magnanimity, self-reli
ance, dignity, independence, and, in a word, elevation
of character, constituted the Roman idea of perfection;
while humility, obedience, gentleness, patience, resigna
tion are Christian virtues” (Lecky, vol. ii., pp. 72, 155),
and it is not, I think, saying too much to affirm, that
had the principles of Christianity been really practised,
modern civilization could never have existed. His
Excellency Iwakura Tomomi, chief of the supreme
Japanese Embassy, which visited England a few years
ago, has presented to the Library of the India Office a
set of the Chinese version of the Buddhist Scriptures.
The work weighs 3| tons. A selection is probably, in
their case, allowed to be made for the use of families.
If, as is reported, the Chinese and Hindus are about to
send missionaries to Europe, they certainly cannot come
Bible in hand.
The time was when people were really in earnest
about their religion, but now all living faith in the
dogmas of the past seems to have died out. Where
the idea of duty first makes its appearance is in the
sacrifices to the dead. The most costly gifts of men,
and women, and horses, and dogs, and arms, and money,
were presented to the dead, and buried or burned with
them. The Chinese, however, are a practical people,
and Tylor tells us that in China “ the fanciful art of
replacing these costly offerings by worthless imitations
is at this day worked out into the quaintest devices—
the men and horses dispatched by fire for the service
of the dead are but paper figures and the manufacture
mock-money, both in gold and silver, is the trade of
thousands of w’omen and children in a Chinese city”
(“ Primitive Culture,” vol. i. p. 445). Such a change
has come over our religion,—which has now become a
�The Christian Religion.
^7
mere conventional custom of what is called good society
—a great sham which thousands of men, women and
clergymen are engaged in manufacturing. There is no
doubt we are bordering on change.
Not that we expect this change to be rapid; all per
manent change is very slow. Besides the two extremes of
the positivists and scientific men at one end, and work
ing men at the other—who regard religion as allied
always with monarchy and aristocracy, and as offering
post-obit bills on heaven for what they think they are
unjustly deprived of here—the great body of society
looks upon Christianity as containing their highest
ideal of excellence. Its dogmas are a dead letter to all
but a very few, people have got used to them, or they
are interpreted so as not to shock their moral sense, or
they are regarded as awful mysteries to be cleared up in
another world, and without which their religion would
be mere morality and not half so acceptable. Add to
this that custom, conventional usage, fashion, and re
spectability, with the toll-gates of birth, marriage and
death, are all on the side of the national religion, and
we certainly need expect no sudden change. The
Christianity of the present day is not taken from the
Bible, but is Bible doctrine strained through the mind
of the nineteenth century, and many good people still pre
fer to call themselves Christians because there is nothing
really at present equally good and of equal authority
to take its place. There cannot be a doubt that church
membership, whether of churchmen or dissenters, helps
to keep people within the broader and most obvious
moral laws ; and it will be some time before the mass
of the people will set themselves to learn what is true
in order that they may do what is right, or that they
will do what is right because it is right, and not from
the hope of reward or from the fear of punishment. We
must wait; in the meantime let no one fear or hesitate
to proclaim what he believes to be the truth and of
highest excellence.
��
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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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Christianity: viewed in the light of our present knowledge and moral sense
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Bray, Charles
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Place of publication: London
Collation: 57 p. ; 18 cm.
Notes: From the library of Dr Moncure Conway. Published in three parts. Contains Part 1: Religion: Primitive, and Among the Lowest Races. Part II: The Christian Religion.
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Thomas Scott
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Christianity
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Christianity-Controversial Literature
Conway Tracts
Religion
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CT <02
CLERICAL
“POOH, POOH!” RHETORIC.
Ovk aiffxpbv Tjye'i bpra to ipeuBrj Keyeiv ;
Ouk, ei rb cra>£ijvat ye rb if/evbos cpepei.
Philoctetes, 108-9.
PUBLISHED BY THOMAS SCOTT,
NO. II THE TERRACE, FARQUHAR ROAR, UPPER NORWOOD,
LONDON, S.E.
1875.
Price Threepence.
�LONDON!
PRINTED BY C. W. REYNELL, LITTLE PVLTENEY STREET,
HAYMARKET, W.
�CLERICAL “POOH POOH!” RHETORIC.
T is much easier to be religious than to be moral.
This is remarkably the case in countries where
the Roman Catholic religion is that of the State.
There every person is religious, but scarcely any one
is moral. There religion is a respectable suit of
clothes to be worn on great occasions and holy days ;
or, it is a passport which those who dislike being
“ spotted ” carry with them to produce in case any one
might question their orthodoxy.
Religion—not
morality—circulates through the blood of these
people, through their families, their households, and
the very atmosphere they breathe. Their religion
may be blind admiration, or submission, or faith, or
adoration, or even it may be persuasion; but it
scarcely ever is a binding rule for their moral con
duct. It has not the least necessary connection with
any one moral virtue. The most hardened murderer,
the most self-indulgent sensualist, the most atrocious
villain may be rigidly devout,—as in the case of the
notorious Francisco Pizarro. He may even avow
publicly that he is rigidly devout and intensely pious
without giving the least shock to public opinion. In
short, the Roman Catholic Religion is witchcraft
undisguised. The Protestant Religion is witchcraft
disguised to a certain extent.
Protestants do not allow themselves the same,
indulgence that Roman Catholics permit themselves.
Protestants have less faith than Roman Catholics in
I
B
�6
Clerical '''‘Pooh, Pooh I ” Rhetoric.
the efficacy of a death-bed repentance. Regarding
the efficacy of the Sacraments there is a difference
of opinion among Protestants. Moreover the oracle
of Protestants is a dumb book called the Bible, whose
want of speech causes almost endless diversities of
opinion among those who consult it. These differ
ences and difficulties necessarily promote the cause of
morality. The accusation, that a man holds strange
opinions in order to find arguments for whatever he
has an inclination to do, is a reproach which must
always sting a Protestant who leads an immoral life.
Hence if a Protestant hold any peculiar opinion it is
cf almost infinite satisfaction to himself and advan
tage to his cause if he be able to point to a private
life of dignified moral repute. Consequently the
peoples among whom the Protestant religion prevails
are much more moral than the peoples among whom
the Roman Catholic religion is established by law.
Nevertheless, the Protestants allow themselves a
certain amount of a certain kind of self-indulgence.
In the first place, they have their little allowance
of witchcraft, namely, the laying on of hands—
infant baptism—-justification by faith—remission of
sins—and the final perseverance of the saints.
Secondly, they have their little hard and fast lines
of exclusiveness, as arranged among their various
divisions of Presbyterians, Episcopalians, Congregationalists, Methodists, Baptists, &c. &c.
Thirdly, Protestants permit and even applaud a
certain amount of spiritual hatred, spiritual ran
cour, and spiritual denunciation. The odium tlieologicum is particularly gratifying to the Protestant intel
lect. At Exeter Hall, Belfast, or Glasgow, there
could scarcely be any public matter that would be
more likely to draw together a numerous audience
than the announcement that an eloquent firebrand,
on a certain time, and at a certain place, would
denounce Mr. Gladstone and the Pope.
�Clerical “Pooh^ Pooh ! ” Rhetoric.
7
Fourthly (and principally), persistent and vocifer
ous assertion, in opposition to facts, that the Bible
has been written by men who were guided by divine
grace, and that Protestantism is the only true reli
gion on earth, are points that are almost universally
acted on and applauded by Protestants. If such a
course were adopted by Infidels it would be called
“ a system of enormous lying.” But when that
course is adopted for the preservation of Christianity
it is considered not only justifiable but a bounden
duty by almost all Protestants.
In Sophocles’ “ Philoctetes,” 108-9, Neoptolemus
says to Ulysses, “ Dost thou, then, not think it base
to tell a lie ? ” To this Ulysses answers : “No ; at
least not if the lie bring preservation.” This doc
trine is avowed by the Jesuits and practised by Pro
testants—especially by the clergy of the Established
Church in England and of the disestablished church
in Ireland.
In the days of David Hume, who flourished about
A.n. 1750, the clergy of the day deemed it their duty
to refute the arguments against miracles, against a
particular Providence, and against a future life, con
tained in his “ Inquiry concerning Human Under
standing,” published a.d. 1748. Not being able to
refute him they wrote what they called Answers'to
him. He says “ Answers by Reverends and Right
Reverends came out two or three in a year, and I
found, by Dr. Warburton’s railing, that the books
were beginning to be esteemed in good company.”
On the part of the clergy this was decent. It showed
they thought they had something to defend besides
their salaries. But the clergy of the present day
have long ago lost the power of using their pens, or
indeed of using any weapons requiring the aid of
human intellect to wield them.
So, when the late Dr. Strauss published, a.d. 1837,
his “Life of Jesus,” the clergy were quite taken by
�8
Clerical11 Pooh, Pooh ! ” Rhetoric.
surprise. The idea that Jesus might not be a strictly
historical character, and that the narratives con
tained in our Gospels might be, for the most part
mythological, was quite new to our clergy. They
had not as much as one argument to bring forward.
They could use only exclamations, such as Oh !—Ah !
—Such a thing to say !—Downright blasphemy !—
Shocking!—Horrible !—&c. &c.
Not long after this, a.d. 1844, “ Vestiges of the
Natural History of Creation ” appeared. It found
the clergy utterly unable to bring forward an argu
ment against its statements and reasonings. The
clergy had been better employed. They had been
looking after rectories., archdeaconries, canonries,
prebends’ stalls, and deaneries, and the Presbyterian
portion of them had been manufacturing bricks and
getting leases of building ground. Nevertheless the
clergy raised against the “ Vestiges ” an outcry that
resounded through her Majesty’s three kingdoms;
but it was vox et prceterea nihil.
Not long after this, A.D. 1860, “ Essays and Reviews ”
made their appearance. Again the clergy were “un
practised, unprepared, and still to seek.” Again the
clergy raised an outcry, but it was as powerless as the
“ unearthly squeak ” uttered by “ the feeble forms of
the deceased dead” fluttering around Ulysses in Hades.
Before the sensation caused by the publication of
“ Essays and Reviews ” had died away, Dr. Colenso,
a.d. 1862, published the first volume of “ The Penta
teuch and Book of Joshua Critically Examined.”
This was too much. All the interjections in the
English language could not successfully resist this
rush of learned and clever publications on behalf of
the good old cause, “ Truth v. Christianity.” It
was deemed necessary to do something. The stupid
good people began to expect that the clergy would
do something. The ignorant little curates began to
expect that some powerful church dignitary would
�Clerical “Pooh, Pooh ! ” Rhetoric.
9
come forth and refute Dr. Colenso. If there was
any such churchman in existence he did not make
his appearance. Mr. Speaker Denison suggested that
all the eminent blockheads in the church of England
should put their heads together and refute Dr.
Colenso. This was received with applause by the
stupid good people. And accordingly the Fathers
of the Church were gathered together in West
minster Abbey amidst “ the pride, pomp and circum
stance of glorious ” witchcraft to refute Dr. Colenso.
They commenced by receiving the holy communion! And
if they ever shall arrive at a conclusion, it will be “ a
conclusion in which nothing is concluded.”
In the meantime the expectation of the. stupid
good people was stretched to the utmost. They first
uttered a cry for help, next a scream of anguish,
then a howl of despair, and finally a wail of lamen
tation. This was too much. The clergy were at
their wit s end—and they had not to go very far to
reach it! Resort was had to the maxim of Ulysses,
that “ It is not base to tell a lie if the lie bring
preservation.”
So the clergy went among their flocks exclaiming
“Pooh, Pooh!” and preserving an ostentatious
silence on all matters of controversy.
Like all great and important doctrines, the pro- .
found reason and important theory contained in the
exclamation “ Pooh, Pooh ! ” have been gradually
“ developed.”
When Dr. Colenso was in England during the
year 1863 he wrote to a bishop asking for an expla
nation of certain statements he had made against
Dr. Colenso. To this the bishop replied that he
would not enter into a controversy “with one who
has been so ably answered ”—the bishop did not say
by whom. This is the suppressio veri in the form of
“ Pooh ! Pooh ! ”
At that time, 1863, a bishop was performing cer-
�io
Clerical “Pooh, Pooh!” Rhetoric.
tain ceremonies of witchcraft, commonly called
“ confirmation,” “ ordination,” “ consecration,’ &c.
&c., and when Dr. Colenso called on him to explain
certain ungrounded assertions he had made relative
to the futility of Dr. Colenso’s arguments against
the pretensions claimed for some parts of Holy
Scripture to be regarded as written by aid of Divine
inspiration, the bishop’s reply was to the effect that
he was too much occupied by his witchcraft to be
able to waste time in defending Holy Scripture.
This is the trick of shirking under the form of “ Pooh,
Pooh ! ”
A layman sent a copy of a tract published in
Mr. Scott’s series to a dignitary of the church of
England, requesting him to refute it, “ at which
his nose was in great indignation.” The dignitary
returned the tract with a message, to the effect that
he considered the act of sending him such a tract
was “a personal insult.” This is the stately profes
sional dodge under the form of “ Pooh, Pooh ! ”
Another layman sent a copy of another tract which
appeared in Mr. Scott’s series to a poor curate,
requesting him to refute the arguments contained in
it. The curate wrote back in reply that all the state
ments and arguments contained in that tract had
been written and refuted many years ago. The lay
man wrote back to the curate requesting him to give
.the names of the books which the curate alleged had
anticipated, and refuted the statements and argu
ments contained in the tract. To this the curate did
not give any answer. This is deliberate lying for the
Gospel’s sake under the form of “ Pooh, Pooh !”
A lay inquirer asked a dignitary to explain why
there are so many contradictory statements in our
New Testament regarding “justification by works,”
and “justification by faith?” The dignitary asked
the layman had he read certain books. The layman
answered in the negative. Thereupon the dignitary
�Clerical "Pooh, Pooh 1 ” Rhetoric.
11
named a number of books so numerous that it would
require the time of five or six average human lives
to peruse them, and the dignitary told the layman
that the answer to the question would be found among
those books. This is running away and taking refuge
behind the petticoats of mother Church under the
form of “ Pooh, Pooh ! ”
Dr. Farrar lately published a ‘ Life of Christ ’
grounded on the old maxim of obstinate stupidity:—
Over and over again I repeat it,
Time after time and day after day,
Nothing while I live shall ever defeat it
For over and over the same I will say.
A favourable notice of this performance is given
in the Quarterly Review for January, 1875. The
notice concludes thus :—“To fill the minds of those
who read his pages with solemn and not ignoble
thoughts, ‘ to add sunlight to daylight by making
the happy happier, to encourage the toiler, to con
sole the sorrowful, to point the weak to the one true
source of moral strength ’—these are the high ends
to which he [Dr. Farrar] desires that his work may
be blest, and we may safely promise him that he will
not be disappointed.” This is Peter driving a nail
through the Moon, and Paddy clinching the nail on
the other side, under the form of “ Pooh, Pooh I”
Many other instances of clerical “ Pooh, Pooh ! ”
rhetoric could be given. But it is needless. What,
has been said is amply sufficient to enable the intelli
gent reader to detect clerical “ Pooh, Pooh ! ” rhetoric
under whatever guise it may lurk.
In his essay on Miracles David Hume says, “ ’Tis
strange, a judicious reader is apt to say, upon the
perusal of these wonderful histories, that such prodi
gious events never happen in our days. But ’tis
nothing strange, I hope, that men should lie in all
ages. You must surely have seen instances enow of
that frailty.*’
�12
Clerical “Pooh, Pooh ! ” Rhetoric.
Recommending the clerics to study the works of
David Hume, and learn honesty, we shall take leave
of those holy men, expressing for them in English a
wish which Demosthenes expressed in Greek for
certain persons who “ flourished ” by dishonest means
in his day:—
“If it be possible, inspire even in these men a better sense
and feeling! But if they be indeed incurable, destroy them by
themselves : exterminate them on land and sea.”
Kilferest,
Feast of the Annunciation, 1875.
Printed
by c. w. reynell, little pulteney-street, haymarket, w.
�
Dublin Core
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Title
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Victorian Blogging
Description
An account of the resource
A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
Creator
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Conway Hall Library & Archives
Date
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2018
Publisher
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Conway Hall Ethical Society
Text
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Original Format
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Pamphlet
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
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Clerical "Pooh, pooh!" rhetoric
Description
An account of the resource
Place of publication: London
Collation: 12 p. ; 18 cm.
Notes: From the library of Dr Moncure Conway. Printed by C.W. Reynell, London.
Publisher
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Thomas Scott
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1875
Identifier
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CT128
Subject
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Clergy
Christianity
Creator
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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 (Clerical "Pooh, pooh!" rhetoric), 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
Type
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Text
Language
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English
Christianity-Controversial Literature
Clergy
Conway Tracts
-
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c3b56e59ed941e7130f20c034704af0c
PDF Text
Text
CT3^
CLERICAL INTEMPERANCE.
BY
T. P. KIRKMAN, M.A., F.R.S.
I
Rev. Canon
BARD8LEY, M.A.
(N< Anne’s, Manchester.}
PUBLISHED BY THOMAS
MOUNT PLEASANT, RAMSGATE.
' ___ *
1871.
SCOTT,
��CLERICAL INTEMPERANCE.
Rev. Sir,
OU have requested me in the name of a Com
mittee of Northern Convocation to answer a
long list of queries under the title, ‘ Effects of Intem
perance in Religion, Education, &c.’ If the paper
were issued to me by the command of my diocesan, or
if it sprang from a Committee of earnest men of all
denominations, or even a mixed Committee of
Churchmen, lay and clerical, I should feel bound
to attend to it. But, without expressing an opinion
on the wisdom or usefulness of the inquiry, I prefer
to lay aside a document proceeding from an anti
quarian body so intensely sectarian and sacerdotal as
Convocation. It occurred to me in reading the paper
that there are two other questions about which Con
vocation might be more usefully employed. One is,
not the effects of intemperance on religion and edu
cation, but the effects of what we divines call religion
and education on intemperance. Many thinkers of
the day are pondering this question, full of wonder
that we clergy produce so small an impression on the
ignorance and vice of the millions, and that the masses
are more and more withdrawing themselves from our
teaching and influence, while we appear more and
more to prefer sectarian discord to wise and brotherly
unity. Another question, perhaps more important,
�4
Clerical Intemperance.
is the effect of clerical intemperance on religion and
education. I do not mean intemperance in the use
of the bottle, although, from what I know of priests
and preachers, I am inclined to believe that the
average of their abstemiousness and self-denial,
church-officers of all kinds included, is not much
higher than that among the laity, taken all
• through. It may be that the daily self-indulgence
of many of us is a good set-off against the Saturday
excess of about the same proportion of the toilers.
What I mean is the intemperance of our stiff-necked
pharisaism, popery, and priestcraft—of our mutual
intolerance, pride, and bitterness. Can you look
without a pang at this ugly fact, more hideous, and. I
' fear more hopeless, than that intemperance of the laity
which we all deplore—that after eighteen centuries
of pretended loyalty to him who sacrificed his spotless
life in attacking the orthodoxy and priestcraft of his
country’s abominable church, whose dignified clergy
shrieked out,—“ Not this man, but Barabbas!”—
, doubtless a much sounder churchman than Jesus—
v we still exhibit to the sorrowing angels a spectacle a
' hundred times more guilty considering our light and
learning than that wrangling and cursing of the
• hostile priests of Gerizim and Zion ? I fear that the
mutual anathemas and repulsions of the canting aiid
i conjuring zealots among! the mock-Christian sects of
this day are, in the sight of the Great Head in whom
we all glory, far less pardonable than that old scorn
and hatred between Jew and Samaritan. We ought
- ■
to burn with shame as we pass each other in our
' White chokers in the sunshine ; and it is a merciful
world that does not pursue us everywhere with the
.
finger of derision. The men of thought and action
in other departments differ greatly and differ long ; but
they all appear to believe in truth, and manfully and
hopefully do they debate to find it: at the long run
. they do find it, every life-time increasing the gold of
�'Clerical Intemperance,
imperishable knowledge. But among us how many
are’ there who care one straw for truth, or who have
any fixed belief that it is attainable by patient inquiry
for the common gain of themselves and of fair anta
gonists ? The Jews appear to have wiped away from
their Church the greatest part of the priestcraft and
lies which Jesus and Paul assailed, and thousands Of
them are better disciples of those Masters than most
of us; but we Christian divines continue century
after century in our maze of mingled Judaism and
Paganism, pelting each other with some old weed.
Is not this evidence of drunken delirium more dreadful
because more permanent than that which maddens
the victims of alcohol ?
The truth is within the reach of us all, if we only
seek it in the love of it, such truth as is sufficient for
salvation and Christian brotherhood; nay, it is actually
in the possession of us all, both Jews and Christians.
No need for more planting, or more building ; all that
is required is'the removal of weeds and rubbish. It
is not that we are, any'of us, ignorant of that revealed
truth of God, which should be to us the bond of love
and hearty co-operation in Christ; but that most
of us undervalue and disparage it, in comparison of
our quibbles of sham science, o4ur sectarian shibboleths, .
and our priestly dominations. All that is required in
addition to the grand' fundamentals of morality, in
the way of symbol and common rconfes$ion among
believers in one God, and in a future life for man, was
long ago delivered by an authority greater than
Councils and Convocations. It was to Rome, the'
world’s queen and centre, that Paul laid down, once
for all the confession or creed necessary and sufficient
to entitle every sincere believer to the fulness of
Christian birthright and privilege. After a solemn
protest against speculation about unsearchable
mysteries above, or miracles inscrutable below, he
Says :—“ The word is nigh thee, even in thy mouth
*■
K,
�6
Clerical Intemperance. •
-and in thine heart, even the word of faith that we
■preach; that if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the
Master Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God
hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved.”
Was that short creed savingly sufficient, then, for
Christian discipleship and fraternity ? Then I maintain
that it is sufficient now. Whoso, in my hearing,
makes that confession, and convinces me that he
takes Jesus for the living Lord and Master of his
life, be he white, black, or brown, baptized or unbap
tized, I will give him the embrace of Christian love ;
and if he has gifts and graces fitting him to teach in
the name and in accordance with the teaching of
Jesus, I would, if the laws of the Chief Priests and
Pharisees permitted me—however he might dissent
from my opinions in a hundred questions of history
and speculation—give him leave to teach from my
pulpit. Such confidence do I feel in the truth of that
solemn word of Paul. Hence I cannot, for my life,
see what right Popes, or Convocations, or Parliaments
have ever had to lengthen, by one syllable, that early
catholic creed which the great apostle of the Gentiles
delivered to the Roman world. Every article which
has since been added to the Christian creed, has
been, so far as required to be believed under pain of
-eternal damnation for denial or doubt of it, as much
a pious fraud as the recent addition under the like
anathema of the dogma of the Pope’s infallibility ;
and I have no doubt that, if the history of such addi
tions were exactly known, it would be evident that
each was inserted for practical worldly ends, all of
■one value, in thrusting somebody up, and turning
somebody out. But I am far from affirming the
falsehood of such additions as mere propositions in
theology. It may be a proposition quite true enough
and clear enough for Romish theology to say that the
Pope is infallible; but it seems hard for me to be
damned for doubting it.
�Clerical Intemperance.
7
I may be in the wrong in my estimate of the
clearness and authority of S. Paul's short creed, in
Romans x. But they have no doctor in their Con
vocation or Conference, in their Synod or Assembly,
nor even in their conclave of Cardinals, who would
like to undertake, face to face, to prove me in the
wrong, with that bright Pauline page open before me,
along with our twentieth Article and the record of
my Ordination vows, wherein I bound myself before
God and man “ to teach nothing as required of neces
sity for eternal salvation, but that which I shall be
persuaded may be concluded and proved by the
Scripture.”
It may also be that I am not in the wrong. If I
am in the right, what can there be, except reasons too
mean to be confessed, which can prevent the Jews
and Christians of this land, at least the non-Popish
Christians—I suppose we must, yet long, despair of
the Pagan pride of priesthood—from tearing down
those blind partition walls which have hitherto been
the ignominy of our Bibledom and the bulwarks of
inidelity ?
I am, Rev. Sir,
Your obedient servant,
THOS. P. KIRKMAN.
Croft Rectory, Warrington,
July 10,-1871.
C. W. REYNE1L, TRINTER, LITTLE PULTENEY STREET, HAYMARKET.
�
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
Date
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2018
Publisher
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Conway Hall Ethical Society
Text
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text.
Original Format
The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data
Pamphlet
Dublin Core
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Title
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Clerical intemperance
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Kirkman, T. P. (Thomas Penington) [1806-1895]
Description
An account of the resource
Place of publication: Ramsgate
Collation: 7 p. ; 18 cm.
Notes: Inscribed (unknown hand) on first page "Of course Mr (?) K. is practically right but whether the letter will do much good or any, is doubtful". A letter to the Rev. Canon Bardsley. From the library of Dr Moncure Conway. Printed by C.W. Reynell, Haymarket, London.
Publisher
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Thomas Scott
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1871
Identifier
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CT96
Subject
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Christianity
Clergy
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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 (Clerical intemperance), 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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1
CRITICISM
THE
RESTORATION OF CHRISTIANITY.
A LETTER TO MR. THOS. SCOTT REVIEWING A
PAPER BY DR. LANG.
BY
•
A COUNTRY VICAR.
PUBLISHED BY THOMAS SCOTT,
NO. 11, THE TERRACE, FARQUHAR ROAD,
UPPER NORWOOD, LONDON, S.E.,
Price Sixpence.
��CRITICISM THE RESTORATION OF
CHRISTIANITY.
My Dear Mr Scott,—-I have been reading the
notice of your “English Life of Jesus/’ in Theological
Review of Oct. ’72. In it Mr Wright says, “But
surely the suggestion of difficulties should be accom
panied by the solution, if one can be found, and for
this purpose some notice of the steps by which the
synoptical gospels were produced would have been most
useful.” Now, I have also lately read with much in
terest the remarkable paper by Dr. Heinrich Lang of
Zurich, which you sent me; and this seems to supply
to a certain extent what is stated by Mr Wright to be
wanting in your book.
Dr Heinrich Lang’s paper presents in a short form
the latest results of criticism on many questions of
supreme importance ; and more than this, it shows how
a practical use may be made of them in the reconstruc
tion of the religious teaching of Jesus himself, without
the miraculous superstructure of a later age. The
Church has been very confident for many centuries,
that the doctrines she has taught, and the religious
views she has held, are the authentic doctrines and
views of Jesus and his first disciples. It is indeed well
known that the entire system was not formulated for
some centuries after his death, almost every doctrine of
importance was assailed by the fire and steel of persecu
tion, and watered with the blood of martyrs. There
was in the earliest period of Christianity, considerable
difference, not only between the Jewish and Christian
religions, but between opposing parties in the Christian
Church. Nevertheless, it was assumed that before
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Criticism the Restoration of Christianity.
these differences arose, there was a time of entire agree
ment in' a form of doctrine and discipline, directlygiven by Jesus himself to his apostles, and by them to
‘•his Church. Whence, then, all our difficulties and all
our differences ? This divine unity of faith given to
man must set them all at rest for ever. But where are
we to find it ? Each sect will say,—It is preserved
pure and entire in the religion we profess, and so the
real influence which the divine teaching of the gospels
ought to have upon the world is lost, because we can
not agree what it is. The substantial value of a
religion influencing all mankind for good is sacrificed to
the maintenance of different forms of other worldliness;
and after all we get no clear ideas of that other world,
and that future state, which would be so precious to us
if we could. This being the case, it is a consolation to
find that the assumption of the unity of the faith in
the apostolic age is a dream, and the pretension of any
system of religion delivered by Jesus to his apostles,
and by them to the Church, and by the Church to us,
is a delusion. There was no unity of the faith in the
apostolic age, and there is none in the writings of the
New Testament taken as a whole. The miraculous
religion of the Church was unknown to Jesus and his
disciples. There was no substantial agreement about
the Christ himself. The Jesus of the fourth Gospel is
a different person from the Jesus of Matthew, of Luke,
and of the apocalypse, especially from that Jesus Christ
the Son of God, whom the great apostle Paul preached
with such marvellous devotion and success to the
world.
The New Testament has been erroneously supposed
for many centuries to be the original authority for
orthodox doctrines, whereas, in truth, the opposing
orthodoxies of the first century gave rise to much of
the Testament. Words which he never spoke, and
deeds which he never did, have been ascribed to Jesus,
as well as to his apostles. A later age was able to in-
�Criticism the Restoration of Christianity.
5
troduce as original documents the narratives which we
now have, and which are shown in this paper to have .
been, in part at least, arbitrarily constructed for particu
lar purposes. A better text, and a more reverent and'
faithful use of the New Testament, has opened the way
for these discoveries. It cannot be right to profess to
derive the articles of the faith of Jesus from those
parts of the New Testament, which can be shown as in
this paper, to be the work of opposing parties in the
next generation, written for the purpose of giving a
supposed divine authority to their own divergent views.
If our religion is to be the religion of Jesus, it is of
paramount importance to ascertain how much of it be
longs to his age and was taught by himself. It begins
to be possible now to know something of the real Jesus,
who taught in Galilee and suffered at Jerusalem, and
to have a much more real appreciation of the actual
doctrine which he taught.
We cannot indeed assume the right of deciding veith
certainty how much of the discourses of Jesus. has
come down to us in his own words, and how much has
been put into his mouth by later writers for definite
purposes of their own. But when we find two different
versions of the same discourse, we are justified in
maintaining that both cannot be faithful reports of the
actual words. We see how the writers of the New
Testament habitually quote the Old Testament: we
know that there was in existence a book of the oracles
of Jesus, which the synoptical evangelists appear to
have manipulated, each in their own manner : we have
a vast store-house of Jewish tradition, showing how
carefully the Jews treasured up the sayings of their rab
bin, in which, for instance, almost every sentence of the
Lord’s prayer may be found; while the way in which the
words of ancient speakers and the doctrines of ancient
philosophers were handed down to posterity, is “abun
dantly shown in the works of classical writers still ex
tant. So, while we have reason to believe in the
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Criticism the Restoration of Christianity.
general faithfulness of the reports of the sayings of
Jesus, we are by no means compelled to accept every
word of the Gospels as of divine authority; and to
allow that the most difficult questions of religion and
morality, about our present and future state, are to be
decided for ever by one or two detached sentences, of
which we know not whence they came.
A summary of the contents of Dr. Heinrich Lang’s
remarkable paper will show that love of the Bible and
not enmity against it, is the characteristic of modern
theological criticism. Strauss began the work in the
year 1835. He took his stand upon the four Gospels,
and set to work with such resources as he had to hand :
no great advance however was made, because the
ground on which he stood was not firm enough under
his feet. This defect in foundation was recognized by
Baur. He sought for a firmer standing ground, and
found it in the four unquestioned epistles of Paul,
Galatians, I. and II. Corinthians, and Romans. True,
these epistles were not written until about twenty years
after the death of Jesus, nevertheless, they are the
genuine works of a man, who had been a contemporary
of the master, and afterwards became the foremost
champion of Christianity. These epistles faithfully
represent the character of the writer, and throw a
stream of light upon the controversies of their day.
Here there is firm ground for the feet : Niebuhr had no
such guide to help him in his researches into Roman
History: with such a clue we ought to find our way
through the labyrinth of early Christendom. These
writings disclose to our view a scene of perpetual strife.
The cause of this strife is that Christianity has already
departed from its original principles and become another
gospel. The teachers of this other gospel are the
Church in Jerusalem with its chiefs, James, the Lord’s
brother, and the twro apostles Peter and John. The strife
broke out into open flame when Paul returned to Anti
och from his first missionary circuit in Lesser Asia.
�Criticism the Restoration of Christianity.
7
Certain brethren from Jerusalem stirred up the com
munity of Antioch against Paul. Their enmity was
so great that he determined to go to Jerusalem, and lay
before the authorities there, the doctrine he preached to
the heathen world. He succeeded in making some sort
of reconciliation. They gave him the right hand of
fellowship, and arranged that he and his party should
go to the Gentiles, and they to the circumcision. But
henceforth there was no substantial unity in the
Church: the gospel of the Gentile and the gospel of
the Jew received each a formal sanction. Soon after
this outward reconciliation at Jerusalem, Paul found
himself obliged to rebuke his fellow apostle Peter at
Antioch. Wherever he went his enemies followed him.
No sooner did he leave his new-born church in Gal
atia in order to preach elsewhere, than the Judaizers
denied that he was an apostle, discredited his gospel,
and tried to bring his converts under the yoke of Juda
ism. In this they had met with considerable success,
when he wrote his epistle to the Galatians. Again, at
Corinth he had built up from the elements of Greek
civilization, a- community full of hope and promise.
Scarcely had he left the city for Ephesus, when a party
rose up calling itself by the name of Cephas. They
employed against him the resources of argument and
intrigue. They disowned him as an apostle, showing
their own authority from Jerusalem.
They said Paul
had never seen the Lord Jesus, whereas Peter knew him
well in the flesh. They scoffed at Paul’s visions, which he
gave as the credentials of his call to the apostolate.
They contrasted unfavourably his personal appearance
and his want of eloquence with the claims set up in his
letters. Where, then, is the unity of the apostolic age
which has been so long assumed in the Church'? Where
is the supernatural halo with which the credulity of
centuries has invested this period V
The Acts of the Apostles are closely connected with
the Pauline Epistles : they give a historical represent^
�8
Criticism the Restoration of Christianity.
tion of the period with which these letters are con
cerned. Here, however, all is changed. The natural
world of human agents and human agencies, which we
find in the letters of Paul, has given place to the fan
ciful domain of miracle. Heaven interposes visibly in
the affairs of earth. An angel comes down to lead
Peter out of prison through the midst of his frightened
guards. An earthquake breaks the chains from the
hands and feet of Paul at Philippi. Both apostles
scatter miracles on either hand. A supernatural
element pervades the narrative, making it well-nigh
unintelligible. Here, at one time Peter becomes the
apostle of the Gentiles, and under remarkable circum
stances baptizes a Gentile family, an action which he
has to justify before the community at Jerusalem. At
another time, Peter, James, and John, the pillars of the
Epistle to the Galatians, take the gospel of Paul under
their protection at the council, maintaining its complete
harmony with their own. In this way the whole his
tory of the period has been remoulded; and Paul has
been best known to the Church for 1800 years through
the representations of the Acts. Criticism, however,
decides at once that the letters of Paul, as the spon
taneous outpourings of a contemporary writer, deserve
all credit, whereas the Acts are the legendary work of
a later hand. But what could move this unknown
author so thoroughly to change the actual history of
things? His object seems to have been the reconcilia
tion of the Petrine and Pauline factions in the Church.
The Christian community required all its powers for
united effort against Judaism and heathenism, and the
unknown author of the Acts was a mediator between
the two parties towards the end of the first, or about
the beginning of the second century. He passes over
in silence the difference between Paul and Peter at
Antioch, and presents instead a contention between
Paul and Barnabas, in order to withdraw the other
controversy from the recollection of Christians. The
�Criticism the Restoration of Christianity.
g
hostile Judaizers persecuted Paul under every kind of
character and caricature. They represented him under
the person of Simon the Samaritan sorcerer; they
made him employ the collections he raised for the
poor at Jerusalem, for the purpose of bribing Peter
to confer upon him the apostolic privilege of giving
the Holy Ghost by imposition of hands. The Pauline
author of the Acts skilfully represents this Samaritan
sorcerer as a historical personage, who tried to corrupt
Peter, before Paul appears upon the stage of events.
The exact resemblance produced in this book between
Peter and Paul, in teaching as well as in life and
character, is a very effectual method of reconciliation.
Both are made apostles of the Gentiles, Paul by a
vision at Damascus, Peter a short time before by a
heavenly apparition at Joppa. Peter had to suffer the
reproach of the circumcision for eating with Gentiles.
According to Paul’s account, fourteen years after this
time, he exposed himself to censure on this question ;
but, according to the Acts, he makes a brilliant defence
of his Gentile associations after the conversion of Cor
nelius. There is no trace in the speeches of Paul in
the Acts of that peculiar teaching we find in his
epistles. His individuality is suppressed, and he is
made to think and speak just like Peter. So also with
regard to his personal character, the Paul of the Acts
is much more Judaizing than the Paul of history. The
independence of the man is sacrificed ; he is made to
allow himself to be led away to a kind of dissimulation,
of which he was quite incapable; the apostleship of
the Gentiles, which was his own, is given to Peter.
The man who went up to Jerusalem three years after
his conversion, in full consciousness of a. mission from
Christ himself, and saw Peter only, is here made a
dependent and companion of-the other apostles (ix.
27, 28). And when fourteen years after he goes up to
Jerusalem to communicate his gospel to the apostles,
he sits silent at the council in the Acts, while Peter,
�io Criticism the Restoration of Christianity.
Janies, and John defend his doctrine. The Paul
of history is an incomparably greater and more com
manding character than the Paul of the Acts.
Every kind of miracle which is assigned to Peter in
the first part of this legendary book is ascribed to Paul
in the second. Peter begins his miracles with the
healing of a man born lame, and so does Paul. The
shadow of Peter falling on the sick works miraculous
cures, so do handkerchiefs or aprons from the body of
Paul. Peter is said to have cast out devils, so the evil
spirit himself testifies at Ephesus and Philippi to the
power of Paul. As an enemy to sorcerers, Paul is not
inferior to the adversary of Simon Magus. Both
apostles occasionally inflicted miraculous punishment.
Peter raises Tabitha from the dead, and Paul Eutyches.
Peter is made an object of divine worship by Cornelius,
and the idolatrous inhabitants of Lystra and of Melita
are ready to offer sacrifice to Paul. Both apostles de
cline the superhuman honours in nearly the same
language. The question before us is not the possibility
of miracles—this has been long settled for thinking
men of the present day—-but the resemblance between
Peter and Paul. Actual history does not repeat itself
in this way; it must be ascribed to the author of the
book. So far from being an actual history of the
apostolic age, it is only the development of Church
ideas down to the second century, represented in the
persons of the two foremost characters.
Soon after the death of Jesus, a clearly defined dif
ference arose in the Church. The contest lay between
works and faith, authority and independence, tradition
and progress, Peter and Paul. Judaism as represented
by Peter prevailed at first, but it was impossible to
ignore the gospel of Paul. While the Jews became
every year more hardened against the gospel, the Gen
tile Churches were daily increasing in numbers and
influence. Jerusalem, the seat of early Christianity,
and the future seat of Christ on his return from
�Criticism the Restoration of Christianity. 11
Heaven, according to the prevailing view, was destroyed
in the year 70. The early Church raised Peter to the
highest place. Afterwards, when the doctrines main
tained by Paul began to prevail, it was necessary to
acknowledge his claims and reconcile them with Peter’s.
This the Pauline author of the Acts undertook to do.
By assigning to Peter in the first part of the work the
apostleship of the Gentiles, and by representing the
Judaizing community at Jerusalem as in full accord
with the principles maintained by Paul, he prepares
the way for his purpose, which was to present Paul to
the eyes of the Church in all the glory of the apostolate,
as united in work and will with Peter, in the unbroken
unity of the Catholic faith.
One fabrication followed quick upon another. Every
important Church like Corinth, Pome, and Antioch
insisted on the honour of being founded by both of
these illustrious apostles; they claimed to have re
ceived their first bishops from the hands of both,
though in the apostolic age bishops were none. In
Antioch, Evodus is said to have been established by
Peter, Ignatius by Paul ; in Rome, Linus by Paul,
Clement by Peter. Both apostles, after founding
churches and sees together, close their career at Rome.
The researches of the last ten years have done much
to show the utter groundlessness of the traditional
legends about Peter and Paul. But let us turn from
these apostles to another figure surrounded also with
mysterious halo.
One more name stands prominently forward in the
original Church, John the Apostle and beloved disciple.
We have in the New Testament three works that bear
his name. The Apocalypse, the Fourth Gospel, and
the three Epistles, and over and above the New Testa
ment a mass of tradition. These writings offer a rich
field of discovery to the scientific enquirer, above all
the Apocalypse, a book dear to the early Church, and
understood by it, though sealed with seven seals
�12 Criticism the Restoration of Christianity.
against the curiosity of later times. Theologians have
been accustomed to regard this book as a faithful pro
phecy of the history of the world from the time of
Christ to the end of days. Each breaks the seals for
himself, and interprets the book according to his own
■will; but the key to its real meaning may be found.
The city of seven hills, the whore, Babylon, which was
made drunk with the blood of saints during the Neronic
persecution in 64, the woman with seven heads, or
as the author explains with seven hills and seven kings,
Augustus, Tiberius, Caligula, Claudius, Nero, Galba,
Vespasian, all this points to Rome. The beast also
who was one of the seven heads or kings, wounded to
death but healed of his wound, now no more a king, but
about to return again to the throne, this is Nero
who perished in an insurrection of the people, but
according to a widespread legend was still living in
concealment, and would return again to power. The
number of the beast, 666, is the numerical value of the
Hebrew letters composing Nero Csesar. The num
ber 616 found in some manuscripts supports the view.
The rest of the seals fall away of themselves.
The Apocalypse was written about the year 68, after
the persecution and death of Nero, and before the
reign of Vespasian. The author believes that Nero
already healed of his deadly wound, is living among
the Parthians, and will soon return with an army to
level Rome with the ground. After this Nero, or Anti
christ will march against Jerusalem ; but when he has
already overthrown a great part of the city, Christ will
appear in the clouds of heaven, on a white horse, with
a great sword proceeding from his mouth, and destroy
Antichrist with his army. Now begins upon earth the
millennial reign at Jerusalem : The faithful dead raised
from their graves, keep the marriage feast of the lamb
with the faithful living. But after the thousand years
Satan breaks loose from the chains and darkness in
which he has been held since the fall of Antichrist.
�Criticism the Restoration of Christianity. 13
He appears again upon earth and summons Gog and
Magog, the remnant of the Heathen, to a last attack
upon Christ. Fire and brimstone fall from heaven and
destroy the whole army. Now comes the end of the
world ; God creates a new heaven and a new earth :
Sun and moon and stars vanish away, and the only
light is God: Jerusalem comes down from above
shining with gold and jewels.
Such is the meaning of this strange book : Criticism
has not been deterred by the solemn denunciations of
its author. The fundamental idea of the triumph of
Christianity in the world, has alone been fulfilled.
The prophetic dreams are in strange contrast with the
actual truth. Happily for the world, Nero the anti
christ, who is the chief figure after Christ himself, has
never come back. The real king who reigned in the
place of the resuscitated tyrant, was Titus, the delight
of mankind. The race of Heathens consigned by the
prophet to the abyss of hell, produced from its bosom
Nerva Trajan, and the Antonines, unsurpassed by any
of the Christian emperors. Constantine closed the
list of Heathen emperors by handing down the empire
to Christians. Rome, over whose fall the prophet
triumphs, did not become the habitation of devils,
and the hold of every foul spirit, and a cage of every
unclean and hateful bird (xviii. 2). Jerusalem, on
the other hand, the beloved city, that was to be
protected by the angel of God from ruin, and to
become the seat of the millennial kingdom, was
levelled with the ground within a year or two of the
appearance of this book. The Jews did not finally re
ceive Christ, nor the Heathen reject him. Where
Christianity has conquered Heathenism, it has been by
the doctrines of the crucified one, not by miracles and
vials and trumpets.
Nevertheless we have reason enough to value this
book very highly. Next after the Pauline Epistles to
which it is opposed, it is the most ancient and impor
�14 Criticism the Restoration oj- Christianity.
tant document of early Christendom. The four Pauline
Epistles are the memorial of the Gentile Church, the
Apocalypse of the Petrine and Judaizing Christians.
Taken together they furnish us with authentic accounts
of the development of the Christian idea from the death
of Jesus to the end of the Apostolic age. We have
a natural picture of the views of the first Christians,
amongst whom the appearance of Paul caused so much
bitterness. The book is full of real Jewish hatred
against Gentiles. The unbelieving Jews are to be con
verted by the judgments which precede the coming of
Christ: but the Gentiles, in the eyes of the Judaizer,
will find no deliverance. The enmity of the author
against Paul is strongly displayed. The Church of
Ephesus is praised for unmasking and rejecting those
that say they are apostles and are not. The licence
granted by Paul to sit at Gentile tables, and eat meat
from Gentile shambles, and intermarry with Gentiles,
is stigmatized as the doctrine of Balaam and of Jezebel.
Some of the characteristics of Paul are assigned to the
false prophet, who did homage to Nero, and wrought
miracles before him, and was cast with him into the
pit (xix. 26). Paul’s name was not one of those that
were written on the foundations of the walls of the
city (xxi., 14). However, notwithstanding their dif
ferences, there are many points of agreement. Both
Paul and the author of the Apocalypse believe in the
same Christ j and he is not the Jesus of history, but the
supernatural Christ of imagination and faith : he is the
divine king in heaven who will return at the last
trumpet to judge the world. Although Paul does not
mention the millennium, nevertheless his representa
tions of the kingdom to come agree in essential, points
with the Apocalypse. According to him the dead rise
from their graves when Christ comes, to live for ever
upon the earth, and the living are changed by divine
magic into heavenly beings. Christ overcomes all
antagonisms, Satan, death and sin, and at last delivers
�Criticism the Restoration of Christianity. 15
up the sceptre to God, who is then all in all. Both
alike look for their consummation as close at hand,
about to begin in their own lifetime.
The Revelation of John and the Gospel of John can
no more be the work of the same author and the same
age, than the Epistles of Paul and the Acts. The gos
pel is the final development of the ideas introduced by
Paul. Judaism lies behind the author as a thing of
the past; and Christianity has no longer to struggle for
bare existence, as in Paul’s writings. He speaks of the
Jewish law as gone by. He accuses the Jews of ignor
ance and obstinacy—of hatred and wickedness in their
conduct towards Jesus. Jesus himself is no longer a Jew,
but the Eternal Word ; who was with God in heaven
before the foundation of the world; incarnate in the
person of Jesus of Nazareth ; revealing the grace and
truth of the Godhead for a time upon earth, but soon
to return to the glory which he had with the Path er.
The Judo-cnristian dreams which were common to Paul
and his enemies, of an actual return of Jesus, and of a
reign for a thousand years upon earth, are quietly set
aside. Jesus comes again only in the Spirit, which he
left with his disciples to guide them into all truth.
There is no longer any idea of the establishment of the
divine kingdom upon earth. Christ is in heaven ; and
the desires of the faithful follow him thither. No talk
of the waiting of those who have died in faith, for the
hour when Christ is to come, that they may return with
their Lord to this world, and reign with him even over
the angels as Paul thought. They who die in faith go
straight to their Lord in the mansions of his Father’s
house, where he has prepared a place for them, that
they may be with him where he is. My kingdom is
not of this world,—is no saying of the historic Jesus,
nor an idea of early Christianity ; it is rather the word
of a Christian Platonist, in the middle of the second
century.
The author chose the form of a life of Jesus for the
�16 Criticism the Restoration of Christianity.
representation of his own philosophical ideas.
He
draws his materials to a great extent from the synoptic
gospels before him, but he makes a free use of them.
All that does not suit with his higher views of the per
son of Christ, he discards ; so he passes over the birth
of Jesus, his baptism by John, his temptation in the
wilderness, his agony in Gethsemane, the institution of
the Lord’s supper, and he changes the day of his death.
The sayings of Jesus and of other persons, he constructs
from his own philosophical ideas. He alters the scene
of his ministry : Judea is his country instead of Galilee,
and Jerusalem his chief abode instead of Capernaum.
He adopts in great part the miraculous narratives of
his predecessors, but he produces some that are entirely
new, and exalts the others to the highest pitch of thau
maturgy, in order to bring them down to means of re
presentation of higher ideas reflected in them. From
beginning to end, he wages war against merely out
ward miracles, which close the eyes to the miracles of
the Spirit. As to the great miracle of the bodily resur
rection of Jesus, he expresses his meaning in a striking
sentence,—Blessed are they that have not seen and yet
have believed, i.e., who believe in the spirit and truth
of ideas, without requiring the outward guise of a risen
body, who believe that Jesus is the way, the truth,
and the life, without the need of an outward miracle of
resurrection. The fiat of later German criticism pro
nounces this book to be the work of a Christian of the
Hellenistic school, about the middle of the second cen
tury. With respect to the Apostle John, to whom the
Church has assigned the fourth gospel, and the apoca
lypse, and the three epistles, neither more nor less is
known, than that Jesus called him from his fisher’s net
to the Apostolate ; and that after the death of Jesus,
with Peter and James he became a pillar of the Judochristian community at Jerusalem. So far as regards
opinions, being of the school of Peter, he might have
written the Apocalypse; but the authorities decide
�Criticism the Restoration of Christianity. I7
with increasing clearness against his authorship. The
fact that the author of the Revelations ascribes his hook
to John, the servant of Jesus, is no proof that John
wrote the book. It was a common custom in those
days to publish works under the name of some impor
tant personage. Cicero justifies his ascription of the
De Amicitia to a great man of a former age, by the
words, Genus hoc sermonum, positum in hominum
veterum auctoritate et eorum illustrium, plus nescio quo
pacto videtur habere gravitatis. The testimony of the
fathers, who represent John as the author, is of no value
without further authority j for as Ritschl says of them,
they knew very little of the apostolic age, and that
little was mostly false. Unsparing criticism has swept
away the mass of tradition about the Apostle John,
preserved by Irenseus and other fathers, as unworthy of
credit. Much of it rose from the assumption that he
wrote the Apocalypse, and from a misunderstanding of a
passage in that book, chap. i. 9. I, John, was in the isle
that is called Patmos, for the word of God, and for the
testimony of Jesus Christ. The use of the same words
in the second verse plainly shows that he was in the
island for the sake of receiving and recording divine
revelations. The Church tradition erroneously inferred
that he was banished to Patmos by Domitian, and re
turned thence to Asia Minor, because he addresses him
self to the seven Churches.
The same criticism which has done so much to throw
light on the age immediately after Jesus, may be used
with equal effect on the life of Jesus himself. Much
labour has been lost in trying to reconcile the fourth
gospel with the synoptics ; now that the unhistorical
character of the fourth gospel is fully recognized, the
work is greatly simplified. Moreover, the landmarks
which have been discovered for the history of the apos
tolic age, are of great use in ascertaining the history of
the previous age. We find everywhere in the gospels
tokens of the same state of party feeling that we have
�18 Criticism the Restoration of Christianity.
found in the generation after. Matthew traces back the
genealogy of Jesus to David, Luke to Adam, and both
in sucb a marked way as to show that Jesus is to one—
the Messiah of the Jews, to the other the Messiah of all
mankind. Matthew makes Jesus say to his disciples,
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 (chap. x. 5-6): and
again, Give not that which is holy unto the dogs,
neither cast ye your pearls before swine (chap. vii. 6):
and Jesus himself avoids Samaria, going up to Jeru
salem by the pilgrim route through Pereea. Whereas,
Luke leaves out these sayings altogether, and fixes upon
Samaria, as the scene of especial energy on the part of
Jesus. There he rebukes his disciples for wishing to
call down fire from heaven on the Samaritans, and
shows by parable their equal fitness for the kingdom of
heaven ; thence he sends out the seventy disciples, one
for every nation of the earth, according to the notion of
those times.
In Matthew and in Luke alike Jesus condemns
certain persons who called him Lord, Lord; but in
Matthew these are Christians, who prided themselves
on prophesying in Christ’s name, and casting out
devils, and doing wonderful works ; and they are con
demned by him for not keeping the J ewish law, as
avo/A/au • whereas in Luke they are
Christians, who have eaten and drunk in his presence,
and heard him teach in their streets, and are condemned
for want of that righteousness which Paul requires
in the Romans from Jew and Gentile alike as epyarai
adixias : the distinction is lost in our translation, but
is none the less important. Now this is the very lan
guage used by the original apostles against Paul; they
said they had seen Jesus and lived with him; that
they had received their distinctive doctrines from his
own mouth ; that they had known him after the flesh,
all which he had not. (1 Cor. i. 5-16; ix.) Paul
�Criticism the Restoration of Christianity. 19
appeals in proof of the equality of his apostleship to
his prophesying, 1 Cor. xiv., to his casting out devils,
i.e., to his great success in converting the Gentile
world, Gal. ii., and chiefly to the signs of an apostle,
which were wrought by him in all patience in signs
and wonders, and mighty deeds, 2 Cor. xii. 12. The
questions and the difficulties of the apostolic age are
described as arising in the lifetime of Jesus, and receiv
ing their solution from his own mouth. He gives his
eleven apostles a positive command, Go ye into all the
world, and preach the gospel to every creature. He
that believeth and is baptized shall be saved, but he
that believeth not shall be damned, Mark xvi. 15, 16.
This is just the doctrine Paul taught; Paith, not the
works of the law, is the condition of salvation ; Baptism,
not circumcision, is the outward sign of Christians ; and
so salvation is given for all creatures, not for Jews
only. Nevertheless, twenty years after this supposed
command, the twelve confined their ministry to the
circumcision, according to Gal. ii:
The Jesus of our gospels foretells in unmistakable
language the fall of the Jewish people for their obstinate
unbelief; the vineyard is to be taken from the wicked
husbandmen and given to others; men are to come
from the east and west, the north and south, to sit
down with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in the kingdom
of heaven. Whereas, nearly forty years afterwards, the
author of the apocalypse regards Jerusalem as the holy
city, and the Jewish people as the rightful possessors
of gospel privileges ; whilst the converted Gentiles are
the proletariats of the kingdom, and the unconverted
the objects of the endless wrath of God. Eating with
Gentiles was the chief cause of offence with Jews and
Judaizers against Paul. So late as the year 50 eating
even with Gentile Christians was considered an
abomination by James, the chief of the Christian com
munity at Jerusalem, and his adherents; and Peter
had to make amends for his weak compliance in this
�20 Criticism the Restoration of Christianity.
respect at Antioch. According to the Acts Peter could
not enter into the house of a Gentile and sit at his
table, without an extraordinary revelation from heaven;
and incurred the reproach of the community for so
doing. Nevertheless, according to the gospels Jesus
must have set all questions of this kind at rest for
ever. In Mark ii. 14 Jesus and his disciples are said
to have sat at meat with many publicans and sinners ;
the Jews murmured, but Jesus said, They that are
whole have no need of the physician, but they that are
sick; I came not to call the righteous but sinners to
repentance. Again, in Luke xv. Jesus answers the
reproach of the Pharisees, This man receiveth sinners
and eateth with them, with the three parables of the
lost sheep, the lost shekel, and the prodigal son. And
in Luke xix., in the case of Zaccheus, he answers the
same kind of questioning with the words, This day is
salvation come to this house, forasmuch as he also is a
son of Abraham. Por the Son of Man is come to seek
and to save that which was lost. This question which
was scarcely set at rest after the struggles of 50 years,
and such great historical events as the destruction of
Jerusalem, the hardening of the Jews, and the con
version of great masses of the Gentiles, is höre
anticipated and decided by Jesus himself. If this were
the case, what are we to think of the apostolic age ?
It becomes entirely unintelligible, its difficulties quite
unmeaning, and its foremost men incomprehensible.
Criticism at once decides, Jesus did not speak and act
in this way; this Jesus of the gospels is not the Jesus
of history. The same Pauline writer, who paulized in
the Acts the time immediately after Jesus, paulized in
his gospel the life of Jesus himself; in order to defend
the disciple by the influence of the Master.
When the Life of Jesus was first written tradition
had preserved little more than its main features, and
several characteristic events and discourses. The
greatest part of his life was spent in obscurity. His ■
�Criticism the Restoration of Christianity. 21
public ministry was comprised in. one year according
to three gospels, in three according to the other; and
even this time, great as it was in results, had less
interest for the first Christians than we should suppose.
They lived with their thoughts fixed more on the
future than on the past. The return of Christ was
their chief idea. Capernaum by the sea where Jesus
loved to dwell, had less interest for them than the new
Jerusalem. What then was the use of history? That
no apostle or eyewitness had written a Life of Jesus
may be inferred from the preface to Luke’s Gospel.
The want rose in the Pauline circle. They required to
rest their views of Christianity on the authority of
Jesus, no less than their adversaries. Convinced that
they were acting and speaking in the spirit of Jesus,
they reproduced, in his discourses and parables, the
great results which had been achieved in the Gentile
world.
Thus, while the gospels derived one portion of their
material from the experience of the apostolic age, they
found another in the Old Testament. If Jesus was Mes
siah, he must fulfil what was foretold of him by the pro
phets, according to the interpretation of the day. Por
example, there was no record of the circumstances of
the birth of Jesus ; Mark, who was in all probability
the earliest of our evangelists, passes them over in
silence. The later evangelists, Luke and Matthew,
furnish accounts in detail. They are chiefly drawn
from the Old Testament. Jesus was known to be a
Nazarene; but the prophet Micah had said, Thou
Bethlehem Ephratah, though thou be little among the
thousands of Judah, yet out of thee shall he come forth
unto me that is to be ruler in Israel. This passage
speaks of some powerful prince of the line of David ;
but as it was determined to be Messianic, Jesus must
be born at Bethlehem. There are two ways of harmon
izing these data, that Jesus was a Nazarene, but born
at Bethlehem; first, the parents of Jesus might be
�2 2 Criticism the Restoration of Christianity.
assumed to have first lived at Bethlehem, and after
wards migrated to Nazareth. But why should they
move 1 Herod issued an edict against Jesus, as
Pharaoh did against Moses. He was informed of his
birth by the eastern Magi, who came with gifts to
worship him, according to Isaiah ix.; and they knew of
it by the star that rose out of Jacob according to
Numbers xxiv. 17. In consequence of the persecution
of Herod, the parents of Jesus went down into Egypt,
with their new-born child, to fulfil Hosea xi. 1 : they
came back when the danger was over, but settled at
Nazareth, being still afraid to live at Bethlehem. This
is the account of Matthew; Luke on the other hand
makes them live originally at Nazareth; but they
came to Bethlehem because of the decree of Augustus,
that all the world should be taxed, which took place
from six to ten years after the birth of Jesus. The
Inns being filled, the child was born in a manger;
but supernatural light, Is. lx. 1, and a choir of angels,
made the manger a palace. The shepherds of Beth
lehem were the first to acknowledge him ; then the
child was publicly recognized as Messiah in the temple
by Simeon and Hannah ; after this his parents returned
with their child in peace to Nazareth. It is unnecesary
to remark that these two accounts exclude each other
on almost every point. In like manner, other passages
from the Psalms and Prophets, and especially the
typical histories of Moses and Elijah, furnish material
for the life of Jesus. Paul in 1 Cor. xv. 3-4, and Peter
in his Pentecostal speech, both acknowledge that the
Christians derived their views of the significance of the
death of Jesus, as a sacrifice for the sins of the world,
and of his resurrection from the dead, and ascension
into heaven, from the Old Testament. If, then, the
evangelists have so often mistaken the creations of
the imagination for historic truth, what shall we say
about the real life of Jesus ? It must be confessed
that little is known, even less tJian is thought by many
�Criticism the Restoration of Christianity. 23
who have followed with assent the researches of
criticism. However, this little is enough ; the general
framework of his life is incontrovertible. The home
at Nazareth, the carpenter’s trade, the family of
brothers and sisters, the entrance upon public life in
consequence of the ministry of John, the baptism of
Jesus in Jordan, the commencement of his own ministry
upon the imprisonment and death of the Baptist,
Capernaum as the central point of Messianic agency, the
circle of disciples, the great influence of Jesus over
all classes of the people, the journey to Jerusalem, the
death there upon the cross, all this general framework is
indisputable. We are also able to reproduce many of
the most essential features of his character. No doubt
Jesus declared himself to be Messiah, and his concep
tion of Messiah was that of his own people. No doubt
he thought the Messiah’s kingdom to be, as the prophets
said, a reign of God upon earth, beginning with faithful
Israel, and extending over all nations, in which the
love of God, and the love of man, should remove the
limitations and the sufferings of mortal existence. The
early Christians remained faithful to the thought of
Jesus ; since they all, Paul as well as the writer of the
apocalypse, the authors of the epistles and first three
gospels alike, looked to the second coming of Christ to
accomplish what had been expected from his first
coming, the creation of a new heaven and a new earth,
a state of existence without sin and without death.
Jesus adopted this idea, that he was called of God
to be Messiah, by virtue of remarkable fitness and
peculiar religious gifts. The thought that he was Mes
siah rose in the heart of Jesus from his conception of
God, which made him choose the name of Father from
all his names ; from a trust in God which held all
things possible to him that believeth; from his selfrenunciation which sacrificed all self-interest to the
cause; from his love for man which made him seek
the deliverance of the whole race, and treat the youngest
�24 Criticism the Restoration of Christianity.
and the lowest with utmost tenderness ; from his moral
purity which enjoined upon his disciples the duty of
being saints, a name adopted by them soon after his
death. He was Messiah by virtue of this peculiar
fitness, and in this lies the personal character of Jesus.
Thus we learn to understand the age which followed
after Jesus. His idea was a Messianic kingdom be
ginning with Israel and embracing all nations; this
also was the idea of his disciples after his death. Now
in the first place this implied the necessity of bringing
all Israel to believe in its Messiah; and so the apostles
felt themselves bound to confine their gospel preaching
to the Jews. But in the second place it involved no
agreement as to the conditions upon which the nonJewish nations should be received into the kingdom ;
whether they should adopt Jewish ordinances or not.
This question had no practical significance in the life
time of Jesus ; it had not yet come into existence as a
problem requiring solution. When Paul brought it
forward the apostles were taken by surprise. Jesus
had lived amongst them as a Jew : he kept the Sab
bath and refrained from forbidden meats, and observed
the law. The life and teaching of Paul were not the
life and teaching of Jesus. They did not see why
Paul should not submit himself to them, as the original
disciples of Jesus who best knew his will. When
after fourteen years of missionary work among the
Gentiles, he communicated to them his gospel and its
success, they reached him the right hand of fellowship;
because the conversion of the Gentile world had also a
place in their programme of the Messianic kingdom. But
the prerogative of Judaism was not surrendered; and the
question whether the Christian should live as Jew or
Gentile, was not decided ; so that afterwards during his
stay at Antioch, Peter might well have been in some
'uncertainty how to act. Paul must have learnt in his
days of persecution, the almost invincible obstacles
to the Gospel in the heart of a Jew; he might well
�Criticism the Restoration of Christianity. 2 5
have had his own feelings towards Gentiles softened by
his early residence amongst them at Tarsus. When
he became a Christian he saw in the cross the downfall
of the law and all Jewish privilege. His resolution
was taken to be the apostle of the Gentiles ; and he so
far changed the earlier Christian programme as to endea
vour to provoke the Jews to emulation by the conver
sion of the Gentiles. Paul set Christendom free ; but
he is not on this account the original founder of
Christianity. The religion of love aDd of freedom, the
consciousness of being the Son of God and of the pos
session of the divine Spirit, he learnt from Jesus.
We have next to enquire what results we have at
the present time from the researches of criticism in
the early history of Christianity. Criticism has dis
covered in the New Testament such a Christianity as
our time requires, such alone as it will receive, a religion
freed from miracles. The obstinacy with which the
Churches have striven to force upon an altered world
the miraculous religion of a byegone age, has done much
to discredit Christianity. Men are weary of long
disputes about the possibility, reality, necessity of
miracles. Criticism has taught us to recognise in the
miracles of the New Testament, the natural and signi
ficant results of the intellectual condition of mankind.
Impartiality forbids us to acknowledge the miracles of
Scripture as actual events, while we refuse similar stories
in other books as idle dreams : especially when we
find upon examination that many of the miraculous
tales of classic literature are so nearly the same as
those of Scripture, that they evidently spring from
the same source. There was at first some disagreement
as to the interpretation of miracles, and the rationale
of their appearance. Men were so entangled with the
ecclesiastical tradition of the apostolic authorship of
the writings in which the miraculous stories are found,
that they took them for truth even while they divested
them of their miraculous character. The events were
�16 Criticism the Restoration of Christianity.
supposed to have really taken place, but the narrators
being uneducated and credulous persons, more influenced
by imagination than critical discernment, overlooked
natural causes and involved them in a halo of miracle.
They admit that Jesus fed five thousand men with five
loaves, but it was not till he had supplied the deficiency
from the resources of a passing caravan. Jesus rescued
Peter when he leapt into the sea, but he himself was
walking on the shore, and only the darkness of the night
made his disciples think he was walking on the sea.
No doubt he raised up the son of the widow of Nain,
and the daughter of Jairus to life, but this was because
they were only apparently dead. In this way the whole
history of Jesus and his apostles has been rationalized
piecemeal in an arbitrary manner. The narratives are
supposed to be true in the main, but all the heart of
them is cut out, all that gave them value and signifi
cance in the eyes of the writer, as conspicuous instances
of the triumph of the spirit of Christianity over all the
limitations of nature. Many minds are alienated from
the Bible by its miracles; but more are brought into
a state of indifference and depreciation by the rationalistic
explanation of them.
Strauss, in his life of Jesus, pronounces the miracles
to be myths, the half-unconscious result of popular
feeling, which adorned the life of Jesus with images of
the fancy, for which the prevailing Messianic ideas fur
nished the material. Poetry must be understood to be
poetry ; and this explanation is enough to account for
much of the supernatural over-growth of gospel history,
but not for all. Advancing criticism discovered that
the series of parallel miracles, which runs through the
Acts, is due to an intentional purpose of raising Paul to
an equality with Peter, and has found in the fourth
gospel an entire book, to show how men invented mir
aculous stories for themselves, or used those they found
to hand, as emblems of religious ideas and Christian
truths. The following examples will show the way in
�Criticism the Restoration of Christianity.
which this was done. The disciples of John and the
Pharisees accused the disciples of Jesus of neglecting
the customary fasts. Jesus defended them with the two
figures of the presence of the bridegroom, and of new
wine which must not he put into old bottles (Mark ii.
18). The author of the fourth gospel makes out of this
a marriage feast at Cana, where the guests were fasting
for want of wine, until Jesus changed the water (of the
law) into the wine (of the gospel) : thus he expressed
in a figure the excellence of the gospel above the law.
To take another instance (Luke xvi. 27), the parable of
the rich man and Lazarus ends with the petition of the
rich man to Abraham, that he would send Lazarus to
testify to his brethren; and with Abraham’s answer,
If they hear not Moses and the prophets, neither will
they be persuaded though one rose from the dead. The
fourth gospel makes out of Lazarus a real personage;
associates with him two sisters, Martha and Mary, and
creates a family circle in which Jesus is at home.
Lazarus dies and Jesus raises him from the dead, to the
great astonishment of the Jews ; but instead of believ
ing, from that day forth they took counsel to put
Jesus to death, thus showing the truth of the saying,
That if they believed not Moses and the prophets, they
would not helieve though one rose from the dead : out
of which the fourth Evangelist worked up this touching
narrative. There are also legends of a later time, which
he introduces as scenes in the life of Jesus. We have
only to read chap. xxi. 15-24 to see how he, or the
later hand that wrote this appendix to the gospel, re
produced the legends of the crucifixion of Peter at
Pome, and of the survival of John to the second coming
of Jesus, in a conversation between these disciples and
their risen Lord.
In the fourth evangelist, this rise of miracles, when
once pointed out, is as clear as day—it is equally clear
in the other three, except to determined prejudice. For
instance, Mark relates the call of the first apostles with-
�28 Criticism the Restoration of Christianity.
out miracle : Jesus took them from their nets with the
promise they should become fishers of men, i. 16. Luke
changes the natural account into a supernatural story.
Peter tells Jesus that they have toiled all night and
taken nothing. Jesus bids him launch out into the
deep and let down his nets for a draught: and now
they enclose so great a multitude of fish that their net
breaks, and believing, in consequence of the miracle,
they receive the call to become fishers of men. The
fourth evangelist places this narrative after the resur
rection, and gives the number of fish one hundred
and fifty-three, and adds, that the net brake not.
The method of gospel narrative is quite plain in
this case : the Pauline author of the gospel that
goes by the name of Luke, wrote at a time when
the results of the preaching of the first apostles
to the Jews were very small, as compared with
the results of Paul’s mission to the Gentiles. Jesus
bids them launch out (as Paul does) into the deep (the
Gentile world) and become fishers of men, not merely
fishers of Jews. This filled the net until it broke ; and
here is expressed the original schism caused by Paul
in Christendom, when he launched out into the deep.
The fourth evangelist understood the meaning of the
miraculous draught related in Luke; and after the
manner of his day, expresses the name of Peter in the
number of fishes, thus showing the reconciliation in
his time of the former serious division in the Christian
community.
Again, one of the common figures of gospel preach
ing is the bread of life : was this to be given to Jew or
Gentile ? We have seen the diverging opinions on this
point; now we may see how skilfully the evangelists
employ the figure. The rich man of the parable (the
Jew) who fared sumptuously every day, is damned ; the
poor man (the Gentile), content with the crumbs that fell
from his table, is saved. Whereas Jesus, when surrounded
by the multitude in the wilderness, feeds five thou-
�Criticism the Restoration of Christianity. 29
sand with five loaves ; but twelve baskets full are left ;
a significant number, one for each of the tribes of Israel,
that they might not complain of want, when the desert
inhabitants of the Gentile world were filled with
heavenly food. Another time Jesus goes into the land
of the Gentiles, and a Gentile woman prays him for mercy
and help. When Jesus harshly answered her, That it
is not good to cast the children’s bread to dogs, she
meekly replied, That the dogs might eat the crumbs
that fall from the children’s table. These words of
lowly faith prevailed : Jesus grants the mother’s prayer
and heals the daughter from afar, without going to the
house. Now, we understand this story : we know the
Gentile woman ; we know her daughter’s Illness, she
was vexed with devils ; we know who applied those
harsh words in the age after Jesus to the Gentiles, call
ing them dogs and swine before whom pearls are not to
be .cast. We know the Pauline talisman of faith,
which saves the Gentiles ; and the cure by Jesus from
afar, denotes the fact that he did not himself convert the
Gentiles by entering into their houses, but Paul and
his companions worked in his name. Thus rose the
miraculous stories of the gospels. They are the incor
poration of Christian views and Christian experiences
in outward signs, the representation of the work of the
Spirit of Jesus in his community after his death,
referred to events in his lifetime.
The greatest difficulty is the chief miracle—the resur
rection of Jesus himself. It is not enough simply
to deny it, on the ground of the contradictions of the
authorities. It is better to examine closely what Paul,
the foremost champion of this doctrine, really says. In
that crucial passage 1 Cor. xv. 3-9, he reminds his
readers that he had delivered to them that which he
himself received.—1. That Christ died for our sins accor
ding to the Scriptures ; 2. That he was buried and rose
again the third day according to the Scriptures ; 3. That
he was seen of Cephas, then of the twelve, then of more
�30 Criticism the Restoration of Christianity.
than five hundred brethren at once, after that he was
seen of James, then of all the Apostles, then of Paul
himself. The early Christians saw certain appearances
of Christ, from which they concluded that he was alive
and so risen from the dead. Of the nature of these ap
pearances we know nothing in the case of the other
Apostles, as we have no written testimony from their
own hand; but we do know from Paul’s own writings,
the way in which Jesus appeared to him. He often
says that he had seen the Lord; he appeals to visions
and revelations of the Lord which were vouchsafed to
him, and he gives an example of one, 2 Cor. xii. He
was caught up into Paradise, and heard there unspeak
able words, which it is not lawful for a man to utter.
Paul was a visionary ; and the appearances of the Lord
which he saw were visions, that is, mental processes of
such a kind, that the image called up by the entranced
spirit, presented itself to the bodily eye, and became per
ceptible to the bodily ear. It is plain from Paul’s letters,
that the image he saw was the glorified Christ from
heaven in a Spiritual body. He argued with him
self, that God had shown Jesus, whom once he perse
cuted, to be Messiah by raising him from the dead, and
exalting him into heaven; whence he appeared to him
self, and before him to other disciples, as the Lord that
Spirit. This was the case with Paul himself; and
there ought to be no question whether it was the case
with the other disciples also. Paul places the appearances
of Christ to the others, entirely on the same ground as
those to himself, saying, “ last of all he appeared to
me also there is not a word to show that there was
any difference between them. Indeed, in other pas
sages of his epistles, he expressly excludes any such
difference, making himself not a whit behind the very
chiefest Apostles. He answers the question, How are
the dead raised and with what body do they come, by
showing that they did not come in their former material
body, but in a heavenly and spiritual body; for flesh
�Criticism the Restoration of Christianity. 3 1
and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, neither
doth corruption inherit incorruption. The bodily resur
rection of Jesus, the coming out of the grave with the
same body that went in, to eat and drink and be touched
once more, to walk with earthly feet from Jerusalem to
Emmaus, and speak human words with a human mouth
—all this which is the groundwork of the later narra
tives of the Evangelists, and of the doctrine of the
Church, Paul most decidedly excludes. Apparently he
bad never heard a word of it. The faith of Paul and
of the early Christians was this : Jesus went down like
all the dead into the under world, out of which he was
raised into heaven by the Almighty power of God, in a
way withdrawn from human ken; where he sits at the
right hand of God, and whence he has appeared in a
glorified form. Accordingly Paul knew nothing of an
ascension of Jesus as distinct from his resurrection.
Both were the same act to him : and the earlier evange
lists originally held nearly the same view, for they
placed the resurrection from the dead and the ascension
into heaven upon the same day. It is passing strange
that the author of the Acts, who places both on the
same day in his gospel, should say that the ascension
was forty days after the resurrection, in his later work.
When once their visions of a glorified Lord from heaven
had degenerated into the carnal idea of a bodily resur
rection, it was natural for the early Christians to say
that he had remained with his disciples for a time upon
earth.
Thus, also, this most difficult question of Christian
history has been solved by criticism. The original
design has been separated from the superstructure ; and
the result is that Christianity, without miracles, is now
presented to the world. Much, indeed, has been taken
away, that for eighteen centuries has been a rich foun
tain of spiritual and intellectual life; but it has been
taken at the right time, at the very moment when
aversion to a miraculous Christianity, was threatening
�32 Criticism the Restoration of Christianity.
to bring on aversion to Christianity altogether. The
best religion has been given back to us that the world
has ever seen, the religion of Jesus Christ himself.
Lessing asked when Christendom would be reasonable
enough to distinguish between the religion of Jesus,
which is so clearly portrayed in the gospels, and about
which all pious hearts are at one, from that religion
about Jesus which is so obscure and uncertain, that
scarcely two heads agree upon it, and which has filled
the world with wrangling and hatred. Criticism has
given us the means of effecting this distinction with all
requisite certainty. The lofty figure of Jesus stands
forth in fuller grandeur than ever, as the man who felt
himself called of God to be the Christ, and to establish
upon earth a kingdom of God, embracing all mankind.
The New Testament is the record of the impression
which his glorious appearing made upon his disciples.
We hold these books to be inspired, because they are
the testimonies to a great revelation of God, written by
men who tried to reproduce in word and deed, in
poetry and in prose, the effect of the spirit upon them
selves. But we are freed from the bondage of the
letter, while we drink of the spirit; because we see
how freely the writers dealt with the material which
they used. Such a Church as the Church of the past
can never again be built upon these well-known and
carefully criticised books; but a fresh stream of spirit
and freedom will flow into the veins of the Church,
from the proper use of these time-honoured records.
We may call ourselves Christians because we hope by
growing up into the likeness of Christ, to be sons of
God, as he was. We can keep Christmas because we
have recognised in the gospel narrative of the nativity
the fragrant growth of the Spirit given by Christ himself.
We can keep Good-Friday, although we do not believe
in the death of a God, who quenched his own indigna
tion in his own blood, because Jesus taught no such
doctrine as this, but by sacrificing himself for the
�Criticism the Restoration of Christianity. 33
kingdom of God, gave an example of self-devotion
which is the saving of the world, and the supreme law
of human society, and is worthy of everlasting remem
brance. We can keep Easter although we do not be
lieve that a dead body ever came back to life upon
earth, because we do believe, as Paul did and the
earliest Christians, that Jesus, when he had laid aside
the flesh and blood which cannot enter into the king
dom of heaven, was raised from the darkness of death
to the bright heaven of the spiritual world, revealing
himself there to his disciples and working upon
them to the end of time.
Criticism has discovered in the New Testament the
Christianity of Jesus Christ, upon which we may hope
a new church will be founded. The New Testament
is the foundation of the Protestant Church, but the
New Testament which we have now is not the same as
the New Testament which Luther and Zwingli had;
neither is the Jesus of history the God of the Church.
Nevertheless, in the midst of all our social miseries, we
cannot remain cold and indifferent to the Jesus of
history, the man who lived, and died to found a king
dom of God upon earth.
Such are the chief points of the paper before us.
Undoubtedly this criticism is destructive; and there
are many excellent people who blame religious criticism
for destroying much that they once held to be true, and
giving them nothing in exchange. This is a serious
obj ection, especially in the uncertainty which surrounds
the whole question, and seems likely enough to con
tinue. We have no right, it is said, to receive one part
of Scripture as historically true, and dispute another
part. We cannot decide for ourselves what is the word
of God, and what is not. Unless we accept the whole
as it has been handed down to us, we reject the whole.
The religion of the Church either is the religion which
Jesus gave to his disciples, or it is not j if it is, we are
bound to keep each sacred doctrine pure and undefiledc
�34 Criticism the Restoration of Christianity.
if it is not, we are equally bound to reject the whole.
Such arguments have a great sound of reality about
them; but there is more sound than substance.
Destructive criticism is more conservative and more
reverential than blind credulity. It is the merest
assumption to say we must accept all or none.
Criticism knows of no such canon; truth and fiction
are often interwoven in the same writings. Her office
is to discover the truth, and maintain it wherever it is
found. ' The science of astronomy was not destroyed
when the errors of ancient systems were proven; and
the religion of Christ will suffer no loss, if we can but
find what it is, and what it is not.
The chief reason why the truths of the gospel have
had as yet so little effect for the salvation of the world,
is the fact that they have been overlaid and identified
with so much that men have been unable to believe
and agree upon with an intelligent and practical accep
tance. It has been found impossible to unite the whole
New Testament into one universal system, and repro
duce it in actual life. Our author’s summary of the
results of criticism shows us that we have the best
reasons for believing that the overgrowth of miracles
and other-worldliness that we see before us, was not
the teaching of Jesus, but was imported into his life
and doctrine after his death, for the sake of getting
larger acceptance for the discordant opinions of a later
age. The miracles arethe more serious difficulty ; for
they must be one and all matters of fact, or the reverse.
Nevertheless in our day they are of no kind of use as
proofs of the truth of Christianity. We cannot receive
the Bible on the authority of miracles, and the miracles
on the authority of the Bible. So we do not lose much
if we are compelled to admit that they do not rest on
incontestible evidence, and have been from the first
misunderstood. Even if we are obliged to give up our
early faith in the bodily resurrection of Jesus on the
third day; we gain more than we lose in an increased
�Criticism the Restoration of Christianity. 35
appreciation of our union with him in sonship to the
one God and Father of all. For we learn to believe
that he rose just as we shall rise, and that God who
raised him will raise us too. We cannot, as before,
receive the bodily resurrection on the authority of the
apostles and evangelists, and then acknowledge the
apostles and evangelists on the authority of the resur
rection. Our author has shown with remarkable force
the way in which Paul conceived the doctrine of the
Resurrection and Ascension. The whole argument of the
apostle, 1 Cor. xv. 1-28, requires us to understand that
Christ rose from the dead in the same way that his
people rise ; so when we know how his people do not
rise, we know how he did not rise. A miraculous
resurrection of the kind afterwards introduced into
some of the evangelists would destroy the whole force
of the passage. We are taught to believe that Jesus
rose, as we shall rise; and so his resurrection is a
pledge to us of our own; but we are not meant to
understand that our bodies will rise on the third day,
and continue in a spiritualized state for a greater or less
period upon earth. The orthodox doctrine of resurrec
tion breaks up the union between Christ and man, and
leads us rather to question than believe our own resur
rection. The apostle says, Christ rose again the third
day according to the Scriptures, and this may show the
way in which the Gospel narrative grew up. It is no
where said in any Scripture already written when Paul
wrote, that Christ would rise on the third day. But a
wholly irrelevant passage in Hosea vi. 2 (after two
days will he revive'us : in the third day he will raise us
up, and we shall live in his sight) received a Messianic
interpretation and suggested the idea, which is also
supposed to be prefigured and foretold by the three
days and three nights which Jonah is said to have
passed in the whale’s belly. By rightly understanding
this greatest of miracles, we remove it from the extra
ordinary to the ordinary course of Providence; and we
�36 Criticism the Restoration of Christianity.
do not depart from Scripture authority, but return to
the real doctrine held at first by the greatest preacher
of the resurrection of Christ and man. Nothing is
really lost to the believer, except some cherished delu
sions of early faith ; this is a loss, for faith which has
once been abused and then opened to conviction will
have parted with some of its freshness and fragrance.
But for all that is taken much more is given back. If
the miracles are shown to be poetical fictions, they
become like the parables, each one enshrines some
sacred truth under a figure, and conveys a real spiritual
lesson instead of a doubtful historical verity. If the
bodily resurrection and ascension of Jesus are shown to
have been adopted by the Church on insufficient autho
rity, to have been propagated by inconsistent, even
irreconcilable narratives of the same event, and to be
opposed to the most genuine works of the earliest
writer in the New Testament; if this be the case, we
need not over much regret the convictions that are
forced upon us, when we find the sole honour that is
His own given back to God the Father, and the real
unity of man with Jesus established on firmer grounds
than before. The miraculous conception and the bodily
resurrection on the third day separate our Divine
Master from us in this world and in the world to come.
Unless he was born of a human father and mother like
ourselves, he did not take our nature upon him in this
world; and unless he rose from the dead by the power
of God in the same way as his brethren, his resurrec
tion is no pledge to us of our own; we have no part
with him in the resurrection world.
The other-worldliness or supposed spirituality of the
Church system is a far less serious difficulty. None
need complain of much loss to their faith, if they are
obliged to surrender the cloud land, which they think
they hold with such secure possession. It may be a
great consolation to the orthodox Christian to say,
when I die I shall go to heaven, and my unathanasian
�Criticism the Restoration of Christianity. 37
neighbour will go to hellj but it would be no loss to
him to have to consider which of the two is in heaven
now, and which is in hell now. And with regard to
the after-world, it might be enough for the most
orthodox and most catholic Christian to know that
when he and his neighbour, whom he loves so much
according to the command of his Lord, depart this life,
they will both go to Him, who was first fully revealed
as the Father of all in the teaching of Jesus. All the
beautiful imagery with which the truths of the other
world are spoken of in Scripture remains as before
for the devout contemplation of each disciple accord
ing to the measure of his enlightenment. All the
profane and sensual fables about the world to come
may be given up as human conceptions of things
beyond our ken. Jesus brought life and immortality
to light, not by telling us in definite and intelligible
language about a world of which he perhaps knew no
more than ourselves, but by showing us that the know
ledge of God in Christ, that is, as taught by Jesus, is
eternal life, and that whosoever liveth and believeth
in Him shall never die.
When criticism has done its utmost, no real harm can
be done. The same sacred book is before us with a
purer text and larger means of interpretation : and,
more rather than less, is known of the earliest age of
Christianity. The practical use we have to make of it,
is the same as in the paper before us. We hope for the
rise of a Church without miracles, a religion without
superstition, a brotherhood of man with man upon a
foundation acknowledged by all. This is clearly pos
sible, and it seems to be the only hope of the restoration
of happiness to man. The restraints of religion are
even more necessary to society, than the restraints of
law and civilization: besides, religion is a constraining,
not merely a restraining power; it urges what is good
before it condemns what is wrong. False religions have
taken away far more than they have given. It is a
�38 Criticism the Restoration of Christianity.
cruel and wicked thing to cheat the poor and the igno
rant, out of the share they ought to have of heaven
upon earth, with delusions about another world. The
souls and bodies of men are enslaved with a superstition
which they do not more than half believe. They have
a right to have the full results of criticism communi
cated to them by authority. The learned and capable
men who occupy the highest positions in our Church,
are in a situation of great difficulty; nevertheless, they
seem to me bound by their office, either to establish by
argument the claims of orthodoxy, or to acknowledge
the results of criticism : and, in the meantime, to give
their sanction to a reverential statement of such truths
as are here contained, by such of the clergy as have
conscientiously embraced them, in the pulpit and else
where. Not only might they give their sanction ; they
might themselves take the lead, and by handling such
difficult subjects with the great learning and enlight
ened wisdom they possess, prevent the mischief which
will infallibly be caused, by the truth being forced in,
mixed, with mud from below, instead of being poured
down, well filtered from above. Public opinion in the
Church, and the state of the law would occasionally in
troduce painful complications. No doubt, the bishops
will generally concede to the rank and file of their pro
fession, so far as they can, the liberty which some of
them are now asserting for themselves, in so judicious
and determined a manner. But the office of the bishop
may be promoted against opinions which the bishop
himself does not wholly condemn. The cardinals are
said once to have come to the Pope with a strange sen
tence, according to the words of the old chronicler,
which remain in my memory, though I cannot recal
the names : Judica te cremari, quia hsereticus es, Papa
judicavit se cremari, et crematus est. Surely the bold
unflinching statement of the Archbishop of Canterbury,
in convocation about the Athanasian creed, is a more
definite and distinct contravention of the VUIth article,
�Criticism the Restoration of Christianity. 39
than Mr Voysey’s doctrine of the atonement, was of the
second. It was made a chief point against him by the
court, of which the primate is so distinguished a mem
ber, that he taught that Christ did not die to reconcile
his Father to us. The article says that he did : so does
the Lord Chancellor; and I suppose the Archbishop
says the same. But the second Testament does not say
so from one end to the other, and in effect does say the
contrary. Neither is the language of the second article
altogether at variance with Mr Voysey’s doctrine, if we
assume that the English idiom at the time, like the
Latin and Greek, makes little or no distinction between reconciling the Father to us, and us to the Father. But
the VUIth article cannot be explained into consistency’
with an authoritative disclaimer of belief in one of the
three creeds. The Archbishop in the privy council
must needs pronounce his own condemnation, if re
quired ; the only escape seems to be in the usual am
biguity of the language : the bishops may know they
ought to believe the creeds, only they don’t. If
martyrs are still necessary, they have always been the’
seed of the Church. Martyrdom, • indeed, no longer
consists in fire and fagot, but in social ostracism, the
forfeiture of valued friendships, and the loss of their
only means of subsistence to men in middle life, this is
quite enough punishment for daring to believe the
truth. Besides, it is an infinite humiliation to go about
the world as the supposed representative of doctrines
which having been shown to be delusions, have lost
their power over mankind, and are only held under
reservations. Let the orthodox religion of the future
establish itself by argument, and the orthodox religion
of the past be no longer upheld by pains and penalties.
It would be far better to abolish preaching for a time
and confine our public worship to prayer and praise and
reading of the Bible, than to go on as we are now doing,
necessarily avoiding most important subjects, for fear of
deposition on the one hand, and on the other of insidi-
�40 Criticism the Restoration of Christianity.
ously undermining the Church while we eat her bread.
The Church has overlaid Christianity ; but truth must
in the end prevail, and falsehood fall to the ground j
but our lives are passing fast away: the world is suffer
ing for want of the true religion of Jesus; and his
great maxim is forgotten, that we ought to render to
God the things that are God’s, and to man the things
that are man’s.
Yours most truly,
A Country Vicar.
�
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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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Criticism: the restoration of Christianity: a letter to Mr. Thos. Scott reviewing a paper by Dr. Lang
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Place of publication: London
Collation: 40 p. ; 18 cm.
Notes: From the library of Dr Moncure Conway. 'By A Country Vicar'. Date of publication from British Library catalogue. Concerning a letter by Mr Wright writing about Heinrich Lang's 'The English Life of Jesus' in Theological Review, October 1872.
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Thomas Scott
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[1872]
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Christianity-Controversial Literature
Conway Tracts
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Gi
'Vq
DIVERGENCE OF CALVINISM
FROM
PAULINE DOCTRINE.
BY
PROFESSOR F. W. NEWMAN.
PUBLISHED
BY THOMAS
MOUNT PLEASANT, RAMSGATE.
Price Threepence.
1871.
SCOTT,
�LONDON:
PRINTED BY C. W. REYNELL, LITTLE PULTENEY STREET
HAYMARKET, W.
�DIVERGENCE OF CALVINISM
FROM
PAULINE DOCTRINE.
------- +-------
T is with the greatest unwillingness that Chris
tians, who look all round in religion, ever give
assent to the Calvinistie doctrine of Election; which,
however, is Lutheran and Augustinian, not Calvin’s
only. Election, as reasoned out in the ninth chapter
of Paul’s epistle to the Romans, if interpreted as by
Calvin, seems to turn God into the ideal of hideous
injustice, and to overthrow all moral ground of
homage. It is not wonderful that in every univer
sity Christian students arise who struggle for another
interpretation of the apostle’s words ; and, in general,
the attempt is made to show that the election, on
which he dwells, is not an election of individuals to
salvation and glory, but the election of a nation to
the performance of a work. If such an interpreta
tion could be made grammatically consistent, it may
be regarded as certain that the entire Christian
Church would long since have joyfully embraced it;
for the opposite view is alike distressing and perni
cious. What is called the Arminian interpretation is
I
�6 .
Divergence of Calvinism
in direct contrariety to chapter viii., which chapter
ix. continnes and justifies. In chapter viii. nothing
is clearer than that the elect are individuals, and that
they are first foreknown, therefore predestined, there
fore called, therefore justified, therefore glorified. A
second attempt to evade the unpalatable inferences, is
by saying that the first step in the series was a fore
knowing that the individuals would be meritorious.
This second effort of Arminianism equally fails ; first,
because in chapter ix. it is insisted that the election
of Jacob over Esau took place before the children had
done good or evil (clearly implying that their rela
tive merit did not affect the election) ; secondly,
because the interpretation lays self-righteousness as
the basis against the whole current of the epistle;
thirdly, because, in fact, there is no sharp separation
of human merit into two classes, such that a Being
who foreknew it could justly resolve to glorify one
portion of mankind eternally, and eternally punish
the rest. In the result, Arminianism is scarcely less
offensive to common sense and common conscience
than Calvinism; since it upholds what is the nucleus
of the whole difficulty—the doctrine of an eternal
Hell, which, with eternal Misery, implies eternal and
ever-growing Sin, and a signal permanent triumph of
Evil over Good in the works of the Creator. What
avails it then to call Him Almighty, All-knowing
and All-loving ?
When we discern the nucleus of offence to reside
in this point, it is natural to ask how it was that
Paul did not see and feel it.
On reaching chapter xi. of the epistle, we find just
the reverse of what an English reader (possessed by
the doctrine of Hell) expects. Not only does the
apostle insist that in every age there has been an
election out oj~ Israel, all through the time in which
�from Pauline doctrine.
7
collective Israel was cast aside ; but he authoritatively
reveals an after-mystery, which is to be accomplished
when the fulness of the Gentiles is come in—namely,
Universal Salvation is to follow. In the contempla
tion of this blessed result, the apostle reaches flu al
satisfaction of heart and conscience, and bursts into
admiration of the mercy and wisdom of God, as if in
perfect ignorance that any doctrine of an eternal
Hell could embarrass any of his readers. Does not
this force us to ask what right we have to suppose
that Hell was, in Paul’s day, a part of the Evangel,
or Good News ?
The advocates of an Eternal Hell are very strong
in their logic, while resting on Matt. xxv. 46, “ These
shall go away into eternal (aionian) punishment, and
the righteous into life eternal (aionian).” It is
argued :—“ All agree that the life of the righteous is
to be absolutely eternal, so, then, is the punishment
of the other side: the doom of each is aionian; it is
then commensurate, coeval, by parallelism of the
clauses.” Let this be granted, yet what is it to Paul ?
Had he ever read the chapter ? There is no just
reason for believing that our Gospel of Matthew was
in existence till long after Paul’s death. On the
other hand, the logic is at least as forcible when
applied to parallel clauses in Paul; “ God hath con
cluded all in unbelief, that he might have mercy
upon all.” By universal confession the former clause
was intended by Paul to apply to all nations and
every individual: “ For there is no difference; for all
have sinned, and come short of the glory of God.”
Obviously then, the all in the second clause is co
extensive with the all in the first, and cannot in any
way be confined to an elect portion. Indeed, any
attempt so to confine it makes void the contemplated
satisfaction and profound homage with which the
apostle winds up. We must conclude therefore, so
�8
Divergence of Calvinism
far as the evidence of this epistle goes, that the
destruction of God’s enemies, in which Paul believed,
was an event in time, wholly transitory, and to be
followed by the day of restitution and universal sal
vation ; and that the opposite idea has been unduly
obtruded on Paul from writings of later date. In the
first epistle to the Corinthians the same doctrine
appears. Christ is to come in glory, to receive to
himself his dead and living saints at a Pirst Resur
rection, is to reign until all enemies are destroyed
(among whom Death is included, and much more
therefore Sin), and after he has thus subjected all
things to God, he is to become subject himself, that
God may be all (and) in all. This is the intense
opposite of Arminianism, as well as of Calvinism.
It is more like the Oriental idea of the absorption of
all things into the Deity. It makes the Sonship of
Christ anything but a state co-eternal, according to
Athanasius, with the Divine existence, or an essence
implying equality with God. Nay, this Sonship is in
Paul a state assumed for a purpose, and laid aside
when the purpose is fulfilled—the purpose, namely,
of restoring all things into harmonious obedience to
the Universal Father. To sum up : in Paul’s view,
all being sinful, and through sin liable to death, no
one was injured by being passed over in election;
guilty men, who are violently destroyed, do but meet a
just doom ; but when the reign of Christ, with his risen
saints (1 Cor. vi. 2), shall at length have brought
in the fulness of the Gentiles, a universal reconcilia
tion is obtained. In the Apocalypse we read, “ Blessed
and holy is he who hath part (Rev. xx. 6) in the
First Resurrection; ” and Paul to the Philippians
says, “ If by any means I might attain to the Resur
rection of the dead ; ” which may lead one to believe
that he expected a Second and Final Resurrection,
though he does not definitely say it, in the eleventh
of Romans.
�from Pauline doctrine.
9
The Christian doctrine of Hell rests on the first
three Gospels, and on the Apocalypse: but in the
Apocalypse the solid imagery is figurative. The
Beast and False Prophet, who are destined to eternal
flames and torment, are not persons, but systems—
Tyranny and Priestcraft, and perhaps it is unjust to
press the doctrine further. But I see not how it can
be denied by historical criticism, that the three
Gospels (so called) have in this respect added to,
and disastrously damaged, the original Gospel as
known to Paul, and sent forth to the world a spurious
representation of the message of Salvation and the
Gospel of the Kingdom. The enigmatical teaching
in which Jesus indulged, may have been the fatal
cause; but (account for it as you will) mankind
(whom the Gospel was to enlighten) have not yet had
a fair chance of knowing what the Gospel was.
On discovering how the doctrine of Hell was fas
tened on to Christianity in the second age, after the
death of Paul, it is inevitable to cast an eye back
ward, and ask what was its origin ? It was not part
of Mosaism, future life was a doctrine unknown even
to Hezekiah, and first rose into belief among the
Jews, as confined to the righteous. Nay, in the
fourth Gospel, “I will raise him up at the last day,”
is equivalent to “ I will save him”—resurrection of
the wicked being an idea or thought absent from the
mind. Since the doctrine of Tartarus was Egyptian,
Greek, Roman, Etruscan, and apparently Oriental;
since the Jews, before their dispersion, had no belief
in it, and only after the cessation of prophecy received
it during their contact with the heathen, and even
then it was no part of the national Creed (for the
Sadducees rejected entirely the very foundation, and
the Pharisees were free to believe future existence in
any such form as commended itself to their con
sciences) ; there is no escape from the conclusion, that
�io
Divergence of Calvinism, &c.
the doctrine (whatever it was), into which Jesns and
the twelve apostles grew np concerning future resur
rection and judgment, had been imbibed from the
surrounding nations. The doctrine of Hell has no
pretence of Jewish inspiration and revelation any
more than Christian. Whether true or false, it is
Pagan in origin; and now has become the weight
which will totally sink Christianity, if it cannot be
cut away. Of course I see clearly why Christians,
who shudder at it, are so slow to rid themselves of it:
they can only do so, by confessing writings called
canonical to be the nidus of pernicious error. By an
obstinate clinging to a sacred letter, they sustain the
fatal divisions of Protestantism. Not until the pre
tensions of the letter are rejected, will it be possible
for that spirituality which is the glory of Chris
tianity, to rally into union for the purification and
ennoblement of the world.
�
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Title
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Victorian Blogging
Description
An account of the resource
A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
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2018
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Conway Hall Ethical Society
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Divergence of Calvinism from Pauline doctrine
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Newman, Francis William [1805-1897]
Description
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Place of publication: Ramsgate
Collation: 10 p. ; 18 cm.
Notes: From the library of Dr Moncure Conway. Printed by C.W. Reynell, Little Pulteney Street, London.
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Thomas Scott
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1871
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CT147
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<img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /><br /><span>This work (Divergence of Calvinism from Pauline doctrine), 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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Calvinism
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Calvinism
Christianity-Controversial Literature
Conway Tracts
Pauline Christianity
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DIVERGENCE OF CALVINISM
FROM
PAULINE DOCTRINE.
BY
PROFESSOR F. W. NEWMAN.
PUBLISHED BY THOMAS
MOUNT PLEASANT, RAMSGATE.
Price Threepence.
1871.
SCOTT,
�LONDON:
PRINTED BY C. W. REYNELL, LITTLE PULTENEY STREET
HAYMARKET, W.
�DIVERGENCE OF CALVINISM
FROM
PAULINE DOCTRINE.
T is with the greatest unwillingness that Chris
tians,
look all round in
Iassent towho Calvinistic doctrinereligion, ever give
the
of Election; which,
however, is Lutheran and Augustinian, not Calvin’s
only. Election, as reasoned out in the ninth chapter
of Paul’s epistle to the Romans, if interpreted as by
Calvin, seems to turn God into the ideal of hideous
injustice, and to overthrow all moral ground of
homage. It is not wonderful that in every univer
sity Christian students arise who struggle for another
interpretation of the apostle’s words; and, in general,
the attempt is made to show that the election, on
which he dwells, is not an election of individuals to
salvation and glory, but the election of a nation to
the performance of a work. If such an interpreta
tion could be made grammatically consistent, it may
be regarded as certain that the entire Christian
Church would long since have joyfully embraced it;
for the opposite view is alike distressing and perni
cious. What is called the Arminian interpretation is
�6
Divergence of Calvinism
in direct contrariety to chapter viii., which chapter
ix. continues and justifies. In chapter viii. nothing
is clearer than that the elect are individuals, and that
they are first foreknown, therefore predestined, there
fore called, therefore justified, therefore glorified. A
second attempt to evade the unpalatable inferences, is
by saying that the first step in the series was a fore
knowing that the individuals would be meritorious.
This second effort of Arminianism equally fails; first,
because in chapter ix. it is insisted that the election
of Jacob over Esau took place before the children had
done good or evil (clearly implying that their rela
tive merit did not affect the election) ; secondly,
because the interpretation lays self-righteousness as
the basis against the whole current of the epistle;
thirdly, because, in fact, there is no sharp separation
of human merit into two classes, such that a Being
who foreknew it could justly resolve to glorify one
portion of mankind eternally, and eternally punish
the rest. In the result, Arminianism is scarcely less
offensive to common sense and common conscience
than Calvinism; since it upholds what is the nucleus
of the whole difficulty—the doctrine of an eternal
Hell, which, with eternal Misery, implies eternal and
ever-growing Sin, and a signal permanent triumph of
Evil over Good in the works of the Creator. What
avails it then to call Him Almighty, All-knowing,
and All-loving ?
When we discern the nucleus of offence to reside
in this point, it is natural to ask how it was that
Paul did not see and feel it.
On reaching chapter xi. of the epistle, we find just
the reverse of what an English reader (possessed by
the doctrine of Hell) expects. Not only does the
apostle insist that in every age there has been an
election out of Israel, all through the time in which
�from Pauline doctrine.
7
collective Israel was cast aside ; but he authoritatively
reveals an after-mystery, which is to be accomplished
when the fulness of the Gentiles is come in—namely,
Universal Salvation is to follow. In the contempla
tion of this blessed result, the apostle reaches final
satisfaction of heart and conscience, and bursts into
admiration of the mercy and wisdom of God, as if in
perfect ignorance that any doctrine of an eternal
Hell could embarrass any of his readers. Does not
this force us to ask what right we have to suppose
that Hell was, in Paul’s day, a part of the Evangel,
or Good News ?
The advocates of an Eternal Hell are very strong
in their logic, while resting on Matt. xxv. 46, “ These
shall go away into eternal (aionian) punishment, and
the righteous into life eternal (aionian).” It is
argued:—“ All agree that the life of the righteous is
to be absolutely eternal, so, then, is the punishment
of the other side: the doom of each is aionian ; it is
then commensurate, coeval, by parallelism of the
clauses.” Let this be granted, yet what is it to Paul ?
Had he ever read the chapter ? There is no just
reason for believing that our Gospel of Matthew was
in existence till long after Paul’s death. On the
other hand, the logic is at least as forcible when
applied to parallel clauses in Paul; “ God hath con
cluded all in unbelief, that he might have mercy
upon all.” By universal confession the former clause
was intended by Paul to apply to all nations and
every individual: “ For there is no difference ; for all
have sinned, and come short of the glory of God.”
Obviously then, the all in the second clause is co
extensive with the all in the first, and cannot in any
way be confined to an elect portion. Indeed, any
attempt so to confine it makes void the contemplated
satisfaction and profound homage with which the
apostle winds up. We must conclude therefore, so
�8
Divergence of Calvinism
far as the evidence of this epistle goes, that the
destruction of God’s enemies, in which Paul believed,
was an event in time, wholly transitory, and to be
followed by the day of restitution and universal sal
vation ; and that the opposite idea has been unduly
obtruded on Paul from writings of later date. In the
first epistle to the Corinthians the same doctrine
appears. Christ is to come in glory, to receive to
himself his dead and living saints at a First Resur
rection, is to reign until all enemies are destroyed
(among whom Death is included, and much more
therefore Sin), and after he has thus subjected all
things to God, he is to become subject himself, that
God may be all (and) in all. This is the intense
opposite of Arminianism, as well as of Calvinism.
It is more like the Oriental idea of the absorption of
all things into the Deity. It makes the Sonship of
Christ anything but a state co-eternal, according to
Athanasius, with the Divine existence, or an essence
implying equality with God. Nay, this Sonship is in
Paul a state assumed for a purpose, and laid aside
when the purpose is fulfilled—the purpose, namely,
of restoring all things into harmonious obedience to
the Universal Father. To sum up : in Paul’s view,
all being sinful, and through sin liable to death, no
one was injured by being passed over in election;
guilty men, who are violently destroyed, do but meet a
just doom ; but when the reign of Christ, with his risen
saints (1 Cor. vi. 2), shall at length have brought
in the fulness of the Gentiles, a universal reconcilia
tion is obtained. In the Apocalypse we read, “ Blessed
and holy is he who hath part (Rev. xx. 6) in the
First Resurrection; ” and Paul to the Philippians
says, “If by any means I might attain to the Resur
rection of the dead ; ” which may lead one to believe
that he expected a Second and Final Resurrection,
though he does not definitely say it, in the eleventh
of Romans.
�from Pauline doctrine.
9
The Christian doctrine of Hell rests on the first
three Gospels, and on the Apocalypse: but in the
Apocalypse the solid imagery is figurative. The
Beast and False Prophet, who are destined to eternal
flames and torment, are not persons, but systems—
Tyranny and Priestcraft, and perhaps it is unjust to
press the doctrine further. But I see not how it can
be denied by historical criticism, that the three
Gospels (so called) have in this respect added to,
and disastrously damaged, the original Gospel as
known to Paul, and sent forth to the world a spurious
representation of the message of Salvation and the
Gospel of the Kingdom. The enigmatical teaching
in which Jesus indulged, may have been the fatal
cause; but (account for it as you will) mankind
(whom the Gospel was to enlighten) have not yet had
a fair chance of knowing what the Gospel was.
On discovering how the doctrine of Hell was fas
tened on to Christianity in the second age, after the
death of Paul, it is inevitable to cast an eye back
ward, and ask what was its origin ? It was not part
of Mosaism, fnture life was a doctrine unknown even
to Hezekiah, and first rose into belief among the
Jews, as confined to the righteous. Nay, in the
fourth Gospel, “ I will raise him up at the last day,”
is equivalent to “ I will save him”—resurrection of
the wicked being an idea or thought absent from the
mind. Since the doctrine of Tartarus was Egyptian,
Greek, Roman, Etruscan, and apparently Oriental;
since the Jews, before their dispersion, had no belief
in it, and only after the cessation of prophecy received
it during their contact with the heathen, and even
then it was no part of the national Creed (for the
Sadducees rejected entirely the very foundation, and
the Pharisees were free to believe future existence in
any such form as commended itself to their con
sciences) ; there is no escape from the conclusion, that
�io
Divergence of Calvinism, &c.
the doctrine (whatever it was), into which Jesus and
the twelve apostles grew up concerning future resur
rection and judgment, had been imbibed from the
surrounding nations. The doctrine of Hell has no
pretence of Jewish inspiration and revelation any
more than Christian. Whether true or false, it is
Pagan in origin; and now has become the weight
which will totally sink Christianity, if it cannot be
cut away. Of course I see clearly why Christians,
who shudder at it, are so slow to rid themselves of it:
they can only do so, by confessing writings called
canonical to be the nidus of pernicious error. By an
obstinate clinging to a sacred letter, they sustain the
fatal divisions of Protestantism. Not until the pre
tensions of the letter are rejected, will it be possible
for that spirituality which is the glory of Chris
tianity, to rally into union for the purification and
ennoblement of the world.
�The following Pamphlets and Papers may be had on addressing
a letter enclosing the price in postage stamps to Mr Thomas
Scott, Mount Pleasant, Ramsgate.
A Lay Sermon, for the Benefit of Clergy. Price 6d.
Eternal Punishment. An Examination of the Doctrines held by the Clergy of the
Church of England. By “Presbyter Anglicanus.” Price 6d.
Letter and Spirit. By a Clergyman of the Church of England. Price 6d.
Science and Theology. By Richard Davies Hanson, Esq., Chief Justice of South
Australia. Price 4d.
A Few Words on the Trinity, the Holy Spirit, and the Divinity and Incarnation of
Jesus. Price 6d.
Questions to which the Orthodox are Earnestly Requested to Give Answers.
Thoughts on Religion and the Bible. By a Layman and M.A. of Trin. Coll., Dublin. 6d.
The Opinions of Professor David F. Strauss. Price 6d,
A Few Self-Contradictions of the Bible. Price Is., free by post.
English Life of Jesus, or Historical and Critical Analysis of the Gospels; complete
in Six Parts, containing about 500 pages. Price 7s. 6d., free by post.
Against Hero-Making in Religion. By Prof. Francis W. Newman. Price 6d.
Ritualism in the Church of England. By “Presbyter Anglicanus.” Price 6d.
The Religious Weakness of Protestantism. By Prof. F. W. Newman. 7d., post free.
The Difficulties and Discouragements which Attend the Study of the Scriptures.
By the Right Rev. Francis Hare, D.D., formerly Lord Bishop of Chichester. 6d.
The Chronological Weakness of Prophetic Interpretation. By a Bbneficed
Clergyman of the Church of England. Price Is. Id., post free.
On the Defective Morality of the New Testament. By Professor F. W. Newman. 6d.
The “Church and its Reform.” A Reprint. Price Is.
The Church of England Catechism Examined. By Jeremy Bentham. A Reprint. Is.
Original Sin. Price <5d.
Redemption, Imputation, Substitution, Forgiveness of Sins, and Grace. Price 6d.
Basis of a New Reformation. Price 9d.
Miracles a.'d Prophecies. Price 6d.
Babylon. By the Rev. P. S. Desprez, B.D. Price 6d.
Thoughts on a Free and Comprehensive Christianity. By Prof. F. W. Newman. 6d.
The Church : the Pillar and Ground of the Truth. Price 6d.
Modern Orthodoxy and Modern Liberalism. Price 6d.
Errors, Discrepancies, and Contradictions of the Gospel Records; with special
reference to the irreconcilable Contradictions between the Synopticsand the Fourth
Gospel. Price Is.
The Gospel of the Kingdom. By a Beneficed Clergyman of the Church of England. 6d.
The Meaning of the Age. By the Author of ' The Pilgrim and the Shrine.’ 6d.
“James and Paul.” A Tract by Emer. Prof. F. W. Newman. Price 6d.
Law and the Creeds. Price 6d.
Genesis Critically Analysed, and continuously arranged; with Introductory Remarks.
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A Confutation of the Diabolarchy, By Rev. John Oxleb. Price 6d.
The Bigot and the Sceptic. By Emer. Professor F. W. Newman. Price 6d.
Church Cursing and Atheism. By the Rev. Thomas P. Kirkman, M.A., F.R.S., &c.,
Rector of Croft, Warrington. Price is.
Practical Remarks on “ The Lord’s Prayer.” By a Layman. With Anno
tations by a Dignitary of the Church of England. Price 6d.
The Analogy of Nature and Religion—Good and Evil. By a Clergyman
of the Church of England. Price 6d.
Commentators and Hierophants; or, The Honesty of Christian Commentators.
In Two Parts. Price 6d. each Part.
Free Discussion of Religious Topics. By Samuel Hinds, D.D., late Lord
Bishop of Norwich. Part I., price is. Part II., price Is. 6d.
The Evangelist and the Divine. By a Beneficed Clergyman of the Church
of England. Price Is.
The Thirty-Nine Articles and the Creeds,—Their Sense and their Non-Sense.
By a Country Parson. Parts I., II., and III. Price 6d. each Part.
�List of Publications—continued.
A Reply to the Question, “What have we got to Rely on, if we cannot
Rely on the Bible ? ” By Professor F. W. Newman,
Another Reply to the Question, “What have we got to Rely on, if we
cannot Rely on the Bible 1 ” By Samuel Hinds, D.D., late Lord Bishop of
Norwich. Price 6d.
The Utilisation of the Church Establishment. By the Author of “ The
Pilgrim and the Shrine,” “ The Meaning of the Age,” &c. Price 6d.
Modern Protestantism. By the Author of “ The Philosophy of Necessity.” 6d.
A Reply to the Question, “ Apart from Supernatural Revelation, what
is the Prospect of Man’s Living after Death?” By Samuel Hinds,
D.D., late Lord Bishop of Norwich. Price Cd.
Tree and Serpent Worship. Price 6d.
A Review of a Pamphlet, entitled, “ The Present Dangers of the Church of England.”
By W. G. Clark, M. A., Vice-Master of Trinity College, Cambridge. Price 6d.
TnE Twelve Apostles. Price 6d.
Is Death the End of all Things for Man ? By a Parent and a Teacher. 6d.
On the Infidelity of Orthodoxy. By the Rev. Thomas Kirkman, M.A.,
F.R.S., Rector of Croft. Parts I. and II. Price 6d. each Part.
The Finding of the Book. By John Robertson, Coupar Angus. Price 2s.
On Moral Evil. Price 6d.
The Claims of Christianity to the Character of a Divine Revelation,
Considered. By William Jevons. Price 6d.
The Unity of the Faith among all Nations. By a Padre of the Esta
blished Church. Price 6d.
Clergymen made Scarce. A Letter to the Bishop of London, by a Presbyter. 6d,
On the Efficacy of Opinion in Matters of Religion. By the Rev. W. R.
Worthington, M.A. Price 6d.
Sacred History as a Branch of Elementary Education. Part I.—“ Its
Influence on the Intellect.” Part II.—“ Its Influence on the Development of the
Conscience.” Price 6d. each Part.
On Religion. By a Former Elder in a Scotch Church. Price 6d.
The Nature and Origin of Evil. A Letter to a Friend, by Samuel Hinds,
D.D., late Lord Bishop of Norwich. Price 6d.
A.I. Conversations. Recorded by a Woman, for Women. Parts Land II. Trice
6d. each Part.
The Passion for Intellectual Freedom. By Edw Maitland. Price 6d.
Reason versus Authority. By W. O. Carr Brook. Price 3d.
An Appeal to the Preachers of all the Creeds. By Gamaliel Brown. 3d.
The Voysey Case. By Moncure D. Conway. Price Cd.
Realities. By P. A. Taylor, M.P.
The Beliefs of Unbelievers. By Rev. O. B. Frothingham. Price 3d.
On the Causes of Atheism. By Professor F. W. Newman. Price Cd.
The Bible; is it the Word of God ? By T. L. Strange, late Judge of the High
Court of Madras. Price 6d.
A Woman’s Letter. Price 3d.
An Episode in the History of Religious Liberty. By Rev. Chas. Voysey. 6d.
Intellectual Liberty. By John Robertson. Price 6d.
Thirty-Nine Questions concerning the Thirty-Nine Articles. By John
Page Hopps, Editor of ‘The Truthseeker.’ Price 3d
Divergence of Calvinism from Pauline doctrine. By Prof. F. W. Newman. 3d.
Friends to the cause of “Free Inquiry and Free Expression” are earnestly requested
to give aid in the wide dissemination of these pamphlets.
�
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Victorian Blogging
Description
An account of the resource
A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
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Conway Hall Library & Archives
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2018
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Conway Hall Ethical Society
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Title
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Divergence of Calvinism from Pauline doctrine
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Newman, Francis William [1805-1897]
Description
An account of the resource
Place of publication: Ramsgate
Collation: 19, [2] p. ; 19 cm
Notes: Publisher's series list on unnumbered pages at the end.
Publisher
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Thomas Scott
Date
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1871
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G4854
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<img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /><br />This work (Divergence of Calvinism from Pauline doctrine), identified by Humanist Library and Archives, is free of known copyright restrictions.
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application/pdf
Type
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Text
Language
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English
Subject
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Christianity
Calvinism
Calvinism
Christianity-Controversial Literature
Pauline Christianity
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FROM
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JOHN
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Pagan Mythology: or, the Wisdom of the
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�NATIONAL SECULAR SOCIETY
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I.—INTRODUCTORY.
It is a stupendous leap from the high and lonely
prison of the preacher to the low, wide, and free ros
trum of the Atheist, and such are the risks connected
with it that no one should ever take it except in
obedience to the stern voice of duty.
Recently, it
fell to my lot to be solemnly called upon to take such
a perilous jump, and to turn such a bewildering
somersault; and I am now obliged to testify that the
event formed the most serious and unforgettable
crisis of my life.
I can honestly state that it was
my supreme crisis, and that I feel it to be my duty,
as well as privilege, to furnish the reader with a minute
description of the various circumstances which com
bined to render it absolutely inevitable. I think I would
be justified in characterising it, further, as a typical
experience, through which hosts of others, ere long, will
be necessitated to pass. Be it known, therefore, that for
upwards of twenty years I occupied the Christian pulpit,
and won a moderate amount of notoriety in it. I was
what is called “a popular preacher,” a fact which was
both pleasing and inspiring to me.
I trust I shall not
lay myself open to the charge of egotism when I affirm
that, during the last fifteen years of my professional
career, the churches in which I officiated were too small
to accommodate the eager crowds. Of course, it often
happens^ that popularity is no proof of superior excel
lence. The most notorious person in Great Britain at
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FROM CHRISTIAN PULPIT
the present moment is Samuel Herbert Dougal, the
brutal murderer and clever forger. Let a man leave
the ruts in which the wheels of society have been
accustomed to run, and become eccentric in his ways,
and he will soon become an object of public curiosity.
Everybody will be anxious to catch a glimpse of him,
and, if possible, to hear him speak. In my own case, I
am afraid that the chief element whieh contributed to
my popularity was a lurking suspicion, on the part of
the people, that I was not quite sound in the faith. To
myself, however, the most painfully conscious fact was
the knowledge that the faith was not sufficiently sound
in me. I was theologically eccentric.
I must emphasise this point. It has always been my
devoutest wish to hold the Christian faith unhesitatingly,
firmly, and in its orthodox completeness ; but, unfortu
nately for my peace of mind, the wish never blossomed
into serene fulfilment. It had been carefully handed
down to me, as a sacred legacy, through a long line of
ancestors, and I had been trained to believe that to
doubt it, or to cherish it languidly and falteringly,
would have been a heinous sin against God. During
childhood and youth, and for at least one year of my
ministerial career, I did hold it with tightest grip, and
was prepared to defend it against all opponents. I
must here explain that, in the school of theology in
which I was brought up, the Christian Faith was
synonymous with Calvinism, and that the only enemies
of it, with whom I was familiar, were Socinians or
Arminians. To me, Calvinism was the only true faith,
and all who denied it were outside the pale of the
Church of God, and would be damned for ever.
I
shuddered as I thought of the awful doom that awaited
benighted Wesleyans and Unitarians in the next world.
I placed John Calvin on the same level as the apostle
Paul, and pitied all who had the audacity to differ from
these two giants. Of atheistical teachers, who rejected
even Christianity and the Bible, I at first knew nothing.
Arminians were bad-enough, in all conscience, and their
chance of entering heaven at death was infinitesimally
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5
small; but infidels and Atheists were too-deep sunk in
moral filth even to be mentioned in respectable society.
They were black emissaries from the Bottomless Pit,
whom the Devil had succeeded in making as desperately
wicked as himself.
With my up-bringing, I would
rather have faced a thousand deaths than ventured to
peruse the diabolical writings of such reprobates as
Voltaire and Tom Paine! But soon after my ordination,
my intellectual grasp of Calvinistic theology slackened,
and ere long gave way altogether. My precious inheri
tance crumbled into white dust about my feet, and was
blown to the four winds before my very eyes; and I
discovered, to my unutterable horror, that I was doomed
to be an unbeliever. In my awful misery I went into
retirement, there to examine the very roots of the old
beliefs. Had I been wise, or wisely advised, I would
have there and then abandoned the Christian ministry,
and qualified for some other profession. But I fought
my doubts, and in some measure overcame them.
Then, unfortunately, I resumed my former work, but
necessarily without the former intellectual assurance. I
persuaded myself to believe that there were still two
sovereign truths to which I could passionately cling—
namely, the Fatherhood of God at one extreme, and, at
the other, the Brotherhood of Man.
During the
remainder of my professional career, I proclaimed these
two doctrines with considerable fervor, and as vehemently
denounced Calvinism, my first love. Intellectually, I
could not demonstrate and fully justify the Divine
Fatherhood, but emotionally it was a source of incalculable
satisfaction to me. Whenever difficult questions arose
(such as, If God be a Father, all-wise and all-good, how
is it that the world is the habitation of so much cruelty,
injustice, and suffering ? If God is infinity or the Abso
lute, how can He be a person ? and, if He is not a
person, how can He be our Father <*), I intellectually
ignored, while emotionally triumphing over them. In
calm, meditative moments, I was often inexpressibly
distressed by the puzzling problems that crowded upon
me ; but my feelings always came to my rescue, enabling
�6
FROM CHRISTIAN PULPIT
me to sail pleasantly on the ocean of maudlin sentiment.
This was a state of things that could not possibly con
tinue. No man can be, for any length of time, intel
lectually a thorough Agnostic, and emotionally an ardent
believer.
As I now look back upon it all, it is an
insoluble mystery to me how I managed to occupy so
anomalous a position for so long a time. In part, the
explanation is, that I honestly and strenuously en
deavored to believe that the spiritual faculty in man is
infinitely superior to the intellectual. But the attempt
turned out a miserable failure. At last, the intellect
won a glorious victory over mere emotionalism, and, in
consequence, my sentimental adherence to, and enjoy
ment of, Christianity and the Bible began gradually to
diminish. Then I was necessarily obliged to abandon
my profession, and to adopt Secularism, based on
Atheism, as my only possible creed.
Another explanation is to be found in a circumstance
which, to some extent at any rate, extenuates my mis
take. You are doubtless aware that noteven a conscious
hypocrite can be serenely and uniformly happy. He
lives a double'life, and is in constant dread lest people
should perceive that he is wearing a mask, and playing
a part. But, surely, inconceivably greater is the misery
of a simple, honest man who is striving to act honorably
in a totally impossible position.
He is perpetually
running up and bruising his knuckles against a dead
wall, in entire ignorance of the fact that there is a way
of preventing so useless and disastrous a performance.
I hat is an accurate description of my experience for
many years. I had been most assiduously trained, from
earliest childhood, in the narrowest of creeds, and
dogmatically taught to look upon it as the only true
creed ; my parents had been similarly trained and
taught in their childhood; for many generations before
my birth, my ancestors had successively occupied high
and prominent positions in the ecclesiastical life of their
country ; and, as an inevitable consequence, even the
idea of renouncing for ever, not merely the old orthodox
Calvinism, but also Christianity itself, was intolerably
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7
repugnant to me. Indeed, during the earlier years, such
an idea never once suggested itself to my imagination.
I was, rather, dominated by the depressing conviction
that the intellectual collapse of my faith was the out
come of some unknown but serious spiritual defect or
fault, or, perhaps, the penalty of some hidden but most
real sin against God. Hence, I multiplied and itensified
my devotions, and knocked persistently at heaven’s door,
passionately pleading for pardon and the restoration of
my vanished treasure. The laws of heredity and environ
ment rendered it impossible for me to contemplate a life
of Atheism except with indescribable aversion and
horror.
The object of the following articles will be to explain,
on the one hand, how I was literally forced into the
Christian ministry, and, on the other, how I was, with
equal literalness, forcibly, though gradually, driven out
of it.
�FROM CHRISTIAN PULPIT
II.—CHILD-LIFE IN A PURITAN HOME.
Surely no man in his senses would ever dream of
pronouncing an unqualified and extravagant eulogium
on Puritanism. That it possessed several wholly admir
able and fascinating qualities cannot be denied ; but it
is equally clear that, as a scheme and philosophy of
human life, it was deplorably one-sided and utterly mis
leading. Thinking only of its courageous insistence on,
and inflexible adherence to, Righteousness, Carlyle and
Ruskin deeply loved and loudly praised it, declaring
with mournful pride that they were the last surviving
exponents of it in England; but, thinking chiefly of its
unlovely and repellent attributes, I am tempted to
denounce it in the bitterest and most vehement terms at
my command. My blood boils and rushes furiously
through my veins, as I look back upon my childhood
and youth, and realise how sadly and completely they
were darkened and blighted by the grim, black shadow
and; cruel; tyranny^ of Puritanism. I thankfully admit,
that in my parents^ were abundantly exemplified the
brighter and nobler features of the darksome system.
My father and mother were living incarnations of honor,
honesty, truth, and righteousness, and their love for their
children knew no bounds. In my references to them, I
hope I shall not employ a single disrespectful or disloyal
word. I am convinced that their affection for me never
wavered, and_that, to secure what they believed to be
my highest good, they would have cheerfully made all
necessary sacrifices. But, while fully admitting the
integrity and.sublimityofwtheir_character, as well as the
purity and nobleness of their motives, I cannot close my
eyes to the mournful .fact, that they were the means of
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9
Utterly spoiling my child-life, and of wofully handicap
ping my whole future. Their conception of life and
character was fundamentally mistaken. They looked
upon the world through colored spectacles, and never
saw it in its true light and beauty.
The first formative heresy instilled into my impres
sionable mind was, that life on earth is a series of disci
plinary experiences, the sole object of which is to prepare
us for the perfect life in heaven. Heaven was an in
effably happy realm, in which the inhabitants incessantly
sang psalms and hymns, to the accompaniment of golden
harps, while earth was the abode of griefs and groans,
with interludes of heart-breaking and spirit-crushing
dirges and threnodies. All amusement was said to be
of the devil, and should be forcibly suppressed. All
music had to be severely in the minor key. Laughter
deserved hottest denunciation, while, on Sunday, not
even a smile could be tolerated. Pleasure of all kinds
was ruthlessly excluded. Once I laughed out over some
humorous passage in the Bible, for which I received
such an emphatic castigation from my father, that I
have not been able to forget it to this day. At this
moment, I can still see the old man’s grandly wrathful
face, and hear his stern rebuke: “Your stupid levity
over God’s own Book, my boy, is rank blasphemy
against the Holy Ghost, for which the Great Judge may,
any minute, strike you down dead.” I trembled with
fear, and repressed my merriment, but failed to under
stand why it was wrong for a little boy to laugh at
ludicrous things. People of the world could eat and
drink and be merry, singing bright, joyous songs ; but
they were on the high road to hell, in which they would
have to weep and gnash their teeth to all eternity. And
yet, I remember that whenever I passed an inn or tavern,
and heard light-hearted, merry singing, I would stand
still, strangely thrilled and attracted : there was some
thing in me which, in spite of all my training and strong
convictions, irresistibly responded to the stirring strains.
But I was quickly brought to my senses byfcthe reflec
tion, that my enjoyment of such things was another
�IO
FROM CHRiSTIAN PULPIT
proof of the existence of original sin in my soul, and of
the fact that as yet I had not been born again.
Because of the same misconception of the nature and
meaning of human life, play, even in its mildest forms,
was regarded as being of the world worldly, in which
only the unregenerate indulged. Even little children
played marbles and span tops under severe parental
protest. Sometimes a lot of us would steal away into a
distant field, in order to have a clandestine turn at foot
ball ; but one of our number had to act as sentinel, that
no one might come upon us unawares. During my
childhood, I never saw an adult taking part in any sport
whatever. Even as recently as twenty years ago, the
Principal of a College, who was an ordained minister,
was solemnly reprimanded by his Presbytery for giving
encouragement to the sinful sporting spirit of the age, by
allowing himself to be elected President of the College
Cricket Club ; and had some of the pious brethren had
their way, he would have been deposed from the ministry.
I shall never forget the funereal tones in which children
were exhorted, at class-meetings, to abstain from all
irreverence and frivolity, and give themselves to prayer
and Bible-reading. Our parents, too, kept dinning the
same lesson in our ears: “ Remember, children,” they
used to say, “ that you are always in the presence of
holy God, and that in his sight seriousness is the most
becoming grace.”
And this brings me to the sole cause and root of the
whole matter, namely, the Puritanical conception of God,
which can only be characterised as pagan, cruel, monstrous.
The Puritan’s Deity was a heartless tyrant, who would
not permit little children to give free and full vent to the
very nature which he himself had bestowed upon them.
How persistently I was reminded that God was watching
me, and that every lie I told, and every wrong I did,
were recorded in his Books, and would be read out
against me at the Day of Judgment. To please him, it
was necessary to think about him all the time, read the
Bible with diligence, pray without ceasing, and go to
church three or four times on Sunday, and ever so
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11
many times during the week. God’s eye was ever upon
me, so that there was no possibility of saying or doing
anything without his knowing about it.
On one occasion, I joined a number of boys in a
nutting expedition, thereby flatly disobeying my mother.
O how sweet was that stolen pleasure, while it lasted,
and how my whole being was thrilled, to its core, with
delight; but it was a short-lived bliss, for on my return
I had administered to me a never-to-be-forgotten punish
ment. Moreover, within a few hours after this motherly
chastisement, a fierce thunderstorm burst upon the com
munity, which was construed into a visible token of
heaven’s displeasure at my sinful behavior ; and after
almost every vivid flash, I was thus comforted : “ What
a mercy it did not strike you, my boy ; how good God
is thus to spare you.”
God’s tyranny cast its black and all-withering shadow
upon everything. I deliberately affirm that life was
not worth living; but, then, it was infinitely better to
live sadly and mournfully for a few years on earth, and
after death be endlessly happy in heaven, than to enjoy
a sinful life on earth, and afterwards grill and burn for
ever and forever in hell. Consequently, the better a
man became the more miserable he was. Lugubrious
ness was a sign of superior saintliness. It was openly
stated that a well-known and pre-eminent man of God,
who was a brilliant scholar, being able to speak with
fluency seven different languages, a profound theo
logian, and an authoritative interpreter of the eternal
decrees, had never been known to laugh. He was one
of the holiest men that ever lived, being so like him of
whom it is recorded that he wept bitteriy on several
occasions, but not that he laughed even once ; and chil
dren, especially, were advised to aim at a similarly
exalted type of piety.
This unrelieved lugubriousness of temper was always
in strong evidence at the public services of the church.
At such times everybody looked tremendously solemn, as
if thermal universal conflagration were about to begin,
and every two or three minutes all the best people
�i2
FROAf CHRlStlAff PUtPlT
vigorously sighed, moaned, grunted, groaned, or cried
“ Amen.” I can see them now, those elders and deacons
of enviable holiness, with their hair brushed down their
foreheads, arrayed in badly-fitted garments of home
made cloth, seated in the Big Pew immediately in front
of the Pulpit, and staring with fixed eyes upon the
preacher, who was vehemently shouting out God’s
gracious message in Christ. O what eloquent croakers
those superior men of God were, and how some of the
children wondered whether they would ever be old and
pious enough to be allowed a like high privilege!
In those days, to be a member of the Church was
identical with being saved. Every church member held
a certificate for heaven.
Hence, to be cut oft from
church membership was the most awful calamity that
could befall a person. Outside was the big world, lying
under the wrath of the Great Judge because of its sins,
and doomed to spend all eternity in the flames of hell;
and to be flung back into such a wretched world was the
greatest curse conceivable. Within my recollection, a
young woman was so thrust out for allowing a man of
the world to fall in love with, and be married to, her.
In excommunicating her, the officiating minister brutally
assured her that, were she to die before she repented and
was readmitted to membership, she would undoubtedly
be committed to the unquenchable flames of Gehenna.
Poor soul, she was frightened almost out of her wits ; and
yet her only crime consisted in marrying a thoroughly
honest, upright, and good man, who did not happen to
be within the pale of the Church.
Children’s meetings were frequently held, at which
the youngsters were drilled in Bible history and the
catechisms. • In all such gatherings, the dominant note
was that God sat on his throne, night and day, watching
the behavior of children on earth, and that, unless their
conduct was in harmony with the teaching of the Church
and their parents, he would most certainly cast them
into the outer darkness, where they would wail and
shudder in infinite torment for ever.
Such was the training of a child in a Puritan home
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13
thirty or forty years ago, and naturally the consequences
were most disastrous. During all my childhood days I
never knew what it was to be spontaneously happy, or
genuinely and unreservedly young. I always had an
old head, filled with fears and forebodings, on my young
shoulders.
Of necessity, therefore, mv nature was
warped, and my character became wofully one-sided.
There was a whole realm of delightful and educative
experiences to which I was a total stranger, and to this
day I have suffered infinite loss in consequence. A
friend, similarly trained in childhood, told me the other
day that he never knew what it was to be young until
he was fifty years of age.
When will parents learn that childhood should be a
period of natural, spontaneous, and ebullient happiness,
and that any training that robs it of that desirable
quality, however well-intentioned, is in the highest
degree iniquitous ? At the bar of justice and common
sense Puritanism stands utterly, absolutely, and eternally
condemned.
�T4
FROM CHRISTIAN PULPIT
III.—LOOKING TOWARDS THE PULPIT.
Nothing was more natural than that a boy, carefully
brought up in . a strictly Puritan home, should be
resolutely ambitious to enter the ministry of the
gospel.
Consider, for a moment, the theological
atmosphere in which the training would naturally be
conducted.
Many of my readers are fully aware
that the philosophy of the plan of salvation, as ex
pounded on the hearth-stone, from the pulpit, and
at most of the ordinary meetings of the church,
would be arrestingly realistic. By eating the for
bidden apple, Adam incurred the righteous wrath of
heaven, and in consequence of that one sinful act all
his descendants were involved in the same inexorable
doom. We have all inherited original sin; or, in
other words, we are all held and accounted guilty
of a sin we have never committed, or, more accurately,
of a sin we have committed in him as our divinely
appointed head. God hates the whole human race,
and has created a lake of fire and brimstone in which
to consume it for ever. Every one of us is justly
doomed to eternal shame and suffering. Such is the
immutable decree of heaven, and there is absolutely
no escape from it. Ours is a doomed world, and
there is not a single ray of hope for it. In this
stern, dark dogma I was most scrupulously indoctri
nated. But, fortunately, there are three persons in
the blessed Trinity, and we were assured that one
of them has always had a tender, compassionate
heart. Although the Father is, and always was, in
himself utterly implacable, and violently determined to
inflict an all-crushing punishment upon the objects of
his well-deserved indignation, the Son cherished feelings
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i5
of yearning pity and forgiving sympathy towards them,
and passionately besought the P atherly heart to graci
ously spare them. The Supreme Ruler of the Universe,
however, showed himself relentlessly unpropitious, and
emphatically disinclined either to withdraw or to modify
the high claims of his justice. Said the Son: . “ My
heart bleeds with compassion for the condemned sinners
of the earth, and I am prepared to do all within my
power to deliver them from thy fierce wrath. Wilt thou
not punish me, and acquit them ? Wilt thou not empty
the vials of thine anger into my soul, and bestow upon
them thy free and full forgiveness ?” In response to so
moving an appeal, the Father entered into a solemn
covenant with his Son, known in theology as the
Covenant of Grace, according to which the Son was to be
accepted as a substitute for a chosen number of man
kind, and to endure, in his own innocent person, the
awful punishment due to them on account of their sins.
Hence, in order to secure the complete deliverance of
the Elect, the second person in the blessed Trinity came
down to earth, was born as a man, lived, toiled,
suffered, died on the Cross, rose from the dead, and
returned to heaven as the perfect Redeemer of his
people.
I know how utterly absurd all this will appear to all
who were not brought up to believe it, and even to me
now its most prominent feature is its absolute un
believability.
But the most extraordinary and in
credible teaching of theology is yet to be described.
We were told that the three persons in the glorious
Trinity had each his own peculiar share in the grand
work of redemption. The work of the Son consisted
in offering himself up as an infinite atonement for the
sins of the Elect, which he did on the Cross of Calvary,
and the Father’s work was, partly, to accept the offered
atonement as all-sufficient, and, partly, to arrange for
the actual administration of the Covenant of Grace.
Now, this administration of the Covenant was entrusted
to the Holy Ghost, the third member of the Trinity, as
his special share of the sublime work. He was there-
�l6
FROM CHRISTIAN PULPIT
fore commissioned to descend into the world in order to
discharge his administrative duties.
But as the Holy Ghost did not become incarnate, he
was obliged to work through mediums and agents. As
a pure ghost he had to enter into chosen vessels, and fill
them to overflowing, before anything could be accom
plished. The chosen vessels were the apostles and their
duly ordained successors, who are usually known now
as clergymen, ministers of the gospel, or men in Holy
Orders, whom I was instructed to regard as the repre
sentatives of the Holy Ghost, commissioned by him to
explain the Covenant of Grace to their fellow-beings,
and to urge all to believe the gospel. Of course, the
non-elect had no chance whatever of being saved ; but,
as no one knew who the elect were, it was necessary
to preach the gospel to all without distinction. In every
congregation some of heaven’s chosen ones would surely
be found, and on hearing the word of life they would
savingly receive it, and be snatched as brands from the
•burning. Thus the extending of the offer of salvation
to all alike was only a trick to get at the elect, and
gather them into the gospel net.
Such was the creed on which I was nourished in my
childhood, and having inherited from my ancestors an
ardent temperament, and being from a child abnormally
sensitive and sympathetic, I was naturally most power
fully affected by it. My heart melted into tears of pity
for the miserable sinners round about me. I burned
with the desire to make known to them what God, for
Christ’s sake, had agreed to do for them. Of course,
there was the possibility that I did not happen to be one
of the elect myself, although I had fervently swallowed
the whole creed, and accepted Christ as my Redeemer.
Indeed, nobody could be absolutely sure of his election.
Even the brightest and most confident faith had a back
ground of fear and trembling. But I passionately
yearned to tell all within my reach that Christ had
offered himself up as an all-meritorious sacrifice for the
sins of his sheep, whom God, for his sake, was prepared
to forgive, justify, and sanctify, that at death they might
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17
ascend and occupy splendid mansions in the sky. And
thus I resolved to become a minister.
My father was the senior deacon of the church, and
the most prominent member of society in the community,
in consequence of which fact I enjoyed several high
privileges that did not fall to the lot of ordinary children.
For example, most of the itinerant preachers who
visited our little Bethel were my father’s guests during
their stay. Ah, how well I remember those holy men of
God. What an infinite honor it was to entertain them,
and with what deep, rich joy my parents waited on them,
and offered them the choicest fare that love could
procure! With what tremulous reverence I used to
regard them, and with what grateful avidity I treasured
up all their precious sayings ! They were not made of
common clay. They were the mouthpieces of Jehovah,
and their sermons came down to them as sacred gifts
from heaven. As I thought of them my soul was on
fire with envy, and O how fervently I prayed God to
appoint me to the same exalted vocation. Sometimes
one of these semi-divine beings would condescend to
speak to me, and at once my whole being quivered with
proud delight. “ What would you like to be when you
grow up, my boy ?” he would ask, and tremblingly I
would answer, “ A preacher, sir.” “ That is a good boy,”
he would add, gently stroking my hair; “ I hope God
has called you, for without his special call no one has a
right to enter the pulpit.” I felt the truth of his words,
and gave myself more than ever to prayer, assuring the
Supreme Being that if he permitted me to become a
preacher, I would do my best to be an honor to him.
At times, I almost fancied I could hear his welcome
voice distinctly calling me to the sacred profession.
But when, at fifteen, failing to restrain myself any
longer, I appealed to the church for permission to
exercise my preaching gifts, my request was firmly
refused, the church being evidently sceptical as to my
possessing such gifts to exercise. Still, the fire burned
in my bones, and preach I must, at whatever cost,
used to go up to the mountain top, and deliver eloquent
�IS
FROM CHRISTIAN PULPIT*
and all-convincing discourses to a congregation of sheep,
lambs, and lapwings. The sheep were somewhat dense,
and responded but slowly to my passionate appeals, but
the lapwings rewarded me with inspiring applause. I
little thought, at the time, that the lovely birds were only
trying to decoy me away from the vicinity of their muchcherished.’ nests.
Eventually, however, the church
accepted me as an accredited candidate for the sacred
profession, and started me on the preparatory course. I
was then the proudest and happiest young man in all the
land. For weeks I walked on air and partook of angels’
food. To keep down my pride a messenger of Satan
occasionally came to buffet me with this hateful insinu
ation : “ What if thou art not one of God’s elect, after
all ? What if thou art thyself, by heaven’s decree, a
miserable castaway ?” But to prevent my sinking into
utter despair, a messenger of God would breathe into
me the consolation that arose from the fact that the
church had chosen me, and that it was through the
church God was accustomed to reveal his will.
O blind, misguided, and superstition-ridden fool that I
was, and knew it not.
�TO SECULAR PLATFORM
*9
IV.—AT THE DIVINITY HALL.
Soon after my enrolment as a ministerial candidate
I entered the University, at which I was privileged to
spend four laborious years. At the conclusion of this
purely academic course, I was admitted to the Divinity
Hall, wherein three interesting and revealing years were
passed. A Divinity Hall, or Theological Seminary, is
one of the most wonderful and unique institutions on
earth. The curriculum includes the Hebrew Language,
Biblical Exegesis, Homiletics, Ecclesiastical History,
and Systematic Theology. In my youthful estimation,
the Professors were demi-gods. How delightfully omni
scient and authoritative they were ! They knew every
thing, could answer every question, solve every problem,
penetrate every mystery, and annihilate every difficulty.
They talked about God with as much familiarity as if
they had stood behind his back and peeped over his
shoulders while he was framing his Eternal Decrees.
They could supply us with all sorts of exact information
about Election, the Incarnation, and the Unseen World.
They were all more or less rigid Calvinists, and each
lecture they delivered stated a doctrine, presented irre
futable proofs of its truth, and triumphantly demolished
all objections to it. All who held different views from
those expressed by them were denounced as dangerous
heresiarchs. Indeed, our Professors were to be regarded,
not as vendors of mere views or opinions, but as divinelyappointed proclaimers of sovereign truths revealed in the
Bible.
Arminians were hopelessly, if not judicially,,
blind, because they deliberately refused to use their
spiritual eyes. All “ isms,” other than Augustinism or
Calvinism, were of the Devil, and destined to pass
away. Charles Hodge, of Princeton, America, one of
the most illustrious champions of the Old School Calvin
ism, was said to have refused to shake hands with
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FROM CHRISTIAN PULPIT
William Ellery Channing, the renowned Unitarian,
because he verily believed that Unitarianism had not a
single Scriptural leg on which to stand, and that Uni
tarians could not be recognised as genuine members of
the household of God.
At our Hall, a cold and narrow literalism reigned
with sublime dignity. The fable of the Fall in Genesis,
with its Adam and Eve, garden, apple, and serpent, was
treated as a unique historical fact. The doctrine of the
Trinity was explained in the most painfully mechanical
style. The Professor of Dogmatic Theology assured us,
with calm confidence, that it w7as the simplest, as -well as
the most important, doctrine contained in the Word of
God. He told us what distinctions and resemblances
there were between the three persons, in what exact
relations they stood to one another, and what distinctive
work each of them did. The fact of the incarnation of
God in Christ, according to him, involved the Immacu
late and Miraculous Conception. He explained to us
that it was just as easy for Omnipotence to create the
body and soul of Christ in Mary’s womb as it had been
to form the first man out of the dust of the ground, and
the first woman out of a male rib. Christ was Humiliated
Deity—Deity punishing himself for the sins of man.
The Incarnation was, therefore, the Supreme Miracle.
I smile as I think of it all now; but then I solemnly
believed it. To-day I regard it as a puerile superstition;
but then it impressed me as a truth revealed to us by the
Holy Spirit. All other dogmas were dealt with in pre
cisely the same way ; but space does not allow me to
give any further examples.
Occasionally the Professors were targets at which
thoughtful and sceptically-inclined young men fired
awkward and staggering questions; but not one of the
shots ever proved fatal. The theological skin was so
thick and hard that nothing could have penetrated it.
Here are a few samples of the type of question asked,
and answer given :—
Student : Professor, what real sin was there in
Adam’s act of eating the forbidden fruit ?
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Professor : No sin at all, except in the sense that it
was a violation of a Divine commandment. The com
mandment was a positive, not a moral, one ; and surely
the Supreme Being has a perfect right to impose what
commandments he pleases on the creatures of his hand.
Student : AVas it right of God to elect some to
eternal life, and leave all others to their doom ?
Professor: Yes, certainly; because the exercise of
mercy is purely optional with the Deity. It was an act
of stupendous condescension, on his part, to choose a
certain number to be saved through the atoning death of
his only begotten Son. Justice demanded that the whole
human family should be consigned to endless torment in
hell-fire. The damned arc only inheriting what they
richly deserve, and cannot fairly blame the Judge. But
salvation is of grace alone.
Student : Is it right to punish a person for ever after
death for a limited number of sins committed during a
limited number of years on earth ?
Professor : Yes ; because every sin, however small it
may appear, is yet infinite, and deserves infinite and end
less punishment.
Student : How do we know that Christ rose from
the grave on the third day, and ultimately ascended to
heaven ?
Professor : Simply because the Bible says so. What
ever the Bible says is of necessity true, because it is the
utterance of God himself. One miracle demands another.
You must always bear in mind that the miraculous birth
necessitated the miraculous uprise from the tomb.
I cannot tell whether the young men who asked such
questions were satisfied with the dogmatic answers given
or not; but I can give my word of honor that I was more
than satisfied. To me the appeal to Holy Writ was
absolutely conclusive, and to question it would have
been a sign of incorrigible depravity.
Of course,
etiquette did not permit students to argue with their
Professors, who were more infallible than the Pope of
Rome. My conviction was that the Bible was the final
court of appeal, the verdict of whic^i should settle alj
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FROM CHRISTIAN PULPIT
disputes.
Some people stumbled at miracles, for
example, and irreverently asked: “ In the name of
common sense, how can you believe that the whale
swallowed Jonah, and flung him out again unharmed ?”
Vehemently I answered: “Common sense has nothing
whatever to do with the matter. Had the Bible affirmed
that Jonah swallowed the whale, I would have believed
it quite as readily.” To me, then, the Bible was the
Word of the living God, and could not err. The
doctrines of the Christian Religion, as interpreted by
our Professors, was clearly revealed in the Scriptures,
and he was doubly blind and an unmitigated fool who
was impertinent enough, either to doubt them, or to
accept the Arminian interpretation of them.
That was the way in which I was trained and equipped
for my profession. My ancestors, my child-life at home,
the church in which I was brought up, and the Pro
fessors at the Seminary, all contributed to the develop
ment within me of an astonishingly firm adhesion to
what was called genuine orthodoxy. I left the hall a
gigantic believer. The supernatural was far more real
to me than the natural. Everything between the two
covers of the Old Book was God’s revealed truth. If
people told me that miracles were violations of natural
laws, I frankly admitted it, well knowing that in order
to facilitate the fulfilment of the noble purposes of
heaven, a higher law had a perfect right to make in
roads upon and subjugate a lower. If some weak-minded
friends experienced great difficulty, in believing in a
special Divine Revelation, I could astonish them with
the bold assertion that my only difficulty would have
been not to believe in it. My appetite for believing
knew no bounds, and was never entirely satisfied. And
this infinite appetite and capacity for blindly believing
constituted my stock-in-trade when I stood on the
threshold of the active ministry. Ah me, the pity and
the misery of it all! It lies on my memory like a horrid
nightmare.
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V.—THE FIRST YEAR OF PROFESSIONAL
LIFE.
The day of my ordination to the ministry of the glorious
Gospel of the blessed God was the greatest, grandest,
and gladdest in my whole history. At last, the harvest
of my ambition was fully ripe, and about to be gathered
into the barn of enjoyment. My wildest dreams and
brightest hopes were on the eve of veritable fulfilment.
Unanimously invited to the pastorate of a large city
church, possessing the entire confidence of a congrega
tion that had had experience of me as a preacher for
several months prior to the tendering of the invitation,
and having just listened to extravagant encomiums pro
nounced upon me by famous ministers who took part in
the ordination service, I was elated with joy unspeakable
and full of glory. I scarcely knew whether I was in
heaven or on earth. I felt as if I were automatically
floating on an ocean of holy peace. As I looked back
upon the past, I was confident that exceptionally high
and fruitful privileges had been lavishly showered upon
me in childhood and youth. While comparing notes
wTith my chums at the Divinity Hall I discovered that,
even at sixteen years of age, not one of them knew the
meaning of the word “ theology,” while I was a distin
guished champion of the faith at ten. I had drunk
theology with my mother’s milk, and had been, during
all my teens, systematically drilled in the art of contro
versy. Had I no excuse for cherishing a little pride and
self-complacency ? And as I looked forward to the
future, bright stars of hope shone upon and illuminated
the far-stretching pathway.
There never had been such a preacher as I was fully
determined to become. The Celtic fire, sanctified by
the grace of God, blazed away in all my veins. I was
deeply sensible of the reason why the majority of
churches were empty, and entertained no doubt that
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FROM CHRISTIAN PULPIT
mine would soon be full. My sermons would aim at
converting two predominant classes of people, namely,
the open, reckless sinners who were rushing on to hell
at express speed, and those characterised by St. Paul as
natural or psychical men, who neither cared for nor
believed in the higher and nobler realities. In the faces
of shameless sinners I would vigorously shake hell,
painted in the most lurid colors, and I would drive the
natural man out of every stronghold in his possession,
and force him to surrender, openly confessing that his
case was utterly hopeless. Certainly, my part of the
city would be completely transformed within a few
months. I would frighten sinners and argue naturalists
right into the kingdom of God. Such was my program.
I little dreamed that the Fates were all the time laughing
in their sleeves at my ineffable stupidity.
For a time I did, undoubtedly, occasion not a little
sensation in my own immediate neighborhood. My out
spoken denunciation of everything I believed to be sin
soon attracted attention. Crowds flocked to hear me
preach. I had invincible energy and boundless enthu
siasm ; and I spared nobody. A text from which I
frequently discoursed was this : “ Ye serpents, ye offspring
of vipers, how shall ye escape the damnation of hell ?” The
sufferings of the damned were never more vividly and
realistically portrayed than in those crude addresses of
my early ministry. I could not have depicted them
better had I actually seen and experienced them for a
thousand years. I remember once taking a Sunday
afternoon service at a neighboring church, and speaking
on this my then favorite theme. At the close the
minister intervened, and said: “I thank God for this
afternoon’s message. It is so refreshing and reassuring
to hear God’s own truths so boldly and uncompromisingly
proclaimed. Alas, not all ministers in this city (with an
obvious reference to a popular preacher who did not
believe in endless punishment) preach the Gospel on this
awful subject. But woe be to us if we withhold this
revealed truth from our people.” In the extra-orthodox
churches I was immensely popular, People admired my
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courage in putting so much fire and brimstone into my
sermons. Not one of my discourses was a sugar-coated
pill. But I was not nearly so successful with St. Paul’s
natural man. I soon perceived that he had a mind of
his own, and was astonishingly difficult to move. I
brought out my heavy artillery, and vigorously bom
barded the castle of his naturalism, but failed to make
the least impression upon it. I had fondly hoped that
he would have quickly surrendered, readily acknow
ledging the superior cogency of my arguments; but
instead of that coveted result, I found my own armor
sadly riddled with his shot, while he remained untouched
in his strongly fortified position. My signal failure with
him gave me a painful sense of disappointment, but I
comforted myself with the soothing reflection that, had
it not been for his intellectual stupidity and spiritual
obstinacy, I would have gained a magnificent victory
over him.
On the whole, however, my first year of professional
life was fairly satisfactory. My faith in the Divine
Verities continued unfaltering and undimmed for many
months. My acceptance of the Bible was complete,
without even a shadow of reservation; and I was
joyously loyal to all the doctrinal standards. I was a
firm believer in the efficacy of prayer ; and, when the
late Professor Tyndall issued his famous Prayer-Test, I
was horrified at the blasphemous audacity of his pro
posal. I pitied the poor scientist as an unregenerate
natural man.
Bye-and-bye, however, dark, ominous
clouds began to gather in my hitherto clear ecclesiastical
sky.
In the middle of each week a well-attended
Prayer-meeting was held in a large hall adjoining the
church. It was my custom to deliver a short address
on some religious topic, and then to call upon several
people to engage in prayer. Among those who usually
responded were two of the office-bearers. They were
both exceedingly fluent, and people always liked to hear
them.
They were well-read, intelligent, and devout
men ; but, unfortunately, it was softly whispered that
their unctuous rectitude was only a thin coat of veneer,
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FROM CHRISTIAN PULPIT
covering and hiding a character that was radically
putrid. The one was said to be living continually in
grossest immorality, and the other to be the biggest
scoundrel out of prison. By degrees, the half-smothered
whisper grew into a loud rumor, behind which it was
evident there was too much truth. It was an insoluble
mystery to me how these men could offer up such fervent,
heart-stirring prayers, while pursuing such iniquitous
and God-defying practices. Thus two of my right-hand
men were consummate hypocrites. Was it possible that
they really believed in a holy, truthful, and loving God,
or were they simply playing at religion ?
I was
staggered and bewildered, and knew not what to think.
In course of time, I came to the mournful conviction
that, in the world, Christians were generally looked upon
with suspicion, that in business circles they were not
always trusted, and that many of them were openly
denounced as cunning and heartless swindlers. I found
out that because of their commercial crookedness and
social insincerity the members of a particular sect were
universally loathed, and the more I mingled with men
the more deeply convinced I became that such aspersions
were only too well founded. People who professed to be
better were really worse than their neighbors, and shielded
themselves under the cloak of religion. To-day I am
bound sorrowfully to admit that the tendency of adhesion
to the popular type of religion is to make people hypo
critical and immoral. Their professed peace with God,
the fact of their regeneration, their dream of eternal
blessedness in heaven, and their comforting conviction
that they shall never see hell except at a safe distance,
are dependent, not in any sense or degree on their char
acter, but on their faith in Christ, for whose sake and in
whose merits alone they are accepted in the Divine
sight. Their faith is reckoned or imputed to them for
righteousness, and their religious exercises—their praying,
hymn-singing, church-going, Bible-reading, alms-giving
—are substituted for upright living. Christ fulfilled the
moral law in their stead, and the moment they believed
in him they were released from all moral obligation. I
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27
remember a dear, deluded old saint saying, with
grateful tears in her eyes: “I deserve to go to hell,
and therein to burn for ever; but, blessed be his
name, my beloved Redeemer deserves that I should
go to heaven and sing his praises without end, and
I am sure God cannot say Nay to his only begotten
Son.” If there were a God of truth and love, such a
belief would be rank blasphemy; and in any case, he
who lives up to such a faith is guilty of high treason
against his own nature. I have no hesitation whatever,
therefore, in laying to the charge of all so-called Evan
gelical Churches the stupendous crime of being direct
and fruitful sources and encouragers of commercial dis
honesty, social hypocrisy, and moral stupor. In illustra
tion of the truth of this charge, John Ruskin tells us,
with burning indignation, of a wicked merchant in the
City of London who was a prominent and active member
in a suburban church. In the City he was a man that
required special watching, and one day he was guilty of
a specially tricky and fraudulent transaction. On the
following Sunday, one who knew of this dishonest
bargain, happened to attend that suburban church, and
therein saw the self-same merchant engaged in a most
solemn act of worship. At the close of the service, he
went up to him, and, with a significant look in his eye
and withering scorn in his voice, said : “You here ?”
The great man felt most uncomfortable, but after a
moment’s pause, answered: “ Here, you know, we all
assume the attitude of the poor publican, in the parable,
who smote upon his breast and tremblingly praye’d,
‘ Crod be merciful to me a sinner.' "
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FROM CHRISTIAN PULPIT
VI.—THE INTELLECT IN REVOLT.
Why was I such an ardent and militant believer in the
Calvinistic Version of the Christian Religion ? Was it
because it commended itself to my reason as essentially
and eternally true ? Was it because I could prove its
divinity by a long and elaborate train of irrefragable
reasoning ? Or was it simply because I had been
diligently taught from the cradle to believe and cherish
it ? The fact is, that I was a Christian solely because I
accepted the Bible as the inspired and infallible Word
of God, and that I accepted the Bible as the only
authoritative revelation from above, because, primarily,
my parents, and all the other people I knew, so regarded,
and trained me so to regard, it, and, secondarily, because
such was the doctrine of the Church into which I had
been born. Had I beeen born and bred in a Moham
medan country, I would have been a Mohammedan on
precisely the same ground. My belief in the Bible and
Christianity came down to me as an inheritance from
my ancestors: it ran in the blood, and I was not con
sulted as to whether I would take it or not. It was a
purely mechanical, traditional, and superstitious belief,
endowed with no inherent vitality with which to fight
fop its own existence. But such is the force of the law
of heredity, and of the influence of early training, that
this dead faith remained with me to the close of the first
year of my clerical career. When anybody asked me
why I believed such-and-such a dogma, the only answer
I could make was, “ Because I find it in the Bible.”
When pressed further for the ground of my faith in the
Bible, I could only cite the teaching of the great doctors
of the Church. For the faith that was in me this was a
flimsy, fragile, and worthless reason ; but it was the only
one I had to offer.
Just at that time a most remarkable theological book
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2<J
fell into my hands, entitled The. Limits of Religious
Thought, by the late Dean Mransel. That well-known
dignitary of the Anglican Church was an exceptionally
keen and subtle metaphysician of the school of Kant
and Sir William Hamilton.
One of the distinctive
tenets of this school crystalised into the apt phrase,
Relativity of Human Knowledge, which figured so
largely in the Lectures of Sir William Hamilton. This
is the tenet that underlies Mr. Herbert Spencer’s Syn
thetic Philosophy, and of which he makes such splendid
applications in his First Principles. M'ansel adopted this
doctrine in its entirety, and applied it to theology. His
main contention is that we cannot know the Infinite
and Eternal, all knowledge being confined to visible,
tangible, and finite objects. Hence, to our purely in
tellectual faculties, the Christian Creed is at once un
believable and unthinkable.
God is of necessity
unknown and unknowable, uncomprehended and incom
prehensible. Wre believe in him alone on the testimony
of Scripture. Our reason, acting within its own legiti
mate limits, pronounces all our theological dogmas
absurd and self-contradictory. As Christians, we are
not thinkers or reasoners, but blind believers. It was
under the influence of this monstrous teaching that
Tennyson sang, in his In Memoriam,
We have but faith : we cannot know ;
For knowledge is of things we see.
The Limits of Religious Thought is now a dead book ;
but it was marked by much logical -ingenuity and intel
lectual force, and a careful perusal of it compelled me
to pause and think. I had been instructed to regard
Calvinism as in the highest degree reasonable, although
in its nature and origin immeasurably above reason.
Times without number, as I imagined, I had success
fully championed it along purely intellectual lines. But
now I perceived, for the first time, that I had been
laboring under a fatal delusion. In reality my reason
had never had the opportunity of critically examining
the Christian Faith, and of ascertaining whether it was
in itself believable or not. I had begun life firmly
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Fkofvi CKRiSTiAN PULPIT
believing it, and I had taken for granted that hiy reason
gave it full support. But Dean Mansei’s book opened
my mind’s eyes, and for the first time in my life I began
to think for myself. But no sooner did I begin to think
for myself, than the foundations of my faith commenced
to tremble and crumble beneath my feet, and I realised
how completely I had been the slave of superstition and
traditionalism. The house of my faith tumbled into
awful rum, and I was flung headlong into an unfathom
able pit of pain and misery. I walked about in the
dark dungeon as one demented, weepingly bemoaning
my infinite loss. The discovery that the so-called truths
of the Bible were, not only above, but also in utter con
travention of reason brought with it a most disagreeable
sense of deprivation and impoverishment.
To be
actually. without God and without hope in the world was
a calamity too dreadful to contemplate. So deep and
poignant was my grief that I sank into utter despair.
I grew so tired of my life that I was strongly tempted
to put a violent end to it. At last a voice cried out of
the central deeps of my being, “ Thou coward ! ” and
thereupon I determined to fight my battle through to the
bitter end. But the end was not reached for several
years. Fierce in the extreme was the soul-wrestling
with Giant Doubt. What sunless days and starless
nights I wept my way through ! How incessantly and
confidently 1 prayed lor guidance to a deaf, unheeding
Deity! In my eagerness I consulted innumerable
standard books on the Evidences, wended my weary
way through ponderous Bodies of Divinity, and gave
whole nights as well as days to a prayerful study of the
Bible, yearning unspeakably all the while for the return
of my faith.
In this crisis books of science were conscientiously
eschewed as positively dangerous, because in the circles
in which I turned science was violently denounced as
irreligious and atheistical. Although I had lost my
faith in God, and Christ, and the spiritual world, I still
regarded Darwin and Tyndall as enemies of mankind.
I had not read a line of their works ; but it was my
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strong conviction that Evolution was a hellish theory.
When Dr. Charles Hodge, the renowned orthodox
divine, published his little volume against it, I was
transported with delight, and contributed an impassioned
eulogy of the production to a religious magazine. It
never occurred to me to suggest that the learned divine
did not understand what the word “ Darwinism ” meant,
and was not competent to pronounce judgment against
it with such dogmatic assurance. But while thus rashly
taking sides with the theologian against the naturalist, I
was myself in an entirely atheistical frame of mind. I
was afraid of science, because I knew it could not help
me back to faith. Nor could I take any of my friends
into my confidence, for they were all such orthodox
believers that they had no patience with doubt and
doubters. Thus, in a loneliness that lacerated the very
soul, I had to wage ceaseless war, singlehanded, against
my cruel foe. How much I suffered neither tongue nor
pen can ever tell.
But the long night came to an end, the welcome light
began to dawn upon my desolate heart, and slowly two
great truths, like twin suns, appeared on the horizon,
and offered me their kindly service. As I have already
stated, these truths were the Fatherhood of God and the
Brotherhood of Man, and to them I tendered the full
homage of my being. Of course, my acceptance of the
Divine Fatherhood necessitated the reconstruction of
Christ. The deposition of the Despot and the enthrone
ment of the Father involved the overthrow of the
Calvinistic conception of the Savior. In my search for
a consistent interpretation of Jesus and his work I fell
on a most ingenious and suggestive book, entitled
Wcan'pws Sacrifice, by the late Horace Bushnell, a very
profound but shockingly heterodox theologian. In this
luminous volume, the great man maintained that we are
to regard Christ as the last and absolutely perfect reve
lation of God, and that his work consisted, not in
conciliating or propitiating a vindictive Tyrant, but in
making known the all-holy, all-merciful, and all-re
deeming Father. This was a new evangel towards
�32
PROM CHRISTIAN PULPIT
which my hungry heart leaped with boundless gratitude.
Surely this was a genuine return to the simple teaching
of the Apostolic Church. And with this new-found
gospel, I returned to the pulpit, aglow with zeal, jubilantly
triumphant, and resolutely bent on scathingly denouncing
the. very theology on which I had been brought up, and
which I had previously preached with such confidence.
On the Calvinism that was once so dear and precious
in my sight I now poured scalding streams of scorn.
The exhibition of such iconoclastic vehemence filled
the church to overflowing with interested hearers, the
great majority of whom enthusiastically approved and
applauded my deliverances. A few of the older and
narrower thinkers frowned, and raved, and threatened,
and denounced, it is true; but the bulk of the people
rejoiced, and wished me God-speed in the fulfilment of
what they styled my beneficent mission.
This was my second theological house, and O with what
ardor I thanked God for having inspired me to erect it!
It was such a lovely structure, and in it I hoped to spend
the remainder of my life. Alas, little did I then think
that this house also was built upon the sand, and that, like
the foolish man of the parable, I should soon find it
tumbling disastrously about my ears.
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VII.—THE INTELLECT IN BONDS.
Dogmatic theology no longer wielded its bewildering
fascination over me, but was scornfully trampled under
my feet. With those who regarded precision and defi
niteness of thought in religion as of supreme importance
I was completely out of touch. Like Dr. Bushnell, I
was firmly of the opinion that an adequate dogmatic
theology cannot exist, because spiritual facts can only
be expressed in approximative and poetical language.
This was also the contention so cleverly defended by
Matthew Arnold in his epoch-making book entitled
Literature and Dogma. His central proposition is that
Bible terms, like grace, new birth, justification, are not to
be “ 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, but 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 adequately.”
Such teaching suited my mood to
perfection, and with riotous joy I revelled in the two
sparkling gems, Literature and Dogma and St. Paul and
Protestantism. In these books Matthew Arnold goes so
far as to formally reject the Supernatural and the Mira
culous. “ God,” he says, “ 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.”
This idea was a key that opened most of the locks of the
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FROM CHRISTIAN PULPIT
Bible, and I used it continually with great prolit. But
I had not the courage to mention Arnold’s name, or
even Bushnell’s, in any of my public pronouncements,
because in deeply-religious circles both were highly
suspected and execrated names.
In this way it became fashionable to decry the
intellect as an inferior faculty, a calculating machine, a
logic-grinder, which deals only with mundane and
temporal realities, but cannot even touch the higher
things of the spirit. It is doubtless extremely useful to
the scientist, or the low-grade philosopher ; but to the
preacher it has no real value. Of course, this position
was tenable only to those who believed in the existence
and possible activity, within the human soul, of a
superior faculty, “ a subjective faculty,” as Max Muller
calls it, “ for the apprehension of the infinite.” In his
Hibbert Lectures the same scholar describes it more fully
as “ a mental faculty which, independent of, nay in
spite of, sense and reason, enables man to appre
hend the infinite under different names and under vary
ing disguises.” This faculty is intuitive, inborn, and
belongs to all alike, at least potentially. It is the gift of
insight, vision, and realisation. Now, my contention
was that by the exercise of this spiritual organ we could
clearly see God and Christ, realise the spiritual world
and immortality, and become blessedly assured of our
salvation through the risen and ascended Lord. Vision,
it seemed to me, was infinitely nobler and more ennobling
than ordinary knowledge.
Many of my comrades in
the new school used to wax irresistibly eloquent in
praise and commendation of this inward eye. To the
intellect God was unknowable and inconceivable ; but
through the soul’s eye and to the heart’s need he was
most gloriously and savingly visible.
At this time I had the unspeakable privilege of an
introduction to six luminous and illuminating poets,
namely, Dante, Shakespeare, Milton, Wordsworth,
Browning, and Tennyson, all of whom confirmed and
advanced my theological liberalism. It was to Browning,
perhaps, that I -was most deeply indebted, and I habi-
�1*0 sfecULAk PtAti'Okfvi
35
tually quoted him in my sermons. How shocked I was
when I discovered that Mrs. Sutherland Orr and others
were impertinent enough to claim him as an Agnostic.
Among prose-writers my chief instructors were Emerson,
Carlyle, and Ruskin. Of theologians, the most inspiring
by far was Dr. George Matheson, the poet-preacher of
Scotland, whose able book, Can the Old Faith live with
the New ? gave me a firmer grip of what people call the
fundamental verities of the Gospel than all other books
put together. He made a magnificent use of the intellect
in the vilification of itself. The maligned faculty glowed
and sparkled, in the most charming manner, as it sang
the praises of its rival and so-called supplanter.
What makes me dwell so long on this point is the
knowledge that there are thousands of clergymen among
us at present, who loudly glory in their alleged posses
sion and enjoyment of the spiritual faculty. They say :
“ We cannot prove the existence of God on merely intel
lectual lines ; but we know that he is because our inward
eye sees him.” “ We cannot prove the Divinity of Jesus
Christ in any outward, formal way ; but to us his
Divinity is an irresistible inference from what we have
seen and experienced of his saving grace.” Not long
ago, the Rev. R. J. Campbell, the oracle of the City
Temple, stated that he had no fear of the Higher Critics.
“ Even if they w’ere to succeed in destroying the authority
of the Bible from Genesis to Revelation,” he said, “ yet
my own experience of its gracious efficacy would enable
me to cling to Christianity as confidently and tenaciously
as ever.” On another occasion he said : “ Our faith in
Christianity is dependent, not on the inspiration and
infallibility of the Bible, but on our direct vision and
knowledge of Christ.” I am not at all surprised at his
making such an assertion, because I often made it
myself; but it is an impotent attitude, and dates no
further back than the date of the Higher Criticism.
Fifty years ago it was well-nigh the universal teaching
of the Pulpit that no one could be a Christian without
believing in the full inspiration of the Scriptures; and
even at present there are a few, such as Dr. Robertson
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FROM CHRISTIAN PULPIT
Nicoll, who declare that if the Bible were discredited on
critical grounds, Christianity would have to be given up.
The truth, undoubtedly, is that the advanced theologians
of the present day are standing on the brink of the
chasm of scepticism, because, in the absence of an infal
lible Book, which claims to be a direct revelation from
God, Supernatural Religion must speedily collapse. In his
Literature and Dogma, Matthew Arnold’s mam object
was to make it possible for educated people who rejected
the miraculous still to believe in the Bible and Chris
tianity. What he said, in effect, was this : “ Miracles
do not happen, the belief in the personality of God is
groundless, and the hope of immortality is illusive; but,
on the whole, the Bible’s chief concern is with conduct,
which is three-fourths of human life, and, on this account,
the Bible should be retained, and we can still call our
selves Christians.” But, for once, one of the finest of
literary critics was utterly mistaken. Divest Chris
tianity of its miraculous element, and what will there be
left that is not common to all great religions ? Banish
the Supernatural from the Bible, and what will it contain
worth preserving ? Indeed, I am convinced that Arnold’s
argument inevitably leads to Atheism, not to the recovery
of faith. I am prepared to go one step further and
affirm that, at heart, the great apostle of culture was
himself a genuine Atheist.
The God in whom he
believed was only a projection or externalisation of him
self. In proof of this assertion I need give only the
following characteristic quotation : “ Bishop Wilson
says, ‘ Look up to God (by which he means just this,
consult your conscience) at all times, and you will, as in
a glass, discover what is fit to be done.’ ” To a cer
tainty we know that Bishop Wilson meant just exactly
what he said ; but to Matthew Arnold God and con
science, or God and himself, were convertible terms.
It took me many years, however, to perceive how
utterly unsound and illogical the position I occupied
really was, and how inevitable would be the alternative
between a return to the simple, blind, unreasoning, but
strong faith of my childhood, and an advance to open
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37
and unadulterated Atheism. There is no safe and per
manent half-way house between emphatic, unequivocal,
and old-fashioned Supernaturalism and plain, unadorned
Secularism. Mr. Campbell, though by no means an
orator, is yet a most magnetic speaker, and will always
have a large following of non-thinkers ; but I am certain
that his theological attitude and style of reasoning, if
reasoning it can be called, are calculated, in the long
run, to make more infidels than believers. Without one
definite seat of authority, to which to refer all debateable
points, religion cannot survive.
During the Middle
Ages it was the Church that settled all disputes. All its
official findings were infallible and universally binding.
The Reformation shifted the seat of authority from the
Church to the Bible; and for many generations Pro
testants worshipped the Book with as complete a homage
as Catholics did the Pope. The Protestant Reformation
did nothing more than exchange one seat of authority
for another. But in our day the only authoritative voice,
acknowledged by the leaders of British Free Churchism,
is that of individual experience; and the people who
decline to listen to, and follow, it, are declared to be
destitute of the spiritual organ. Every preacher is now
an infallible pope in his own society. The result is that
we have a million popes instead of one ; and it is a very
significant fact that no two of them agree on a single
subject. Each has a different kind of spiritual faculty
from all the others ; and the consequence is that all of
them deliver different and conflicting spiritual judgments.
The intellect is in bonds, but this very multiplicity of
contradictory voices is a sure sign that the day of its
glorious emancipation is hastening on. The Church is
slowly committing suicide at the instigation of its own
rulers, and the time is not far off when its tomb will be
adorned with green grass and lovely flowers. This is a
prophecy which is already in the process of fulfilment, as
every careful student of the signs of the times is bound
to admit.
�3§
FROM CHRISTIAN PULPIT
VIII.—THE REIGN OF EMOTIONALISM.
When a man of an ardent temperament discovers that
the position he occupies is intellectually weak and in
defensible, he is almost sure to fall back on emotional
ism. That was the temptation that came to me, and to
which I readily yielded. With what infinite relish I
kept repeating to myself Matthew Arnold’s famous
saying : “ The true meaning of religion is, not simply
morality, but morality touched by emotion.''' During this
second period of my religious history, my theology
assumed a purely sentimental form, and pretended to
deal with facts as distinguished from theories. Dogmas
no longer appealed to me as true, although I had not the
temerity to reject them as false; but the great facts
which the dogmas endeavored to imprison within the
stone walls of scientific definitions appeared more vital
and precious than ever to me, and I hugged them with
kindling affection. There were doctrines which it was
my delight to hold up to ridicule and scorn; but there
were others on which I was silent, because I did not
understand them. Among these was the doctrine of
the Trinity. It was wholly inexplicable to me that
three infinite persons constituted but one God. Indeed,
there was something positively repulsive in the idea,
calmly held and seriously championed by many learned
doctors, that the second infinite person was eternally
born of the first, and that the third eternally proceeded,
without either birth or creation, from the other two.
Face-to-face with such inscrutable mysteries, I emotion
ally clung to the sweet Bible-verse, “ God is love." 1
was equally incapable of comprehending the Immaculate
Conception and Virgin Birth of Christ, or the mystical
union of the Divine and Human Natures in the con
stitution of his theanthropic person, which was no
longer merely the second person in the Trinity, but a
kind of new person miraculously brought into existence
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39
through the Incarnation. No theologian on earth ever
pretended to understand that strange doctrine; and yet
it found a place in every standard work on theology.
Not one of the twenty different theories of the Atone
ment commended itself to my reason, although some
of them were more acceptable than others ; and so I
contented myself with proclaiming the living fact that
lay behind them all. To me Christ was. the visible
image of the living God, and his only mission in the
world was to reveal the Divine love.
Towards miracles, as such, I maintained a sceptical
attitude. With Huxley, I fully admitted their possibility,
but was not clearly convinced that a single genuine
miracle had ever happened; nor could I appreciate the
ground on which Christian apologists rejected all miracles
except those recorded in the Bible. Consequently, I
never preached on the subject, nor did anxious inquirers
privately press me to give an opinion on it. I knew what
evidential value the majority of theologians attached to
the miraculous, and what emphasis was laid on the
assertion that the proof from miracles was the only
proof on which we could absolutely rely in the refutation
of the arguments of unbelief. Archbishop Whately was
confident that all Catholic 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.”
Dean Mansel argued that “ if the reality of miracles as
facts is denied, the whole system of Christian belief with
its evidences, all Christianity, in short, so far as it has
any title to that name, so far as it has any special relation
to the person or the teaching of Christ, is overthrown at
the same time.” Mozley, Westcott, and Farrar ex
pressed themselves to the same effect. But while fully
aware of the theological contention that “ miracles and
the supernatural contents of Christianity must stand or
fall together,” still I somehow felt that it was a fallacy
and could not stand. But what was I to do with the
Resurrection of Christ, which was universally regarded
as the corner stone of the Christian Religion ? If J
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FROM CHRISTIAN PULPIT
denied the miraculous, how could I believe that Christ
rose from the dead ? Must I not exclaim, in the poet’s
mournful words,—.
Far hence he lies
In the lorn Syrian town,
And on his grave, with shining eyes,
The Syrian stars look down ?
But if I denied that Christ rose again, how could I, for
a moment longer, be a Christian minister ? Well, I
must confess that I took refuge in a mean and cowardly
subterfuge. I contended, with a few others, that Christ’s
Resurrection was to be understood poetically and
spiritually, not literally and mechanically. I deluded
myself into believing that the Apostle Paul, also,
accepted and interpreted the doctrine in precisely the
same way. I think it was Clough, in his exquisite
poem, in two parts, entitled Easter Day, who first sug
gested the subterfuge to me. What a spiritual resur
rection signified, it would have been most difficult to
explain ; but the belief in it was emotional, and conse
quently did not require to have its contents too minutely
described.
I was satisfied with merely feeling that
somehow and somewhere Christ still lived. It was a
degrading, soul-killing subterfuge, though I knew it not
at the time ; but it enabled me to imagine and feel that
I was a believer when in reality I was not.
To the more thoughtful and intelligent people such
preaching lacked precision, definiteness, and clearness,
and the preacher was severely censured by them. But
with the people as a whole I never lost touch. I was
capable of rising to such an exceptionally high pitch
of fervor that I never failed to secure the sympathy
and support of the crowd. Besides, the presence of a
crowd had such a magical and transforming effect upon
me that my natural enthusiasm more than doubled its
power. The dormant fire in my constitution was fanned
into white and furioufe heat ; and if ever I spoke with
convincing effect it was because I so deeply felt what I
said. Argumentatively I may have been deplorably
weak and vulnerable ; but emotionally I was gloriously
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41
strong and unassailable. And it is incontrovertible that a
miscellaneous, popular assembly responds much more
quickly and heartily to sentiment or feeling than to logic.
Earnestness, accompanied by kindling eloquence, is
infinitely more convincing to a multitude than the most
perfect and lucid argument ever framed.
Towards the close of the period under consideration, I
was, to all intents and purposes, nothing but an emo
tional and superficial expounder of the Christian
Religion. To my intellect, Christianity was almost
painfully false, but to my heart, it was irresistibly true.
On week days I was frequently a rampant Agnostic or
Atheist, but on Sundays and in the pulpit always a redhot believer. It was a pitiable condition, in the extreme,
to be in; but there was then absolutely no help for it.
I did my utmost to keep under and silence the intellect,
in which endeavor I occasionly succeeded ; and I did it
in the name and for the sake of what I verily believed to
be a higher and nobler faculty. Words can never tell
what soul-agonies I endured, what cruel crises I passed
through, and to what self-loathing I more than once
subjected myself. What kept me going was the con
viction that somehow the highest and best in my nature
still witnessed to the blessed reality of Revealed Religion;
and on Sundays, as I stood face-to-face with crowded
congregations, this conviction completely swayed my
whole being.
But the worst has yet to come, and must have a whole
chapter to itself. Arnoldism will never work, except
disastrously. The public has never been able to appre
ciate the fine distinction between literature and dogma.
On the contrary, the public is perpetually reducing
poetry to prose, and treating literature itself as if it were
dogma. A follower of Arnold in the pulpit cannot fail
sooner or later to commit suicide. He puts one meaning
into a word, a literary and poetical one, and his hearers,
another ; and he cannot but be aware of the fact. The
consequence is that he degenerates into a miserable
play-actor, a process I shall describe in the next
chapter,
�7
42
FROM CHRISTIAN PURPIT
IX.—PLAY-ACTING IN THE PULPIT.
In theory, Arnoldism is exquisitely beautiful and
irresistibly fascinating; but, in practice, it proves
wofully complicating and confusing. It leads to all
sorts of insincerities and hypocrisies.
A long time
ago a famous actor, on being asked by a clergyman,
“ Why is play-acting so much more successful than
preaching ?” answered, “ Because we treat fiction as
if it were truth, and you present truth as if it were
fiction.” It was a witty, apt, and, if both preacher and
actor believed the Bible to be the Word of God, emi
nently true answer. In numerous instances, it must be
confessed, the pulpit is such a signal failure because the
fire of enthusiasm does not burn in it, or because so
many preachers are empty-headed and empty-hearted
triflers. They do not doubt, because they are too lazy
to think. To them, the ministry is solely a “ living,”
an easy and respectable “ billet,” and they would forsake
it to-morrow did it not allow them to spend their days
in luxurious indolence. But there are other ministers
to whom laziness is not a besetting sin, and who cannot
complain of non-success in their work. The chief source
of their weakness is that they proclaim fiction as if it
were truth, thoroughly believing it, for the time being,
to be truth. We are assured that, while on the stage,
first-rate actors verily feel as if they were the characters
they represent, which, for the time, they doubtless are.
Judging by my own experience, and by observation of
other cases, pulpit play-acting reveals itself in various
ways.
In the first place, no sooner had I adopted Arnoldism,
and commenced to treat the Bible as literature, than I
discovered that I dared not preach all I knew. In
course of time, I came into possession of a large body of
esoteric truths, which were of too dangerous a character
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43
to be communicated to a mixed congregation. I was
positively certain that the Pentateuch was not written,
even the earlier and simpler portions of it, for many
centuries after Moses’ time. I knew well enough that
the Mosaic Economy was a late and gradual develop
ment, and that from the time it began to assume a
definite shape the prophets and the priests became
sworn enemies, proofs of which fact abound in the
prophetical writings themselves.
It was as clear . as
noonday to me that Genesis is a collection of interesting
legends, traditions, and myths; that Adam, Noah,
Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob are by no means historical,
but purely fabulous, symbolical, or eponymous char
acters, and that the stories of Creation, the Fall, and the
Flood are fables, borrowed from Babylonian and other
sources.
It was not hidden from my eyes that the
Historical Books were extremely crude and imperfect,
full of contradictions and discrepancies ; that the two
Chronicles, in particular, were written with the object
of representing the priesthood of the later Jewish
Church as an institution that had existed continuously,
and in its entirety, from the time of Moses, and that of
history in the modern sense they contained none.
Dr. Torrey boldly asserts that there are no mistakes
of any kind in the Bible—an assertion that makes
one wonder whether the popular evangelist can be
even an honest man.
From the time I began to
treat the Bible as literature, I have not been able to
shut my eyes to the fact that it contains innumerable
mistakes—historical, chronological, numerical, and
moral. But although I had full knowledge of all these
things, I had to be silent about them in the pulpit,
because of the danger that any public reference to
them might disturb the people’s simple faith in the
inspiration of the Book.
If I ever mentioned the
Higher Criticism at all, it was merely for the purpose
of emphasising the fact that if the Bible is inspired
no criticism, however hostile in spirit and aim, can
inflict any permanent injury upon it.
It was also
undeniable that as yet the Critics themselves were
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FROM CHRISTIAN PULPIT
not quite sure of their ground, inasmuch as they hotly
disagreed with, and contradicted, one another.
Nor
could it be forgotten that some of the most advanced
and iconoclastic among them were yet firm advocates
of the moral and spiritual supremacy of the Volume,
and stood in the front rank of evangelical preachers.
On these grounds, as far as I possibly could, I kept my
congregation in the dark as to what was being done by
Biblical scholars, and continued to treat the Bible as
the supreme seat of authority in religion. Its history
might be glaringly inaccurate; its geology, hopelessly
chaotic, and its astronomy, ludicrously antiquated;
but then it was not written to teach these lower,
earthly sciences, but to be an infallible guide in all
matters affecting the destiny of the soul. Such was
the attitude taken up by theologians as soon as they
realised the impossibility of retaining the exploded
theory of verbal inspiration and inerrancy; and we
preachers feebly followed their example.
But, after
all, preachers have no moral right to withhold im
portant knowledge from their congregation, nor can
they do it without seriously weakening their position
and doing themselves irreparable harm.
In the second place, I found that, having adopted
the literary and poetical method of interpreting
Scripture, I attached other and, as I fondly fancied,
larger and worthier meanings to the great theological
terms than those which they popularly bore.
This
was an excessively risky game to play, but it was
played in the sincere hope that genuine good might
be the result.
For instance, the generality of the
people believed God to be an infinite and eternal
person, clothed with so many natural and moral
attributes of absolute perfection, with whom, through
the merits of Christ, they professed to be in intimate
and soul-making communion.
They told him all
their troubles, confessed to him all their sins, implored
him to pardon and release them, and besought him to
grant them sundry little favors. To me, on the other
hand, God was the name loosely given to the sum-total
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45
of ideal virtues and. moral excellencies, communion with
whom signified active admiration for and an ardent
desire and effort to possess and exhibit, such noble
qualities. I spoke of him as if he were a person ; but I
did so in a loose, poetical, or literary sense. I addressed
him as Father, Friend, Savior, meaning just this : that
at the core or heart of things is constructive, healing,
saving Love.
In maintaining this attitude I was
enormously helped and comforted by Henry Drummond’s
exquisitely beautiful book, entitled The Ascent of Man.
Its teaching was nebulous, vague, poetical, almost
fantastical ; but to me, at that time, irresistible. The
law of the Universe was Love, and only that which
opposed the glorious purposes of love could be called
sinful.
There were numerous other terms, such as
atonement, regeneration, justification, immortality, which I
treated in the same ambiguous and passing way. The
object I had in view was the gradual conversion of the
people to my way of looking at things.
But my success in the realisation of that object was
most discouragingly small. It is cocksure dogmatism
that always moves the multitude ; and even I, in my
most Arnoldian mood, was supposed to be speaking
dogmatically. There were but few who took me in my
own sense, and those few soon lost all interest in the
popular religion and ceased to attend its various meet
ings. I was all the time on the high road to Secularism,
though at that time I had not the least suspicion of it.
Some of those who joined me in the strange pilgrimage
soon outstripped me in speed, and arrived at the inevitable
destination years before I did. One of these was a man
of exceptional intellectual brilliancy, dowered with a fine,
lively imagination, and privileged, above most, to live
close to Nature’s heart. What deep joy was mine when
I had succeeded in winning him to my side ; but his
stay with me was wonderfully brief. He perceived,
almost at once, that the position I occupied was illogical,
irrational, and impossible, and his sense of perspective
drove him at a furious pace straight on to Naturalism or
Monism, in which he found intellectual peace and heart-
�46
FROM CHRISTIAN PULPIT
rest. We are both together again now, sharing each
other’s joy, as well as responsibility.
When will ministers learn that theological liberalism
is only a stage in the journey either to Rome or to
Atheism ? Many of us remember how Newman, in a
book of startling novelty, assigned that fact as the chief
reason why he was obliged to become a Catholic—to
bow in lowliest reverence to a corporate authority—in
order to preserve his faith in religion. At one time he
and his younger brother, Francis William, stood on
practically the same platform ; but one day they parted
company, John Henry going down to Rome and
becoming a Cardinal, while Francis William climbed
towards, and almost reached, the domain of pure
Naturalism.
Theology cannot be liberal, and live.
Based on an infallible revelation from heaven, it must
remain stationary for ever, or die. No progress is
possible, except the progress out of it. Newman was
philosopher enough to perceive this; and he made his
escape in time.
The next chapter will explain how my deliverance
came.
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47
X.—THE EMANCIPATION OF THE
INTELLECT.
Everybody knows that play-acting is a species of
hypocrisy, this Greek word being the term originally
employed to describe the theatrical profession ; and it
would be equally a truism to say that play-acting, how
ever acceptable and successful on the stage, always
destroys the legitimate power of the pulpit. Above
everything else the preacher needs sincerity. At all
costs he must say what he means, and, to the deepest
roots of his being, mean what he says. If he speaks
hesitatingly, falteringlv, apologetically, or with numerous
reservations, explanations, and comments, he thereby
robs himself of more than half his natural power, and
completely cripples the influence of his ministry. He
occupies a lower platform than Samson did when he
made sport for the people.
Besides, although the
intellect may not be the strongest and noblest of our
mental faculties, it is anything but safe and wise to per
manently ignore and snub it. Sooner or later the day
of its revenge will come, which to the play-acting
preacher will be a dreadful day of swift judgment. In
my case the terrible day arrived much later than it would
have done had I been of a cooler, calmer, and more
reflective temperament.
Let me, now set down in order some of the causes
that led up to my emancipation, or indicate a few of the
stages in my journey from Supernaturalism to Secu
larism. They are these :—
1. Loss of faith in the infallibility and Divine authority
of the Bible.
2. The consequent relegation of Religion to the sphere
of faith, feeling, and individual experience.
�48
FROM CHRISTIAN PULRlt
3. Realisation of the forced nature of all devotional
exercises, in the cultivation of which the Closet
and the Church are but forcing-pits.
1. In connection with the passing of the Bible it is a
highly significant fact that the most effective agents in
the process have been professional theologians, trained
exegetes, accredited representatives of the Church. The
Bible has been mortally wounded in the house of its
nominal friends. The Faith has been stabbed to the
heart by its own official champions. Prominent among
these, at the present time, are Canons Driver and Cheyne,
of the Etablished Church of England, and Professor
George Adam Smith, of the United Free Church of
Scotland. I utterly fail to see how any honest, unbiassed
person can carefully study and understand Canon Driver’s
famous Introduction to the Literature of the Old Testament,
and his lucid Commentaries on several Old Testament
Books; Canon Cheyne’s Introduction to the Booh of Isaiah,
together with his numerous Commentaries, critical articles
in theological and expository magazines, and the great
and scholastic Encyclopedia Biblica, of which he is chief
editor; and, in particular, Professor George Adam
Smith’s startling book entitled Modern Criticism and the
Preaching of the Old Testament, without being unavoidably
driven to the conclusion that the Bible is not, in any
superior or special sense, the word of God, and must be
subjected to the same canons of criticism as all other
books. At any rate, that was the inevitable effect the
study of such works had upon me.
2. But how can Supernaturalism stand without the
support of a specially inspired and infallible Book ?
There are still a few simple-minded and honest-hearted
people who, in spite of all the discoveries of modern
criticism, dogmatically maintain that, if the Bible is
fallible and bristles with blunders, there can be no escape
from the hateful inference that Christianity is overthrown.
Such people are the only consistent Christians extant.
But the bulk of present-day apologists refer for authority,
not to the Bible, but to the experience of living believers.
They eloquently exclaim : “ Religion does not live in a
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book, but in the hearts and lives of its devotees. As
plants and flowers are grandly independent of the very
best Botanical text-books, so is Christianity of the Bible.”
The first great divine that formulated this argument in
England was the late Dr. Dale, of Birmingham, in a
book of immense interest, entitled The Living Christ and
the Four Gospels. He firmly believed in the authenticity
and inspiration of these documents ; but his argument
was that as Christianity came into healthy and vigorous
existence before a single line of the Four Gospels was
written, so it could likewise survive their utter destruc
tion. According to this argument, in its latest develop
ment, the Christian Religion, in its present sublimated
and etherealised form, is not vitally associated with the
miraculous birth, benevolent life, peerless teaching,
redemptive work, sacrificial death, and triumphant resur
rection of a historical Christ, but roots itself, rather, in
the personal experience of every genuine Christian, and
refers to the same source for its supreme and final
evidence. Consequently, Christ is not so much a his
torical person as a spiritual force in the souls of believers;
—that is to say, he is an unseen and omnipotent Being,
who in some mystic, inexplicable sense really dwells, as
a seed or germ, in every human soul ; in that of the
Mohammedan, the Confucian, or the Buddhist no less
than in that of the professing believer in Christendom.
Now, if this universally indwelling spiritual Christ gets
fair play, whether the gospel be heard and accepted or
not, he will certainly grow and develop into the ideal
stature. In those who make a spontaneous surrender to
him, he soon comes to conscious life ; and they worship
him with glowing devotion. They enjoy full communion
with him, as if he still actually existed somewhere, or as
if he were a person with a unique history lying behind
him. And yet, in spite of all this, they coolly assure us
that “ Christianity is not a system of intellectual truths,
but a practical and vital experience of the heart,” and
that “ Christ is not a fiction of the theologians, not a
prophet of Galilee, but an indwelling power whereby we
are evolved upward to the perfect spiritual stature of
�5°
FROM CHRISTIAN PULPIT
man.” Quite recently, I heard the Rev. R. J. Campbell,
at the City Temple when'he affirmed, with his own pecu
liarly quiet and infectious’fervor, that this spiritual Christ
is now germinally present in the lowest and worst char
acter on earth. To those who venture to cast suspicion
on such an assertion, these modern apologists say : —■
“ You are blind, and there are whole regions of spiritual
apprehension of which you know nothing. Intellectually
you may, perhaps, be our equals or superiors; but
spiritually we are immeasurably above you, and possess a
faculty which enables and entitles us to judge you,
although you cannot judge us. We have allowed the
indwelling spiritual Christ to have his way with us to
such an extent that we already know all things.” They
affect a sublime indifference to all historical, critical, and
theological problems, saying : “ You may. smash up the
historical and intellectual setting to smithereens , but
when you have done that, you have not yet touched real
Christianity.” What, then, in the name of all the
wonders, is real Christianity ? Is it only the. creation of
the sanctified imagination of a few duly ordained clergy
men ? And is the same thing true of Christ himself ?
The late Professor Bruce, who wielded such an enormous
influence in his day, regarded the historicity of the Four
Gospels as absolutely essential. All the Epistles might
utterly disappear, without our suffering any radical loss,
for at best they were but human interpretations and
commentaries; but the moment we abandoned the
Gospels, Christianity would be entirely undermined.
And is it not true that Professor Bruce was literally and
profoundly right ? If it is or can be proved that Christ
never lived at all, or never lived as reported in the docu
ments, does not his spiritual existence in the souls of
believers become an empty dream? Surely a nonhistoric lesus cannot be in any sense a real person, nor
can a religion founded on an imaginary being possess
any objective reality, whatever the experience of its
devotees may say. The moment we give up our faith m
the inspiration and inerrancy of the Bible, the moment
we admit that miracles do not happen, and have not
�TO SECULAR PLATFORM
51
happened, that same moment we strip Christianity of all
its distinctive features as a Revealed Religion, and bring
it down to the level of all the great ethnic religions.
With this discovery came my emancipation (from all
superstitious slavery, and the full redemption of my soul.
A necessity was laid upon me to renounce, the Super
natural, and to find all I needed within the limits of the
natural. I substituted conscience for God, reason for
faith, common sense for prayer ; and for the first time in
my life I found mental rest and joy. •
3. But there was a third element that contributed to
my deliverance, namely, the conviction that all religious
exercises are artificially forced. Let us take prayer as an
example. As a child, I was systematically taught to
regard praying as an imperative duty, which everyone
should piously endeavor to discharge. I was also con
tinually reminded of the sorrowful fact that, ever since
the Fall in Eden, mankind had been sinfully disinclined
to bend their knees before the God of Heaven. Hence,
even to those who were born again through faith in
Christ, prayer did not come naturally. There was an
old man within them still who violently rebelled against
it; so that, in order to become proficient and find enjoy
ment in it, a necessity was laid upon them to crucify the
indwelling villain, and extend to his rightful successor,
created within them by the Holy Ghost, a firmer and
more welcome lodgment. But, in spite of all my des
perate efforts to bring about the death and ejectment of
the ancient Adam, in spite of all my passionate appeals
to God to come to my assistance in the matter, prayer
was never a joyous and strengthening exercise to me.
It continued to the end to be a hard, difficult, and un
illumined duty, which only my sense of loyalty to Christ
enabled me to perform at all. This constitutional dis
inclination to pray I then attributed to a fundamental
lack of spirituality, to some incompleteness of surrender
to God in Christ, or to some abnormal activity of the
persistent old scamp in my heart; and I tried to pray all
the more. After a while, I noticed that there was nothing
extraordinary or peculiar about my experience, but that
�52
FROM CHRISTIAN PULPIT
the experience of all other children and adults was prac
tically the same. Of course, as long as I believed in
the Edenic Catastrophe, and the consequent imputation
of guilt and transmission of depravity to the whole race,
it was easy enough to account for the innate disinclina
tion to pray : it was a sign, proof, and direct consequence
of that hideous and hell-creating event. But as soon as
it became imperative to repudiate that damnable dogma,
because it flatly contradicted both reason and history,
there was no possibility of avoiding the atheistic con
clusion that religion, in the form of belief in and com
munion with an infinite and eternal Person, is un
natural, irrational, and injurious, and that for Christ,
with the whole paraphernalia of Atonement, Sacrifice,
and Salvation from hell, there is absolutely no need.
This is why adults are never religious unless they have
had religion forced down their throats in their youth.
This is why ministers and their assistants have to be so
busy attending to the religious education of the children ;
and it is to this incontrovertible fact that we owe SundaySchools, Bands of Hope, Societies of Christian Endeavor,
and even the regular services of the Churches. The
idea that underlies all ecclesiastical institutions, con
sciously or unconsciously, is that man is not by nature a
religious being, and that all religious convictions, beliefs,
and practices must be drilled into him by a long and
most laborious course of teaching. All religion originates
in superstition ; and it is a statement capable of amplest
verification that in proportion as superstition loses its
hold upon the common people, religion becomes a dead
letter. If the churches were to suspend operations from
next Sunday, in less than a hundred years Christianity
would be a thing of the past. We know that during the
last fifty or sixty years theology has been steadily aban
doning, one by one, positions that used to be regarded as
vitally essential. The renaissance of physical science in
the nineteenth century was accompanied by a corres
ponding decadence of religion. The acceptance of
Evolution meant the consequent rejection of the Bible
and Christianity.
�TO SECULAR PLATFORM
53
XI.—THE INDESTRUCTIBLE REMAINDER.
Now that we have eliminated the Bible as a specially
inspired and authoritative book, and Christianity as a
miraculously revealed religion, both from our minds and
from our lives, is there anything that remains and cannot
be swept away? Yes, all that has ever had any
real and verifiable existence. We have merely rid
ourselves of unnatural and morbid developments, of
troublesome and hurtful incumbrances, or, in other
words, we have only lopped off a few injurious excres
cences. We ourselves, and Nature, of which we are an
important part, still endure. I can find no more in
external objects than is already, either active or dormant,
in myself. Man is an epitome of the Universe.
Nothing transcends the soul, because it is the sum-total
of all things in miniature. Hence, neither poet nor
philosopher ever uttered a thought that did not awaken
echoes in all minds. That which is in itself true appeals
more or less forcibly to all alike, because it is germinally
present and regnant in all natural souls. I know how
customary it is, in certain quarters, to accuse Atheists of
contradicting, in the most wilful manner, the testimony
of their own nature, and to call them liars and hypocrites.
“ At heart,” we are confidently assured, “ no man is or
can be an Atheist.” The obvious retort is that, at
heart, no man either is or can be anything else. Even
according to the teaching of orthodox theology, ever
since the Fall in Eden Atheism has been the natural
fruit of unregenerate hearts. Now that science has dis
proved the Story of the Fall it is undeniable that, by
nature, all men are Atheists. Everybody knows now
how the belief in Supernatural Beings first arose, and
how it was gradually evolved into its present forms. As
�54
l’kO'M CHRISTIAN PULPIT
I have already said, we are not naurally religious. Even
to-day children have to be diligently and painfully
trained and coaxed, often very much against their wills,
into religious beliefs and exercises, and many of them, as
soon as they arrive at years of discretion and indepen
dence, shake them off again. We do not take to religion
as naturally as we do to our food. Furthermore, un
believers are frequently taunted with their inability to
supply the world with a worthy substitute for the Christian
Religion. “ What have you to offer us in place of Chris
tianity ?” they are excitedly asked. “You must not rob
us of our religion until you can provide us with another
and better one.” We cheerfully accept the challenge ;
and our answer to it is, that the world would be im
mensely better off without its Supernatural Religions,
because they are more or less artificial and of a bedwarfing tendency.
As illustrations of the truth of this contention let us
consider a few of the great, central words of the Bible,
such as God, Christ, Sin, and Immortality. Is not the
merest tyro in theology fully aware that no two divines
are in entire agreement as to the meaning of a single
one of these terms ? It may be alleged that all theo
logians speak of God as an infinite, eternal, invisible,
and absolute Being ; and yet hosts of them admit, on
metaphysical grounds, that an infinite and absolute
Being is unthinkable. “ But,” some simple-minded
person will say, “ I must believe in God because he is
revealed in the Bible.” But several different and con
flicting gods are revealed in the Bible—in which of them
do you believe; the god who commanded human
sacrifice, or the one who forbade it : the god of war or
the god of peace: the god of vengeance or the god of
love ? These are all in the Book, and you must make
your choice between them.
“ My God,” another
exclaims, “ is the embodiment of all high and noble
qualities, and whenever I worship him it is really to
such attributes that I am paying homage.” Then your
God cannot be an infinite and self-conscious person, but
merely an idealisation, a poetic fancy, a product of your
�*ro SECULAR RLaTFoRM
55
own imagination. The only sound advice to such a
believer is this : By all means, retain and adore the
qualities, in so far as they are high and noble, rbut, or
all sakes, drop the fanciful person. The term C/mst,
also, is open to the same objection. As to who or
what Christ is there is an endless diversity of opinion.
To one disciple, he is the Son of the living God, the
only begotten; to another, the completest revelation o
the Highest ; to another, the all-sufficient expiatory
sacrifice for sin; to another, a teacher of remarkable
originality and power ; and to another still, man at his
highest and best, the supreme miracle of history. These
typical disciples represent different and contradictory
schools of Christology, which have always stood at
daggers drawn in relation to one another. In the
Middle Ages the Church sanctioned the Christology of
the Augustinian school, and tried to stamp out the other
schools by imprisoning, torturing, and burning their
representatives. But at no time was the. Church com
petent to exercise absolute authority in matters of
doctrine, because it has been repeatedly proved that she
put men to death for holding and teaching opinions
which riper knowledge has established as incontestably
true. Her character as an infallible teacher has been
completely and irretrievably shattered. Convicted, in
open court, as a false witness on many important points,
the validity of her evidence on all other subjects has
been hopelessly destroyed. If therefore we listen to our
own reason, unterrorised by any superstition, we shall
have to let the theological Christ go, with all the theories
concerning him, or put him in the same category as
Buddha, and Confucius, and Zoroaster.
The same remarks apply to the words Stn and Immor
tality. What is sin ? No two people agree. According
to some there are sins specially against God, trans
gressions against positive commands, similar to * the
Edenic one about the forbidden apple, aftd so far as one
can make out these are exclusively sins of omission.
We sin against God when we neglect to pray, to read
the Bible, to attend church, or to contribute towards the
�5^
FROM CHRISTIAN PULPIT’
clue maintenance of the priesthood. Then there are sins
against ourselves and sins against our neighbor, which
are variously defined according to the theological stand
point- Again, according to the ripest and most reliable
Biblical scholars, immortality is not taught in the Old
Testament at all, so that in reality the Jewish Church
concerned itself solely with the affairs of the life that
now is. Dr. George Adam Smith informs us, further,
that there are excellent Christians in present-day
Churches to whom the doctrine of a future life does not
appeal, and who have accepted Christianity merely on
the. ground of the unique exaltation and purity of its
ethical teaching. But is it not indisputable that if we
eliminate the Supernatural,^with its heaven and hell,
from the Christian Religion^nothing of distinctive value,
nothing that is not common to all great Religions,
remains ? All that is peculiar to it is purely mythical,
while all that is of real value in it is common property.
Now, face-to-face with such significant facts, my
argument is that we do not need a substitute for
Christianity, but would be much better off, in every
respect, with no Supernatural Religion whatever. But
what remains to us after we have discarded God, Christ,
and . Immortality, with all the absurd dogmas con
cerning them ?
Nature, in all the plenitude of her
glory and power. She is our kind, loving, all-sustaining
mother, in whom we live, and move, and have our
being.
She answers all our anxious questions and
solves all our vexing problems. We never appeal to
her in vain. How speedily she responds to our varying
moods, comforting us in sorrow, cheering us in des
pondency, inspiring us in weakness, weeping with us
when we are sad, and laughing with us when we are
merry. Our one business in life is to observe her laws,
and to be in perfect tune with her sweet harmonies ;
and the only sin possible to us is to be in a state of
rebellion against her wise orderings. There is only one
thing we should dread, not the wrath and punishment
of a Supernatural Being, supposed to be seated on a
glittering throne no one knows where, but the ominous
�TO SECULAR PLATFORM
57
frown of our mother when we have wilfully disregarded
her beneficent injunctions. No, my friends, we do not
need another Supernatural Religion, but we do need to
return to the worship of reason, the adoration of Nature,
and the practical fulfilment of the laws of truth, and
honor, and honesty, and pity, and service. This is the
the divinest religion on earth, and yet the one most
culpably neglected. Christians are too busy preparing
for heaven to pay the slightest attention to the socfal
duties of earth. “ But,” someone cries, “ I cannot give
up my hope of heaven, and you have no right to try
to rob me of it.” Well, cherish it to your heart’s
content, so far as I am concerned ; but will you be good
enough to consider, with due seriousness, the following
practical questfons ?—
“ Is it well that while we range with Science, glorying in the
Time,
City children soak and blacken soul and sense in city slime ?”
Is it well that—
“ There among the glooming alleys Progress halts on palsied
feet,
Crime and hunger cast our maidens by the thousand on the
street ?”
Is it well that—
“ There the smouldering fire of fever creeps across the rotted
floor,
And the crowded couch of incest in the warrens of the poor ?”
Is it well, is it right, is it just that these and a thousand
other anomalies, sufferings, and cruelties should be per
mitted to continue in countries which call themselves
Christian ?
Is it well, is it consistent that you, a
professed follower of Christ, should be rapidly amassing
a colossal fortune, and faring sumptuously every day, at
the expense of the poverty and misery of your work
people ? If that is what your hope of heaven enables or
allows or leads you to do, the sooner you part with it
the better it will be for all concerned. In your sane
moments, do you not agree ? It is most lamentable to
think how Christian churches seek to win and retain the
rich by wheedling flatteries and infamous cajoleries, and
�58
FROM CHRISTIAN PULPIT
then dole out a little charity to the poor, accom
panied by the assurance that though poor on earth
they shall be rich in heaven. In their hearts the
poor scorn charity, and cry bitterly for justice, fair
play, and the recognition of their humanity. If the
churches were true to Christ, whom they call their
Head, they would tell the rich that they cannot possibly
enter the Kingdom of Heaven until they learn, not to
bequeath their riches to good causes when they die, or
devote them to ecclesiastical purposes while they live,
and be made famous, but so to conduct their business
affairs from day to day as to preclude the possibility of
ever becoming rich. Instead of that, they are doing
their utmost to perpetuate and accentuate the terrible
injustices, inequalities, and artificial distinctions that
now obtain in Society. Our reason tells us how iniquitous
the present condition of things is, and our reason, guided
by our heart, dictates the only true remedy ; and if we
only had the courage to apply the remedy all would soon
be well. Christianity has been in the world for nineteen
hundred years, but has ignominiously failed to set it
right. Indeed, it has often succeeded in setting it quite
wrong. The reason is that it is pre-eminently the
religion of the world to come, and, consequently, concerns
itself but little with the affairs of this. When we have
detached ourselves from it we shall have time to fulfil
the common duties of the common day, and, as a result,
to restore our relations to ourselves and to one another
to their normal and healthy condition.
My story is told, and I am at rest, and can face the
future without dread. I know whence I came and
whither I am going, and I greet the unseen, whatever it
may be, with a cheer. I take my stand with Ernst
Haeckel in the tabernacle of wonder and admiration,
and I join the great Goethe in the sanctuary of sorrow
and sympathy, reconsecrating myself to the service of
the huge army of the wronged and sinned against, the
suffering and the sad. Great and honorable is the work
that lies before us, and I call upon the reader and myself
�TO SECULAR PLATfoRM
59
to awake from sloth and begin with glowing hearts to do
it. Let us unite in a grandly altruistic mission to rid
the world of debasing superstitions, to dethrone all
existing evils, to establish right relations between man
and man, to promote good will and genuine brotherhood
all round, and to fill the days and hours of this earthly
life, the only life of which we are sure, with merry
laughter- and songful joy. Such is the beneficent ministry
of the only true gospel.
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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
Text
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Original Format
The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data
Pamphlet
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
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From Christian pulpit to secular platform
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Lloyd, John
Description
An account of the resource
Place of publication: London
Collation: 59 p. ; 19 cm.
Notes: Part of the NSS pamphlet collection. Publisher's advertisements on 5 pages at end, also inside covers and on back cover. Reprinted from The Free Thinker. John Lloyd was the Rector of Llanvapley.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
The Pioneer Press
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1903
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
N439
Subject
The topic of the resource
Secularism
Rights
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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 (From Christian pulpit to secular platform), 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>
Format
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application/pdf
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Language
A language of the resource
English
Atheism
Christianity-Controversial Literature
Free Thought
NSS
Secularism