The truths of religion and the Bible!

Introduction

The aims and purposes of the author, and his peculiar conceptions in matters of truth and religion, can be set forth in a very few words. To wade through the whole book to find them, would be quite unnecessary. They can be fairly developed in the brief pages of this simple introduction. After that has been digested, the reader can better decide whether the work would be«apt to justify his perusal; and should he finally decide to follow the writer in his rough and devious ways, he will find the journey less monotonous, when he knows whither every step tends and just why it is taken. It is perhaps proper, in concluding this paragraph, to explain why the pronoun "I" is used, as the author proposes, instead of the more fashionable, and no doubt more modest, monosyllabic "we." This book is meant to be merely the plain talk of a candid inquirer with such thinking people as may be so kind as to listen to him. It his intention to indicate merely what he himself thinks, and to state simply how things appear to his vision. To use the pronoun "we" might imply that he wishes to hold others responsible for such thoughts as he might utter, and that would be the farthest of all things from his intention. Hence the use of the only monosyllable that will place beyond all doubt this fact, that he wishes to compromise no other person by the strange things he may publish. The consideration of this subject lies solely, so far as this book is concerned, between the author and his readers. He brings forth his evidence and advances his assertions. His readers weigh both, and draw their own conclusions. There is no sense in trying to conceal these relations by any "set forms of speech," no matter how customary those forms may be.

My religious opinions, I am ready to confess in the outset, are not orthodox. And, indeed, who that reads and thinks to-day is orthodox, that is, as the term was understood fifty, or even ten years ago? The world moves; the race itself progresses. It is not possible for men to-day to see things as they saw them yesterday. Who believes the fables of the Old Testament; who sees and understands them in their literal sense? Who does not seek to explain

4 INTRODUCTION.

them by a resort to natural causes? Who believes in a personal God, or a personal Devil, or in angels that are as monstrous in form as the Centaur or Mermaids? I protest against the sin of teaching, even to little children, what we ourselves know to be false; I protest against even innocent and fashionable fibbing; I protest against stultifying ourselves; I protest against the vain attempts to have religion mould science, rather than science mould religion; I protest against all sprites, all elfs, all patron saints, all Cupids, all Mercuries and Jupiters — of which Ave seem to have as many now as they ever had in Greece or Rome in their craziest days.

I beg to have it understood that I do not seek to depreciate or destroy religion. I will not admit that a person lives who places a higher estimate upon the value of religion than I do; no one feels its effects upon society more sensibly, and no one trusts in its power ovej the heart more implicitly than I do. But science has opened my eyes. I see God as revealed not alone in the Scriptures, but in all nature around us. I have the same faith now that I had formerly, but it is not founded upon the same basis, Formerly I trusted in tradition only; now I refuse to believe what reason abhors. So far from opposing that religion which I have all along defended, I seek merely to divest it of that false and fanciful covering which renders it disgusting and offensive to every honest and intelligent heart. No, I love the church, as I love every society that seeks to do good; I want to labor for it and work with it. But then it stands to-day, in my opinion, in a false light; it is clad in the borrowed mythological drapery of the ancients ; it is not the religion of to-day. Following its present walks, Christianity is just as liable to do harm as to do good. It is merely behind the age. There has been no development in it. The earth has revolved, and returned upon its axis again and again. The sun has risen and set, and the planets have goneon in their courses. Yet religion, worth more to us than all the treasures of earth beside, moves not. It stands to-day where it stood two, perhaps six, thousand years ago. We believe what our fathers believed, and teach what our fathers taught. The sedate and cynic monks of the Dark Ages did nothing more nor less than we have done. But is it strange that a religion which the pious old Jews made for us twenty centuries ago should hardly fit us now? Is it strange that, as a tight-fitting and ill adapted garment, it leaves us naked in some places and draws tightly upon us in others? Finally, are we not capable, at this late day, of developing our own faith and seeking our own salvation?

I stand, as I conceive the matter, between two hostile and irreconcilable extremes, the scoffers and revilers of religion at the one

INTRODUCTION. 5

pole, and the'unprogressive, unreasoning, immovable devotees of religion at the other. I represent that vast multitude of reflecting and feeling humanity who shun the touch of the atheist and the blasphemer as they would the plague, and at the same time pity the listless and thoughtless worshiper of mystery and ignorance as they would the child or the savage. I belong to that numerous class of individuals, in the church as well as out of it, who believe that religion is progressive; that it was not in the Old Testament what it is in the New; that it is not in the Reformation what it was out of it ; that it is not to-day what it was yesterday, and that it will not be to-morrow what it was the day before. Religion is no monster. It had a natural birth; it has lived a natural life, and will die a natural death. Religion is no miracle. It was born in the nature of man. It lives with him; it grows with him, and as the race vanishes and is lost, it will finally decay and disappear with him. Religion is simply the reflex of man's character and position. In the very nature of things the heathens have one belief, the half civilized another, and the enlightened still another.

I look to religion as the true source of all good, all virtue, all truth ; and upon the church as the proper defender and representative of this religion. But with all this, I believe that with the weight of some excrescences which now bear it down, it cannot go on successfully to the fulfilment of its mission, I claim that the religion of to-day does not meet the wants of the hour. It is not doing for humanity what God intended it should do. It is to-day what it was in Moses' time, too much a religion of forms. There is no heart in it ; it is pulseless. The ministry mean to perform what is demanded of them, but they have, in my opinion, simply mistaken their duty. While humanity is dying for work, the pulpit gives us simply discussion and precept; while she begs for the substance, it is the shadow that is given her. But, is it with dazzle, and pomp, and glitter, and form, and pretence, and show, that we are going to appease a just and an unrelenting God? Oh, what would our good old Methodist fathers and mothers say to these things ? Shall we go to heaven on church records, long praying, much fasting, liturgies well learned, and pew rents liberally paid? Ah, my good friends, is that what God demands? Is that what people are to do to be saved? Is there nothing in common between our religion and our morality? Is religion not the parent and pattern of morality? Is there nothing of true Christ left in us ?

For myself these are the chief commandments, and surely " there is none other than these." "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind,

6 INTRODUCTION.

and with all thy strength; this is the first commandment. And the second is like, namely this: Thou shalt loye thy neighbor

AS THYSELF."

My mission, as I conceive it, is different from that of any man who has preceded me. I come neither to build up a church nor to gather in converts. I come merely to establish that which is founded already. I am opposed to no sect, or at least, am as much opposed to one sect as I am to another. It is the general truths of religion that I am discussing, rather than the imperfections and weaknesses of any particular sect. If they will only open their eyes and see, or their ears and hear, I am confident they may all profit by the lesson I am now attempting to give them.

I come to violate no law and to oppose no organization. I come not as Huss did, or Luther or Calvin, with fire in my eye and Satan in my heart. I come as the Summer breeze cometh, to soothe, strengthen and delight. I come in the interests of peace, to promote peace. I come to teach liberty of conscience and liberty of sentiment, the unrestricted right of all men and women to believe in those doctrines which the God of heaven, as well as the God of earth, impels them to believe. I come to teach the common brotherhood of the race, not in theory only, but in practice, not for any one sect, hutjbr all mankind. I come to teach love, the love for all nature, as well as for Nature's God. I come to praise God, not because I fear him, but because I love him; not because I dread his mightiness, but because I adore his goodness.

I hope in all things to show myself a man, but in no case more than in this important undertaking. I hope that no sort of persecution and no possible step on the part of my Christian opposers, will remove me from that calmness and forbearance which is proper for one who would preach good irill to all men.

My motives in this matter let no man impugn. I may be misguided; harm may come where only good was intended, but let no man say that my purposes are not just, and that the objects I have aimed at are not those becoming to one who claims to be in the fullest sense of the term a follower of Christ. What is here written and published is not to gratify any spleen or satisfy any ambition. It is the simple performance of what I conceived to be my imperative duty. I have felt myself inspired in writing this, just as the writers of the Old and New Testament no doubt felt themselves inspired. I have felt, fatalist that I am, that God has preserved me unto this day to do this very work. It has been my resolve from my youth onward to do what I am now doing. I have never lost sight of it for one moment. I have never doubted, never

INTROD UCTION. 7

hesitated; I have never lost confidence in God, never distrusted either his wisdom or his power. I acknowledge his supremacy in all things. I feel my own nothingness ; I feel that I am merely an instrument in his hands, simply "a reed shaken by the wind". I seek no glory, I ask no applause. I want no triumphs but the triumphs of light and reason.

Finally, I come to utter what has been suppressed for more than a century. I come to breathe aloud sentiments and* remonstrances which have lain smothering in the heart since the day that Luther was born. I come to speak for intelligent manhood, to publish to the world what thinking men feel, but which they do not find it policy to utter. I come to protest against the bigotry, the selfishness, the intolerance, and the hypocrisy which prevail too largely to-day among those who claim to be followers of Christ.

THE BIBLE.

Chapter I, Its Value

The Christian religion is founded upon the Bible, and it is this book that we will make our first subject for consideration. As a book of records, there are none more sacred; as a collection of moral and religious teachings, there are none so holy. What intelligent man is there who will not reverence it for its antiquity? Who is there that will not hold it in tender regard for its piety and its wisdom ? If in the pride of our self-sufficiency, we cast that aside, what better code or constitution shall we take in its stead? I venerate that blessed book; I love its holy teachings, I humbly bow to its divine authority, but after all, I do not worship it, at least I do not worship it as the blind heathens worship their deities, their relics, and their heroes. I cannot consent that it shall be veiled from our sight, or carefully concealed in the adytum of the temple, while its oracles are, as it were, handed down to us from the lips of some venerated priestess. For me at least the age of wild and senseless devotion is past. If I confess the power of the Bible, it must be simply because I feel that power. If I recognize its authority, it is only because I perceive that recognition to be due.

ITS CHARACTER.

I acknowledge that the Bible is sacred, but not that it is beyond the limits of human intelligence and inquiry. If it claims our submission and support, I have a right to ask for the basis upon which those claims are founded, and it is in this connection that I now proceed to seek after the true character of the Bible.

The question in which we are most concerned is this : is the Bible infallible; is it a direct revelation from God, in the sense commonly understood ; is it essentially different from other books, at least from similar books among other people? Our answer to these questions is, unhesitatingly, no. The Bible does indeed differ from all other books, but only as one book differs from, or is above, another. The Bible writers were no doubt divinely inspired; they were men who drew near unto God and held close communion with him, but I do not believe they were the last ones or the only ones who ever felt that divine inspiration. All true christian and good men who write or speak what they feel impelled to utter are, I believe, even to-day, in like manner inspired of God, — with an inspiration like the prophets in kind, but far less, probably, in degree.

But when you insist that I shall receive as gospel truth the saying that God left his high throne in heaven to aid in preparing or compiling this holy book, that he prepared tables of stone, that "the tables were the work of God, and the writing was the writing of God" (Ex., 23, 16), you are going altogether too far back into the the regions of superstition and myth to permit me to put any reliance in the truth of such a story. However, it is not claimed that anything more than an insignificant portion of this great book came thus direct from the hand of God — a little in the books of Moses, and that is all. So far as relates to anything godlike in the appearance of these accounts, the writers of the Bible relate, just as other historians or narrators do, simply what they have seen, heard, or believe.

The leading error in the religious notions of Christian people seems to be this : that no such book can be found in the world, none so good, none so great, none so divine. And yet it is a fact that there is no enlightened people upon the earth that has not just such a book of its own, a bible. There is none without its traditions, none without its records, none without its accounts of a world created, of a deluge, of wicked men and their punishments, of Devils and Gods, their wondrous workings and their interminable conflicts. There is none without its code of morals, none without its well defined rules of conduct, none without certain prescribed conditions by which they are to be governed in this world and saved in the the world to come.

The Mahometans have their Koran; there is the Zendavesta of Zoroaster, and the sacred Vedas of the Hindoos, the writings of Confucius and the Shu-King, the book par excellence of the Chinese. These holy writings were not only believed and adopted each by a race more numerous than our own, but even we ourselves are forced to confess that they bear upon their face abundant marks of wisdom, of goodness, and of great moral excellence. We might also name the Mythology of the Greeks and Romans ; we might speak of their fables, their traditions, their aphorisms, their philosophy. We affect to ridicule and despise these chapters in the history of an ancient people, and yet we know them to have been our equals at least in all that makes a race learned and intelligent, in all tl^at gives it grandeur and renown, in all that makes it at the same time powerful and permanent.

We descant with great confidence upon the sparse literary remains of an extinct people. There is no uncertainty in our minds about their character. We assign to them a natural origin, and give them a natural history. But in what essential elements do these documents differ from our own holy scriptures ? We worship our writings as sacred, and so do other people worship as sacred the writings that they have inherited. We consider ours as affording the supreme law and direction in life, and so they consider theirs. We consider theirs a mere collection of holy traditions handed down from generation to generation, embellished with such additions as the imagination of commentators could supply. We find woven in these writings the thoughts and philosophy of certain devout and reflective individuals, men who have felt impelled by a power unseen to themselves, and who have been urged forward to sacrifice both their happiness and life in order that a world might be saved. And when you add to this the codes of certain moral lawgivers, what have we more or less than our own Bible affords ?

Christians assume, in the sufficiency of their own conceit, not only that theirs is the only Bible extant, but that theirs is the only true religion. No other people, if we may believe what they pretend, have a true God, none have a true Savior, none others have reliable prophets, none others afford a veritable Satan and a true purgatory. Now, this is the- same old story repeated over and over again in the history of every nation on the globe, and we need not except even the nomads of Asia or the savages of the New World. Wrapped up and concentrated as it were in self, they are all equally certain in their own hearts that they are the only reliable and important people on earth, and, as a matter of course, that theirs is the only true religion and philosophy of the world. The creeds of the Turks and Chinese are disgusting to us, and the Turks and Chinese again are astonished at our ignorance and conceit. It requires a great deal of effort, much concentrated mental power and some intelligence, to enable us to break open the crust that envelopes us, and cast off the covering that dims our reason and blunts our senses. We have only to look about us and use the light that nature gives us, to perceive that as a people we are only one among thousands, that we are neither the only one nor the first one, and that in all probability we shall not be the last one, in the world.

As it is with us as a people, so it is with ours as a religion. It is only one unit in a vast collection of units, all of them alike in character and kind, and each performing its own useful and important office in the development and direction of the heart. They are all true in themselves, true from a certain stand-point, true for a certain time and in a certain place. All start upon a career more or less lasting, and all are destined to give place to something more vigorous and youthful in the end.

I concede most cheerfully that our religion is founded in truth, but I consider it a mark both of vanity and weakness to imagine that no other religion has a foundation so good. Ours is truth for us ; it is good for us ; it corresponds to our conditions and answers to our wants ; it is in harmony with our thoughts and purposes, and that is why we adopt it. It is truth as we view it, truth as seen reflected in ourselves. But it is no truth for the Hindoo, or the Arab, or the followers of Fot, for the reason that they have different conditions, and they must have different doctrines to meet them. Our religion would be worthless to them, nay more, it would be positively ruinous. They want something different, something born of their own nature, something that satisfies their own needs and meets their own requirements.

In the character of religion as we have just described it, behold the picture of truth in general. In my humble judgment, the nature of truth has been, and is even now, most sadly misunderstood. It is not a single indivisible and undeveloped thing, fitted for all times and for all people, and remaining to eternity without modification or change. Of that which is received as true now most of it was not so accepted a thousand years ago, and will not, in all probability » be so accepted a few centuries hence. It is a well known fact that what we believe to be true other people equally intelligent and equally honest, believe to be false ; and we deny as absurd and pernicious what others draw to their bosoms as both beautiful and just.

It is the height of folly to assume that what we believe must always and of necessity be true. Let us rather see and believe that what is truth from one stand-point cannot be truth from some other; that truth is not everlasting nor unchangeable ; that it grows and develops, and in the end will decay. Let us not be counted among the number of those who are wont to claim that because one thing is true every other thing in the same direction must be false. There is a great deal of truth in this world, much more than people commonly suppose. Truth has its fashions, truth has its changes, truth has its times. I beg to assure my readers that truth has no royal road, no constant and invariable standard by which to measure either justice or virtue. Under some circumstances it is a great crime to have killed a man, and again under other conditions, it may be either excusable or glorious. Robbery and thieving pass for great offenses with us, while other people encourage them as tending to develop both dexterity and sharpness. Here it is a grave charge to have killed a child; elsewhere, for different reasons, the murder of infants is not only permitted but encouraged. And so we might go on through the whole list of what we have been taught to consider as imperative duties, but which, every one, we find elsewhere condemned and discarded.

ITS AUTHENTICITY.

As we turn now to consider briefly the authenticity of the scriptures, it will be necessary first to determine what we mean by the term authentic. We speak of an ordinary history as authentic, when we are assured that it is written by some one who has had peculiar sources of positive and reliable information. When we speak of the scriptures as authentic records, however, we mean this and something more. The essential point in the authenticity of these writings lies in the question whether they are, as assumed and believed to be by Christians, laws, records and revelations coming directly from God. It is upon this fact of divine origin that Christians wish to found the supreme authority of the scriptures, rather than upon any power inherent in the scriptures themselves. In other words, the Bible contains histories, laws and precepts coming directly from the hand of God, as opposed to every other book which can contain only that which fallible man can write. This is the main point of authenticity that I come to discuss.

But where is the evidence, in those writings or out of them, that they were prepared directly or indirectly by the hand of God? Have the several parts of the Bible anything in themselves which would indicate a divine or an extraordinary origin ? There is nothing in them, not one word, that might not have been written, as similar writings have been written over and over again, by some one who was really an impostor, or by one who, as seems most probable in this case, conceived himself to be sent of heaven to instruct and direct mankind.

Where, again I ask, is the impress of the divine hand in this book? In matters of such grave importance, must we take the unaided, uncorroborated, word of him who renders the account, and who claims to be both prophet and messenger? There is not, I venture to say, within the lids of that book one single attempt to prove by external or additional evidence, or to demonstrate in any way, that God did ever dictate or write one single word therein contained. We read indeed of a multitude of things which ' 'the Lord said unto Moses" and unto others, as if it was the most ordinary thing in the world for the Lord to hold special converse with men 1 For us, this would be an extraordinary event, requiring some more proof than the mere ipse dixit of any one. But what have we in the Bible beyond the mere impression of one who may have been mistaken as to the personage whom he conceived to be the Lord, or who may have either misunderstood or not faithfully remembered the language that he heard ? What single thing do we know of the character of the writer to entitle him to our confidence in matters of such grave importance ? Perhaps too when he uses the formula "the Lord said", he does not mean that the Lord really talked aloud in this manner, but rather that the Lord impressed certain things upon his heart, or showed him certain things in a vision. It is evident besides that a large portion of the Bible must have been written upon the merest hearsay, for no single person could have witnessed all the things which we find related there ; for example is it not rather doubtful that Moses was present when God created the heavens and the earth ?

Again, we are wont to speak of the Bible, as if it was one complete book, uniform and homogeneous, as indeed it would be, if it all came from the hands of the great Creator, God. But in fact we know it to be a heterogeneous mass, a mere pile of detached and disconnected pieces, of every conceivable character, from the wildest romance down to the most serious disquisition in poetry and prose,, a book prepared confessedly by a multitude of persons, various in their rank, in learning and in piety; with chapters, some of them written in the darkest and most uncertain ages of the world, and others again of much later date than some of our profane history. Where, again we ask, is the evidence that God wrote or dictated the whole of that book, down to and including the epistles of Paul and Peter, as he must have done, if it is the Bible, the book of God?

So little evidence is there to be found to enlighten us, so very delicate is the shade that separates the sacred from the profane, that no two sects, nor two communities, nor even two men, agree exactly upon what should and what should not be considered scriptural. Contrary to the commonly received opinion, that the Bible writings have marks peculiar to themselves by which they are easily distinguished from those which are not sacred, it has been found one of the most embarrassing questions in the world to decide what are scriptures and what are not. Some, as the Jews, receive the Old Testament and reject the New ; some books that are rejected as apocryphal by us, the Catholics adopt as sound and sacred. The question as to what books are genuine and what are spurious is not yet decided even among Protestants. Of those that are cast out, no one would say that they are not as holy in character as some of those accepted, and no one would say that they have not as much evidence to corroborate their stories and substantiate their claims.