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THE TRUTH ABOUT JESUS
Is He a Myth?
by M.M. MANGASARIAN
Independent Religious Society
ORCHESTRA HALL
CHICAGO
1909
By education most have been misled,
So they believe because they were so bred;
The priest continues what the nurse began,
And thus the child imposes on the man.
DRYDEN.
Preface
The following work offers in book form the series of studies
on the question of the historicity of Jesus, presented from time to
time before the Independent Religious Society in Orchestra Hall. No
effort has been made to change the manner of the spoken word into
the more regular form of the written word.
M.M. MANGASAIRIAN.
ORCHESTRA HALL
CHICAGO
PART I.
A PARABLE
I am today twenty-five hundred years old. I have been dead for
nearly as many years. My place of birth was Athens; my grave was
not far from those of Xenophon and Plato, within view of the white
glory of Athens and the shimmering waters of the Aegean sea.
After sleeping in my grave for many centuries I awoke suddenly
-- I cannot tell how nor why -- and was transported by a force
beyond my control to this new day and this new city. I arrived here
at daybreak, when the sky was still dull and drowsy. As I
approached the city I heard bells ringing, and a little later I
found the streets astir with throngs of well dressed people in
family groups wending their way hither and thither. Evidently they
were not going to work, for they were accompanied by their children
in their best clothes, and a pleasant expression was upon their
faces.
"This must be a day of festival and worship, devoted to one of
their gods," I murmured to myself
Looking about me I saw a gentleman in a neat black dress,
smiling, and his hand extended to me with great cordiality. He must
have realized I was a stranger and wished to tender his hospitality
to me. I accepted it gratefully. I clasped his hand. He pressed
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IS JESUS A MYTH? by M.M. MANGASARIAN
mine. We gazed for a moment into each other's eyes. He understood
my bewilderment amid my novel surroundings, and offered to
enlighten me. He explained to me the ringing of the bells and
meaning of the holiday crowds moving in the streets. It was Sunday
-- Sunday before Christmas, and the people were going to "the House
of God."
"Of course you are going there, too," I said to my friendly
guide.
"Yes," he answered, "I conduct the worship. I am a priest."
"A priest of Apollo?" I interrogated.
"No, no," he replied, raising his hand to command silence,
"Apollo is not a god; he was only an idol."
"Am idol?" I whispered, taken by surprise.
"I perceive you are a Greek," he said to me, "and the Greeks,"
he continued, "notwithstanding their distinguished accomplishments,
were an idolatrous people. They worshipped gods that did not exist.
They built temples to divinities which were merely empty names --
empty names," he repeated. "Apollo and Athene -- and the entire
Olympian lot were no more than inventions of the fancy."
"But the Greeks loved their gods," I protested, my heart
clamoring in my breast.
"They were not gods, they were idols, and the difference
between a god and an idol is this: an idol is a thing; God is a
living being. When you cannot prove the existence of your god, when
you have never seen him, nor heard his voice, nor touched him --
when you have nothing provable about him, he is an idol. Have you
seen Apollo? Have you heard him? Have you touched him?"
"No," I said, in a low voice.
"Do you know of any one who has?"
I had to admit that I did not.
"He was an idol, then, and not a god."
"But many of us Greeks," I said, "have felt Apollo in our
hearts and have been inspired by him."
"You imagine you have," returned my guide. "If he were really
divine be would be living to this day.
"Is he, then, dead?" I asked.
"He never lived; and for the last two thousand years or more
his temple has been a heap of ruins."
I wept to hear that Apollo, the god of light and music, was no
more -- that his fair temple had fallen into ruins and the fire
upon his altar had been extinguished; then, wiping a tear from my
eyes, I said, "Oh, but our gods were fair and beautiful; our
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IS JESUS A MYTH? by M.M. MANGASARIAN
religion was rich and picturesque. It made the Greeks a nation of
poets, orators, artists, warriors, thinkers. It made Athens a city
of light; it created the beautiful, the true, the good -- yes, our
religion was divine."
"It had only one fault"' interrupted my guide.
"What was that?" I inquired, without knowing what his answer
would be.
"It was not true."
"But I still believe in Apollo," I exclaimed; "he is not dead,
I know he is alive."
"Prove it," he said to me; then, pausing for a moment, "if you
produce him," he said, "we shall all fall down and worship him.
Produce Apollo and be shall be our god."
"Produce him!" I whispered to myself. "What blasphemy!" Then,
taking heart, I told my guide how more than once I had felt
Apollo's radiant presence in my heart, and told him of the immortal
lines of Homer concerning the divine Apollo. "Do you doubt Homer?"
I said to him; "Homer, the inspired bard? Homer, whose ink-well was
as big as the sea; whose imperishable page was Time? Homer, whose
every word was a drop of light?" Then I proceeded to quote from
Homer's Iliad, the Greek Bible, worshipped by all the Hellenes as
the rarest Manuscript between heaven and earth. I quoted his
description of Apollo, than whose lyre nothing is more musical,
than whose speech even honey is not sweeter. I recited how his
mother went from town to town to select a worthy place to give
birth to the young god, son of Zeus, the Supreme Being, and how he
was born and cradled amid the ministrations of all the goddesses,
who bathed him in the running stream and fed him with nectar and
ambrosia from Olympus. Then I recited the lines which picture
Apollo bursting his bands, leaping forth from his cradle, and
spreading his wings like a swan, soaring sun-ward, declaring that
he had come to announce to mortals the will of God. "Is it
possible," I asked, "that all this is pure fabrication, a fantasy
of the brain, as unsubstantial as the air? No, no, Apollo is not an
idol. He is a god, and the son of a god. The whole Greek world will
bear me witness that I am telling the truth." Then I looked at my
guide to see what impression this outburst of sincere enthusiasm
had produced upon him, and I saw a cold smile upon his lips that
cut me to the heart. It seemed as if he wished to say to me, "You
poor deluded pagan! You are not intelligent enough to know that
Homer was only a mortal after all, and that he was writing a play
in which he manufactured the gods of whom he sang -- that these
gods existed only in his imagination, and that today they are as
dead as is their inventer -- the poet."
By this time we stood at the entrance of a large edifice which
my guide said was "the House of God." As we walked in I saw
innumerable little lights blinking and winking all over the
spacious interior. There were, besides, pictures, altars and images
all around me. The air was heavy with incense; a number of men in
gorgeous vestments were passing to and fro, bowing and kneeling
before the various lights and images. The audience was upon its
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IS JESUS A MYTH? by M.M. MANGASARIAN
knees enveloped in silence -- a silence so solemn that it awed me.
Observing my anxiety to understand the meaning of all this, my
guide took me aside and in a whisper told me that the people were
celebrating the anniversary of the birthday of their beautiful
Savior -- Jesus, the Son of God.
"So was Apollo the son of God," I replied, thinking perhaps
that after all we might find ourselves in agreement with one
another.
"Forget Apollo," he said, with a suggestion of severity in his
voice. "There is no such person. He was only an idol. If you were
to search for Apollo in all the universe you would never find any
one answering to his name or description. Jesus," he resumed, "is
the Son of God. He came to our earth and was born of a virgin."
Again I was tempted to tell my guide that that was how Apollo
became incarnate; but I restrained myself.
"Then Jesus grew up to be a man," continued my guide,
"performing unheard-of wonders, such as treading the seas, giving
sight, hearing and speech to the blind, the deaf and the dumb,
converting water into wine, feeding the multitudes miraculously,
predicting coming events and resurrecting the dead."
"Of course, of your gods, too," he added, "it is claimed that
they performed miracles, and of your oracles that they foretold the
future, but there is this difference -- the things related of your
gods are a fiction, the things told of Jesus are a fact, and the
difference between Paganism and Christianity is the difference
between fiction and fact."
Just then I heard a wave of murmur, like the rustling of
leaves in a forest, sweep over the bowed audience. I turned about
and unconsciously, my Greek curiosity impelling me, I pushed
forward toward where the greater candle lights were blazing. I felt
that perhaps the commotion in the house was the announcement that
the God Jesus was about to make his appearance, and I wanted to see
him. I wanted to touch him, or, if the crowd were too large to
allow me that privilege, I wanted, at least, to hear his voice. I,
who had never seen a god, never touched one, never heard one speak,
I who had believed in Apollo without ever having known anything
provable about him, I wanted to see the real God, Jesus.
But my guide placed his hand quickly upon my shoulder, and
held me back.
"I want to see Jesus," I hastened, turning toward him. I said
this reverently and in good faith. "Will he not be here this
morning? Will he not speak to his worshippers?" I asked again.
"Will he not permit them to touch him, to caress his hand, to clasp
his divine feet, to inhale the ambrosial fragrance of his breath,
to bask in the golden light of his eyes, to hear the music of his
immaculate accents? Let me, too, see Jesus," I pleaded.
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IS JESUS A MYTH? by M.M. MANGASARIAN
"You cannot see him," answered my guide, with a trace of
embarrassment in his voice. "He does not show himself any more."
I was too much surprised at this to make any immediate reply.
"For the last two thousand years," my guide continued, "it has
not pleased Jesus to show himself to any one; neither has he been
heard from for the same number of years."
"For two thousand years no one has either seen or heard
Jesus?" I asked, my eyes filled with wonder and my voice quivering
with excitement.
"No," he answered.
"Would not that, then," I ventured to ask, impatiently, "make
Jesus as much of an idol as Apollo? And are not these people on
their knees before a god of whose existence they are as much in the
dark as were the Greeks of fair Apollo, and of whose past they have
only rumors such as Homer reports of our Olympian gods -- as
idolatrous as the Athenians? What would you say," I asked my guide,
"if I were to demand that you should produce Jesus and prove him to
my eyes and ears as you have asked me to produce and prove Apollo?
What is the difference between a ceremony performed in honor of
Apollo and one performed in honor of Jesus, since it is as
impossible to give oracular demonstration of the existence of the
one as of the other? If Jesus is alive and a god, and Apollo is an
idol and dead, what is the evidence, since the one is as invisible,
as inaccessible, and as unproducible as the other? And, if faith
that Jesus is a god proves him a god, why will not faith in Apollo
make him a god? But if worshipping Jesus, whom for the best part of
the last two thousand years no man has seen, heard or touched; if
building temples to him, burning incense upon his altars, bowing at
his shrine and calling him "God," is not idolatry, neither is it
idolatry to kindle fire upon the luminous altars of the Greek
Apollo, -- God of the dawn, master of the enchanted lyre -- he with
the bow and arrow tipped with fire! I am not denying," I said,
"that Jesus ever lived. He may have been alive two thousand years
ago, but if he has not been heard from since, if the same thing
that happened to the people living at the time he lived has
happened to him, namely -- if he is dead, then you are worshipping
the dead, which fact stamps your religion as idolatrous."
And, then, remembering what he had said to me about the Greek
mythology being beautiful but not true, I said to him: "Your
temples are indeed gorgeous and costly; your music is grand your
altars are superb; your litany is exquisite; your chants are
melting; your incense, and bells and flowers, your gold and silver
vessels are all in rare taste, and I dare say your dogmas are
subtle and your preachers eloquent, but your religion has one fault
-- it is not true."
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IS JESUS A MYTH? by M.M. MANGASARIAN
IN CONFIDENCE
I shall speak in a straightforward way, and shall say today
what perhaps I should say tomorrow, or ten years from now, -- but
shall say it today, because I cannot keep it back, because I have
nothing better to say than the truth, or what I hold to be the
truth. But why seek truths that are not pleasant? We cannot help
it. No man can suppress the truth. Truth finds a crack or crevice
to crop out of; it bobs up to the surface and all the volume and
weight of waters can not keep it down. Truth prevails! Life, death,
truth -- behold, these three no power can keep back. And since we
are doomed to know the truth, let us cultivate a love for it. It is
of no avail to cry over lost illusions, to long for vanished
dreams, or to call to the departing gods to come back. It may be
pleasant to play with toys and dolls all our life, but evidently we
are not meant to remain Children always. The time comes when we
must put away childish things and obey the summons of truth, stern
and high. A people who fear the truth can never be a free people.
If what I will say is the truth, do you know of any good reason why
I should not say it? And if for prudential reasons I should
sometimes hold back the truth, how would you know when I am telling
what I believe to be the truth, and when I am holding it back for
reasons of policy?
The truth, however unwelcome, is not injurious; it is error
which raises false hopes, which destroys, degrades and pollutes,
and which, sooner or later, must be abandoned. Was it not Spencer,
whom Darwin called "our great philosopher," who said, "Repulsive as
is its aspect, the hard fact which dissipates a cherished illusion
is presently found to contain the germ of a more salutary belief?"
Spain is decaying today because her teachers, for policy's sake,
are withholding the disagreeable truth from the people. Holy water
and sainted bones can give a nation illusions and dreams, but
never, -- strength.
A difficult subject is in the nature of a challenge to the
mind. One difficult task attempted is worth a thousand commonplace
efforts completed. The majority of people avoid the difficult and
fear danger. But he who would progress must even court danger.
Political and religious liberty were discovered through peril and
struggle. The world owes its emancipation to human daring. Had
Columbus feared danger, America might have slept for another
thousand years.
I have a difficult subject in hand. It is also a delicate one.
But I am determined not only to know, if it is possible, the whole
truth about Jesus, but also to communicate that truth to others.
Some people can keep their minds shut. I cannot; I must share my
intellectual life with the world. If I lived a thousand years ago,
I might have collapsed at the sight of the burning stake, but I
feel sure I would have deserved the stake.
People say to me, sometimes, Why do you not confine yourself
to moral and religious exhortation, such as, 'Be kind, do good,
love one another, etc.'?" But there is more of a moral tonic in the
open and candid discussion of a subject like the one in hand, than
in a multitude of platitudes. We feel our moral fiber stiffen into
force and purpose under the inspiration of a peril dared for the
advancement of truth.
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IS JESUS A MYTH? by M.M. MANGASARIAN
"Tell us what you believe," is one of the requests frequently
addressed to me. I never deliver a lecture in which I do not,
either directly or indirectly, give full and free expression to my
faith in everything that is worthy of faith. If I do not believe in
dogma, it is because I believe in freedom. If I do not believe in
one inspired book, it is because I believe that all truth and only
truth is inspired. If I do not ask the gods to help us, it is
because I believe in human help, so much more real than
supernatural help. If I do not believe in standing still, it is
because I believe in progress. If I am not attracted by the vision
of a distant heaven, it is because I believe in human happiness,
now and here. If I do not say "Lord, Lord!" to Jesus, it is because
I bow my head to a greater Power than Jesus, to a more efficient
Savior than he has ever been -- Science!
"Oh, he tears down, but does not build up," is another
criticism about my work. it is not true. No preacher or priest is
more constructive. To build up their churches and maintain their
creeds the priests pulled down and destroyed the magnificent
civilization of Greece and Rome, plunging Europe into the dark and
sterile ages which lasted over a thousand years. When Galileo waved
his hands for joy because he believed be had enriched humanity with
a new truth and extended the sphere of knowledge, what did the
church do to him? It conspired to destroy him. It shut him up in a
dungeon! Clapping truth into jail; gagging the mouth of the student
-- is that building up or tearing down? When Bruno lighted a new
torch to increase the light of the world what was his reward? The
stake! During all the ages that the church had the power to police
the world, every time a thinker raised his head he was clubbed to
death. Do you think it is kind of us -- does it square with our
sense of justice to call the priest constructive, and the
scientists and philosophers who have helped people to their feet --
helped them to self-government in politics, and to self-help in
life, -- destructive? Count your rights -- political, religious,
social, intellectual -- and tell me which of them was conquered for
you by the priest.
"He is irreverent," is still another hasty criticism I have
heard advanced against the rationalist. I wish to tell you
something. But first let us be impersonal. The epithets
"irreverent," "blasphemer," "atheist," and "infidel," are flung at
a man, not from pity, but from envy. Not having the courage or the
industry of our neighbor who works like a busy bee in the world of
men and books, searching with the sweat of his brow for the real
bread of life, wetting the open page before him with his tears,
pushing into the "wee" hours of the night his quest, animated by
the fairest of all loves, the love of truth, -- we ease our own
indolent conscience by calling him names. We pretend that it is not
because we are too lazy or too selfish to work as hard or think as
freely as he does, but because we do not want to be as irreverent
as he is that we keep the windows of our minds shut. To excuse our
own mediocrity we call the man who tries to get out of the rut a
"blasphemer." And so we ask the world to praise our indifference as
a great virtue, and to denounce the conscientious toil and thought
of another, as "blasphemy."
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IS JESUS A MYTH? by M.M. MANGASARIAN
IS JESUS A MYTH?
What is a myth? A myth is a fanciful explanation of a given
phenomenon. Observing the sun, the moon, and the stars overhead,
the primitive man wished to account for them. This was natural. The
mind craves for knowledge. The child asks questions because of an
inborn desire to know. Man feels ill at ease with a sense of a
mental vacuum, until his questions are answered. Before the days of
science, a fanciful answer was all that could be given to man's
questions about the physical world. The primitive man guessed where
knowledge failed him -- what else could he do? A myth, then, is a
guess, a story, a speculation, or a fanciful explanation of a
phenomenon, in the absence of accurate information.
Many are the myths about the heavenly bodies, which, while we
call them myths, because we know better, were to the ancients
truths. The Sun and Moon were once brother and sister, thought the
child-man; but there arose a dispute between them; the woman ran
away, and the man ran after her, until they came to the end of the
earth where land and sky met. The woman jumped into the sky, and
the man after her, where they kept chasing each other forever, as
Sun and Moon. Now and then they came close enough to snap at each
other. That was their explanation of an eclipse. [Childhood of the
World, by Edward Clodd.] With this myth, the primitive man was
satisfied, until his developing intelligence realized its
inadequacy. Science was born of that realization.
During the middle ages it was believed by Europeans that in
certain parts of the World, in India, for instance, there were
people who had only one eye in the middle of their foreheads, and
were more like monsters than humans. This was imaginary knowledge,
which travel and research have corrected. The myth of a one-eyed
people living in India has been replaced by accurate information
concerning the Hindoos. Likewise, before the science of ancient
languages was perfected -- before archaeology had dug up buried
cities and deciphered the hieroglyphics on the monuments of
antiquity, most of our knowledge concerning the earlier ages was
mythical, that is to say, it was knowledge not based on
investigation, but made to order. Just as the theologians still
speculate about the other world, primitive man speculated about
this world. Even we moderns, not very long ago, believed, for
instance, that the land of Egypt was visited by ten fantastic
plagues; that in one bloody night every first born in the land was
slain; that the angel of a tribal-god dipped his hand in blood and
printed a red mark upon the doors of the houses of the Jews to
protect them from harm; that Pharaoh and his armies were drowned in
the Red Sea; that the children of Israel wandered for forty years
around Mourit Sinai; and so forth, and so forth. But now that we
can read the inscriptions on the stone ages dug out of ancient
ruins; now that we can compel a buried world to reveal its secret
and to tell us its story, we do not have to go on making myths
about the ancients. Myths die when history is born.
It will be seen from these examples that there is no harm in
myth-making if the myth is called a myth. It is when we use our
fanciful knowledge to deny or to shut out real and scientific
knowledge that the myth becomes a stumbling block. And this is
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IS JESUS A MYTH? by M.M. MANGASARIAN
precisely the use to which myths have been put. The king with his
sword and the priest with his curses, have supported the myth
against science. When a man pretends to believe that the Santa
Claus of his childhood is real, and tries to compel also others to
play a part, he becomes positively immoral. There is no harm in
believing in Santa Claus as a myth, but there is in pretending that
he is real, because such an attitude of mind makes truth
unnecessary and not at all vital.
Is Jesus a myth? There is in man a faculty for fiction. Before
history was born, there was myth; before men could think, they
dreamed. It was with the human race in its infancy as it is with
the child. The child's imagination is more active than its reason.
It is easier for it to fancy even than to see. It thinks less than
it guesses. This wild flight of fancy is checked only by
experience. It is reflection which introduces a bit into the mouth
of imagination, curbing its pace and subduing its restless spirit.
It is, then, as we grow older, and, if I may use the word, riper,
that we learn to distinguish between fact and fiction, between
history and myth.
In childhood we need playthings, and the more fantastic and
bizarre they are, the better we are pleased with them. We dream,
for instance, of castles in the air -- gorgeous and clothed with
the azure hue of the skies. We fill the space about and over us
with spirits, fairies, gods, and other invisible and airy beings.
We covet the rainbow. We reach out for the moon. Our feet do not
really begin to touch the firm ground until we have reached the
years of discretion.
I know there are those who wish they could always remain
children, -- living in dreamland. But even if this were desirable,
it is not possible. Evolution is our destiny; of what use is it,
then, to take up arms against destiny?
Let it be borne in mind that all the religions of the world
were born in the childhood of the race.
Science was not born until man had matured. There is in this
thought a world of meaning.
Children make religions.
Grown up people create science.
The cradle is the womb of all the fairies and faiths of
mankind.
The school is the birthplace of science.
Religion is the science of the child.
Science is the religion of the matured man.
In the discussion of this subject, I appeal to the mature, not
to the child mind. I appeal to those who have cultivated a taste
for truth -- who are not easily scared, but who can "screw their
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IS JESUS A MYTH? by M.M. MANGASARIAN
courage to the sticking point" and follow to the end truth's
leading. The multitude is ever joined to its idols; let them alone.
I speak to the discerning few.
There is an important difference between a lecturer and an
ordained preacher. The latter can command a hearing in the name of
God, or in the name of the Bible. He does not have to satisfy his
hearers about the reasonableness of what he preaches. He is God's
mouthpiece, and no one may disagree with him. He can also invoke
the authority of the church and of the Christian world to enforce
acceptance of his teaching. The only way I may command your respect
is to be reasonable. You will not listen to me for God's sake, nor
for the Bible's sake, nor yet for the love of heaven, or the fear
of hell. My only protection is to be rational -- to be truthful. In
other words, the preacher can afford to ignore common sense in the
name of Revelation. But if I depart from it in the least, or am
caught once playing fast and loose with the facts, I will
irretrievably lose my standing.
Our answer to the question, Is Jesus a Myth? must depend more
or less upon original research, as there is very little written on
the subject. The majority of writers assume that a person answering
to the description of Jesus lived some two thousand years ago. Even
the few who entertain doubts on the subject, seem to hold that
while there is a large mythical element in the Jesus story,
nevertheless there is a historical nucleus round which has
clustered the elaborate legend of the Christ. In all probability,
they argue, there was a man called Jesus, who said many helpful
things, and led an exemplary life, and all the miracles and wonders
represent the accretions of fond and pious ages.
Let us place ourselves entirely in the hands of the evidence.
As far as possible, let us, be passive, showing no predisposition
one way or another. We can afford to be independent. If the
evidence proves the historicity of Jesus, well and good; if the
evidence is not sufficient to prove it, there is no reason why we
should fear to say so; besides, it is our duty to inform ourselves
on this question. As intelligent beings we desire to know whether
this Jesus, whose worship is not only costing the world millions of
the people's money, but which is also drawing to his service the
time, the energies, the affection, the devotion, and the labor of
humanity, -- is a myth, or a reality. We believe that an religious
persecutions, all sectarian wars, hatreds and intolerance, which
still cramp and embitter our humanity, would be replaced by love
and brotherhood, if the sects could be made to see that the God-
Jesus they are quarreling over is a myth, a shadow to which
credulity alone gives substance. Like people who have been fighting
in the dark, fearing some danger, the sects, once relieved of the
thraldom of a tradition which has been handed down to them by a
childish age and country, will turn around and embrace one another.
In every sense, the subject is an all-absorbing one. It goes to the
root of things; it touches the vital parts, and it means life or
death to the Christian religion.
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IS JESUS A MYTH? by M.M. MANGASARIAN
THE PROBLEM STATED
Let me now give an idea of the method I propose to follow in
the study of this subject. Let us suppose that a student living in
the year 3000 desired to make sure that such a man as Abraham
Lincoln really lived and did the things attributed to him. How
would he go about it?
A man must have a birthplace and a birthday. All the records
agree as to where and when Lincoln was born. This is not enough to
prove his historicity but it is an important link in the chain.
Neither the place nor the time of Jesus' birth is known. There
has never been any unanimity about this matter. There has been
considerable confusion and contradiction about it. It cannot be
proved that the twenty-fifth of December is his birthday. A number
of other dates were observed by the Christian church at various
times as the birthday of Jesus. The Gospels give no date, and
appear to be quite uncertain - really ignorant about it. When it is
remembered that the Gospels purport to have been written by Jesus'
intimate companions, and during the lifetime of his brothers and
mother, their silence on this matter becomes significant. The
selection of the twenty-fifth of December as his birthday is not
only an arbitrary one, but that date, having been from time
immemorial dedicated to the Sun, the inference is that the Son of
God and the Sun of heaven enjoying the same birthday, were at one
time identical beings. The fact that Jesus' death was accompanied
with the darkening of the Sun, and that the date of his
resurrection is also associated with the position of the Sun at the
time of the vernal equinox, is a further intimation that we have in
the story of the birth, death, and resurrection of Jesus, an
ancient and nearly universal Sun-myth, instead of verifiable
historical events. The story of Jesus for three days in the heart
of the earth; of Jonah, three days in the belly of a fish; of
Hercules, three days in the belly of a whale, and of Little Red
Riding Hood, sleeping in the belly of a great black wolf, represent
the attempt of primitive man to explain the phenomenon of Day and
Night. The Sun is swallowed by a dragon, a wolf, or a whale, which
plunges the world into darkness; but the dragon is killed, and the
Sun rises triumphant to make another Day. This ancient Sun myth is
the starting point of nearly an miraculous religions, from the days
of Egypt to the twentieth century.
The story which Matthew relates about a remarkable star, which
sailing in the air pointed out to some unnamed magicians the cradle
or cave in which the wonder-child was born, helps further to
identify Jesus with the Sun. What became of this "Performing" star,
or of the magicians, and their costly gifts, the records do not
say. It is more likely that it was the astrological predilections
of the gospel writer which led him to assign to his God-child a
star in the heavens. The belief that the stars determine human
destinies is a very ancient one. Such expressions in our language
as "ill starred," "a lucky star," "disaster," "lunacy," and so on,
indicate the hold which astrology once enjoyed upon the human mind.
We still call a melancholy man, Saturnine; a cheerful man, Jovial;
a quick-tempered man, Mercurial; Showing how closely our ancestors
associated the movements of celestial bodies with human affairs.
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[Childhood of the World. -- Edward Clodd.] The prominence,
therefore, of the sun and stars in the Gospel story tends to show
that Jesus is an astrological rather than a historical character.
That the time of his birth, his death, and supposed
resurrection is not verifiable is generally admitted.
This uncertainty robs the story of Jesus, to an extent at
least, of the atmosphere of reality.
The twenty-fifth of December is celebrated as his birthday.
Yet there is no evidence that he was born on that day. Although the
Gospels are silent as to the date on which Jesus was born, there is
circumstantial evidence in the accounts given of the event to show
that the twenty-fifth of December could not have been his birthday.
It snows in Palestine, though a warmer country, and we know that in
December there are no shepherds tending their flocks in the night
time in that country. Often at this time of the year the fields and
hills are covered with snow. Hence, if the shepherds sleeping in
the fields really saw the heavens open and heard the. angel-song,
in all probability it was in some other month of the year, and not
late in December. We know, also, that early in the history of
Christianity the months of May and June enjoyed the honor of
containing the day of Jesus' birth.
Of course, it is immaterial on which day Jesus was born, but
why is it not known? Yet not only is the date of his birth a matter
of conjecture, but also the year in which he was born. Matthew, one
of the Evangelists, suggests that Jesus was born in King Herod's
time, for it was this king who, hearing from the Magi that a King
of the Jews was born, decided to destroy him; but Luke, another
Evangelist, intimates that Jesus was born when Quirinus was ruler
of Judea, which makes the date of Jesus' birth about fourteen years
later than the date given by Matthew. Why this discrepancy in a
historical document, to say nothing about inspiration? The
theologian might say that this little difficulty was introduced
purposely into the scriptures to establish its infallibility, but
it is only religious books that are pronounced infallible on the
strength of the contradictions they contain.
Again, Matthew says that to escape the evil designs of Herod,
Mary and Joseph, with the infant Jesus, fled into Egypt, Luke says
nothing about this hurried flight, nor of Herod's intention to kill
the infant Messiah. On the contrary he tells us that after the
forty days of purification were over Jesus was publicly presented
at the temple, where Herod, if he really, as Matthew relates,
wished to seize him, could have done so without difficulty. It is
impossible to reconcile the flight to Egypt with the presentation
in the temple, and this inconsistency is certainly insurmountable
and makes it look as if the narrative had no value whatever as
history.
When we come to the more important chapters about Jesus, we
meet with greater difficulties. Have you ever noticed that the day
on which Jesus is supposed to have died falls invariably on a
Friday? What is the reason for this? It is evident that nobody
knows, and nobody ever knew the date on which the Crucifixion took
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place, if it ever took place. It is so obscure and so mythical that
an artificial day has been fixed by the Ecclesiastical councils.
While it is always on a Friday that the Crucifixion is
commemorated, the week in which the day occurs varies from year to
year. "Good Friday" falls not before the spring equinox, but as
soon after the spring equinox as the full moon allows, thus making
the calculation to depend upon the position of the sun in the
Zodiac and the phases of the moon. But that was precisely the way
the day for the festival of the pagan goddess Oestera was
determined. The Pagan Oestera has become the Christian Easter. Does
not this fact, as well as those already touched upon, make the
story of Jesus to read very much like the stories of the Pagan
deities.
The early Christians, Origin, for instance, in his reply to
the rationalist Celsus who questioned the reality of Jesus, instead
of producing evidence of a historical nature, appealed to the
mythology of the pagans to prove that the story of Jesus was no
more incredible than those of the Greek and Roman gods. This is so
important that we refer our readers to Origin's own words on the
subject. "Before replying to Celsus, it is necessary to admit that
in the matter of history, however true it might be," writes this
Christian Father, "it is often very difficult and sometimes quite
impossible to establish its truth by evidence which shall be
considered sufficient" [Origin Contre Celsus. 1. 58 et Suiv.] This
is a plain admission that, as early as the second and third
centuries the claims put forth about Jesus did not admit of
positive historical demonstration. But in the absence of evidence
Origin offers the following metaphysical arguments against the
skeptical Celsus: 1. Such stories as are told of Jesus are admitted
to be true when told of pagan divinities, why can they not also be
true when told of the Christian Messiah? 2. They must be true
because they are the fulfillment of Old Testament prophecies
[Ibid.] In other words, the only proofs Origin can bring forth
against the rationalistic criticism of Celsus is, that to deny
Jesus would be equivalent to denying both the Pagan and Jewish
mythologies. If Jesus is not real, says Origin, then Apollo was not
real, and the Old Testament prophecies have not been fulfilled. If
we are to have any mythology at all, he seems to argue, why object
to adding to it the myths of Jesus? There could not be a more
damaging admission than this from one of the most conspicuous
defenders of Jesus' story against early criticism.
Justin Martyr, another early Father, offers the following
argument against unbelievers in the Christian legend: "When we say
also that the Word, which is the first birth of God, was produced
without sexual union, and that he, Jesus Christ, our teacher, was
crucified, died, and rose again, and ascended into heaven, we
propound nothing different from what you believe regarding those
whom you esteem sons of Jupiter." [
First Apology, Chapter xxi (Anti-Niacin Library.] Which is another
way of saying that the Christian myths is very similar to the
pagan, and should therefore be equally true. Pressing his argument
further, this interesting Father discovers many resemblances
between what he himself is preaching and the pagans have always
believed: "For you know how many sons your esteemed writers ascribe
to Jupiter. Mercury, the interpreting word (he spells this word
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with small w, while in the above quotation he uses w to denote the
Christian incarnation) and teacher of all; Aesculapius ... to
heaven; one Hercules ... and Perseus; ... and Bellerophon, who,
from mortals, rose to heaven on the horses of Pegasus." [Ibid.] If
Jupiter can have, Justin Martyr seems to reason, half a dozen
divine sons, why cannot Jehovah have at least one?
Instead of producing historical evidence or appealing to
creditable documents, as one would to prove the existence of a
Caesar or an Alexander, Justin Martyr draws upon pagan mythology in
his reply to the critics of Christianity. All he seems to ask for
is that Jesus be given a higher place among the divinities of the
ancient world.
To help their cause the Christian apologists not infrequently
also changed the sense of certain Old Testament passages to make
them support the miraculous stories in the New Testament. For
example, having borrowed from Oriental books the story of the god
in a manger, surrounded by staring animals, the Christian fathers
introduced a prediction of this event into the following text from
the book of Habakkuk in the Bible: "Accomplish thy work in the
midst of the years, in the midst of the years make known, etc."
[Heb. iii. 2.] This Old Testament text appeared in the Greek
translation as follows: "Thou shalt manifest thyself in the midst
of two animals," which was fulfilled of course when Jesus was born
in a stable. How weak must be one's case to resort to such tactics
in order to command a following! And when it is remembered that
these follies were deemed necessary to prove the reality of what
has been claimed as the most stupendous event in all history, one
can readily see upon how fragile a foundation is built the story of
the Christian God-man.
Let us continue: Abraham Lincoln's associates and
contemporaries are all known to history. The immediate companions
of Jesus appear to be, on the other hand, as mythical as he is
himself. Who was Matthew? Who was Mark? Who were John, Peter,
Judas, and Mary? There is absolutely no evidence that they ever
existed. They are not mentioned except in the New Testament books,
which, as we shall see, are "supposed" copies of "supposed"
originals. If Peter ever went to Rome with a new doctrine, how is
it that no historian has taken note of him? If Paul visited Athens
and preached from Mars Hill, how is it that there is no mention of
him or of his strange Gospel in the Athenian chronicles? For all we
know, both Peter and Paul may have really existed, but it is only
a guess, as we have no means of ascertaining. The uncertainty about
the apostles of Jesus is quite in keeping with the uncertainty
about Jesus himself.
The report that Jesus had twelve apostles seems also mythical.
The number twelve, like the number seven, or three, or forty, plays
an important role in all Sun-myths, and points to the twelve signs
of the Zodiac. Jacob had twelve sons; there were twelve tribes of
Israel; twelve months in the year; twelve gates or pillars of
heaven, etc. In many of the religions of the world, the number
twelve is sacred. There have been few god-saviors who did not have
twelve apostles or messengers. In one or two places, in the New
Testament, Jesus is made to send out "the seventy" to evangelize
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the world. Here again we see the presence of a myth. It was
believed that there were seventy different nations in the world --
to each nation an apostle. Seventy wise men are supposed to have
translated the Old Testament, sitting in seventy different cells.
That is why their translation is called "the Septuagint." But it is
all a legend, as there is no evidence of seventy scholars working
in seventy individual cells on the Hebrew Bible. One of the Church
Fathers declares that he saw these seventy cells with his own eyes.
He was the only one who saw them.
That the "Twelve Apostles" are fanciful may be inferred from
the obscurity in which the greater number of them have remained.
Peter, Paul, John, James, Judas, occupy the stage almost
exclusively. If Paul was an apostle, we have fourteen, instead of
twelve. Leaving out Judas, and counting Matthias, who was elected
in his place, we have thirteen apostles.
The number forty figures also in many primitive myths. The
Jews were in the wilderness for forty years; Jesus fasted for forty
days; from the resurrection to the ascension were forty days; Moses
was on the mountain with God for forty days. An account in which
such scrupulous attention is shown to supposed sacred numbers is
apt to be more artificial than real. The biographers of Lincoln or
of Socrates do not seem to be interested in numbers. They write
history, not stories.
Again, many of the contemporaries of Lincoln bear written
witness to his existence. The historians of the time, the
statesmen, the publicists, the chroniclers -- all seem to be
acquainted with him,or to have heard of him. It is impossible to
explain why the contemporaries of Jesus, the authors and historians
of his time, do not take notice of him. If Abraham Lincoln was
important enough to have attracted the attention of his
contemporaries, how much more Jesus. -- Is it reasonable to suppose
that these Pagan and Jewish writers knew of Jesus, -- had heard of
his incomparably great works and sayings, -- but omitted to give
him a page or a line? Could they have been in a conspiracy against
him? How else is this unanimous silence to be accounted for? Is it
not more likely that the wonder-working Jesus was unknown to them?
And he was unknown to them because no such Jesus existed in their
day.
Should the student, looking into Abraham Lincoln's history,
discover that no one of his biographers knew positively just when
he lived or where he was born, he would have reason to conclude
that because of this uncertainty on the part of the biographers, he
must be more exacting than he otherwise would have been. That is
precisely our position. Of course, there are in history great men
of whose birthplaces or birthdays we are equally uncertain. But we
believe in their existence, not because no one seems to know
exactly when and where they were born, but because there is
overwhelming evidence corroborating the other reports about them,
and which is sufficient to remove the suspicion suggested by the
darkness hanging over their nativity. Is there any evidence strong
enough to prove the historicity of Jesus, in spite of the fact that
not even his supposed companions, writing during the lifetime of
Jesus' mother, have any definite information to give.
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But let us continue. The reports current about a man like
Lincoln are verifiable, while many of those about Jesus are of a
nature that no amount of evidence can confirm. That Lincoln was
President of these United States, that he signed the Emancipation
Proclamation, and that he was assassinated, can be readily
authenticated.
But how can any amount of evidence satisfy one's self that
Jesus was born of a virgin, for instance? Such a report or rumor
can never even be examined; it does not lend itself to evidence; it
is beyond the sphere of history; it is not a legitimate question
for investigation. It belongs to mythology. Indeed, to put forth a
report of that nature is to forbid the use of evidence, and to
command forcible acquiescence, which, to say the least, is a very
suspicious circumstance, calculated to hurt rather than to help the
Jesus story.
The report that Jesus was God is equally impossible of
verification. How are we to prove whether or not a certain person
was God? Jesus may have been a wonderful man, but is every
wonderful man a God? Jesus may have claimed to have been a God, but
is every one who puts forth such a claim a God? How, then, are we
to decide which of the numerous candidates for divine honors should
be given our votes? And can we by voting for Jesus make him a God?
Observe to what confusion the mere attempt to follow such a report
leads us.
A human Jesus may or may not have existed, but we are as sure
as we can be of anything, that a virgin-born God, named Jesus, such
as we must believe in or be eternally lost, is an impossibility --
except to credulity. But credulity is no evidence at all, even when
it is dignified by the name of FAITH.
Let us pause for a moment to reflect: The final argument for
the existence of the miraculous Jesus, preached in church and
Sunday-school, these two thousand years, as the sole savior of the
world, is an appeal to faith -- the same to which Mohammed resorts
to establish his claims, and Joseph Smith, to prove his revelation.
There is no other possible way by which the virgin-birth or the
godhood of a man can be established. And such a faith is never
free, it is always maintained by the sword now, and by hell-fire
hereafter.
Once more, if it had been reported of Abraham Lincoln that he
predicted his own assassination; that be promised some of his
friends they would not die until they saw him coming again upon the
clouds of heaven; that he would give them thrones to sit upon; that
they could safely drink deadly poisons in his name, or that he
would grant them any request which they might make, provided they
asked it for his sake, we would be justified in concluding that
such a Lincoln never existed. Yet the most impossible utterances
are put in Jesus' mouth. He is made to say: "Whatsoever ye shall
ask in my name that will I do." No man who makes such a promise can
keep it. It is not sayings like the above that can prove a man a
God. Has Jesus kept his promise? Does he give his people
everything, or "whatsoever" they ask of him? But, it is answered,
"Jesus only meant to say that he would give whatever he himself
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considered good for his friends to have." Indeed! Is that the way
to crawl out of a contract? If that is what he meant, why did he
say something else? Could he not have said just what he meant, in
the first place? Would it not have been fairer not to have given
his friends any occasion for false expectations? Better to promise
a little and do more, than to promise everything and do nothing.
But to say that Jesus really entered into any such agreement is to
throw doubt upon his existence. Such a character is too wild to be
real. Only a mythical Jesus could virtually hand over the
government of the universe to courtier who have petitions to press
upon his attention. Moreover, if Jesus could keep his promise,
there would be today no misery in the world, no orphans, no
childless mothers no shipwrecks, no floods, no famines, no disease,
no crippled children, no insanity, no wars, no crime, no wrong!
Have not a thousand, thousand prayers been offered in Jesus' name
against every evil which has ploughed the face of our earth? Have
these prayers been answered? Then why is there discontent in the
world? Can the followers of Jesus move mountains, drink deadly
poisons, touch serpents, or work greater miracles than are ascribed
to Jesus, as it was promised that they would do? How many self-
deluded prophets these extravagant claims have produced! And who
can number the bitter disappointments caused by such impossible
promises?
George Jacob Holyoake, of England, tells how in the days of
utter poverty, his believing mother asked the Lord, again and again
-- on her knees, with tears streaming from her eyes, and with
absolute faith in Jesus' ability to keep His promise, -- to give
her starving children their daily bread. But the more fervently she
prayed the heavier grew the burden of her life. A stone or wooden
idol could not have been more indifferent to a mother's tears. "My
mind aches as I think of those days," writes Mr. Holyoake. One day
he went to see the Rev. Mr. Cribbace, who had invited inquirers to
his house. "Do you really believe," asked young Holyoake to the
clergyman, "that what we ask in faith we shall receive?" "It never
struck me," continues Mr. Holyoake, "that the preacher's threadbare
dress, his half-famished look, and necessity of taking up a
collection the previous night to pay expense's showed that faith
was not a source of income to him. It never struck me that if help
could be obtained by prayer no church would be needy, no believer
would be poor." What answer did the preacher give to Holyoake's
earnest question? The same which the preachers of today give: "He
parried his answer with many words, and at length said that the
promise was to be taken with the provision that what we asked for
would be given, if God thought it for our good." Why then, did not
Jesus explain that important proviso when he made the promise? Was
Jesus only making a half statement, the other half of which he
would reveal later to protect himself against disappointed
petitioners. But he said: "If ye ask anything in my name, I will do
it," and "If it were not so, I would have told you." Did he not
mean just what be said? The truth is that no historical person in
his senses ever made such extraordinary, such impossible promises,
and the report that Jesus made them only goes to confirm that their
author is only a legendary being.
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When this truth dawned upon Mr. Holyoake he ceased to petition
Heaven, which was like "dropping a bucket into an empty well," and
began to look elsewhere for help. [Bygones Worth Remembering. --
George Jacob Holyoake.] The world owes its advancement to the fact
that men no longer look to Heaven for help, but help themselves.
Self-effort, and not prayer, is the remedy against ignorance,
slavery, poverty, and moral degradation. Fortunately, by bolding up
before us an impossible Jesus, with his impossible promises, the
churches have succeeded only in postponing, but not in preventing,
the progress of man. This is a compliment to human nature, and it
is well earned. It is also a promise that in time humanity will be
completely emancipated from every phantom which in the past has
scared it into silence or submission, and
"A loftier race than e'er the world
Hath known shall rise
With flame of liberty in their souls,
And light of science in their eyes."
THE CHRISTIAN DOCUMENTS
The documents containing the story of Jesus are so unlike
those about Lincoln or any other historical character, that we must
be doubly vigilant in our investigation.
The Christians rely mainly on the four Gospels for the
historicity of Jesus. But the original documents of which the books
in the New Testament are claimed to be faithful copies are not in
existence. There is absolutely no evidence that they ever were in
existence. This is a statement which can not be controverted. Is it
conceivable that the early believers lost through carelessness or
purposely every document written by an apostle, while guarding with
all protecting jealousy and zeal the writings of anonymous persons?
Is there any valid reason why the contributions to Christian
literature of an inspired apostle should perish while those of a
nameless scribe are preserved, why the original Gospel of Matthew
should drop quietly out of sight, no one knows how, while a
supposed copy of it in an alien language is preserved for many
centuries? Jesus himself, it is admitted, did not write a single
line. He bad come, according to popular belief, to reveal the will
of God -- a most important mission indeed, and yet he not only did
not put this revelation in writing during his lifetime, and with
his own hand, which it is natural to suppose that a divine teacher,
expressly come from heaven, would have done, but he left this all-
important duty to anonymous chroniclers, who, naturally, made
enough mistakes to split up Christendom into innumerable factions.
It is worth a moment's pause to think of the persecutions, the
cruel wars, and the centuries of hatred and bitterness which would
have been spared our unfortunate humanity, if Jesus himself had
written down his message in the clearest and plainest manner,
instead of leaving it to his supposed disciples to publish it to
the world, when he could no longer correct their mistakes.
Moreover, not only did Jesus not write himself, but he has not
even taken any pains to preserve the writings of his "apostles." It
is well known that the original manuscripts, if there were any, are
nowhere to be found. This is a grave matter. We have only supposed
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copies of supposed original manuscripts. Who copied them? When were
they copied? How can we be sure that these copies are reliable? And
why are there thousands upon thousands of various readings in these
numerous supposed copies? What means have we of deciding which
version or reading to accept? Is it possible that as the result of
Jesus' advent into our world, we have only a basketful of nameless
and dateless copies and documents? Is it conceivable, I ask, that
a God would send his Son to us, and then leave us to wander through
a pile of dusty manuscripts to find out why He sent His Son, and
what He taught when on earth?
The only answer the Christian church can give to this question
is that the original writings were purposely allowed to perish.
When a precious document containing the testament of Almighty God,
and inscribed for an eternal purpose by the Holy Ghost, disappears
altogether there is absolutely no other way of accounting for its
disappearance than by saying, as we have suggested, that its divine
author must have intentionally withdrawn it from circulation. "God
moves in a mysterious way" is the last resort of the believer. This
is the one argument which is left to theology to fight science
with. Unfortunately it is an argument which would prove every cult
and "ism" under the heavens true. The Mohammedan, the Mazdaian, and
the Pagan may also fall back upon faith. There is nothing which
faith can not cover up from the light. But if a faith which ignores
evidence be not a superstition, what then is superstition?
I wonder if the Catholic Church, which pretends to believe --
and which derives quite an income from the belief -- that God has
miraculously preserved the wood of the cross, the Holy Sepulchre,
in Jerusalem, the coat of Jesus, and quite a number of other
mementos, can explain why the original manuscripts were lost. I
have a suspicion that there were no "original" manuscripts. I am
not sure of this, of course, but if nails, bones and holy places
could be miraculously preserved, why not also manuscripts? It is
reasonable to suppose that the Deity would not have permitted the
most important documents containing His Revelation to drop into
some hole and disappear, or to be gnawed into dust by the insects,
after having had them written by special inspiration.
Again, when these documents, such as we find them, are
examined, it will be observed that, even in the most elementary
intelligence which they pretend to furnish, they are hopelessly at
variance with one another. It is, for example, utterly impossible
to reconcile Matthew's genealogy of Jesus with the one given by
Luke. In copying the names of the supposed ancestors of Jesus they
tamper with the list as given in book of Chronicles, in the Old
Testament, and thereby justly expose themselves to the charge of
bad faith. One evangelist says Jesus was descended from Solomon,
born of "her that had been the wife of Urias." It will be
remembered that David ordered Urias killed in a cowardly manner,
that may marry his widow, whom he coveted. According to Matthew,
Jesus is one of the offspring of this adulterous relation.
According to Luke, it is not through Solomon, but through
Nathan, that Jesus is connected with the house of David.
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Again, Luke tells us that the name of the father of Joseph was
Heli; Matthew says it was Jacob. If the writers of the gospels were
contemporaries of Joseph they could have easily learned the exact
name of his father.
Again, why do these biographers of Jesus give us the genealogy
of Joseph if he was not the father of Jesus? It is the genealogy of
Mary which they should have given to prove the descent of Jesus
from the house of David, and not that of Joseph. These
irreconcilable differences between Luke, Matthew and the other
evangelists, go to prove that these authors possessed no reliable
information concerning the subjects they were writing about. For if
Jesus is a historical character, and these biographers were really
his immediate associates, and were inspired besides, how are we to
explain their blunders and contradictions about his genealogy?
A good illustration of the mythical or unhistorical character
of the New Testament is furnished by the story of John the Baptist.
He is first represented as confessing publicly that Jesus is the
Christ; that he himself is not worthy to unloose the latchet of his
shoes; and that Jesus is the Lamb of God, "who taketh away the sins
of the. world." John was also present, the gospels say, when the
heavens opened and a dove descended on Jesus' head, and he heard
the voice from the skies, crying: "He is my beloved Son, in whom I
am well pleased."
Is it possible that, a few chapters later, this same John
forgets his public confession, -- the dove and the voice from
heaven, -- and actually sends two of his disciples to find out who
this Jesus is. [Matthew xi.] The only way we can account for such
strange conduct is that the compiler or editor in question had two
different myths or stories before him, and he wished to use them
both.
A further proof of the loose and extravagant style of the
Gospel writers is furnished by the concluding verse of the Fourth
Gospel: "There are also many other things which Jesus did, the
which, if they should be written, every one, I Suppose that even
the world itself could not contain the books that should be
written." This is more like the language of a myth-maker than of a
historian. How much reliance can we put in a reporter who is given
to such exaggeration? To say that the world itself would be too
small to contain the unreported sayings and doings of a teacher
whose public life possibly did not last longer than a year, and
whose reported words and deeds fill only a few pages, is to prove
one's statements unworthy of serious consideration.
And it is worth oar while to note also that the documents
which have come down to our time and which purport to be the
biographies of Jesus, are not only written in an alien language,
that is to say, in a language which was not that of Jesus and his
disciples, but neither are they dated or signed. Jesus and his
twelve apostles were Jews; why are all the four Gospels written in
Greek? If they were originally written in Hebrew, how can we tell
that the Greek translation is accurate, since we can not compare it
with the originals? And why are these Gospels anonymous? Why are
they not dated? But as we shall say something more on this subject
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in the present volume, we confine ourselves at this point to
reproducing a fragment of the manuscript pages from which our Greek
Translations have been made. It is admitted by scholars that owing
to the difficulty of reading these ancient and imperfect and also
conflicting texts, an accurate translation is impossible. But this
is another way of saying that what the churches call the Word of
God is not only the word of man, but a very imperfect word, at
that.
The belief in Jesus, then, is founded on secondary documents,
altered and edited by various hands; on lost originals, and on
anonymous manuscripts of an age considerably later than the events
therein related -- manuscripts which contradict each other as well
as themselves. Such is clearly and undeniably the basis for the
belief in a historical Jesus. It was this sense of the
insufficiency of the evidence which drove the missionaries of
Christianity to commit forgeries.
If there was ample evidence for the historicity of Jesus, why
did his biographers resort to forgery? The following admissions by
Christian writers themselves show the helplessness of the early
preachers in the presence of inquirers who asked for proofs. The
church historian, Mosheim, writes that, "The Christian Fathers
deemed it a pious act to employ deception and fraud."
[Ecclesiastical Hist., Vol. I, p. 347.] Again, he says: "The
greatest and most pious teachers were nearly all of them infected
with this leprosy." Will not some believer tell us why forgery and
fraud were necessary to prove the historicity of Jesus.
Another historian, Milman, writes that, "Pious fraud was
admitted and avowed" by the early missionaries of Jesus. "It was an
age of literary frauds," writes Bishop Ellicott, speaking of the
times immediately following the alleged crucifixion of Jesus. Dr.
Giles declares that, "There can be no doubt that great numbers of
books were written with no other purpose than to deceive." And it
is the opinion of Dr. Robertson Smith that, "There was an enormous
floating mass of spurious literature created to suit party views."
Books which are now rejected as apocryphal were at one time
received as inspired, and books which are now believed to be
infallible were at one tune regarded as of no authority in the
Christian world. It certainly is puzzling that there should be a
whole literature of fraud and forgery in the name of a historical
person. But if Jesus was a myth, we can easily explain the legends
and traditions springing up in his name.
The early followers of Jesus, then, realizing the force of
this objection, did actually resort to interpolation and forgery in
order to prove that Jesus was a historical character.
One of the oldest critics of the Christian religion was a
Pagan, known to history under the name of Porphyry; yet, the early
Fathers did not hesitate to tamper even with the writings of an
avowed opponent of their religion. After issuing an edict to
destroy, among others, the writings of this philosopher, a work,
called Philosophy of Oracles, was produced, in which the author is
made to write almost as a Christian; and the name of Porphyry was
signed to it as its author. St. Augustine was one of the first to
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reject it as a forgery. [Geo. W. Foote. Crimes of Christianity.] A
more astounding invention than this alleged work of a heathen
bearing witness to Christ is difficult to produce. Do these
forgeries, these apocryphal writings, these interpolations, freely
admitted to have been the prevailing practice of the early
Christians, help to prove the existence of Jesus? And when to this
wholesale manufacture of doubtful evidence is added the terrible
vandalism which nearly destroyed every great Pagan classic, we can
form an idea of the desperate means to which the early Christians
resorted to prove that Jesus was not a myth. It all goes to show
how difficult it is to make a man out of a myth.
VIRGIN BIRTHS
Stories of gods born of virgins are to be found in nearly
every age and country. There have been many virgin mothers, and
Mary with her child is but a recent version of a very old and
universal myth. In China and India, in Babylonia and Egypt, in
Greece and Rome, "divine" beings selected from among the daughters
of men the purest and most beautiful to serve them as a means of
entrance into the world of mortals. Wishing to take upon themselves
the human form, while retaining at the same time their "divinity,"
this compromise -- of an earthly mother with a "divine" father --
was effected. In the form of a swan Jupiter approached Leda, as in
the guise of a dove, or a Paracletug, Jehovah "overshadowed" Mary.
A nymph bathing in a river in China is touched by a lotus
plant, and the divine Fohi is born.
In Siam, a wandering sunbeam caresses a girl in her teens, and
the great and wonderful deliverer, Codom, is born. In the life of
Buddha we read that he descended on his mother Maya, "in likeness
as the heavenly queen, and entered her womb," and was born from her
right side, to save the world." [Stories of Virgin Births.
Reference: Lord Macartney. Voyage dans 'interview de la Chine et en
Tartarie. Vol. I p. 48. See also Les Vierges Meres et les Naissance
Miraculeuse. P. Saintyves. p. 19, etc.] In Greece, the young god
Apollo visits a fair maid of Athens, and a Plato is ushered into
the world.
In ancient Mexico, as well as in Babylonia, and in modern
Corea, as in modern Palestine, as in the legends of all lands,
virgins gave birth and became divine mothers. But the real home of
virgin births is the land of the Nile. Eighteen hundred years
before Christ, we find carved on one of the walls of the great
temple of Luxor a picture of the annunciation, conception and birth
of King Amunothph III, an almost exact copy of the annunciation,
conception and birth of the Christian God. Of course no one will
think of maintaining that the Egyptians borrowed the idea from the
Catholics nearly two thousand years before the Christian era. "The
story in the Gospel of Luke, the first and second chapters is,"
says Malvert, "a reproduction, 'point by point,' of the story in
stone of the miraculous birth of Amunothph." [Science and Religion.
p. 96.]
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Sharpe in his Egyptian Mythology, page 19, gives the following
description of the, Luxor picture, quoted by G.W. Foote in his
'Bible Romances,' page 126: "In this picture we have the
annunciation, the conception, the birth and the adoration, as
described in the first and second chapters of Luke's Gospel."
Massey gives a more minute description of the Luxor picture. "The
first scene on the left hand shows the god Taht, the divine Wolrd
or Loges, in the act of hailing the virgin queen, announcing to her
that she is to give birth to a son. In the second scene the god
Kneph (assisted by Hathor) gives life to her. This is the Holy
Ghost, or Spirit that causes conception. ... Next the mother is
seated on the midwife's stool, and the child is supported in the
hands of one of the nurses. The fourth scene is that of the
adoration. Here the child is enthroned, receiving homage from the
gods and gifts from men." [Natural Geneses. Massey, Vol. II, p.
398.] The picture on the wall of the Luxor temple, then, is one of
the sources to which the anonymous writers of the Gospels went for
their miraculous story. It is no wonder they suppressed their own
identity as well as the source from which they borrowed their
material.
Not only the idea of a virgin mother, but all the other
miraculous events, such as the stable cradle, the guiding star, the
massacre of the children, the flight to Egypt, and the resurrection
and bodily ascension toward the clouds, have not only been
borrowed, but are even scarcely altered in the New Testament story
of Jesus.
That the early Christians borrowed the legend of Jesus from
earthly sources is too evident to be even questioned. Gerald Massey
in his great work on Egyptian origins demonstrates the identity of
Mary, the mother of Jesus, with Isis, the mother of Horus. He says:
"The most ancient, goldbedizened, smoke-stained Byzantine pictures
of the virgin and child represent the mythical mother as Isis, and
not as a human mother of Nazareth. [Vol. II, p. 487.] Science and
research have made this fact so certain that, on the one hand
ignorance, and on the other interest only, can continue to claim
inspiration for the authors of the undated and unsigned fragmentary
documents which pass for the Word of God. If, then, Jesus is
stripped of all the borrowed legends and miracles of which he is
the subject; and if we also take away from him all the teachings
which collected from Jewish and Pagan sources have been attributed
to him -- what will be left of him? That the ideas put in his mouth
have been culled and compiled from other sources is as demonstrable
as the Pagan origin of the legends related of him.
Nearly every one of the dogmas and ceremonies in the Christian
cult were borrowed from other and older religions. The resurrection
myth, the ascension, the eucharist, baptism, worship by kneeling or
prostration, the folding of the hands on the breast, the ringing of
bells and the burning of incense, the vestments and vessels used in
church, the candles, "holy" water, -- even the word Mass, were all
adopted and adapted by the Christians from the religions of the
ancients. The Trinity is as much Pagan, as much Indian or Buddhist,
as it is Christian. The idea of a Son of God is as old as 'the
oldest cult. The sun is the son of heaven in all primitive faiths.
The physical sun becomes in the course of evolution, the Son of
Righteousness, or the Son of God, and heaven is personified as the
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Father on High. The halo around the head of Jesus, the horns of the
older deities, the rays of light radiating from the heads of Hindu
and Pagan gods are incontrovertible evidence that all gods were at
one time -- the sun in heaven.
THE ORIGIN OF THE CROSS
Only the uninformed, of whom, we regret to say, there are a
great many, and who are the main support of the old religions,
still believe that the cross originated with Christianity. Like the
dogmas of the Trinity, the virgin birth, and the resurrection, the
sign of the cross or the cross as an emblem or a symbol was
borrowed from the more ancient faiths of Asia. Perhaps one of the
most important discoveries which primitive man felt obliged never
to be ungrateful enough to forget, was the production of fire by
the friction of two sticks placed across each other in the form of
a cross. As early as the stone age we find the cross carved on
monuments which have been dug out of the earth and which can be
seen in the museums of Europe. On the coins of later generations as
well as on the altars of prehistoric times we find the "sacred"
symbol of the cross. The dead in ancient cemeteries slept under the
cross as they do in our day in Catholic churchyards.
In ancient Egypt, as in modern China, India, Corea, the cross
is venerated by the masses as a charm of great power. In the Musee
Guimet, in Paris, we have seen specimens of pre-Christian crosses.
In the Louvre Museum one of the "heathen" gods carries a cross on
his head. During his second journey to New Zealand, Cook was
surprised to find the natives marking the graves of their dead with
the cross. We saw, in the Museum of St. Germain, an ancient
divinity of Gaul, before the conquest of the country by Julius
Caesar, wearing a garment on which was woven a cross. In the same
museum an ancient, altar of Gaul under Paganism, had a cross carved
upon it. That the cross was not adopted by the followers of Jesus
until a later date may be inferred from the silence of the earlier
disciples, Matthew, Mark and Luke, on the details of the
crucifixion, which is more fully developed in the later gospel of
John. The first three evangelists say nothing about the nails or
the blood, and give the impression that he was hanged. Writing of
the two thieves who were sentenced to receive the same punishment,
Luke says, "One of the malefactors that was hanged with him." The
idea of a bleeding Christ, such as we see on crosses in Catholic
churches, is not present in these earlier descriptions of the
crucifixion; the Christians of the time of Origin were called "the
followers of the god who was hanged." In the fourth gospel we see
the beginnings of the legend of the cross, of Jesus carrying or
falling under the weight of the cross, of the nail prints in his
hands and feet, of the spear drawing the blood from his side and
smearing his body. Of all this, the first three evangelists are
quite ignorant.
Let it be further noted that it was not until eight hundred
years after the supposed crucifixion that Jesus is seen in the form
of a human being on the cross. Not in any of the paintings on the
ancient catacombs is found a crucified Christ. The earliest cross
bearing a human being is of the eighth century. For a long time a
lamb with a cross, or on a cross, was the Christian symbol, and it
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is a lamb which we see entombed in the "holy sepulchre." In more
than one mosaic of early Christian times, it is not Jesus, but a
lamb, which is bleeding for the salvation of the world. How a lamb
came to play so important a role in Christianity is variously
explained. The similarity between the name of the Hindu god, Agni
and the meaning of the same word in Latin, which is a lamb, is one
theory. Another is that a ram, one of the signs of the zodiac,
often confounded by the ancients with a lamb, is the origin of the
popular reverence for the lamb as a symbol -- a reverence which all
religions based on sun-worship shared. The lamb in Christianity
takes away the sins of the people, just as the paschal lamb did in
the Old Testament, and earlier still, just as it did in Babylonia.
To the same effect is the following letter of the bishop of
Mende, in France, bearing date of the year 800 A.D.: "Because the
darkness has disappeared, and because also Christ is a real man,
Pope Adrian commands us to paint him under the form of a man. The
lamb of God must not any longer be painted on a cross, but after a
human form has been placed on the cross, there is no objection to
have a lamb also represented with it, either at the foot of the
cross or on the opposite side." [Translated from the French of
Didron. Quoted by Malvert.] We leave it to our readers to draw the
necessary conclusions from the above letter. How did a lamb hold
its place on the cross for eight hundred years? If Jesus was really
crucified, and that fact was a matter of history, why did it take
eight hundred years for a Christian bishop to write, "now that
Christ is a real man," etc.? Today, it would be considered a
blasphemy to place a lamb on a cross.
On the tombstones of Christians of the fourth century are
pictures representing, not Jesus, but a lamb, working the miracles
mentioned in the gospels, such as multiplying the loaves and
fishes, and raising Lazarus from the dead.
The first representations of a human form on the cross differ
considerably from those which prevail at the present time. While
the figure on the modern cross is almost naked, those on the
earlier ones are clothed and completely covered. Wearing a flowing
tunic, Jesus is standing straight against the cross with his arms
outstretched, as though in the act of delivering an address.
Frequently, at his feet, on the cross, there is still painted the
figure of a lamb, which by and by, he is going to replace
altogether. Gradually the robe disappears from the crucified one,
until we see him crucified, as in the adjoining picture, with
hardly any clothes on, and wearing an expression of great agony.
THE SILENCE OF PROFANE WRITERS
In all historical matters, we cannot ask for more than a
reasonable assurance concerning any question. In fact, absolute
certainty in any branch of human knowledge, with the exception of
mathematics, perhaps, is impossible. We are finite beings, limited
in all our powers, and, hence, our conclusions are not only
relative, but they should ever be held subject to correction. When
our law courts send a man to the gallows, they can have no more
than a reasonable assurance that he is guilty; when they acquit
him, they can have no more than a reasonable assurance that he is
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innocent. Positive assurance is unattainable. The dogmatist is the
only one who claims to possess absolute certainty. But his claim is
no more than a groundless assumption. When, therefore, we learn
that Josephus, for instance, who lived in the same country and
about the same time as Jesus, and wrote an extensive history of the
men and events of his day and country, does not mention Jesus,
except by interpolation, which even a Christian clergyman, Bishop
Warburton, calls "a rank forgery, and a very stupid one, too," we
can be reasonably sure that no such Jesus as is described in the
New Testament, lived about the same time and in the same country
with Josephus.
The failure of such a historian as Josephus to mention Jesus
tends to make the existence of Jesus at least reasonably doubtful.
Few Christians now place any reliance upon the evidence from
Josephus. The early Fathers made this Jew admit that Jesus was the
Son of God. Of course, the admission was a forgery. De Quincey says
the passage is known to be "a forgery by all men not lunatics." Of
one other supposed reference in Josephus, Canon Farrar says: "This
passage was early tampered with by the Christians." The same writer
says this of a third passage: "Respecting the third passage in
Josephus, the only question is whether it be partly or entirely
spurious." Lardner, the great English theologian, was the first man
to prove that Josephus was a poor witness for Christ.
In examining the evidence from profane writers we must
remember that the silence of one contemporary author is more
important than the supposed testimony of another. There was living
in the same time with Jesus a great Jewish scholar by the name of
Philo. He was an Alexandrian Jew, and he visited Jerusalem while
Jesus was teaching and working miracles in the holy city. Yet Philo
in all his works never once mentions Jesus. He does not seem to
have heard of him. He could not have helped mentioning him if he
had really seen him or heard of him. In one place in his works
Philo is describing the difference between two Jewish names, Hosea
and Jesus. Jesus he says, means Savior of the people. What a fine
opportunity for him to have said that, at that very time, there was
living in Jerusalem a savior by the name of Jesus, or one supposed
to be, or claiming to be, a savior. He could not have helped
mentioning Jesus if he had ever seen or heard of him.
We have elsewhere referred to the significant silence of the
Pagan historians and miscellaneous writers on the wonderful events
narrated in the New Testament. But a few remarks may be added here
in explanation of the supposed testimony of Tacitus.
The quotation from Tacitus is an important one. That part of
the passage which concerns us is something like this: "They have
their denomination from Chrestus, put to death as a criminal by
Pontius Pilate during the reign of Tiberius." I wish to say in the
first place that this passage is not in the History of Tacitus,
known to the ancients, but in his Annals, which is not quoted by
any ancient writer. The Annals of Tacitus were not known to be in
existence until the year 1468. An English writer, Mr. Ross, has
undertaken, in an interesting volume, to show that the Annals were
forged by an Italian, Bracciolini. I am not competent to say
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whether or not Mr. Ross proves his point. But is it conceivable
that the early Christians would have ignored so valuable a
testimony had they known of its existence, and would they not have
known of it had it really existed? The Christian Fathers, who not
only collected assiduously all that they could use to establish the
reality of Jesus -- but who did not hesitate even to forge
passages, to invent documents, and also to destroy the testimony of
witnesses unfavorable to their cause -- would have certainly used
the Tacitus passage had it been in existence in their day. Not one
of the Christian Fathers in his controversy with the unbelievers
has quoted the passage from Tacitus, which passage is the church's
strongest proof of the historicity of Jesus, outside the gospels.
But, to begin with, this passage has the appearance, at least,
of being penned by a Christian. It speaks of such persecutions of
the Christians in Rome which contradict all that we know of Roman
civilization. The abuse of Christians in the same passage may have
been introduced purposely to cover up the identity of the writer,
The terrible outrages against the Christians mentioned in the text
from Tacitus are supposed to have taken place in the year 64 A.D.
According to the New Testament, Paul was in Rome from the year 63
to the year 65, and must, therefore, have been an eye-witness of
the persecution under Nero. Let me quote from the Bible to show
that there could have been no such persecution as the Tacitus
passage describes. The last verse in the book of Acts reads: "And
he (Paul) abode two whole years in his own hired dwelling, and
received all that went in unto him, preaching the kingdom of God,
and teaching things concerning the Lord Jesus Christ with all
boldness, none forbidding him." How is this picture of peace and
tranquility to be reconciled with the charge that the Romans rolled
up the Christians in straw mats and burned them to illuminate the
streets at night, and also that the lions were let loose upon the
disciples of Jesus?
Moreover, it is generally known that the Romans were
indifferent to religious propaganda, and never persecuted any sect
or party in the name of religion. In Rome, the Jews were free to be
Jews; why should the Jewish Christians -- and the early Christians
were Jews -- have been thrown to the lions? In all probability the
persecutions were much milder than the Tacitus passage describes,
and politics was the real cause.
Until not very long ago, it was universally believed that
William Tell was a historical character. But it is now proven
beyond any reasonable doubt, that Tell and his apple are altogether
mythical. Notwithstanding that a great poet has made the theme of
a powerful drama, and a great composer devoted one of his operas to
his heroic achievements; notwithstanding also that the Swiss show
the crossbow with which he is supposed to have shot at the apple on
his son's head -- he is now admitted to be only a legendary hero.
The principal arguments which have led the educated world to revise
its views concerning William Tell are that, the Swiss historians,
Faber an Hamurbin, who lived shortly after the "hero." and who
wrote the history of the country, as Josephus did that of his, do
not mention Tell. Had such a man existed before their time, they
could not have failed to refer to him. Their complete silence
damaging beyond help to the historicity of Tell. Neither does the
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historian, who was an eye witness of the battle of Morgarten in
1315, mention the name of Tell. The Zurich Chronicle of 1497, also
omits to refer to his story. In the accounts of the struggle of the
Swiss against Austria, which drove the former into rebellion and
ultimate independence, Tell's name cannot be found. Yet all these
arguments are not half so damaging to the William Tell story, as
the silence of Josephus is to the Jesus story. Jesus was supposed
to have worked greater wonders and to have created a wider
sensation than Tell; therefore, it is more difficult to explain the
silence of historians like Josephus, Pliny and Quintilian; or of
philosophers like Philo, Seneca and Epictetus, concerning Jesus,
than to explain the silence of the Swiss chroniclers concerning
Tell.
THE JESUS STORY A RELIGIOUS DRAMA
We have now progressed far enough in our investigation to
pause a moment for reflection before we proceed any further. I am
conscious of no intentional misrepresentation or suppression of the
facts relating to the question in hand. If I have erred through
ignorance, I shall correct any mistake I may have made, if some
good reader will take the trouble to enlighten me. I am also
satisfied that I have not commanded the evidence, but have allowed
the evidence to command me. I am not interested in either proving
or in disproving the existence of the New-Testament Jesus. I am not
an advocate, I am rather an umpire, who hears the evidence and
pronounces his decision accordingly. Let the lawyers or the
advocates argue pro and con, I only weigh, -- and I am sure,
impartially, -- the evidence which the witnesses offer. We have
heard and examined quite a number of these, and I, at least, am
compelled to say, that unless stronger evidence be forthcoming, a
historical Jesus has not been proven by the evidence thus far taken
in. This does not mean that there is no evidence whatever that
Jesus was a real existence, but that the evidence is not enough to
prove it.
To condemn or to acquit a man in a court of law, there must
not only be evidence, but enough of it to justify a decision. There
is some evidence for almost any imaginable proposition; but that is
not enough -- the evidence already examined fail to give this a
reasonable assurance. Not only does the evidence already examined
fail to give this assurance, but, on the contrary, it lends much
support to the opposite supposition, namely, that in all
probability, Jesus was a myth -- even as Mithra, Osiris, Isis,
Hercules, Sampson, Adonis, Moses, Attis, Hermes, Heracles, Apollo
of Tyanna, Chrishna, and Indra, were myths.
The story of Jesus, we are constrained to say, possesses all
the characteristics of the religious drama, full of startling
episodes, thrilling situations, dramatic action and denouement. It
reads more like a play than plain history. From such evidence as
the gospels themselves furnish, the conclusion that he was no more
than the principal character in a religious play receives much
support. Mystery and morality plays are of a very ancient origin.
In earlier times, almost all popular instruction was by means of
Tableaux vivant.
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As a great scenic or dramatic performance, with Jesus as the
hero, Judas as the villain -- with conspiracy as its plot, and the
trial, the resurrection and ascension as its finale, the story is
intelligent enough. For instance, as the curtain rises, it
discloses upon the stage shepherds tending their flocks in the
green fields under the moonlit sky; again, as the scene shifts, the
clouds break, the heavens open, and voices are heard from above,
with a white-winged chorus chanting an anthem. The next scene
suggests a stable with the cattle in their stalls, munching hay. In
a corner of the stable, close to a manger, imagine a young woman,
stooping to kiss a newly born babe. Anon appear three bearded and
richly costumed men, with presents in their hands, bowing their
heads in ecstatic adoration. Surely enough this is not history. It
does not read like history. The element of fiction runs through the
entire Gospels, and is its warp and woof. A careful analysis of the
various incidents in this ensemble will not fail to convince the
unprejudiced reader that while they possess an the essentials for
dramatic presentation, they lack the requirements of real history.
The "opened-heavens," "angel-choirs," "grazing flocks,"
"watchful shepherds," "worshiping magicians," "the stable crib,"
"the mother and child," "the wonderful star." "the presents," "the
anthem" -- all these, while they fit admirably as stage setting,
are questionable material for history. No historical person was
ever born in so spectacular a manner. The Gospel account of Jesus
is an embellished, ornamental, even sensationally dramatic creation
to serve as an introduction for a legendary hero. Similar
theatrical furniture has been used thousands of times to introduce
other legendary characters. All the Savior Gods were born
supernaturally. They were a all half god, half man. They were all
of royal descent. Miracles and wonders attended their birth. Jesus
was not an exception. We reject as mythical the birth-stories about
Mithra, and Apollo. Why accept as history those about Jesus? It
rests with the preachers of Christianity to show that while the
god-man of Persia, or of Greece, for example, was a myth, the god-
man of Palestine is historical.
The dramatic element is again plainly seen in the account of
the betrayal of Jesus. Jesus, who preaches daily in the temples,
and in the public places; who talks to the multitude on the
mountain and at the seaside; who feeds thousands by miracle; the
report of whose wonderful cures has reached the ends of the earth,
and who is often followed by such a crush that to reach him an
opening has to be made in the ceiling of the house where he is
stopping; who goes in and out before the people and is constantly
disputing with the elders and leaders of the nation -- is,
nevertheless, represented as being so unknown that his enemies have
to resort to the device of bribing with thirty silver coins one of
his disciples to point him out to them, and which is to be done by
a kiss. This might make a great scene upon the stage, but it is not
the way things happen in life.
Then read how Jesus is carried before Pilate the Roman
governor, and how while he is being tried a courier rushes in with
a letter from Pilate's wife which is dramatically torn open and
read aloud in the presence of the crowded court. The letter it is
said, was about a dream of Pilate' wife, in which some ghost tells
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her that Jesus is innocent, and that her husband should not proceed
against him. Is this history? Roman jurisprudence had not
degenerated to that extent as to permit the dreams of a woman or of
a man to influence the course of justice. But this letter episode
was invented by the playwright -- if I may use the phrase -- to
prolong the dramatic suspense, to complicate the situation, to
twist the plot, and thereby render the impression produced by his
"piece" more lasting. The letter and the dream did not save Jesus.
Pilate was not influenced by his dreaming wife. She dreamed in
vain.
In the next place we hear Pilate pronouncing Jesus guiltless;
but, forthwith, he hands him over to the Jews to be killed. Does
this read like history? Did ever a Roman court witness such a
trial? To pronounce a man innocent and then to say to his
prosecutors: "If you wish to kill him, you may do so," is
extraordinary conduct. Then, proceeding, Pilate takes water and
ostentatiously washes his hands, a proceeding introduced by a Greek
or Latin scribe, who wished, in all probability, to throw the blame
of the crucifixion entirely upon the Jews. Pilate, representing the
Gentile world, washes his hands of the responsibility for the death
of Jesus, while the Jews are made to say, "His blood be upon us and
our children."
Imagine the clamoring, howling Jews, trampling on one another,
gesticulating furiously, gnashing their teeth, foaming at the
mouth, and spitting in one another's face as they shout, "Crucify
him! Crucify him!" A very powerful stage setting, to be sure -- but
it is impossible to imagine that such disorder, such anarchy could
be permitted in any court of justice. But think once more of those
terrible words placed in the mouths of the Jews, "His blood be upon
us and our children." Think of a people openly cursing themselves
and asking the whole Christian world to persecute them forever --
"His blood be upon us and our children."
Next, the composers of the gospels conduct us to the Garden of
Gethsemane, that we may see there the hero of the play in his
agony, fighting the great battle of his life alone, with neither
help nor sympathy from his distracted followers. He is shown to us
there, on his knees, crying tears of blood -- sobbing and groaning
under the shadow of an almost crushing fear. Tremblingly he prays,
"Let this cup pass from me -- if it be possible;" and then,
yielding to the terror crowding in upon him, he sighs in the
hearing of all the ages, "The spirit is willing, but the flesh is
weak," precisely the excuse. given by everybody for not doing what
they would do if they could. Now, we ask in all seriousness, is it
likely that a God who has come down from heaven purposely to drink
that cup and to be the martyr-Savior of humanity -- would seek to
be spared the fate for which he was ordained from all eternity?
The objection that Jesus' hesitation on the eve of the
crucifixion, as well as his cry of despair on the cross, were meant
to show that he was as human as he was divine, does not solve the
difficulty. In that event Jesus, then, was merely acting --
feigning a fear which he did not feel, and pretending to dread a
death which he knew could not hurt him. If, however, Jesus really
felt alarmed at the approach of death, how much braver, then, were
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many of his followers who afterwards faced dangers and tortures far
more cruel than his own! We honestly think that to have put in
Jesus' mouth the words above quoted, and also to have represented
him as closing his public career with a shriek on the cross: "My
God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" was tantamount to an
admission by the writers that they were dealing with a symbolic
Christ, an ideal figure., the hero of a play, and not a historical
character.
It is highly dramatic, to be sure, to see the sun darkened, to
feel the whole earth quaking, to behold the graves ripped open and
the dead reappear in their shrouds -- to hear the hero himself
tearing his own heart with that cry of shuddering anguish, "My God!
my God!" -- but it is not history. If such a man as Jesus really
lived, then his biographers have only given us a caricature of him.
However beautiful some of the sayings attributed to Jesus, and
whatever the source they may have been borrowed from, they are not
enough to prove his historicity. But even as the Ten Commandments
do not prove Moses to have been a historical personage or the
author of the books and deeds attributed to him, neither do the
parables and miracles of Jesus prove him to have once visited this
earth as a god, or to have even existed as a man.
Socrates and Jesus! Compare the quite natural behavior of
Socrates in prison with that of Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane.
The Greek sage is serene. Jesus is alarmed. The night agony of his
soul, his tears of blood, his pitiful collapse when he prays, "if
it be possible let this cup pass from me," -- all this would be
very impressive on the boards, but they seem incredible of a real
man engaged in saving a world. Once more we say that the defense
that it was the man in Jesus and not the god in him that broke
down, would be unjust to the memory of thousands of martyrs who
died by a more terrible death than that of Jesus. As elsewhere
stated, but which cannot be too often emphasized, what man would
not have embraced death with enthusiasm, -- without a moment's
misgiving, did he think that by his death, death and sin would be
no more! Who would shrink from a cross which is going to save
millions to millions added from eternal burnings. He must be a
phantom, indeed, who trembles and cries like a frightened child
because be cannot have the crown without the cross! What a
spectacle for the real heroes crowding the galleries of history! It
is difficult to see the shrinking and shuddering Savior of the
world, his face bathed in perspiration, blood oozing out of his
forehead, his lips pale, his voice breaking into a shriek, "My God,
my God, why hast thou forsaken me!" -- it is difficult to witness
all this and not to pity him. Poor Jesus! he is going to save the
world, but who is going to save him?
If we compare the trial of Jesus with that of Socrates, the
fictitious nature of the former cannot possibly escape detection.
Socrates was so well known in Athens, that it was not necessary for
his accusers to bribe one of his disciples to betray him. Jesus
should have been even better known in Jerusalem than Socrates was
in Athens. He was daily preaching in the synagogues, and his
miracles had given him an eclat which Socrates did not enjoy.
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Socrates is not taken to court at night, bound hand and feet.
Jesus is arrested in the glare of torchlights, after he is betrayed
by Judas with a kiss; then he is bound and forced into the high
priest's presence. All this is admirable setting for a stage, but
they are no more than that.
The disciples of Socrates behave like real men, those of Jesus
are actors. They run away; they hide and follow at a distance. One
of them curses him. The cock crows, the apostate repents. This
reads like a play.
In the presence of his judges, Socrates makes his own defense.
One by one he meets the charges. Jesus refused, according to two of
the evangelists, to open his mouth at his trial. This is dramatic,
but it is not history. It is not conceivable that a real person
accused as Jesus was, would have refused a great opportunity to
disprove the charges against him. Socrates' defense of himself is
one of the classics. Jesus' silence is a conundrum. "But he
answered nothing," "But Jesus as yet answered nothing", "And he
answered him never a word," is the report of two of his
biographers. The other two evangelists, as is usual, contradict the
former and produce the following dialogues between Jesus and his
judges, which from beginning to end possess all the marks of
unreality:
Pilate. -- "Art thou the King of the Jews?"
Jesus. -- "Sayest thou this thing of thyself, or did others
tell it thee of me?"
Pilate. -- "Art thou a King?"
Jesus. -- "Thou sayest that I am a King."
Is it possible that a real man, not to say the Savior of the
world, would give such unmeaning and evasive replies to straight-
forward questions? Does it not read like a page from fiction?
In the presence of the priests of his own race Jesus is as
indefinite and sophistical as he is before the Roman Pilate.
The Priests. -- "Art thou the Christ -- tell us?"
Jesus. -- "If I tell you ye will not believe me."
The Priests. -- "Art thou the Son o God?"
Jesus. -- "Ye say that I am."
In the first answer he refuses to reveal himself because he
does not think he can command belief in himself; in his second
answer be either blames them for saying he was the Son of God, or
quotes their own testimony to prove that he is the Son of God. But
if they believed he was God, would they try to kill him? Is it not
unthinkable? He intimates that the priests believe he is the Son of
God -- "Ye say that I am." Surely, it is more probable that these
dialogues were invented by his anonymous biographers than that they
really represent an actual conversation between Jesus and his
judges.
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Compare in the next place the manner in which the public
trials of Socrates and Jesus are conducted. There is order in the
Athenian court; there is anarchy in the Jerusalem court. Witnesses
and accusers walk up to Jesus and slap him on the face, and the
judge does not reprove them for it. The court is in the hands of
rowdies and hoodlums, who shout "Crucify him," and again, "Crucify
him." A Roman judge, while admitting that he finds no guilt in
Jesus deserving of death, is nevertheless represented as handing
him over to the mob to be killed, after he has himself scourged
him. No Roman judge could have behaved as this Pilate is reported
to have behaved toward an accused person on trial for his life. All
that we know of civilized government, all that we know of the
jurisprudence of Rome, contradicts this "inspired" account of a
pretended historical event. If Jesus was ever tried and condemned
to death in a Roman court, an account of it that can command belief
has yet to be written.
Again, when we come to consider the random, disconnected and
fragmentary form in which the teachings of Jesus are presented, we
cannot avoid the conclusion that he is a dramatis persona brought
upon the stage to give expression not to a consistent, connected
and carefully worked-out thought, but to voice with many breaks an
interruptions, the ideas of his changing managers. He is made to
play a number of contradictory roles, and appears in the same story
in totally different characters.
One editor or compiler of the Gospel describes Jesus as an
ascetic and a mendicant, wandering from place to place, without
"roof over his head, and crawling at eventide into his cave in the
Mount of Olives. He introduces him as the "Man of Sorrows," fasting
in the wilderness, counseling people to part with their riches, and
promising the Kingdom of Heaven to Lazarus, the beggar.
Another redactor announces him as "eating and drinking" at the
banquets of "publicans and sinners," -- a "wine-bibbing" Son of
Man. "John the Baptist came neither eating nor drinking, but the
Son of Man came both eating and drinking," which, if it means
anything, means that Jesus was the very opposite of the ascetic
John.
A partisan of the doctrine of non-resistance puts in Jesus'
mouth the words: "Resist not evil;" "The meek shall inherit the
earth," etc., and counsels that he who smites us on the one cheek
should be permitted to strike us also on the other, and that to him
who robs us of an undergarment, we should also hand over our outer
garments.
Another draws the picture of a militant Jesus who could never
endorse such precepts of indolence and resignation. "The kingdom of
heaven is taken by violence," cries this new Jesus, and intimates
that no such beggar like Lazarus, sitting all day long with the
dogs and his sores, can ever earn so great a prize. With a scourge
in his hands this Jesus rushes upon the traders in the temple-
court, upturns their tables and whips their owners into the
streets. Surely this was resistance of the most pronounced type.
The right to use physical force could not have been given a better
endorsement than by this example of Jesus.
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It will not help matters to say that these money-changers were
violating a divine law, and needed chastisement with a whip. Is not
the man who smites us upon the cheek, or robs us of our clothing,
equally guilty? Moreover, these traders in the outer courts of the
synagogue were rendering the worshipers a useful service. Just as
candles, rosaries, images and literature are sold in church
vestibules for the accommodation of Catholics, so were doves,
pigeons and Hebrew coins, necessary to the Jewish sacrifices, sold
in the temple-courts for the Jewish worshiper. The money changer
who supplied the pious Jew with the only sacred coin which the
priests would accept was not very much less important to the Jewish
religion than the rabbi. To have fallen upon these traders with a
weapon, and to have caused them the loss of their property, was
certainly the most inconsistent thing that "meek" and "lowly" Jesus
preaching non-resistance could have done.
Again; one writer makes Jesus the teacher 'par excellence' of
peace. He counsels forgiveness of injuries not seven time but
seventy times that number -- meaning unlimited love and charity.
"Love your enemies," "Bless them that curse you," is his unusual
advice. But another hand retouches this picture, and we have a
Jesus who breaks his own golden rule. This other Jesus heaps abuse
upon the people who displease him; calls his enemies "vipers,"
"serpents," "devils," and predicts for them eternal burnings in
sulphur and brimstone. How could he who said, "Come unto me all ye
that are heavy laden," say also, "Depart from me ye cursed?" Who
curses them? How can there be an everlasting hell in a universe
whose author advises us to love our enemies, to bless them that
curse us, and to forgive seventy times seven? How could the same
Jesus who said, "Blessed are the peacemakers," say also, "I came
not to bring peace, but a sword?" Is it possible that the same
Jesus who commands us to love our enemies, commands us also to
"hate" father, mother, wife and child, for "his name's sake?" Yes!
the same Jesus who said, "Put up thy sword in its sheath," also
commands us to sell our effects and "buy a sword."
Once more: A believer in the divinity of Jesus -- I am going
to say -- invents the following text: "The Father and I are one."
An opponent to this Trinitarian dogma introduces a correction which
robs the above text of its authority: "The Father is greater than
I," and makes Jesus admit openly that there are some things known
to the father only. It is not difficult not to see in these
passages the beginnings of the terrible controversies which,
starting with Peter and Paul, have come down to our day and which
will not end until Jesus shall take his place among the mythical
saviors of the world.
To harmonize these many and different Jesuses into something
like unity or consistency a thousand books have been written by the
clergy. They have not succeeded. How can a Jesus represented at one
time as the image of divine perfection, and at another as
protesting against being called "good," for "none is good, save
one, God," -- how can these two conceptions be reconciled except by
a resort to artificial an arbitrary interpretations? If such
insurmountable contradictions in the teaching and character of
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another would weaken our faith in his historicity, then we are
justified in inferring that in all probability Jesus was only a
name -- the name of an imaginary stage hero, uttering the
conflicting thoughts of his prompters.
Again, such phrases as, "and he was caught up in a cloud," --
describing the ascension and consequent disappearance of Jesus,
betray the anxiety of the authors of the Gospels to bring their
marvelous story to a close. Not knowing how to terminate the career
of an imaginary Messiah, his creators invented the above method of
dispatching him. "He was caught up in a cloud," -- but for that,
the narrators would have been obliged to continue their story
indefinitely.
In tragedy the play ends with the death of the hero, but if
the biographers of Jesus had given a similar excuse for bringing
their narrative to a finale, there would have been the danger of
their being asked to point out his grave. "He was caught up in a
cloud," relieved them of all responsibility to produce his remains
if called upon to do so, and, at the same time, furnished them with
an excuse to bring their story to a close.
It would hardly be necessary, were we all unbiased, to look
for any further proofs of the mythical and fanciful nature of the
Gospel narratives than this expedient to which the writers
resorted. To questions, "Where is Jesus?" "What became of his
body?" etc., they could answer, "He was caught up in a cloud." But
a career that ends in the clouds was never begun on the earth.
Let us imagine ourselves in Jerusalem in the year One, of the
Christian era, when the apostles, as it is claimed, were
proclaiming Jesus as the Messiah, crucified and risen. Desiring to
be convinced before believing in the strange story, let us suppose
the following conversation between the apostles and ourselves. We
ask:
How long have you known Jesus?
I have known him for one year.
And I for two.
And I for three.
Has any of you known him for more than three years?
No.
Was he with his apostles for one year or for three?
For one.
No, for three.
You are not certain, then, how long Jesus was with his
apostles.
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No.
How old was Jesus when crucified?
About thirty-one.
No. about thirty-three.
No, he was much older, about fifty.
You cannot tell with any certainty, then, his age at the time
of his death.
No.
You say he was tried and crucified in Jerusalem before your
own eyes, can you remember the date of this great event?
We cannot.
Were you present when Jesus was taken down from the cross?
We were not.
You cannot tell, then, whether he was dead when taken down.
We have no personal knowledge.
Were you present when be was buried?
We were not, because we were in hiding for our lives.
You do not know, therefore, whether he was actually buried, or
where he was buried.
We do not.
Were any of you present when Jesus came forth from the
grave?
Not one of us was present.
Then, you were not with him when he was taken down from the
cross; you were not with him when he was interred, and you were not
present when he rose from the grave.
We were not.
When, therefore, you say, he was dead, buried and rose again,
you are relying upon the testimony of others?
We are.
Will you mention the names of some of the witnesses who saw
Jesus come forth from the tomb?
Mary Magdalene, and she is here and may be questioned.
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Were you present, Mary, when the angels rolled away the stone,
and when Jesus came forth from the dead?
No, when I reached the burying place early in the morning, the
grave had already been vacated, and there was no one sleeping in
it.
You saw him, then, as the apostles did after he had risen?
Yes.
But you did not see anybody rise out of the grave.
I did not.
Are there any witnesses who saw the resurrection?
There are many who saw him after the resurrection.
But if neither they nor you saw him dead, and buried, and did
not see him rise, either, how can you tell that a most astounding
and supposedly impossible miracle had taken place between the time
you saw him last and when you saw him again two or three days
after? Is it not more natural to suppose that, being in a hurry on
account of the approaching Sabbath, Jesus, if ever crucified, was
taken down from the cross before he had really died, and that he
was not buried, as rumor states, but remained in hiding; and his
showing himself to you under cover of darkness and in secluded
spots and in the dead of night only, would seem to confirm this
explanation.
You admit also that the risen Jesus did not present himself at
the synagogue of the people, in the public streets, or at the
palace of the High Priest to convince them of his Messiahship. Do
you not think that if he had done this, it would then have been
impossible to deny his resurrection? Why, then, did Jesus hide
himself after he came out of the grave? Why did be not show himself
also to his enemies? Was he still afraid of them, or did he not
care whether they believed or not? If so, why are you trying to
convert them? The question waits for a reasonable answer; why did
not Jesus challenge the whole world with the evidence of his
resurrection? You say you saw him occasionally, a few moments at a
time, now here, and now there, and finally on the top of a mountain
whence he was caught up in a cloud and disappeared altogether. But
that "cloud" has melted away, the sky is clear, and there is no
Jesus visible there. The cloud, then, had nothing to hide. It was
unnecessary to call in a cloud to close the career of your Christ.
The grave is empty, the cloud has vanished. Where is Christ? In
heaven! Ah, you have at last removed him to a world unknown, to the
undiscovered country. Leave him there Criticism, doubt,
investigation, the light of day, cannot cross its shores. Leave him
there!"
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THE JESUS OF PAUL
The central figure of the New Testament is Jesus, and the
question we are trying to answer is, whether we have sufficient
evidence to prove to the unbiased mind that he is historical. An
idea of the intellectual caliber of the average churchman may be
had by the nature of the evidence he offers to justify his faith in
the historical Jesus. "The whole world celebrates annually the
nativity of Jesus; how could there be a Christmas celebration if
there never was a Christ?" asks a Chicago clergyman. The simplicity
of this plea would be touching were it not that it calls attention
to the painful inefficiency of the pulpit as an educator. The
church goer is trained to believe, not to think. The truth is
withheld from him under the pious pretense that faith, and not
knowledge, is the essential thing. A habit of untruthfulness is
cultivated by systematically sacrificing everything to orthodoxy.
This habit in the end destroys one's conscience for any truths
which are prejudicial to one's interest. But is it true that the
Christmas celebration proves a historical Jesus?
We can only offer a few additional remarks to what we have
already said elsewhere in these pages on the Pagan origin of
Christmas. It will make us grateful to remember that just as we
have to go to the Pagans for the origins of our civilized
institutions -- our courts of justice, our art and literature, and
our political and religious liberties -- we must thank them also
for our merry festivals, such as Christmas and Easter. The
ignorant, of course, do not know anything about the value and
wealth of the legacy bequeathed to us by our glorious ancestors of
Greek and Roman times, but the educated can have no excuse for any
failure to own their everlasting indebtedness to the Pagans. It
will be impossible today to write the history of civilization
without giving to the classical world the leading role. But while
accepting the gifts of the Pagan peoples we have abused the givers.
A beneficiary who will defame a bounteous benefactor is unworthy of
his good fortune. I regret to say that the Christian church,
notwithstanding that it owes many of its most precious privileges
to the Pagans, has returned for service rendered insolence and
vituperation. No generous or just institution would treat a rival
as Christianity has treated Paganism.
Both Christmas and Easter are Pagan festivals. We do not know,
no one knows, when Jesus was born; but we know the time of the
winter solstice when the sun begins to retrace his steps, turning
his radiant face toward our earth once more. It was this event, a
natural, demonstrable, universal, event, that our European
ancestors celebrated with song and dance -- with green branches,
through which twinkled a thousand lighted candles, and with the
exchange of good wishes and gifts. Has the church had the courage
to tell its people that Christmas is a Pagan festival which was
adopted and adapted by the Christian world, reluctantly at first,
and in the end as a measure of compromise only? The Protestants,
especially, conveniently forget the severe Puritanic legislation
against the observance of this Pagan festival, both in England an
America. It is the return to Paganism which has given to Christmas
and Easter their great popularity, as it is the revival of Paganism
which is everywhere replacing the Bible ideas of monarchic
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government republicanism. And yet, repeatedly, an without any
scruples of conscience, preach and people claim these festivals as
the gift of their creed to humanity, and quote them further to
prove the historical existence of their god-man, Jesus. It was this
open an persistent perversion of history by church, the manufacture
of evidence on the one hand, the suppression of witnesses
prejudiced to her interests on the other, and the deliberate
forging of documents, which provoked Carlyle into referring to one
of its branches as the great lying Church.
We have said enough to show that, in all probability -- for
let us not be dogmatic -- the story of Jesus, -- his birth and
betrayal by one of his own disciples, his trial in a Roman court,
his crucifixion, resurrection and ascension, -- belongs to the
order of imaginative literature. Conceived at first as a religious
drama, it received many new accretions as it traveled from country
to country and from age to age. The "piece" shows signs of having
been touched and retouched to make it acceptable to the different
countries in which it was played. The hand of the adapter, the
interpolator and the reviser is unmistakably present. As an
allegory, or as a dramatic composition, meant for the religious
stage, it proved one of the strongest productions of Pagan or
Christian times. But as real history, it lacks the fundamental
requisite -- probability. As a play, it is stirring and strong; as
history, it lacks naturalness and consistency. The miraculous is
ever outside the province of history. Jesus was a miracle, and as
such, at least, we are safe in declaring him unhistorical.
We pass on now to the presentation of evidence which we
venture to think demonstrates with an almost mathematic precision,
that the Jesus of the four gospels is a legendary hero, as
unhistorical as William Tell of Switzerland. This evidence is
furnished by the epistles bearing the signature of Paul. He has
been accepted as not only the greatest apostle of Christianity, but
in a sense also the author of its theology. It is generally
admitted that the epistles bearing the name of Paul are among the
oldest apostolical writings. They are older than the gospels. This
is very important information. When Paul was preaching, the four
gospels had not yet been written. From the epistles of Paul, of
which there are about thirteen in the Bible -- making the New
Testament largely the work of this one apostle -- we learn that
there were in different parts of Asia, a number of Christian
churches already established. Not only Paul, then, but also the
Christian church was in existence before the gospels were composed.
It would be natural to infer that it was not the gospels which
created the church, but the church which produced the gospels. Do
not lose sight of the fact that when Paul was preaching to the
Christians there was no written biography of Jesus in existence.
There was a church without a book.
In comparing the Jesus of Paul with the Jesus whose portrait
is drawn for us in the gospels, we find that they are not the same
persons at all. This is decisive. Paul knows nothing about a
miraculously born savior. He does not mention a single time, in all
his thirteen epistles, that Jesus was born of a virgin, or that his
birth was accompanied with heavenly signs and wonders. He knew
nothing of a Jesus born after the manner of the gospel writers. It
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is not imaginable that he knew the facts, but suppressed them, or
that he considered them unimportant, or that he forgot to refer to
them in any of his public utterances. Today, a preacher is expelled
from his denomination if he suppresses or ignores the miraculous
conception of the Son of God; but Paul was guilty of that very
heresy. How explain it? It is quite simple: The virgin-born Jesus
was not yet invented when Paul was preaching Christianity. Neither
he, nor the churches he had organized, had ever heard of such a
person. The virgin-born Jesus was of later origin than the Apostle
Paul.
Let the meaning of this discrepancy between the Jesus of Paul,
that is to say, the earliest portrait of Jesus, and the Jesus of
the four evangelists, be fully grasped by the student, and it
should prove beyond a doubt that in Paul's time the story of Jesus'
birth from the virgin-mother and the Holy Ghost, which has since
become a cardinal dogma of the Christian church, was not yet in
circulation. Jesus had not yet been Hellenized; he was still a
Jewish Messiah whose coming was foretold in the Old Testament, and
who was to be a prophet like unto Moses, without the remotest
suggestion of a supernatural origin.
No proposition in Euclid is safer from contradiction than
that, if Paul knew what the gospels tell about Jesus, he would
have, at least once or twice during his long ministry, given
evidence of his knowledge of it. The conclusion is inevitable that
the gospel Jesus is later than Paul and his churches. Paul stood
nearest to the time of Jesus of those whose writings are supposed
to have come down to us, he is the most representative, and his
epistles are the first literature of the new religion. And yet
there is absolutely not a single hint or suggestion in them of such
a Jesus as is depicted in the gospels. The gospel Jesus was not yet
put together or compiled, when Paul was preaching.
Once more; if we peruse carefully critically the writings of
Paul, the earliest and greatest Christian apostle and missionary,
we find that he is not only ignorant of the gospel stories about
the birth and miracles of Jesus, but he is equally and just as
innocently ignorant of the teachings of Jesus. In the gospels Jesus
is the author of the Sermon on the Mount, the Lord's Prayer, the
Parable of the Prodigal Son, the Story of Dives, the Good
Samaritan, etc. Is it conceivable that a preacher of Jesus could go
throughout the world to convert people to the teachings of Jesus,
as Paul did, without ever quoting a single one of his sayings? Had
Paul known that Jesus had preached a sermon, or formulated a
prayer, or said many inspired things about the here and the
hereafter, he could not have helped quoting, now and then, from the
words of his master. If Christianity could have been established
without a knowledge of the teachings of Jesus, why then, did Jesus
come to teach, and why were his teachings preserved by divine
inspiration? But if a knowledge of these teachings of Jesus is
indispensable to making converts, Paul gives not the least evidence
that he possessed such knowledge.
But the Apostle Paul, judging from his many epistles to the
earliest converts to Christianity which are really his testimony,
supposed to have been sealed by his blood, appears to be quite as
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ignorant of a Jesus who went about working miracles, -- opening the
eyes of the blind, giving health to the sick, hearing to the deaf,
and life to the dead, -- as he is of a Jesus born of a virgin woman
and the Holy Ghost. Is not this remarkable? Does it not lend strong
confirmation to the idea that the miracle-working Jesus of the
gospels was not known in Paul's time, that is to say, the earliest
Jesus known to the churches was a person altogether different from
his namesake in the four evangelists. If Paul knew of a miracle-
working Jesus, one who could feed the multitude with a few loaves
and fishes -- who could command the grave to open, who could cast
out devils, and cleanse the land of the foulest disease of leprosy,
who could, and did, perform many other wonderful works to convince
the unbelieving generation of his divinity, -- is it conceivable
that either intentionally or inadvertently he would have never once
referred to them in all his preaching? Is it not almost certain
that, if the earliest Christians knew of the miracles of Jesus,
they would have been greatly surprised at the failure of Paul to
refer to them a single time? And would not Paul have told them of
the promise of Jesus to give power to work even greater miracles
than his own, had he known of such a promise. Could Paul really
have left out of his ministry so essential a chapter from the life
of Jesus, had he been acquainted with it? The miraculous fills up
the greater portion of the four gospels, and if these documents
were dictated by the Holy Ghost, it means that they were too
important to be left out. Why, then, does not Paul speak of them at
all? There is only one reasonable answer: A miracle-working Jesus
was unknown to Paul.
What would we say of a disciple of Tolstoy, for example, who
came to America to make converts to Count Tolstoy and never once
quoted anything that Tolstoy had said? Or what would we think of
the Christian missionaries who go to India, China, Japan and Africa
to preach the gospel, if they never mentioned to the people of
these countries the Sermon on the Mount, the Parable of the
Prodigal Son, the Lord's Prayer -- nor quoted a single text from
the gospels? Yet Paul, the first missionary, did the very thing
which would be inexplicable in a modern missionary. There is only
one rational explanation for this: The Jesus of Paul was not born
of a virgin; he did not work miracles; and he was not a teacher. It
was after his day that such a Jesus was -- I have to use again a
strong word -- invented.
It has been hinted by certain professional defenders of
Christianity that Paul's specific mission was to introduce
Christianity among the Gentiles, and not to call attention to the
miraculous element in the life of his Master. But this is a very
lame defense. What is Christianity, but the life and teachings of
Jesus? And how can it be introduced among the Gentiles without a
knowledge of the doctrines and works of its founder? Paul gives no
evidence of possessing any knowledge of the teachings of Jesus, how
could he, then, be a missionary of Christianity to the heathen?
There is no other answer which can be given than that the
Christianity of Paul was something radically different from the
Christianity of the later gospel writers, who in all probability
were Greeks and not Jews. Moreover, it is known that Paul was
reprimanded by his fellow-apostles for carrying Christianity to the
Gentiles. What better defense could Paul have given for his conduct
than to have quoted the commandment of Jesus -- "Go ye into all the
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world and preach the gospel to every creature." And he would have
quoted the "divine" text had he been familiar with it. Nay, the
other apostles would not have taken him to task for obeying the
commandment of Jesus had they been familiar with such a
commandment. It all goes to support the proposition that the gospel
Jesus was of a date later than the apostolic times.
That the authorities of the church realize how damaging to the
reality of the gospel Jesus is the inexplicable silence of Paul
concerning him, may be seen in their vain effort to find in a
passage put in Paul's mouth by the unknown author of the book of
Acts, evidence that Paul does quote the sayings of Jesus. The
passage referred to is the following: "It is more blessed to give
than to receive." Paul is made to state that this was a saying of
Jesus. In the first place, this quotation is not in the epistles of
Paul, but in the Acts, of which Paul was not the author; in the
second place, there is no such quotation in the gospels. The
position, then, that there is not a single saying of Jesus in the
gospels which is quoted by Paul in his many epistles is
unassailable, and certainly fatal to the historicity of the gospel
Jesus.
Again, from Paul himself we learn that he was a zealous
Hebrew, a Pharisee of Pharisees, studying with Gamaliel in
Jerusalem, presumably to become a rabbi. Is it possible that such
a man could remain totally ignorant of a miracle worker an teacher
like Jesus, living in the same city with him? If Jesus really
raised Lazarus from the grave, and entered Jerusalem a the head of
a procession, waving branches and shouting, "hosanna" -- if he was
really crucified in Jerusalem, and ascended from one of its
environs -- is it possible that Paul neither saw Jesus nor heard
anything about these miracles? But if he knew all these things
about Jesus, is it possible that he could go through the world
preaching Christ and never once speak of them? It is more likely
that when Paul was studying in Jerusalem there was no miraculous
Jesus living or teaching in any part of Judea.
If men make their gods they also make their Christs.
[Christianity and Mythology. J.M. Robertson, to whom the author
acknowledges his indebtedness, for the difference between Paul's
Jesus and that of the Gospels.] It is frequently urged that it was
impossible for a band of illiterate fishermen to have created out
of their own fancy so glorious a character as that of Jesus, and
that it would be more miraculous to suppose that the unique sayings
of Jesus and his incomparably perfect life were invented by a few
plain people than to believe in his actual existence. But it is not
honest to throw the question into that form. We do not know who
were the authors of the gospels. It is pure assumption that they
were written by plain fishermen. The authors of the gospels do not
disclose their identity. The words, according to Matthew, Mark,
etc., represent only the guesses or opinions of translators and
copyists.
Both in the gospels and in Christian history the apostles are
represented as illiterate men. But if they spoke Greek, and could
also write in Greek, they could not have been just plain fishermen.
That they were Greeks, not Jews, and more or less educated, may be
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safely inferred from the fact that they all write in Greek, and one
of them at least seems to be acquainted with the Alexandrian school
of philosophy. Jesus was supposedly a Jew, his twelve apostles all
Jews -- how is it, then, that the only biographies of him extant
are all in Greek? If his fishermen disciples were capable of
composition in Greek, they could not have been illiterate men, if
they could not have written in Greek -- which was a rare
accomplishment for a Jew, according to what Josephus says -- then
the gospels were not written by the apostles of Jesus. But the fact
that thou these documents are in a language alien both to Jesus and
his disciples, they are unsigned and undated, goes to prove, we
think, that their editors or authors wished to conceal their
identity that they may be taken for the apostles themselves.
In the next place it is equally an assumption that the
portrait of Jesus is incomparable. It is now proven beyond a doubt
that there is not a single saying of Jesus, I say this
deliberately, which had not already been known both among the Jews
and Pagans. [Sometimes it is urged by pettifogging clergymen that
while it is true that Confucius gave the Golden Rule six hundred
years before Jesus, it was in a negative form. Confucius said, "Do
not unto another what you would not another to do unto you." Jesus
said, "Do unto others," etc. But every negative has its
corresponding affirmation. Moreover, are not the Ten Commandments
in the negative? But the Greek sages gave the Golden Rule in as
positive a form as we find it in the Gospels. "And may I do to
others as I would that others should do to me," said Plato. --
Jowett Trans., V. 483. P.
Besides if the only difference between Jesus and Confucius,
the one a God, the other a mere man, was that they both said the
same thing, the one in the negative, the other in the positive, it
is not enough to prove Jesus infinitely superior to Confucius. Many
of Jesus' own communications are in the negative: [Resist not
evil," for instance.] And as to his life; it is in no sense
superior or even as large and as many sided as that of Socrates. I
know some consider it blaphemy to compare Jesus with Socrates, but
that must be attributed to prejudice rather than to reason.
And to the question that if Jesus be mythical, we cannot
account for the rise and progress of the Christian church, we
answer that the Pagan gods who occupied Mount Olympus were all
mythical beings -- mere shadows, and yet Paganism was the religion
of the most advanced and cultured nations of antiquity. How could
an imaginary Zeus, or Jupiter, draw to his temple the elite of
Greece and Rome? And if there is nothing strange in the rise and
spread of the Pagan church; in the rapid progress of the worship of
Osiris, who never existed; in the wonderful success of the religion
of Mithra, who is but a name; if the worship of Adonis, of Attis,
of Isis, and the legends of Heracles, Prometheus, Hercules, and the
Hindu trinity, -- Brahma, Shiva, Chrishna, -- with their rock-hewn
temples, can be explained without believing in the actual existence
of these gods -- why not Christianity? Religions, like everything
else, are born, they grow and die. They show the handiwork of whole
races, and of different epochs, rather than of one man or of age.
Time gives them birth, and changing environments determine their
career. Just as the portrait of Jesus we see in shops and churches
is an invention, so is his character. The artist gave him his
features, the theologian his attributes.
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What are the elements out of which the Jesus story was
evolved? The Jewish people were in constant expectation of a
Messiah. The belief prevailed that his name would be Joshua, which
in English is Jesus. The meaning of the word is savior. In ancient
Syrian mythology, Joshua was a Sun God. The Old-Testament Joshua,
who "stopped the Sun," was in all probability this same Syria,
divinity. According to tradition this Joshua, or Jesus, was the Son
of Mary, a name which with slight variations is found in nearly all
the old mythologies. Greek and Hindu divinities were mothered by
either a Mary, Meriam, Myrrah, or Merri, Maria or Mares is the
oldest word for sea -- the earliest source of life. The ancients
looked upon the sea-water as the mother of every living thing.
"Joshua (or Jesus), son of Mary," was already a part of the
religious outfit of the Asiatic world when Paul began his
missionary tours. His Jesus, or anointed one, crucified or slain,
did in no sense represent a new or original message. It is no more
strange that Paul's mythological "savior" should loom into
prominence and cast a spell over all the world, than that a
mythical Apollo or Jupiter should rule for thousands of years over
the fairest portions of the earth.
It is also well known that there is in the Talmud the story of
a Jesus, Ben, or son, of Pandira, who lived about a hundred years
before the Gospel Jesus, and who was hanged from a tree. I believe
this Jesus is quite as legendary as the Syrian Hesous, or Joshua.
But may it not be that such a legend accepted as true -- to the
ancients all legends were true -- contributed its share toward
marking the outlines of the later Jesus, hanged on a cross? My idea
has been to show that the materials for a Jesus myth were at hand,
and that, therefore, to account for the rise and progress of the
Christian cult is no more difficult than to explain the widely
spread religion of the Indian Chrishna, or of the Persian Mithra.
[For a fuller discussion of the various "christs" in mythology read
Robertson's Christianity and Mythology and his Pagan Christs.]
Now, why have I given these conclusions to the world? Would I
not have made more friends -- provoked a warmer response from the
public at large -- had I repeated in pleasant accents the familiar
phrases about the glory and beauty and sweetness of the Savior God,
the Virgin-born Christ? Instead of that, I have run the risk of
alienating the sympathies of my fellows by intimating that this
Jesus whom Christendom worships today as a god, this Jesus at whose
altar the Christian world bends its knees and bows its head, is as
much of an idol as was Apollo of the Greeks; and that we -- we
Americans of the twentieth century -- are an idolatrous people,
inasmuch as we worship a name, or at most, a man of whom we know
nothing provable.
IS CHRISTIANITY REAL?
It is assumed, without foundation, as I hope to show, that the
religion of Jesus alone can save the world. We are not surprised at
the claim, because there has never been a religion which has been
too modest to make a similar claim. No religion has ever been
satisfied to be one of the saviors of man. Each religion wants to
be the only savior of man. There is no monopoly like religious
monopoly. The industrial corporations with all their greed are less
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exacting than the Catholic church, for instance, which keeps heaven
itself under lock and key.
But what is meant by salvation? Let us consider its religious
meaning first. An unbiased investigation of the dogmas and their
supposed historical foundations will prove that the salvation which
Christianity offers, and the means by which it proposes to effect
the world's salvation, are extremely fanciful in nature. If this
point could be made clear, there will be less reluctance on the
part of the public to listen to the evidence on the unhistoricity
of the founder of Christianity.
We are told that God, who is perfect, created this world
about half a hundred centuries ago. Of course, being perfect
himself the world which he created was perfect, too. But the
world did not stay perfect very long. Nay, from the heights it
fell, not slowly, but suddenly, into the lowest depths of
degradation. How a world which God had created perfect, could in
the twinkling of an eye become so vile as to be cursed by the
same being who a moment before had pronounced it "good," and
besides be handed the devil as fuel for eternal burnings, only
credulity can explain. I am giving the story of what is called
the "plan of salvation," in order to show its mythical nature. In
the preceding pages we have discussed the question, Is Jesus a
Myth, but I believe that when we have reflected upon the story of
man's fall and his supposed subsequent salvation by the blood of
Jesus, we shall conclude that the function, or the office, which
Jesus is said to perform, is as mythical as his person.
The story of Eden possesses all the marks of an allegory.
Adam and Eve, and a perfect world suddenly plunged from a snowy
whiteness into the blackness of hell, are the thoughts of a child
who exaggerates because of an as yet undisciplined fancy. Yet, if
Adam and Eve are unreal, theologically speaking, Jesus is unreal.
If they are allegory and myth, so is Jesus. It is claimed that it
was the fall of Adam which necessitated the death of Jesus, but
if Adam's fall be a fiction, as we know it is, Jesus' death as an
atonement must also be a fiction.
In the fall of Adam, we are told, humanity itself fell.
Could anything be more fanciful than that? And what was Adam's
sin? He coveted knowledge. He wished to improve his mind. He
experimented with forbidden things. He dared to take the
initiative. And for that imaginary crime, even the generations
not yet born are to be forever blighted. Even the animals, the
flowers and vegetables were cursed for it. Can you conceive of
anything more mythical than that? one of the English divines of
the age of Calvin declared that original sin, -- Adam's sin
imputed to us, -- was so awful, that "if a man had never been
born he would yet have been damned for it." It is from this
mythical sin that a mythical Savior saves us. And how does he do
it? In a very mythical way, as we shall see.
When the world fell, it fell into the devil's hands. To
redeem a part of it, at least, the deity concludes to give up his
only son for a ransom. This is interesting. God is represented as
being greatly offended, because the world which he had created
perfect was all in a heap before him. To placate himself he
sacrificed his son -- not himself.
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But, as intimated above, he does not intend to restore the
whole world to its pristine purity, but only a part of it. This
is alarming. He creates the whole world perfect, but now he is
satisfied to have only a portion of it redeemed from the devil.
If he can save at all, pray, why not save all? This is not an
irrelevant question when it is remembered that the whole world
was created perfect in the first place.
The refusal of the deity to save all of his world from the
devil would lead one to believe that even when God created the
world perfect he did not mean to keep all of it to himself, but
meant that some of it, the greater part of it, as some
theologians contend, should go to the devil! Surely this is
nothing but myth. Let us hope for the sake of our ideals that all
this is no more than the childish prattle of primitive man.
But let us return to the story of the fall of man; God
decides to save a part of his ruined perfect world by the
sacrifice of his son. The latter is supposed to have said to his
father: "Punish me, kill me, accept my blood, and let it pay for
the sins of man." He thus interceded for the elect, and the deity
was mollified. As Jesus is also God, it follows that one God
tried to pacify another, which is. pure myth. Some theologians
have another theory -- there is room here for many theories.
According to these, God gave up his son as a ransom, not to
himself, but to the devil, who now claimed the world as his own.
I heard a distinguished minister explain this in the following
manner: A poor man whose house is mortgaged hears that some
philanthropist has redeemed the property by paying off the
mortgage. The soul of man was by the fall of Adam mortgaged to
the devil. God has raised the mortgage by abandoning his son to
be killed to satisfy the devil who held the mortgage. The debt
which we owed ha been paid by Jesus. By this arrangement the
devil loses his legal right to our souls and we are saved. All we
need to do is to believe in this story and we'll be sure to go to
heaven. And to think that intelligent Americans not only accept
all this as inspired, but denounce the man who venture to
intimate modestly that it might be a myth as a blasphemer! "O,
judgment!" cries Shakespeare, "thou hast fled to brutish beasts,
and men have lost their reason."
The morality which the Christian church teaches is of as
mythical a nature as the story of the fall, and the blood-
atonement. It is not natural morality, but something quite
unintelligible and fictitious. For instance, we are told that we
cannot of our selves be righteous. We must first have the grace
of God. Then we are told that we cannot have the grace of God
unless he gives it to us. And he will not give it us unless we
ask for it. But we cannot ask for it, unless he moves us to ask
for it. And there we are. We shall be damned if we do not come to
God, and we cannot come to God unless he calls us. Besides, could
anything be more mythical than a righteousness which can only be
imputed to us, -- any righteousness of our own being but "filthy
rags?"
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The Christian religion has the appearance of being one great
myth, constructed out of many minor myths. It is the same with
Mohammedanism, or Judaism, which latter is the mischievous parent
of both the Mohammedan and the Christian faiths. It is the same
with all supernatural creeds. Myth is the dominating element in
them all. Compared with these Asiatic religions how glorious is
science! How wholesome, helpful, and luminous, are her
commandments!
If I were to command you to believe that Mount Olympus was
once tenanted by blue eyed gods and their consorts, -- sipping
nectar and ambrosia the live-long day, -- You will answer, "Oh,
that is only mythology." If I were to tell you that you cannot be
saved unless you believe that Minerva was born full-fledged from
the brain of Jupiter, you will laugh at me. If I were to tell you
that you must punish your innocent sons for the guilt of their
brothers and sisters, you will answer that I insult your moral
sense.
And yet, every Sunday, the preacher repeats the myth of Adam
and Eve, and how God killed his innocent son to please himself,
or to satisfy the devil, and with bated breath, and on your
knees, you whisper, Amen.
How is it that when you read the literature of the Greeks,
the literature of the Persians, the literature of Hindostan, or
of the Mohammedan world, you discriminate between fact and
fiction, between history and myth, but when it comes to the
literature of the Jews, you stammer, you stutter, you bite your
lips, you turn pale, and fall upon your face before it as the
savage before his fetish? You would consider it unreasonable to
believe that everything a Greek, or a Roman, or an Arab ever said
was inspired. And yet, men have been hounded to death for not
believing everything that a Jew ever said in olden times was
inspired.
I do not have to use arguments, I hope, to prove to an
intelligent public that an infallible book is as much a myth as
the Garden of Eden, or the Star of Bethlehem. A mythical Savior,
a mythical Bible, a mythical plan of salvation!
When we subject what are called religious truths to the same
tests by which we determine scientific or historical truths, we
discover that they are not truths at all; they are only opinions.
Any statement which snaps under the strain of reason is unworthy
of credence. But it is claimed that religious truth is discovered
by intuition and not by investigation. The believer, it is
claimed, feels in his own soul -- he has the witness of the
spirit, that the Bible is infallible, and that Jesus is the
Savior of man. The Christian does not have to look into the
arguments for or against his religion it is said, before he makes
up his mind; he knows by an inward assurance; he has proved it to
his own deepermost being that Jesus is real and that he is the
only Savior. But what is that but another kind of argument? The
argument is quite inadequate to inspire assurance, as you will
presently see, but it is an argument nevertheless. To say that we
must believe and not reason is a kind of reasoning, This device
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of reasoning against reasoning is resorted to by people who have
been compelled by modern thought to give up, one after another,
the strongholds of their position. They run under shelter of what
they call faith, or the "inward witness of the spirit," or the
intuitive argument, hoping thereby to escape the enemy's fire, if
I may use so objectionable a phrase.
What is called faith, then, or an intuitive spiritual
assurance, is a Species of reasoning; let its worth be tested
honestly.
In the first place, faith or the intuitive argument would
prove too much. If Jesus is real, notwithstanding that there is
no reliable historical data to warrant the belief, because the
believer feels in his own soul that He is real and divine, I
answer that, the same mode of reasoning -- and let us not forget,
it is a kind of reasoning -- would prove Mohammed a divine
savior, and the wooden idol of the savage a god. The African
Bushman trembles before an image, because he feels in his own
soul that the thing is real. Does that make it real? The Moslem
cries unto Mohammed, because he believes in his innermost heart
that Mohammed is near and can hear him. He will risk his life on
that assurance. To quote to him history and science to prove that
Mohammed is dead and unable to save, would be of no avail, for he
has the witness of the spirit in him, an intuitive assurance,
that the great prophet sits on the right hand of Allah. An
argument which proves too much, proves nothing.
In the second place, an intuition is not communicable. I may
have an intuition that I see spirits all about me this morning.
They come, they go, they nod, they brush my forehead with their
wings. But do you see them, too, because I see them? There is the
difference between a scientific demonstration and a purely
metaphysical assumption. I could go to the blackboard and assure
you, as I am myself assured, that two parallel lines running in
the same direction will not and cannot meet. That is
demonstration. A fever patient when in a state of delirium, and a
frightened child in the dark, see things. We do not deny that
they do, but their testimony does not prove that the things they
see are real.
"What is this I see before me?" cries Macbeth, the murderer,
and be shrieks and shakes from head to foot -- he draws his sword
and rushes upon Banquo's ghost, which be sees coldly staring at
him. But is that any proof that what he saw we could see also?
Yes, we could, if we were in the same frenzy! And it is the
revivalist's aim, by creating a general excitement, to make
everybody see things. "Doctor, Doctor, help! they are coming to
kill me; there they are the assassins, -- one, two, three -- oh,
help," and the patient jumps out of bed to escape the banditti
crowding in upon him. But is that any reason why the attending
physician, his pulse normal and his brow cool should believe that
the room is filling up with assassins? I observe people jump up
and down, as they do in holiness meetings; I hear them say they
see angels, they see Jesus, they feel his presence. But is that
any evidence for you or me? An intuitive argument is not
communicable, and, therefore, it is no argument at all.
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Our orthodox friends are finally driven by modern thought,
which is growing bolder every day, to the only refuge left for
them. It is the one already mentioned. Granted that Jesus was an
imaginary character, even then, as an ideal, they argue, he is an
inspiration, and the most effective moral force the world has
ever known. We do not care, they say, whether the story of his
birth, trial, death, and resurrection is myth or actual history;
such a man as Jesus may never have existed, the things he is
reported as saying may have been put in his mouth by others, but
what of that -- is not the picture of his character perfect? Are
not the Beatitudes beautiful -- no matter who said them? To
strengthen this position they call our attention to Shakespeare's
creations, the majority of whom -- Hamlet, Othello, Lear, Portia,
Imogen, Desdemona, are fictitious. Yet where are there grander
men, or finer women? These children of Shakespeare may never have
lived, but, surely, they will never die. In the same sense, Jesus
may be just as ideal a character as those of Shakespeare, they
say, and still be "the light of the world." A New York preacher
is reported as saying that if Christianity is a lie, it is a
"glorious lie."
My answer to the above is that such an argument evades
instead of facing the question. It is receding from a position
under cover of a rhetorical manoeuvre. It is a retreat in
disguise. If Christianity is a "glorious lie," then call it such.
The question under discussion is, Is Jesus Historical? To answer
that it is immaterial whether or not he is historical, is to
admit that there is no evidence that he is historical. To urge
that, unhistorical though he be, he, is, nevertheless, the only
savior of the world, is, I regret to say, not only evasive, --
not only does it beg the question, but it is also clearly
dishonest. How long will the tremendous ecclesiastical machinery
last, if it were candidly avowed that it is doubtful whether
there ever was such a historical character as Jesus, or that in
all probability he is no more real than one of Shakespeare's
creations? What! all these prayers, these churches, these
denominations, these sectarian wars which have shed oceans of
human blood -- these unfortunate persecutions which have
blackened the face of man -- the fear of hell and the devil which
has blasted millions of lives -- all these for a Christ who may,
after all, be only a picturer!
Neither is it true that this pictorial Jesus saved the
world. He has had two thousand years to do it in, but as
missionaries are still being sent out, it follows that the world
is yet to be saved. The argument presented elsewhere in these
pages may here be recapitulated.
There was war before Christianity; has Jesus abolished war?
There was poverty and misery in the world before
Christianity; has Jesus removed these evils?
There was ignorance in the world before Christianity; has
Jesus destroyed ignorance?
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There were disease, crime, persecution, oppression, slavery,
massacres, and bloodshed in the world before Christianity; alas,
are they not still with us?
When Jesus shall succeed in pacifying his own disciples; in
healing the sectarian world of its endless and bitter quarrels,
then it will be time to ask what else Jesus has done for
humanity.
If the world is improving at all, and we believe it is, the
progress is due to the fact that man pays now more attention to
this life than formerly. He is thinking less of the other world
and more of this. He no longer sings with John Wesley:
The world is all a fleeting show
For man's delusion given.
Its smiles of joy, its tears of woe,
Deceitful shine, deceitful flow,
There's nothing true but heaven.
How could people with such feelings labor to improve a world
they hated? How could they be in the least interested in social
or political reforms when they were constantly repeating to
themselves --
I'm a pilgrim, and I'm a stranger --
I can tarry, I can tarry, but a night.
That these same people should now claim not only a part of
the credit for the many improvements, but all of it -- saying
that but for their religion the "world would now have been a
hell," [Rev. Frank Gunsaulus, of the Central Church, Chicago.]
is really a little too much for even the most serene temperament.
Which of the religions has persecuted as long and as
relentlessly as Christianity?
Which of the many faiths of the world has opposed Science as
stubbornly and as bitterly as Christianity?
In the name of what other prophets have more people been
burned at the stake than in the names of Jesus and Moses?
What other revelation has given rise to so many sects,
hostile and irreconcilable, as the Christian?
Which religion has furnished as many effective texts for
political oppression, polygamy, slavery, and the subjection of
woman [See A New Catechism. -- M.M. Mangasarian.] as the
religion of Jesus and Paul?
Is there, -- has there ever been another creed which makes
salvation dependent on belief, -- thereby encouraging hypocrisy,
and making honest inquiry a crime?
To send a thief to heaven from the gallows because he
believes, and an honest man to hell because he doubts, is that
the virtue which is going to save the world?
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The claim that Jesus has saved the world is another myth.
A pictorial Christ, then, has not done anything for humanity
to deserve the tremendous expenditure of time, energy, love, and
devotion, which has for two thousand years taxed the resources of
civilization.
The passing away of this imaginary savior will relieve the
world of an unproductive investment.
We conclude: Honesty, like charity, must begin at home.
Unless we can tell the truth in our churches we will never tell
the truth in our shops. Unless our teachers, the ministers of
God, are honest, our insurance companies and corporations will
have to be watched. Permit sham in your religious life, and the
disease will spread to every member of the social body. If you
may keep religion in the dark, and cry "hush," "hush," when
people ask that it be brought out into the light, why may not
polities or business cultivate a similar partiality for darkness?
If the king cries, "rebel," when a citizen asks for justice, it
is because he has heard the priest cry, "infidel," when a member
of his church asked for evidence. Religious hypocrisy is the
mother of all hypocrisies. Cure a man of that, and the human
world will recover its health.
Not so long ago, nearly everybody believed in the existence
of a personal devil. People saw him, heard him, described him,
danced with him, and claimed, besides, to have whipped him.
Luther hurled his ink-stand at him, and American women accused as
witches were put to death in the name of the devil. Yet all this
"evidence" has not saved the devil from passing out of existence.
What has happened to the devil will happen to the gods. Man is
the only real savior. If he is not a savior, there is no other.
PART II.
IS THE WORLD INDEBTED TO CHRISTIANITY?
"But," says the believer, again, as a last resort, "Jesus,
whether real or mythical, has certainly saved the world, and is
its only hope." If this assertion can be supported with facts,
then surely it would matter very little whether Jesus really
lived and taught, or whether he is a mere picture. Although even
then it would be more truthful to say we have no satisfactory
evidence that such a teacher as Jesus ever lived, than to affirm
dogmatically his existence, as it is now done. Whatever Jesus may
have done for the world, he has certainly not freed us from the
obligation of telling the truth. I call special attention to this
point. Because Jesus has saved the world, granting for the moment
that he has, is no reason why we should be indifferent to the
truth. Nay, it would show that Jesus has not saved the world, if
we can go on and speak of him as an actual existence, born of a
virgin and risen from the dead, and in his name persecute one
another -- oppose the advance of science, deny freedom of
thought, terrorize children and women with pictures of hellfire
and seek to establish a spiritual monopoly in the world, when the
evidence in hand seems clearly to indicate that such a person
never existed.
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We shall quote a chapter from Christian history to give our
readers an idea of how much the religion of Jesus, when
implicitly believed in, can do for the world. We have gone to the
earliest centuries for our examples of the influence exerted by
Christianity upon the ambitions and passions of human nature
because it is generally supposed that Christianity was then at
its best. Let us, then, present a picture of the world, strictly
speaking, of the Roman Empire, during the first four or five
hundred years after its conversion to Christianity.
We select this specific period, because Christianity was at
this time fifteen hundred years nearer to its source, and was
more virile and aggressive than it has ever been since.
Shakespeare speaks of the uses of adversity; but the uses of
prosperity are even greater. The proverb says that "adversity
tries a man." While there is considerable truth in this, the fact
is that prosperity is a much surer criterion of character. It is
impossible to tell for instance, what a man will do who has
neither the power nor the opportunity to do anything.
"Opportunity," says a French writer; "is the cleverest devil."
Both our good and bad qualities wait upon opportunity to show
themselves. It is quite easy to be virtuous when the opportunity
to do evil is lacking. Behind the prison bars, every criminal is
a penitent, but the credit belongs to the iron bars and not to
the criminal. To be good when one cannot be bad, is an
indifferent virtue.
It is with institutions and religions as with individuals --
they should be judged not by what they pretend in their weakness,
but by what they do when they are strong. Christianity,
Mohammedanism and Judaism, the three kindred religions -- we call
them kindred because they are related in blood and are the
offspring of the same soil and climate -- these three kindred
religions must be interpreted not by what they profess today, but
by what they did when they had both the power and the opportunity
to do as they wished.
When Christianity, or Mohammedanism, was professed only by a
small handful of men -- twelve fishermen, or a dozen camel-
drivers of the desert -- neither party advocated persecution. The
worst punishment which either religion held out was a distant and
a future punishment; but as soon as Christianity converted an
Emperor, or Mohammed became the victorious warrior, that is to
say, as soon as, springing forth, they picked up the sword and
felt their grip sure upon its hilt, this future and distant
punishment materialized into a present and persistent persecution
of their opponents. Is not that suggestive? Then, again, when in
the course of human evolution, both Christianity and
Mohammedanism lost the secular support -- the throne, the favor
of the courts, the imperial treasury -- they fell back once more
upon future penalties as the sole menace against an unbelieving
world. As religion grows, secularly speaking, weaker and is more
completely divorced from the temporal, even the future penalties,
from being both literal and frightful, pale into harmless figures
of speech.
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It was but a short time after the conversion of the Emperor
Constantine, that the following edict was published throughout
the provinces of the Roman Empire:
"O ye enemies of truth, authors and counsellors of
death -- we enact by this law that none of you dare
hereafter to meet at your conventicles ... nor keep any
meetings either in public buildings or private houses. We
have commanded that all your places of meeting -- your
temples -- be pulled down or confiscated to the Catholic
Church."
The man who affixed his signature to this edict was a
monarch, that is to say, a man who had the power to do as he
liked. The man and monarch, then, who affixed his imperial
signature to this first document of persecution in Europe -- the
first, because, as Renan has beautifully remarked, "We may search
in vain the whole Roman law before Constantine for a single
passage against freedom of thought, and the history of the
imperial government furnishes no instance of a prosecution for
entertaining an abstract doctrine," -- this is glory enough for
the civilization which we call Pagan and which was replaced by
the Asiatic religion -- the man and the monarch who fathered the
first instrument of persecution in our Europe, who introduced
into our midst the crazed hounds of religious wars, unknown
either in Greece or Rome, Constantine, has been held up by
Cardinal Newman as "a pattern to all succeeding monarchs." Only
an Englishman, a European, infected with the malady of the East,
could hold up the author of such an edict, -- an edict which
prostitutes the State to the service of a fad -- as "a pattern."
If we asked for a modern illustration of what a church will
do when it has the power, of Russia. there is the example of
Russia. Russia is today centuries behind the other European
nations. She is the most unfortunate, the most ignorant, the most
poverty-pinched country, with the most orthodox type of
Christianity. What is the difference between Greek Christianity,
such as prevails in Russia, and American Christianity? Only this:
The Christian Church in Russia has both the power and the
opportunity to do things, while the Christian church in America
or in France has not. We must judge Christianity as a religion by
what it does in Russia, more than by what it does not do in
France or America. There was a time when the church did in France
and in England what it is doing now in Russia, which is a further
confirmation of the fact that a religion must be judged not by
what it pretends in its weakness, but by what it does when it
can. In Russia, the priest can tie a man's hands and feet and
deliver him up to the government; and it does so. In Protestant
countries, the church, being deprived of all its badges and
prerogatives, is more modest and humble. The poet Heine gives
eloquent expression to this idea when be says: "Religion comes
begging to us, when it can no longer burn us."
There will be no revolution in Russia, nor even any radical
improvement of existing conditions, so long as the Greek Church
has the education of the masses in charge. To become politically
free, men must first be intellectually emancipated. If a Russian
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is not permitted to choose his own religion, will he be permitted
to choose his own form of government? If he will allow a priest
to impose his religion upon him, why may he not permit the Czar
to impose despotism upon him? If it is wrong for him to question
the tenets of his religion, is it not equally wrong for him to
discuss the laws of his government? If a slave of the church, why
may he not be a slave of the state? If there is room upon his
neck for the yoke of the church, there will be room, also, for
the yoke of the autocracy. If he is in the habit of bending his
knees, what difference does it make to how many or to whom he
bends them?
Not until Russia has become religiously emancipated, will
she conquer political freedom. She must first cast out of her
mind the fear of the church, before she can enter into the
glorious fellowship of the free. In Turkey, all the misery of the
people will not so much as cause a ripple of discontent, because
the Moslem has been brought up to submit to the Sultan as to the
shadow on earth of Allah. Both in Russia and Turkey, the
protestants are the heretics. The orthodox Turk and the orthodox
Christian permit without a murmur both the priest and the king to
impose upon them at the point of a bayonet, the one his religion,
and the other his government. It is only by taking the education
of the masses out of the hands of the clergy that either country
can enjoy any prosperity. Orthodoxy and autocracy are twins.
Let me now try to present to you a picture of the world
under Christianity about the year 400 of the present era. Let us
discuss this phase of the subject in a liberal spirit,
extenuating nothing, nor setting down aught in malice. Please
interpret what I say in the next few minutes metaphorically, and
pardon me if my picture is a repellant one.
We are in the year of our Lord, 400:
I rose up early this morning to go to church. As I
approached the building, I saw there a great multitude of people
unable to secure admission into the edifice. The huge iron doors
were closed, and upon them was affixed a notice from the
authorities, to the effect that all who worshiped in this church
would, by the authority of the state, be known and treated
hereafter as "infamous heretics," and be exposed to the extreme
penalty of the law if they persisted in holding services there.
But the party to which I belonged heeded not the prohibition, but
beat against the doors furiously and effected an entrance into
the church. The excitement ran high; men and, leaders shouted,
gesticulated and came to blows. The Archbishop was urged to
ascend his episcopal throne and officiate at the altar in spite
of the formal interdiction against him. He consented. But he had
not proceeded far when soldiers, with a wild rush, poured into
the building and began to discharge arrows at the panic-stricken
people. Instantly pandemonium was let loose. The officers
commanding the soldiers demanded the head of the offending
Archbishop. The worshipers made a attempt to resist; then blood
was shed, the sight of which reeled people's heads, and in an
instant, the sanctuary was turned into a house of murder. Taking
advantage of the uproar, the Archbishop, assisted by his
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secretaries, escaped through a secret door behind the altar.
On my way home from this terrible scene, I fell upon a procession
of monks. They were carrying images and relies, and a banner upon
which were inscribed these words: "The Virgin Mary, Mother of
God." As they marched on, their number increased by new
additions. But suddenly they encountered another band of monks,
carrying a different banner, bearing the same words which were on
the other party's banner, but instead of "The Virgin Mary, Mother
of God," their banner read: "The Virgin Mary, mother of Jesus
Christ." The two processions clashed, and a bloody encounter
followed; in an instant images, relies and banners were all in an
indiscriminate heap. The troops were called out again, but Such
was the zeal of the conflicting parties that not until the
majority of them were disabled and exhausted, was tranquility
restored.
Looking about me, I saw the spire of neighboring church. My
curiosity prompted me to wend my steps thither. As soon as I
entered, I was recognized as belonging to the forbidden sect, and
in an instant a hundred fists rained down blows upon head. "He
has polluted the sanctuary,' they cried. "He has committed
sacrilege." "No quarter to the enemies of the true church," cried
others, and it was a miracle that, beaten, bruised, my clothes
torn from my back, I regained the street. A few seconds later,
looking up the streets, I saw another troop of soldiers, rushing
down toward this church at full speed. It seems that while I was
being beaten in the main auditorium, in the baptistery of the
church they were killing, in cold blood, the Archbishop, who was
suspected of a predilection for the opposite party, and who had
refused to retract or resign from his office. The next day I
heard that one hundred and thirty-seven bodies were taken out of
this building.
Seized with terror, I now began to run, but, alas, I had
worse experiences in store for me. I was compelled to pass the
principal square in the center of the city before I could reach a
place of safety. When I reached this square, it had the
appearance of a veritable battlefield. It was Sunday morning, and
the partisans of rival bishops, differing in their interpretation
of theological doctrines, were fighting each other like maddened,
malignant creatures. One could hear, over the babel of discordant
yells, scriptural phrases. The words, "The Son is equal to the
Father," "The Father is greater than the Son," "He is begotten of
the same substance as the Father," "He is of like substance, but
not of the same substance," "You are a heretic," "You are an
atheist," were invariably accompanied with blows, stabs and sword
thrusts, until, as an eye-witness, I can take an oath that I saw
the streets leading out of the square deluged with palpitating
human blood. Suddenly the commander of the cavalry, Hermogenes,
rode upon the scene of feud and bloodshed. He ordered the
followers of the rival bishops to disperse, but instead of
minding his authority, the zealots of both sides rushed upon his
horse, tore the rider from the saddle and began to beat him with
clubs and stones which they picked up from the street. He managed
to escape into a house close by, but the religious rabble
surrounded the house and set fire to it. Hermogenes appeared at
the window, begging for his life. He was attacked again, an
killed, and his mangled body dragged through the streets and
rushed into a ditch.
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The spectacle inflamed me, being a sectarian myself. I felt
ashamed that I was not showing an equal zeal for my party I, too,
longed to fight, to kill, to be killed for my religion. And,
anon! the opportunity presented itself. I saw, looking up the
street to my right, a group of my fellow-believers, who, like
myself, shut out of their own church by the orthodox authorities,
armed with whips loaded with lead and with clubs, were entering a
house. I followed them. As we went in, we commanded the head of
the family and his wife to appear. When they did, we asked them
if it was true that in their prayers to Mary they had refrained
from the use of the words, "The mother of God." They hesitated to
give a direct answer, whereupon we used the club, and then, the
scourge. Then they said they believed in and revered the blessed
virgin, but would not, even if we killed them, say that she was
the mother of God. This obstinacy exasperated us and we felt it
to be our religious duty, for the honor of our, divine Queen, to
perpetrate such cruelties upon them as would shock your gentle
ears to hear. We held them over slowly burning fires, flung lime
into their eyes, applied roasted eggs and hot irons to the
sensitive parts of their bodies, and even gagged them to force
the sacrament into their mouths. ... As we went from house to
house, bent upon our mission, I remember an expression of one of
the party who said to the poor woman who was begging for mercy:
"What! shall I be guilty of defrauding the vengeance of God of
its victims?" A sudden chill ran down my back. I felt my flesh
creep. Like a drop of poison the thought embodied in those words
perverted whatever of pity or humanity was left in me, and I felt
that I was only helping to secure victims with which to feed the
vengeance of God!
I was willing to be a monster for the glory of God!
The Christian sect to which I belonged was one of the oldest
in Christendom. Our ancestors were called the Puritans of the
fourth and fifth centuries. We believe that no one can be saved
outside of our communion. When a Christian of another church
joins us, we re-baptize him, for we do not believe in the
validity of other baptisms. We are so particular that we deny our
cemeteries to any other Christians than our own members. If we
find that we have, by mistake, buried a member of another church
in our cemetery, we dig up his bones, that he may not pollute the
soil. When one of the churches of another denomination falls into
our hands, we first fumigate the building, and with a sharp knife
we scrape the wood off the altars upon which other Christian
priests have offered prayers. We under no consideration, allow a
brother Christian from another church to commune with us; if by
stealth anyone does, we spare not his life. But we are persecuted
just as severely as we persecute, ourselves. [This sect
(Donatist) and others, lasted for a long time, and made Asia and
Africa a hornet's nest, -- a blood-stained arena, of feud and
riot and massacre, until Mohammedanism put an end, In these parts
of the world, not only to these sects, but to Christianity
itself.]
As the sun was setting, fatigued with the holy Sabbath's
religious duties, I started to go home. On my way back, I saw
even wilder, bloodier scenes, between rival ecclesiastical
factions, streets even redder with blood, if possible, yea,
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certain sections of the city seemed as if a storm of hail, or
tongues of flame had swept over them. Churches were on fire,
cowled monks attacking bishops' residences, rival prelates
holding uproarious debates, which almost always terminated in
bloodshed and, to cap the day of many vicissitudes, I saw a bear
on exhibition which bad been given its freedom by the ruler, as a
reward for his faithful services in devouring heretics. The
Christian ruler kept two fierce bears by his own chamber, to
which those who did not bold the orthodox faith were thrown in
his presence while he listened with delight to their groans.
When I reached home, I was panting for breath. I had lived
through another Sabbath day. [If the reader will take the pains
to read Dean Milman's History of Christianity, and his History of
Latin Christianity; also Gibbon's Downfall of the Roman Empire,
and Mosheim's History of Christianity, he will see that we have
exaggerated nothing. The Athanasian and the Arian, the Donstist
and Sabellian, the Nestorian and Alexandrian factions converted
the early centuries into a long reign of terror.]
I feel like covering my face for telling you so grewsome a
tale. But if this were the fourth or the fifth century, instead
of the twentieth, and this were Constantinople, or Alexandria, or
Antioch, instead of Chicago, I would have spent just such a
Sunday as I have described to you. In giving you this
concentrated view of human society in the great capitals of
Christendom in the year 400, I have restrained, rather than
spurred, my imagination. Remember, also that I have excluded from
my generalization all reference to the centuries of religious
wars which tore Europe limb from limb, -- the wholesale
exterminations, the crusades, which represented one of the
maddest spells of misguided and costly zeal which ever, shuck our
earth, the persecution of the Huguenots, the extermination of the
Albigenses and of the Waldenses, -- the massacre of St.
Bartholomew, the Inquisition with its red hand upon the intellect
of Europe, the Antibaptist outrages in Germany, the smithfield
fires in England, the religious outrages in Scotland, the Puritan
excesses in America, -- the reign of witchcraft and superstition
throughout the twenty centuries -- I have not touched my picture
with any colors borrowed from these terrible chapters in the
history of our unfortunate earth. I have also left out all
reference to Papal Rome, with its dungeons, its stakes, its
massacres and its burnings. I have said nothing of Galileo,
Vanini, Campanella or Bruno. I have passed over all this in
silence. You can imagine, now, how much more repellant and
appalling this representation of the Roman world under
Christianity would have been had I stretched my canvas to include
also these later centuries.
But I tremble to be one-sided or unjust, and so I hasten to
say that during the twenty centuries reign of our religion, the
world has also seen some of the fairest flowers spring out of the
soil of our earth. During the past twenty centuries there have
been men and women, calling themselves Christians, who have been
as generous, as heroic and as deeply consecrated to high ideals
as any the world has ever produced. Christianity has in many
instances, softened the manners of barbarians and elevated the
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moral tone of primitive peoples. It gives us more pleasure to
speak of the good which religions have accomplished than to call
attention to the evil they have caused. But this raises a very
important question. "Why do you not confine yourself," we are
often asked, "to the virtues you find in Christianity or
Mohammedanism, instead of discussing so frequently their
short-comings? Is it not better to praise than to blame, to
recommend than to find fault?" This is a fair question, and we
may just as well meet it now as at any other time.
Such is the economy of nature that no man, or institution or
religion, can be altogether evil. The poet spoke the truth when
he said: "There is a soul of goodness in things evil." Evil, in a
large sense, is the raw material of the good. All things
contribute to the education of man. The question, then, whether
an institution is helpful or hurtful, is a relative one. The
character of an institution, as that of an individual, is
determined by its ruling passion. Despotism, for instance, is
generally considered to be an evil. And yet, a hundred good
things can be said of despotism. The French people, over a
hundred years ago, overthrew the monarchy. And yet the monarchy
had rendered a thousand services to France, It was the monarchy
that created France, that extended her territory, developed her
commerce, built her great cities, defended her frontiers against
foreign invasion, and gave her a place among the first-class
nations of Europe. Was it just, then, to pull down an institution
that had done so much for France?
Why did the Americans overthrow British rule in this
country? Had not England rendered innumerable services to the
colony? Was she not one of the most progressive, most civilizing
influences in the modern world? Was it just, then, that we should
have beaten out of the land a government that had performed for
us so many friendly acts?
Referring once more to the case of Russia: Why do the
awakened people in that country demand the overthrow of the
autocracy? Is there nothing good to be said of Russian autocracy?
Have not the Czars loved their country and fought for her
prosperity? Have they not brought Russia up to her present size,
population and political influence in Europe? Have they not
beautified her cities and enacted laws for the protection of
their subjects? Is it right, then, in spite of all these things
that autocracy has done for Russia, to seek to overthrow it?
Once more: Why do the missionaries go into India and China
and Japan trying to replace the ancestral religion of these
people with the Christian faith? Why does the missionary labor to
overthrow the worship of Buddha, Confucius and Zoroaster? Have
not these great teachers helped humanity? Have they not rendered
any services to their countrymen? Are there no truths in their
teachings? Are there no virtues in their lives? Is it right,
then, that the missionary should criticize these ancient faiths?
Let us take an example from nearer home. We were talking
some years ago with a gentleman who had just returned from
Dowie's Zion. He was surprised to find there a clean, orderly and
well-behaved people, apparently quite happy. He said that after
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his experience there, he would rather do business with Dowie and
his men than with the average member of other religious bodies.
He found the Dowieites honest, reliable and peaceful. Now, all
this may be true, and I hope it is; but what of it? Dowieism is
an evil, notwithstanding this recital of its virtues. It is an
evil, because it arrests the intellectual development of man,
because it makes dwarfs of the people it converts, because it
pinches the forehead of each convert into that of either a
charlatan or an idiot. We regret to have to use these harsh
terms. But Dowieism is denounced, because it brings up human
beings as if they were sheep, because it robs them of the most
glorious gift of life, the freedom to grow, Dowieism is an evil,
because it makes the human race mediocre by contracting its
intellect down to the measure of a creed. We would much rather
that the Dowieites smoked and drank and swore, than that they
should fear to think. There is hope for a bad man. There is no
hope for the stupid.
In the case of an institution or a religion, then, it is not
by adding up the debit and credit columns and striking a balance
sheet that the question whether it has helped or hurt mankind is
to be determined. We cannot, for instance, place ninety-nine
vices in one column, and a hundred virtues in another, and
conclude therefrom that the institution or the religion should be
preserved. Nor, conversely speaking, can we place a hundred vices
against ninety-nine virtues, and, therefore, condemn the
institution. Even as a man is hanged for one act in his life, in
spite of the thousand good acts which may be quoted against the
one evil deed, so an institution or a religion is honored or
condemned, as we said above, for its ruling passion.
Mohammedanism, Judaism and Christianity have done much good, just
as other religions have, but they are condemned today by modern
thought, because they are a conspiracy against reason -- because
they combat progress, as if it were a crime!
Another criticism frequently advanced against us is that we
fail to realize that all the evil of which Christianity is said
to have been the cause, is only the result of human ignorance and
passion. When attention is called, for instance, to the
intolerance and stubborn opposition to science, of Christianity,
the answer given is, that this conduct is not only not inspired
by the spirit of Christianity, but that it is in direct
contradiction to its teachings. The Christians claim that all the
luminous chapters in history have been inspired by their
religion, all its sorrowful and black pages have been written by
the passions of men. But this apology, which, we regret to say,
is in every preacher's mouth, is not an honest one. In our
opinion, both Mohammedanism and Christianity, as also Judaism,
are responsible for the evil as well as the good they have
accomplished in the world. They are responsible for the lives
they have destroyed, as for the lives they have saved. They are
responsible for the passions they have aroused, -- for the
hatred, the persecutions and the religious wars of the centuries,
as for the piety and charity they have encouraged.
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The central idea in all the three religions mentioned above,
is that God has revealed his will to man. There is, we say
frankly, the root of all the evil which religion has inflicted
upon our unfortunate earth. The poison is in both the flower and
the fruit which that idea brings forth. If it be true that God
has revealed his will, that he has told us, for instance, to
believe in the Trinity, the atonement, the fall of man, and the
dogma of eternal punishment, and we refuse to do so, will we not,
then, be regarded as the most odious, the most heinous, the most
rebellious, the most sacrilegious, the most stiff-necked, the
most criminal people in the world? Think of refusing to believe
as God has dictated to us! Think of saying no! to one's Creator
and Father in Heaven I Think of the consequences of differing
with God, and tempting others to do the same! Is it at all
strange that during the early centuries of Christianity, the
people who hesitated to agree with the deity, or to believe as he
wanted them to, were looked upon as incarnate fiends, as the
accomplices of the devil and the enemies of the human race, and
were treated accordingly?
The doctrine of salvation by faith makes persecution inevitable.
If to refuse to believe in the Trinity, or in the divinity of
Christ, is a crime against God and will be punished by an
eternity of hell in the next world, and if such a man endangers
the eternal salvation of his fellows, is it not the duty of all
religious people to endeavor to exterminate him and his race, now
and here? How can Christian people tolerate the rebel against
their God, when God himself has pronounced sentence of death
against him? Why not follow the example of the deity, as set
forth in the persecutions of the Old Testament?
When we have a God for a teacher, the highest and surest
virtue is unconditional acquiescence. Judaism, Mohaemmedanism and
Christianity, in giving us a God for a teacher, have taken away
from us the liberty to think for ourselves. Each one of these
three religions makes unconditional obedience the price of the
salvation it offers, but do you know what other word in the
English language unconditional obedience is a synonym of? --
Silence! A dumb world, a tongue-tied humanity alone can be saved!
The good man is the man on his knees with his mouth in the dust.
But silence is sterility! Silence is slavery! Think, then, of the
character of a religion which makes free speech, free thought, a
crime -- which hurls hell against the Protestant!
There is a third question to be answered: It is true, they
say to us, that there are many things in the Koran, the Old
Testament and the New, which are really injurious, and which
ought to be discarded, but there are also many beautiful
principles, noble sentiments and high educational maxims in these
scriptures. Why not, then, dwell upon these, and pass in silence
over the objectionable teachings of these religions?
It is not necessary to repeat again that in all so-called
sacred scriptures, there are glorious truths. It could not have
been otherwise. All literature, whether secular or religious, is
the voice of man and sweeps the whole compass of human love and
hope. We have no objection to quoting from the Veddas, the
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Avestas, the Koran or the Bible; nor do we hesitate to admire and
enjoy and praise generously the ravishingly beautiful utterances
of the poets and prophets of all times and climes. Nevertheless,
it remains true that the modern world finds more practical help
and inspiration in secular authors, in the books of science and
philosophy, than in these so-called inspired scriptures. Jesus,
who is popularly believed to have preached the Sermon on the
Mount, has said little or nothing which can help the modern world
as much as the scientific revelations of a student like Darwin,
or of a philosopher like Herbert Spencer, or of a poet like
Goethe or Shakespeare. We know this will sound like blasphemy to
the believer, but a moment's honest and fearless reflection will
convince everyone of the fact that neither Mohammed nor Jesus had
in view modern conditions when they delivered their sermons.
Jesus could have had no idea of a world outside of his little
Palestine. The thought of the many races of the world mingling
together in one country could never have occurred to him. His
vision did not embrace the vista of two thousand years, nor did
his mind rise to the level of the problems which today tax the
brain and heart of man. Jesus believed implicitly that the world
would speedily come to an end, that the sun and the moon would
soon fall from the face of the sky, and that people living then
in Palestine would not taste of death before they saw "the Son of
Man return upon the clouds." Jesus had no idea of a progressive
evolution of humanity. It was beyond him to conceive the
consolidation of the nations into one fellowship, the new
resources which science would tap, or the new energies which
human industry would challenge. Jesus was in peaceful ignorance
of the social and international problems which confront the world
of today. The Sermon on the Mount, then, which is said to be the
best in our gospels, can be of little help to us, for it could
not have been meant for us. And it is very easy to show that the
modern world ignores, not out of disrespect to Jesus, but by the
force of circumstances and the evolution of society, the
principles contained in that renowned sermon.
I was waiting for transportation at the corner of one of the
principal streets of Chicago, the other day, when, looking about
me, I saw the tremendous building's which commerce and wealth
have reared in our midst. On one hand was a savings bank, on the
other a colossal national bank, and up and down the street a
thousand equally solid and substantial buildings, devoted to the
interests of commerce and civilization. To bring out and
emphasize the wide breach between the man who preached the Sermon
on the Mount, and progressive and aggressive, busy and wealthy,
modern Chicago, I took the words of Jesus and mentally inscribed
them upon the walls of these buildings. Upon the savings bank --
and a savings bank represents economy, frugality, self-sacrifice,
self-restraint, -- the desire of the people to provide for the
uncertainties of the future, to lay by something for the
education of their children, for the maintenance of their
families when they themselves have ceased to live, -- I printed
upon the facade of this institution, figuratively speaking, these
words of the Oriental Jesus:
"Take no thought of the morrow, for the morrow
will take care of itself."
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And upon the imposing front of the national bank, I wrote:
"Lay not up for yourselves treasures on earth."
If we followed these teachings, would not our industrial and
social life sink at once to the level of the stagnating Ascetics?
Pursuing this comparison between Jesus and modern life, I
inscribed upon the handsome churches whose pews bring enormous
incomes, and on the palatial residences of Bishops with salaries
of from twenty-five to a hundred thousand dollars, (this was 1909
folks! EFF) these words:
"How hardly shall a rich man enter into the
kingdom of Heaven," and, "It is easier for a camel to
go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to
enter the kingdom of Heaven."
In plain words, the gospel condemns wealth, and cries, "Woe
unto you rick," and "Sell all thou hast and give it to the poor,"
which, by the way, would only be shifting the temptation of
wealth from one class to another. Buckle was nearer the truth,
and more modem in spirit, when he ascribed the progress of man to
the pursuit of truth and the acquisition of wealth.
But let us apply the teachings of Jesus to still other
phases of modern life. Some years ago our Cuban neighbors
appealed to the United States for protection against the cruelty
and tyranny of Spanish rule. We sent soldiers over to aid the
oppressed and down-trodden people in the Island. Now, suppose,
instead of sending iron-clads and admirals, -- Schley, Sampson
and Dewey,-- we had advised the Cubans to "resist not evil," and
to "submit to the powers that be," or suppose the General of our
army, or the Secretary of our navy, had counseled seriously our
soldiers to remember the words of Jesus when fighting the
Spaniards: "If a man smite thee on one cheek," etc.
Write upon our halls of justice and court-houses and statute
books, and on every lawyer's desk, these solemn words of Jesus:
"He that taketh away thy coat, let him have thy cloak also."
Introduce into our Constitution, the pride and bulwark of
our liberties, guaranteeing religious freedom unto all, -- these
words of Paul: "If any man preach any other gospel than that
which I have preached unto you, let him be accursed." Think of
placing nearly fifty millions of our American population under a
curse!
Tell this to the workers in organized charities: "Give to
every man that asketh of thee," which, if followed, would make a
science of charity impossible.
To the workingmen, or the oppressed seeking redress and
protesting against evil, tell this: "Blessed are they that are
persecuted," which is equivalent to encouraging them to submit
to, rather than to resist, oppression.
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Or upon our colleges and universities, our libraries and
laboratories consecrated to science, write the words: "The wisdom
of this world is foolishness with God," and "God has chosen the
foolish to confound the wise." Ah, yes, the foolish of Asia, it
is true, succeeded in confounding the philosophers of Europe.
Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, Jesus, did replace Socrates, Plato,
Aristotle, Seneca, Cicero, Caesar and the Antonines! But it was a
trance, a spell, a delirium only, and it did not last, -- it
could not last. The charm is at last broken. Europe is forever
free from the exorcism of Asia.
I believe the health and sanity and virtue of our Europe
would increase a hundred fold, if we could, from this day forth,
cease to pretend professing by word of mouth what in our own
hearts and lives we have completely outgrown. If we could be cere
and brave; if our leaders and teachers would only be honest with
themselves and, honest with the modern world, there would,
indeed, be a new earth and a new humanity -- But the past is
past. It is for us to sow the seeds which in the day of their
fruition shall emancipate humanity from the pressing yoke of a
stubborn Asiatic superstition, and push the future even beyond
the beauty and liberty of the old Pagan world!
CHRISTIANITY AND PAGANISM
Christianity as an Asiatic cult is not suitable to European
races. To prove this, let us make a careful comparison between
Paganism and Christianity. There are many foolish things, and
many excellent things, in both the Pagan and the Christian
religions. We are not concerned with particular beliefs and
rites; it is Paganism as a philosophy of life, and Christianity
as a philosophy of life, that we desire to investigate. And at
the threshold of our investigation we must bear in mind that
Paganism was born and grew into maturity in Europe, while Asia
was the cradle of Christianity. It would be superfluous to
undertake to prove that in politics, in government, in
literature, in art, in science, in the general culture of the
people, Europe was always in advance of Asia. Do we know of any
good reason, when it comes to religion, why Asia should be
incomparably superior to anything Europe has produced in that
line? Unless we believe in miracles, the natural inference would
be that a people who were better educated in every way than the
Ascetics should have also possessed the better religion. I admit
that this is only inferential, or a-priori reasoning, and that it
still remains to be shown by the recital of facts, that Europe
not only ought to have produced a better religion than Asia, but
that she did.
In my opinion, between the Pagan and Christian view of life
there is the same difference that there is between a European and
an Asiatic. What makes a Roman a Roman, a Greek a Greek, and a
Persian a Persian? That is a very interesting, but also a very
difficult question. Why are not all nations alike? Why is the oak
more robust than the spruce? What are the subtle influences which
operate in the womb of nature, where "the embryos of races are
nourished into form and individuality?" I cannot answer that
question satisfactorily, and I am not going to attempt to answer
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it at all. We know there is a radical difference between the
European and the Asiatic; we know that Oriental and Occidental
culture are the antitheses of each other, and nowhere else is
this seen more clearly than in their interpretations of the
universe, that is to say, in their religions.
In order to understand the Oriental races, we must discover
the standpoint from which they take their observations.
But first, it is admitted, of course, that there are
Europeans who are more Asiatic in their habits of life and
thought than the Ascetics themselves, and, conversely, there
are Ascetics who in spirit, energy and progressiveness are
abreast of the most advanced representatives of European culture.
Nor has Asia been altogether barren; she has blossomed in
Many spots, and she nursed the flame of civilization at a time
when Europe was not yet even cradled.
To show the intellectual point of view of the Asiatic, let
me quote a passage from the Book of Job, which certainly is an
oriental composition, and one of the finest:
"How, then, can man be justified with God, or how can
he be clean that is born of a woman? Man that is a worm, and
the son of man, which is a worm."
This, then, is the standpoint of the Oriental. He believes
he is a poor little worm. His philosophy must necessarily trail
in the dust. A worm cannot have the thoughts of an eagle; a worm
cannot have the imagination of a Titan; a worm sees the world
only as a worm may. This is the angle of vision of the Asiatic.
He calls himself a worm, and naturally his view of life shrinks
to the limits of his standpoint. To be perfectly fair, however,
we must admit there are passages in all the bibles of the Orient
which are as daring as those found in any European book, but they
represent only the strayings of the Oriental mind, not its normal
pulse. The habitual accent of the Oriental is that man, calling a
woman his mother, is a worm. In the Psalms of David, or whoever
wrote the book, we read these words: "I am a worm, and not a
man." What did the Oriental see in the worm, which, induced him
to select it out of all things as the original, so to speak, of
man? The worm crawls and creeps and writhes. Nothing is so
distressing as to see its helpless wiggling -- and its home is in
the dust; dirt is its daily food. Moreover, it is in danger of
being stamped or trampled into annihilation at any instant. A
worm represents the minimum of worth, -- the dregs in the cup of
existence; it is the scum or the froth of life, which one may
blow into the air. It is impossible to descend lower than this in
self-abasement.
When the Oriental, therefore, says that man is a worm or "I
am a worm," he is just as much obeying the cumulative pressure of
his Asiatic ancestry, and voicing the inherited submission of the
Oriental mind, as Prometheus, with the vulture at his breast, and
shaking, his hand in the face of the gods, expresses the revolt
of the European mind. The normal state for the Asiatic is
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submission; for the European it is independence. Slavery has a
fascination for the children of the east. The air of independence
is too sharp for them. They crave a master, a Sultan or a Czar,
who shall own them body and soul. Through long practice, they
have acquired the art of servility and flattery, of salaams and
prostrations -- an art in which they have become so efficient
that it would be to them like throwing away so much capital to
abandon its practice. They expect to go to Heaven on their knees.
This is not said to hurt the feelings of the races of the Orient.
We are explaining the influence of absolutism upon the products
and tendencies of the human mind. The religion of the Orient,
then, notwithstanding its many beautiful features like its
polities, is a product of the suppressed mind, which finds in the
creeping worm of the dust the measure of its own worth. How
different is the European from the Asiatic in this respect! The
latter crawls upon the stage of this magnificent universe with
the timidity, hesitancy and tremblings of a worm. True to his
bringing up, be falls prostrate, overwhelmed by the marvelous
immensities opening before him and the abysses yawning at his
feet. He contracts and dwindles in size, imploring with
outstretched hands to be spared because he is a poor worm. It is
a part of his religion or philosophy that if he admits he is
nothing but a worm, the dread powers will not consider him a
rival or a rebel, but will look upon him as a confirmed subject,
and permit him to live. This is his art, the strategy by which he
hopes to secure his salvation.
There has never been a republic in Asia, which is another
way of saying that the Asiatic mind has never asserted its
independence. Hence its thought smacks of slavery. In politics,
as in religion, the Asiatic has always been passive. He has never
been an actor, but only a spectator. It is his to nod the head,
fold the arms and bend the knee. On earth he must have a king and
a pope, and in heaven an Allah or a Jehovah. He has not been
created for himself, but for the glory of his earthly and
heavenly Lords. This radical difference between European self-
appreciation and Asiatic self-depreciation furnishes the key to
the problem under discussion.
Paganism is the religion of a self-governing race. Buddhism,
Judaism, Mohammedanism, and Christianity are religions born on a
soil where man is owned by another. It will be impossible to
imagine Marcus Aurelius, for instance, crawling upon his knees
before any being, or calling himself a worm. One must have in his
blood the taint of a thousand years of slavery, before he can
stoop so low. Marcus Aurelius was a gentleman. The European
conception of a gentleman implies self-respect and independence;
the Oriental conception of a gentleman implies self-abasement and
acquiescence. The Oriental gentleman is a man who serves his king
as though he were his slave.
But observe now how the Oriental proceeds. to pull down his
mind to the level of his body, which he has likened to a worm.
When I was still a Presbyterian minister, I was invited to
address a Sunday-school camp-meeting at Asbury Park in New
Jersey. There were other speakers besides myself; one of them,
known as a Sunday-school leader, had brought with him a chart of
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the human heart, which, when he arose to address the children, he
spread on a black-board before them: This is a picture of your
heart before you have accepted Jesus. What do you think of it?"
he asked the school. "It is all black," was the answer; and it
was. He had drawn a totally black picture to represent the heart
of the child before conversion.
In all the literature of Pagandom, there is not the least
intimation of so fearful an idea as the total depravity of human
nature. The Pagans never thought, spoke, or heard of such a
thing. It was inconceivable to them; they would have recoiled
from it as from a species of barbarism. How radically different,
then, must European culture have been from the Asiatic. There is
a gulf well-nigh impassible between the thought of a free-born
citizen and that of the oppressed and enslaved Oriental.
But let us continue. Not satisfied with thinking of himself
as a worm, and of his Intellectual and moral nature as totally
degraded, the Oriental strikes with the same paralyzing stroke,
at the world in which he lives, until it, too, withers and
becomes an ugly and heinous thing. He calls the world a "vale of
tears," ruled by the powers of darkness, and groaning under a
primeval curse. "The world, the flesh and the devil" become a
trio of iniquity and sin. Some of you in your earlier days must
have sung that Methodist hymn which represents the world as a
snare and a delusion:
"The world is a fleeting show
For man's illusion given."
Given! Think of believing that the world has been purposely
given us to lead us astray. The thought staggers the mind. It
suggests a terrible conspiracy against man. For his ruin, sun,
moon and stars co-operate with the devil. Help! we cry, as we
realize our inability to cope with the tremendous powers hurling
themselves against us like billows of the raging sea, and taking
our breath away. It suggests that we are placed in a world which
has been made purposely beautiful, in order to tempt us into sin.
Think of such a belief! It is that of a slave. It is Asiatic; it
is not European. Neither you nor I, in all our readings, have
ever come across any such attitude toward nature in Pagan
literature. The Greeks and the Romans loved nature and made
lovely gods out of every running brook, caressing zephyr, dancing
wave, glistening dew, sailing cloud, beaming star, beautiful
woman, or brave man. The Oriental suspects nature and regards her
smiles -- the shining of the sun, the perfume of the meadows, the
swell of the seal the fluttering of the branches tipped with
blossoms, the emerald grass, the sapphire sky -- looks upon all
these as the seductive advances of a prostitute in whose embrace
lurks death!
But, once more; not satisfied with dragging the world down
to the plane of his totally depraved nature, and that again to
the level of the worm, the Asiatic projects his fatal thought
into the next world and, crossing the grave, that silent and
painless home of a tired race, he crowds the beyond with a
thousand thousand pains and aches and horrors and fires -- with
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sulphur and brimstone and burning hells. His frightened
imagination invokes dark and infernal beings without number,
fanning with their dark wings the very air he breathes. This is
too revolting to think of. Poor slave! Inured to suffering, -- to
the lash, to oppression's crushing heel, -- he dare not dream of
a painless future, of a quiet, peaceful sleep at life's end, nor
has he the divine audacity to invent a new world wherein the
misery and slavery of his present existence will be impossible,
-- where all his tyrants will be dead, where he shall taste of
sweet freedom and become himself a god. In his timidity and
shrinking submission, with the spring of his heartbroken, his
spirit crushed, all independence strangled in his soul, -- he
puts in the biggest corner of his heaven even, -- a hell! Nor
does he pause there, but, stinging his slave imagination once
more, he declares that this future of torture and hell-fire is
everlasting. He cannot improve upon that. Deeper in degradation
he cannot descend. That is the darkest thought he can have, and,
strange to say, he hugs it to his bosom as a mother would her
child. The doctrine of hell is the thought of a slave and of a
coward. No free-born man, no brave soul could ever have invented
so abhorrent an idea. Only under a regime of absolutism, only
under an Oriental Sultan whose caprice is law, whose vengeance is
terrible, whose favors are fickle whose power is crushing, whose
greed is insatiable, whose torture instruments are without
number, and whose dark dungeons always resound with the rattling
of chains and the groans of martyrs -- only under such a regime
could man have invented an unending hell.
But we were mistaken when we said that hell was the darkest
that the Asiatic was capable of. He has grafted upon the European
mind a belief which is darker still.
Is there anything more precious in human life than children?
The sternest heart melts, the fiercest features relax, at the
sight of an innocent, sweet, laughing, frolicking babe in its
mother's arms. Look at its glorious eyes, so full of surprises,
so deep, so appealing! Look at the soft round hands, the little
feet, the exquisite mouth, opening like a bud! Hear its prattle,
which is nothing but the mind beginning to stir! Watch its
gestures, the first language of the child! See it with its tiny
arms about its mother's neck. Mark its joy when it is kissed.
What else in our human world is more beautiful, more divine? And
yet, and yet, the slave creed of Asia has drawn into its burning
net of damnation even the cradle. John Burroughs describes how in
a Catholic cemetery near where he lives he was shown a neglected,
unkept corner, used for the burial of unbaptized children.
Consecrated ground is denied to them, and so their poor bodies
are huddled together in this profane plot, unblessed and unsaved.
I do not wish to live in a world where such absurdities are not
only countenanced, but where they are exalted to the dignity of a
religion!
O holy children! O sweet children! huddled together in
unconsecrated ground, and thus exposed to the cruelty of
indescribable demons! Can you hear me? I am a man of compassion.
I can forgive the murderer. I can pardon and pity the meanest
wretch and take him into my arms, but I confess that even if I
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had a heart as big as the ocean, I could not, I would not,
forgive the creed that can be guilty of such inhumanity against
you, -- dear, innocent ones, who were born to breathe but for a
moment the harsh air of this world! When such gloom overpowers me
and wrings from my lips such hard words, I find some little
respite in contemplating the old Pagan world in its best days. I
hasten for consolation to my Pagan friends, and in their sanity
find healing for my bruised heart.
In one of his letters, the Greek Plutarch says this about
children, which I want you to compare with what St. Augustine,
the representative of the Asiatic creed, says on the same
subject. "It is irreligious," writes Plutarch, "to lament for
those pure souls (the children) who have passed into a better
life and a happier dwelling place." [Plutarch Ad Uxorem. Comp.
Lecky's History of European Morals, Vol. 1.] Compare this Pagan
tenderness for children with the Asiatic doctrine of infant
damnation but recently thrown out of the Presbyterian creed. Yet,
if St. Augustine is to be believed, it is a heresy to reject the
damnation of. unbaptized infants: "Whosoever shall tell," writes
this Father of the church, "that infants shall be quickened in
Christ who died without partaking in his sacrament, does both
contradict the apostles' teaching and condemn the whole church."
[St. Augustine Epist. 166.] It is infinitely more religious to
disagree with the apostles and the church, if that is their
teaching. The Pagan view of children is the holier view. The
doctrine of the damnation of children could only find lodgment in
the brain of a slave or a madman. It is Asiatic and altogether
foreign to the culture of Europe.
All that we have advanced thus far may be summed up in one
phrase: Asia invented the idea that man is a fallen being. This
idea, which is the dors espinal, -- the backbone -- of
Christianity, never for once entered the mind of the European. We
have already quoted from Job and the psalms; the following is
from the book of Jeremiah: "The heart is deceitful above all
things and desperately wicked." This is one of the texts upon
which the doctrine of the fall of man is based. We repeat that
only under a religion of slavery, where one slave vies with
another to abase himself before his lords and masters, could such
an idea have been invented. There is not a man in all our sacred
scriptures who could stand before the deity erect and unabashed,
or who could speak in the accents of a Cicero Who said, "We boast
justly of our own virtue, which we could not do if we derived it
from the deity and not from ourselves," or this from Epictetus,
"It is characteristic of a wise man that he looks for all his
good and evil from himself." Such independence was foreign to a
race that believed itself fallen.
In further confirmation of our position, it may be said that
the models which the Pagans set up for emulation were men like
themselves, only nobler. The models which the Orientals set up
for imitation, on the other hand, were supernatural beings, or
men who were supposed to possess supernatural powers. The great
men for the Oriental are men who can work miracles, who possess
magical powers, who possess secrets and can know how to influence
the deity, -- Moses, Joshua, David, Joseph, Isaiah, Jesus, Paul,
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-- all demi-divinities. The Pagans, on the other hand, selected
natural men, men like themselves, who had earned the admiration
of their fellows. Let me quote to you Plutarch's eloquent
sentence relative to this subject: "Whenever we begin an
enterprise or take possession of a charge, or experience a
calamity, we place before our eyes the examples of the greatest
men of our own or of bygone ages, and we ask ourselves how Plato,
or Epaminondas, or Lycurgus, or Agesilaus, would have acted.
Looking into these personages, as into a faithful mirror, we can
remedy our defects in word or deed."
The Westminster Catechism, which in its essentials is a
resume of our Asiatic religion, emphasizes the doctrine of the
fall of man, of which the Pagan world knew nothing, and refused
to believe it until priests succeeded in dominating the mind of
Europe: "The catechism following the Scripture teaches that ...
we are not only a disinherited family, but we are personally
depraved and demoralized." [Wsatminster Catechism, Comments.]
Goodness! the oriental imagination, abused by slavery, cannot rid
itself of the idea of being disinherited, turned out into the
cold, orphaned and smitten with moral sores from head to foot. To
the Pagan, such a description of man would have been the acme of
absurdity. Again: "It (the fall) affirms that he (man) is all
wrong, in all things and all the time." [Ibid] If this was
comforting news to the Asiatic, the Pagan world would have
rejected the idea as unworthy of men in their senses. Once more:
"All mankind by their fall lost communion with God, are under his
wrath and curse, and so made liable to all miseries in this life
and to the pains of hell forever." [Westminster Catechism,
Comments.] And this is the Gospel we have imported from Asia!
is it not pathetic? Could slavery ever strike a deeper
bottom than that? Standing before his owner, the Asiatic, of his
own choice, hands himself over to be degraded, to be placed in
chains and delivered up to the torments of hell forever. I
despair of man. I would cry my heart out if I permitted myself to
dwell upon the folly and stupidity and slavery of which man
voluntarily makes himself the victim. Think of it! A man and a
woman, nobody knows where or when, are supposed to have tasted of
the fruit of a tree; the Oriental mind, with its crouching
imagination, pounces upon this flimsy, fanciful tale with the
appetite of a carrion crow, and exalts it to the dignity of an
excuse for the eternal damnation of a whole world. I am dazed! I
can say no more!
Let us recapitulate. The Oriental distrust of the natural
man, born of self-depreciation, which is the fruit of prolonged
slavery, develops into a sort of mental canker spreading at a
raging pace until the whole universe, with its glorious sun and
stars, becomes an object of horror and loathing. Not satisfied
with thinking of himself as a worm, of his intellectual and moral
nature as totally depraved, he communicates his disease to the
world in which he lives until it, too, shrinks and wastes away.
Then the disease, finding no more on this side of the grave to
feed upon, leaps over the grave and converts the beyond, the
virgin worlds, into an inferno with which to satiate its fear.
Indeed frightful are the thoughts of a slave people!
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Let me now, in conclusion, call your attention to another
difference between the Occidental and the Oriental mind. When the
body is feeble or ill-nourished, it is less liable to resist
disease; likewise when the mind is alarmed, cowed, or pinched
with fear, it becomes more exposed to superstition. Superstition
is the disease of the mind. It will keep away from robust minds,
as physical disease from a body in health. Now, the Asiatic mind,
seared into silence and subjection, -- starved to a mere shadow
of what it should be, falls an easy prey to all the maladies that
mind is heir to. The European mind, on the other hand, with room
and air to move and grow in, develops a vitality which offers
resistance to all attacks of mental disease. That explains why
superstition thrives with ignorance and slavery, and expires when
science and liberty gain the ascendancy. Sanitary precautions
prevent physical disease; knowledge and liberty constitute the
therapeutics of the mind. Why is the Oriental so prone or partial
to miracle and mystery? His mind is sick. To believe is easier to
him than to reason. He follows the line of the least resistance:
he has invented faith that he may not have to think. The mental
cells in his brain are so starved, so devitalized, that they have
to be whipped into movement. Only the bizarre, the monstrous, the
supernatural, -- demons, ghosts, dream worlds, miracles and
mysteries, -- can hold his attention. Not science, but
metaphysics, barren speculation, -- is the product of the
Oriental mind. The philosopher Bacon describes the Asiatic when
he speaks of men who "have hitherto dwelt but little, or rather
only slightly touched upon experience, whilst they have wasted
much time on theories and fictions of the imagination."
Again: I sometimes think that if it be true that monotheism,
the idea of one God, was first discovered in Asia, it must have
been suggested to them by the regime of Absolutism, under which
they lived. Unlike Asia, democratic Europe believed in a republic
of gods. Polytheism is more consonant with the republican idea,
than monotheism. If we would let the American President rule the
land without the aid of the two houses of congress or his cabinet
ministers, his power would be infinitely more than it is now, but
his gain would be the people's loss. His increased power would
only represent so much more power taken away from the people, One
God means not only more slaves, but more abject, more helpless
ones. One God is a centralization which reduces man's liberty to
a minimum. With more gods, and gods at times disagreeing among
themselves, and all bidding for man's support, man would count
for more, The Greeks could not tolerate a Jehovah, or an Allah,
before whom the Oriental rabble bent the knee. "Allah knows,"
exclaims the Moslem; that is why the Mohammedans continue in
ignorance. "Allah is great," cries again the Turk. That is why he
himself is small. The more powerful the sovereign, the smaller
the subject.
Now this leads us to a final reflection upon the difference
between the mind brought up under restraint, -- in slavery, --
and the mind free. "The Pagan," to quote Lecky, "believed that to
become acceptable to the deity, one must be virtuous;" the
Asiatic doctrine, on the contrary, taught that "the most heroic
efforts of human virtue are insufficient to avert a sentence of
eternal condemnation, unless united with an implicit belief" in
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the dogmas of religion. In other words, the noblest of men cannot
be saved by his own merits of character alone, for even when we
have done our best, we are but unprofitable slaves," quoting a
Bible text. Only by the merits of Christ, or by the grace of God,
can any man be saved. Have you ever paused to think of the
purpose of this piece of Orientalism? It wipes out every
imaginable claim or right of man. Even when he is just and great
and good, he has no rights, he is as vile as the vilest. Only the
favor of the king can save, -- only the grace of God, who can
save the thief on the cross if he so pleases. Is he not absolute?
If he extends his scepter, you live; if he smiles you are spared;
if he patronizes you, you are fortunate. He says, live! you live.
He says, die I you die. This is the apotheosis of despotism
exalted into a revelation.
What, then, is our creed, but the thoughts of an eastern
slave population, cringing before the throne of a Sultan, and one
by one signing away their liberties? "The foundation of all real
grandeur is a spirit of proud and lofty independence," says
Buckle; but that is not the spirit of Asia, or of its religion.
It is, and we ought to try to keep it, the spirit of the Western
world.
I cannot imagine how we in this country, born of sturdy
parents, born of the freedom-loving Pagans of Rome and Greece,
born of men who shook their hands in the face of heaven, and
pulled the gods off their thrones when they violated the rights
of man, -- I cannot understand how we have thrown overboard the
proud, lofty spirit of independence of the Pagans, -- our
forefathers, and taken upon our necks the strangling yoke of the
slave-thought of Asia!
PART III.
SOME MODERN OPINIONS ABOUT JESUS.
Christianity "dwells with noxious exaggeration
about the person of Jesus."
-- Emerson.
Christmas is the season in the year when pulpit and press
dwell, with what Emerson calls "noxious exaggeration," about the
work and life, as well as the person of Jesus. We have, lying
before us, the Christmas sermon of so progressive a teacher as
the Rev. Jenkin Lloyd Jones. [Unitarian -- independent preacher
of All Souls Church, Chicago.] Here is his text: "And the Word
became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld his glory, glory
as of the only begotten from the Father." -- John 1:14. How our
educated neighbor can find food for sober reflection in so
mystical and metaphysical an effusion, is more than we can tell.
Who is the Word that became flesh? And when did the event take
place? What does it mean to be the "only begotten from the
Father?" We know what it means in the orthodox sense, but what
does it mean from the Unitarian standpoint of Mr. Jones? But the
text faithfully reflects the discourse which follows. It is
replete with unlimited compliments to this Word which became
flesh and assumed the name of Jesus. The following is a fair
sample:
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"I am compelled to think of Jesus of Nazareth as an
epoch-marking soul, an era-forming spirit, a character in
whom the light of an illustrious race and a holy ancestry
was focalized, a personality from which radiated that
subtle, creative power of the spirit which defies all
analysis, which baffles definition, which over-flows all
words."
Goodness! this is strong rhetoric, and we regret that the
evidence justifying so sweeping an appreciation has been withheld
from us. Although the doctor says that Jesus "defies all
analysis, baffles definition and overflows all words," he
nevertheless proceeds to devote fifteen pages to the impossible
task. "I am compelled to think of him as one who won the right of
preeminence in the world's history," continues Mr. Jones, as if
he had not said enough.
That is a definite claim, and personally, we would be glad
to see it made good. But truth compels us to state that the claim
is unjust. Without entering into the question of the authenticity
of the gospels, a question which we have discussed at some length
in our pamphlet on the "Worship of Jesus," we beg to submit that
there is nothing in the gospels, -- the only records which speak
of him, -- to entitle him to the "right of preeminence in the
world's history." No one knows better than Mr. Jones that the
sayings attributed to Jesus -- the finest of them -- are to be
found in the writings of Jewish and Pagan teachers antedating the
birth of Jesus by many centuries.
Was it, then, for his "works," if not for his "words," that
Jesus "won the right of preeminence in the world's history"? What
did he do that was not done by his predecessors? Was he the only
one who worked miracles? Had the dead never been raised before?
Had the blind, and the lame, and the deaf, remained altogether
neglected before Jesus took compassion upon them? Moreover, what
credit is there in opening the eyes of the blind or in raising
the dead by miracle? Did it cost Jesus any effort to perform
miracles? Did it imply a sacrifice on his part to utilize a small
measure of his infinite power for the good of man? Who, if he
could by miracle feed the hungry, clothe the naked and give light
and sound to the blind and the deaf, would be selfish enough not
to do so? If Mr. Jones does not believe in miracles, then Jesus
contributed even less than many a doctor contributes today to the
welfare of the world. More poor and diseased people are visited
and medicined gratuitously by a modern physician in one month,
than Jesus cured miraculously in the two or three years of his
career. Jesus, if he was "the only begotten of God," as Mr.
Jones' text states, was not in any danger of contracting disease
himself, which is not the case with the doctors and nurses who
extend their services to people afflicted with contagious and
abhorrent diseases, Moreover, Jesus' power must have come to him
divinely, while we have to study, labor, and conquer with the
sweat of our brow any power for good that we may possess. If
Jesus as a God opened the eyes of the blind, would it not have
been kinder if he had prevented blindness altogether? If Jesus
can open the eyes of the blind, then, why is there blindness in
the world? How many of the world's multitude of sufferers did
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Jesus help? Which of us, if he had the divine power, would not
have extended it unto every suffering child of man? Of what
benefit is it to open the eyes of a few blind people, two
thousand years ago, in one country, when he could, by his unique
divinity, have done so much more? Mr. Jones falls into the
orthodox habit of not applying to Jesus the same canons of
criticism by which human beings are judged.
But perhaps the "preeminence of Jesus" lay in his
willingness to give his life for us. Noble is every soul who
prefers truth and duty to life. But was Jesus the only one, or
even the first to offer himself as a sacrifice upon the altar of
humanity? If Jesus died for us, how many thousands have died for
him -- and by infinitely more cruel deaths? It is easier for an
"only begotten" of God, himself a God -- who knows death can have
no power over him -- who sees a throne prepared for him in heaven
-- who is sure of rising from the dead on the third day -- to
face death? than for an ordinary mortal. Yet Jesus showed less
courage, if his reporters are reliable, than almost any martyr
whose name shine upon memory's golden page.
The European churches are full of pictures showing Jesus
suffering indescribable agonies as the critical hour draws nigh.
We saw, in Paris, a painting called "The HOLY Face," La Sainte
Face, which was, truly, too horrible to look upon; big tears of
blood trickling down his cheeks, his head almost drooping over
his chest, an expression of excruciating pain upon his features,
his eyes fairly imploring for help, -- he is really breaking down
under the weight of his cross. Compare this picture with the
serenity of Socrates drinking the hemlock in prison!
Nor would it do to say that this is only the Catholic way of
representing Jesus in his passion. The picture is in the gospels,
it may be seen in the Garden of Gethsemane and on the cross with
all its realism. Far be it from us to withhold from Jesus, if he
really suffered as the gospels report, one iota of the love and
sympathy he deserves, but why convert the whole world into a
black canvas upon which to throw the sole figure of Jesus? Which
of us, poor, weak, sinful though we are, would not be glad to
give his life, if thereby he could save a world? Do you think we
would mourn and groan and weep tears of blood, or collapse, just
when me should be the bravest, if we thought that by our death we
would become the divine Savior of all mankind? Would we stammer,
"Let this cup pass from me, if it be possible," or tear our
hearts with a cry of despair: "My God, my God, why hast thou
forsaken me," if we knew that the eternal welfare of the human
race depended upon our death? If the Russian or Japanese soldier
can take his home and wife and children, -- his hopes and loves,
his life, -- his all, -- and throw them into the mouth of the
cannon, dying with a shout upon his lips, -- who would hesitate
to do the same, when not the salvation of one country alone, but
of the whole world, depended upon it? There are examples of
heroism in the annals of man which would bring the blush to the
cheeks of Jesus, if his biographers have not abused his memory.
Wherein, then, was the "preeminence" of Jesus? Upon what
grounds does Mr. Jones claim, with "unlimited rhetoric," to use
his own expression, for Jesus "the right of preeminence in the
world's history?"
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While there is neither a commendable saying nor an act
attributed to Jesus in our gospels which teachers older than
himself had not already said or done, there are some things in
which his seniors clearly outshine him. King Asoka, for instance,
the Buddhist sovereign of India, 250 years before Jesus, in one
of his edicts chiseled on the rocks of India, declared against
human slavery and offered the sweet gift of liberty to all in
captivity. Jesus used the word slave in one of his parables
(improperly translated servant), without expressing himself on
the subject, except to intimate that when a slave does all his
duty faithfully, even then he is only an "unprofitable slave,"
unworthy of the thanks of his master. There was slavery of the
worst kind in the world of Jesus, and yet he never opened his
mouth to denounce the awful curse. It is claimed that Jesus'
doctrine of love was indirectly a condemnation of slavery. Even
then, inasmuch as other and earlier teachers did more than strike
only indirectly at the ancient evil, -- for they not only taught
the brotherhood of man, too, but expressed themselves, besides,
positively on the subject of slavery, -- they have a prior claim
to the "right of preeminence in the world's history, if they
cared anything about ranks and titles.
The doctrine of humanity to animals, our dumb neighbors, is
a positive tenet in Buddhism; is it in Christianity?
Two and a half centuries before Jesus, under the influence
of Buddha's teaching, King Asoka convened a religious Parliament,
offering to each and every representative of other religions,
absolute religious liberty. Is there any trace of such tolerance
in any of the sayings of Jesus? On the contrary, the claim of
Jesus that he is the light, the way, the truth, and that no man
can come to the father except through him, leaves no room for the
great est of all boons-liberty, without which every promise of
religion is only a mockery and a cheat. Not even heaven and
eternal life can be accepted as a consideration for the loss of
liberty. The liberty of teaching is alien to a teacher who
claims, as Jesus did, that he alone is infallible, and that all
who came before him were "thieves and robbers."
Of course, Mr. Jones will deny that Jesus ever said any of
the things ascribed to him which spoil his ideal picture of him.
But he finds his ideal Jesus, whose personality "defies analysis,
baffles definition and overflows all words," in the gospels; if
these are not reliable, what becomes of his argument? If the
writers of our gospels bear false witness against Jesus when they
represent him as "cursing the fig tree," as calling his enemies
liars and devils, as calling the Gentiles dogs, as claiming
equality with God, as menacing with damnation all who disagree
with him, -- what security have we that they speak truthfully
when they put the beatitudes in his mouth? We have no more
reliable authority for attributing to Jesus the beatitudes than
we have for holding him responsible for the curses attributed to
him in the gospels.
To return to our comparison between Jesus and his
illustrious colleagues. It is with cheerful praise and generous
pleasure that we express our admiration for many of the sayings,
parables, and precepts attributed to Jesus. The fact that they
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are much older than Jesus, more universal than Christianity, only
enhances their value and reflects glory upon the human race, a
glory of which Jesus, too, as a brother, if he ever existed, has
his share. We love and admire every teacher who has a message for
humanity; we feel our indebtedness to them and would deem
ourselves fortunate if we could contribute to the advancement of
their noble influence; but we have no idols, and in our pantheon,
truth is above all. We have no hesitation to sacrifice even Jesus
to the Truth. If we were in India, and some Hindoo preacher spoke
of Buddha, as Mr. Jones does of Jesus, as a "personality defying
all analysis, baffling definition and overflowing all words" --
one who has "won the right to preeminence in the world's
history," -- we would protest against it, in the interest of
Jesus and other teachers, as we now protest against Mr. Jones'
Jesus, in the interest of truth. We have a suspicion, however,
that if Mr. Jones, or preachers of his style, were Hindoos, they
would speak of Buddha, as they now, being Christians, speak of
Jesus -- echoing in both instances the popular opinion.
The best way to illustrate Mr. Jones' style of reasoning is
to quote a few examples from his sermon:
"The story of the Good Samaritan has had a power beyond
the story of the senseless blighting of the fig tree; the
ages have loved to think of Jesus talking with the woman at
the well more than they have loved to think of him as
manufacturing wine at Canna. No man is so orthodox but that
he reads more often the Sermon on the Mount than he does the
story of the drowning of the pigs."
But if he did not "drown the pigs," the reporter who says he
did might have also collected from ancient sources the texts in
the Sermon on the Mount and put them in Jesus' mouth.
Again:
"The dauntless crusaders who now in physical armament
and again in the more invulnerable armament of the spirit,
went forth, reckless of danger, regardless of cost, to
rescue the world from heathen hands or to gather souls into
the fold of Christ."
We can hardly believe Mr. Jones speaking of "rescuing the
world from heathen hands," etc. Who were the heathen? And think
of countenancing the craze of the crusades, which cost a million
lives to possess the empty sepulchre of a mythical Savior! Is it
one of the merits of Christianity that it calls other people
"heathen," or that it kills them and lays waste their lands for
an empty grave?
Once more:
"Jesus had tremendous expectations. ... He believed
mightily in the future, not as some glory-rimmed heaven
after death, but as a conquering kingdom of love and
justice. Jesus took large stock in tomorrow; he laughed at
the prudence that never dares, the mock righteousness of the
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ledger that presumes to balance the books and pay all
accounts up to date. He knew that the prudence of commerce,
the thrift of trade, the exclusive pride of the synagogue,
must be broken through with a larger hope and a diviner
enterprise. He believed there was to be a day after today
and recognized his obligation to it; he acknowledged the
debt which can never be paid to the past and which is paid
only by enlarging the resources of the future. Life, to
Jesus, was an open account; he was a forward looker; he was
honest enough to recognize his obligations to the unborn.
Perhaps this adventurous spirit in the realms of morals,
even more than his heart of love, has made him the
superlative leader of men."
We sincerely wish all this were true, and would be glad to
have Mr. Jones furnish us with the texts or evidences which have
led him to his conclusions. Would not his adjectives be equally
appropriate in describing any other teacher he admires? "Jesus
had tremendous expectations." Well, though this is somewhat vague
as a tribute to Jesus, we presume the preacher means that Jesus
was an optimist. The reports, unfortunately, flatly contradict
Mr. Jones. Jesus was a "man of sorrows." He expressly declared
that this earth belonged to the devil, that the road which led to
destruction was crowded, while few would enter the narrow gates
of life. He said: "Many are called but few are chosen;" he told
his disciples to confine their good work to the lost sheep of the
House of Israel, and intimated that it were not wise to take the
bread of children (his people) and give it to the dogs (other
people). The "Go ye into all the world" is a post-resurrection
interpolation, and Mr. Jones does not believe in the miracle of
the resurrection. Jesus looked forward to the speedy ending and
destruction of the world, "when the sun and moon would turn
black, and the stars would fall;" and he doubted whether he would
find any faith in the world when "the son of man cometh;" and it
was Jesus who expected to say to the people on his left, "depart
from me, ye cursed, into everlasting punishment." This is the
teacher, whose pessimism is generally admitted, of whom Mr. Jones
says that, he had "tremendous expectations."
"He believed there was to be a day after today, and
recognized his obligation to it," writes Mr. Jones in his
indiscriminate laudation of Jesus. Is that why he said "Take no
thought of the morrow," and predicted the speedy destruction of
the world? "He acknowledged the debt which can never be paid to
the past." A sentence like this has all the ear-marks of a
glittering generality. Did Jesus show gratitude to the past when
he denounced all who had preceded him in the field of love and
labor as "thieves and robbers?" Equally uncertain is the
following: "He was honest enough to recognize his obligations to
the unborn." How does our clerical neighbor arrive at such a
conclusion? From what teaching or saying of Jesus does he infer
his respect for the rights of posterity? Indeed, how could a
teacher who said, "He that believeth not shall be damned," be
described as recognizing the rights of future generations? To
menace with damnation the future inquirer or doubter is to seek
to enslave as well as to insult the generations yet to be born,
instead of "recognizing his obligations" to them. The Jesus Mr.
Jones is writing about is not in the gospels.
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"Do you ask me if I am a 'Christian'?" writes Mr. Jones, and
he answers the question thus: "I do not know. Are you? If anyone
is inclined to give me that high name, with the spiritual and
ethical connotation in mind, I am complimented and will try to
merit it." As our excellent neighbor is still in the dark, and
does not know whether or not, or in what sense he is a Christian
-- unless he is allowed to define the word himself, -- and as he
also intimates that he would like to be a Jesus Christian, but
not a Church Christian, we humbly beg to express this opinion:
The American churches of today, notwithstanding all their
shortcomings, are, on every question of ethics and science, of
charity and the humanities, far in advance of Jesus, and that in
these churches there are men and women who in breadth of mind and
nobility of spirit are as good, and even better than Jesus.
Does our neighbor grasp our meaning? Charging all the bad in
a religion to the account of man, and attributing all the good to
God, or to a demigod, is, after all, only a dodge. Had not the
disciples of Jesus been braver than their master, his religion
would not have come down to us. And had the Christian church
lived up to the letter of this Semitic teacher, Europe would
never have embraced Christianity. By modernizing Jesus, by
selecting his more essential teachings, and relegating his
eccentricities to the background, by making his name synonymous
with the best aspirations of humanity, by idealizing his
character and enclosing it with a human halo, the churches have
saved Jesus from oblivion. Jesus was a tribal teacher, the church
universalized him; Jesus had no gospel for woman, the church has
after much hesitation and wavering converted him to the European
attitude toward woman; Jesus was silent on the question of
slavery, the churches have urged him with success to champion the
cause of the bondsman; Jesus denounced liberty of conscience when
he threatened with hell-fire the unbeliever; but the churches
have won him over to the modern secular principle of religious
tolerance; Jesus believed only in the salvation of the elect, but
the church to a certain extent has succeeded in reconciling him
to the larger hope; Jesus was an ascetic, preferring the single
life to the joys of the home, and fasting and praying to the duty
and privilege of labor, but the church in America and Protestant
Europe at least has made Jesus a lover and a seeker of wealth and
knowledge, the two great forces of civilization. No longer does
Jesus say, "hate your father and mother;" no longer does he cry
in our great thoroughfares, "blessed are the poor;" no longer is
his voice heard denouncing this world as belonging to the devil.
The modern church, modernized by science, has in turn modernized
the gospels. And yet Mr. Jones prefers to be a Christian such as
Jesus was. He is repeating one of those phrases which apologists
use when they give God all the praise and man all the blame.
In conclusion: Mr. Jones admits that Christianity is not
unique, that Buddha conquered greater tyrannies than Christ; that
"humility and self-sacrifice ... have world-wide foundations;"
but he draws no conclusions from these important facts, but
returns in a hurry to say that Jesus is the "finest and dearest
stream swelling the mighty tide of history." The only objection
we have to Mr. Jones' Jesus is that he is not real.
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ANOTHER RHETORICAL JESUS
The Rev. W.H.H. Boyle, of St. Paul, improves even on Mr.
Jones' superlative tribute to Jesus. He says:
"Can you imagine such a thing as a black sun, or the
reversal of creation or the annihilation of primal light?
Then, give rest to imagination and soberly think what it
would mean to have the spiritual processes of two
millenniums reversed, to have the light of life in the
unique personality of Jesus forever eclipsed."
Here is an idolater, indeed. To make an idol of his Jesus he
takes a sponge, and without a twinge of conscience, wipes out all
the beauty and grandeur of the ancient world. Has this gentleman
never heard of Greece? During a short existence, in only two
centuries and a half, that little land of Greece achieved
triumphs in the life of the mind so unparalleled as to bring all
the subsequent centuries upon their knees before it. In
philosophy, in poetry, -- lyrical, epochal, dramatic, -- in
sculpture, in statesmanship, in ethics, in literature, in
civilization, -- where is there another Greece?
Oh, land of Sophocles! whose poetry is the most perfect
flower the earth has ever borne, -- of Phidias and Praxiteles!
whose immortal children time cannot destroy, though the gods are
dead -- whose masterpieces the earth wears as the best gem upon
her brow, -- of Aristotle! the intellect of the world, -- of
Socrates! the parens philosophiae, and its first martyr! -- of
Aristides! the Just -- of Phocion and Epaminondas! -- of Chillon
and Anarcharchis! whose devotion to duty and beauty have perfumed
the centuries! O, Athens, the bloom of the world! Hear this
sectarian clergyman, in his black Sunday robes, closing his eyes
upon all thine immortal contributions, pulling down like a
vandal, as did the early Christians, the figures and temples, the
culture and civilization of the ancient world -- the monuments of
thy unfading glory -- to build therewith a pedestal for his
mythical Christ! I can imagine the reverend advocate saying: "But
there was slavery in Greece, and immorality, too," -- of course,
and is the Christian world free from them? Has Christ after two
thousand years abolished war? Indeed, he came to bring, as he
says, not peace, but a sword!" Has Jesus healed the world of the
maladies, for which we blame the Pagan world? Has he made
humanity free? Has he saved the world from the fear of hell? Has
he redeemed man from the blight of ignorance? Has he broken the
yoke of superstition and priestcraft? Has he even succeeded in
uniting into one loving fold his own disciples? How, then, can
this clergyman, with any conscience for truth, compare a world
deprived of the god of his sect, to a tomb -- to a blind man
groping under a blackened sun? Must a man rob the long past in
order to provide clothing for his idol? Must he close his eyes
upon all history before be can behold the beauty of his own cult?
But let us quote again:
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"To efface from the statute books of Christendom every
law which has its basal principle in Christian ethics; to
abolish every institution which ministers to human need and
misfortune in the name of Him whose sympathy is the heart of
the divine; to lower every sense of moral obligation between
man and man to the old level of Paganism to silence the
great oratorios which have made music the echo of the
divine; to take down from the galleries of the world the
sacred canvases with which genius has sanctified them; to
obliterate from memorial symbolism the cross of sublime
renunciation which has been the rebuke of human selfishness;
to disband every organization which makes prayer, through
the merit of one great name, the hand of man upon the arm of
God -- you may be able to think of an ocean without a
harbor, of a sky without a sun, of a garden without a
flower, of a face without a smile, of a home without a
mother; but, can you think of a world with holiness and
happiness in it and Jesus gone out of it? You cannot, "Then,
come, let us adore him," etc., etc.
Observe how this special pleader avoids breathing so much as
a word about any of the many evils which may be laid at the door
of his religion with as much show of reason as the benefits he
enumerates.
What about the dark ages which held all Europe for the space
of a thousand years in the clutches of an ignorance the like of
which no other religion in the world had known?
What about the atrocious inquisition to which no other
religion in the world had ever been able to give the swing that
Christianity did?
What about the persecution and burning of helpless women as
witches? Is there anything as infamous as that in any religion
outside of ours?
What about the wholesale massacres in the name of the true
faith?
What about the centuries of religious wars, the most
imbecile as well as the most bloody, from the effects of which
Germany, France, Italy and England are still suffering today?
And need we also call attention to that obstinate resistance
to science and progress? which rewarded every discoverer of a new
power for man, with the halter or the stake, which filled the
dungeons with the elite of Europe, -- which even dug open graves
to punish the bones of the dead savants and illuminators of man?
The Pagans, in their gladiatorial games, sacrificed the
lives of slaves; Christianity made a holocaust of the noblest
intellects of Europe.
And shall we speak of the bigotry, the fanaticism, the
bitter sectarian prejudices which to this day embitter the life
of the world? Are not these, too, the fruits of Christianity?
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We know the answer which the reverend gentleman would make
to this: "All the evils you speak of are chargeable, not to
Christianity, but to its abuse." But we have already shown that
that argument won't do. We might as well say that all the evil of
Paganism was due to its abuse. The mere fact that Christianity
lent itself to such fearful distortions, and was capable of
arousing the worst passions in man on such a fearful scale, is
condemnation enough. It shows that there was in it a potentiality
for evil beyond compare. Moreover, wherein does a "divine"
religion differ from a man-made cult, if it is equally powerless
to protect itself against perversion? In what sense is Jesus a
god, while all his rivals were "mere men," if he is as helpless
to prevent the abuse of his teachings as they were? But it would
not be difficult to show that the characteristic crimes we have
scheduled are the direct inspiration of a religion claiming
exclusiveness and infallibility. Such texts as, "there is no
other name given under heaven by which men can be saved;" "Let
such an one (the man who will not be converted) be like a heathen
and a publican to you;" John's advice to refrain from saying "God
speed" to the alien in faith; the bible command not to "suffer a
witch to live;" and many of the dogmas which might be cited, --
corrupted the sympathies, perverted the judgment of the noblest,
while at the same time they stung the evil-minded into something
like madness. The world knew nothing of the tyranny of dogma, or
religious oppression and persecution, comparatively speaking,
until the advent of the Jewish-Christian Church.
"Verily I say unto you, it shall be more tolerable for the
land of Sodom and of Gomorrah, in the day of judgment, than for
that city," said Jesus, speaking of the people who might not
accept his teachings. How can Christianity be a religion of love,
and how can it believe in tolerance, when it threatens the
unbeliever with a fate worse than that of Sodom and Gomorrah?
The benefits which the Rev. Boyle parades as the direct
fruit of his cult, did not appear until after the Renaissance,
that is to say, -- the return to Pagan culture and ideals. The
art and science and the humanities which he praises, followed
upon the gradual decline of the Jewish-Christian religion which
had already destroyed two civilizations.
But Greece and Rome triumphed. To this day, if we need
models in poetry, in art, in philosophy, in literature, in
politics, in patriotism, in service to the public, in heroism and
devotion to ideals -- we must go to the Greeks and the Romans.
Not that these nations were by any means perfect, but because
they have not been surpassed. In our colleges and schools, when
we wish to bring up our children in the ways of wisdom and
beauty, we do not give them the Christian fathers to read, we
give them the Pagan classics.
We ask this St. Paul clergyman to read Gibbons' tribute to
Pagan Rome: "If a man was called upon to fix a period in the
history of the world during which the condition of the human race
was most happy and prosperous, he would without hesitation name
that which elapsed from the death of Domitian to the accession of
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Commodus." This period included such men and rulers as Nerva,
Trajan, Adrian, Antoninus Pius, and above all, the greatest of
them all -- the greatest ruler our earth has ever owned -- Marcus
Aurelius Antoninus. Let the Rev. W.H.H. Boyle look over the names
of the kings of Israel and of Christian France, Spain, Italy and
England, and find among them any one that can come up to the
stature of these Pagan monarchs.
"WE OWE EVERYTHING TO JESUS"
But, behold! another clergyman with the claim that the
modern world owes all its joy and cheer, during the Christmas
season, "to the babe in Bethlehem." "What was it that brought
about such a condition that crowds the stores, that overflows the
mails, and loads the express with packages of every description?
The little babe in Bethlehem set all this in motion, -- the
wreath, the holly, are all from him."
When we read the above and more to the same effect, we wrote
to the Rev. W.A. Bartlett, [Pastor First congregational Church,
Chicago.] the author of the words quoted, asking him if he was
correctly reported. We reproduce herewith a copy of our letter:
Dec. 20, 1904.
Rev. W.A. Bartlett,
Washington Boul. and Ann St., Chicago.
DEAR MR. BARTLETT: In the report of your sermon of last
Sunday you are represented as claiming that it is to the
"babe in Bethlehem" we owe the Christmas festival, the
giving of presents, etc., etc. I write to ascertain whether
this report has stated your position correctly? I am sure
you know that Christmas is only a recomposition of an old
Pagan festival, and that "giving presents" at this season is
a much older practice than Christianity. Of course, you do
not believe that Christmas is celebrated in December and on
the 25th of the month because Jesus was born on that day.
You know as well as I do of the Pagan festivals celebrated
in the month of December throughout the Roman Empire --
celebrations which were accompanied with the giving and
receiving of presents. Moreover, you know also, as every
student does, that in the Latin countries of Europe it is
not on Christmas day, but on New Year's day, that presents
are exchanged. Surely you would not claim that for New
Year's day, too, the world is indebted to the Bethlehem
babe. You must also have known that the use of the evergreen
and the holly was in vogue among the Druids of Pagan times.
Be kind enough, therefore, to give me, if I am not asking
too much, the facts which led you to make the statements to
which I have called your attention, and believe me, with
great respect, etc.
To this neighborly letter the reverend gentleman did not
condescend to send an acknowledgment. We knocked at his door, as
it were, and he, a minister of the Gospel, declined to open it
unto us. Clergymen, as a rule, say that they are happy when
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people will let them preach the gospel to them. In our case, we
saved the clergyman from calling upon us, we called upon him --
that is to say, we wrote and gave him an opportunity to enlighten
us, to bring his influence to bear upon us, to open our eyes to
the error of our ways, -- and he would have nothing to do with
us. Was not our soul worth saving? Did the Rev. W.A. Bartlett
consider us beyond hope? We ask this clergyman to place his hand
upon his conscience and ask himself whether he did the brotherly
thing in not returning a friendly and kindly answer to our honest
inquiry for truth. But he did not answer us, because he had no
real faith in his gospel. It was not good enough for an inquirer.
But the clergyman, according to reports, made an attempt on
the Sunday following the receipt of our letter, before his
congregation, to answer indirectly our question. He denied that
"Christmas was a recomposition of an old Pagan festival," and
said that the early Christians "fasted and wept" because of these
Pagan festivals, and that as early as the second century, the
birth of Jesus was commemorated. In short, he pronounced it "a
distortion of history" to assign to the Christmas festival a
Pagan origin. In his great work on the History of Civilization,
Buckle says this, to which we call Dr. Bartlett's attention: "As
soon as eminent men grow unwilling to enter any profession, the
luster of that profession will be tarnished; first its reputation
will be lessened, then its power abridged." We fear this is true
of Mr. Bartlett's profession.
How can Christian ministers hope to engage the interest of
the reading public if they themselves abstain from reading? Ask a
secular newspaper about the origin of the Christmas celebration,
and it will tell you the truth. On the very Sunday that Dr.
Bartlett was denouncing, in his church, our claim that the Pagans
gave us the December season of joy and merry-making, as "a
distortion of history," an editorial in the Chicago Tribune said
this:
But the festive character of the celebration, the
giving of presents, the feasting and merriment, the use of
evergreen and holly and mistletoe, are all remnants of Pagan
rites.
Continuing, the same editorial called attention to the
antiquity of the institution:
Long before the shepherds on the Judean plains saw the
star rise in the east and heard the tidings of "Peace on
earth, good will to man," the Roman populace surged through
the streets at the feast of Saturn, giving themselves up to
wild license and boisterous merry making. They exchanged
presents, they decorated their dwellings and temples with
green boughs; slaves were given special privileges, and the
spirit of good will was abroad among men. This Roman
Saturnalia came at the winter solstice, the same as does our
Christmas day, while the birth of Christ is widely believed
to have taken place at some other season of the year.
But Dr. Bartlett may have had in mind the quotation from
Anastasius:
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"Our Lord, Jesus Christ, was born of the Holy Virgin, Mary,
in Bethlehem, at one o'clock in the afternoon of December 25th,"
-- appearing to quote from some old manuscript which,
unfortunately, is not to be found anywhere. But Clement of
Alexandria, in the year 210 A.D., dismisses all guesses as to
when Jesus was born, -- the 18th of April, 19th of May, etc., --
as products of reckless speculation. March 28th is given as
Jesus' birthday in De Pascha Computius, in the year 243. Jan. 5th
is the date defended by Epiphanius. Baradaens, Bishop of Odessa,
says: "No one knows exactly the day of the nativity of our Lord:
this only is certain from what Luke writes, that he was born in
the night." Poor Dr. Bartlett, his December 25th does not receive
support from the Fathers.
For our clerical brother's sake, we quote some more from the
Tribune editorial:
Primeval man looked upon the sun as the revelation of
divinity. When the shortest day of the year was passed, when
the sun began his march northward, the primitive man
rejoiced in the thought of the coming seedtime and summer,
and he made feasts and revelry the mode of expressing the
gladness of his heart. Among the sun worshipers of Persia,
among the Druids of the far north, among the Phoenicians,
among the Romans, and among the ancient Goths and Saxons the
winter solstice was the occasion of festivities. Many of
them were rude and barbarous, but they were all
distinguished by hearty and profuse hospitality.
And yet our neighbor calls it "distortion of history" to
connect Christmas with the Pagan festival, celebrated about this
time. We quote once more from the Secular press:
The Christian church did not abolish these heathen
ceremonies, but grafted upon them a deeper spiritual
meaning. For this reason Christmas is an institution which
memorializes the best there was in Pagan man. Its good
cheer, its charity, its sports, its feasting, and the
features which most endear it to children are all the
heritage of our Pagan ancestors.
How refreshing this, compared with the clergyman's silence,
or cry of "distortion."
But in one thing the doctor is correct. The early Christians
did bewail the Pagan festivals, as they did everything else that
was Pagan. But it did not help them at all; they were compelled
to acquiesce. The Christians have "fasted and prayed" also
against science, progress, and modern thought, but what good has
it done? They asked God to hook Theodore Parker's tongue; to
overthrow Darwin, and to confound the wisdom of this world, but
the prayer remains unanswered. Yes, the doctor is right, the
church has "fasted and prayed" against religious tolerance,
against the use of Sunday as a day of recreation, -- the opening
of galleries and libraries on that day, the advancement of woman,
the emancipation of the negro, the secularization of education,
the revision of old creeds, and a thousand other things. But
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their opposition has only damaged their own cause. They did try
to suppress the Pagan festival, which we call Christmas, and the
Puritans in this country, until recently, abstained from all
recognition of the day, and called it "Popery," and "Paganism,"
but their efforts bore no fruit. Dr. Bartlett, if he will read,
will learn that for many years, in England and in this country,
the observance of Christmas was forbidden by law under severe
penalties. As to our being indebted for the cheer and merriment
of the December festival to the "Bethlehem babe," the doctor must
inform himself of those acts of Parliament which, under the
Puritan regime, compelled people to mourn on Christmas day and to
abstain from merry-making. In Christian Connecticut, for a man to
have a sprig of holly in his house on Christmas day was a finable
crime. In Massachusetts, any Christian detected celebrating
Christmas was fined five shillings and costs. But, see, having
failed to suppress these good institutions, they now turn about
and claim that they have always believed in them, and that, in
fact, we would not now be enjoying any one of these benefits but
for the Christian Church.
In conclusion, we have one other word to say to the three
clerical teachers from whose writings we have quoted. Against
them we are constrained to bring the charge of looseness in
thought. They seem to have little conscience for evidence. Mr.
Jones says, for instance:
"In short, I am compelled to think that this Light of
Souls, this saving and redeeming spirit, was the loved and
loving child of Joseph, the carpenter, and the loyal wife
Mary. I believe this, notwithstanding the stories of
immaculate conceptions, star-guided magi, choiring angels
and adoring shepherds that gathered around. the birth-
night."
Which is another way of saying that he is "compelled to
believe" against the evidence, merely because it is his pleasure
or interest to do so. This is not very edifying, to be sure. Mr.
Jones takes all his information about Joseph and Mary and Jesus
from the gospels, and yet the gospels clearly contradict his
conclusions. Mary, the mother of Jesus, gives her word of honor
that Joseph was not the father of her child, and Joseph himself
testifies that he is not Jesus' father, but Mr. Jones pays no
attention to their testimony; he wishes Joseph to be the father
of Jesus, and that ought to be sufficient evidence, he thinks. We
quote from the gospel:
"Now the birth of Jesus Christ was on this wise: When
his mother Mary had been betrothed to Joseph, before they
came together she was found with child of the Holy Ghost.
And Joseph, her husband, being a righteous man, and not
willing to make her a public example, was minded to put her
away privily. But when he thought on these things, behold,
an angel of the Lord appeared unto him in a dream, saying,
Joseph, thou son of David, fear not to take unto thee Mary
thy wife; for that which is conceived in her is of the Holy
Ghost."
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Now, if Joseph admits be was not Jesus' father, and Mary
corroborates his testimony (See Luke, 1st chapter), Jesus was, if
he ever lived, and the records which give Mr. Jones his ideal
Jesus are reliable, the son of a man who has succeeded in
concealing his identity, unless, of course, we believe in the
virgin birth. If the real father of Jesus had come forth and
owned his son, and Mary had acknowledged that he was the father
of her child, what would have become of Christianity? We hope
these clergymen who have dwelt, as Emerson says, "With noxious
exaggeration about the person of Jesus," will reflect upon this,
and while doing so, will they not also remember this other saying
of the Concord philosopher: "The vice of our theology is seen in
the claim that Jesus was something different from a man."
We take our leave of the three clergymen, assuring them that
in what we have said we have not been actuated, in the least, by
any personal motive whatever, and that we have only done to them
what we would have them do to us.
A LIBERAL JEW ON JESUS
FELIX ADLER, PRAISES JESUS
That it is very easy for scholars to follow the people
instead of leading them, and to side with the view that commands
the majority, receives fresh confirmation from the recent
utterances of the founder of the Ethical Culture Society in New
York. Professor Adler the son of a rabbi, and at one time a
freethinker, has slowly drifted into orthodox waters, after
having tried for a period of years the open seas, and has become
a more enthusiastic champion of the god of the Christians than
many a Christian scholar whom we could name. The pendulum in the
Adler case has swung clear to the opposite side. We do not find
fault with a man because be changes his views, we only ask for
reasons for the change. It will be seen by the following extracts
from Adler's printed lectures that he has made absolutely no
critical study of the sources of the Jesus story, but has merely,
and hurriedly at that, accepted the conventional estimate of
Jesus and enlarged upon it. Jesus is entitled to all the praise
which is due him, but it must first be shown that in praising him
we are not sacrificing the truth. Praising any man at such a cost
is merely flattering the masses and bowing to the fashion of the
day.
Let us hear what Professor Adler has to say about Jesus. He
writes:
It has been said that if Christ came to New York or
Chicago, they would stone him in the very churches. it is
not so! If Christ came to New York or Chicago, the publicans
and sinners would sit at his feet! For they would know that
he cared for them better than they in their darkness knew
how to care for themselves, and they would love him as they
loved him in the days of yore.
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This would sound pious in the mouth of a Moody or a Torrey,
but, we confess, it sounds like affectation in the mouth of the
free thinking son of a rabbi. That Prof. Adler enters here into a
field for which his early Jewish training has not fitted him, is
apparent from the hasty way in which he has put his sentences
together. "It has been said," he writes, "that if Christ came to
New York or Chicago, they would stone him in the very churches.
It is not so." Why is it not so? And he answers: "If Christ came
to New York or Chicago, the publicans and sinners would sit at
his feet." But what has the reception which publicans and sinners
might give Jesus to do with how the churches would receive him?
He proves that Jesus would not be stoned in the churches of New
York and Chicago by saying that the "publicans and sinners would
sit at his feet." Does he mean that "New York and Chicago
churches" and "publicans and sinners" are the same thing?
"Publicans and sinners" might welcome him, and still the churches
might stone him, which in fact, according to Adler's own
admission, was the case in Jerusalem, where the synagogues
conspired against Jesus, while Mary Magdalene sat at his feet.
Nor are his words about "the publicans and sinners loving Jesus
as they loved him in the days of yore" edifying. Who does he mean
by the "publicans and sinners," and how many of them loved Jesus
in the days of yore, and why should this class of people have
felt a special love for him?
On the question of the resurrection of Jesus, Prof. Adler
says this:
"It is sometimes insinuated that the entire Christian
doctrine depends on the accounts contained in the New
Testament, purporting that Jesus actually rose on the third
day and was seen by his followers; and that if these reports
are found to be contradictory, unsupported by sufficient
evidence, and in themselves incredible, then the bottom
falls out of the belief in immortality as represented by
Christianity."
It was the Apostle Paul himself who said that "if Jesus has
not risen from the dead, then is our faith in vain, -- and we
are, of all men, most miserable." So, you see, friend Adler, it
is not "Sometimes insinuated," as you say, but it is openly, and
to our thinking, logically asserted, that if Jesus did not rise
from the dead, the whole fabric of Christian eschatology falls to
the ground. But we must remember that Prof. Adler has not been
brought up a Christian. He has acquired his Christian
predilections only recently, so to speak, hence his unfamiliarity
with its Scriptures. Continuing, the Professor says:
"But similar reports have arisen in the world time and
again, apparitions of the dead have been seen and have been
taken for real; and yet such stories, after being current
for a time, invariably have passed into oblivion. Why did
this particular story persist, despite the paucity and the
insufficiency of the evidence? Why did it get itself
believed and take root?"
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What shall we think of such reasoning from the platform of a
presumably rationalist movement? Does not the Professor know that
the story of the resurrection of Jesus is not original, but a
repetition of older stories of the kind? Had the world never
heard of such after-death apparitions before Jesus' day, it would
never have invented the story of his resurrection. And how does
the Professor know that the story of Jesus' resurrection is not
going to meet the same fate which has overtaken all other similar
stories? Is it not already passing into the shade of neglect? Are
not the intelligent among the Christians themselves beginning to
explain the resurrection of Jesus allegorically, denying
altogether that he rose from the dead in a literal sense?
Moreover, the pre-christian stories of similar resurrections
lived to an old age, -- two or three thousand years -- before
they died, and the story of Jesus' resurrection has yet to prove
its ability to live longer. All miraculous beliefs are
disappearing, and the story of the Christian resurrection will
not be an exception. But Prof. Adler's motive in believing that
the story of the resurrection of Jesus shall live, is to offer it
as an argument for immortality, and in so doing be strains the
English language in lauding Jesus. He says:
"In my opinion, people believed in the resurrection of
Jesus because of the precedent conviction in the minds of
the disciples that such a man as Jesus could not die,
because of the conviction that a personality of such
superlative excellence, so radiant, so incomparably lofty in
mien and port and speech and intercourse with others, could
not pass away like a forgotten wind, that such a star could
not be quenched."
We regret to say that there are as many assumptions in the
above sentence as there are lines in it. Of course if we are for
emotionalism and not for exact and accurate conclusions, Adler's
estimate of Jesus is as rhetorical as that of Jones or Boyle, but
if we have any love for historical truth, there is not even the
shadow of evidence, for instance, that the disciples could not
believe "that such a man as Jesus could die." On the contrary,
the disciples left him at the cross and fled, and believed him
dead, until it was reported to them that he had been seen alive,
and even then "some doubted," and one wished to feel the flesh
with his fingers before he would credit his eyes. Jesus had to
eat and drink with them, he had to "open their eyes," and perform
various miracles before they would believe that he was not dead.
The text which says that the apostles hesitated to believe in the
resurrection because "as yet they knew not the scripture, that he
would rise from the dead," shows conclusively how imaginary is
the idea that there was a "precedent conviction" in the minds of
the disciples that such a man as Jesus could not die. Apparently
it was all a matter of prophecy, not of moral character at all.
Yet in the face of all the evidence to the contrary, Prof. Adler
tells his Carnegie Hall audience, who unfortunately are even less
informed in Christian doctrine than their leader, that "there was
a precedent conviction in the minds of the disciples that such a
man as Jesus could not die." And what gave the disciples this
supposed "precedent conviction?" "That a personality of such
superlative excellence, so radiant, so incomparably lofty in mien
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and port and speech and intercourse with others, could not pass
away like a forgotten wind, that such a star could not be
quenched," We are simply astonished, and grieved as well, to see
the use which so enlightened a man as Prof. Adler makes of his
gifts. Will this Jewish admirer of the god of Christendom kindly
tell us wherein Jesus was superlatively excellent, or
incomparably lofty in mien and port and speech and intercourse
with others? Was there a weakness found in men like Buddha,
Confucius, Socrates, etc., from which Jesus was free? That Jesus
created no such ideal impression upon his disciples, is shown by
the fact that they represented him as a sectarian and an egotist
who denounced all who had preceded him as unworthy of respect and
to be despised.
And how could a man whose public life did not cover more
than two or three years of time, and who lived as a celibate and
a monk, returning every night to his cave in the Mount of Olives,
taking no active part in the business life -- supporting no
family or parents, assuming no civil or social duties -- how can
such a man, we ask, be held up as a model for the men and women
of today? Jesus, according to his biographers, believed he could
raise the dead, and announced himself the equal of God. "I and my
father are one," he is reported to have said; and one of his
apostles writes: "He (Jesus) thought it no robbery to be equal to
God." Either this report is true, or it is not. If it is, what
shall we think of a man who thought he was a god and could raise
the dead? If the report is not true, what reliance can we place
in his biographers when the things which they affirm with the
greatest confidence are to be rejected?
Yet Prof. Adler, swept off his feet by the popular and
conventional enthusiasm about Jesus, describes him as "a
personality of such superlative excellence, so radiant, so
incomparably lofty in mien and port and speech and intercourse
with others," that his followers could not believe he was a mere
mortal. But where is the Jesus to correspond to this rhetorical
language? He is not in the anonymous gospels. There we find only
a fragmentary character patched or pieced together, as it were,
by various contributors -- a character made up of the most
contradictory elements, as we have tried to show in the preceding
pages. The Jesus of Adler is not in history, he is not even in
mythology. There is no one of that name and answering that
description in the four gospels.
That a loose way of speaking grows upon one if one is not
careful, and that sounding phrases and honest historical
criticism are not the same thing, will be seen by Prof. Adler's
lavish praise of John Calvin. He speaks of him in terms almost as
glowing as he does of Jesus. He calls Calvin "that mighty and
noble man."
That Calvin ruled Geneva like a Russian autocrat; that he
was "mighty" in a community in which Jacques Gruet was beheaded
because be had "danced," and also because he had committed the
grave offense of saying that "Moses was only a man and no one
knows what God said to him," and in which Michael Servetus was
burned alive for holding opinions contrary to those which the
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Genevan pope was interested in, -- is readily conceded. But was
Calvin "mighty" in a beneficent sense? Did his power save people
from the Protestant inquisition? Was not the Geneva of his day
called the Protestant Rome? And if he did not use his powerful
influence to further religious tolerance and intellectual
honesty; if he did not use his position to save men from the grip
of superstition and the fear of hell, how can Prof. Adler refer
to him as "that mighty and noble man -- John Calvin?"
It is not our purpose to grudge Calvin any compliments which
Felix Adler wishes to pay him. What we grieve to see is, that he
should, indirectly at least, recommend to the admiration of his
readers a man who, if he existed today and acted as he did in the
Geneva of the sixteenth century, would be regarded by every
morally and intellectually awakened man, as a criminal. Has not
Felix Adler examined the evidence which incriminates Calvin and
proves him beyond doubt as the murderer of Servetus? "If he
(Servetus) comes to Geneva, I shall see that he does not escape
alive," wrote John Calvin to Theodore Beza. And he carried out
his fearful menace; Servetus was put to death by the most
horrible punishment ever invented -- he was burned alive in a
smoking fire. What did this mighty and noble man do to save a
stranger and a scholar from so atrocious a fate? Let his
eulogist, Prof. Adler, answer. It will not do to say that those
were different times. A thousand voices were raised against the
wanton and cruel murder of Servetus, but Calvin's was not among
them. In fact, when Calvin himself was a fugitive and a wanderer,
he had written in favor of religious tolerance, but no sooner did
he become the Protestant pope of Geneva, than he developed into
an exterminator of heresy by fire. Such is the "mighty and noble
man" held up for our admiration. "Mighty" he was, but we ask
again, was he mighty in a noble sense?
Had Calvin been considered a "mighty and noble man" by the
reformers who preceded Prof. Adler, there would have been no
Ethical Culture societies in America today. Prof. Adler is
indebted for the liberties which he enjoys in New York to the
Voltaires and the Condorcets, who regarded Calvin and his "isms"
as pernicious to the intellectual life of Europe, and did all
they could to lead the people away from them. Think of the leader
of the Ethical Societies exalting a persecutor, to say nothing of
his abominable theology, or of his five aliases, as "that mighty
and noble man, -- John Calvin!" We feel grateful to Prof. Adler
for organizing the Ethical Societies in American, but we would be
pleased to have him explain in what sense a man of Calvin's small
sympathies and terrible deeds could be called both "noble and
mighty." [See "The Kingdom of God in Geneva Under Calvin." --
M.M. Mangaearian.
It was predicted some years ago that the founder of the
Ethical Societies will before long return to the Jewish faith of
his fathers. However this may be, we have seen, in his estimate
of Jesus and John Calvin, evidences of his estrangement from
rationalism, of which in his younger days he was so able a
champion. In his criticism of the Russian scientist, Metchnikoff,
of the Pasteur Institute in Paris, Prof. Adler, endorsing the
popular estimate of Jesus, accepts also the popular attitude
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toward science. He appears to prefer the doctrine of special
creation to the theory of evolution. We would not have believed
this of Felix Adler if we did not have the evidence before us. We
speak of this to show the relation between an exaggerated praise
of a popular idol, and a denial of the conclusions of modem
science. It is the popular view which Prof. Adler champions in
both instances. In his criticism of Metchnikoff's able book, 'The
Nature of Man,' Prof. Adler writes:
And to account for the reason in man, this divine spark
that has been set ablaze in him, it is not sufficient to
point to an ape as our ancestor. If we are descended from an
anthropoid ape on the physical side, we are not descended
from him in any strict sense of the word on our rational
side; for as life is born of life, so reason is born of
reason, and if the anthropoid ape does not possess reason as
we possess it, it cannot be said that on our rational side
we are his progeny.
If the above had been written fifty years ago, when the
doctrine of evolution was a heresy, or by an orthodox clergyman
of today, we would have taken no note of it. But coming as it
does from the worthy founder of the Ethical Movement in America,
it deserves attention. "If," says Dr. Adler, "we are descended
from an anthropoid ape on the physical side, we are not descended
from him in any strict sense of the word on our rational side."
He is not sure, evidently, that even physically man is the
successor of the anthropoid ape, but he is sure that "we are not
descended from him ... on our rational side." Is Dr. Adler, then,
a dualist? Does he believe that there are two eternal sources,
from one of which we get our bodies, and from the other our
"rational side?" And why cannot Dr. Adler be a monist? He
answers, "for as life is born of life, so reason is born of
reason, and if the anthropoid ape does not possess reason as we
possess it, it cannot be said that on our rational side we are
his progeny." Not so, good doctor! There is no life without
reason. Do we mean to say that the jelly-fish, the creeping worm,
or the bud on the tree has reason? Yes; not as much reason as a
horse or a dog, and certainly not as much as a Metchnikoff or an
Adler, but these lower forms of life could not have survived but
for the element of rationality in them. We may call this
instinct, sensation, promptings of nature, but what's in a name?
The difference between a pump and a watch is only a difference of
mechanism. The stone and the soul represent different stages of
progression, not different substances. If a charcoal can be
transformed into a diamond, why may not nature, with the
resources of infinity at her command, refine a stone into a soul?
Let us not marvel at this; it is not less thinkable than the
proposition of two independent sources of life, the one physical,
the other rational. If "life is born of life," where did the
first life come from? Let us have an answer to that question. And
if, as the professor says, reason is born of reason," how did the
first reason come? Is it not very much simpler to think in
monistic terms, than to separate life from reason, and mind from
matter, as Prof. Adler does in the words quoted above? Why cannot
mind be a state of matter? What objection is there to thinking
that matter refined, elevated, ripened, cultured, becomes both
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sentient and rational? If matter can feel, can see, can hear, can
it not also think? Does not the horse see, hear and think? There
is no lowering of the dignity of man to say that he tastes with
his palate, sees with his eyes, hears with his ears, and thinks
with the gray matter in his brain. Remove his optic nerve and he
becomes blind, destroy the ganglia in his brain, and he becomes
mindless. Gold is as much matter as the dust, but it is very much
more precious; so is mind infinitely more precious than the
matter which can only feel, see, taste or hear. "If the
anthropoid ape does not possess reason as we possess it, it
cannot be said that on our rational side we are his progeny,"
says Dr. Adler: But, suppose we were to say that if our remote
African or Australian savage ancestors did not possess reason as
we possess it, "it cannot be said that on our rational side we
are their progeny." The child in the cradle does not possess
reason "as we do," any more than does the anthropoid ape, but the
beginnings of reason are in both. Let the worm climb and he will
overtake man. This is a most hopeful, a most beautiful gospel.
Its spirit is not one of isolation and exclusiveness from the
rest of nature, but one of fellowship and sympathy. We are all --
plants, trees, birds, bugs, animals -- all members of one family,
children at various ages and stages of growth of the same great
mother, -- Nature.
We quote again:
"When I ask him (Metchnikoff) whence do I come, he
points to the simian stage which we have left behind; but I
would look beyond that stage to some ultimate fount of
being, to which all that is highest in me and in the world
around me can be traced, a source of things equal to the
best that I can conceive."
But if there is "some ultimate fount of being"' to which our
"highest" nature "can be traced," whence did our lower nature
come? Is Prof. Adler trying to say God? We do not object to the
word, we only ask that he give the word a more intelligible
meaning than has yet been given. If God is the "ultimate fount of
being to which all that is highest in us can be traced," who or
what is the ultimate fount to which all that is lowest in us can
be traced? Let us have the names of the two ultimate founts of
being, and also to what still more ultimate founts these founts
may be traced.
In our opinion Dr. Adler has failed to do justice to Prof.
Metchnikoff. It is no answer to the Darwinian Theory, which the
Russian scientist accepts in earnest, and in all its fullness, --
not fractionally, as Adler seems to do -- to say that it does not
explain everything. No one claims that it does. Not all the
mystery of life has been cleared. Evolution has offered us only a
new key, so to speak, with which to attempt the doors which have
not yielded to metaphysics. And if the key has not opened all the
doors, it has opened many. Prof. Adler seems to think that the
doctrine of evolution explains only the physical descent of man;
for the genesis of the spiritual man, he looks for some
supernatural "fount" in the skies. Well, that is not science;
that is theology. and Adler's estimate of Jesus is just as
theological as his criticism of evolution.
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APPENDIX
The argument in this volume will be better understood if we
give to our readers the comments and criticisms which our little
pamphlet, 'Jesus a Myth,' and 'The Mangasarian-Crapsey Debate' on
the Historicity of Jesus, [Price, 25c, Independent Religious
Society, Orchestra Hall, Chicago.] called forth from orthodox and
liberal clergymen. We shall present these together with our reply
as they appeared on the Sunday Programs of the Independent
Religious Society.
Criticism is welcome. If the criticism is just, it prevents
us from making the same mistake twice; if it is unjust, it gives
us an opportunity to correct the error our critic has fallen
into. No one's knowledge is perfect. But the question is, does a
teacher suppress the facts? Does he insist on remaining ignorant
of the facts?
FROM THE SUNDAY PROGRAMS
I
Now that the debate on one of the most vital questions of
modern religious thought -- The Historicity of Jesus -- is in
print, a few further reflections on some minor points in Dr.
Crapsey's argument may add to the value of the published copy.
REV. DR. CRAPSEY: "Now, I say this is the great law of
religious variation, that in almost every instance, indeed, I
think, in every single instance in history, all such movements
begin with a single personality." (P. 5, Mangasarian-Crapsey
Debate.)
ANSWER: The only way this question can be settled is by
appealing to history. Mithraism is a variant religion, which at
one time spread over the Roman Empire and came near outclassing
Christianity. Yet, Mithra, represented as a young man, and
worshiped as a god, is a myth. How, then, did Mithraism arise?
Religions, as well as their variations, appear as new
branches do upon an old tree. The new branch is quite as much the
product of the soil and climate as the parent tree. Like
Brahmanism, Judaism, Shinto and the Babylonian and Egyptian
Cults, which had no single founders, Christianity is a deposit to
which Hellenic, Judaic and Latin tendencies have each contributed
its quota.
But the popular imagination craves a Maker for the Universe,
a founder for Rome, a first man for the human race, and a great
chief as the starter of the tribe. In the same way it fancies a
divine, or semidivine being as the author of its credo.
Because Mohammed is historical, it does not follow that
Moses is also historical. That argument would prove too much.
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Rev. Dr. CRAPSEY: "We would be in the same position that the
astronomers were when they discovered the great planet Uranus --
from their knowledge of the movements of these bodies they were
convinced that these perturbations could be occasioned by nothing
less than a great planet lying outside of the then view of
mankind." (P. 6, Ibid.)
ANSWER: But the astronomers did not rest until they
converted the probability of a near-by planet into demonstration.
Jesus is still a probability.
Rev. Dr. CRAPSEY: "We have of Jesus a very distinctly
outlined history. There is nothing vague about him." (P. 12,
Ibid.)
ANSWER: But in the same sentence the doctor takes all this
back by adding: "There are a great many things in his history
that are not historical." If so, then we do not possess "a very
distinctly outlined history," but at best a mixture of fact and
fiction.
Rev. Dr. CRAPSEY: "We can follow Jesus' history from the
time that he entered upon his public career until the time that
career closed, just as easily as we can follow Caesar, etc." (P.
12, Ibid.)
ANSWER: How long was "the time from the opening of Jesus'
public career until the time that it closed?" -- One year! --
according to the three gospels. It sounds quite a period to speak
of "following his public career" from beginning to end,
especially when compared with Caesar's, until it is remembered
that the entire public career of Jesus covers the space of only
one year. This is a most decisive argument against the
historicity of Jesus. With the exception of one year, his whole
life is hid in impenetrable darkness. We know nothing of his
childhood, nothing of his old age, if he lived to be old, and of
his youth, we know just enough to fill up a year. Under the
circumstances, there is no comparison between the public career
of a Caesar or a Socrates covering from fifty to seventy years of
time, and that of a Jesus of whose life only one brief year is
thrown upon the canvas.
An historical Jesus who lived only a year!
Rev. Dr. CRAPSEY: The Christ I admit to be purely
mythological ... the word Christ, you know, means the anointed
one ... they (the Hebrews) expected the coming of that Christ ...
But that is purely a mythical title. (The Debate -- p. 35.)
ANSWER: Did the Hebrews then expect the coming of a title?
Were they looking forward to seeing the ancient throne of David
restored by a title? By Messiah or Christ the Jews did not mean a
name, but a man -- a real flesh and bone savior, anointed or
appointed by heaven.
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But if the 'Christ' which the Hebrews expected was "purely
mythical," what makes the same 'Christ' in the supposed Tacitus
passage historical? The New Testament Jesus is Jesus Christ, and
the apostle John speaks of those "who confess not that Jesus
Christ is come in the flesh" -- mark his words -- not Christ, but
Jesus Christ. The apostle does not separate the two names. There
were those, then, in the early church who denied the historicity,
not of a title, -- for what meaning would there be in denying
that a title "is come in the flesh," -- but of a person, known as
Jesus Christ.
And what could the doctor mean when he speaks of a title
being "mythological?" There are no mythological titles. Titles
are words, and we do not speak of the historicity or the non-
historicity of words. We cannot say of words as we do of men,
that some are historical and others are mythical. William Tell is
a myth -- not the name, but the man the name stands for. William
is the name of many real people, and so is Tell. There were many
anointed kings, who are historical, and the question is, Is Jesus
Christ -- or Jesus the Anointed -- also historical? To answer
that Jesus is historical, but The Anointed is not, is to evade
the question.
When Mosheim declares that "The prevalent opinion among
early Christians was that Christ existed in appearance only," he
could not have meant by 'Christ' only a title. There is no
meaning in saying that a man's title "existed in appearance
only?"
We do not speak of a title being born, or crucified; and
when some early Christians denied that Jesus Christ was ever born
or ever crucified, they had in mind not a title but a person.
In conclusion: If the 'Christ' by whom the Hebrews meant,
not a mere name, but a man, was "purely mythological," as the
reverend debater plainly admits (see pages 35, 36 of The Debate)
-- that is, if when the Hebrews said: "Christ is coming," they
were under the influence of an illusion, -- why may not the
Christians when they say that 'Christ' has come, be also under
the influence of an illusion? The Hebrew illusion said, Christ
was coming; the Christian illusion says, Christ has come. The
Hebrews had no evidence that 'Christ' was coming, although that
expectation was a great factor in their religion; and the
Christians have no more evidence for saying 'Christ' has come,
although that belief is a great factor in their religion.
II
The minister of the South Congregational Church, who heard
the debate, has publicly called your lecturer an "unscrupulous
sophist," who "practices imposition upon a popular audience" and
who "put forth sentence after sentence which every scholar
present knew to be a perversion of the facts so outrageous as to
be laughable."
As one of the leading morning papers said, the above "is not
a reply to arguments made by Mr. Mangasarian."
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Invited by several people to prove these charges, the
Reverend replies: "In the absence of any full report of what he
(M. M. Mangasarian) said, or of any notes taken at the time, I am
unable to furnish you with quotations." When the Reverend was
addressing the public his memory was strong enough to enable him
to say, "sentence after sentence was put forth by Mr. Mangasarian
which every scholar present knew to be a perversion of the
facts." But when called upon to mention a few of them, his memory
forsakes him. Our critic is not careful to make his statements
agree with the fact.
One instance, however, he is able to remember which "when it
fell upon my ears," he writes, "it struck me with such amazement,
that it completely drove from my mind a series of most
astonishing statements of various sorts which had just preceded
it."
We refrain from commenting on the excuse given to explain so
significant a failure of memory. The instance referred to was
about the denial of some in apostolic times that "Jesus Christ is
come in the flesh." But as Mr. Mangasarian had hardly spoken more
than twenty minutes when he touched upon this point, it is not
likely that it could have been "preceded by a series of most
astonishing statements of various sorts."
And what was the statement which, while it crippled his
memory, it did not moderate his zeal? We will let him present it
himself; "I refer to the use he made of one or two passages in
the New Testament, mentioning some who deny 'that Jesus Christ is
come in the flesh.' 'So that,' he went on to say, 'there were
those even among the early Christians themselves who denied that
Jesus had come in the flesh. Of course, they were cast out as
heretics.' Here came an impressive pause, and then without
further explanation or qualification, he proceeded to something
else."
This is his most serious complaint. Does it justify hasty
language?
St. John writes of those who "confessed not that Jesus
Christ is come in the flesh." The natural meaning of the words is
that even in apostolic times some denied the flesh and bone
Jesus, and regarded him as an idea or an apparition -- something
like the Holy Ghost. All church historians admit the existence of
sects that denied the New Testament Jesus -- the Gnostics, the
Essenes, the Ebionites, the Marcionites, the Cerinthians, etc.
As the debate is now in print, further comment on this would
not be necessary.
Incidents like the above, however, should change every
lukewarm rationalist into a devoted soldier of truth and honor.
To us, more important than anything presented on this
subject, is this evidence of the existence of a very early
dispute among the first disciples of Jesus on the question of
whether he was real or merely an apparition. The Apostle John, in
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his epistle, clearly states that even among the faithful there
were those who confess not that Jesus Christ is come in the
flesh. This is very important. As early as John's time, if he is
the writer of the epistle, Jesus' historicity was questioned.
The gospel of John also hints at the existence in the
primitive church of Christians who did not accept the reality of
Jesus. When doubting Thomas is told of the resurrection, he
answers that he must feel the prints of the nails with his
fingers before he will believe, and Jesus not only grants the
wishes of this skeptical apostle, but he also eats in the
presence of them all, which story is told evidently to silence
the critics who maintained that Jesus was only a spirit, "the
Wisdom of God," an emanation, a light, and not real flesh and
bones.
III
The same clergyman, to whom a copy of the Mangasarian-
Crapsey Debate was sent, has written a five page criticism of it.
The strength of a given criticism is determined by asking:
Does it in any way impair the soundness of the argument against
which it is directed? Critics have discovered mistakes in Darwin
and Haecket, but are these mistakes of such a nature as to prove
fatal to the theory of evolution?
To be effective, criticism must be aimed at the heart of an
argument. A man's life is not in his hat, which could be knocked
off, or in his clothes -- which could be torn in places by his
assailant without in the least weakening his opponent's position.
It is the blow that disables which counts.
To charge that we have said 'Gospel,' where we should have
said 'Epistle,' or 'Trullum' instead of 'Trullo'; that it was not
Barnabas, but Nicholas who denied the Gospel Jesus, and that
there were variations of this denial, does not at all disprove
the fact that, according to the Christian scriptures themselves,
among the apostolic followers there were those to whom Jesus
Christ was only a phantom.
Milman, the Christian historian, states that the belief
about Jesus Christ "adopted by almost all the Gnostic sects," was
that Jesus Christ was but an apparent human being, an impassive
phantom, (History of Christianity. Vol. 2, P. 61). Was ever such
a view entertained of Caesar, Socrates or of any other historical
character?
On page 28 of The Debate we say: "The Apostle John complains
of those ... who confess not that Jesus Christ is come in the
flesh." To this the clergyman replies:
"The Apostle John never made any such complaint. Critical
scholarship is pretty well agreed that he did not write the
epistles ascribed to him."
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We have a lecture on "How the Bible was Invented," and this
clergyman's admission that at least parts of the bible are
invented is very gratifying.
In a former communication, this same clergyman tried to
prove that the Apostle John's complaint does not at all imply a
denial of the historical Jesus. In his recent letter he denies
that the apostle ever made such a complaint.
John did not write the epistles, then, which the Christian
church for two thousand years, and at a cost of millions of
dollars, and at the greater sacrifice of truth and progress has
been proclaiming to the world as the work of the inspired John!
The strenuous efforts to get around this terrible text in
the "Holy Bible," show what a decisive argument it is. Every
exertion to meet it only tightens the text, like a rope, around
the neck of the belief in the historical Jesus. Our desire, in
engaging in this argument, is to turn the thought and love of the
world from a mythical being, to humanity, which is both real and
present.
On page 22 Of The Debate, we say: "St. Paul tells us that he
lived in Jerusalem at a time when Jesus must have been holding
the attention of the city; yet he never met him." To this the
clergyman replies:
"Paul tells us nothing of the kind. In a speech which is put
into the mouth of Paul" -- put into the mouth of Paul! Is this
another instance of forgery? John did not write the epistles, and
Paul's speech in the Book of Acts was put into his mouth! Will
the clergyman tell us which parts of the bible are not invented?
Let us make a remark: The church people blame us for not
believing in the trustworthiness of the bible; but when we reply
that if the bible is trustworthy, then Paul must have been in
Jerusalem with Jesus, and John admits that some denied the
historical Jesus, we are blamed for not knowing better than to
prove anything by quoting Paul and John as if everything they
said was trustworthy.
In other words, only those passages in the bible are
authentic which the clergy quote; those which the rationalists
quote are spurious. In the meantime, the authentic as well as the
spurious passages together compose the churches' Word of God.
IV
In a letter of protest to Mr. Mangasarian, Rabbi Hirsch, of
this city, asks: "Was it right for you to assume that I was
correctly reported by the News!" After stating what he had said
in his interview with the reporter, the Rabbi continues: "But
said I to the reporter all these possible allusions do not prove
that Jesus existed ... You see in reality I agreed with you. I
personally believe Jesus lived. But I have no proof for this
beyond my feeling that the movement with which the name is
associated could even for Paul not have taken its nomenclature
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without a personal substratum. But, and this I told the reporter
also, this does not prove that the Jesus of the Gospels is
historical." Rabbi Hirsch writes in this same letter that he did
not say Jesus was mentioned in the Rabbinical Books. The News
reports the Rabbi as saying, "But we know through the Rabbinical
Books that Jesus lived."
A committee from our Society waited on the editor of the
Daily News for an explanation. The editor promised to locate the
responsibility for the contradiction.
As the report in the News was allowed to stand for four days
without correction, and as Rabbi Hirsch did not even privately,
by letter or by phone, disclaim responsibility for the article,
to Mr. Mangasarian, the latter claims he was justified in
assuming that the published report was reliable. But it is with
pleasure that the Independent Religious Society gives Rabbi
Hirsch this opportunity to explain his position. We hope he will
also let us know whether he said to the reporter "I do not
believe in Mr. Mangasarian's argument that Christianity has
inspired massacres, wars and inquisitions. It is a stock argument
and not to the point." This is extraordinary; and as the Rabbi
does not question the statement, we infer that it is a correct
report of what he said. Though we have room for only one
quotation from the Jewish-Christian Scriptures, it will be enough
to show the relation of religion to persecution:
"And thou shalt consume all the people which the Lord, thy
God, shall deliver thee; thine eye shall have no pity upon them."
Why were women put to death as witches? Why were Quakers
hanged? For what "economic and political reasons," which the
Rabbi thinks are responsible for persecution, was the blind Derby
girl who doubted the Real Presence, burned alive at the age of
twenty-two?
V
The Rev. W.E. Barton, of Oak Park, is one of the ablest
Congregational ministers in the West. He has recently expressed
himself on the Mangasarian-Crapsey Debate. Let us hear what he
has to say on the historicity of Jesus.
The Reverend begins by an uncompromising denial of our
statements, and ends by virtually admitting all that we contend
for. This morning we will write of his denials; next Sunday, of
his admissions.
"Mr. Mangasarian," says Dr. Barton, "has not given evidence
of his skill as a logician or of his accuracy in the use of
history." Then he proceeds to apologize, in a way, for the
character of his reply to our argument, by saying that "Mr.
Mangasarian's arguments, fortunately, do not require to be taken
very seriously, for they are not in themselves serious."
Notwithstanding this protest, Dr. Barton proceeds to do his
best to reply to our position.
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In The Debate we call attention to the fact that according
to the New Testament, Paul was in Jerusalem when Jesus was
teaching and performing his miracles there. Yet Paul never seems
to have met Jesus, or to have heard of his teachings or miracles.
To this Dr. Barton replies: "We cannot know and are not bound to
explain where Paul was on the few occasions when Jesus publicly
visited Jerusalem."
The above reply, we are compelled to say, much to our
regret, is not even honest. Without 'actually telling any
untruths, it suggests indirectly two falsehoods: First, that
Jesus was not much in Jerusalem -- that he was there only on a
few occasions; and that, therefore, it is not strange that Paul
did not see him or hear of his preaching or miracles; and second,
that Paul was absent from the city when Jesus was there. The
question is not how often Jesus visited Jerusalem, but how
conspicuous was the part he played there. He may have visited
Jerusalem only once in all his life, yet if he preached there
daily in the synagogues; if he performed great miracles there; if
he marched through the streets followed by the palm-waving
multitude shouting Hosanna, etc.; if he attacked the high-priest
and the pharisees there, to which latter class Paul belonged; and
if he was arrested, tried and publicly executed there; and if his
teaching stirred the city from center to circumference, -- it
would not be honest to intimate that the "few" times Jesus
visited Jerusalem, Paul was engaged elsewhere.
The Reverend attempts to belittle the Jerusalem career of
Jesus, by suggesting that he was not there much, when according
to the Gospels, it was in that city that his ministry began and
culminated.
Again, to our argument that Paul never refers to any of the
teachings of Jesus, the Reverend replies: "Nor is it of
consequence that Paul seldom quotes the words of Jesus." "Seldom"
-- would imply that Paul quotes Jesus sometimes. We say Paul
gives not a single quotation to prove that he knew of a teaching
Jesus. He had heard of a crucified, risen, Christ -- one who had
also instituted a bread and wine supper, but of Jesus as a
teacher and of his teaching, Paul is absolutely ignorant.
But by saying "Paul seldom quotes Jesus," Dr. Barton tries
to produce the impression that Paul quotes Jesus, though not very
often, which is not true. There is not a single miracle, parable
or moral teaching attributed to Jesus in the Gospels of which
Paul seems to possess any knowledge whatever.
Nor is it true that it is of no consequence that "Paul
seldom quotes the words of Jesus." For it proves that the Gospel
Jesus was unknown to Paul, and that he was created at a later
date.
Once more; we say that the only Jesus Paul knew was the one
he met in a trance on his way to Damascus. To this the pastor of
the First Congregational Church of Oak Park replies in the same
we-do-not-care-to-explain style. He says: "Nor is it of
consequence that Paul values comparatively lightly, having known
him in the flesh."
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The words "Paul valued comparatively lightly" are as
misleading as the words "Paul seldom quotes Jesus." Paul never
quotes Jesus' teachings, and he never met Jesus in the flesh. The
clergyman's words, however, convey the impression that Paul knew
Jesus in the flesh, but he valued that knowledge "comparatively
lightly," that is to say, he did not think much of it. And Dr.
Barton is one of the foremost divines of the country.
And now about his admissions:
VI
I. "The Gospels, by whomever written," says the clergyman,
"are reliable." By whomever written! After two thousand years, it
is still uncertain to whom we are indebted for the story of
Jesus. What, in Dr. Barton's opinion, could have influenced the
framers of the life of Jesus to suppress their identity? And why
does not the church instead of printing the words, "The Gospel
according to Matthew or John," which is not true, -- print, "The
Gospel by whomever written"?
II. "At the very least, four of Paul's epistles are
genuine," says the same clergyman. Only four? Paul has thirteen
epistles in the bible, and of only four of them is Dr. Barton
certain. What are the remaining nine doing in the Holy Bible? And
which 'four' does the clergyman accept as doubtlessly "genuine?"
Only yesterday all thirteen of Paul's letters were infallible,
and they are so still wherever no questions are asked about them.
It is only where there is intelligence and inquiry that "four of
them" at least are reliable. As honesty and culture increase, the
number of inspired epistles decreases. What the Americans are too
enlightened to accept, the church sends to the heathen.
III. "It is true that early a sect grew up which ... held
that Jesus could not have had a body of carnal flesh; but they
did not question that he had really lived." According to Dr.
Barton, these early Christians did not deny that Jesus had really
lived, -- they only denied that Jesus could have had a body of
carnal flesh. We wonder how many kinds of flesh there are
according to Dr. Barton. Moreover, does not the bible teach that
Jesus was tempted in all things, and was a man of like passions,
as ourselves? The good man controls his appetites and passions,
but his flesh is not any different from anybody else's. If Jesus
did not have a body like ours, then he did not exist as a human
being. Our point is, that if the New Testament is reliable, in
the time of the apostles themselves, the Gnostics, an influential
body of Christians, denied that Jesus was any more than an
imaginary existence. "But," pleads the clergyman, "these sects
believed that Jesus was real, though not carnal flesh." What kind
of flesh was he then? If by carnal the Gnostics meant 'sensual,'
then, the apostles in denouncing them for rejecting a carnal
Jesus, must have held that Jesus was carnal or sensual. How does
the Reverend Barton like the conclusion to which his own
reasoning leads him?
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IV. "It is true that there were literary fictions in the age
following the apostles." This admission is in answer to the
charge that even in the first centuries the Christians were
compelled to resort to forgery to prove the historicity of Jesus.
The doctor admits the charge, except that he calls it by another
name. The difference between fiction and forgery is this: the
former is, what it claims to be; the latter is a lie parading as
a truth. Fiction is honest because it does not try to deceive.
Forgery is dishonest because its object is to deceive. If the
Gospel was a novel, no one would object to its mythology, but
pretending to be historical, it must square its claims with the
facts, or be branded as a forgery.
V. "We may not have the precise words Jesus uttered; the
portrait may be colored; ... tradition may have had its
influence; but Jesus was real." A most remarkable admission from
a clerical! It concedes all that higher criticism contends for.
We are not sure either of Jesus' words or of his character,
intimates the Reverend. Precisely.
In commenting on our remark that in the eighth century "Pope
Hadrian called upon the Christian world to think of Jesus as a
man," Dr. Barton replies with considerable temper: "To date
people's right to think of Jesus as a man from that decree is not
to be characterized by any polite term." Our neighbor, in the
first place, misquotes us in his haste. We never presumed to deny
anyone the right to think of Jesus what he pleased, before or
after the eighth century. (The Debate, p. 28.) We were calling
attention to Pope Hadrian's order to replace the lamb on the
cross by the figure of a man. But by what polite language is the
conduct of the Christian church -- which to this day prints in
its bibles "Translated from the Original Greek," when no original
manuscripts are in existence -- to be characterized?
Dr. Barton's efforts to save his creed remind us of the
Japanese proverb: "It is no use mending the lid, if the pot be
broken."
VII
The most remarkable clerical effort thus far, which The
Mangasarian-Crapsey Debate has called forth, is that of the Rev.
E.V. Shayler, rector of Grace Episcopal Church of Oak Park.
"In answer to your query, which I received, I beg to give
the following statement. Facts, not theories. The date of your
own letter 1908 tells what? 1908 years after what? The looking
forward of the world to Him."
Rev. Shayler has an original way of proving the historicity
of Jesus. Every time we date our letters, suggests the clergyman,
we prove that Jesus lived. The ancient Greeks reckoned time by
the Olympiads, which fact, according to this interesting
clergyman, ought to prove that the Olympic games were instituted
by the God Heracles or Hercules, son of Zeus; the Roman
Chronology began with the building of Rome by Romulus, which by
the same reasoning would prove that Romulus and Remus, born of
Mars, and nursed by a she-wolf, are historical.
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Rev. Shayler has forgotten that the Christian era was not
introduced into Europe until the sixth century, and Dionysius,
the monkish author of the era, did not compute time from the
birth of Jesus, but from the day on which the Virgin Mary met an
angel from heaven. This date prevailed in many countries until
1745. Would the date on a letter prove that an angel appeared to
Mary and hailed her as the future Mother of God? According to
this clergyman, scientists, instead of studying the crust of the
earth and making geological investigations to ascertain the
probable age of the earth, ought to look at the date in the
margin of the bible which tells exactly the world's age.
Rev. Shayler continues: ."The places where he was born,
labored and died are still extant, and have no value apart from
such testimony."
While this is amusing, we are going to deny ourselves the
pleasure of laughing at it; we will do our best to give it a
serious answer. If the existence of such a country as Palestine
proves that Jesus is real, the existence of Switzerland must
prove that William Tell is historical; and the existence of an
Athens must prove that Athene and Apollo really lived; and from
the fact that there is an England, Rev. Shayler would prove that
Robin Hood and his band really lived in 1160.
The Reverend knows of another 'fact' which he thinks proves
Jesus without a doubt:
"A line of apostles and bishops coming right down from him
by his appointment to Anderson of Chicago," shows that Jesus is
historical. It does, but only to Episcopalians. The Catholics and
the other sects do not believe that Anderson is a descendant of
Jesus. Did the priests of Baal or Moloch prove that these beings
existed?
The Reverend has another argument:
"The Christian Church -- when, why and how did it begin?"
Which Christian church, brother? Your own church began with Henry
the Eighth in 1534, with persecution and murder, when the king,
his hands wet with the blood of his own wives and ministers, made
himself the supreme head of the church in England. The Methodist
church began with John Wesley not much over a hundred years ago;
the Presbyterian church began with John Calvin who burned his
guest on a slow fire in Geneva about three hundred years ago; and
the Lutheran church began with Martin Luther in the sixteenth
century, the man who said over his own signature: "It was I,
Martin Luther, who slew all the peasants in the Peasants War, for
I commanded them to be slaughtered ... But I throw the
responsibility on our Lord God who instructed me to give this
order;" and the Roman Catholic church, the parent of the smaller
churches -- all chips from the same block -- began its real
career with the first Christian Emperor, Constantine, who hanged
his father-in-law, strangled his brother-in-law, murdered his
nephew, beheaded his eldest son, and killed his wife. Gibbon
writes of Constantine that "the same year of his reign in which
he convened the council of Nice was polluted by the execution, or
rather murder, of his eldest son."
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But our clerical neighbor from Oak Park has one more
argument: "Why is Sunday observed instead of Saturday?" Well,
why? Sun-day is the day of the Sun, whose glorious existence in
the lovely heavens over our heads has never been doubted; it was
the day which the Pagans dedicated to the Sun. Sunday existed
before the Jesus story was known -- the anniversary of whose
supposed resurrection falls in March one year, and in April
another. If Jesus rose at all, he rose on a certain day, and the
apostles must have known the date. Why then is there a different
date every year?
Rev. Shayler concludes: "Haven't time to go deeper now," and
he intimates that to deny his 'facts' is either to be a fool or a
"liar." We will not comment on this. We are interested in
arguments, not in epithets.
VIII
One of our Sunday programs, the other day, found its way
into a church. It went farther; it made its appearance in the
pulpit.
"In my hand I hold the notice of a publication bearing the
title Is Jesus a Myth?" said Dr. Boyle. "This, too, just as
though Paul never bore testimony."
This gave the clergyman a splendid opportunity to present in
clear and convincing form the evidence for the reality of Jesus.
But one thing prevented him: -- the lack of evidence.
Therefore, after announcing the subject, he dismissed it, by
remarking that Paul's testimony was enough.
The Rev. Morton Culver Hartzell, in a letter, offers the
same argument. "Let Mr. Mangasarian first disprove Paul," he
writes. The argument in a nutshell is this: Jesus is historical
because he is guaranteed by Paul.
But who guarantees Paul?
Aside from the fact that the Jesus of Paul is essentially a
different Jesus from the gospel Jesus there still remains the
question, Who is Paul? Let us see how much the church scholars
themselves know about Paul:
"The place and manner and occasion of his death are not less
uncertain than the facts of his later life ... The chronology of
the rest of his life is as uncertain ... We have no means of
knowing when he was born, or how long he lived, or at what dates
the several events of his life took place."
Referring to the epistles of Paul, the same authority says:
"The chief of these preliminary questions is the genuineness of
the epistles bearing Paul's name, which if they be his" -- yes,
IF --
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The Christian scholar whose article on Paul is printed in
the Britannica, and from which we are now quoting, gives further
expression to this uncertainty by adding that certain of Paul's
epistles "have given rise to disputes which cannot easily be
settled in the absence of collateral evidence. ... The pastoral
epistles ... have given rise to still graver questions, and are
probably even less defensible."
Let the reader remember that the above is not from a
rationalist, but from the Rev. Edwin Hatch, D.D., Vice-Principal,
St. Mary Hall, Oxford, England.
Were we disposed to quote rationalist authorities, the
argument against Paul would be far more decisive ... But we are
satisfied to rest the case on orthodox admissions alone.
The strongest argument then of clergymen who have attempted
an answer to our position is something like this:
Jesus is historical because a man by the name of Paul says
so, though we do not know much about Paul.
It is just such evidence as the above that led Prof. Goldwin
Smith to exclaim: "Jesus has flown. I believe the legend of Jesus
was made by many minds working under a great religious impulse --
one man adding a parable, another an exhortation, another a
miracle story;" -- and George Eliot to write: "The materials for
a real life of Christ do not exist."
In the effort to untie the Jesus-knot by Paul, the church
has increased the number of knots to two. In other words, the
church has proceeded on the theory that two uncertainties make a
certainty.
We promised to square also with the facts of history our
statement that the chief concern of the church, Jewish,
Christian, or Mohammedan, is not righteousness, but orthodoxy.
IX
Speaking in this city, Rev. W.H. Wray Boyle of Lake Forest,
declared that unbelief was responsible for the worst crimes in
history. He mentioned the placing.
-- "of a nude woman on a pedestal in the city of Paris.
-- "the assassination of William McKinley.
-- "The same unbelief "sent a murderer down the isle of a
church in Denver to pluck the symbol of the sacrament from the
hands of a priest and slay him at the altar."
The story of a "nude woman," etc., is pure fiction, and that
the two murders were caused by unbelief is mere assumption. To
help his creed, the preacher resorts to fable. We shall prove our
position by quoting facts:
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I. HYPATIA [See Author's, The Martyrdom of Hypatia.] was
dragged into a Christian church by monks in Alexandria, and
before the altar she was stripped of her clothing and cut in
pieces with oyster shells, and murdered. Her innocent blood
stained the hands of the clergy, who also handle the Holy
Sacraments. She was murdered not by a crazed individual but by
the orders of the bishop of Alexandria. How does the true story
of Hypatia compare with the fable of "a nude woman placed on a
pedestal in the city of Paris?" The Reverend must answer, or
never tell an untruth again.
Hypatia was murdered in church, and by the clergy, because
she was not orthodox.
II. POLTROT, the Protestant, in the 16th century
assassinated Francois, the Catholic duke of Guise, in France, and
the leaders of the church, instead of disclaiming responsibility
for the act, publicly praised the assassin, and Theodore Beza,
the colleague of Calvin, promised him a crown in heaven, (De
l'etat etc, p. 82, Quoted by Jules Simon.)
III. JAMES CLEMENT, a Catholic, assassinated Henry III. For this
act the clergy placed his portrait on the altar in the churches
between two great lighted candle-sticks. Because he had killed a
heretic prince, the Catholics presented the assassin's mother
with a purse. (Esprit de la Ligue I. III. p. 14.)
If it was unbelief that inspired the murder of McKinley,
what inspired the assassins of Hypatia and Henry III?
We read in the Bible that Gen. Sisera, a heathen, having
lost a battle, begged for shelter at the tent of Jael, a friendly
woman, but of the Bible faith. Jael assured the unfortunate
stranger that he was safe in her tent. The tired warrior fell
asleep from great weariness. Then Jael picked a tent-peg and with
a hammer in her hand "walked softly unto him, and smote the nail
into his temples, and fastened it into the ground ... So he
died."
The BIBLE calls this assassin "blessed above women." (Judge
IV. 18, etc.) She had killed a heretic.
In each of the instances given above, the assassin is
horrified because he committed murder in the interest of the
faith. We ask this clergyman and his colleagues who are only too
anxious to charge every act of violence to unbelief in their
creeds -- What about the crimes of believers?
Without comment we recommend the following text to their
attention:
"Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own
eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote of thy
brother's eye." (Matthew VII, 5.)
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