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“For no more can he who understands hut one religion under
stand even that religion,than the man who knows only one language
can understand that language.”—Primitive Culture, E. B. Tylor.
“ Woe to the Philosopher who will not condescend to flatter in
his picture of man 1 ... he sets the reading public against him ;
he is refuted beforehand or -worse than refuted, for he is laid
aside unread.”—Minor JKorZs, Geo. Grote.
�CHRISTIANITY:
Viewed in the Light of our Present Knowledge
and Moral Sense.
L—RELIGION : PRIMITIVE, AND AMONG
THE LOWEST RACES.
Part II.—THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION.
Part
By CHARLES BRAY,
AUTHOR OF THE “PHILOSOPHY OF NECESSITY: ” “ A MANUAL OF ANTHROPOLOGY,
OR SCIENCE OF MAN,” ETC.
PUBLISHED BY THOMAS. SCOTT,
NO. Il, THE TERRACE, FARQUHAR ROAD,
UPPER NORWOOD, LONDON, S.E.
Price One. Shilling.
�T
�CHRISTIANITY.
PART 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.”—The Intellectual Development of Europe. J. W. Draper,
vol. ii. p. 109.
HESE views embody the philosophy of the present
day, and it is a no less interesting than profitable
study to follow the evidence in the works 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,
T
CA.
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Primitive Religion.
depends upon the past, prepares the future, and is
related to the whole. We must go hack to pre-historic
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 e.ombustion—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” (■£.<?.) 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 Bandj ermassin, 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
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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-,
factprily 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 Hew 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 “ 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 j 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 ? 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
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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
d;hem (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
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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. Waylaying and_ murdering men for their heads was the
Layak 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 us 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
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Primitive Religion.
dead on the same day with the upper classes, for this
excellent reason, that the aristocratic souls might make
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
beuUr true’ the verJ 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 j and they grow hut 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 Muller 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 1”
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 ? Brom 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
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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, “ 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.
15
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 spaced’ (“ 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 beours.” (“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
�18
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.
ig
“ 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,
‘ 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 j 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
�20
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 number of 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 existence 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.)
�22
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 Nir
wana, 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 Beality 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. drove.
11 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.
�24
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.
PART 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 Himself. 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 l?ut
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
I
X
The Christian Religion.
thee with my hand while I pass by: and I will take
away my hand, and thon 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 elean 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 tKey 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 1 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
m her house, jewels of silver and jewels of gold, and
raiment: and ye shall put them upon your sons, and
�The Christian Religion.
IS]
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.
46-48.)
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” (Neh. 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
bad not known man by lying with him ” (Num. xxxi.
1,2,7,14,17,18,35.)
“Righteous” is not perhaps exactly the word which
we should now apply to such dealings ! And the child
ren 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
�28
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 zoith 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 ? 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 ?
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.)
Por 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. Eor 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. 17j
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.
�jo
c
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:—
“ 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 him
self 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
�The Christian Religion.
31
it not strange that this barbarons 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 1
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
�^2
The Christian Religion.
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., i
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 j 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 Borne, 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 1 Oth and 11 th centuries. Through the influence of
Rome 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 1 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 after 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 glory, 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 1 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, 11 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 f ’ 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 ?
We very much doubt, however, whether omnipotence
itself could create a free, that is self-originating, uncaused 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
t 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 1
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 meanby 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
•hew 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 j 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 1 ”
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, “ Mv 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 w’as
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 wuthin 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 j
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 1 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 by, 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 our 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
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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 ? 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 1 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
Bather 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, ‘ 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
Jo be smitten would prevent its recurrence, let us do it.
�50
The Christian Religion.
With a good man it might do so, but with the great
majority it would only encourage them to further
aggression. To give a man my cloak who had taken
my coat would be 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 sesthetic 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 W’e 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.
51
not 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 Bev. Charles Kingsley, says, speaking of
Atheism •—££ 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
�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 the
altered conditions by new and forced meanings, and by
dropping, what no forcing can adapt, as not abidingprinciples intended for our times. So far as attempts
have been made to put Christianity systematically into
practice, they have been failures.
The early Christians were communists—they had all
things in common ; 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 “ who
believeth 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 evil,
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 j 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 have
been 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 their 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 modern civilization
to Christianity. Islamism \yas 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
�56
The Christian Religion.
to the dark 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
of mock-money, both in gold and silver, is the trade of
thousands of women 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.
57
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 Dot 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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Conway Hall Ethical Society
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Christianity : viewed in the light of our present knowledge and moral sense
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Bray, Charles [1811-1884]
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Place of publication: Upper Norwood, London, S.E.
Collation: 57 p, ; 18 cm.
Notes: Annotations in pencil and ink. Part of the NSS pamphlet collection.
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Thomas Scott
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[n.d.]
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N106
RA1829
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Christianity
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Christianity
Primitive
Religion