God and my Neighbour Part 13

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 G.o.d 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 G.o.d.

It gives an erroneous account of the relations between G.o.d 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 ma.s.sacre 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 inst.i.tuted by G.o.d Himself."

I shall quote no more on the subject of slavery. That inhuman inst.i.tution 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 ma.s.sacres, 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 pa.s.sions are fostered, and all the finer motions of the human spirit are r.e.t.a.r.ded, by the habit of reading those savage old books of the Jews as the word of G.o.d.

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 G.o.d 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 G.o.d is supposed to be the Christian conception of G.o.d as a Heavenly Father. This conception credits the Supreme Being with supernal tenderness and mercy--"G.o.d 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 G.o.d 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 G.o.d 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 G.o.d 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 G.o.d 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 G.o.d, as Heavenly Father to Man, to an earthly father, representing G.o.d 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 G.o.d 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 G.o.d 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, G.o.d allows millions to die of starvation. These His children pray to Him for bread.

He leaves them to die. Is it not so?

G.o.d 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 G.o.d 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. G.o.d has permitted famine, pestilence, and war. He has permitted martyrdom, witch-burning, slavery, ma.s.sacre, 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 G.o.d for help, for comfort, for guidance. G.o.d 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 G.o.d persecuted and slew these men of science. G.o.d 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 G.o.d 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 G.o.d'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. G.o.d, our Heavenly Father, has power to save them. He allows them to suffer and die.