From Bondage to Liberty in Religion Part 3

The first shock I got was learning that "The Gospel According to Matthew," was not written in its present form by the Apostle of that name. Nor is the author or date definitely known. The substance of a long article on the subject is to the effect that Matthew the Apostle, about A.D. 68, wrote an account of the doings and sayings of Jesus, in the Syro-Chaldee language, the vernacular of Palestine at the time, for the benefit of the Hebrew Christians. From this basis some later hand, unknown, translated into Greek, and elaborated it into substantially our present version. The earliest known Hebrew, or Syro-Chaldee version was that used by the Ebionites, which materially differed from our present Greek version; but which is the original and which the recession has never been settled. The early Ebionite version did not contain the first two chapters, giving the account of the miraculous birth; but our author insists that these were cut off from the original, rather than added on, tho n.o.body knows which.

Concerning the Gospel of Mark, he insists that it was also written as was the original of Matthew, before the destruction of Jerusalem, but after Matthew; that the material in it was learned from Peter, whose companion Mark was (how does this comport with divine inspiration?) as Mark was not an apostle and could not have known these facts at first hand. He admits the last twelve verses to be spurious and added by a later hand.

Concerning Luke he says that he derived his information from Paul (another case of doubtful inspiration), admits the date and place he wrote are unknown; admits the discrepancies between him and Matthew, in regard to the circ.u.mstances of the miraculous birth and the genealogy of Jesus--something I had never noticed before!--and undertakes to reconcile them. When I turned to the records and read them in this new light, his attempted reconciliation, to my mind, was an utter failure.

Like every attempted reconciliation I have ever read since, it was done by "reading into the record," not only what was not there, but what was wholly inconsistent with the record that is there. If any candid reader will first read carefully the first two chapters of Matthew, noting all the details, and then likewise the first two chapters of Luke, he will see that they are wholly irreconcilable in their details.

They agree in but two points: That Jesus was miraculously begotten, and born at Bethlehem. But in every detail of what went before and after, they are wholly at variance.

My belief in divine and infallible inspiration was here materially weakened. How could the Holy Spirit "inspire" in two different men, writing upon the same subject, such varying and irreconcilable accounts of the same event? Besides, our author had practically abandoned the idea of inspiration by attributing Mark's knowledge of the life of Jesus to Peter and Luke's to Paul. But, on the other hand, as I learned a little later, in all the writings attributed to Paul, there is not a single reference, even most remotely, to the miraculous birth of Jesus; but on the other hand there is much evidence in his writings to lead to the conclusion that he knew nothing about it. Then where did Luke get this information?

Concerning the Gospel according to John, our author devotes forty-eight pages to an effort to support its authorship in the Apostle John, and to try to reconcile it with the other Gospels. Like the differences between Matthew and Luke concerning the birth of Jesus, this was the first knowledge I had that there were any discrepancies between them, or that there was any doubt about its authorship. He quotes elaborately from the Church Fathers in its favor, as well as from the modern critics both for and against. He admits that chapter xxi is a later addition to the book, but insists that John wrote it himself, except the last two verses, which were "added by the church at Ephesus." He also admits that v, 2, 3, and viii, 1-11, are both spurious and added by a later and unknown hand.

When I had read it all I knew less about the authorship of the book than when I began. But the discrepancies between it and the synoptics loomed large and menacing. I will not go into details concerning these. The reader can easily see them for himself. But on the question of inspiration I was about at my wits' end. Here I was at the very vital part of the Christian religion, as I had been taught it and was trying to teach it to others. I have already told how I pa.s.sed up the matter of the inspiration of the Old Testament as being of little importance under the Christian dispensation. And now every prop was falling from under me in regard to the inspiration of the New. If the very records of the life and teachings of the Christ himself, upon which the whole fabric of Christianity rested, were now shown to be discordant and irreconcilable in their contents, and some of them very doubtful in their authorship; with it the whole doctrine of a divine and infallible revelation would have to go.

I was dumfounded. Was it possible that all this upon which I had staked my whole life, and had been preaching for years, was a mere fiction? It seemed to be so, if the Bible was not divinely inspired, a true revelation from G.o.d, and infallibly correct. But how could it _all_ be true, when it told so many different and conflicting stories about the same thing? Was not G.o.d the very essence of truth? Then how could He miraculously reveal one thing to Matthew, another and entirely different one to Luke, and still another and different one to John, all about the same thing? And yet, that in many instances this was true, I could no longer doubt. Even tho these discrepancies might not go to the essence of Christianity as a system of religion; nor materially affect its fundamental doctrines; yet they did go to the very foundations upon which it was based,--a divine and infallible revelation from heaven. Take this away and orthodox Christianity is not left a leg to stand on; and I knew it.

But we will hurry on thru this subject. The authorship of the Acts of the Apostles was attributed without serious question to Luke. All the Epistles usually attributed to Paul are conceded to him by our author, except that to the Hebrews, while some critics reject the Pauline authorship of any of the Pastoral Epistles,--those to Timothy, t.i.tus and Philemon. The author of the Epistle to the Hebrews is admitted to be unknown, and its date uncertain, tho it existed in the church quite early.

The Epistle of James is admitted to be doubtful; and especially as to which of several men of this name might have written it. It is admitted that it could not have been written by the Apostle James, as he was put to death at Jerusalem long before the epistle was known. As has already been seen, it was rejected by many of the Fathers; and even Martin Luther dubbed it "an epistle of straw."

First Peter is considered genuine, and written by the Apostle; but Second Peter is admitted to have been unknown in the church before the third century, and consequently spurious.

The First Epistle of John is believed by our author to have been written by the same hand that wrote the Fourth Gospel, the Apostle John. Second and Third John are admitted to be doubtful, probably written by some other John, and by later tradition, because of the ident.i.ty of the names, attributed to the Apostle. Third John was unknown in the church before the third century.

The Epistle of Jude is admitted to be a mystery. n.o.body knows even who Jude was, or what he was, or when the epistle was written. It was known to exist early in the second century. It was generally rejected by the early church, but somehow got into the canon.

The Book of Revelation is admitted to be the most mysterious book in the whole Bible. By whom and when written are both unknown. Tradition and its internal content is the only evidence that the Apostle John wrote it, and this would apply to any other John as well. It is evident that the same person did not write it and the Fourth Gospel.

It was unknown in the church until near the middle of the second century; tho it bears internal evidence of having been written before the fall of Jerusalem. Most of the early Church Fathers rejected it, but it got into the canon;--and is therefore divinely inspired!

My study of "Harman's Introduction of the Study of the Holy Scriptures"

was here finished. I have elaborated somewhat on these studies for two reasons: First, because the results that these studies produced in me, that I shall presently sum up, were the results of the whole, rather than any particular part of it, except those portions which I have already specially noted. Second, I desire to arouse a similar spirit of study and investigation in my readers; and I thus give this outline of study in detail, as a sort of basis from or upon which to work.

I have already indicated in part my feelings at this time. I summed the whole thing up briefly. The one great question around which it all hinged was this: If the authorship of the books of the greater portion of the Old Testament are wholly unknown, as well as the dates when they were written, and the same is true of several of the books of the New Testament, how are we to know these same books are divinely inspired, the infallible truth, the word of G.o.d? This is a fair question and a reasonable one.

I had set out in earnest and good faith to find the proofs of inspiration, in which I had always believed, and only found them wanting. Add to this the manifold discrepancies and direct contradictions which I now began to discover running thru the whole Bible, both Old and New Testaments, and I found them wholly irreconcilable with any idea of divine revelation and infallible truth.

I here recalled a small book I had read some years before on Inspiration,--the author I have forgotten,--but I remember the three leading reasons for the inspiration of the Bible which he gave, and which, with my limited knowledge at the time, seemed satisfactory.

These were: Tradition, Necessity and Success. The tradition of the Jews as to the authenticity and inspiration of the books of the Old Testament: it was argued, that whatever may at this time be the limits of our knowledge concerning these books, the ancient Jewish Rabbis _knew_ just what they were, and if they had not every one been the word of G.o.d, these Rabbis would have known it, and they never would have been in the canon. The same doctrine of tradition was applied to the Church Fathers concerning the books of the New Testament. But I had here learned that these Church Fathers were by no means agreed as to these books. I began to see now that the same argument might be applied with equal force to the Vedas, the Zend Avesta, or the Koran.

The argument from necessity was based upon the a.s.sumption that man in his fallen and sinful state was by nature wholly unable to discover anything about G.o.d, or the means of his redemption. Therefore a divine revelation was necessary to meet man's needs in this case; and the Bible meets this necessity. Therefore the Bible is a divine revelation. But I here recalled that the only evidence we have of man's original perfection and fall is in the Bible itself; and that this line of argument must ultimately drive us back to the mere _a.s.sumption_ of the facts upon which this supposed "divine necessity"

was based.

The argument based upon success was that Christ and Christianity were not only the fulfillment of Old Testament promise and prophecy; but that it never could have made the success in the world that it has _if it had not been of divine origin, the result of divine revelation_. I was prepared at this time to look with some favor on the argument drawn from "promise and prophecy"; but if success was a true test I wondered if the same argument would not apply with equal force to Buddhism, with a third more followers than Christianity, or to Mohammedanism with half as many in a much shorter time.

These arguments could satisfy me no longer, in the light of the new facts I had learned. But I was not yet ready to give up religion and Christianity. I began to look for some new basis of interpretation. I asked myself the questions: May not Christianity be substantially true after all? Is not man a sinner? And as such does he not need a Savior? Does not Christianity meet this necessity? Is not the Bible after all, tho of purely human origin as I now conceived, a valuable book? May we not yet find much valuable truth in it, tho neither inspired nor infallible? May not the "great plan of salvation" be true after all? Is it not of vital importance to know? But if the Bible in which we find it cannot be relied upon infallibly, _how_ are we to know?

In thus questioning myself I took into consideration my own personal experiences, those emotional impressions and manifestation which I had always been taught were the supernatural manifestations of the Holy Spirit on my life and consciousness. I could not deny them, nor get away from them. They were real. It was years later before I learned to interpret them from the scientific standpoint of psychology. I determined to take a new course--a course I had never taken before. I had heretofore taken my religion on authority. This authority had now failed. I determined to apply the test of _reason_, with a firm conviction that in doing so G.o.d would guide me aright. "If any man will do his will he shall know of the doctrine."

I may say just here that I have never yet met a person who undertook to defend the "Christian System," or doctrine of sin and salvation, from the standpoint _of its own intrinsic reasonableness_. The only manner in which reason has been applied to its defence is, that it is _a reasonable deduction_ from the _divine revelation_ upon which it is based; which revelation _must be accepted_ as true without question or equivocation. To doubt is to be d.a.m.ned. In fact, its _unreasonableness_, from any natural human viewpoint, was quite freely admitted. But it was argued that man in his fallen state was quite incapable of perceiving, or understanding, any of the great mysteries of G.o.d. "Great is the mystery of G.o.dliness" was often quoted to me; as well as, "For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways," saith Jehovah. "For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts." This was the court of last resort and must be accepted, and to ask further questions was to blaspheme.

Perhaps it may be well to give here a quotation which I came across years afterwards, as ill.u.s.trating this process of reasoning from the a.s.sumed hypothesis of a divine and infallible revelation, that _must be taken_ as the starting point. It is from Dr. Albert Barnes, a distinguished Presbyterian minister of Philadelphia, about the middle of the last century. I quote him because of his high character and representative position; and his dilemma is substantially the same with practically all others with whom I have conversed on the subject. Here is what he says:

"That the immortal mind should be allowed to jeopard its infinite welfare, and that trifles should be allowed to draw it away from G.o.d and virtue and heaven; that any should suffer forever,--lingering on in hopeless despair and rolling amidst infinite torments, without the possibility of alleviation and without end; that since G.o.d _can_ save men, and _will_ save a part, He has not purposed to save _all_; that, on the supposition that the atonement is ample, and that the blood of Christ can cleanse from all and every sin, it is not in fact applied to all; that, in a word, a G.o.d who claims to be worthy of the confidence of the universe, and to be a being of infinite benevolence, should make such a world as this, full of sinners and sufferers; and that, when an atonement had been made, He did not save _all_ the race, and put an end to sin and woe forever,--these, and kindred difficulties, meet the mind when we think on this great subject; and they meet us when we endeavor to urge our fellow-sinners to be reconciled to G.o.d, and to put confidence in him. On this ground they hesitate. These are _real_, not imaginary difficulties. They are probably felt by every mind that has ever reflected on the subject; and they are _unexplained, unmitigated, unremoved_. I confess, for one, that I feel them more sensibly and powerfully the more I look at them, and the longer I live.

I do not understand these facts; and I make no advances towards understanding them. I do not know that I have a ray of light on the subject, which I had not when the subject first flashed across my soul.

"I have read, to some extent, what wise and good men have written; I have looked at their theories and explanations; I have endeavored to weigh their arguments; for my whole soul pants for light and relief on these questions. But I get neither; and, in the distress and anguish of my own spirit, I confess that I see no light whatever, I see not one ray to disclose to me the _reason_ why sin came into the world, why the earth is strewed with the dying and the dead, and why man must suffer to all eternity.

"I have never yet seen a particle of light thrown on these subjects that has given a moment's ease to my tortured mind; but I confess, when I look on a world of sinners and sufferers, upon death-beds and graveyards, upon the world of woe, filled with hosts to suffer forever; when I see my parents, my friends, my family, my people, my fellow-citizens,--when I look upon a whole race, all involved in this sin and danger; and when I feel that G.o.d only can save them, and yet he _does not_ do it,--I am struck dumb. It is all _dark, dark, dark_ to my soul, and I cannot disguise it."

I think the conclusions Dr. Barnes reached are about the only conclusions any honest, intelligent _man_ can reach, starting from his hypothesis, that a certain book is a divine and infallible revelation from G.o.d, which no one dare question, or go behind. But, as has been seen, this foundation had now entirely slipped from under me. My only course was to proceed just as tho no such book were known; or at least, that it was completely shorn of all claim to being a divine revelation, or infallible truth. I proposed to a.n.a.lyze every element that entered into the whole Christian system, creation, sin, redemption, atonement, salvation, immortality, heaven and h.e.l.l, going back to original sources so far as possible, without any preconceived hypothesis whatever, in search of abstract truth. I felt that since G.o.d had left me without any conclusive and indisputable proofs of the truth of those things which I had always believed to be of the most supreme importance to mankind for time and eternity, that this supreme, distinguishing feature of man that lifts him above all known forms of creation could, and should be, appealed to as the final authority and last test in all things. And since reason was universally recognized as the court of last resort in all other things outside of religion, why should it not be applied to this also? I felt that if I thus honestly and sincerely followed the last and only light I had, that G.o.d could not be just and everlastingly d.a.m.n me for some possible error in my conclusions. The process I followed and the results I reached will be told in the next chapter.

CHAPTER V

THE CRISIS

I went back to the beginning. G.o.d was certainly good. He was all-wise, infinite. He must have known all things---the end from the beginning. If He thus knew all things He must have known the whole destiny of man before He created him. He must have known that he would yield to temptation and fall, and that all the direful consequences would follow it that orthodoxy has pictured for centuries. I began to wonder how G.o.d could be just and make a creature, whom He knew in advance would do what Adam is alleged to have done, and knew in advance the dreadful consequences that would follow it, not only to Adam himself, but to all the unborn generations yet to people the world.

Especially was I perplexed to understand how G.o.d could be just and visit all the consequences of Adam's sin on his entire posterity for uncounted generations when they were and could be in no way responsible for it and could not help it. Yet I believed G.o.d to be just. He could not be G.o.d and be otherwise.

Since the whole purpose of religion, and Christianity in particular, was to save mankind from h.e.l.l hereafter, I first directed my inquiries to the question of h.e.l.l. Who made h.e.l.l? and whence came the devil?

The Bible is silent as to their origin, except the vague reference in the Book of Revelation to the war in heaven and the casting out of Lucifer with a third part of the angels with him into the bottomless pit so graphically portrayed by Milton in Paradise Lost. But this only carried me back farther. Who created the angels, or were they co-eternal with G.o.d? If they are co-eternal with G.o.d then there are other eternal beings in the universe over whom G.o.d has little or no control. If so G.o.d is not omnipotent. The devil is his rival in the spiritual world and, according to the current doctrine, his equal in omniscience and omnipresence, and a close and terrible antagonist in the contest for omnipotence.

Take the other horn of the dilemma. Then angels and the devil are created beings, creatures of G.o.d, and not eternal. Then G.o.d must have made the devil. If He created him a holy angel, yea, an archangel, as is claimed, G.o.d certainly knew in advance that this archangel would sometime lead a rebellion in heaven and lead one-third of the angels into the conspiracy! Would an all-wise, a just and good G.o.d create such beings, knowing in advance what they would do and what the consequences of it would be? This forced G.o.d to create a h.e.l.l in which to put and punish these rebellious angels whom He knew before He created them would rebel against him and thus have to be punished. If G.o.d needed angels to glorify him was it not just as easy to create good ones, that would not rebel against him! He created some that way, why not all? And if rebellious angels had to be punished why not do it by annihilation instead of making this burning h.e.l.l for them? If annihilation be considered too merciful and this h.e.l.l the only adequate punishment, all very well for rebellious and sinful angels; but why should this yawning gulf of eternal woe open its throat to receive the future being to be made in G.o.d's own image and called man?

We are told that h.e.l.l was not created for man, but for the devil and his angels. Nevertheless, if the story of Eden and the doctrines of modern orthodoxy be true, it is now and will ultimately become the eternal abode of about ninety-eight per cent of the entire human race.

I could never again reconcile the old views of h.e.l.l with any rational conception of a just and merciful G.o.d. The story of Eden itself I took up for a.n.a.lysis. Man was alleged to have been framed up out of dust, yet made "in the image and likeness" of G.o.d,--and consequently perfect.

At least this is the universal teaching. He was alone. A companion was made for him from a rib. They are happy in a garden. G.o.d walks and talks with them like a man. Everything is going smoothly until one day G.o.d comes in and points out a certain tree, hitherto unnoticed and unknown, and informs Adam that he must not eat of the fruit of this particular tree on penalty of death. Then comes the serpent, talking like a man, and tells the woman that what G.o.d said was not true; but if they would eat of the fruit of that tree they would "be as G.o.ds, knowing good and evil." "And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise, she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat, and gave also unto her husband with her, and he did eat." Gen. iii, 6.

Now, was the first sin that eternally d.a.m.ned the whole human race a mere matter of eating from a forbidden tree? It seems so from the natural import of the language used. "When the woman saw that the tree was _good for food_ ..." Could a just G.o.d inflict such an awful punishment as orthodox Christianity teaches, not only upon this simple, ignorant couple, but upon the entire human race for all time and eternity for such a trifling incident? I trow not. Besides, I have often thought that if that particular tree had not been specifically pointed out and forbidden, probably neither Adam nor Eve would ever have had any desire to eat of it. It is the forbidden that always draws the strongest.

Let us examine this story closely and see whether the serpent or G.o.d told the truth. Don't be alarmed and accuse me of blasphemy or sacrilege. We set out in search of truth; let us try to find it. G.o.d is alleged to have said, "of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for _in the day_ that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die." Gen. ii, 17. But he _did not_ die, according to the subsequent story, for over nine hundred years thereafter. The fact that the penalty: "For dust thou art and unto dust thou shalt return," was p.r.o.nounced _after_ the transgression, does not fulfill the statement "in the _day_ thou eatest thereof." But we shall refer to this again.

The serpent is alleged to have said: "Ye shall not surely die: for G.o.d doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened and ye shall be as G.o.d, knowing good and evil." Gen. iii, 4, 5.

And verse 7 says: "And the eyes of them both were opened, and they knew that they were naked." And verse 22 says: "And Jehovah G.o.d said, 'Behold, the man is become as _one of us_, to know good and evil.'"

Does not this confirm that what the serpent said was true?

The temptation is very great here to digress far enough to offer a rational interpretation of this beautiful poetic allegory of the "Fall of Man." But it is outside the scope and purpose of this work, and I leave it with the simple question: Was not that which we call the first sin only the expression of man's natural aspirations onward and upward, in search of knowledge and a higher and better and broader and larger life, that always entails its penalties of trial, suffering, toil, and more or less disappointment?

When G.o.d comes to call them to account, Adam puts the blame on his wife, and she shifts it to the serpent. Note what follows: The serpent is cursed to crawl upon his belly, just as we see him now. Did he walk uprightly before, and did he have legs and feet? "And dust shalt thou eat all the days of thy life." What did he eat before? As a matter of fact, serpents do not eat dust now. Remember, this sentence was p.r.o.nounced _to the serpent_ himself: "And Jehovah G.o.d said unto the serpent,"--not to Adam and Eve. We shall have occasion to recall this again.

"Unto the woman he said, I will greatly multiply thy pain and thy conception; in pain thou shalt bring forth children..." This was the penalty p.r.o.nounced upon Eve for her part in the tragedy. The question arises: Was Eve never to be a mother but for this transaction? This, if not the only, is at least the most natural inference. Then how was the race to be propagated? or was it to be propagated at all?

Adam for his part was condemned to hard labor, and altho creation was supposed to have been finished and complete, the ground was cursed so as to make it produce thorns and thistles to annoy and tantalize him and increase his labor. Were none of these things on the earth before?

Were the rose bushes in the Garden of Eden "thornless"? "In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground: for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return."

Several questions arise here. Was Adam to be immortal in the flesh if he had not eaten of the forbidden fruit? Did death enter the world, as we have always been taught, because of this sin? And if Adam had not sinned would he and Eve still be living in the Garden of Eden, without the knowledge of good and evil, naked and unashamed to this day? If Eve was never to become a mother if she had not sinned, would she and Adam still be there alone, with nothing but the animal world about them for companions?

And if death only entered the world because of sin, why does all nature die? Man alone was capable of sin, and according to the story, man alone sinned,--unless we include the serpent. Yet, not a beast of the field, a fowl of the air, a fish of the deep, nor a reptile or creeping thing of all the earth has ever lived but that it died, or will die.