Now, the Christians claim that their God created this universe—not the universe He is described, in His own inspired word, as creating, but the universe revealed by science; the universe of twenty millions of suns.

And the Christians claim that this God is a God of love, a God omnipotent, omnipresent, and eternal. And the Christians claim that this great God, the Creator of our wonderful universe, is the God revealed to us in the Bible.

Let us, then, go to the Bible, and find out for ourselves whether the God therein revealed is any more like the ideal Christian God than the universe therein revealed is like the universe since discovered by man without the aid of divine inspiration.

As for the biblical God, Jahweh, or Jehovah, I shall try to show from the Bible itself that He was not all-wise, nor all-powerful, nor omnipresent; that He was not merciful nor just; but that, on the contrary, He was fickle, jealous, dishonourable, immoral, vindictive, barbarous, and cruel.

Neither was He, in any sense of the words, great nor good. But, in fact, He was a tribal god, an idol, made by man; and, as the idol of a savage and ignorant tribe, was Himself a savage and ignorant monster.

First then, as to my claim that Jahweh, or Jehovah, was a tribal god. I shall begin by quoting from Shall We Understand the Bible? by the Rev. T. Rhondda Williams:

The theology of the Jahwist is very childish and elementary, though it is not all on the same level. He thinks of God very much as in human form, holding intercourse with men almost as one of themselves. His document begins with Genesis ii. 4, and its first portion continues, without break, to the end of chapter iv. This portion contains the story of Eden. Here Jahweh moulds dust into human form, and breathes into it; plants a garden, and puts the man in it. Jahweh comes to the man in his sleep, and takes part of his body to make a woman, and so skilfully, apparently, that the man never wakes under the operation. Jahweh walks in the garden like a man in the cool of the day. He even makes coats for Adam and Eve. Further on the Jahwist has a flood story, in which Jahweh repents that he had made man, and decides to drown him, saving only one family. When all is over, and Noah sacrifices on his new altar, Jahweh smells a sweet savour, just as a hungry man smells welcome food. When men build the Tower of Babel, Jahweh comes down to see it—he cannot see it from where he is. In Genesis xviii. the Jahwist tells a story of three men coming to Abraham's tent. Abraham gives them water to wash their feet, and bread to eat, and Sarah makes cakes for them, and "they did eat"; altogether, they seemed to have had a nice time. As the story goes on, he leaves you to infer that one of these was Jahweh himself. It is J. who describes the story of Jacob wrestling with some mysterious person, who, by inference, is Jahweh. He tells a very strange story in Exodus iv. 24, that when Moses was returning into Egypt, at Jahweh's own request, Jahweh met him at a lodging-place, and sought to kill him. In Exodus xiv. 15 it is said Jahweh took the wheels off the chariots of the Egyptians. If we wanted to believe that such statements were true at all, we should resort to the device of saying they were figurative. But J. meant them literally. The Jahwist would have no difficulty in thinking of God in this way. The story of the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah belongs to this same document, in which, you remember, Jahweh says: "I will go down now, and see whether they have done altogether according to the cry of it which is come unto me; and if not, I will know" (Gen. xviii. 21). That God was omniscient and omnipresent had never occurred to the Jahwist. Jahweh, like a man, had to go and see if he wanted to know. There is, however, some compensation in the fact that he can move about without difficulty—he can come down and go up. One might say, perhaps, that in J., though Jahweh cannot be everywhere, he can go to almost any place. All this is just like a child's thought. The child, at Christmas, can believe that, though Santa Claus cannot be everywhere, he can move about with wonderful facility, and, though he is a man, he is rather mysterious. The Jahwist's thought of God represents the childhood stage of the national life.

Later, Mr. Williams writes:

All this shows that at one time Jahweh was one of many gods; other gods were real gods. The Israelites themselves believed, for example, that Chemosh was as truly the god of the Moabites as Jahweh was theirs, and they speak of Chemosh giving territory to his people to inherit, just as Jahweh had given them territory (Judges xi. 24).

Just as a King of Israel would speak of Jahweh, the King of Moab speaks of Chemosh. His god sends him to battle. If he is defeated, the god is angry; if he succeeds, the god is favourable. And we have seen that there was a time when the Israelite believed Chemosh to be as real for Moab as Jahweh for himself. You find the same thing everywhere. The old Assyrian kings said exactly the same thing of the god Assur.

Assur sent them to battle, gave defeat or victory, as he thought fit. The history, however, is very obscure up to the time of Samuel, and uncertain for some time after. Samuel organised a Jahweh party. David worshipped Jahweh only, though he regards it as possible to be driven out of Jahweh's inheritance into that of other gods (1 Sam. xxvi. 19). Solomon was not exclusively devoted to Jahweh, for he built places of worship for other deities as well.

In the chapter on "Different Conceptions of Providence in the Bible," Mr. Williams says:

I have asked you to read Judges iii. 15-30, iv. 17-24, v. 24-31. The first is the story of Ehud getting at Eglon, Israel's enemy, by deceit, and killing him—an act followed by a great slaughter of Moabites. The second is the story of Jael pretending to play the friend to Sisera, and then murdering him. The third is the eulogy of Jael for doing so, as "blessed above women," in the so-called Song of Deborah. Here, you see, Providence is only concerned with the fortunes of Israel; any deceit and any cruelty is right which brings success to this people. Providence is not concerned with morality; nor is it concerned with individuals, except as the individual serves or opposes Israel.

In these two chapters Mr. Williams shows that the early conception of God was a very low one, and that it underwent considerable change. In fact, he says, with great candour and courage, that the early Bible conception of God is one which we cannot now accept.

With this I entirely agree. We cannot accept as the God of Creation this savage idol of an obscure tribe, and we have renounced Him, and are ashamed of Him, not because of any later divine revelation, but because mankind have become too enlightened, too humane, and too honourable to tolerate Jehovah.

And yet the Christian religion adopted Jehovah, and called upon its followers to worship and believe Him, on pain of torture, or death, or excommunication in this world, and of hell-fire in the world to come. It is astounding.

But lest the evidence offered by Mr. Williams should not be considered sufficient, I shall quote from another very useful book, The Evolution of the Idea of God, by the late Grant Allen. In this book Mr. Allen clearly traces the origins of the various ideas of God, and we hear of Jehovah again, as a kind of tribal stone idol, carried about in a box or ark. I will quote as fully as space permits:

But Jahweh was an object of portable size, for, omitting for the present the descriptions in the Pentateuch—which seem likely to be of later date, and not too trustworthy, through their strenuous Jehovistic editing—he was carried from Shiloh in his ark to the front during the great battle with the Philistines at Ebenezer; and the Philistines were afraid, for they said, "A god is come into the camp." But when the Philistines captured the ark, the rival god, Dagon, fell down and broke in pieces—so Hebrew legend declared—before the face of Jahweh. After the Philistines restored the sacred object, it rested for a time at Kirjath-jearim till David, on the capture of Jerusalem from the Jebusites, went down to that place to bring up from thence the ark of the god; and as it went, on a new cart, they "played before Jahweh on all manner of instruments," and David himself "danced before Jahweh."... The children of Israel in early times carried about with them a tribal god, Jahweh, whose presence in their midst was intimately connected with a certain ark or chest containing a stone object or objects. This chest was readily portable, and could be carried to the front in case of warfare. They did not know the origin of the object in the ark with certainty; but they regarded it emphatically as "Jahweh their god, which led them out of the land of Egypt."...

I do not see, therefore, how we can easily avoid the obvious inference that Jahweh the god of the Hebrews, who later became sublimated and etherealised into the God of Christianity, was, in his origin, nothing more nor less than the ancestral sacred stone of the people of Israel, however sculptured, and, perhaps, in the very last resort of all, the unhewn monumental pillar of some early Semitic sheikh or chieftain.

It was, indeed, as the Rev. C. E. Beeby says, in his book Creed and Life, a sad mistake of St. Augustine to tack this tribal fetish in his box on to the Christian religion as the All-Father, and Creator of the Universe. For Jehovah was a savage war-god, and, as such, was impotent to save the tribe who worshipped him.

But let us look further into the accounts of this original God of the Christians, and see how he comported himself, and let us put our examples under separate heads; thus:

Jehovah's Anger

Jahweh's bad temper is constantly displayed in the Bible. Jahweh made a man, whom he supposed to be perfect. When the man turned bad on his hands, Jahweh was angry, and cursed him and his seed for thousands of years. This vindictive act is accepted by the Apostle Paul as a natural thing for a God of Love to do.

Jahweh who had already cursed all the seed of Adam, was so angry about man's sin, in the time of Noah, that he decided to drown all the people on the earth except Noah's family, and not only that, but to drown nearly all the innocent animals as well.

When the children of Israel, who had eaten nothing but manna for forty years, asked Jahweh for a change of diet, Jahweh lost his temper again, and sent amongst them "fiery serpents," so that "much people of Israel died." But still the desire for other food remained, and the Jews wept for meat. Then the Lord ordered Moses to speak to the people as follows:

... The Lord will give you flesh, and ye shall eat. Ye shall not eat one day, nor two days, nor five days, neither ten days nor twenty days: but even a whole month, until it come out of your nostrils, and it be loathsome unto you; because that ye have despised the Lord, which is among you, and have wept before Him, saying, Why came we forth out of Egypt?

Then Jahweh sent immense numbers of quails, and the people ate them, and the anger of their angry god came upon them in the act, and smote them with "a very great plague."

One more instance out of many. In the First Book of Samuel we are told that on the return of Jahweh in his ark from the custody of the Philistines some men of Bethshemesh looked into the ark. This made Jahweh so angry that he smote the people, and slew more than fifty thousand of them.

The Injustice of Jehovah

I have already instanced Jahweh's injustice in cursing the seed of Adam for Adam's sin, and in destroying the whole animal creation, except a selected few, because he was angry with mankind. In the Book of Samuel we are told that Jahweh sent three years' famine upon the whole nation because of the sins of Saul, and that his wrath was only appeased by the hanging in cold blood of seven of Saul's sons for the evil committed by their father.

In the Book of Joshua is the story of how Achan, having stolen some gold, was ordered to be burnt; and how Joshua and the Israelites took "Achan, and his sons, and his daughters, and his oxen, and his asses, and his sheep, and his tent, and all that he had," and stoned them to death, and "burnt them with fire."

In the First Book of Chronicles the devil persuades David to take a census of Israel. And again Jahweh acted in blind wrath and injustice, for he sent a pestilence, which slew seventy thousand of the people for David's fault. But David he allowed to live. In Samuel we learn how Jahweh, because of an attack upon the Israelites four hundred years before the time of speaking, ordered Saul to destroy the Amalekites, "man and woman, infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and ass." And Saul did as he was directed; but because he spared King Agag, the Lord deprived him of the crown and made David king in his stead.

The Immorality Of Jehovah

In the Second Book of Chronicles Jehovah gets Ahab, King of Israel, killed by putting lies into the mouths of the prophets:

And the Lord said, Who shall entice Ahab, king of Israel, that he may go up and fall at Ramoth-gilead? And one spake, saying after this manner, and another saying after that manner.

Then there came out a spirit, and stood before the Lord, and said, I will entice him. And the Lord said unto him, Wherewith?

And he said, I will go out, and be a lying spirit in the mouth of all his prophets. And the Lord said, Thou shalt entice him, and thou shalt also prevail: go out, and do even so.

In Deuteronomy are the following orders as to conduct in war:

When thou goest forth to war against thine enemies, and the Lord thy God hath delivered them into thine hands, and thou hast taken them captive.

And seest among the captives a beautiful woman, and hast a desire unto her, that thou wouldest have her to thy wife; Then thou shalt bring her home to thine house; and she shall shave her head, and pare her nails;

And she shall put the raiment of her captivity from off her, and shall remain in thine house, and bewail her father and her mother a full month: and after that thou shalt go in unto her, and be her husband, and she shall be thy wife.

And it shall be, if thou have no delight in her, then thou shall let her go whither she will; but thou shalt not sell her at all for money, thou shalt not make merchandise of her, because thou hast humbled her.

The children of Israel, having been sent out by Jahweh to punish the Midianites, "slew all the males." But Moses was wrath, because they had spared the women, and he ordered them to kill all the married women, and to take the single women "for themselves." The Lord allowed this brutal act—which included the murder of all the male children—to be consummated. There were sixteen thousand females spared, of which we are told that "the Lord's tribute was thirty and two."

The Cruelty Of Jehovah

I could find in the Bible more instances of Jahweh's cruelty and barbarity and lack of mercy than I can find room for.

In Deuteronomy, the Lord hardens the heart of Sihon, King of Hesbon, to resist the Jews, and then "utterly destroyed the men, women, and little ones of every city."

In Leviticus, Jahweh threatens that if the Israelites will not reform he will "walk contrary to them in fury, and they shall eat the flesh of their own sons and daughters."

In Deuteronomy is an account of how Bashan was utterly destroyed, men, women, and children being slain.

In the same book occur the following passages:

When the Lord thy God shall bring thee into the land whither thou goest to possess it, and hath cast out many nations before thee, the Hittites, and the Girgashites, and the Amorites, and the Canaanites, and the Perizzites, and the Hivites, and the Jebusites, seven nations greater and mightier than thou;

And when the Lord thy God shall deliver them before thee; thou shalt smite them, and utterly destroy them; thou shalt make no covenant with them, or show mercy unto them.

That is from chapter vii. In chapter xx. there are further instructions of a like horrible kind:

Thus shalt thou do unto all the cities which are very far off from thee, which are not of the cities of these nations.

But of the cities of these people, which the Lord thy God doth give thee for an inheritance, thou shalt save alive nothing that breatheth:

But thou shalt utterly destroy them; namely, the Hittites, and the Amorites, the Canaanites, and the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites, as the Lord thy God hath commanded thee.

And here, in a long quotation, is an example of the mercy of Jahweh, and his faculty for cursing:

The Lord shall make the pestilence cleave unto thee, until he have consumed thee from off the land, whither thou goest to possess it.

The Lord shall smite thee with a consumption, and with a fever, and with an inflammation, and with an extreme burning, and with the sword, and with blasting, and with mildew; and they shall pursue thee until thou perish.

And thy heaven that is over thy head shall be brass, and the earth that is under thee shall be iron.

The Lord shall make the rain of thy land powder and dust: from heaven shall it come down upon thee, until thou be destroyed.

The Lord shall cause thee to be smitten before thine enemies: thou shalt go out one way against them, and flee seven ways before them: and shalt be removed into all the kingdoms of the earth.

And thy carcase shall be meat unto all fowls of the air, and unto the beasts of the earth, and no man shall fray them away.

The Lord will smite thee with the botch of Egypt, and with the emerods, and with the scab, and with the itch, whereof thou canst not be healed.

The Lord shall smite thee with madness, and blindness, and astonishment of heart:...

And he shall besiege thee in all thy gates, until thy high and fenced walls come down, wherein thou trustedst, throughout all thy land: and he shall besiege thee in all thy gates throughout all thy land, which the Lord thy God hath given thee.

And thou shalt eat the fruit of thine own body, the flesh of thy sons and of thy daughters, which the Lord thy God hath given thee, in the siege, and in the straightness wherewith thine enemies shall distress thee:

So that the man that is tender among you, and very delicate, his eyes shall be evil toward his brother, and toward the wife of his bosom, and toward the remnant of his children which he shall leave....

For a fire is kindled in mine anger, and shall burn into the lowest hell, and shall consume the earth with her increase, and set on fire the foundations of the mountains.

I will heap mischiefs upon them; I will spend mine arrows upon them.

They shall be burnt with hunger, and devoured with burning heat, and with bitter destruction: I will also send the teeth of beasts upon them, with the poison of serpents of the dust.

The sword without, and terror within, shall destroy both the young man and the virgin, the suckling also with the man of grey hairs.

I think I have quoted enough to show that what I say of the Jewish God Jehovah is based on fact. But I could, if needful, heap proof on proof, for the books of the Old Testament reek with blood, and are horrible with atrocities.

Now, consider, is the God of whom we have been reading a God of love? Is He the Father of Christ? Is He not rather the savage idol of a savage tribe?

Man and his gods: what a tragi-comedy it is. Man has never seen one of his gods, never heard the voice of one of his gods, does not know the shape, expression, or bearing of one of his gods. Yet man has cursed man, hated man, hunted man, tortured man, and murdered man, for the sake of shadows and fantasies of his own terror, or vanity, or desire. We tiny, vain feeblenesses, we fussy ephemera; we sting each other, hate each other, hiss at each other, for the sake of the monster gods of our own delirium. As we are whirled upon our spinning, glowing planet through the unfathomable spaces, where myriads of suns, like golden bees, gleam through the awful mystery of "the vast void night," what are the phantom gods to us? They are no more than the waterspouts on the ocean, or the fleeting shadows on the hills. But the man, and the woman, and the child, and the dog with its wistful eyes; these know us, touch us, appeal to us, love us, serve us, grieve us.

Shall we kill these, or revile them, or desert them, for the sake of the lurid ghost in the cloud, or the fetish in his box?

Do you think the bloodthirsty vindictive Jahweh, who prized nothing but his own aggrandisement, and slew or cursed all who offended him, is the Creator, the same who made the jewels of the Pleiades, and the resplendent mystery of the Milky Way?

Is this unspeakable monster, Jahweh, the Father of Christ? Is he the God who inspired Buddha, and Shakespeare, and Herschel, and Beethoven, and Darwin, and Plato, and Bach? No; not he. But in warfare and massacre, in rapine and in rape, in black revenge and deadly malice, in slavery, and polygamy, and the debasement of women; and in the pomps, vanities, and greeds of royalty, of clericalism, and of usury and barter—we may easily discern the influence of his ferocious and abominable personality. It is time to have done with this nightmare fetish of a murderous tribe of savages. We have no use for him. We have no criminal so ruthless nor so blood-guilty as he. He is not fit to touch our cities, imperfect as we are. The thought of him defiles and nauseates. We should think him too horrible and pitiless for a devil, this red-handed, black-hearted Jehovah of the Jews.

And yet: in the inspired Book, in the Holy Bible, this awful creature is still enshrined as "God the Father Almighty." It is marvellous. It is beyond the comprehension of any man not blinded by superstition, not warped by prejudice and old-time convention. This the God of Heaven? This the Father of Christ? This the Creator of the Milky Way? No. He will not do. He is not big enough. He is not good enough. He is not clean enough. He is a spiritual nightmare: a bad dream born in savage minds of terror and ignorance and a tigerish lust for blood.

But if He is not the Most High, if He is not the Heavenly Father, if He is not the King of kings, the Bible is not an inspired book, and its claims to divine revelation will not stand. THE HEROES OF THE BIBLE

Carlyle said we might judge a people by their heroes. The heroes of the Bible, like the God of the Bible, are immoral savages. That is because the Bible is a compilation from the literature of savage and immoral tribes.

Had the Bible been the word of God we should have found in it a lofty and a pure ideal of God. We should not have found in it open approval—divine approval—of such unspeakable savages as Moses, David, Solomon, Jacob, and Lot.

Let us consider the lives of a few of the Bible heroes. We will begin with Moses.

We used to be taught in school that Moses was the meekest man the world has known: and we used to marvel.

It is written in the second chapter of Exodus thus:

And it came to pass in those days, when Moses was grown, that he went out unto his brethren, and looked on their burdens: and he spied an Egyptian smiting an Hebrew, one of his brethren.

And he looked this way and that way, and when he saw that there was no man, he slew the Egyptian, and hid him in the sand.

And when he went out the second day, behold two men of the Hebrews strove together: and he said to him that did the wrong, Wherefore smitest thou thy fellow? And he said, Who made thee a prince and a judge over us? intendest thou to kill me as thou killedst the Egyptian? And Moses feared, and said, Surely this thing is known.

The meekest of men slays an Egyptian deliberately and in cold blood. It may be pleaded that the Egyptian was doing wrong; but the remarks of the Hebrew suggest that even the countrymen of Moses looked upon his act of violence with disfavour.

But the meekness of Moses is further illustrated in the laws attributed to him, in which the death penalty is almost as common as it was in England in the Middle Ages.

Also, in the thirty-first chapter of Numbers we have the following story. The Lord commands Moses to "avenge the children of Israel of the Midianites," after which Moses is to die. Moses sends out an army:

And they warred against the Midianites, as the Lord commanded Moses; and they slew all the males.

And they slew the kings of Midian, besides the rest of them that were slain; namely Evi, and Rekem, and Zur, and Hur, and Reba, five kings of Midian: Balaam also the son of Beor they slew with the sword.

And the children of Israel took all the women of Midian captives, and their little ones, and took the spoil of all their cattle, and all their flocks, and all their goods.

And they burnt all their cities wherein they dwelt, and all their goodly castles, with fire.

And they took all the spoil, and all the prey, both of men and of beasts....

And Moses was wroth with the officers of the host, with the captains over thousands, and captains over hundreds, which came from the battle.

And Moses said unto them, Have ye saved all the women alive?

Behold, these called the children of Israel, through the counsel of Balaam, to commit trespass against the Lord in the matter of Peor, and there was a plague among the congregation of the Lord.

Now therefore kill every male among the little ones, and kill every woman that hath known man by lying with him.

But all the women children that have not known a man by lying with him, keep alive for yourselves.

Moses is a patriarch of the Jews, and the meekest man. But suppose any pagan or Mohammedan general were to behave to a Christian city as Moses behaved to the people of Midian, what should we say of him? But God was pleased with him.

Further, in the sixteenth chapter of Numbers you will find how Moses the Meek treated Korah, Dathan, and Abiram for rebelling against himself and Aaron; how the earth opened and swallowed these men and their families and friends, at a hint from Moses; and how the Lord slew with fire from heaven two hundred and fifty men who were offering incense, and how afterwards there came a pestilence by which some fourteen thousand persons died.

Moses was a politician; his brother was a priest. I shall express no opinion of the pair; but I quote from the Book of Exodus, as follows:

And when the people saw that Moses delayed to come down out of the mount, the people gathered themselves together unto Aaron, and said unto him, Up, make us gods, which shall go before us; for as for this Moses, the man that brought us up out of the land of Egypt, we wot not what is become of him.

And Aaron said unto them, Break off the golden earrings, which are in the ears of your wives, of your sons, and of your daughters, and bring them unto me.

And all the people brake off the golden earrings which were in their ears, and brought them unto Aaron.

And he received them at their hand, and fashioned it with a graving tool after he had made it a molten calf: and they said, These be thy gods, O Israel, which brought thee up out of the land of Egypt.

And when Aaron saw it, he built an altar before it; and Aaron made proclamation, and said, To-morrow is a feast to the Lord.

And they rose up early on the morrow, and offered burnt offerings, and brought peace offerings; and the people sat down to eat and to drink, and rose up to play.

And the Lord said unto Moses, Go, get thee down; for thy people which thou broughtest out of the land of Egypt, have corrupted themselves.

Aaron, when asked by Moses why he has done this thing, tells a lie:

And Moses said unto Aaron, What did this people unto thee, that thou hast brought so great a sin upon them?

And Aaron said, Let not the anger of my lord wax hot; thou knowest the people, that they are set on mischief.

For they said unto me, Make us gods, which shall go before us: for as for this Moses, the man that brought us up out of the land of Egypt, we wot not what is become of him.

And I said unto them, Whosoever hath any gold, let them break it off. So they gave it to me: then I cast it into the fire, and there came out this calf.

And when Moses saw that the people were naked; (for Aaron had made them naked unto their shame among their enemies:)

Then Moses stood in the gate of the camp, and said, Who is on the Lord's side? let him come unto me. And all the sons of Levi gathered themselves together unto him.

And he said unto them, Thus saith the Lord God of Israel, Put every man his sword by his side, and go in and out from gate to gate throughout the camp, and slay every man his brother, and every man his companion, and every man his neighbour.

And the children of Levi did according to the word of Moses; and there fell of the people that day about three thousand men.

So much for this meek father of the Jews.

And now let us consider David and his son Solomon, the greatest of the Bible kings, and the ancestors of Jesus Christ.

Judging King David by the Bible record, I should conclude that he was a cruel, treacherous, and licentious savage. He lived for some time as a bandit, robbing the subjects of the King of Gath, who had given him shelter. When asked about this by the king, David lied. As to the nature of his conduct at this time, no room is left for doubt by the story of Nabal. David demanded blackmail of Nabal, and, on its being refused, set out with four hundred armed men to rob Nabal, and kill every male on his estate. This he was prevented from doing by Nabal's wife, who came out to meet David with fine presents and fine words. Ten days later Nabal died, and David married his widow. See twenty-fifth chapter First Book of Samuel.

David had seven wives, and many children. One of his favourite wives was Bathsheba, the widow of Uriah.

While Uriah was at "the front," fighting for David, that king seduced his wife, Bathsheba. To avoid discovery, David recalled Uriah from the war, and bade him go home to his wife. Uriah said it would dishonour him to seek ease and pleasure at home while other soldiers were enduring hardship at the front. The king then made the soldier drunk, but even so could not prevail.

Therefore David sent word to the general to place Uriah in the front of the battle, where the fight was hardest. And Uriah was killed, and David married Bathsheba, who became the mother of Solomon.

So much for David's honour. Now for a sample of his humanity. I quote from the twelfth chapter of the Second Book of Samuel:

And Joab sent messengers to David, and said, I have fought against Rabbah, and have taken the city of waters.

Now therefore gather the rest of the people together, and encamp against the city, and take it: lest I take the city, and it be called after my name.

And David gathered all the people together, and went to Rabbah, and fought against it, and took it.

And he took their king's crown from off his head, the weight whereof was a talent of gold with the precious stones: and it was set on David's head. And he brought forth the spoil of the city in great abundance.

And he brought forth the people that were therein, and put them under saws, and under harrows of iron, and under axes of iron, and made them pass through the brick kiln: and thus did he unto all the cities of the children of Ammon. So David and all the people returned unto Jerusalem.

But nothing in David's life became him so little as his leaving of it. I quote from the second chapter of the First Book of Kings. David, on his deathbed, is speaking to Solomon, his son:

Moreover thou knowest also what Joab the son of Zeruiah did to me, and what he did to the two captains of the host of Israel, unto Abner the son of Ner, and unto Amasa the son of Jether, whom he slew, and shed the blood of war in peace, and put the blood of war upon his girdle that was about his loins, and in his shoes that were on his feet.

Do therefore according to thy wisdom, and let not his hoar head go down to the grave in peace.

But show kindness unto the sons of Barzillai, the Gileadite, and let them be of those that eat at thy table; for so they came to me when I fled because of Absalom thy brother.

And, behold, thou hast with thee Shimei the son of Gera, a Benjamite of Bahurim, which cursed me with a grievous curse in the day when I went to Mahanaim: but he came down to meet me at Jordan, and I sware to him by the Lord, saying, I will not put thee to death with the sword. Now therefore hold him not guiltless: for thou art a wise man, and knowest what thou oughtest to do unto him; but his hoar head bring thou down to the grave with blood.

These seem to have been the last words spoken by King David. Joab was his best general, and had many times saved David's throne.

Solomon began by stealing the throne from his brother, the true heir. Then he murders the brother he has robbed, and disgraces and exiles a priest, who had been long a faithful friend to David, his father. Later he murders Joab at the altar, and brings down the hoar head of Shimei to the grave with blood.

After which he gets him much wisdom, builds a temple, and marries many wives.

Much glamour has been cast upon the names of Solomon and David by their alleged writings. But it is now acknowledged that David wrote few, if any, of the Psalms, and that Solomon wrote neither Ecclesiastes nor the Song of Songs, though some of the Proverbs may be his.

It seems strange to me that such men as Moses, David, and Solomon should be glorified by Christian men and women who execrate Henry VIII. and Richard III. as monsters.

My pet aversion amongst the Bible heroes is Jacob; but Abraham and Lot were pitiful creatures.

Jacob cheated his brother out of the parental blessing, and lied about God, and lied to his father to accomplish his end. He robbed his brother of his birthright by trading on his necessity. He fled from his brother's wrath, and went to his uncle Laban. Here he cheated his uncle out of his cattle and his wealth, and at last came away with his two cousins as his wives, one of whom had stolen her own father's gods.

Abraham was the father of Ishmael by the servant-maid Hagar. At his wife's demand he allowed Hagar and Ishmael to be driven into the desert to die. And here is another pretty story of Abraham. He and his family are driven forth by a famine:

And it came to pass, when he was come near to enter into Egypt, that he said unto Sarai, his wife, Behold now, I know that thou art a fair woman to look upon:

Therefore it shall come to pass, when the Egyptians shall see thee, that they shall say, This is his wife: and they will kill me, but they will save thee alive.

Say, I pray thee, thou are my sister; that it may be well with me for thy sake; and my soul shall live because of thee.

And it came to pass, that, when Abram was come into Egypt the Egyptians beheld the woman that she was very fair.

The princes also of Pharaoh saw her, and commended her before Pharaoh: and the woman was taken into Pharaoh's house.

And he entreated Abram well for her sake: and he had sheep, and oxen, and he-asses, and menservants, and maidservants, and she-asses, and camels.

And the Lord plagued Pharaoh and his house with great plagues because of Sarai, Abram's wife.

And Pharaoh called Abram, and said, What is this that thou hast done unto me? why didst thou not tell me that she was thy wife?

Why saidst thou, She is my sister? so I might have taken her to me to wife: now therefore behold thy wife, take her, and go thy way.

And Pharaoh commanded his men concerning him: and they sent him away, and his wife, and all that he had.

But Abraham was so little ashamed of himself that he did the same thing again, many years afterwards, and Abimelech King of Gerar, behaved to him as nobly as did King Pharaoh on the former occasion.

The story of Lot is too disgusting to repeat. But what are we to think of his offering his daughters to the mob, and of his subsequent conduct?

And what of Noah, who got drunk, and then cursed the whole of his sons' descendants for ever, because Ham had seen him in his shame?

Joseph seems to me to have been anything but an admirable character, and I do not see how his baseness in depriving the Egyptians of their liberties and their land by a corner in wheat can be condoned. Jacob robbed his brother of his birthright by trading on his hunger; Joseph robbed a whole people in the same way.

Samson was a dissolute ruffian and murderer, who in these days would be hanged as a brigand.

Reuben committed incest. Simeon and Levi were guilty of treachery and massacre. Judah was guilty of immorality and hypocrisy.

Joshua was a Jewish general of the usual type. When he captured a city he murdered every man, woman, and child within its walls. Here is one example from the tenth chapter of the Book of Joshua:

And Joshua returned, and all Israel with him, to Debir; and fought against it:

And he took it, and the king thereof; and all the cities thereof; and they smote them with the edge of the sword, and utterly destroyed all the souls that were therein; he left none remaining: as he had done to Hebron, so he did to Debir, and to the king thereof; as he had done also to Libnah, and to her king.

So Joshua smote all the country of the hills, and of the south, and of the vale, and of the springs, and all their kings: he left none remaining, but utterly destroyed all that breathed, as the Lord God of Israel commanded.

And Joshua smote them from Kadesh-barnea even unto Gaza, and all the country of Goshen, even unto Gibeon.

Elijah the prophet was of the same uncompromising kind. After he had mocked the god Baal, and had triumphed over him by miracle, he said to the Israelites:

"Take the prophets of Baal. Let not one of them escape." And they took them, and Elijah brought them down to the brook Kishon, and slew them there.

Now, there were 450 of the priests of Baal, all of whom Elijah the prophet had killed in cold blood.

And here is a story about Elisha, another great prophet of the Jews. I quote from the second chapter of the Second Book of Kings.

And he went up from thence unto Bethel: and as he was going up by the way, there came forth little children out of the city, and mocked him, and said unto him, Go up, thou bald head; go up, thou bald head.

And he turned back, and looked on them, and cursed them in the name of the Lord. And there came forth two she bears out of the wood, and tare forty and two children of them.

After this, Elisha assists King Jehoram and two other kings to waste and slaughter the Moabites, who had refused to pay tribute. You may read the horrible story for yourselves in the third chapter of the Second Book of Kings. There was the usual massacre, but this time the trees were cut down and the wells choked up.

Later, Elisha cures a man of leprosy, and refuses a reward. But his servant runs after the man, and gets two talents of silver and some garments under false pretences. When Elisha hears of this crime, he strikes the servant with leprosy, and all his seed for ever.

Now, it is not necessary for me to harp upon the conduct of these men of God: what I want to point out is that these cruel and ignorant savages have been saddled upon the Christian religion as heroes and as models.

Even to-day the man who called David, or Moses, or Elisha by his proper name in an average Christian household would be regarded as a wicked blasphemer.

And yet, what would a Christian congregation say of an "Infidel" who committed half the crimes and outrages of any one of those Bible heroes?

Do you know what the Christians call Tom Paine? To this day the respectable Christian Church or chapel goer shudders at the name of the "infidel," Tom Paine. But in point of honour, of virtue, of humanity, and general good character, not one of the Bible heroes I have mentioned was worthy to clean Tom Paine's shoes.

Now, it states in the Bible that God loved Jacob, and hated Esau. Esau was a man, and against him the Bible does not chronicle one bad act. But God hated Esau.

And it states in the Bible that Elijah went up in a chariot of fire to heaven.

And in the New Testament Christ or His apostles speak of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob as being in heaven. Paul speaks of David as a "man after God's own heart"; Elijah and Moses come down from heaven, and appear talking with Christ; and, in Hebrews, Paul praises Samuel, Jephtha, Samson, and David.

My point is not that these heroes were bad men, but that, in a book alleged to be the word of God, they are treated as heroes.

I have been accused of showing irreverence towards these barbarous kings and priests. Irreverence! It is like charging a historian with disrespect to the memory of Nero.

I have been accused of having an animus against Moses, and David, and all the rest. I have no animus against any man, nor do I presume to censure my fellow creatures. I only wish to show that these favourites of God were not admirable characters, and that therefore the Bible cannot be a divine revelation. As for animus: I do not believe any of these men ever existed. I regard them as myths. Should one be angry with a myth? I should as soon think of being angry with Bluebeard, or the Giant that Jack slew.

But I should be astonished to hear that Bluebeard had been promoted to the position of a holy patriarch, and a model of all the virtues for the emulation of innocent children in a modern Sunday school. And I think it is time the Church considered itself, and told the truth about Jehovah, and Moses, and Joshua, and Samson.

If you fail to agree with me I can only accept your decision with respectful astonishment.



THE BOOK OF BOOKS

Floods of sincere, but unmerited, adulation have been lavished on the Hebrew Bible. The world has many books of higher moral and literary value. It would be easy to compile, from the words of Heretics and Infidels, a purer and more elevated moral guide than this "Book of Books."

The ethical code of the Old Testament is no longer suitable as the rule of life. The moral and intellectual advance of the human race has left it behind.

The historical books of the Old Testament are largely pernicious, and often obscene. These books describe, without disapproval, polygamy, slavery, concubinage, lying and deceit, treachery, incest, murder, wars of plunder, wars of conquest, massacre of prisoners of war, massacre of women and of children, cruelty to animals; and such immoral, dishonest, shameful, or dastardly deeds as those of Solomon, David, Abraham, Jacob, and Lot.

The ethical code of the Old Testament does not teach the sacredness of truth, does not teach religious tolerance, nor humanity, nor human brotherhood, nor peace.

Its morality is crude. Much that is noblest in modern thought has no place in the "Book of Books." For example, take these words of Herbert Spencer's:

Absolute morality is the regulation of conduct in such way that pain shall not be inflicted.

There is nothing so comprehensive, nothing so deep as that in the Bible. That covers all the moralities of the Ten Commandments, and all the Ethics of the Law and the Prophets, in one short sentence, and leaves a handsome surplus over.

Note next this, from Kant:

What are the aims which are at the same time duties? They are the perfecting of ourselves, and the happiness of others.

I do not know a Bible sentence so purely moral as that. And in what part of the Bible shall we find a parallel to the following sentence, from an Agnostic newspaper:

Freedom of thought, freedom of speech, freedom of action are helps to the children of men in their search for wisdom.

Tom Paine left Moses and Isaiah centuries behind when he wrote:

The world is my country: to do good my religion.

Robert Ingersoll, another "Infidel," surpassed Solomon when he said:

The object of life is to be happy, the place to be happy is here, the time to be happy is now, the way to be happy is by making others happy.

Which simple sentence contains more wisdom than all the pessimism of the King of kings. And again, Ingersoll went beyond the sociological conception of the Prophets when he wrote:

And let us do away for ever with the idea that the care of the sick, of the helpless, is a charity. It is not a charity: it is a duty. It is something to be done for our own sakes. It is no more a charity than it is to pave or light the streets, no more a charity than it is to have a system of sewers. It is all for the purpose of protecting society, and civilising ourselves.

I will now put together a few sayings of Pagans and Unbelievers as an example of non-biblical morality:

Truth is the pole-star of morality, by it alone can we steer. Can there be a more horrible object in existence than an eloquent man not speaking the truth? Abhor dissimulation. To know the truth and fear to speak it: that is cowardice. One thing here is worth a good deal, to pass thy life in truth and justice, with a benevolent disposition, even to liars and unjust men.

He who acts unjustly acts unjustly to himself, for he makes himself bad. The practice of religion involves as a first principle a loving compassionate heart for all creatures. Religion means self-sacrifice. A loving heart is the great requirement: not to oppress, not to destroy, not to exalt oneself by treading down others; but to comfort and befriend those in suffering. Like as a mother at the risk of her life watches over her only child, so also let every one cultivate towards all beings a bounteous friendly mind.

Man's great business is to improve his mind. What is it to you whether another is guilty or guiltless? Come, friend, atone for your own guilt.

Virtue consists in contempt for death. Why should we cling to this perishable body? In the eye of the wise the only thing it is good for is to benefit one's fellow creatures.

Treat others as you wish them to treat you. Do not return evil for evil. Our deeds, whether good or evil, follow us like shadows.

Never will man attain full moral stature until woman is free. Cherish and reverence little children. Let the slave cease, and the master of slaves cease.

To conquer your enemy by force increases his resentment. Conquer him by love and you will have no after-grief. Victory breeds hatred.

I look for no recompense—not even to be born in heaven— but seek the benefit of men, to bring back those who have gone astray, to enlighten those living in dismal error, to put away all sources of sorrow and pain in the world.

I cannot have pleasure while another grieves and I have power to help him.

Those who regard the Bible as the "Book of Books," and believe it to be invaluable and indispensable to the world, must have allowed their early associations or religious sentiment to mislead them.

Carlyle is more moral than Jeremiah, Ruskin is superior to Isaiah; Ingersoll, the Atheist, is a nobler moralist and a better man than Moses; Plato and Marcus Aurelius are wiser than Solomon; Sir Thomas More, Herbert Spencer, Thoreau, Matthew Arnold, and Emerson are worth more to us than all the Prophets.

I hold a high opinion of the literary quality of some parts of the Old Testament; but I seriously think that the loss of the first fourteen books would be a distinct gain to the world. For the rest, there is considerable literary and some ethical value in Job (which is not Jewish), in Ecclesiastes (which is Pagan), in the Song of Solomon (which is an erotic love song), and in parts of Isaiah, Proverbs, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and Amos. But I don't think any of these books equal to Henry George's Progress and Poverty, or William Morris' News from Nowhere. Of course, I am not blaming Moses and the Prophets: they could only tell us what they knew.

The Ten Commandments have been effusively praised. There is nothing in those Commandments to restrain the sweater, the rack-renter, the jerry-builder, the slum landlord, the usurer, the liar, the libertine, the gambler, the drunkard, the wife-beater, the slave-owner, the religious persecutor, the maker of wheat and cotton rings, the fox-hunter, the bird-slayer, the ill-user of horses and dogs and cattle. There is nothing about "cultivating towards all beings a bounteous friendly mind," nothing about liberty of speech and conscience, nothing about the wrong of causing pain, nor the virtue of causing happiness; nothing against anger or revenge, nor in favour of mercy and forgiveness. Of the Ten Commandments, seven are designed as defences of the possessions and prerogatives of God and the property-owner. As a moral code the Commandments amount to very little.

Moreover, the Bible teaches erroneous theories of history, theology, and science.

It relates childish stories of impossible miracles as facts.

It presents a low idea of God.

It gives an erroneous account of the relations between God and man.

It fosters international hatred.

It fosters religious pride and fanaticism.

Its penal code is horrible.

Its texts have been used for nearly two thousand years in defence of war, slavery, religious persecution, and the slaughter of "witches" and of "sorcerers."

In a hundred wars the Christian soldiery have perpetrated massacre and outrage with the blood-bolstered phrases of the Bible on their lips.

In a thousand trials the cruel witness of Moses has sent innocent women to a painful death.

And always when an apology or a defence of the barbarities of human slavery was needed it was sought for and found in the Holy Bible.

Renan says:

In all ancient Christian literature there is not one word that tells the slave to revolt, or that tells the master to liberate the slave, or even that touches the problem of public right which arises out of slavery.

Mr. Remsburg, in his book, The Bible, shows that in America slavery was defended by the churches on the authority of the sacred Scriptures. He says:

The Fugitive Slave law, which made us a nation of kidnappers, derived its authority from the New Testament. Paul had established a precedent by returning a fugitive slave to his master.

Mr. Remsburg quotes freely from the sermons and speeches of Christian ministers to show the influence of the Bible in upholding slavery. Here are some of his many examples:

The Rev. Alexander Campbell wrote: "There is not one verse in the Bible inhibiting slavery, but many regulating it. It is not, then, we conclude, immoral."

Said the Rev. Mr. Crawder, Methodist, of Virginia: "Slavery is not only countenanced, permitted, and regulated by the Bible, but it was positively instituted by God Himself."

I shall quote no more on the subject of slavery. That inhuman institution was defended by the churches, and the appeal of the churches was to the Bible.

As to witchcraft, the Rev. T. Rhondda Williams says that in one century a hundred thousand women were killed for witchcraft in Germany. Mr. Remsburg offers still more terrible evidence. He says:

One thousand were burned at Como in one year; eight hundred were burned at Wurzburg in one year; five hundred perished at Geneva in three months; eighty were burned in a single village of Savoy; nine women were burned in a single fire at Leith; sixty were hanged in Suffolk; three thousand were legally executed during one session of Parliament, while thousands more were put to death by mobs; Remy, a Christian judge, executed eight hundred; six hundred were burned by one bishop at Bamburg; Bogult burned six hundred at St. Cloud; thousands were put to death by the Lutherans of Norway and Sweden; Catholic Spain butchered thousands; Presbyterians were responsible for the death of four thousand in Scotland; fifty thousand were sentenced to death during the reign of Francis I.; seven thousand died at Treves; the number killed in Paris in a few months is declared to have been "almost infinite." Dr. Sprenger places the total number of executions for witchcraft in Europe at nine millions. For centuries witch fires burned in nearly every town of Europe, and this Bible text, "Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live," was the torch that kindled them.

Count up the terrible losses in the many religious wars of the world, add in the massacres, the martyrdoms, the tortures for religion's sake; put to the sum the long tale of witchcraft murders; remember what slavery has been; and then ask yourselves whether the Book of Books deserves all the eulogy that has been laid upon it.

I believe that to-day all manner of evil passions are fostered, and all the finer motions of the human spirit are retarded, by the habit of reading those savage old books of the Jews as the word of God.

I do not think the Bible, in its present form, is a fit book to place in the hands of children, and it certainly is not a fit book to send out for the "salvation" of savage and ignorant people.



OUR HEAVENLY FATHER

The Rev. T. Rhondda Williams, in Shall We Understand the Bible? shows very clearly the gradual evolution of the idea of God amongst the Jews from a lower to a higher conception.

Having dealt with the lower conception, let us now consider the higher.

The highest conception of God is supposed to be the Christian conception of God as a Heavenly Father. This conception credits the Supreme Being with supernal tenderness and mercy—"God is Love." That is a very lofty, poetical, and gratifying conception, but it is open to one fatal objection—it is not true.

For this Heavenly Father, whose nature is Love, is also the All-knowing and All-powerful Creator of the world.

Being All-powerful and All-knowing, He has power, and had always power, to create any kind of world He chose. Being a God of Love, He would not choose to create a world in which hate and pain should have a place.

But there is evil in the world. There has been always evil in the world. Why did a good and loving God allow evil to enter the world? Being All-Powerful and All-knowing, He could have excluded evil. Being good, He would hate evil. Being a God of Love He would wish to exclude evil. Why, then, did He permit evil to enter?

The world is full of sorrow, of pain, of hatred and crime, and strife and war. All life is a perpetual deadly struggle for existence. The law of nature is the law of prey.

If God is a tender, loving, All-knowing, and All-powerful Heavenly Father, why did He build a world on cruel lines? Why does He permit evil and pain to continue? Why does He not give the world peace, and health, and happiness, and virtue?

In the New Testament Christ compares God, as Heavenly Father to Man, to an earthly father, representing God as more benevolent and tender: "How much more your Father which is in heaven?"

We may, then, on the authority of the Founder of Christianity, compare the Christian Heavenly Father with the human father. And in doing so we shall find that Christ was not justified in claiming that God is a better father to Man than Man is to his own children. We shall find that the poetical and pleasing theory of a Heavenly Father, and God of Love is a delusion.

"Who among you, if his child asks bread, will give him a stone?" None amongst us. But in the great famines, as in India and Russia, God allows millions to die of starvation. These His children pray to Him for bread. He leaves them to die. Is it not so?

God made the sunshine, sweet children, gracious women; green hills, blue seas; music, laughter, love, humour; the palm tree, the hawthorn buds, the "sweet-briar wind"; the nightingale and the rose.

But God made the earthquake, the volcano, the cyclone; the shark, the viper, the tiger, the octopus, the poison berry; and the deadly loathsome germs of cholera, consumption, typhoid, smallpox, and the black death. God has permitted famine, pestilence, and war. He has permitted martyrdom, witch-burning, slavery, massacre, torture, and human sacrifice. He has for millions of years looked down upon the ignorance, the misery, the crimes of men. He has been at once the author and the audience of the pitiful, unspeakable, long-drawn and far-stretched tragedy of earthly life. Is it not so?

For thousands of years—perhaps for millions of years—the generations of men prayed to God for help, for comfort, for guidance. God was deaf, and dumb, and blind.

Men of science strove to read the riddle of life; to guide and to succour their fellow creatures. The priests and followers of God persecuted and slew these men of science. God made no sign. Is it not so?

To-day men of science are trying to conquer the horrors of cancer and smallpox, and rabies and consumption. But not from Burning Bush nor Holy Hill, nor by the mouth of priest or prophet does our Heavenly Father utter a word of counsel or encouragement.

Millions of innocent dumb animals have been subjected to the horrible tortures of vivisection in the frantic endeavours of men to find a way of escape from the fell destroyers of the human race; and God has allowed the piteous brutes to suffer anguish, when He could have saved them by revealing to Man the secret for which he so cruelly sought. Is it not so?

"Nature is red in beak and claw." On land and in sea the animal creation chase and maim, and slay and devour each other. The beautiful swallow on the wing devours the equally beautiful gnat. The graceful flying-fish, like a fair white bird, goes glancing above the blue magnificence of the tropical seas. His flight is one of terror; he is pursued by the ravenous dolphin. The ichneumon-fly lays its eggs under the skin of the caterpillar. The eggs are hatched by the warmth of the caterpillar's blood. They produce a brood of larvae which devour the caterpillar alive. A pretty child dances on the village green. Her feet crush creeping things: there is a busy ant or blazoned beetle, with its back broken, writhing in the dust, unseen. A germ flies from a stagnant pool, and the laughing child, its mother's darling, dies dreadfully of diphtheria. A tidal wave rolls landward, and twenty thousand human beings are drowned, or crushed to death. A volcano bursts suddenly into eruption, and a beautiful city is a heap of ruins, and its inhabitants are charred or mangled corpses. And the Heavenly Father, who is Love, has power to save, and makes no sign. Is it not so?

Blindness, epilepsy, leprosy, madness, fall like a dreadful blight upon a myriad of God's children, and the Heavenly Father gives neither guidance nor consolation. Only man helps man. Only man pities; only man tries to save.

Millions of harmless women have been burned as witches. God, our Heavenly Father, has power to save them. He allows them to suffer and die.

God knew that those women were being tortured and burnt on a false charge. He knew that the infamous murders were in His name. He knew that the whole fabric of crime was due to the human reading of His "revelation" to man. He could have saved the women; He could have enlightened their persecutors; He could have blown away the terror, the cruelty, and the ignorance of His priests and worshippers with a breath.

And He was silent. He allowed the armies of poor women to be tortured and murdered in His name. Is it not so?

Will you, then, compare the Heavenly Father with a father among men? Is there any earthly father who would allow his children to suffer as God allows Man to suffer? If a man had knowledge and power to prevent or to abolish war and ignorance and hunger and disease; if a man had the knowledge and the power to abolish human error and human suffering and human wrong and did not do it, we should call him an inhuman monster, a cruel fiend. Is it not so?

But God has knowledge and power, and we are asked to regard Him as a Heavenly Father, and a God of infinite wisdom, and infinite mercy, and infinite love.

The Christians used to tell us, and some still tell us, that this Heavenly Father of infinite love and mercy would doom the creatures He had made to Hell—for their sins. That, having created us imperfect, He would punish our imperfections with everlasting torture in a lake of everlasting fire. They used to tell us that this good God allowed a Devil to come on earth and tempt man to his ruin. They used to say this Devil would win more souls than Christ could win: that there should be "more goats than sheep."

To escape from these horrible theories, the Christians (some of them) have thrown over the doctrines of Hell and the Devil.

But without a Devil how can we maintain a belief in a God of love and kindness? With a good God, and a bad God (or Devil), one might get along; for then the good might be ascribed to God, and the evil to the Devil. And that is what the old Persians did in their doctrine of Ormuzd and Ahrimann. But with no Devil the belief in a merciful and loving Heavenly Father becomes impossible.

If God blesses, who curses? If God saves, who damns? If God helps, who harms?

This belief in a "Heavenly Father," like the belief in the perfection of the Bible, drives its votaries into weird and wonderful positions. For example, a Christian wrote to me about an animal called the aye-aye. He said:

There is a little animal called an aye-aye. This animal has two hands. Each hand has five fingers. The peculiar thing about these hands is that the middle finger is elongated a great deal—it is about twice as long as the others. This is to enable it to scoop a special sort of insect out of special cracks in the special trees it frequents. Now, how did the finger begin to elongate? A little lengthening would be absolutely no good, as the cracks in the trees are 2 inches or 3 inches deep. It must have varied from the ordinary length to one twice as long at once. There is no other way. Where does natural selection come in? In this, as in scores of other instances, it shows the infinite goodness of God.

Now, how does the creation of this long finger show the "infinite goodness of God"? The infinite goodness of God to whom? To the animal whose special finger enables him to catch the insect? Then what about the insect? Where does he come in? Does not the long finger of the animal show the infinite badness of God to the insect?

What of the infinite goodness of God in teaching the cholera microbe to feed on man? What of the infinite goodness of God in teaching the grub of the ichneumon-fly to eat up the cabbage caterpillar alive?

I see no infinite goodness here, but only the infinite foolishness of sentimental superstition.

If a man fell into the sea, and saw a shark coming, I cannot fancy him praising the infinite goodness of God in giving the shark so large a mouth. The greyhound's speed is a great boon to the greyhound; but it is no boon to the hare.

But this theory of a merciful, and loving Heavenly Father is vital to the Christian religion.

Destroy the idea of the Heavenly Father, who is Love, and Christianity is a heap of ruins. For there is no longer a benevolent God to build our hopes upon; and Jesus Christ, whose glory is a newer revelation of God, has not revealed Him truly, as He is, but only as Man fain would believe Him to be.

And I claim that this Heavenly Father is a myth: that in face of a knowledge of life and the world we cannot reasonably believe in Him.

There is no Heavenly Father watching tenderly over us, His children. He is the baseless shadow of a wistful human dream.



PRAYER AND PRAISE

As to prayer and praise.

Christians believe that God is just, that He is all-wise and all-knowing.

If God is just, will He not do justice without being entreated of men?

If God is all wise, and knows all that happens, will He not know what is for man's good better than man can tell Him?

If He knows better than Man knows what is best for man, and if He is a just God and a loving Father, will He not do right without any advice or reminder from Man?

If He is a just God, will He give us less than justice unless we pray to Him; or will He give us more than justice because we importune Him?

To ask God for His love, or for His grace, or for any worldly benefit seems to me unreasonable.

If God knows we need His grace, or if He knows we need some help or benefit, He will give it to us if we deserve it. If we do not deserve it, or do not need what we ask for, it would not be just nor wise of Him to grant our prayer.

To pray to God is to insult Him. What would a man think if his children knelt and begged for his love or for their daily bread? He would think his children showed a very low conception of their father's sense of duty and affection.

Then Christians think God answers prayer. How can they think that?

In the many massacres, and famines, and pestilences has God answered prayer? As we learn more and more of the laws of Nature we put less and less reliance on the effect of prayer.

When fever broke out, men used to run to the priest: now they run to the doctor. In old times when plague struck a city, the priests marched through the streets bearing the Host, and the people knelt to pray; now the authorities serve out soap and medicine and look sharply to the drains.

And yet there still remains a superstitious belief in prayer, and most surprising are some of its manifestations.

For instance, I went recently to see Wilson Barrett in The Silver King. Wilfred Denver, a drunken gambler, follows a rival to kill him. He does not kill him, but he thinks he has killed him. He flies from justice.

Now this man Denver leaves London by a fast train for Liverpool. Between London and Rugby he jumps out of the train, and, after limping many miles, goes to an inn, orders dinner and a private room, and asks for the evening paper.

While he waits for the paper he kneels down and prays to God, for the sake of wife and children, to allow him to escape.

And, directly after, in comes a girl with a paper, and Denver reads how the train he rode in caught fire, and how all the passengers in the first three coaches were burnt to cinders.

Down goes Denver on his knees, and thanks God for listening to his prayer.

And not a soul in the audience laughed. God, to allow a murderer to escape from the law, has burnt to death a lot of innocent passengers, and Wilfred Denver is piously grateful. And nobody laughed!

But Christians tell us they know that prayer is efficacious. And to them it may be so in some measure. Perhaps, if a man pray for strength to resist temptation, or for guidance in time of perplexity, and if he have faith, his prayer shall avail him something.

Why? Not because God will hear, or answer, but for two natural reasons.

First, the act of prayer is emotional, and so calms the man who prays, for much of his excitement is worked off. It is so when a sick man groans: it eases his pain. It is so when a woman weeps: it relieves her overcharged heart.

Secondly, the act of prayer gives courage or confidence, in proportion to the faith of him that prays. If a man has to cross a deep ravine by a narrow plank, and if his heart fail him, and he prays for God's help, believing that he will get it, he will walk his plank with more confidence. If he prays for help against a temptation, he is really appealing to his own better nature; he is rousing up his dormant faculty of resistance and desire for righteousness, and so rises from his knees in a sweeter and calmer frame of mind.

For myself, I never pray, and never feel the need of prayer. And though I admit, as above, that it may have some present advantage, yet I am inclined to think that it is bought too dearly at the price of a decrease in our self-reliance. I do not think it is good for a man to be always asking for help, for benefits, or for pardon. It seems to me that such a habit must tend to weaken character.

"He prayeth best who loveth best all things both great and small." It is better to work for the general good, to help our weak or friendless fellow-creatures, than to pray for our own grace, or benefit, or pardon. Work is nobler than prayer, and far more dignified.

And as to praise, I cannot imagine the Creator of the Universe wanting men's praise. Does a wise man prize the praise of fools? Does a strong man value the praise of the weak? Does any man of wisdom and power care for the applause of his inferiors? We make God into a puny man, a man full of vanity and "love of approbation," when we confer on Him the impertinence of our prayers and our adoration.

While there is so much grief and misery and unmerited and avoidable suffering in the world, it is pitiful to see the Christian millions squander such a wealth of time and energy and money on praise and prayer.

If you were a human father, would you rather your children praised you and neglected each other, or that brother should stand by brother and sister cherish sister? Then "how much more your Father which is in Heaven?"

Twelve millions of our British people on the brink of starvation! In Christian England hundreds of thousands of thieves, knaves, idlers, drunkards, cowards, and harlots; and fortunes spent on churches and the praise of God.

If the Bible had not habituated us to the idea of a barbarous God who was always ravenous for praise and sacrifice, we could not tolerate the mockery of "Divine Service" by well-fed and respectable Christians in the midst of untaught ignorance, unchecked roguery, unbridled vice, and the degradation and defilement and ruin of weak women and little children. Seven thousand pounds to repair a chapel to the praise and glory of God, and under its very walls you may buy a woman's soul for a few pieces of silver.

I cannot imagine a God who would countenance such a religion. I cannot understand why Christians are not ashamed of it. To me the national affectation of piety and holiness resembles a white shirt put on over a dirty skin.



THE NEW TESTAMENT THE RESURRECTION

VALUE OF THE EVIDENCE IN LAW

Christianity as a religion must, I am told, stand or fall with the claims that Christ was divine, and that He rose from the dead and ascended into Heaven. Archdeacon Wilson, in a sermon at Rochdale, described the divinity and Resurrection of Christ as "the central doctrines of Christianity." The question we have to consider here is the question of whether these central doctrines are true.

Christians are fond of saying that the Resurrection is one of the best attested facts in history. I hold that the evidence for the Resurrection would not be listened to in a court of law, and is quite inadmissible in a court of cool and impartial reason.

First of all, then, what is the fact which this evidence is supposed to prove? The fact alleged is a most marvellous miracle, and one upon which a religion professed by some hundreds of millions of human beings is founded. The fact alleged is that nearly two thousand years ago God came into the world as a man, that He was known as Jesus of Nazareth, that He was crucified, died upon the cross, was laid in a tomb, and on the third day came to life again, left His tomb, and subsequently ascended into Heaven.

The fact alleged, then, is miraculous and important, and the evidence in proof of such a fact should be overwhelmingly strong.

We should demand stronger evidence in support of a thing alleged to have happened a thousand years ago than we should demand in support of a fact alleged to have happened yesterday.

The Resurrection is alleged to have happened eighteen centuries ago.

We should demand stronger evidence in support of an alleged fact which was outside human experience than we should demand in support of a fact common to human experience.

The incarnation of a God in human form, the resurrection of a man or a God from the dead, are facts outside human experience.

We should demand stronger evidence in support of an alleged fact when the establishment of that fact was of great importance to millions of men and women, than we should demand when the truth or falsity of the alleged fact mattered very little to anybody.

The alleged fact of the Resurrection is of immense importance to hundreds of millions of people.

We should demand stronger evidence in support of an alleged fact when many persons were known to have strong political, sentimental, or mercenary motives for proving the fact alleged, than we should demand when no serious interest would be affected by a decision for or against the fact alleged.

There are millions of men and women known to have strong motives—sentimental, political, or mercenary—for proving the verity of the Resurrection.

On all these counts we are justified in demanding the strongest of evidence for the alleged fact of Christ's resurrection from the dead.

The more abnormal or unusual the occurrence, the weightier should be the evidence of its truth.

If a man told a mixed company that Captain Webb swam the English Channel, he would have a good chance of belief.

The incident happened but a few years ago; it was reported in all the newspapers of the day. It is not in itself an impossible thing for a man to do.

But if the same man told the same audience that five hundred years ago an Irish sailor had swum from Holyhead to New York, his statement would be received with less confidence.

Because five centuries is a long time, there is no credible record of the feat, and we cannot believe any man capable of swimming about four thousand miles.

Let us look once more at the statement made by the believers in the Resurrection.

We are asked to believe that the all-powerful eternal God, the God who created twenty millions of suns, came down to earth, was born of a woman, was crucified, was dead, was laid in a tomb for three days, and then came to life again, and ascended into Heaven.

What is the nature of the evidence produced in support of this tremendous miracle?

Is there any man or woman alive who has seen God? No. Is there any man or woman alive who has seen Christ? No.

There is no human being alive who can say that God exists or that Christ exists. The most they can say is that they believe that God and Christ exist.

No historian claims that any God has been seen on earth for nearly nineteen centuries.

The Christians deny the assertions of all other religions as to divine visits; and all the other religions deny their assertions about God and Christ.

There is no reason why God should have come down to earth, to be born of a woman, and die on the cross. He could have convinced and won over mankind without any such act. He has not convinced or won over mankind by that act. Not one-third of mankind are professing Christians to-day, and of those not one in ten is a true Christian and a true believer.

The Resurrection, therefore, seems to have been unreasonable, unnecessary, and futile. It is also contrary to science and to human experience.

What is the nature of the evidence?

The common idea of the man in the street is the idea that the Gospels were written by Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John; that Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John were contemporaries of Christ; and that the Gospels were written and circulated during the lives of the authors.

There is no evidence to support these beliefs. There is no evidence, outside the New Testament, that any of the Apostles ever existed. We know nothing about Paul, Peter, John, Mark, Luke, or Matthew, except what is told in the New Testament.

Outside the Testament there is not a word of historical evidence of the divinity of Christ, of the Virgin Birth, of the Resurrection or Ascension.

Therefore it is obvious that, before we can be expected to believe the tremendous story of the Resurrection, we must be shown overwhelming evidence of the authenticity of the Scriptures.

Before you can prove your miracle you have to prove your book.

Suppose the case to come before a judge. Let us try to imagine what would happen:

COUNSEL: M'lud, may it please your ludship. It is stated by Paul of Tarsus that he and others worked miracles—

THE JUDGE: Do you intend to call Paul of Tarsus?

COUNSEL: No, m'lud. He is dead.

JUDGE: Did he make a proper sworn deposition?

COUNSEL: No, m'lud. But some of his letters are extant, and I propose to put them in.

JUDGE: Are these letters affidavits? Are they witnessed and attested?

COUNSEL: No, m'lud.

JUDGE: Are they signed?

COUNSEL: No, m'lud.

JUDGE: Are they in the handwriting of this Paul of Tarsus?

COUNSEL: No, m'lud. They are copies; the originals are lost.

JUDGE: Who was Paul of Tarsus?

COUNSEL: M'lud, he was the apostle to the Gentiles.

JUDGE: You intend to call some of these Gentiles?

COUNSEL: No, m'lud. There are none living.

JUDGE: But you don't mean to, say—how long has this shadowy witness, Paul of Tarsus, been dead?

COUNSEL: Not two thousand years, m'lud.

JUDGE: Thousand years dead? Can you bring evidence to prove that he was ever alive?

COUNSEL: Circumstantial, m'lud.

JUDGE: I cannot allow you to read the alleged statements of a hypothetical witness who is acknowledged to have been dead for nearly two thousand years. I cannot admit the alleged letters of Paul as evidence.

COUNSEL: I shall show that the act of resurrection was witnessed by one Mary Magdalene, by a Roman soldier—

JUDGE: What is the soldier's name?

COUNSEL: I don't know, m'lud.

JUDGE: Call him.

COUNSEL: He is dead, m'lud.

JUDGE: Deposition?

COUNSEL: No, m'lud.

JUDGE: Strike out his evidence. Call Mary Magdalene.

COUNSEL: She is dead, m'lud. But I shall show that she told the disciples—

JUDGE: What she told the disciples is not evidence.

COUNSEL: Well, m'lud, I shall give the statements of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Matthew states very plainly that—

JUDGE: Of course, you intend to call Matthew?

COUNSEL: No, m'lud. He is—he is dead.

JUDGE: It seems to me, that to prove this resurrection you will have to perform a great many more. Are Mark and John dead, also?

COUNSEL: Yes, m'lud.

JUDGE: Who were they?

COUNSEL: I—I don't know, m'lud.

JUDGE: These statements of theirs, to which you allude: are they in their own handwriting?

COUNSEL: May it please your ludship, they did not write them. The statements are not given as their own statements, but only as statements "according to them." The statements are really copies of translations of copies of translations of statements supposed to be based upon what someone told Matthew, and—

JUDGE: Who copied and translated, and re-copied and re-translated, this hearsay evidence?

COUNSEL: I do not know, m'lud.

JUDGE: Were the copies seen and revised by the authors? Did they correct the proofs?

COUNSEL: I don't know, m'lud.

JUDGE: Don't know? Why?

COUNSEL: There is no evidence that the documents had ever been heard of until long after the authors were dead.

JUDGE: I never heard of such a case. I cannot allow you to quote these papers. They are not evidence. Have you any witnesses?

COUNSEL: No, m'lud.

That fancy dialogue about expresses the legal value of the evidence for this important miracle.

But, legal value not being the only value, let us now consider the evidence as mere laymen.



THE GOSPEL WITNESSES

As men of the world, with some experience in sifting and weighing evidence, what can we say about the evidence for the Resurrection?

In the first place, there is no acceptable evidence outside the New Testament, and the New Testament is the authority of the Christian Church.

In the second place, there is nothing to show that the Gospels were written by eye-witnesses of the alleged fact.

In the third place, the Apostle Paul was not an eye-witness of the alleged fact.

In the fourth place, although there is some evidence that some Gospels were known in the first century, there is no evidence that the Gospels as we know them were then in existence.

In the fifth place, even supposing that the existing Gospels and the Epistles of Paul were originally composed by men who knew Christ, and that these men were entirely honest and capable witnesses, there is no certainty that what they wrote has come down to us unaltered.

The only serious evidence of the Resurrection being in the books of the New Testament, we are bound to scrutinise those books closely, as on their testimony the case for Christianity entirely depends.

Who, then, are the witnesses? They are the authors of the Gospels, the Acts, and the Epistles of Peter and of Paul.

Who were these authors? Matthew and John are "supposed" to have been disciples of Christ; but were they? I should say Matthew certainly was not contemporary with Jesus, for in the last chapter of the Gospel according to Matthew we read as follows:

Now while they were going behold some of the guard came into the city, and told unto the chief priests all the things that were come to pass. And when they were assembled with the elders, and had taken counsel, they gave large money unto the soldiers, saying, Say yet his disciples came by night and stole him away while we slept. And if this come to the governor's ears, we will persuade him, and rid you of care. So they took the money, and did as they were taught: and this saying was spread abroad among the Jews, and continueth until this day.

Matthew tells us that the saying "continueth until this day." Which day? The day on which Matthew is writing or speaking. Now, a man does not say of a report or belief that it "continueth until this day" unless that report or belief originated a long time ago, and the use of such a phrase suggests that Matthew told or repeated the story after a lapse of many years.

That apart, there is no genuine historical evidence, outside the New Testament, that such men as Paul, Peter, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John ever existed.

Neither can it be claimed that Matthew, Mark, Luke and John actually wrote the Gospels which bear their names. These Gospels are called the Gospel "according to Matthew," the Gospel "according to Mark," the Gospel "according to Luke," and the Gospel "according to John." They were, then, Gospels condensed, paraphrased, or copied from some older Gospels, or they were Gospels taken down from dictation, or composed from the verbal statements of the men to whom they were attributed.

Thus it appears that the Gospels are merely reports or copies of some verbal or written statements made by four men of whom there is no historic record whatever. How are we to know that these men ever lived? How are we to know that they were correctly reported, if they ever spoke or wrote? How can we rely upon such evidence after nineteen hundred years, and upon a statement of facts so important and so marvellous?

The same objection applies to the evidence of Peter and of Paul. Many critics and scholars deny the existence of Peter and Paul. There is no trustworthy evidence to oppose to that conclusion.

That by the way. Let us now examine the evidence given in these men's names. The earliest witness is Paul. Paul does not corroborate the Gospel writers' statements as to the life or the teachings of Christ; but he does vehemently assert that Christ rose from the dead.

What is Paul's evidence worth? He did not see Christ crucified. He did not see His dead body. He did not see Him quit the tomb. He did not see Him in the flesh after He had quitted the tomb. He was not present when He ascended into Heaven. Therefore Paul is not an eye-witness of the acts of Christ, nor of the death of Christ, nor of the Resurrection of Christ, nor of the Ascension of Christ.

If Paul ever lived, which none can prove and many deny, his evidence for the Resurrection was only hearsay evidence.

Paul, in the Epistle to the Corinthians, says that after His Resurrection Christ was "seen of about five hundred persons; of whom the great part remain unto this present, but some are fallen asleep."

But none of the Gospels mentions this five hundred, nor does Paul give the name of any one of them, nor is the testimony of any one of them preserved, in the Testament or elsewhere.

Now, let us remember how difficult it was to disprove the statements of the claimant in the Tichborne Case, although the trial took place in the lifetime of the claimant, and although most of the witnesses knew the real Roger Tichborne well; and let us also bear in mind that many critics and scholars dispute the authorship of Shakespeare's plays, as to which strong contemporary evidence is forthcoming, and then let us ask ourselves whether we shall be justified in believing such a marvellous story as this of the Resurrection upon the evidence of men whose existence cannot be proved, and in support of whose statements there is not a scrap of historical evidence of any kind.

Nor is this all. The stories of the Resurrection as told in the Gospels are full of discrepancies, and are rendered incredible by the interpolation of miraculous incidents.

Let us begin with Matthew. Did Matthew see Christ crucified? Did Matthew see Christ's dead body? Did Matthew see Christ quit the tomb? Did Matthew see Christ in the flesh and alive after His Resurrection? Did Matthew see Christ ascend into Heaven? Matthew nowhere says so. Nor is it stated by any other writer in the Testament that Matthew saw any of these things. No: Matthew nowhere gives evidence in his own name. Only, in the Gospel "according to Matthew" it is stated that such things did happen.

Matthew's account of the Resurrection and the incidents connected therewith differs from the accounts in the other Gospels.

The story quoted above from Matthew as to the bribing of Roman soldiers by the priests to circulate the falsehood about the stealing of Christ's body by His disciples is not alluded to by Mark, Luke, or John.

Matthew, in his account of the fact of the Resurrection, says that there was an earthquake when the angel rolled away the stone. In the other Gospels there is no word of this earthquake.

But not in any of the Gospels is it asserted that any man or woman saw Jesus leave the tomb.

The story of His actual rising from the dead was first told by some woman, or women, who said they had seen an angel, or angels, who had declared that Jesus was risen.

There is not an atom of evidence that these young men who told the story were angels. There is not an atom of evidence that they were not men, nor that they had not helped to revive or to remove the swooned or dead Jesus.

Stress has been laid upon the presence of the Roman guard. The presence of such a guard is improbable. But if the guard was really there, it might have been as easily bribed to allow the body to be removed, as Matthew suggests that it was easily bribed to say that the body had been stolen.

Matthew says that after the Resurrection the disciples were ordered to go to Galilee. Mark says the same. Luke says they were commanded not to leave Jerusalem. John says they did go to Galilee.

So, again, with regard to the Ascension. Luke and Mark say that Christ went up to Heaven. Matthew and John do not so much as mention the Ascension. And it is curious, as Mr. Foote points out, that the two apostles who were supposed to have been disciples of Christ and might be supposed to have seen the Ascension, if it took place, do not mention it. The story of the Ascension comes to us from Luke and Mark, who were not present.

Jesus rose from the dead on the third day. Yet Luke makes Him say to the thief on the cross: "Verily I say unto thee, to-day shalt thou be with me in Paradise." Matthew, Mark, and John do not repeat this blunder.

There are many other differences and contradictions in the Gospel versions of the Resurrection and Ascension; but as I do not regard those differences as important, I shall pass them by.

Whether or not the evidence of these witnesses be contradictory, the facts remain that no one of them states that he knows anything about the matter of his own knowledge; that no one of them claims to have himself heard the story of the woman, or the women, or the angels; that no one of them states that the women saw, or said they saw, Christ leave the tomb.

As for the alleged appearances of Christ to the disciples, those appearances may be explained in several ways. We may say that Christ really had risen from the dead, and was miraculously present; we may say that the accounts of His miraculous appearance are legends; or we may say that His reappearance was not miraculous at all, for He had never died, but only swooned.

As Huxley remarked, when we are asked to consider an alleged case of resurrection, the first essential fact to make sure of is the fact of death. Before we argue as to whether a dead man came to life, let us have evidence that he was dead.

Considering the story of the crucifixion as historical, it cannot be said that the evidence of Christ's death is conclusive.

Death by crucifixion was generally a slow death. Men often lingered on the cross for days before they died. Now, Christ was only on the cross for a few hours; and Pilate is reported as expressing surprise when told that he was dead.

To make sure that the other prisoners were dead, the soldiers broke their legs. But they did not break Christ's legs.

To be sure, the Apostle John reports that a soldier pierced Christ's side with a spear. But the authors of the three synoptic Gospels do not mention this wounding with the spear. Neither do they allude to the other story told by John, as to the scepticism of Thomas, and his putting his hand into the wound made by the spear. It is curious that John is the only one to tell both stories: so curious that both stories look like interpellations.

But even if we accept the story of the spear thrust, it affords no proof of death, for John adds that there issued from the wound blood and water: and blood does not flow from wounds inflicted after death.

Then, when the body of Christ was taken down from the cross, it was not examined by any doctor, but was taken away by friends, and laid in a cool sepulchre.

What evidence is forthcoming that Christ did not recover from a swoon, and that His friends did not take Him away in the night? Remember, we are dealing with probabilities in the absence of any exact knowledge of the facts, and consider which is more probable—that a man had swooned and recovered; or that a man, after lying for three days dead, should come to life again, and walk away?

Apologists will say that the probabilities in the case of a man do not hold in the case of a God. But there is no evidence at all that Christ was God. Prove that Christ was God, and therefore that He was omnipotent, and there is nothing impossible in the Resurrection, however improbable His death may seem.

Even assuming that the Gospels are historical documents, the evidence for Christ's death is unsatisfactory, and that for His Resurrection quite inadequate. But is there any reason to regard the Gospel stories of the death, Resurrection, and Ascension on of Christ as historical? I say that we have no surety that these stories have come down to us as they were originally compiled, and we have strong reasons for concluding that these stories are mythical.

Some two or three years ago the Rev. R. Horton said: "Either Christ was the Son of God, and one with God, or He was a bad man, or a madman. There is no fourth alternative possible." That is a strange statement to make, but it is an example of the shifts to which apologists are frequently reduced. No fourth alternative possible! Indeed there is; and a fifth!

If a man came forward to-day, and said he was the Son of God, and one with God, we should conclude that he was an impostor or a lunatic.

But if a man told us that another man had said he was a god, we should have what Mr. Horton calls a "fourth alternative" open to us. For we might say that the person who reported his speech to us had misunderstood him, which would be a "fourth alternative"; or that the person had wilfully misrepresented him, which would be a fifth alternative.

So in the Gospels. Nowhere have we a single word of Christ's own writing. His sayings come to us through several hands, and through more than one translation. It is folly, then, to assert that Christ was God, or that He was mad, or an impostor.

So in the case of the Gospel stories of the Crucifixion, the Resurrection, and Ascension of Christ. Many worthy people may suppose that in denying the facts stated in the Gospels we are accusing St. Matthew and St. John of falsehood.

But there is no certainty who St. Matthew and the others were. There is no certainty that they wrote these stories. Even if they did write them, they probably accepted them at second or third hand. With the best faith in the world, they may not have been competent judges of evidence. And after they had done their best their testimony may have been added to or perverted by editors and translators.

Looking at the Gospels, then, as we should look at any other ancient documents, what internal evidence do they afford in support of the suspicion that they are mythical?

In the first place, the whole Gospel story teems with miracles. Now, as Matthew Arnold said, miracles never happen. Science has made the belief in miracles impossible. When we speak of the antagonism between religion and science, it is this fact which we have in our mind: that science has killed the belief in miracles, and, as all religions are built up upon the miraculous, science and religion cannot be made to harmonise.

As Huxley said:

The magistrate who listens with devout attention to the precept, "Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live," on Sunday, on Monday dismisses, as intrinsically absurd, a charge of bewitching a cow brought against some old woman; the superintendent of a lunatic asylum who substituted exorcism for rational modes of treatment, would have but a short tenure of office; even parish clerks doubt the utility of prayers for rain, so long as the wind is in the east; and an outbreak of pestilence sends men, not to the churches, but to the drains. In spite of prayers for the success of our arms, and Te Deums for victory, our real faith is in big battalions and keeping our powder dry; in knowledge of the science of warfare; in energy, courage, and discipline. In these, as in all other practical affairs, we act on the aphorism, Laborare est orare; we admit that intelligent work is the only acceptable worship, and that, whether there be a Supernature or not, our business is with Nature.

We have ceased to believe in miracles. When we come upon a miracle in any historical document we feel not only that the miracle is untrue, but also that its presence reduces the value of the document in which it is contained. Thus Matthew Arnold, in Literature and Dogma, after saying that we shall "find ourselves inevitably led, sooner or later," to extend one rule to all miraculous stories, and that "the considerations which apply in other cases apply, we shall most surely discover, with even greater force in the case of Bible miracles," goes on to declare that "this being so, there is nothing one would more desire for a person or document one greatly values than to make them independent of miracles."

Very well. The Gospels teem with miracles. If we make the accounts of the death, Resurrection, and Ascension of Christ "independent of miracles," we destroy those accounts completely. To make the Resurrection "independent of miracles" is to disprove the Resurrection, which is a miracle or nothing.

We must believe in miracles, or disbelieve in the Resurrection; and "miracles never happen."

We must believe miracles, or disbelieve them. If we disbelieve them, we shall lose confidence in the verity of any document in proportion to the element of the miraculous which that document contains. The fact that the Gospels teem with miracles destroys the claim of the Gospels to serious consideration as historic evidence.

Take, for example, the account of the Crucifixion in the Gospel according to Matthew. While Christ is on the cross "from the sixth hour there was darkness over all the land until the ninth hour," and when He dies, "behold, the veil of the temple was rent in twain from the top to the bottom; and the earth did quake; and the rocks were rent; and the tombs were opened; and many bodies of the saints that had fallen asleep were raised; and coming forth out of the tombs after His Resurrection, they entered into the holy city, and appeared unto many."

Mark mentions the rending of the veil of the temple, but omits the darkness, the earthquake, and the rising of the dead saints from the tombs. Luke tells of the same phenomena as Mark; John says nothing about any of these things.

What conclusion can we come to, then, as to the story in the first Gospel? Here is an earthquake and the rising of dead saints, who quit their graves and enter the city, and three out of the four Gospel writers do not mention it. Neither do we hear another word from Matthew on the subject. The dead get up and walk into the city, and "are seen of many," and we are left to wonder what happened to the risen saints, and what effect their astounding apparition had upon the citizens who saw them. Did these dead saints go back to their tombs? Did the citizens receive them into their midst without fear, or horror, or doubt? Had this stupendous miracle no effect upon the Jewish priests who had crucified Christ as an impostor? The Gospels are silent.

History is as silent as the Gospels. From the fifteenth chapter of the first volume of Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire I take the following passage:

But how shall we excuse the supine inattention of the Pagan and philosophic world to those evidences which were presented by the hand of Omnipotence, not to their reason, but to their senses? During the age of Christ, of His Apostles, and of their first disciples, the doctrine which they preached was confirmed by innumerable prodigies. The lame walked, the blind saw, the sick were healed, the dead were raised, demons were expelled, and the laws of Nature were frequently suspended for the benefit of the Church. But the sages of Greece and Rome turned aside from the awful spectacle, and pursuing the ordinary occupations of life and study, appeared unconscious of any alterations in the moral or physical government of the world. Under the reign of Tiberius the whole earth, or at least a celebrated province of the Roman Empire, was involved in a preternatural darkness of three hours. Even this miraculous event, which ought to have excited the wonder, the curiosity, and the devotion of all mankind, passed without notice in an age of science and history. It happened during the lifetime of Seneca and the elder Pliny, who must have experienced the immediate effects, or received the earliest intelligence of the prodigy. Each of these philosophers, in a laborious work, has recorded all the great phenomena of Nature, earthquakes, meteors, comets, and eclipses, which his indefatigable curiosity could collect. But the one and the other have omitted to mention the greatest phenomenon to which mortal eye has been witness since the creation of the globe. A distinct chapter of Pliny is designed for eclipses of an extraordinary nature and unusual duration; but he contents himself with describing the singular defect of light which followed the murder of Caesar, when, during the greatest part of the year, the orb of the sun appeared pale and without splendour. This season of obscurity, which surely cannot be compared with the preternatural darkness of the Passion, had been already celebrated by most of the poets and historians of that memorable age.