The safe side, a theistic refutation of the divinity of Christ

Front matter

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UNITED STATES OF A3IEEICA.

Chapter I. Page

Guiding Nature of the Mental Faculties, . 15

CHAPTER n.

Natural Depravity, 33

CHAPTER in.

The Reasoning and Religious Faculties, . 59

CHAPTER IV.

The Christian Religion 71

CHAPTER V.

The Witnesses and Imagination, . . 91

CHAPTER VI.

John the Baptist, 108

CHAPTER Vll.

Cause of the Crucifixion, . . . .142

CHAPTER VIII.

The Teachings of Christ, . . ' . .154

CHAPTER IX.

4 CONTENTS.

CHAPTER X.

PAGE JOSEPHUS AND JeSUS OF TiBERIAS, . . . 202

CHAPTER XL St. Paul, 222

CHAPTER Xn.

St. Paul and the Ascension, .... 242

CHAPTER Xm.

Faith 260

CHAPTER XIV.

The Fourth Gospel, 288

CHAPTER XV.

The Question as Met by Modern Authors, . 322

CHAPTER XVI.

Inertia of Ideas, 347

CHAPTER XVII.

Conversion, 377

CHAPTER XVIII.

Worldliness, 403

CHAPTER XIX.

The Safe Side 423

CHAPTER XX.

Immortality, 444

CHAPTER XXI.

Supernatural Supervision, .... 461

Preface

/COMPLICATED questions in politics or religion ^ are generally such only through the great interests that grow up under long accepted ideas and become too powerful to be suppressed when time has demonstrated that those ideas were founded in error. The questions themselves are usually simple enough ; in fact there is generally no question except as to how to act on new ideas in spite of the opposition of those interested in customs established by old ones. Hence our natural assumption that the opposition to religious or political reform is at all times a vicious and ignorant one, is not true. The opponents are often influential, intelligent, and prosperous. Even then, however, it would not be difficult to overcome them if the evil to be corrected were made conspicuous by isolation; but erroneous ideas are associated with so much that is true that the mind is misled and their separation becomes a difficult task.

Bad principles are formidable only when they are but relatively few as compared with the good principles of prominent men. Though the truth may predominate, the ultimate result of error is as serious as it would be if unmixed with truth. The slight thread of poison in the food will eventually kill, the slight deviation of the ship from the true course will guide it to the rocks, and so in the principles governing our actions, a slight smothering of doubt on the part of some, a slight suppression of small items of fact on the part of others, and a slight fostering of personal interest on the part of still others will result in the underlying principles becoming wholly corrupt, even though employed by a body of men whose intelligence and social positions are most exalted.

The mind is so constructed that erroneous governing ideas will sooner or later work themselves to the front and become a bar to further progress until they are corrected.

The Christian religion supplies many illustrations of this. The belief that Christ was the Son of God involved the affirmation of certain virtues and sins that are such only within the Christian system. Those false virtues alone are harmless, but they work most serious injury in the loss of that which they intercept, and it may be shown that just so far as they control the public mind they are a bar to much needed social and political reform.

But the source whence those pretended virtues emanate has been denominated "the truth," and unquestioning belief is demanded without investigation. This is done by the bitterness of censure of those who presume to question those so-called truths and who demand from the Bible the same responsibility that is attached to other books. It is true a few leading churchmen are alive to the confession of weakness which this position presents and pretend to challenge investigation upon both sides of the question. Mr. Beecher said of Christianity that " what can be swept away ought to be swept away ;" but the great body of believers have been taught and still believe that works inimical to the divinity of Christ must not be read at all. Though claiming so much for the Bible and Christ, Christians, as a rule, pride themselves on their exclusion of all knowledge of those facts that tend to disprove the inspiration of the one and the divinity of the other.

If the Bible be the word of God, it is an insult to Him to demand intellectual concessions in reading it that would not in other works be conceded to a child. That spirit which we are directed to employ when searching the Scriptures should follow, not precede, its reading. If that spirit can be possessed before reading the Bible then we are not indebted to the Bible for it and it becomes our obvious duty to inquire into the circumstances which caused that book and its inseparable system to be attached to the natural religious feelings. The desired effect is produced only by that spirit, and to discover its source and proper exercise is a truly religious study.

So very much has been claimed for Christianity that many believe its overthrow would be a misfortune even though its doctrines be not true. But those many wide claims compose an important part of its system, and its support in our day is largely derived through mistaken ideas as to its supposed virtues. As the believer's mind becomes awake to the actual truth he will the more clearly discover the evil effects that have attended that religion. Its name is given a wider meaning than naturally belongs to it, so that large numbers do not realize that God and religion can be and are quite distinct from the question of the divinity of Christ and of the doctrines appertaining thereto. Christianity has reference only to the latter, though falsely assumed to be the sole representative of the former. Christians are so thoroughly imbued with ideas of this nature that few of them can realize that the entire Christian system may be swept away and yet a pure religion and profound veneration for God remain.

The attention of Christians ought to be arrested by the solemn fact that the first step in worshiping Christ consists in defaming God. It cannot be shown how Christ is a savior without representing God to have made a partial failure. The united voice of Christendom throughout the Christian era proclaiming that God was circumvented by an independent and inferior power, constitutes the greatest insult that man has ever offered to his Creator, and that insult has borne its natural fruit and been the greatest misfortune that mankind has ever known.

It is human nature to promptly protect our interests. We do so involuntarily. This natural disposition has necessarily been an element in defense of Christianity and undesignedly its worldly interests rather than its dogmas have been the base of Christian exertions. The church has been wavering in its rules for salvation, but in its earthly interest it has been constant, consistent, and prosperous. Only therein has it been successful. The immensity of that success has filled the eye and obscured any opinion we might otherwise have had as to the usefulness of that religion.

Belief in the system is what is wanted rather than especial devotion to Christ and the Bible. The church promptly sets aside the wishes of Christ when they conflict with its interest. His two most distinct commands are utterly ignored, and if those commands were as the word of God there is probably not a true Christian in the world.

Among the earliest exhibitions of mechanical ingenuity in the Middle Ages were certain inventions of Christians used to torture other Christians for not believing that to be true which all now know to be false. A knowledge of the truth w^ould have prevented those cruelties and did at last suppress them. The rule here, as everywhere, has held good, that truth and happiness go hand in hand, even though the truth demolishes Christian dogmas. The progress of the church since has been marked, not by an augmentation of its creeds, but by a curtailment of them. *' Its new truths have been but discoveries of its old falsehoods," and the prominence of its leaders in our day is measured by the extent of their widening disbelief.

The church has always combated whatever conflicted with the Bible, regardless of all other considerations, and in so doing its influence has often been given on the side of ignorance. As yet human progress has been the work of but a few minds as compared to the whole population. In astronomy, for instance, the number of those to whom we are indebted for what is now known in that science is very small as compared to the people living in their times, far less than i per cent. But the church has done much to hold back that study. It at one time made it dangerous for a man to say that the world was round — a fact we first learned through that science — and, though that truth has in time over-ridden the so-called truth it disproved, it does not follow that the church did not retard that science by its opposition. We do not nor cannot know what valuable truths and what progress mankind might have reached but for the power of the church in suppressing investigation in that which conflicted with its own support.

Wonderful discoveries have of late been made in exploring the works of God, many of which directly contradict statements in the so-called word of God, and the conflict is increasing yearly and has caused a divergence too wide for reconciliation. Both cannot be true. If the Bible were the word of God the developments of time would the more and more have confirmed such to be the fact, nor could its history be traced through the natural working of the minds of those who originated present ideas as to its sacredness. But time is disclosing its errors, and in a knowledge of human nature nearly every step and sentiment that actuated those originators and leaders may be accounted for, even to the causes that led to the prediction of the coming of the Messiah at that particular time and the circumstances that led to proclaiming Christ to be that Messiah. Nor were the relations between the various characters mentioned in the New Testament such as have been represented.

The New Testament discloses why it is that, after the gospels, just two-thirds of that book is taken up with records of the sentiments and movements of a man who, if he ever saw Christ, saw him with the eyes of an enemy, who looked on approvingly when Stephen was stoned to death, and who quarreled with Peter, James, and other Apostles, while but one-ninth of that space is devoted to the sayings of Christ's chief apostle and his successor after the crucifixion, and whose suppressed gospel was virtually the original New Testament and must have been the foundation for church doctrines for more than a hundred years. Also the natural succession of circumstances that led to the production of the Gospel of John may be clearly traced. Every step in the formation of the Christian religion may be accounted for in the natural operation of the human mind.

Christianity surpasses any nation in power and number of officers, and it costs vast sums, which are an idle waste if its doctrines are erroneous, and it continues to cause political trouble wherever it exists. If, therefore, Christ was not the Son of God and if all the doctrines founded on that supposition be false, it is as important to discover those facts as it is to know the contrary if they be true. The exact truth is what is wanted and to obtain it the first step is to refuse to give to the Bible the deference that can be felt only by its most confirmed believers. The spirit with which we are required to search the Scriptures is not the spirit we should employ in searching for the truth. We should be as intent upon exposing its errors as its truth and should demand of it greater accuracy instead of less than is demanded of other books.

It is a theory within the Christian system that their doctrines have grown up under eighteen hundred years of constant contention and that they have demolished a world of opposition by the overpowering evidence of their truth. But this is a deception growing out of the vast amount of contention among themselves. They have mistaken much of their own loud noise for that of enemies who did not exist. Their frail defenses have stood, not because they were impregnable, but because comparatively no effort was made to destroy them. But little has been written against the whole system and most of that the church has successfully suppressed.

Nevertheless, its weakness is being fast exposed, not by the efforts of concerted opponents, but by the widening difference between the ideas of God as drawn out by His works and the ideas of God as set forth by the writers of the Bible. There have been few as yet to tell of the many evils of that system, though they are most serious, and it is time that they be investigated, not with a spirit of superstitious fear, but with a confidence in our own judgment and that in accepting each little item of fact which may be found there is no danger, for God is on the side of truth.

THE SAFE SIDE.

CHAPTER I.

GUIDING NATURE OF THE MENTAL FACULTIES.

John Stuart Mill says: "A true psychology is the indispensable scientific basis of morals, of politics, of the science and art of education ; the difficulties of metaphysics lie at the root of all science ; those difficulties can only be quieted by being resolved, and until they are resolved, positively if possible, but at any rate negatively, we are never assured that any human knowledge, even physical, stands on solid foundation."

PRELIMINARY to the work in contemplation, I desire to call attention to the confining and guiding nature of the various mental faculties. Our thoughts flow seemingly at our own will, but those various faculties confine them in certain channels, and the acts they impel us to perform are, therefore, of a nature that our Creator intended we should perform. Our free agency, though wide, is nevertheless confined to well-defined limits, within which alone happiness can be secured. We do not notice the loss of liberty caused by some of the mental faculties, simply because our ease of mind is obtained only through following their dictation. We act as our hopes and feelings dictate, but why those hopes and feelings were brought into existence is a question to which spe ial attention is here invited.

The varying theories of metaphysicians as to the number and functions of those faculties need not be dwelt upon. Sir William Hamilton refers to the different classifications by different philosophers as being numerous and contradictory, and no classification is directly given in his published lectures, though he refers to many and possibly all of the faculties into which he believed the mind to be divided. He was regarded at the time of his death, thirty years ago, as the most learned metaphysician of his time, and hence those lectures, coupled with John Stuart Mill's examination of them, will necessarily give the most advanced, though opposing, ideas on this subject.

The evolution theory is directly connected with this science, and necessarily all writers upon that subject have much to say of the mind; but, while the writings of metaphysicians are more particularly with reference to its phenomena, the latter class of writers deal with its development, and in either case they are outside of and above the scope of this work. So far as I have anything to say of the mind, it will be of its workings, what thoughts certain faculties lead us to, and how in some instances we attribute acts to faculties that took little or no part in them. It is human nature as it now is, and not a question as to how that nature was developed, nor as to how the mystery of thought can be accounted for.

Darwin directly and Hamilton and others indirectly admit that no classification of the mental faculties has been agreed upon, and writers usually refer to but the few faculties necessary to illustrate their ideas and sustain their theories. I feel licensed by this to mention a few not named by those distinguished writers, particularly as the presence of such faculties seems to be quite generally conceded. Even if it shall eventually prove true that the partial division herein given is not wholly correct, it still will not invalidate the ideas offered. It is enough that it is admitted that the mind is divided into numerous faculties and that there is no question as to the existence of those most referred to.

The affections are the most conspicuous illustration of the guiding nature of those faculties. A careful analysis of our love for our children, for instance, will show that our feelings have been made especially sensitive to their needs, and the power that holds us to our duties to them is measured by the degree of their helplessness. Even the mother's caresses are necessary, because the infant needs that outward demonstration of affection to realize the existence of that affection, and the child also needs the confidence and mental rest that love secures to it. By just the degree that our children are able to take care of themselves are we released from care and anxiety for them.

The Creator has so ordered it that some of the lower order of animals have no other care for their young than to properly deposit their eggs ; higher orders of animals care for their young but a short time; and we also are released from anxiety regarding children not our own, our care for them being required only in rare instances, and then through a different faculty of the mind. We also could have been created without especial love for our own children, and could in such cases abandon them without disturbing our peace of mind. We would have been just as happy and our liberties would have been greater.

It was not, therefore, for our own good, but for the necessities of the young, that we are made to suffer mental agony by and in proportion to any neglect of our duties to them. That faculty is often too weak in individuals and in some instances is almost if not entirely absent. Such persons can abandon their children without mental suffering, and in other countries again marry and have children, whom they also abandon. However despicable they may be, the fact remains that their liberties are greater and their burdens less. In the absence of those faculties, such people are mental monstrosities, and there are instances when, like physical monstrosities — if the truth could be known — they should be put to death as soon as they are born.

GUIDING NATURE OF MENTAL FACULTIES. IQ

The mental faculty of honor also restricts our liberties. We do not so regard it, because those who, through its deficiency, are enabled to exercise those liberties are looked upon with contempt by all others. That faculty has far more to do in regulating the daily affairs of life than laws have. It can be employed only in our dealings with others, and its general cultivation is necessarily of the greatest importance. An interesting feature connected with it consists in this : that the by-laws of any association are made by people who at the time are under no temptation to violate that faculty, and consequently those by-laws exhibit a higher degree of honor than is always manifested in the average dealings of those who made them. It is, therefore, to the public interest that all men belong to some association and be subject to its discipline, rather than that each individual should be left too much to his own less competent and biased interpretations as to his duty.

The confining and guiding nature of hpnor will be the more readily realized by observing that whenever that faculty is called up in our intercourse with our fellow-men it is because that which it demands of us to do is that which our inclinations otherwise would prevent us from doing.

Respect for public opinion also fills a very important duty and is clearly owing to a faculty given for that purpose. The public interest is often protected by it, as against officers and others who otherwise would violate public rights. , Like all the mental faculties, its power is not felt until attempts are made to cross the limits it is intended to prescribe.

These and other indispensable duties could not be left for us to discover and discharge by education. On the contrary, our schooling and discipline is stimulated by those faculties. They are with us from birth and form as much a part of our creation as our limbs, or eyes, or ears, or other organs. Certain duties must be performed and certain branches of knowledge promptly obtained ; and faculties are given that insure the performance of those duties and the acquisition of that knowledge, and hence an understanding of the duties they lead to will throw light upon our Creator's designs regarding our daily life.

Inasmuch as it is admitted that the mind is divided into numerous faculties, the question arises as to what natural feelings are owing to a faculty and what to other causes. If the functions of each were as well defined as those just mentioned, it would be a simple task to discover the whole, but certain characteristics attend certain apparent faculties that greatly embarrass this question. Memory, for instance, has peculiarities very different from simple mental powers, like honor, or caution, or mathematics. If a man is a good mathematician he will be equally so in all branches of mathematics to which he gives his attention. So with honor, a man will have the same average of that power according to his understanding.

Such variation as those faculties exhibit is of slow growth and is owing to their cultivation or to changes in their relative power caused by the cultivation of others.

But memory is never equally vStrong upon all subjects in any individual. There will be varying degrees of power in remembering words, faces, colors, etc. There will also be a difference in recollecting facts, according to the nature of the subject. The service of memory is in constant demand, and its importance and peculiarities are so great as to have first drawn the attention of metaphysicians from Aristotle to the present time. Nevertheless, in the sense that we have a faculty of honor, or caution, or love of our children, there is, I contend, no faculty of memory.

Memory is simply the action of the faculties themselves, and will be good or bad in an individual according as he may be deficient or superior in any one of them. There is the same difference between other mental faculties and memory that there is between muscle and strength or between the storage capacity of a room and the articles stored within it. Thus, a man who remembers figures well, but does not remember names (or words), is one who is good in mathematics and poor in language. Or memory of faces or localities will be according to the faculties of form, locality, etc.

Recollection of facts is a branch of memory that may be better or worse than recollection of figures or words. We remember best that which interests us most and our interest is measured by the extent of the faculty called into action by the subject. It is great and possibly useless labor to try to perfect ourselves in that for which the required mental power is largely wanting. No interest will be felt in a topic that calls up such absent power and what is then learned will soon be forgotten. But great interest will be taken in that which calls into action the powers in which we excel and the facts then learned will be remembered.

The ability to distinguish color supplies a fair illustration of this, for that power is dependent upon a mental faculty, a fact which seems too frequently to be overlooked. More than a hundred years ago, Hume wrote:

Were I not afraid of appearing too philosophical, I should remind my readers of the famous doctrines supposed to be fully proven in modern times, " that taste and colors and all other sensible qualities lie not in the bodies, but merely in the senses." The case is the same with beauty and deformity, virtue and vice.

The mental faculty of color is so well developed in some that they can match any shade of color from memory, and the extent of that faculty in any individual may be measured by his powers of memory in that respect. With some persons this deficiency is so great that they can remember no colors whatever and are consequently color blind.

Color blindness has no connection with the organs of vision, it being simply a deficiency in the mental faculty of color.

Sudden loss of memory in some directions, while it remains good in others, but indicates a w^eakening or possible paralysis of a faculty. Very old people remember that which occurred in their vigor, but are less able to hold in their weakening minds the events of their old age. Memory, therefore, is only the action of the faculties themselves and will be good or bad according to the degree of their varying powers. An individual, consequently, can judge as to the extent of any one of his faculties by noting the tendency of his mind to dwell upon the subject appertaining to that faculty, and his memory therein.

Courage, also, is a mental power having characteristics peculiar to itself alone. We certainly have the very important faculty of caution, and to neutralize it with one of an opposite tenor would be equivalent to dispensing with both. Nevertheless, both are found in high degree in the same person. Headley, in his Life of Napoleon, represents the Emperor, whose courage is unquestioned, to have been one of the most cautious of generals, and records many illustrations in support of his assertion. Courage, like memory, is not a mental faculty in the sense referred to ; it is derived through a combination of some of the most desirable mental powers, and, as it has caution to contend against, its display has necessarily always been looked upon with admiratioil. The combination that creates courage varies necessarily in different individuals, some being quite deficient in part of the required powers. (When a woman's affections, for instance, form part of the combination, she will often exhibit courage to an unsurpassed degree, ) Such persons will be irregular in their courage, displaying it under certain conditions and showing a want of it in others. There is a false courage, caused by deficiency in caution. Such a person will be foolhardy and unnecessarily expose himself to danger.

Those attributes of the mind derived through the action of several faculties are usually more conspicuous than those gained through any one faculty and have received correspondingly more attention. The combinations and single faculties have all been treated alike, to the great confusion of this important science. It is as though we had regarded the muscles of the arm, the arm itself, and its strength as three separate things, all standing upon equal footing and each capable of exertion without the others. Too much attention cannot be given to those combinations, but they should be recognized as such. They are quite numerous, also, and include memory, courage, imagination, conscience, and others.

The varying degrees of power of the various faculties in different individuals cause combinations peculiar to each, and in those varying powers and combinations lie all the different intellectual abilities exhibited not only in man, but in animals. The range of such intelligence as animals possess is necessarily narrow because their faculties are less in number; but they have widely varying degrees of intelligence, a fact that has come under the observation of most people in their experience with horses, dogs, etc. Darwin refers to the diversity of mental faculties in animals, and says that " all who have had charge of menageries admit this fact and we see it plainly in our dogs and other domestic animals."

Men are distinguished or are especially competent in their occupation by a fortunate combination of well-developed mental faculties, or rather by not having one or more deficiencies that destroy such combination. No knowledge an individual can possess is so valuable to himself as a knowledge of his own mental powers and deficiencies, a knowledge of the latter being much the more difficult to obtain. We may go through life lamentably crippled by the want of a certain mental power and never have the least vSuspicion of that fact. We can more readily find out those in which we excel, though there, too, one may be misled.

It is important when constructing an engine to have every part not unnecessarily strong and yet strong enough to sustain the work. But the mind by comparison is often out of proportion in this respect, some faculties being too strong in proportion to others. This does not conflict with the fact that all mental faculties are good; the trouble even in such cases is the inability of one faculty to fully meet the undue requirements of another. There is also a broad distinction between such evils as an unsupported excelling quality produces and those caused by deficiencies. The evils in the first condition fall only upon the possessor and possibly those dependent upon him, but the evils caused by the latter are felt by others. Some of the mental powers cannot be too strong, while others, such as caution, love of property, selfishness, etc. , can be so disproportionally large as to be a fault.