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Theosophy House
My Path to Atheism
By
Annie Besant
The Secret Doctrine by H P Blavatsky
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[Third
Edition]
Freethought
Publishing Company,
63, Fleet
Street, E.C.
1885.
TO
THOMAS SCOTT,
WHOSE NAME IS
HONORED AND REVERED WHEREVER
FREETHOUGHT
HAS--
WHOSE WIDE
HEART AND GENEROUS KINDNESS WELCOME
ALL FORMS OF
THOUGHT, PROVIDED THE THOUGHT
BE EARNEST
AND HONEST;
WHO KNOWS NO
ORTHODOXY SAVE THAT OF HONESTY, AND
NO RELIGION
SAVE THAT OF GOODNESS;
TO WHOM I OWE
MOST GRATEFUL THANKS,
AS ONE OF THE
EARLIEST OF MY FREETHOUGHT FRIENDS,
AND AS THE
FIRST WHO AIDED ME IN MY NEED;--
TO HIM
I DEDICATE
THESE PAGES, KNOWING THAT,
ALTHOUGH WE
OFTEN DIFFER IN OUR
THOUGHT, WE
ARE ONE IN OUR DESIRE FOR TRUTH.
ANNIE BESANT.
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PREFACE TO
FIRST EDITION.
The Essays
which form the present book have been written at intervals
during the
last five years, and are now issued in a single volume
without
alterations of any kind. I have thought it more useful--as
marking the
gradual growth of thought--to reprint them as they were
originally
published, so as not to allow the later development to mould
the earlier
forms. The essay on "Inspiration" is, in part, the oldest
of all; it
was partially composed some seven years ago, and re-written
later as it
now stands.
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The first
essay on the "Deity of Jesus of
before I left
the Church of England, and marks the point where I broke
finally with
Christianity. I thought then, and think still, that to
cling to the
name of Christian after one has ceased to be the thing
is neither
bold nor straightforward, and surely the name ought, in all
fairness, to
belong to those historical bodies who have made it their
own during
many hundred years. A Christianity without a Divine Christ
appears to me
to resemble a republican army marching under a royal
banner--it
misleads both friends and foes. Believing that in giving up
the deity of
Christ I renounced Christianity, I place this essay as the
starting-point
of my travels outside the Christian pale. The essays
that follow
it deal with some of the leading Christian dogmas, and are
printed in
the order in which they were written. But in the gradual
thought-development
they really precede the essay on the "Deity of
Christ".
Most inquirers who begin to study by themselves, before they
have read any
heretical works, or heard any heretical controversies,
will have
been awakened to thought by the discrepancies and
inconsistencies
of the Bible itself. A thorough knowledge of the Bible
is the
groundwork of heresy. Many who think they read their Bibles never
read them at
all. They go through a chapter every day as a matter of
duty, and
forget what is said in Matthew before they read what is said
in John;
hence they never mark the contradictions and never see the
discrepancies.
But those who _study_ the Bible are in a fair way to
become
heretics. It was the careful compilation of a harmony of the
last chapters
of the four Gospels--a harmony intended for devotional
use--that
gave the first blow to my own faith; although I put the doubt
away and
refused even to look at the question again, yet the effect
remained--the
tiny seed, which was slowly to germinate and to grow up,
later, into
the full-blown flower of Atheism.
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The trial of
Mr. Charles Voysey for heresy made me remember my own
puzzle, and I
gradually grew very uneasy, though trying not to think,
until the
almost fatal illness of my little daughter brought a sharper
questioning
as to the reason of suffering and the reality of the love of
God. From
that time I began to study the doctrines of Christianity from
a critical
point of view; hitherto I had confined my theological reading
to devotional
and historical treatises, and the only controversies
with which I
was familiar were the controversies which had divided
Christians;
the writings of the Fathers of the Church and of the modern
school which
is founded on them had been carefully studied, and I had
weighed the
points of difference between the Greek, Roman, Anglican, and
Lutheran
communions, as well as the views of orthodox dissenting schools
of thought;
only from Pusey's "Daniel", and Liddon's "Bampton
Lectures",
had I
gathered anything of wider controversies and issues of more vital
interest. But
now all was changed, and it was to the leaders of the
pain had been
so! rude when real doubts assailed and shook me, that I
had steadily
made up my mind to investigate, one by one, every Christian
dogma, and
never again to say "I believe" until I had tested the object
of faith; the
dogmas which revolted me most were those of the Atonement
and of
Eternal Punishment, while the doctrine of Inspiration of
Scripture
underlay everything, and was the very foundation of
Christianity;
these, then, were the first that I dropped into the
crucible of
investigation. Maurice, Robertson, Stopford Brooke, McLeod,
Campbell, and
others, were studied; and while I recognised the charm
of their
writings, I failed to find any firm ground whereon they could
rest: it was
a many-colored beautiful mist--a cloud landscape, very
fair, but
very unsubstantial. Still they served as stepping stones away
from the old
hard dogmas, and month by month I grew more sceptical as
to the
possibility of finding certainty in religion. Mansel's Bampton
lectures on
"The Limits of Religious Thought" did much to increase the
feeling; the
works of F. Newman, Arnold, and Greg carried on the
same work; some
efforts to understand the creeds of other nations, to
investigate
Mahommedanism, Buddhism, and Hinduism, all led in the same
direction,
until I concluded that inspiration belonged to all people
alike, and
there could be no necessity of atonement, and no eternal
hell prepared
for the unbeliever in Christianity. Thus, step by step,
I renounced
the dogmas of Christianity until there remained only, as
distinctively
Christian, the Deity of Jesus which had not yet been
analysed. The
whole tendency of the
to increase
the manhood at the expense of the deity of Christ; and with
hell and
atonement gone, and inspiration everywhere, there appeared
no _raison
d'etre_ for the Incarnation. Besides, there were so many
incarnations,
and the Buddhist absorption seemed a grander idea. I now
first met
with Charles Voysey's works, and those of Theodore Parker and
Channing, and
the belief in the Deity of Jesus followed the other dead
creeds. Renan
I had read much earlier, but did not care for him; Strauss
I did not
meet with until afterwards; Scott's "English Life of Jesus",
which I read
at this period, is as useful a book on this subject as
could be put
into the hands of an inquirer. From Christianity into
simple Theism
I had found my way; step by step the Theism melted into
Atheism;
prayer was gradually discontinued, as utterly at variance with
any dignified
idea of God, and as in contradiction to all the results
of scientific
investigation. I had taken a keen interest in the later
scientific
discoveries, and
my old bonds.
Of John Stuart Mill I had read much, and I now took him up
again; I
studied Spinoza, and re-read Mansel, together with many other
writers on
the Deity, until the result came which is found in the essay
entitled
"The Nature and Existence of God ". It was just before this was
written that
I read Charles Bradlaugh's "Plea for Atheism" and his "Is
there a
God?". The essay on "Constructive Rationalism" shows how we
replace the
old faith and build our house anew with stronger materials.
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The path from
Christianity to Atheism is a long one, and its first steps
are very
rough and very painful; the feet tread on the ruins of the
broken faith,
and the sharp edges cut into the bleeding flesh; but
further on
the path grows smoother, and presently at its side begins to
peep forth
the humble daisy of hope that heralds the spring tide, and
further on
the roadside is fragrant with all the flowers of summer,
sweet and
brilliant and gorgeous, and in the distance we see the promise
of the
autumn, the harvest that shall be reaped for the feeding of man.
Annie Besant.
1878.
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ON THE DEITY
OF JESUS OF
"WHAT
think ye of Christ, whose son is he?" Humane child of human
parents, or
divine Son of the Almighty God? When we consider his purity,
his faith in
the Father, his forgiving patience, his devoted work
among the
offscourings of society, his brotherly love to sinners
and
outcasts--when our minds dwell on these alone,--we all feel the
marvellous
fascination which has drawn millions to the feet of this
"son of
man," and the needle of our faith begins to tremble towards the
Christian
pole. If we would keep unsullied the purity of our faith
in God alone,
we are obliged to turn our eyes some times--however
unwillingly--towards
the other side of the picture and to mark the human
weaknesses
which remind us that he is but one of our race. His harshness
to his
mother, his bitterness towards some of his opponents, the marked
failure of
one or two of his rare prophecies, the palpable limitation of
his
knowledge--little enough, indeed, when all are told,--are more
than enough
to show us that, however great as man, he is not the
All-righteous,
the All-seeing, the All-knowing, God.
No one,
however, whom Christian exaggeration has not goaded into unfair
detraction,
or who is not blinded by theological hostility, can fail
to revere
portions of the character sketched out in the three synoptic
gospels. I
shall not dwell here on the Christ of the fourth Evangelist;
we can
scarcely trace in that figure the lineaments of the Jesus of
I propose, in
this essay, to examine the claims of Jesus to be more
than the man
he appeared to be during his lifetime: claims--be it
noted--which
are put forward on his behalf by others rather than by
himself. His
own assertions of his divinity are to be found only in the
unreliable
fourth gospel, and in it they are destroyed by the sentence
there put
into his mouth with strange inconsistency: "If I bear witness
of myself, my
witness is not true."
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It is evident
that by his contemporaries Jesus was not regarded as God
incarnate.
The people in general appear to have looked upon him as a
great
prophet, and to have often debated among themselves whether he
were their
expected Messiah or not. The band of men who accepted him
as their
teacher were as far from worshipping him as God as were their
fellow-countrymen:
their prompt desertion of him when attacked by his
enemies,
their complete hopelessness when they saw him overcome and put
to death, are
sufficient proofs that though they regarded him--to quote
their own
words--as a "prophet mighty in word and deed," they never
guessed that
the teacher they followed, and the friend they lived with
in the
intimacy of social life was Almighty God Himself. As has been
well pointed
out, if they believed their Master to be God, surely when
they were attacked
they would have fled to him for protection, instead
of
endeavouring to save themselves by deserting him: we may add that
this would
have been their natural instinct, since they could never
have imagined
beforehand that the Creator Himself could really be taken
captive by
His creatures and suffer death at their hands. The third
class of his
contemporaries, the learned Pharisees and Scribes, were as
far from
regarding him as divine as were the people or his disciples.
They seem to
have viewed the new teacher somewhat contemptuously at
first, as one
who unwisely persisted in expounding the highest doctrines
to the many,
instead of--a second Hillel--adding to the stores of
their own
learned circle. As his influence spread and appeared to be
undermining
their own,--still more, when he placed himself in direct
opposition,
warning the people against them,--they were roused to a
course of
active hostility, and at length determined to save themselves
by destroying
him. But all through their passive contempt and direct
antagonism,
there is never a trace of their deeming him to be anything
more than a
religious enthusiast who finally became dangerous: we never
for a moment
see them assuming the manifestly absurd position of men
knowingly
measuring their strength against God, and endeavouring to
silence and
destroy their Maker. So much for the opinions of those who
had the best
opportunities of observing his ordinary life. A "good man,"
a
"deceiver," a "mighty prophet," such are the recorded
opinions of his
contemporaries:
not one is found to step forward and proclaim him to be
Jehovah, the
God of
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One of the
most trusted strongholds of Christians, in defending their
Lord's
Divinity, is the evidence of prophecy. They gather from the
sacred books
of the Jewish nation the predictions of the longed-for
Messiah, and
claim them as prophecies fulfilled in Jesus of
But there is
one stubborn fact which destroys the force of this
argument: the
Jews, to whom these writings belong, and who from
tradition and
national peculiarities may reasonably be supposed to be
the best
exponents of their own prophets, emphatically deny that these
prophecies
are fulfilled in Jesus at all. Indeed, one main reason for
their
rejection of Jesus is precisely this, that he does not resemble in
any way the
predicted Messiah. There is no doubt that the Jewish nation
were eagerly
looking for their Deliverer when Jesus was born: these very
longings
produced several pseudo-Messiahs, who each gained in turn
a considerable
following, because each bore some resemblance to the
expected
Prince. Much of the popular rage which swept Jesus to his
death was the
re-action of disappointment after the hopes raised by the
position of
authority he assumed. The sudden burst of anger against one
so benevolent
and inoffensive can only be explained by the intense hopes
excited by
his regal entry into
those hopes
by his failing to ascend the throne of David. Proclaimed
as David's
son, he came riding on an ass as king of
himself to be
welcomed as the king of
of the
prophecies ended, and the people, furious at his failing them,
rose and
clamoured for his death. Because he did _not_ fulfil the
ancient Jewish
oracles, he died: he was too noble for the _rôle_ laid
down in them
for the Messiah, his ideal was far other than that of a
conqueror,
with "garments rolled in blood." But even if, against all
evidence,
Jesus was one with the Messiah of the prophets, this would
destroy,
instead of implying, his Divine claims. For the Jews were pure
monotheists;
their Messiah was a prince of David's line, the favoured
servant, the
anointed Jehovah, the king who should rule in His name: a
Jew would
shrink with horror from the blasphemy of seating Messiah on
Jehovah's
throne remembering how their prophets had taught them that
their God
"would not give His honour to another." So that, as to
prophecy, the
case stands thus: If Jesus be the Messiah prophesied of
in the old
Jewish books, then he is not God: if he be not the Messiah,
Jewish
prophecy is silent as regards him altogether, and an appeal to
prophecy is
absolutely useless.
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After the
evidence of prophecy Christians generally rely on that
furnished by
miracles. It is remarkable that Jesus himself laid but
little stress
on his miracles; in fact, he refused to appeal to them
as
credentials of his authority, and either could not or would not work
them when met
with determined unbelief. We must notice also that the
people, while
"glorifying God, who had given such power unto _men_,"
were not
inclined to admit his miracles as proofs of his right to claim
absolute
obedience: his miracles did not even invest him with such
sacredness as
to protect him from arrest and death. Herod, on his trial,
was simply
anxious to see him work a miracle, as a matter of curiosity.
This stolid
indifference to marvels as attestations of authority is
natural
enough, when we remember that Jewish history was crowded with
miracles,
wrought for and against the favoured people, and also that
they had been
specially warned against being misled by signs and
wonders.
Without entering into the question whether miracles are
possible, let
us, for argument's sake, take them for granted, and see
what they are
worth as proofs of Divinity. If Jesus fed a multitude with
a few loaves,
so did Elisha: if he raised the dead, so did Elijah and
Elisha; if he
healed lepers, so did Moses and Elisha; if he opened
the eyes of
the blind, Elisha smote a whole army with blindness
and afterwards
restored their sight: if he cast out devils, his
contemporaries,
by his own testimony, did the same. If miracles prove
Deity, what
miracle of Jesus can stand comparison with the divided Red
the rushing
waters of the
these men
worked by _conferred_ power and Jesus by _inherent_, we can
only answer
that this is a gratuitous assumption, and begs the whole
question. The
Bible records the miracles in equivalent terms: no
difference is
drawn between the manner of working of Elisha or Jesus; of
each it is
sometimes said they prayed; of each it is sometimes said
they spake.
Miracles indeed must not be relied on as proofs of divinity,
unless
believers in them are prepared to pay divine honours not to Jesus
only, but
also to a crowd of others, and to build a Christian Pantheon
to the new
found gods.
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So far we
have only seen the insufficiency of the usual Christian
arguments to
establish a doctrine so stupendous and so _prima facie_
improbable as
the incarnation of the Divine Being: this kind of negative
testimony,
this insufficient evidence, is not however the principle
reason which
compels Theists to protest against the central dogma of
Christianity.
The stronger proofs of the simple manhood of Jesus remain,
and we now
proceed to positive evidence of his not being God. I
propose to
draw attention to the traces of human infirmity in his noble
character, to
his absolute mistakes in prophecy, and to his evidently
limited knowledge.
In accepting as substantially true the account
of Jesus
given by the evangelists, we are taking his character as
it appeared
to his devoted followers. We have not to do with slight
blemishes,
inserted by envious detractors of his greatness; the history
of Jesus was
written when his disciples worshipped him as God, and his
manhood, in
their eyes, reached ideal perfection. We are not forced to
believe that,
in the gospels, the life of Jesus is given at its highest,
and that he
was, at least, not more spotless than he appears in these
records of
his friends. But here again, in order not to do a gross
injustice, we
must put aside the fourth gospel; to study his character
"according
to S. John" would need a separate essay, so different is
it from that drawn
by the three; and by all rules of history we should
judge him by
the earlier records, more especially as they corroborate
each other in
the main.
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The first
thing which jars upon an attentive reader of the gospels is
the want of
affection and respect shown by Jesus to his mother. When
only a child
of twelve he lets his parents leave
home, while
he repairs alone to the temple. The fascination of the
ancient city
and the gorgeous temple services was doubtless almost
overpowering
to a thoughtful Jewish boy, more especially on his first
visit: but
the careless forgetfulness of his parents' anxiety must be
considered as
a grave childish fault, the more so as its character is
darkened by
the indifference shown by his answer to his mother's grieved
reproof. That
no high, though mistaken, sense of duty kept him in
felt that
"his Father's business" detained him in
is evident
that this sense of duty would not have been satisfied by a
three days'
delay. But the Christian advocate would bar criticism by an
appeal to the
Deity of Jesus: he asks us therefore to believe that
Jesus, being
God, saw with indifference his parents' anguish at
discovering
his absence; knew all about that three days' agonised search
(for they,
ignorant of his divinity, felt the terrible anxiety as to
his safety,
natural to country people losing a child in a crowded city);
did not, in
spite of the tremendous powers at his command, take any
steps to
re-assure them; and finally, met them again with no words of
sympathy,
only with a mysterious allusion, incomprehensible to them, to
some higher
claim than theirs, which, however, he promptly set aside to
obey them. If
God was incarnate in a boy, we may trust that example as a
model of
childhood: yet, are Christians prepared to set this early
piety and
desire for religious instruction before their young children
as an example
they are to follow? Are boys and girls of twelve to be
free to
absent themselves for days from their parents' guardianship
under the
plea that a higher business claims their attention? This
episode of
the childhood of Jesus should be relegated to those "gospels
of the
infancy" full of most unchildlike acts, which the wise discretion
of
Christendom has stamped with disapproval. The same want of filial
reverence
appears later in his life: on one occasion he was teaching,
and his
mother sent in, desiring to speak to him: the sole reply
recorded to
the message is the harsh remark: "Who is my mother?" The
most practical
proof that Christian morality has, on this head,
outstripped
the example of Jesus, is the prompt disapproval which
similar
conduct would meet with in the present day. By the strange
warping of
morality often caused by controversial exigencies, this want
of filial
reverence has been triumphantly pointed out by Christian
divines; the
indifference shown by Jesus to family ties is accepted as a
proof that he
was more than man! Thus, conduct which they implicitly
acknowledge to
be unseemly in a son to his mother, they claim as natural
and right in
the Son of God, to His! In the present day, if a person is
driven by
conscience to a course painful to those who have claims on his
respect, his
recognised duty, as well as his natural instinct, is to try
and make up
by added affection and more courteous deference for the pain
he is forced
to inflict: above all, he would not wantonly add to that
pain by
public and uncalled-for disrespect.
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The attitude
of Jesus towards his opponents in high places was marked
with
unwarrantable bitterness. Here also the lofty and gentle spirit
of his whole
life has moulded Christian opinion in favour of a course
different on
this head to his own, so that abuse of an opponent is now
commonly
called _un_-Christian. Wearied with three years' calumny and
contempt, sore
at the little apparent success which rewarded his labour,
full of a sad
foreboding that his enemies would shortly crush him, Jesus
was goaded
into passionate denunciations: "Woe unto you, Scribes and
Pharisees,
hypocrites... ye fools and blind... ye make a proselyte
twofold more
the child of hell than yourselves... ye serpents, ye
generation of
vipers, how can ye escape the damnation of hell!" Surely
this is not
the spirit which breathed in, "If ye love them which love
you, what
thanks have ye?... Love your enemies, bless them that curse
you, pray for
them that persecute you." Had he not even specially
forbidden the
very expression, "Thou fool!" Was not this rendering evil
for evil,
railing for railing?
It is painful
to point out these blemishes: reverence for the great
leaders of
humanity is a duty dear to all human hearts; but when homage
turns into
idolatry, then men must rise up to point out faults which
otherwise
they would pass over in respectful silence, mindful only of
the work so
nobly done.
I turn then,
with a sense of glad relief, to the evidence of the limited
knowledge of
Jesus, for here no blame attaches to him, although _one_
proved
mistake is fatal to belief in his Godhead. First as to prophecy:
"The Son
of man shall come in the glory of his Father with his angels:
and then
shall he reward every man according to his works. Verily I say
unto you,
There be some standing here which shall not taste of death
till they see
the Son of man coming in his kingdom." Later, he amplifies
the same
idea: he speaks of a coming tribulation, succeeded by his own
return, and
then adds the emphatic declaration: "Verily I say unto
you, This
generation shall not pass till all these things be done." The
non-fulfilment
of these prophecies is simply a question of fact: let
men explain
away the words now as they may, yet, if the record is true,
Jesus did
believe in his own speedy return, and impressed the same belief
on his
followers. It is plain, indeed, that he succeeded in impressing
it on them,
from the references to his return scattered through the
epistles. The
latest writings show an anxiety to remove the doubts which
were
disturbing the converts consequent on the non-appearance of Jesus,
and the
fourth gospel omits any reference to his coming. It is worth
remarking, in
the latter, the spiritual sense which is hinted at--either
purposely or
unintentionally--in the words, "The hour... _now_ is when
the dead
shall hear the voice of the Son of God, and they that hear
shall
live." These words may be the popular feeling on the advent of the
resurrection,
forced on the Christians by the failure of their Lord's
prophecies in
any literal sense. He could not be mistaken, _ergo_ they
must spiritualise
his words. The limited knowledge of Jesus is further
evident from
his confusing Zacharias the son of Jehoiada with Zacharias
the son of
Barachias: the former, a priest, was slain in the temple
court, as
Jesus states; but the son of Barachias was Zacharias, or
Zachariah,
the prophet.* He himself owned a limitation of his knowledge,
when he
confessed his ignorance of the day of his own return, and said
it was known
to the "Father only." Of the same class of sayings is
his answer to
the mother of James and John, that the high seats of
the coming
kingdom "are not mine to give." That Jesus believed in the
fearful
doctrine of eternal punishment is evident, in spite of the
ingenious
attempts to prove that the doctrine is not scriptural:
that he, in
common with his countrymen, ascribed many diseases to the
immediate
power of Satan, which we should now probably refer to natural
causes, as
epilepsy, mania, and the like, is also self-evident. But on
such points
as these it is useless to dwell, for the Christian believes
them on the
authority of Jesus, and the subjects, from their nature,
cannot be
brought to the test of ascertained facts. Of the same
character are
some of his sayings: his discouraging "Strive to enter
in at the
strait gate, _for_ many," etc.; his using in defence of
partiality
Isaiah's awful prophecy, "that seeing they may see and not
perceive,"
etc.; his using Scripture at one time as binding, while he,
at another,
depreciates it; his fondness for silencing an opponent by an
ingenious
retort: all these things are blameworthy to those who regard
him as man,
while they are shielded from criticism by his divinity to
those who
worship him as God. There morality is a question of opinion,
and it is
wasted time to dwell on them when arguing with Christians,
whose moral
sense is for the time held in check by their mental
prostration
at his feet. But the truth of the quoted prophecies, and
the
historical fact of the parentage of Zachariah, can be tested, and on
these Jesus
made palpable mistakes. The obvious corollary is, that being
mistaken--as
he was--his knowledge was limited, and was therefore human,
not divine
.
·
See Appendix,
page 12.
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In turning to
the teaching of Jesus (I still confine myself to the three
gospels), we
find no support of the Christian theory. If we take his
didactic
teaching, we can discover no trace of his offering himself as
an object of
either faith or worship. His life's work, as teacher, was
to speak of
the Father. In the sermon on the Mount he is always striking
the keynote,
"your heavenly Father;" in teaching his disciples to
pray, it is
to "Our Father," and the Christian idea of ending a prayer
"through
Jesus Christ" is quite foreign to the simple filial spirit
of their
master. Indeed, when we think of the position Jesus holds in
Christian
theology, it seems strange to notice the utter absence of any
suggestion of
duty to himself throughout this whole code of so-called
Christian
morality. In strict accordance with his more formal teaching
is his
treatment of inquirers: when a young man comes kneeling, and,
addressing
him as "Good Master," asks what he shall do to inherit
eternal life,
the loyal heart of Jesus first rejects the homage, before
he proceeds
to answer the all-important question: "Why callest thou _me_
good: there
is none good but one, that is, God." He then directs the
youth on the
way to eternal life, and _he sends that young man home
without one
word of the doctrine on which, according to Christians,
his salvation
rested_. If the "Gospel" came to that man later, he would
reject it on
the authority of Jesus, who had told him a different "way
of
salvation;" and if Christianity is true, the perdition of that young
man's soul is
owing to the defective teaching of Jesus himself. Another
time, he
tells a Scribe that the first commandment is that God is
one, and that
all a man's love is due to Him; then adding the duty of
neighbourly
love, he says: "There is _none other_ commandment greater
than
these:" so that "belief in Jesus," if incumbent at all, must
come
after love to
God and man, and is not necessary, by his own testimony,
to
"entering into life." On Jesus himself then rests the primary
responsibility
of affirming that belief in him is a matter of secondary
importance,
at most, letting alone the fact that he never inculcated
belief in his
Deity as an article of faith at all. In the same spirit of
frank loyalty
to God are his words on the unpardonable sin: in answer
to a gross
personal affront, he tells his insulters that they shall be
forgiven for
speaking against him, a simple son of man, but warns them
of the danger
of confounding the work of God's. Spirit with that of
Satan,
"because they said" that works; done by God, using Jesus as His
instrument,
were done by Beelzebub.
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There remains
yet one argument of tremendous force, which can only
be
appreciated by personal meditation. We find Jesus praying to
God, relying
on God, in his greatest need crying in agony to God for
deliverance,
in his last: struggle, deserted by his friends, asking why
God, his God,
had also forsaken him. We feel how natural, how true to
life, this
whole account is: in our heart's reverence for that noble
life, that
"faithfulness unto death," we can scarcely bear to think of
the insult
offered to it by Christian lips: they take every beauty
out of it by
telling us that through all that struggle Jesus was
the Eternal,
the Almighty, God: it is all apparent, not real: in his
temptation he
could not fall: in his prayers he needed no support: in
his cry that
the cup might pass away he foresaw it was inevitable: in
his agony of
desertion and loneliness he was present everywhere with
God. In all
that life, then, there is no hope for man, no pledge of
man's
victory, no promise for humanity. This is no _man's_ life at all,
it is only a wonderful
drama enacted on earth. What God could do is no
measure of
man's powers: what have we in common with this "God-man?"
This Jesus,
whom we had thought our brother, is after all, removed from
us by the
immeasurable distance which separates the feebleness of man
from the
omnipotence of God. Nothing can compensate us for such a loss
as this. We
had rejoiced in that many-sided nobleness, and its very
blemishes
were dear, because they assured us of his brotherhood to
ourselves: we
are given an ideal picture where we had studied a history,
another Deity
where we had hoped to emulate a life. Instead of the
encouragement
we had found, what does Christianity offer us?--a perfect
life? But we
knew before that God was perfect: an example? it starts
from a different
level: a Saviour? we cannot be safer than we are with
God: an
Advocate? we need none with our Father: a Substitute to endure
God's wrath
for us? we had rather trust God's justice to punish us as
we deserve,
and his wisdom to do what is best for us. As God, Jesus can
give us
nothing that we have not already in his Father and ours: as man,
he gives us
all the encouragement and support which we derive from every
noble soul
which God sends into this world, "a burning and a shining
light":
"Through such souls alone
God stooping shows sufficient of
His light For us in the dark to rise
by."
As God, he
confuses our perceptions of God's unity, bewilders our reason
with endless
contradictions, and turns away from the Supreme all those
emotions of
love and adoration which can only flow towards a single
object, and
which are the due of our Creator alone: as man, he gives us
an example to
strive after, a beacon to steer by; he is one more leader
for humanity,
one more star in our darkness. As God, all his words would
be truth, and
but few would enter into heaven, while hell would overflow
with victims:
as man, we may refuse to believe such a slander on our
Father, and
take all the comfort pledged to us by that name. Thank God,
then, that
Jesus is only man, "human child of human parents;" that
we need not
dwarf our conceptions of God to fit human faculties, or
envelope the
illimitable spirit in a baby's feeble frame. But though
only man, he
has reached a standard of human greatness which no other
man, so far
as we know, has touched: the very height of his character is
almost a
pledge of the truthfulness of the records in the main: his life
had to be
lived before its conception became possible, at that period
and among
such a people. They could recognise his greatness when it was
before their
eyes: they would scarcely have imagined it for themselves,
more
especially that, as we have seen, he was so different from the
Jewish ideal.
His code of morality stands unrivalled, and he was the
first who taught
the universal Fatherhood of God publicly and to the
common
people. Many of his loftiest precepts may be found in the books
of the
Rabbis, but it is the glorious prerogative of Jesus that he
spread abroad
among the many the wise and holy maxims that had hitherto
been the
sacred treasures of the few. With him none were too degraded
to be called
the children of the Father: none too simple to be worthy of
the highest
teaching. By example, as well as by precept, he taught that
all men were
brothers, and all the good he had he showered at their
feet.
"Pure in heart," he saw God, and what he saw he called all to see:
he longed
that all might share in his own joyous trust in the Father,
and seemed to
be always seeking for fresh images to describe the freedom
and fulness
of the universal love of God. In his unwavering love of
truth, but
his patience with doubters--in his personal purity, but his
tenderness to
the fallen--in his hatred of evil, but his friendliness
to the
sinner--we see splendid virtues rarely met in combination. His
brotherliness,
his yearning to raise the degraded, his lofty piety, his
unswerving
morality, his perfect self-sacrifice, are his indefeasible
titles to
human love and reverence. Of the world's benefactors he is the
chief, not
only by his own life, but by the enthusiasm he has known to
inspire in
others: "Our plummet has not sounded his depth:" words fail
to tell what
humanity owes to the Prophet of
the great Christian
heroes have based their lives: from the foundation
laid by his
teaching the world is slowly rising to a purer faith in God.
We need now
such a leader as he was--one who would dare to follow the
Father's will
as he did, casting a long-prized revelation aside when
it conflicts
with the higher voice of conscience. It is the teaching
of Jesus that
Theism gladly makes its own, purifying it from the
inconsistencies
which mar its perfection. It is the example of Jesus
which Theists
are following, though they correct that example in some
points by his
loftiest sayings. It is the work of Jesus which Theists
are carrying
on, by worshipping, as he did, the Father, and the Father
alone, and by
endeavouring to turn all men's love, all men's hopes, and
all men's
adoration, to that "God and Father of all, who is above all,
and through
all, and," not in Jesus only, but "_in us all_."
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APPENDIX:
"Josephus mentions a Zacharias, a son of Baruch ('Wars of
the Jews,'
Book iv., sec. 4), who was slain under the circumstances
described by
Jesus. His name would be more suitable at the close of the
long list of
Jewish crimes, as it occurred just before the destruction
of
death of
Jesus, it is clear that he could not have referred to it;
therefore, if
we admit that he made no mistake, we strike a serious
blow at the
credibility of his historian, who then puts into his mouth a
remark never
uttered."
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A COMPARISON
BETWEEN THE FOURTH GOSPEL AND THE THREE SYNOPTICS
EVERY one, at
least in the educated classes, knows that the authenticity
of the fourth
gospel has been long and widely disputed. The most
careless
reader is struck by the difference of tone between the simple
histories
ascribed to Matthew, Mark, and Luke, and the theological and
philosophical
treatise which bears the name of John. After following
the three
narratives, so simple in their structure, so natural in their
style, so
unadorned by rhetoric, so free from philosophic terms,--after
reading
these, it is with a feeling of surprise that we find ourselves,
plunged into
the bewildering mazes of the Alexandrine philosophy, and
open our
fourth gospel to be told that, "In the beginning was the word,
and the word
was with God, and the word was God." We ask instinctively,
"How did
John, the fisherman of
Greek
schools, and why does he mix up the simple story of his master
with the
philosophy of that 'world which by wisdom knew not God?'"
The general
Christian tradition is as follows: The spread! of
"heretical"
views about the person of Jesus alarmed the "orthodox"
Christians,
and they appealed to John, the last aged relic of the
apostolic
band, to write a history of Jesus which should confute their
opponents,
and establish the essential deity of the founder of their
religion. At
their repeated solicitations, John wrote the gospel which
bears his
name, and the doctrinal tone of it is due to its original
intention,--a
treatise written against Cerinthus, and designed to
crush, with
the authority of an apostle, the rising doubts as to
the
pre-existence and absolute deity of Jesus of
non-Christians
and Christians--including the writer of the gospel--are
agreed. This
fourth gospel is not--say Theists--a simple biography
of Jesus
written by a loving disciple as a memorial of a departed and
cherished
friend, but a history written with a special object and to
prove a
certain doctrine. "
echoes Dr.
Liddon. "These are written that ye may believe that Jesus
is the
Christ, the Son of God," confesses the writer himself. Now, in
examining the
credibility of any history, one of the first points
to determine
is whether the historian is perfectly unbiassed in his
judgment and
is therefore likely give facts exactly as they occurred,
un-coloured
by views of his own. Thus we do not turn to the pages of a
Roman
Catholic historian to gain a fair idea of Luther, or of William
the Silent,
or expect to find in the volumes of Clarendon a thoroughly
faithful
portraiture of the vices of the Stuart kings; rather, in
reading the
history of a partisan, do we instinctively make allowances
for the
recognised bias of his mind and heart. That the fourth gospel
comes to us
prefaced by the announcement that it is written, not to give
us a history,
but to prove a certain predetermined opinion, is, then,
so much doubt
cast at starting on its probable accuracy; and, by the
constitution
of our minds, we at once guard ourselves against a too
ready
acquiescence in its assertions, and become anxious to test its
statements by
comparing them with some independent and more impartial
authority.
The history may be most accurate, but we require proof
that the
writer is never seduced into slightly--perhaps
unconsciously--colouring
an incident so as to favour the object he
has at heart.
For instance, Matthew, an honest writer enough, is often
betrayed into
most non-natural quotation of prophecy by his anxiety to
connect Jesus
with the Messiah expected by his countrymen. This latent
wish of his
leads him to insert various quotations from the Jewish
Scriptures
which, severed from their context, have a verbal similarity
with the
events he narrates. Thus, he refers to Hosea's mention of the
Exodus:
"When
out of
"prophecy"
of an alleged journey of Jesus into
as this shows
us how a man may allow himself to be blinded by a
pre-conceived
determination to prove a certain fact, and warns us to
sift carefully
any history that comes to us with the announcement that
it is written
to prove such and such a truth.
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Unfortunately
we have no independent contemporary history--except a
sentence of
Josephus--whereby to test the accuracy of the Christian
records; we
are therefore forced into the somewhat unsatisfactory task
of comparing
them one with another, and in cases of diverging testimony
we must
strike the balance of probability between them.
On examining,
then, these four biographies of Jesus, we find a
remarkable
similarity between three of them, amid many divergencies of
detail; some
regard them, therefore, as the condensation into writing
of the oral
teaching of the apostles, preserved in the various Churches
they
severally founded, and so, naturally, the same radically, although
diverse in
detail. "The synoptic Gospels contain the substance of the
Apostles'
testimony, collected principally from their oral teaching
current in
the Church, partly also from written documents embodying
portions of
that teaching."* Others think that the gospels which we
possess, and
which are ascribed severally to Matthew, Mark, and Luke,
are all three
derived from an original gospel now lost, which was
probably
written in Hebrew or Aramaic, and variously translated into
Greek.
However this may be, the fact that such a statement as this has
been put
forward proves the striking similarity, the root identity, of
the three
"synoptical gospels," as they are called. We gather from them
an idea of
Jesus which is substantially the same: a figure, calm, noble,
simple, generous;
pure in life, eager to draw men to that love of the
Father and
devotion to the Father which were his own distinguishing
characteristics;
finally, a teacher of a simple and high-toned morality,
perfectly
unfettered by dogmatism. The effect produced by the sketch of
the Fourth
Evangelist is totally different. The friend of sinners has
disappeared
(except in the narrative of the woman taken in adultery,
which is
generally admitted to be an interpolation), for his whole time
is occupied
in arguing about his own position; "the common people"
who followed
and "heard him gladly" and his enemies, the Scribes and
Pharisees,
are all massed together as "the Jews," with whom he is in
constant
collision; his simple style of teaching--parabolic indeed, as
was the
custom of the East, but consisting of parables intelligible to
a child--is
exchanged for mystical discourses, causing perpetual
misunderstandings,
the true meaning of which is still wrangled about by
Christian
theologians; his earnest testimony to "your heavenly Father"
is replaced
by a constant self-assertion; while his command "do this and
ye shall
live," is exchanged for "believe on me or perish."
* Alford.
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How great is
the contrast between that discourse and the Sermon on
the Mount....
In the last discourse it is His Person rather than his
teaching which
is especially prominent. His subject in that discourse is
Himself.
Certainly he
preaches himself in His relationship to His redeemed; but
still he
preaches above all, and in all, Himself. All radiates from
Himself, all
converges towards Himself.... in those matchless words all
centres so
consistently in Jesus, that it might seem that "Jesus Alone is
before
us."* These and similar differences, both of direct teaching and
of the more
subtle animating spirit, I propose to examine in detail; but
before
entering on these it seems necessary to glance at the disputed
question of
the authorship of our history, and determine whether, if it
prove
apostolic, it _must_ therefore be binding on us.
I leave to
more learned pens than mine the task of criticising
and drawing
conclusions from the Greek or the precise dogma of the
evangelist,
and of weighing the conflicting testimony of mighty names.
From the
account contained in the English Bible of John the Apostle, I
gather the
following points of his character: He was warm-hearted to his
friends,
bitter against his enemies, filled with a fiery and unbridled
zeal against
theological opponents; he was ambitious, egotistical,
pharisaical.
I confess that I trace these characteristics through all
the writings
ascribed to him, and that they seem to be only softened by
age in the
fourth gospel. That John was a warm friend is proved by his
first
epistle; that he was bitter against his enemies appears in his
mention of
Diotrephes, "I will remember his deeds which he doeth,
prating
against us with malicious words;" his unbridled zeal was rebuked
by his
master; the same cruel spirit is intensified in his "Revelation;"
his ambition
is apparent in his anxiety for a chief seat in Messiah's
kingdom; his
egotism appears in the fearful curse he imprecates on those
who alter
_his_ revelation; his pharisaism is marked in such a feeling
as, "we
know _we_ are of God, and the whole world lieth in wickedness."
Many of these
qualities appear to me to mark the gospel which bears
his name; the
same restricted tenderness, the same bitterness against
opponents,
the same fiery zeal for "the truth," i.e., a special
theological
dogma, are everywhere apparent.
* Liddon.
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The same
egotism is most noticeable, for in the other gospels John
shares his
master's chief regard with two others, while here he is
"_the_
disciple whom Jesus loved," and he is specially prominent in the
closing
scenes of Jesus' life as the _only_ faithful follower. We should
also notice
the remarkable similarity of expression and tone between
the fourth
gospel and the first epistle of John, a similarity the more
striking as
the language is peculiar to the writings attributed to
John. It is,
however, with the utmost diffidence that I offer these
suggestions,
well knowing that the greatest authorities are divided on
this point of
authorship, and that the balance is rather against the
apostolic
origin of the gospel than for it. I am, however, anxious
to show that,
_even taking it as apostolic_, it is untrustworthy and
utterly
unworthy of credit. If John be the writer, we must suppose
that his long
residence in
memories, so
that he speaks of "the Jews" as a foreigner would. The
stern Jewish
monotheism would have grown feebler by contact with the
subtle
influence of the Alexandrine tone of thought; and he would have
caught the
expressions of that school from living in a city which was
its second
home. To use the Greek philosophy as a vehicle for Christian
teaching would
recommend itself to him as the easiest way of approaching
minds imbued
with these mystic ideas. Regarding the master of his youth
through the
glorifying medium of years, he gradually began to imagine
him to be one
of the emanations from the Supreme, of which he heard so
much.
Accustomed to the deification of Roman emperors, men of infamous
lives, he
must have been almost driven to claim divine honours for _his_
leader. If
his hearers regarded _them_ as divine, what could he say to
exalt _him_
except that he was ever with God, nay, was himself God? If
John be the
writer of this gospel, some such change as this must have
passed over
him, and in his old age the gradual accretions of years must
have
crystallised themselves into a formal Christian theology. But if we
find, during
our examination, that the history and the teaching of this
gospel is
utterly irreconcilable with the undoubtedly earlier synoptic
gospels, we
must then conclude that, apostolic or not, it must give
place to
them, and be itself rejected as a trustworthy account of the
life and
teaching of Jesus of
The first
striking peculiarity of this gospel is that all the people
in it talk in
exactly the same style and use the same markedly peculiar
phraseology,
(a) "The Father loveth the Son and hath given all things
into his
hand." (b) "For the Father loveth the Son and showeth him all
things that
Himself doeth." (c) "Jesus, knowing that the Father had
given all
things into his hand." These sentences are evidently the
outcome of
the same mind, and no one, unacquainted with our gospel,
would guess
that (a) was spoken by John the Baptist, (b) by Jesus, (c)
by the writer
of the gospel. When the Jews speak, the words still run in
the same
groove: "If any man be a worshipper of God, and doeth His will,
him He
heareth," is not said, as might be supposed, by Jesus, but by the
man who was
born blind. Indeed, commentators are sometimes puzzled, as
in John iii.
10-21, to know where, if at all, the words of Jesus stop
and are
succeeded by the commentary of the narrator. In an accurate
history
different characters stand out in striking individuality, so
that we come
to recognise them as distinct personalities, and can even
guess
beforehand how they will probably speak and act under certain
conditions.
But here we have one figure in various disguises, one voice
from
different speakers, one mind in opposing characters. We have here
no beings of
flesh and blood, but airy phantoms, behind whom we see
clearly the
solitary preacher. For Jesus and John the Baptist are two
characters as
distinct as can well be imagined, yet their speeches are
absolutely
indistinguishable, and their thoughts run in the same groove.
Jesus tells
Nicodemus: "We speak that we do know and testify that we
have seen,
and ye receive not our witness; and no man hath ascended
up to heaven,
but he that came down from heaven." John says to his
disciples:
"He that cometh from heaven is above all, and what he hath
seen and
heard that he testifieth, and no man receiveth his testimony."
But it is
wasting time to prove so self-evident a fact: let us rather
see how a
Christian advocate meets an argument whose force he cannot
deny.
"The character and diction of our Lord's discourses entirely
penetrated
and assimilated the habits of thought of His beloved Apostle;
so that in
his first epistle he writes in the very tone and spirit of
those
discourses; and when reporting the sayings of his former teacher,
the Baptist,
he gives them, consistently with the deepest inner truth
(!) of
narration, the forms and cadences so familiar and habitual to
himself."*
It must be left to each individual to judge if a careful and
accurate
historian thus tampers with the words he pretends to narrate,
and thus
makes them accord with some mysterious inner truth; each
too must
decide as to the amount of reliance it is wise to place on a
historian who
is guided by so remarkable a rule of truth. But further,
that the
"character and diction" of this gospel are moulded on that of
Jesus, seems
a most unwarrantable assertion. Through all the recorded
sayings of
Jesus in the three gospels, there is no trace of this very
peculiar
style, except in one case (Matt. xi. 27), a passage which comes
in abruptly
and unconnectedly, and stands absolutely alone in style
in the three
synoptics, a position which throws much doubt on its
authenticity.
It has been suggested that this marked difference of style
arises from
the different auditories addressed in the three gospels and
in the
fourth; on this we remark that (a), we intuitively recognise such
discourses as
that in Matt. x. as perfectly consistent with the usual
style of
Jesus, although this is addressed to "his own;" (b), In this
fourth gospel
the discourses addressed to "his own" and to the Jews are
in exactly
the same style; so that, neither in this gospel, nor in
the synoptics
do we find any difference--more than might be reasonably
expected--between
the style of the discourses addressed to the disciples
and those
addressed to the multitudes. But we _do_ find a very marked
difference
between the style attributed to Jesus by the three synoptics
and that put
into his mouth by the fourth evangelist; this last being a
style so
remarkable that, if usual to Jesus, it is impossible that its
traces should
not appear through all his recorded speeches. From which
fact we may,
I think, boldly deduce the conclusion that the style in
question is
not that of Jesus, the simple carpenter's son, but is one
caught from
the dignified and stately march of the oratory of Ephesian
philosophers,
and is put into his mouth by the writer of his life. And
this
conclusion is rendered indubitable by the fact above-mentioned,
that all the
characters adopt this poetically and musically-rounded
phraseology.
* Alford.
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Thus our
first objection against the trustworthiness of our historian
is that all
the persons he introduces, however different in character,
speak exactly
alike, and that this style, when put into the mouth of
Jesus, is
totally different from that attributed to him by the three
synoptics. We
conclude, therefore, that the style belongs wholly to the
writer, and
that he cannot, consequently, be trusted in his reports of
speeches. The
major part, by far the most important part, of this gospel
is thus at
once stamped as untrustworthy.
Let us next
remark the partiality attributed by this gospel to Him Who
has
said--according to the Bible--"all souls-are Mine." We find the
doctrine of
predestination, i.e., of favouritism, constantly put
forward.
"_All that the Father giveth me_ shall come to me." "No man can
come to me except
the Father draw him." "That of all _which He hath given
me_ I should
lose nothing." "Ye believe not, _because_ ye are not of
my
sheep." "Though he had done so many miracles before them, yet they
believed not
on him: _that the saying_ of Esaias the prophet _might be
fulfilled._"
"Therefore, they _could not believe because_ that Esaias
said,"
&c. "I have chosen you out of the world." "Thou hast given
him
power over
all flesh, that he should give eternal life to _as many as
Thou hast
given him?_" "Those that thou gavest me I have kept and none
of them is
lost, but the son of perdition, _that the Scriptures might
be
fulfilled._" These are the most striking of the passages which teach
that doctrine
which has been the most prolific parent of immorality and
the bringer
of despair to the sinner. Frightfully immoral as it is, this
doctrine is
taught in all its awful hopelessness and plainness by this
gospel: some
"_could not_ believe" because an old prophet prophesied
that they
should not-So, "according to St. John," these unbelieving Jews
were
pre-ordained to eternal damnation and the abiding wrath of God.
They were
cast into an endless hell, which "they _could not_" avoid. We
reject this
gospel, secondly, for the partiality it dares to attribute
to Almighty
God.
We will now
pass to the historical discrepancies between this gospel and
the three
synoptics, following the order of the former.
It tells us
(ch. i) that at the beginning of his ministry Jesus was at
Bethabara, a
town near the junction of the Jordan with the Dead Sea;
here he gains
three disciples, Andrew and another, and then Simon Peter:
the next day
he goes into Galilee and finds Philip and Nathanael, and on
the following
day--somewhat rapid travelling--he is present, with
these
disciples, at Cana, where he performs his first miracle, going
afterwards
with them to Capernaum and Jerusalem. At Jerusalem, whither
he goes for
"the Jews' passover," he drives out the traders from the
temple, and
remarks, "Destroy this temple, and in three days I
will raise it
up:" which remark causes the first of the strange
misunderstandings
between Jesus and the Jews, peculiar to this Gospel,
simple
misconceptions which Jesus never troubles himself to set right.
Jesus and his
disciples then go to the Jordan, baptising, whence Jesus
departs into
Galilee with them, because he hears that the Pharisees know
he is
becoming more popular than the Baptist (ch. iv. 1-3). All this
happens
before John is cast into prison, an occurrence which is a
convenient note
of time. We turn to the beginning of the ministry of
Jesus as
related by the three. Jesus is in the south of Palestine, but,
hearing that
John is cast into prison, he departs into Galilee, and
resides at
Capernaum. There is no mention of any ministry in Galilee and
Judaea before
this; on the contrary, it is only "from that time" that
"Jesus
_began_ to preach." He is alone, without disciples, but, walking
by the sea,
he comes upon Peter, Andrew, James, and John, and calls
them. Now if
the fourth gospel is true, these men had joined him in
Judaea,
followed him to Galilee, south again to Jerusalem, and back to
Galilee, had
seen his miracles and acknowledged him as Christ, so it
seems strange
that they had deserted him and needed a second call, and
yet more
strange is it that Peter (Luke v. i-ii) was so astonished and
amazed at the
miracle of the fishes. The driving out of the traders from
the temple is
placed by the synoptics at the very end of his ministry,
and the
remark following it is used against him at his trial: so was
probably made
just before it. The next point of contact is the history
of the 5000
fed by five loaves (ch. vi.), the preceding chapter relates
to a visit to
Jerusalem unnoticed by the three: indeed, the histories
seem written
of two men, one the "prophet of Galilee" teaching in its
cities, the
other concentrating his energies on Jerusalem. The account
of the
miraculous, feeding is alike in all: not so the succeeding
account of
the conduct of the multitude. In the fourth gospel, Jesus
and the crowd
fall to disputing, as usual, and he loses many disciples:
among the
three, Luke says nothing of the immediately following
events, while
Matthew and Mark tell us that the multitudes--as would be
natural--crowded
round him to touch even the hem of his garment. This is
the same as
always: in the three the crowd loves him; in the fourth it
carps at and
argues with him. We must again miss the sojourn of Jesus in
Galilee,
according to the three, and his visit to Jerusalem, according
to the one,
and pass to his entry into Jerusalem in triumph. Here we
notice a most
remarkable divergence: the synoptics tell us that he
was going up
to Jerusalem from Galilee, and, arriving on his way at
Bethphage, he
sent for an ass and rode thereon into Jerusalem: the
fourth gospel
relates that he was dwelling at Jerusalem, and leaving it,
for fear of
the Jews, he retired, not into Galilee, but "beyond Jordan,
into the
place where John at first baptised," i.e., Bethabara, "and
_there he
abode_" From there he went to Bethany and raised to life a
putrefying
corpse: this stupendous miracle is never appealed to by the
earlier
historians in proof of their master's greatness, though
"much
people of the Jews" are said to have seen Lazarus after his
resurrection:
this miracle is also given as the reason for the active
hostility of
the priests, "from that day forward." Jesus then retires
to Ephraim
near the wilderness, from which town he goes to Bethany, and
thence in
triumph to Jerusalem, being met by the people "for that they
heard that he
had done this miracle." The two accounts have absolutely
nothing in
common except the entry into Jerusalem, and the preceding
events of the
synoptics exclude those of the fourth gospel, as does the
latter
theirs. If Jesus abode in Bethabara and Ephraim, he could not
have come
from Galilee; if he started from Galilee, he was not abiding
in the south.
John xiii.-xvii. stand alone, with the exception of the
mention of
the traitor. On the arrest of Jesus, he is led (ch. xviii.
13) to Annas,
who sends him to Caiaphas, while the others send him
direct to
Caiaphas, but this is immaterial. He is then taken to Pilate:
the Jews do
not enter the judgment-hall, lest, being defiled, they could
not eat the
passover, a feast which, according to the synoptics, was
over, Jesus
and his disciples having eaten it the night before. Jesus is
exposed to
the people at the sixth hour (ch. xix. 14), while Mark tells
us he was
crucified three hours before--at the third hour--a note of
time which
agrees with the others, since they all relate that there
was darkness
from the sixth to the ninth hour, i.e., there was thick
darkness at
the time when, "according to St. John," Jesus was exposed.
Here our
evangelist is in hopeless conflict with the three. The accounts
about the
resurrection are irreconcilable in all the gospels, and
mutually
destructive. It remains to notice, among these discrepancies,
one or two
points which did not come in conveniently in the course of
the
narrative. During the whole of the fourth gospel, we find Jesus
constantly
arguing for his right to the title of Messiah. Andrew speaks
of him as
such (i. 41); the Samaritans acknowledge him (iv. 42); Peter
owns him (vi.
69); the people call him so-(vii. 26, 31, 41); Jesus
claims it
(viii. 24); it is the subject of a law (ix. 22); Jesus speaks
of it as
already claimed by him (x. 24, 25); Martha recognises it
(xi. 27). We
thus find that, from the very first, this title is openly
claimed by
Jesus, and his right to it openly canvassed by the Jews.
But--in the
three--the disciples acknowledge him as Christ, and he
charges them
to "tell no man that he was Jesus the Christ" (Matt. xvi.
20; Mark
viii. 29, 30; Luke ix. 20, 21); and this in the same year that
he blames the
Jews for not owning this Messiahship, since he had told
them who he
was. "from the beginning" (ch. viii. 24, 25); so that, if
"John"
was right, we fail to see the object of all the mystery about it,
related by
the synoptics.
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We mark, too,
how Peter is, in their account,
praised for
confessing him, for flesh and blood had not revealed it to
him, while in
the fourth gospel, "flesh and blood," in the person of
Andrew,
reveal to Peter that the Christ is found; and there seems little
praise due to
Peter for a confession which had been made two or three
years earlier
by Andrew, Nathanael, John Baptist, and the Samaritans.
Contradiction
can scarcely be more direct. In John vii. Jesus owns that
the Jews know
his birthplace (28), and they state (41, 42) that he comes
from Galilee,
while Christ should be born at Bethlehem. Matthew and Luke
distinctly
say Jesus was born at Bethlehem; but here Jesus confesses
the right
knowledge of those who attribute his birthplace to Galilee,
instead of
setting their difficulty at rest by explaining that though
brought up at
Nazareth, he was born in Bethlehem. But our writer was
apparently-ignorant
of their accounts. We reject this gospel, thirdly,
because its
historical statements are in direct contradiction to the
history of
the synoptics.
The next
point to which I wish to direct attention is the relative
position of
faith and morals in the three synoptics and the fourth
gospel. It is
not too much to say that on this point their teaching is
absolutely
irreconcilable, and one or the other must be fatally in the
wrong. Here
the fourth gospel clasps hands with Paul, while the others
take the side
of James. The opposition may be most plainly shown by
parallel
columns of quotations:
"Except your righteousness "He that _believeth on the_
Son
exceed that of the scribes and hath everlasting life."--iii. 36.
Pharisees, ye shall _in no
case_ enter Heaven."--Matt. v. 20.
"Have
we not prophesied in
"He that believeth on Him _is
thy name and in thy name done not condemned_."--iii. 18.
many wonderful works?"
"Then will I profess unto them...
Depart...ye that work iniquity."
--Matt. vii. 22, 23.
"If thou
wilt enter into life,
"He that believeth not the Son
keep the commandments."--Mark shall not see life."--iii. 36.
x. 17-28.
"Her sins, which are many, are "If ye believe not that I am he
forgiven, _for she loved_ much."-- ye shall die in your sins."--viii.
Luke
vii. 47. 24.
These few
quotations, which might be indefinitely multiplied, are
enough to
show that, while in the three gospels _doing_ is the test of
religion, and
no profession of discipleship is worth anything unless
shown by
"its fruits," in the fourth _believing_ is the cardinal matter:
in the three
we hear absolutely nothing of faith in Jesus as requisite,
but in the
fourth we hear of little else: works are thrown completely
into the
background and salvation rests on believing--not even in
God--but in
Jesus. We reject this gospel, fourthly, for setting faith
above works,
and so contradicting the general teaching of Jesus himself.
The relative
positions of the Father and Jesus are reversed by the
fourth
evangelist, and the teaching of Jesus on this head in the three
gospels is
directly contradicted. Throughout them Jesus preaches the
Father only:
he is always reiterating "your heavenly Father;" "that
ye may be the
children of your Father," is his argument for forgiving
others;
"your Father is perfect," is his spur to a higher life; "your
Father
knoweth," is his anodyne in anxiety; "it is the Father's good
pleasure,"
is his certainty of coming happiness; "_one_ is your Father,
which is in
heaven," is, by an even extravagant loyalty, made a reason
for denying
the very name to any other. But in the fourth gospel all is
changed: if
the Father is mentioned at all, it is only as the sender of
Jesus, as
_his_ Witness and _his_ Glorifier. All love, all devotion, all
homage, is
directed to Jesus and to Jesus only: even "on the Christian
hypothesis
the Father is eclipsed by His only begotten Son."* "All
judgment"
is in the hands of the Son: he has "life in himself;" "the
work of
God" is to believe on him; he gives "life unto the world;" he
will
"raise" us "up at the last day;" except by eating him there
is "no
life;" he
is "the light of the world;" he gives true freedom; he is the
"one
shepherd: none can pluck" us out of his hand; he will "draw all men
unto"
himself: he is the "Lord and Master," "the truth and the
life;"
what is even
asked of the Father, _he_ will do; he will come to his
disciples and
abide in them; his peace and joy are their reward. Verily,
we need no
more: he who gives us eternal life, who raises us from the
dead, who is
our judge, who hears our prayers, and gives us light,
freedom, and
truth, He, He only, is our God; none can do more for us
than he: in
Him only will we trust in life and death. So, consistently,
the Son is no
longer the drawer of believers to the Father, but the
Father is
degraded into becoming the way to the Son, and none can come
to Jesus
unless Almighty God draws them to him. Jesus is no longer the
way into the
Holiest, but the Eternal Father is made the means to an end
beyond
himself.
* Voysey.
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For this
fifth reason, more than for anything else, we reject this
gospel with
the most passionate earnestness, with the most burning
indignation,
as an insult to the One Father of spirits, the ultimate
Object of all
faith and hope and love.
And who is
this who thus dethrones our heavenly Father? It is not even
the Jesus
whose fair moral beauty has exacted our hearty admiration. To
worship _him_
would be an idolatry, but to worship him--were he such as
"John"
describes him--would be an idolatry as degrading as it would
be baseless.
For let us mark the character pourtrayed in this fourth
gospel. His
public career begins with an undignified miracle: at a
marriage,
where the wine runs short, he turns water into wine, in order
to supply men
who have already "well drunk" (ch. ii. 10). [We may ask,
in passing,
what led Mary to expect a miracle, when we are told that
this was the
first, and she could not, therefore, know of her son's
gifts.] The
next important point is the conversation with Nicodemus,
where we
scarcely knew which to marvel at most, the stolid stupidity
of a
"Master in Israel" misunderstanding a metaphor that must have been
familiar to
him, or the aggressive way in which Jesus speaks as to the
non-reception
of his message before he had been in public many months,
and as to
non-belief in his person before belief had become possible.
We then come
to the series of discourses related in ch. v. 10.
Perfect
egotism pervades them all; in all appear the same strange
misunderstandings
on the part of the people, the same strange
persistence
in puzzling them on the part of the speaker. In one of them
the people
honestly wonder at his mysterious words: "How is it that he
saith, I come
down from heaven," and, instead of any explanation, Jesus
retorts that
they should not murmur, since no man _can_ come to him
unless the
Father draw him; so that, when he puts forward a statement
apparently
contrary to fact--"his father and mother we know," say the
puzzled
Jews--he refuses to explain it, and falls back on his favourite
doctrine:
"Unless you are of those favoured ones whom God enlightens,
you cannot
expect to understand me." Little wonder indeed that "many
of his
disciples walked no more with" a teacher so perplexing and so
discouraging;
with one who presented for their belief a mysterious
doctrine,
contrary to their experience, and then, in answer to their
prayer for
enlightenment, taunts them with an ignorance he admits was
unavoidable.
The next important conversation occurs in the temple,
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and here
Jesus, the friend of sinners, the bringer of hope to the
despairing--this
Jesus has no tenderness for some who "believed on him;"
he ruthlessly
tramples on the bruised reed and quenches the smoking
flax. First
he irritates their Jewish pride with accusations of slavery
and low
descent; then, groping after his meaning, they exclaim, "We have
one Father,
even God," and he--whom we know as the tenderest preacher
of that
Father's universal love--surely he gladly catches at their
struggling
appreciation of his favourite topic, and fans the hopeful
spark into a
flame? Yes! Jesus of Nazareth would have done so. But
Jesus,
"according to St. John," turns fiercely on them, denying the
sonship he
elsewhere proclaims, and retorts, "Ye are of your father,
the
devil." And this to men who "believed on him;" this from lips
which
said,
"_One_ is your Father," and He, in heaven. He argues next with the
Pharisees, and
we find him arrogantly exclaiming: "_all_ that ever came
before me
were thieves and robbers." What, all? Moses and Elijah, Isaiah
and all the
prophets? At length, after he has once more repulsed some
inquirers,
the Jews take up stones to stone him, as Moses commanded,
because
"thou makest thyself God." He escapes by a clever evasion, which
neutralises
all his apparent assertions of Divinity. "Other men have
been called
gods, so surely I do not blaspheme by calling myself God's
son."
Never let us forget that in this gospel, the stronghold of the
Divinity of
Jesus, Jesus himself explains his strongest assertion "I and
my Father are
one" in a manner which can only be honest in the mouth of
a man.* We
pass to the celebrated "last discourse." In this we find
the same
peculiar style, the same self-assertion, but we must note,
in addition,
the distinct tritheism which pervades it. There are
three
distinct Beings, each necessarily deprived of some attribute of
Divinity:
thus, the Deity is Infinite, but if He is divided He becomes
finite, since
two Infinites are an impossible absurdity, and unless
they are
identical they must bound each other, so becoming finite.
Accordingly
"the Comforter" cannot be present till Jesus departs,
therefore
neither Jesus nor the Comforter can be God, since God is
omnipresent.
Since, then, prayer is to be addressed to Jesus as God,
the low
theory of tri-theism, of a plurality of Gods, none of whom is
a perfect
God, is here taught. In this discourse, also, the Christian
horizon is
bounded by the figure of Jesus, the office of the Comforter
is
sub-servient to this one worship, "he shall glorify me." Jesus, at
last, prays
for his disciples, markedly excluding from his intercession
"the
world" he was said to have come to save, and, as throughout this
gospel,
restricting all his love, all his care, all his tenderness to
"these,
whom Thou hast given me." Here we come to the essence of the
spirit which
pervades this whole gospel. "I pray for them; I pray not
for the
world: not for them who are of their father the devil, nor for
my betrayer,
the son of perdition." This is the spirit which Christians
dare to
ascribe to Jesus of Nazareth, the tenderest, gentlest,
widest-hearted
man who has yet graced humanity. This is the spirit, they
tell us,
which dwelt in _his_ bosom, who gave us the parables of the
lost sheep
and the prodigal son. "No," we answer, "this is not the
spirit of the
Prophet of Nazareth, but" (Dr. Liddon will pardon the
appropriation)
"this is the temper of a man who will not enter the
public baths
along with the heretic who has dishonoured his Lord."
* "For a good work we stone thee not,
but for blasphemy;
and because that thou being a man makest
thyself God." Jesus
answered them, "Is it not written in
your law, I said, ye
are gods? If he called them gods unto whom
the word of God
came (and the scripture cannot be broken),
say ye of him
whom the Father hath sanctified and sent
into the world,
Thou blasphemest, because I said I am the
son of God?"
This is the
spirit of the writer of the gospel, not of Jesus: the
egotism of
the writer is reflected in the words put into the mouth of
his master;
and thus the preacher of the Father's love is degraded into
the seeker of
his own glory, and bearing witness of himself, his witness
becomes
untrue. I must also draw attention to one or two cases of
unreality
attributed to Jesus by this gospel. He prays, on one occasion,
"because
of the people who stand by:" he cries on his cross, "I thirst,"
not because
of the burning agony of crucifixion, but in order "that
the
Scriptures might be fulfilled:" a voice answers "his prayer,"
"not
because of
me, but for your sakes." This calculation of effect is very
foreign to
the sincere and open spirit of Jesus. Akin to this is the
prevarication
attributed to him, when he declines to accompany his
brethren to
Judaea, but "when his brethren were gone up then went he
also up to
the feast, not openly but as it were in secret." All this
strikes us
strangely as part of that simple, fearless life.
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We reject
this gospel, sixthly, for the cruel spirit, the arrogance, the
self-assertion,
the bigotry, the unreality, attributed by it to Jesus,
and we
denounce it as a slander on his memory and an insult to his noble
life.
We may,
perhaps, note, as another peculiarity of this gospel--although I
do not enter
here into the argument of the divinity of Jesus,--that when
Dr. Liddon,
in his celebrated Bampton Lectures, is anxious to prove
the Deity of
Jesus _from his own mouth_, he is compelled to quote
exclusively
from this gospel. Such a fact as this cannot be overlooked,
when we
remember that "St. John's gospel is a polemical treatise"
written to
prove this special point. We cannot avoid noting the
coincidence.
We have now
gone through this remarkable record and examined it in
various
lights. At the outset we conceded to our opponents all the
advantage
which comes from admitting that the gospel _may_ be written
by the
Apostle John; we have left the authorship a moot point, and
based our
argument on a different ground. Apostolic or non-apostolic,
Johannine or
Corinthian, we accept it or reject it for itself, and not
for its
writer. We have found that all its characters speak alike in a
marked and
peculiar style--a style savouring of the study rather than
the street,
of Alexandria rather than Jerusalem or Galilee. We
have glanced
at its immoral partiality. We have noted the numerous
discrepancies
between the history of this gospel and that of the three
synoptics. We
have discovered it to be equally opposed to them in morals
as in
history: in doctrine as in morals. We have seen that, while it
degrades God
to enthrone Jesus in His stead, it also degrades Jesus,
and so lowers
his character that it defies recognition. Finally, we
have found it
stands alone in supporting the Deity of Jesus from his own
mouth.
I know not
how all this may strike others; to me these arguments are
simply
overwhelming in their force. I tear out the "Gospel according to
St.
John" from the writings which "are profitable" "for
instruction
in
righteousness." I reject it from beginning to end, as fatally
destructive
of all true faith towards God, as perilously subversive of
all true
morality in man, as an outrage on the sacred memory of Jesus of
Nazareth, and
as an insult to the Justice, the Supremacy, and the Unity
of Almighty
God.
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ON THE
ATONEMENT.
THE Atonement
may be regarded as the central doctrine of Christianity,
the very
_raison d'être_ of the Christian faith. Take this away, and
there would
remain indeed a faith and a morality, but both would have
lost their
distinctive features: it would be a faith without its
centre, and a
morality without its foundation. Christianity would be
unrecognisable
without its angry God, its dying Saviour, its covenant
signed with
"the blood of the Lamb:" the blotting out of the Atonement
would deprive
millions of all hope towards God, and would cast them
from
satisfaction into anxiety from comfort into despair. The warmest
feelings of
Christendom cluster round the Crucifix, and he, the
crucified
one, is adored with passionate devotion, not as martyr for
truth, not as
witness for God, not as faithful to death, but as the
substitute
for his worshippers, as he who bears in their stead the wrath
of God, and
the punishment due to sin. The Christian is taught to see in
the bleeding Christ
the victim slain in his own place; he himself should
be hanging on
that cross, agonised and dying; those nail-pierced hands
ought to be
his; the anguish on that face should be furrowed on his own;
the weight of
suffering resting on that bowed head should be crushing
himself inta
the dust. In the simplest meaning of the words, Christ is
the sinner's
substitute, and on him the sin of the world is laid: as
Luther
expressed it, he "is the greatest and only sinner;" literally
"made
sin" for mankind, and expiating the guilt which, in very deed, was
transferred
from man to-him.
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I wish at the
outset, for the sake of justice and candour, to
acknowledge
frankly the good which has been drawn forth by the preaching
of the Cross.
This good has been, however, the indirect rather than the
direct result
of a belief in the Atonement. The doctrine, in itself, has
nothing
elevating about it, but the teaching closely connected with
the doctrine
has its ennobling and purifying side. All the enthusiasm
aroused in
the human breast by the thought of one who sacrificed himself
to save his
brethren, all the consequent longing to emulate that love by
sacrificing
all for Jesus and for those for whom he died, all the moral
gain caused
by the contemplation of a sublime self-devotion, all these
are the fruits
of the nobler side of the Atonement. That the sinless
should stoop
to the sinful, that holiness should embrace the guilty in
order to
raise them to its own level, has struck a chord in men's bosoms
which has
responded to the touch by a harmonious melody of gratitude
to the divine
and sinless sufferer, and loving labour for suffering and
sinful man.
The Cross has been at once the apotheosis and the source of
self-sacrificing
love. "Love ye one another _as_ I have loved you: not
in word but
in deed, with a deep self-sacrificing love:" such is the
lesson which,
according to one of the most orthodox Anglican divines,
"Christ
preaches to us from His Cross." In believing in the Atonement,
man's heart
has, as usual, been better than his head; he has passed over
the dark side
of the idea, and has seized on the divine truth that the
strong should
gladly devote themselves to shield the weak, that labour,
even unto
death, is the right of humanity from every son of man. It is
often said
that no doctrine long retains its hold on men's hearts which
is not
founded on some great truth; this divine idea of self-sacrifice
has been the
truth contained in the doctrine of the Atonement, which has
made it so
dear to many loving and noble souls, and which has hidden its
"multitude
of sins"--sins against love and against justice, against God
and against
man. Love and self-sacrifice have floated the great error
over the
storms of centuries, and these cords still bind to it many
hearts of
which love and self-sacrifice are the glory and the crown.
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This said, in
candi d'homage to the good which has drawn its inspiration
from Jesus
crucified, we turn to the examination of the doctrine itself:
if we find
that it is as dishonouring to God as it is injurious to man,
a crime
against justice, a blasphemy against love, we must forget all
the sentiments
which cluster round it, and reject it utterly. It is well
to speak
respectfully of that which is dear to any religious soul,
and to avoid
jarring harshly on the strings of religious feeling, even
though the
soul be misled and the feeling be misdirected; but a time
comes when
false charity is cruelty, and tenderness to error is treason
to truth. For
long, men who know its emptiness pass by in silence the
shrine
consecrated by human hopes and fears, by love and worship, and
the
"times of this ignorance God (in the bold figure of Paul) also winks
at;" but
when "the fulness of the time is come," God sends forth some
true son of
his to dash the idol to the ground, and to trample it into
dust. We need
not be afraid that the good wrought by the lessons derived
from the
Atonement in time past will disappear with the doctrine itself;
the mark of
the Cross is too deeply ploughed into humanity ever to be
erased, and
those who no longer call themselves by the name of Christ
are not the
most backward scholars in the school of love and sacrifice.
-------Cardiff Theosophical Society in Wales-------
206 Newport Road, Cardiff, Wales, UK CF24-1DL
The history
of this doctrine has been a curious one. In the New
Testament the
Atonement is, as its name implies, a simply making at one
God and man:
_how_ this is done is but vaguely hinted at, and in order
to deduce the
modern doctrine from the Bible, we must import into
the books of
the New Testament all the ideas derived from theological
disputations.
Words used in all simplicity by the ancient writers must
have attached
to them the definite polemical meaning they hold in the
quarrels of
theologians, before they can be strained into supporting a
substitutionary
atonement. The idea, however, of "ransom" is connected
with the work
of Jesus, and the question arose, "to whom is this ransom
paid?"
They who lived in those first centuries of Christianity were
still too
much within the illumination of the tender halo thrown by
Jesus round
the Father's name, to dream for a moment that their redeemer
had ransomed
them from the beloved hands of God. No, the ransom was paid
to the devil,
whose thrall they believed mankind to be, and Jesus, by
sacrificing
himself, had purchased them from the devil and made them
sons of God.
It is not worth while to enter on the quaint details of
this scheme,
how the devil thought he had conquered and could hold Jesus
captive, and
was tricked by finding that his imagined gain could not
be retained
by him, and so on. Those who wish to become acquainted
with this
ingenious device can study it in the pages of the Christian
fathers: it
has at least one advantage over the modern plan, namely,
that we are
not so shocked at hearing of pain and suffering as
acceptable to
the supposed incarnate evil, as at hearing of them being
offered as a
sacrifice to the supreme good. As the teaching of Jesus
lost its
power, and became more and more polluted by the cruel thoughts
of savage and
bigoted men, the doctrine of the atonement gradually
changed its
character. Men thought the Almighty to be such a one as
themselves,
and being fierce and unforgiving and revengeful, they
projected
their own shadows on to the clouds which surrounded the
Deity, and
then, like the shepherd who meets his own form reflected
and magnified
on the mountain mist, they recoiled before the image they
themselves
had made. The loving Father who sent his son to rescue his
perishing
children by sacrificing himself, fades away from the hearts of
the Christian
world, and there looms darkly in his place an awful form,
the
inexorable judge who exacts a debt man is too poor to pay, and who,
in default of
payment, casts the debtor into a hopeless prison, hopeless
unless
another pays to the uttermost farthing the fine demanded by the
law. So, in
this strange transformation-scene God actually takes the
place of the
devil, and the ransom once paid to redeem men from Satan
becomes the
ransom paid to redeem men from God. It reminds one of the
quarrels over
the text which bids us "fear him who is able to destroy
both body and
soul in hell," when we remain in doubt whom he is we are
to fear,
since half the Christian commentators assure us that it refers
to our Father
in heaven, while the other half asseverate that the devil
is the
individual we are to dread. The seal was set on the "redemption
scheme"
by Anselm in his great work, "_Cur Deus Homo_" and the doctrine
which had
been slowly growing into the theology of Christendom was
thenceforward
stamped with the signet of the Church. Roman Catholics
and
Protestants, at the time of the Reformation, alike believed in the
vicarious and
substitutionary character of the atonement wrought by
Christ. There
is no dispute between them on this point. I prefer to
allow the
Christian divines to speak for themselves as to the character
of the
atonement: no one can accuse me of exaggerating their views, if
their views
are given in their own words. Luther teaches that "Christ
did truly and
effectually feel for all mankind, the wrath of God,
malediction
and death." Flavel says that "to wrath, to the wrath of an
infinite God
without mixture, to the very torments of hell, was Christ
delivered,
and that by the hand of his own father." The Anglican homily
preaches that
"sin did pluck God out of heaven to make him feel the
horrors and
pains of death," and that man, being a firebrand of hell and
a bondsman of
the devil, "was ransomed by the death of his own only and
well-beloved
son;" the "heat of his wrath," "his burning wrath,"
could only be
"pacified" by Jesus, "so pleasant was this sacrifice and
oblation of
his son's death." Edwards, being logical, saw that there was
a gross
injustice in sin being twice punished, and in the pains of
hell, the
penalty of sin, being twice inflicted, first on Christ, the
substitute of
mankind, and then on the lost, a portion of mankind. So
he, in common
with most Calvinists, finds himself compelled to restrict
the atonement
to the elect, and declared that Christ bore the sins, not
of the world,
but of the chosen out of the world; he suffers "not for
the world,
but for them whom Thou hast given me." But Edwards adheres
firmly to the
belief in substitution, and rejects the universal
atonement for
the very reason that "to believe Christ died for all is
the surest
way of proving that he died for none in the sense Christians
have hitherto
believed." He declares that "Christ suffered the wrath of
God for men's
sins;" that "God imposed his wrath due unto, and Christ
underwent the
pains of hell for," sin. Owen regards Christ's sufferings
as "a
full valuable compensation to the justice of God for all the sins"
of the elect,
and says that he underwent "that same punishment which....
they
themselves were bound to undergo."
-------Cardiff Theosophical Society in Wales-------
206 Newport Road, Cardiff, Wales, UK CF24-1DL
The doctrine
of the Christian Church--in the widest sense of that
much-fought-over
term--was then as follows, and I will state it in
language
which is studiously moderate, _as compared with the orthodox
teaching_ of
the great Christian divines. If any one doubts this
assertion,
let him study their writings for himself. I really dare
not transfer
some of their expressions to my own pages. God the Father
having cursed
mankind and condemned them to eternal damnation, because
of Adam's
disobedience in eating an apple--or some other fruit, for the
species is
only preserved by tradition, and is not definitely settled
by the
inspired writings--and having further cursed each man for his own
individual
transgressions, man lay under the fierce wrath of God, unable
to escape,
and unable to pacify it, for he could not even atone for his
own private
sins, much less for his share of the guilt incurred by his
forefather in
Paradise. Man's debt was hopelessly large, and he had
"nothing
to pay;" so all that remained to him was to suffer an eternity
of torture,
which sad fate he had merited by the crime of being born
into an
accursed world. The second person of the Trinity moved to pity
by the
helpless and miserable state of mankind, interposed between the
first person
of the Trinity and the wretched sinners; he received into
his own
breast the fire-tipped arrows of divine wrath, and by suffering
inconceivable
tortures, equal in amount to an eternity of the torments
of hell, he
wrung from God's hands the pardon of mankind, or of a
portion
thereof. God, pacified by witnessing this awful agony of one who
had from all
eternity been "lying in his bosom" co-equal sharer of his
Majesty and
glory, and the object of his tenderest love, relents
from his
fierce wrath, and consents to accept the pain of Jesus as
a substitute
for the pain of mankind. In plain terms, then, God is
represented
as a Being so awfully cruel, so implacably revengeful,
that pain
_as_ pain, and death _as_ death, are what he demands as a
propitiatory
sacrifice, and with nothing less than extremest agony can
his fierce
claims on mankind be bought off. The due weight of suffering
he must have,
but it is a matter of indifference whether it is undergone
by Jesus or
by mankind. Did not the old Fathers do well in making the
awful ransom
a matter between Jesus and the devil?
-------Cardiff Theosophical Society in Wales-------
206 Newport Road, Cardiff, Wales, UK CF24-1DL
When this
point is pressed on Christians, and one urges the dishonour
done to God
by painting him in colours from which heart and soul recoil
in shuddering
horror, by ascribing to him a revengefulness and pitiless
cruelty in
comparison with which the worst efforts of human malignity
appear but
childish mischief, they are quick to retort that we are
caricaturing
Christian doctrine; they will allow, when overwhelmed with
evidence,
that "strong language" has been used in past centuries, but
will say that
such views are not now held, and that they do not ascribe
such harsh
dealing to God the Father. Theists are therefore compelled to
prove each
step of their accusation, and to quote from Christian writers
the words
which embody the views they assail. Were I simply to state
that
Christians in these days ascribe to Almighty God a fierce wrath
against the
whole human race, that this wrath can only be soothed by
suffering and
death, that he vents this wrath on an innocent head, and
that he is
well pleased by the sight of the agony of his beloved Son,
a shout of
indignation would rise from a thousand lips, and I should be
accused of
exaggeration, of false witness, of blasphemy. So once more I
write down
the doctrine from Christian dictation, and, be it remembered,
the sentences
I quote are from published works, and are therefore, the
outcome of
serious deliberation; they are not overdrawn pictures taken
from the
fervid eloquence of excited oratory, when the speaker may
perhaps be
carried further than he would, in cold blood, consent to.
-------Cardiff Theosophical Society in Wales-------
206 Newport Road, Cardiff, Wales, UK CF24-1DL
Stroud makes
Christ drink "the cup of the wrath of God." Jenkyn says,
"he
suffered as one disowned and reprobated and forsaken of God." Dwight
considers
that he endured God's "hatred and contempt." Bishop Jeune
tells us that
"after man had done his worst, worse remained for Christ
to bear. He
had fallen into his father's hands." Archbishop Thomson
preaches that
"the clouds of God's wrath gathered thick over the whole
human race:
they discharged themselves on Jesus only;" he "becomes a
curse for us,
and a vessel of wrath." Liddon echoes the same sentiment:
"the
apostles teach that mankind are slaves, and that Christ on the
Cross is
paying their ransom. Christ crucified is voluntarily devoted
and accursed:"
he even speaks of "the precise amount of ignominy and
pain needed
for the redemption," and says that the "divine victim" paid
more than was
absolutely necessary.
These
quotations seem sufficient to prove that the Christians of the
present day
are worthy followers of the elder believers. The theologians
first quoted
are indeed coarser in their expressions, and are less
afraid of
speaking out exactly what they believe, but there is no
real
difference of creed between the awful doctrine of Flavel and the
polished
dogma of Canon Liddon. The older and the modern Christians
alike believe
in the bitter wrath of God against "the whole human race."
Both alike
regard the Atonement as so much pain tendered by Jesus to the
Almighty
Father in payment of a debt of pain owed to God by humanity.
They alike
represent God as only to be pacified by the sight of
suffering.
Man has insulted and injured God, and God must be revenged by
inflicting
suffering on the sinner in return. The "hatred and contempt"
God launched
at Jesus were due to the fact that Jesus was the sinner's
substitute,
and are therefore the feelings which animate the Divine
heart towards
the sinner himself. God hates and despises the world. He
would have
"consumed it in a moment" in the fire of his burning wrath,
had not
Jesus, "his chosen, stood before him in the gap to turn away his
wrathful
indignation."
-------Cardiff Theosophical Society in Wales-------
206 Newport Road, Cardiff, Wales, UK CF24-1DL
Now, how far
is all this consistent with justice? Is the wrath of God
against
humanity justified by the circumstances of the case, so that we
may be
obliged to own that some sacrifice was due from sinful man to his
Creator, to
propitiate a justly incensed and holy God? I trow not. On
this first
count, the Atonement is a fearful injustice. For God has
allowed men
to be brought into the world with sinful inclinations, and
to be
surrounded with many temptations and much evil. He has made
man
imperfect, and the child is born into the world with an imperfect
nature. It is
radically unjust, then, that God should curse the work
of His hands
for being what He made them, and condemn them to endless
misery for
failing to do the impossible. Allowing that Christians are
right in
believing that Adam was sinless when he came from his Maker's
hands, these
remarks apply to every other living soul since born into
the world;
the Genesis myth will not extricate Christians from the
difficulty.
Christians are quite right and are justified by facts when
they say that
man is born into the world frail, imperfect, prone to sin
and error;
but who, we ask them, made men so? Does not their own Bible
tell them
that the "potter hath power over the clay," and, further, that
"we are
the clay and thou art the potter?" To curse men for being men,
_i.e._,
imperfect moral beings, is the height of cruelty and injustice;
to condemn
the morally weak to hell for sin, _i.e._, for failing in
moral
strength, is about as fair as sentencing a sick man to death
because he
cannot stand upright. Christians try and avoid the force of
this by
saying that men should rely on God's grace to uphold them, but
they fail to
see that this _very want of reliance_ is part of man's
natural
weakness. The sick man might be blamed for falling because he
did not lean
on a stronger arm, but suppose he was too weak to grasp
it? Further,
few Christians believe that it is impossible in practice,
however
possible in theory, to lead a perfect life; and as to "offend in
one point is
to be guilty of all," one failure is sufficient to send the
generally
righteous man to hell. Besides, they forget that infants are
included
under the curse, although _necessarily_ incapable of grasping
the idea
either of sin or of God; all babies born into the world and
dying before
becoming capable of acting for themselves would, we are
taught, have
been inevitably consigned to hell, had it not been for the
Atonement of
Jesus. Some Christians actually believe that unbaptized
babies are
not admitted into heaven, and in a Roman Catholic book
descriptive
of hell, a poor little baby writhes and screams in a red-hot
oven.
-------Cardiff Theosophical Society in Wales-------
206 Newport Road, Cardiff, Wales, UK CF24-1DL
This side of
the Atonement, this unjust demand on men for a
righteousness
they could not render, necessitating a sacrifice to
propitiate
God for non-compliance with his exaction, has had its due
effect on
men's minds, and has alienated their hearts from God. No
wonder that
men turned away from a God who, like a passionate but
unskilful
workman, dashes to pieces the instrument he has made because
it fails in
its purpose, and, instead of blaming his own want of skill,
vents his
anger on the helpless thing that is only what he made it.
Most
naturally, also, have men shrunk from the God who "avengeth and
is
furious" to the tender, pitiful, human Jesus, who loved sinners
so deeply as
to choose to suffer for their sakes. They could owe no
gratitude to
an Almighty Being who created them and cursed them, and
only
consented to allow them to be happy on condition that another paid
for them the
misery he demanded as his due; but what gratitude could
be enough for
him who rescued them from the fearful hands of the living
God, at the
cost of almost intolerable suffering to himself? Let us
remember that
Christ is said to suffer the very torments of hell, and
that his
worst sufferings were when "fallen into his father's hands,"
out of which
he has rescued us, and then can we wonder that the
crucified is
adored with a very ecstasy of gratitude? Imagine what it is
to be saved
from the hands of him who inflicted an agony admitted to be
unlimited,
and who took advantage of an infinite capacity in order to
inflict an
infinite pain. It is well for the men before whose eyes this
awful spectre
has flitted that the fair humanity of Jesus gives them a
refuge to fly
to, else what but despair and madness could have been the
doom of those
who, without Jesus, would have seen enthroned above the
wailing
universe naught but an infinite cruelty and an Almighty foe.
-------Cardiff Theosophical Society in Wales-------
206 Newport Road, Cardiff, Wales, UK CF24-1DL
We see, then,
that the necessity for an atonement makes the Eternal
Father both
unjust in his demands on men and cruel in his punishment of
inevitable
failure; but there is another injustice which is of the
very essence
of the Atonement itself. This consists in the vicarious
character of
the sacrifice: a new element of injustice is introduced
when we
consider that the person sacrificed is not even the guilty
party. If a
man offends against law, justice requires that he should be
punished: the
punishment becomes unjust if it is excessive, as in the
case we have
been considering above; but it is equally unjust to allow
him to go
free without punishment. Christians are right in affirming
that moral
government would be at an end were men allowed to sin with
impunity, and
did an easy forgiveness succeed to each offence. They
appeal to our
instinctive sense of justice to-approve the sentiment that
punishment
should follow sin: we acquiesce, and hope that we have now
reached a
firm standing-ground from which to proceed further in our
investigation.
But, no; they promptly outrage that same sense of justice
which they
have called as a witness on their side, by asking us to
believe that
its ends are attained provided that somebody or other is
punished.
When we reply that _this_ is not justice, we are promptly
bidden not to
be presumptuous and argue from our human ideas of justice
as to the
course that ought to be pursued by the absolute justice of
God.
"Then why appeal to it at all?" we urge; "why talk of justice in
the matter if
we are totally unable to judge as to the rights and wrongs
of the
case?" At this point we are commonly overwhelmed with Paul's
notable
argument--"Nay, but, O man, who art thou that repliest against
God?"
But if Christians value the simplicity and straightforwardness
of their own
minds, they should not use words which convey a certain
accepted
meaning in this shuffling, double sense. When we speak of
"justice,"
we speak of a certain well-understood quality, and we do not
speak of a
mysterious divine attribute, which has not only nothing in
common with
human justice, but which is in direct opposition to that
which we
understand by that name. Suppose a man condemned to death for
murder: the
judge is about to sentence him, when a bystander--as it
chances, the
judge's own son--interposes: "My Lord, the prisoner is
guilty and
deserves to be hanged; but if you will let him go, I will
die in his
place." The offer is accepted, the prisoner is set free, the
judge's son
is hanged in his stead. What is all this? Self-sacrifice
(however
misdirected), love, enthusiasm--what you will; but certainly
not
_justice_--nay, the grossest injustice, a second murder, an
ineffaceable
stain on the ermine of the outraged law. I imagine that,
in this
supposed case, no Christian will be found to assert that justice
was done; yet
call the judge God, the prisoner mankind, the substitute
Jesus, and
the trial scene is exactly reproduced. Then, in the name of
candour and
common sense, why call that just in God which we see would
be so unjust
and immoral in man? This vicarious nature of the Atonement
also degrades
the divine name, by making him utterly careless in
the matter of
punishment: all he is anxious for, according to this
detestable
theory, is that he should strike a blow _somewhere_. Like
a child in a
passion, he only feels the desire to hurt somebody, and
strikes out
vaguely and at random. There is no discrimination used;
the
thunderbolt is launched into a crowd: it falls on the head of the
"sinless
son," and crushes the innocent, while the sinner goes
free. What
matter? It has fallen somewhere, and the "burning fire of
his-wrath"
is cooled. This is what men call the vindication of the
justice of
the Moral Governor of the universe: this is "the act of
God's awful
holiness," which marks his hatred of sin, and his immovable
determination
to punish it. But when we reflect that this justice
is consistent
with letting off the guilty and punishing the innocent
person, we
feel dread misgivings steal into our minds. The justice of
our Moral
Governor has nothing in common with our justice--indeed, it
violates all
our notions of right and wrong.
What if, as
Mr. Vance Smith suggests, this strange justice be consistent
also with a
double punishment of sin; and what if the Moral Governor
should
bethink himself that, having confused
morality by an
unjust--humanly
speaking, of course--punishment, it would be well to
set things
straight again by punishing the guilty after all?
-------Cardiff Theosophical Society in Wales-------
206 Newport Road, Cardiff, Wales, UK CF24-1DL
We can never
dare to feel safe in the hands of this
unjust--humanly
speaking--Moral Governor, or predicate
from our
instinctive notions of right and wrong what his requirements
may be. One
is lost in astonishment that men should believe such things
of God, and
not have manhood enough to rise up rebellious against such
injustice--should,
instead, crouch at his feet, and while trying to hide
themselves
from his wrath should force their trembling lips to murmur
some
incoherent acknowledgment of his mercy. Ah! they do not believe it;
they assert
it in words, but, thank God, it makes no impression on their
hearts; and
they would die a thousand deaths rather than imitate, in
their
dealings with their fellow-men, the fearful cruelty which the
Church has
taught them to call the justice of the Judge of all the
earth.
The Atonement
is not only doubly unjust, but it is perfectly futile. We
are told that
Christ took away the sins of the world; we have a right to
ask,
"how?" So far as we can judge, we bear our sins in our own bodies
still, and
the Atonement helps us not at all. Has he borne the physical
consequences
of sin, such as the loss of health caused by intemperance
of all kinds?
Not at all, this penalty remains, and, from the nature
of things,
cannot be transferred. Has he borne the social consequences,
shame, loss
of credit, and so on? They remain still to hinder us as
we strive to
rise after our fall. Has he at least borne the pangs of
remorse for
us, the stings of conscience? By no means; the tears of
sorrow are no
less bitter, the prickings of repentance no less keen.
Perhaps he
has struck at the root of evil, and has put away sin itself
out of a
redeemed world? Alas! the wailing that goes up to heaven from a
world
oppressed with sin weeps out a sorrowfully emphatic, "no, this
he has _not_
done." What has he then borne for us? Nothing, save the
phantom wrath
of a phantom tyrant; all that is real exists the same as
before. We
turn away, then, from the offered atonement with a feeling
that would be
impatience at such trifling, were it not all too
sorrowful, and
leave the Christians to impose on their imagined
sacrifice,
the imagined burden of the guilt of the accursed race.
-------Cardiff Theosophical Society in Wales-------
206 Newport Road, Cardiff, Wales, UK CF24-1DL
Further, the
Atonement is, from the nature of things, entirely
impossible:
we have seen how Christ fails to bear our sins in any
intelligible
sense, but can he, in any way, bear the "punishment" of
sin? The idea
that the punishment of sin can be transferred from one
person to
another is radically false, and arises from a wrong conception
of the
punishment consequent on sin, and from the ecclesiastical guilt,
so to speak,
thought to be incurred thereby. _The only true punishment
of sin is the
injury caused by it to our moral nature_: all the indirect
punishments,
we have seen, Christ has not taken away, and the true
punishment
can fall only on ourselves. For sin is nothing more than the
transgression
of law. All law, when broken, entails _of necessity_ an
appropriate
penalty, and recoils, as it were, on the transgressor. A
natural law,
when broken, avenges itself by consequent suffering, and so
does a
spiritual law: the injury wrought by the latter is not less
real,
although less obvious. Physical sin brings physical suffering;
spiritual,
moral, mental sin brings each its own appropriate punishment.
"Sin"
has become such a cant term that we lose sight, in using it, of
its real
simple meaning, a breaking of law. Imagine any sane man coming
and saying,
"My dear friend; if you like to put your hand into the fire
I will bear
the punishment of being burnt, and you shall not suffer." It
is quite as
absurd to imagine that if I sin Jesus can bear my consequent
suffering. If
a man lies habitually, for instance, he grows thoroughly
untrue: let
him repent ever so vigorously, he must bear the consequences
of his past
deeds, and fight his way back slowly to truthfulness of
word and
thought: no atonement, nothing in heaven or earth save his own
labour, will
restore to him the forfeited jewel of instinctive candour.
Thus the
"punishment" of untruthfulness is the loss of the power of
being true,
just as the punishment of putting the hand into the fire is
the loss of
the power of grasping. But in addition to this simple and
most just and
natural "retribution," theologians have invented certain
arbitrary
penalties as a punishment of sin, the wrath of God and hell
fire. These
imaginary penalties are discharged by an equally imaginary
atonement,
the natural punishment remaining as before; so after all we
only reject
the two sets of inventions which balance each other, and
find
ourselves just in the same position as they are, having gained
infinitely in
simplicity and naturalness. The punishment of sin is not
an arbitrary
penalty, but an inevitable sequence: Jesus may bear, if his
worshippers
will have it so, the theological fiction of the "guilt of
sin," an
idea derived from the ceremonial uncleanness of the Levitical
law, but let
him leave alone the solemn realities connected with the
sacred and
immutable laws of God.
-------Cardiff Theosophical Society in Wales-------
206 Newport Road, Cardiff, Wales, UK CF24-1DL
Doubly
unjust, useless, and impossible, it might be deemed a work of
supererogation
to argue yet further against the Atonement; but its hold
on men's
minds is too firm to allow us to lay down a single weapon which
can be turned
against it. So, in addition to these defects, I remark
that, viewed
as a propitiatory sacrifice to Almighty God, it is
thoroughly inadequate.
If God, being righteous, as we believe Him to be,
regarded man
with anger because of man's sinfulness, what is obviously
the required
propitiation? Surely the removal of the cause of anger,
_i.e._, of
sin itself, and the seeking by man of righteousness. The old
Hebrew
prophet saw this plainly, and his idea of atonement is the
true one:
"wherewith shall I come before the Lord," he is asked, with
burnt-offerings
or--choicer still--parental anguish over a first-born's
corpse?
"What doth the Lord require of thee," is the reproving answer,
"but to
do justly and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God?"
But what is
the propitiatory element in the Christian Atonement?
let Canon
Liddon answer: "the ignominy and pain _needed_ for the
redemption."
Ignominy, agony, blood, death, these are what Christians
offer up as
an acceptable sacrifice to the Spirit of Love. But what have
all these in
common with the demands of the Eternal Righteousness, and
how can pain
atone for sin? they have no relation to each other; there
is no
appropriateness in the offered exchange. These terrible offerings
are in
keeping with the barbarous ideas of uncivilized nations, and we
understand
the feelings which prompt the savage to immolate tortured
victims on
the altars of his gloomy gods; they are appropriate
sacrifices to
the foes of mankind, who are to be bought off from
injuring us
by our offering them an equivalent pain to that they desire
to inflict,
but they are offensive when given to Him who is the
Friend and
Lover of Humanity. An Atonement which offers suffering as
a
propitiation can have nothing in common with God's will for man, and
must be
utterly beside the mark, perfectly inadequate. If we must have
Atonement,
let it at least consist of something which will suit the
Righteousness
and Love of God, and be in keeping with his perfection;
let it not
borrow the language of ancient savagery, and breathe of blood
and dying
victims, and tortured human frames, racked with pain.
-------Cardiff Theosophical Society in Wales-------
206 Newport Road, Cardiff, Wales, UK CF24-1DL
Lastly, I
impeach the Atonement as injurious in several ways to human
morality. It
has been extolled as "meeting the needs of the awakened
sinner"
by soothing his fears of punishment with the gift of a
substitute
who has already suffered his sentence for him; but nothing
can be more
pernicious than to console a sinner with the promise that
he shall
escape the punishment he has justly deserved. The Atonement
may meet the
first superficial feelings of a man startled into the
consciousness
of his sinfulness, it may soothe the first vague fears and
act as an
opiate to the awakened conscience; but it does not fulfil the
cravings of a
heart deeply yearning after righteousness; it offers a
legal
justification to a soul which is longing for purity, it offers
freedom from
punishment to a soul longing for freedom from sin. The true
penitent does
not seek to be shielded from the consequences of his past
errors: he
accepts them meekly, bravely, humbly, learning through pain
the lesson of
future purity. An atonement which steps in between us and
this fatherly
discipline ordained by God, would be a curse and not a
blessing; it
would rob us of our education and deprive us of a priceless
instruction.
The force of temptation is fearfully added to by the idea
that
repentance lays the righteous penalty of transgression on another
head; this
doctrine gives a direct encouragement to sin, as even
Paul
perceived when he said, "shall we continue in sin that grace may
abound?"
Some one has remarked, I think, that though Paul ejaculates,
"God
forbid," his fears were well founded and have been widely realised.
To the
Atonement we owe the morbid sentiment which believes in the holy
death of a
ruffianly murderer, because, goaded by ungovernable terror,
he has
snatched at the offered safety and been "washed in the blood of
the
lamb." To it we owe the unwholesome glorying in the pious sentiments
of such an
one, who ought to go out of this life sadly and silently,
without a
sickening parade of feelings of love towards the God whose
laws, as long
as he could, he has broken and despised. But the Christian
teachers will
extol the "saving grace" which has made the felon die with
words of
joyful assurance, meet only for the lips of one who crowns
a saintly
life with a peaceful death. The Atonement has weakened that
stern
condemnation of sin which is the safeguard of purity; it has
softened down
moral differences, and placed the penitent above the
saint; it has
dulled the feeling of responsibility in the soul; it has
taken away
the help, such as it is, of fear of punishment for sin; it
has confused
man's sense of justice, outraged his feeling of right,
blunted his
conscience, and misdirected his repentance. It has chilled
his love to
God by representing the universal father as a cruel tyrant
and a
remorseless and unjust judge. It has been the fruitful parent of
all
asceticism, for, since God was pacified by suffering once, he would,
of course, be
pleased with suffering at all times, and so men have
logically
ruined their bodies to save their souls, and crushed their
feelings and
lacerated their hearts to propitiate the awful form
frowning
behind the cross of Christ. To the Atonement we owe it that God
is served by
fear instead of by love, that monasticism holds its head
above the
sweet sanctities of love and home, that religion is crowned
with thorns
and not with roses, that the _miserere_ and not the _gloria_
is the strain
from earth to heaven. The Atonement teaches men to crouch
at the feet
of God, instead of raising loving, joyful faces to meet his
radiant
smile; it shuts out his sunshine from us, and veils us in the
night of an
impenetrable dread. What is the sentiment with which Canon
Liddon closes
a sermon on the death of Christ? I quote it to show the
slavish
feeling engendered by this doctrine in a very noble human soul:
"In
ourselves, indeed, there is nothing that should stay His (God's)
arm or invite
his mercy. But may he have respect to the acts and the
sufferings of
his sinless son? Only while contemplating the inestimable
merits of the
Redeemer can we dare to hope that our heavenly Father will
overlook the
countless provocations which he receives at the hands of
the
redeemed." Is this a wholesome sentiment, either as regards our
feelings
towards God or our efforts towards holiness? Is it well to look
to the purity
of another as a makewight for our personal shortcomings?
All these
injuries to morality done by the atonement are completed
by the
crowning one, that it offers to the sinner a veil of "imputed
righteousness."
Not only does it take from him his saving punishment,
but it
nullifies his strivings after holiness by offering him a
righteousness
which is not his own. It introduces into the solemn
region of
duty to God the legal fiction of a gift of holiness, which is
imputed, not
won. We are taught to believe that we can blind the eyes
of God and
satisfy him with a pretended purity. But that every one whose
purity we
seek to claim as ours, that fair blossom of humanity, Jesus
of Nazareth,
whose mission we so misconstrue, launched his anathema at
whited
sepulchres, pure without and foul within. What would he have said
of the
whitewash of unimputed righteousness? Stern and sharp would have
been his
rebuke, methinks, to a device so untrue, and well-deserved
would have
been his thundered "woe" on a hypocrisy that would fain
deceive God
as well as man.
-------Cardiff Theosophical Society in Wales-------
206 Newport Road, Cardiff, Wales, UK CF24-1DL
These
considerations have carried so great a weight with the most
enlightened
and progressive minds among Christians themselves, that
there has
grown up a party in the Church whose repudiation of an
atonement of
agony and death is as complete as even we could wish.
They denounce
with the utmost fervour the hideous notion of a "bloody
sacrifice,"
and are urgent in their representations of the dishonour
done to God
by ascribing to him "pleasure in the death of him that
dieth,"
or satisfaction in the sight of pain. They point out that there
is no virtue
in blood to wash away sin, not even "in the blood of a
God."
Maurice eloquently pleads against the idea that the suffering
of the
"well-beloved Son" was in itself an acceptable sacrifice to the
Almighty
Father, and he sees the atoning element in the "holiness and
graciousness
of the Son." Writers of this school perceive that a moral
and not a
physical sacrifice can be the only acceptable offering to the
Father of
spirits, but the great objection lies against their theory
also, that
the Atonement is still vicarious. Christ still suffers _for_
man, in order
to make men acceptable to God. It is, perhaps, scarcely
fair to say
this of the school as a whole, since the opinions of Broad
Church
divines differ widely from each other, ranging from the orthodox
to the
Socinian standing-point. Yet, roughly speaking, we may say that
while they
have given up the error of thinking that the death of
Christ
reconciles God to-us, they yet believe that his death, in
some
mysterious manner, reconciles us to God. It is a matter of deep
thankfulness
that they give up the old cruel idea of propitiating God,
and so
prepare the way for a higher creed. Their more humane teaching
reaches
hearts which are as yet sealed against us, and they are the
John Baptist
of the Theistic Christ. We must still urge on them that an
atonement at
all is superfluous, that all the parade of reconciliation
by means of a
mediator is perfectly unnecessary as between God and his
child, man;
that the notion put forward that Christ realised the ideal
of humanity
and propitiated God by showing what a man _could_ be, is
objectionable
in that it represents God as needing to be taught what
were the
capacities of his creatures, and is further untrue, because the
powers of God
in man are not really the equivalent of the capabilities
of a simple
man. Broad Churchmen are still hampered by the difficulties
surrounding a
divine Christ, and are puzzled to find for him a place in
their
theology which is at once suitable for his dignity, and consistent
with a
reasonable belief. They feel obliged to acknowledge that some
unusual
benefit to the race must result from the incarnation and death
of a God, and
are swayed alternately by their reason, which places
the
crucifixion of Jesus in the roll of martyrs' deaths, and by their
prejudices,
which assign to it a position unique and unrivalled in the
history of
the race. There are, however, many signs that the deity of
Jesus is, as
an article of faith, tottering from its pedestal in the
Broad Church
school. The hold on it by such men as the Rev. J. S. Brooke
is very
slight, and his interpretation of the incarnation is regarded
by orthodox
divines with unmingled horror. Their _moral_ atonement, in
turn, is as
the dawn before the sunrise, and we may hope that it will
soon develop
into the real truth: namely, that the dealings of Jesus
with the
Father were a purely private matter between his own soul and
God, and that
his value to mankind consists in his being one of the
teachers of
the race, one "with a genius for religion," one of the
schoolmasters
appointed to lead humanity to God.
-------Cardiff Theosophical Society in Wales-------
206 Newport Road, Cardiff, Wales, UK CF24-1DL
The theory of
M'Leod Campbell stands alone, and is highly interesting
and
ingenious--it is the more valuable and hopeful as coming from
Scotland, the
home of the dreariest belief as to the relations existing
between man
and God. He rejects the penal character of the Atonement,
and makes it
consist, so to speak, in leading God and man to understand
one another.
He considers that Christ witnessed to men on behalf of God,
and
vindicated the father's heart by showing what he could be to the son
who trusted
in him. He witnessed to God on behalf of men--and this
is the
weakest point in the book, verging, as it does, on
substitution--showing
in humanity a perfect sympathy with God's feelings
towards sin,
and offering to God for man a perfect repentance for human
transgression.
I purposely say "verging," because Campbell does not
_intend_
substitution; he represents this sorrow of Jesus as what he
must
inevitably feel at seeing his brother-men unconscious of their sin
and danger,
so no fiction is supposed as between God and Christ. But he
considers
that God, having seen the perfection of repentance in Jesus,
accepts the
repentance of man, imperfect as it is, because it is _in
kind_ the
same as that of Jesus, and is the germ of that feeling of
which his is
the perfect flower; in this sense, and only in this sense,
is the
repentance of man accepted "for Christ's sake." He considers that
men must
share in the mind of Christ as towards God and towards sin, in
order to be
benefited by the work of Christ, and that each man must thus
actually take
part in the work of atonement. The sufferings of Jesus he
regards as
necessary in order to test the reality of the life of sonship
towards God,
and brotherhood towards men, which he came to earth to
exemplify. I
trust I have done no injustice in this short summary to a
very able and
thoughtful book, which presents, perhaps, the only view of
the Atonement
compatible with the love and the justice of God; and this
only, of
course, if the idea of _any_ atonement can fairly be said to
be consistent
with justice. The merits of this view are practically that
this work of
Jesus is not an "atonement" in the theological sense at
all. The
defects of Campbell's book are inseparable from his creed,
as he argues
from a belief in the deity of Jesus, from an unconscious
limitation of
God's knowledge (as though God did not understand man
till he was
revealed to him by Jesus) and from a wrong conception of the
punishment
due to sin. I said, at starting, that the Atonement was the
_raison
d'être_ of Christianity, and, in conclusion, I would challenge
all
thoughtful men and women to say whether good cause has or has not
been shown
for rejecting this pillar "of the faith." The Atonement has
but to be
studied in order to be rejected. The difficulty is to persuade
people to
_think_ about their creed, Yet the question of this doctrine
must be faced
and answered. "I have too much faith in the common sense
and justice
of Englishmen when once awakened to face any question
fairly, to
doubt what that answer will be."
-------Cardiff Theosophical Society in Wales-------
206 Newport Road, Cardiff, Wales, UK CF24-1DL
ON THE
MEDIATION AND SALVATION OF ECCLESIASTICAL CHRISTIANITY.
THE whole
Christian scheme turns on the assumption of the inherent
necessity of
some one standing between the Creator and the creature,
and shielding
the all-weak from the power of the All-mighty. "It is a
fearful thing
to fall into the hands of the living God;" such is the
key-note of
the strain which is chanted alike by Roman Catholicism, with
its thousand
intercessors, and by Protestantism, with its "one Mediator,
the man
Christ Jesus." "Speak _thou_ for me," cries man to his favourite
mouthpiece,
whoever it may be; "go thou near, but let me not see the
face of God,
lest I die." The heroes, the saints, the idols of humanity,
have been the
men who have dared to search into the Unseen, and to gaze
straight up
into the awful Face of God. They have dashed aside all that
intervened
between their souls and the Eternal Soul, and have found it,
as one of
them quaintly phrases it, "a profitable sweet necessity to
fall on the
naked arm of Jehovah." Then, because they dared to-trust Him
who had
called them into existence, and to stretch out beseeching hands
to the
Everlasting Father, they have been forced into a position they
would have
been the very first to protest against, and have been made
into
mediators for men less bold, for children less confiding. Those
who dared not
seek God for themselves have clung to the garments of the
braver souls,
who have thus become, involuntarily, veils between
their
brother-men and the Supreme. There is, perhaps, no better way of
demonstrating
the radical errors from which spring all the so-called
"schemes
of redemption" and "economies of Divine grace" than by starting
from the
Christian hypothesis.
We will
admit, for argument's sake, the Deity of Jesus, in order that we
may thus see
the more distinctly that a mediator of any kind between
God and man
is utterly uncalled for. It is mediation, in itself, that
is wrong in
principle; we object to it as a whole, not to any special
manifestation
of it. Divine or human mediators, Jesus or his mother,
saint, angel,
or priest, we reject them each and all; our birthright
as human
beings is to be the offspring of the Universal Father, and we
refuse to
have any interloper pressing in between our hearts and His.
We will take
mediation first in its highest form, and speak of it as if
Jesus were
really God as well as man. All Christians agree in asserting
that the
coming of the Son into the world to save sinners was the result
of the love
of the Father for these sinners; _i.e._, "_God_ so loved the
world that
_He_ sent His Son." The motive-power of the redemption of the
world is,
then, according to Christians, the deep love of the Creator
for the work
of His hands. This it was that exiled the Son from the
bosom of the
Father, and caused the Eternal to be born into time.
But now a
startling change occurs in the aspect of affairs. Jesus has
"atoned
for the sins of the world;" he "has made peace through the blood
of his
cross;" and having done so, he suddenly appears as the mediator
for men. What
does this pleading of the Son on behalf of sinners imply?
Only this--_a
complete change in the Father's mind towards the world_.
After the
yearning love of which we have heard, after this absolute
sacrifice to
win His children's hearts, He at last succeeds. He sees His
children at
His feet, repentant for the past, eager to make amends in
the future;
human hands appealing to Him, human eyes streaming with
tears. He
turns His back on the souls He has been labouring to win; He
refuses to
clasp around His penitents the arms outstretched to them so
long, unless
they are presented to Him by an accredited intercessor,
and come
armed with a formal recommendation. The inconsistency of such a
procedure
must be palpable to all minds; and in order to account for
one
absurdity, theologians have invented another; having created one
difficulty,
they are forced to make a second, in order to escape from
the first. So
they represent God as loving sinners, and desiring to
forgive and
welcome them. This feeling is the Mercy of God; but, in
opposition to
the dictates of Mercy, Justice starts up, and forbids any
favour to the
sinner unless its own claims are first satisfied to the
utmost. A
Christian writer has represented Mercy and Justice as standing
before the
Eternal: Mercy pleads for forgiveness and pity, Justice
clamours for
punishment. Two attributes of the Godhead are personified
and placed in
opposition to each other, and require to be reconciled.
But when we
remember that each personified quality is really but a
portion, so
to speak, of the Divine character, we find that God is
divided
against Himself. Thus, this theory introduces discord into the
harmonious
mind which inspires the perfect melodies of the universe. It
sees warring
elements in the Serenity of the Infinite One; it pictures
successive
waves of love and anger ruffling that ineffable Calm; it
imagines
clouds of changing motives sweeping across the sun of that
unchanging
Will. Such a theory as this must be rejected as soon as
realised by
the thoughtful mind. God is not a man, to be swayed first
by one motive
and then by another. His mercy and justice ever point
unwaveringly
in the same direction: perfect justice requires the same
as perfect
mercy. If God's justice could fail, the whole moral universe
would be in
confusion, and that would be the greatest cruelty that
could be
inflicted on intelligent beings. The weak pliability, miscalled
mercy, which
is supposed to be worked upon by a mediator, is a human
infirmity which
men have transferred to their idea of God.
-------Cardiff Theosophical Society in Wales-------
206 Newport Road, Cardiff, Wales, UK CF24-1DL
A man who has
announced his intention to punish may be persuaded out
of his
resolution. New arguments may be adduced for the condemned one's
innocence,
new reasons for clemency may be suggested; or the judge may
have been
over-strict, or have been swayed by prejudice. Here a mediator
may indeed
step in, and find good work to do; but, in the name of the
Eternal
Perfection, what has all this to do with the judgment of God?
Can His
knowledge be imperfect, His mercy increased? Can His sentence be
swayed by
prejudice, or made harsh by over-severity?
But if His
judgment is already perfect, any change implies imperfection,
and all left
for the mediator to do is to persuade God to make a change,
_i.e._, to
become imperfect; or, God having decided that sin shall
be punished,
the mediator steps in, and actually so works upon God's
feelings that
He revokes His decision, and--most cruel of mercies--lets
it go
unnoticed. Like an unwise parent, God is persuaded not to punish
the erring
child. But such is not the case. God is just, and because He
is just He is
most truly merciful: in that justice rests the certainty
of the due
punishment of sin, and, therefore of the purification of the
sinner! and
no mediator--thanks be to God for it!--shall ever cause to
waver for one
instant that Rock of Justice on which reposes the hope of
Humanity.
But the
theory we are considering has another fatal error in it:
it ascribes
imperfection to Almighty God. For God is represented as
desiring to
forgive sinners, and this desire must be either right or
wrong. If it
be right, it can at once be gratified; but if Justice
opposes this
forgiveness, then the desire to forgive is not wholly
right.
Theologians are thus placed in this dilemma: if God is
perfect--as
He is--any desire of His must likewise be flawlessly
perfect, and
its fulfilment must be the very best thing that could
happen to His
whole creation; on the other hand, if there is any barrier
of right--and
Justice _is_ right--interposed between God and His desire,
then His Will
is not the most perfect Good. Theologians must then choose
between
admitting that the desire of God to welcome sinners is just, or
detracting
from the Eternal Perfection.
-------Cardiff Theosophical Society in Wales-------
206 Newport Road, Cardiff, Wales, UK CF24-1DL
It is obvious
that we do not weaken our case by admitting, for the
moment, the
Deity of Jesus; for we are striking at the root-idea
of mediation.
That the mediator should be God is totally beside the
question, and
in no way strengthens our adversaries' hands. His Deity
does nothing
more than introduce a new element of confusion into the
affair; for
we become entangled in a maze of contradictions. God, who is
One, even
according to Christians, is at one and the same time estranged
from sinners,
pleading for sinners, and admitting the pleading. God
pleads to
Himself--but we are confounding the persons: one God pleads to
another--but
we are dividing the substance. Alas and alas for the creed
which compels
its votaries to deny their reason, and degrade their
Maker! which
babbles of a Nature it cannot comprehend, and forces
its foolish
contradictions on indignant souls! If Jesus be God, his
mediation is
at once impossible and unnecessary; if he be God, his will
is the will
of God; and if he wills to welcome sinners, it is God who
wills to
welcome them. If he, who is God, is content to pardon and
embrace, what
further do sinners require? Christians tell us that Jesus
is one with
God: it is well, we reply; for you say he is the Friend of
sinners, and
the Redeemer of the lost. If he be God, we both agree as to
the
friendliness of God to sinners. You need no mediator between you
and Jesus;
and, since he is God, you need no mediator with God. This
reasoning is
irrefragable, unless Christians are content to assign to
their
mediator some place which is less than divine; for they certainly
derogate from
his dignity when they imagine him as content to receive
those whom
Almighty God chases from before His face. And in making this
difference
between Jesus and the Father they make a fatal admission that
he is
distinct in feeling from God, and therefore cannot be the One God.
It is the
proper perception of this fact which has introduced into
the Roman
Church the human mediators whose intercession is constantly
implored.
Jesus, being God, is too awful to be approached: his mother,
his apostles,
some saint or martyr, must come between. I have read a
Roman
Catholic paper about the mediation of Mary which would be accepted
by the most
orthodox Protestant were Mary replaced by Jesus, and Jesus
by the
Father. For Jesus is there painted, as the Father is painted by
the orthodox,
in stern majesty, hard, implacable, exacting the uttermost
farthing; and
Mary is represented as standing between him and the
sinners for
whom she pleads. It is only a further development of the
idea which
makes the man Jesus the Mediator between God and man. As the
deification of
Mary progresses, following in slow but certain steps
the
deification of Jesus, a mediator will be required through whom to
approach
_her_; and then Jesus, too, will fade out of the hearts of
men, as the
Father has faded out of the hearts of Christians, and this
superstition
of mediation will sink lower and lower, till it is rejected
by all
earnest hearts, and is loathed by human souls which are aching
for the
living God.
-------Cardiff Theosophical Society in Wales-------
206 Newport Road, Cardiff, Wales, UK CF24-1DL
We see, then,
that mediation implies an absurd and inexplicable change
in the
supposed attitude of God towards man, and destroys all confidence
in the
justice of the Supreme Ruler. We should further take into
consideration
the strange feeling towards the Universal _Heart_ implied
in man's
endeavour to push some one in between himself and the Eternal
Father. As we
study Nature and try to discover from its workings
something of
the characteristics of the Worker therein, we find not only
a ruling
Intelligence--a _Supreme Reason_, before which we bow our heads
in an
adoration too deep for words--but we catch also beautiful glimpses
of a ruling
Love--a _Supreme Heart_, to which our hearts turn with a
glad relief
from the dark mysteries of pain and evil which press us in
on every
side. Simple belief in God at all, that is to say, in a Power
which works
in the Universe, is quite sufficient to disperse any of
that feeling
of fear which finds its fit expression in the longing for
a mediator.
For being placed here without our request, and even without
our consent,
we have surely, as a simple matter of justice, a right to
demand that
the Power which placed us here shall provide us with means
by which we
can secure our happiness. I speak, of course, as of a
_conscious_
Power, because a blind Force is necessarily irresponsible;
but those who
believe in a God are bound to acknowledge that He is
responsible
for their well-being. If any one should suggest that to
say thus is
to criticise God's dealings and to speak with presumptuous
irreverence,
I retort that the irreverence lies with those who ascribe
to the
Supreme a course of action towards His creatures that they
themselves
would be ashamed to pursue towards their own children, and
that they who
fling at us the reproach of blasphemy because we will not
bow the knee
before their idol, would themselves lie open to the charge,
were it not
that their ignorance shields them from the sterner censure.
All good in
man--poor shallow streamlet though it be--flows down from
the pure
depths of the Fountain of Good, and any throb of Love on
earth is a
pulsation caused by the ceaseless beating of the Universal
Father-Heart.
Yet men fear to trust that Heart, lest it should cease
beating; they
fear to rest on God, lest He should play them false.
When will
they catch even a glimpse of that great ocean of love which
encircles the
universe as the atmosphere the earth, which is infinite
because God
is infinite? If there is no spot in the universe of which
it can be
said, "God is not here," then is there also no spot where love
does not
rule; if there is no life existing without the support of the
Life-Giver
and the Life-Sustainer, then is there also no life which is
not cradled
in the arms of Love. Who then will dare to push himself in
between man
and a God like this? In the light of the Universal Reason
and the
Universal Heart mediation stands confessed as an impertinent
absurdity.
Away with any and all of those who interfere in the most
sacred
concerns of the soul, who press in between the Creator and His
offspring;
between the heart of man and the parent Heart of God. Whoever
it may be,
saint or martyr, or the king of saints and martyrs, Jesus of
Nazareth, let
him come down from a position which none can rightly hold.
To elevate
the noblest son of man into this place of mediator is to make
him into an
offence to his brethren, and to cause their love to turn
into anger,
and their reverence into indignation. If men persist in
talking about
the need of a mediator before they dare to approach God,
we must
remind them that, if there be a God at all, He _must_ be just,
and that,
therefore, they are perfectly safe In His hands; if they begin
to babble
about forgiveness "_for the sake of Jesus Christ?_ we must
ask them what
in the world they mean by the forgiveness of sin?" Surely
they do not
think that God is like man, quick to revenge affront and
jealous of
His dignity; even were it possible for man to injure, in any
sense, the
Majesty of God, do they conceive that God is an irascible and
revengeful
Potentate? Those who think thus of God can never--I assert
boldly--have
caught the smallest glimpse of _God_. They may have seen
a
"magnified man," but they have seen nothing more; they have never
prostrated
themselves before that Universal Spirit who dwells in this
vast
universe; they have never felt their own littleness in a place so
great. How
_can_ sin be forgiven? can a past act be undone, or the hands
go back on
the sun-dial of Time? All God's so-called chastisements are
but the
natural and inevitable results of broken laws--laws invariable
in their
action, neither to be escaped or defied. Obedience to law
results in
happiness, and the suffering consequent on the transgression
of law is not
inflicted by an angry God, but is the simple natural
outcome of
the broken law itself. Put your hand in the fire, and no
mediator can
save you from burning; cry earnestly to God to save you,
and then cast
yourself from a precipice, and will a mediator come
between you
and the doom you have provoked? We should do more wisely if
we studied
laws and tried to conform ourselves to them, instead of
going
blundering about with our eyes shut, trusting that some one will
interpose to
shield us from the effects of our own folly and stupidity.
Happily for
mankind, mediation is impossible in that beautiful realm of
law in which
we are placed; when men have quite made up their minds that
their
happiness depends entirely on their own exertions, there will at
last be some
chance for the advancement of Humanity, for then they will
work for
things instead of praying for them. It is of real practical
importance
that this Christian notion of mediation should be destroyed,
because on it
hang all the ideas about trusting to some one else to do
our own work.
This plan has not answered: we judge it by results, and
it has
failed. Surely we may hope that as men get to see that prayer has
not succeeded
in its efforts to "move the arm which moves the world, to
bring
salvation down," they may turn to the more difficult, but also
the more
hopeful task, of moving their own arms to work out their own
salvation.
For the past, it is past, and none can reverse it; none
can stay the
action of the eternal law which links sorrow with
transgression,
and joy and peace with obedience. When we slip back on
our path
upward, we may repent and call on God or man for forgiveness
as we list,
but only through toil and suffering can the lost way be
recovered,
and the rugged path must be trodden with bleeding feet; for
there is none
who can lift the sinner over the hindrances he has built
up for himself,
or carry him over the rocks with which he has strewed
his road.
-------Cardiff Theosophical Society in Wales-------
206 Newport Road, Cardiff, Wales, UK CF24-1DL
Does the
sentimental weakness of our age shrink from this doctrine, and
whimper out
that it is cold and stern? Ay, it is cold with the cold
of the
bracing sea-breeze, stringing to action the nerves enfeebled by
hot-houses
and soft-living; ay, it is stern with the blessed sternness
of changeless
law, of law which never fails us, never varies a hair's
breadth. But
in that law is strength; man's arm is feeble, but let him
submit to the
laws of steam, and his arm becomes dowered with a giant's
force;
conform to a law, and the mighty power of that law is on your
side;
"humble yourself under the mighty hand of God," who is the
Universal
Law, "and He shall lift you up."
So much for
mediation. We turn with a still deeper repugnance to study
the Christian
idea of "Salvation." Mediation at least leaves us
God, however
it degrades and blasphemes Him, but salvation takes us
altogether
out of His Hands. Not content with placing a mediator between
themselves
and God, Christians cry out that He is still too near them;
they must
push Him yet further back, they must have a Saviour too,
through whom
all His benefits shall filter.
"Saviour,"
is an expression often found in the Old Testament, where it
bears a very
definite and noble meaning. God is the Saviour of men from
the power of
sin, and although we may consider that God does _not_ save
from sin in
this direct manner, we are yet bound to acknowledge that
there is
nothing in this idea which is either dishonouring or repulsive.
But the word
"Saviour" has been degraded by Christianity, and the
salvation He
brings is not a salvation from sin. "The Lord and Saviour,
Jesus
Christ" is the Saviour of men, not because he delivers them from
sin, but
"because he saves them from hell, and from the fiery wrath
of God."
Salvation is no longer the equivalent of righteousness, the
antithesis of
sin; in Christian life it means nothing more than the
antithesis of
damnation. It is true that Christians may retort that
Jesus
"saves his people from their sins;" we gladly acknowledge the
nobleness and
the beauty of many a Christian life, but nevertheless this
is _not_ the
primary idea attached by popular Christianity to the word
"salvation."
"Being saved" is to be delivered out of "those hands of
the living
God," into which, as they are taught by their Bible, it is
so fearful a
thing to fall. "Being saved" is the _immediate_ result of
conversion,
and is the opposite of "being lost." "Being saved" is being
hidden
"in the riven side of Jesus," and so preserved from the awful
flames of the
destroying wrath of God. Against all this we, believers in
an Almighty
Love, in a Universal Father, enter our solemn and deliberate
protest, with
a depth of abhorrence, with a passion of indignation which
is far too
intense to find any adequate expression in words. There is no
language
strong enough to show our deeply-rooted repugnance to the idea
that we can
be safer anywhere or at any time than we are already here;
we cannot
repel with sufficient warmth the officious interference which
offers to
take us out of the hands of God. To push some one in between
our souls and
Him was bad enough; but to go further and to offer us
salvation
from our Maker, to try and threaten us away from the arms of
His Love, to
suggest that another's hands are more tender, another's
heart more
loving than the Supreme Heart,--these are blasphemies
to which we
will not listen in silence. It is true that to us these
suggestions
are only matters of laughter; dimly as we guess at the
Deity, we
know enough not to be afraid of Him, and these crude and
childish
conceptions about Him are among ourselves too contemptible to
refute.
"Non ragione di lor, mai guardo e
passo."
-------Cardiff Theosophical Society in Wales-------
206 Newport Road, Cardiff, Wales, UK CF24-1DL
But we see
how these ideas colour men's thoughts and lives, how they
cripple their
intellect and outrage their hearts, and we rise to trample
down these
superstitions, not because they are in themselves worth
refuting, but
simply because they degrade our brother-men. We believe in
no wisdom
that improves on Nature's laws, and one of those laws, written
on our
hearts, is that sorrow shall tread on the heels of sin. We are
conscious
that men should learn to welcome this law, and not to shrink
from it. To
fly from the suffering following on broken law is the last
thing we
should do; we ought to have no gratitude for a "Saviour" who
should bear
our punishment, and so cheat us out of our necessary lesson,
turn us into
spoiled children, and check our moral growth; such an offer
as this,
could it really be made, ought to be met with stern refusal.
We should
trust the Supreme so utterly, and adore His wisdom with a
humility so
profound, that if we could change His laws we should not
dare to
interfere; nor ought we, even when our lot is saddest, to
complain of
it, or do anything more than labour to improve it in
steadfast
obedience to law. We should ask for no salvation; we should
desire to
fall--were it possible that we _could_ be out of them--into
the hands of
God.
Further, is
it impossible to make Christians understand that were Jesus
all they say
he is, we should still reject him; that were God all they
say He is, we
would, in that case, throw back His salvation. For were
this awful
picture of a soul-destroying Jehovah, of a blood-craving
Moloch,
endowed with a cruelty beyond human imagination, a true
description
of the Supreme Being, then would we take the advice of Job's
wife, we
would "curse God and die?" we would hide in the burning depths
of His hell
rather than dwell within sight of Him whose brightness would
mock at the
gloom of His creatures, and whose bliss would be a sneer at
their
despair. Were it thus indeed--
"O King of our salvation,
Many would curse to thee, and I for one!
Fling Thee Thy bliss, and snatch at Thy
damnation,
Scorn and abhor the rising of Thy sun.
"Is it
not worth while to believe," blandly urges a Christian
writer,
"if it is true, as it is true, that they who deny will suffer
everlasting
torments?" No! we thunder back at him, _it is not worth
while_; it is
not worth while to believe a lie, or to acknowledge as
true that
which our hearts and intellects alike reject as false; it is
not worth
while to sell our souls for a heaven, or to defile our honesty
to escape a
hell; it is not worth while to bow our knee to a Satan or
bend our
heads before a spectre. Better, far better, to "dwell with
everlasting
burnings" than to degrade our humanity by calling a lie,
truth, and
cruelty, love, and unreasonableness, justice; better to
suffer in
hell, than to have our hearts so hard that we could enjoy
while others
suffer; could rejoice while others are tormented, could
sing
alleluias to the music of golden harps, while our lyrics are echoed
by the
anguished wailing of the lost. God Himself--were He such as
Christians
paint Him--could not blot out of our souls our love of truth,
of
righteousness, of justice. While we have these we are _ourselves_,
and we can
suffer and be happy; but we cannot afford to pay down these
as the price
of our admission to heaven. We should be miserable even as
we paced the
golden streets, and should sit in tears beside the river
of the water
of life. Yet _this_ is salvation; _this_ is what Christians
offer us in
the name of Jesus; _this_ is the glad tidings brought to
us as the
gospel of the Saviour, as the "good news of God;" and this we
reject,
wholly and utterly, laughing it to scorn from the depths of
our glad
hearts which the Truth has made free; this we denounce, with a
stern and
bitter determination, in the name of the Universal Father, in
the name of
the self-reliance of humanity, in the name of all that is
holy, and just,
and loving.
-------Cardiff Theosophical Society in Wales-------
206 Newport Road, Cardiff, Wales, UK CF24-1DL
But happily
many, even among Christians, are beginning to shrink from
this idea of
salvation from the God in whom they say they place all
their hopes.
They put aside the doctrine, they gloss it over, they
prefer not to
speak of it. Free thought is leavening Christianity, and
is moulding
the old faith against its will. Christianity now hides its
own cruel
side, and only where the bold opponents of its creeds have not
yet spread,
does it dare to show itself in its real colours; in Spain,
in Mexico, we
see Christianity unveiled; here, in England, liberty is
too strong
for it, and it is forced into a semblance of liberality. The
old wine is
being poured into new bottles; what will be the result? We
may, however,
rejoice that nobler thoughts about God are beginning to
prevail, and
are driving out the old wicked notions about Him and His
revenge. The
Face of the Father is beginning, however dimly, to shine
out from His
world, and before the Beauty of that Face all hard thoughts
about Him are
fading away. Nature is too fair to be slandered for ever,
and when men
perceive that God and Nature are One, all that is ghastly
and horrible
must die and drop into forgetfulness. The popular
Christian
ideas of mediation and salvation must soon pass away into the
limbo of
rejected creeds which is being filled so fast; they are already
dead, and
their pale ghosts shall soon flit no longer to vex and harass
the souls of
living men.
-------Cardiff Theosophical Society in Wales-------
206 Newport Road, Cardiff, Wales, UK CF24-1DL
ON ETERNAL
TORTURE.
SOME time ago
a Clergyman was proving to me by arguments many and
strong that
hell was right, necessary and just; that it brought glory
to God and
good to man; that the holiness of God required it as a
preventive,
and the justice of God exacted it as a penalty, of sin.
I listened
quietly till all was over and silence fell on the reverend
denunciator;
he ceased, satisfied with his arguments, triumphant in the
consciousness
that they were crushing and unassailable. But my eyes were
fixed on the
fair scene without the library window, on the sacrament
of earth, the
visible sign of the invisible beauty, and the contrast
between God's
works and the Church's speech came strongly upon me. And
all I found
to say in answer came in a few words: "If I had not heard
you mention
the name of God, I should have thought you were speaking of
the
Devil." The words, dropped softly and meditatively, had a startling
effect.
Horror at the blasphemy, indignation at the unexpected result of
laboured
argument, struggled against a dawning feeling that there must
be something
wrong in a conception which laid itself open to such
a blow; the
short answer told more powerfully than half an hour's
reasoning.
The various
classes of orthodox Christian doctrines should be attacked
in very
different styles by the champions of the great army of
free-thinkers,
who are at the present day besieging the venerable
superstitions
of the past. Around the Deity of Jesus cluster many
hallowed
memories and fond associations; the worship of centuries has
shed around
his figure a halo of light, and he has been made into the
ideal of
Humanity; the noblest conceptions of morality, the highest
flights of
enlightened minds, have been enshrined in a human personality
and called by
the name of Christ; the Christ-idea has risen and expanded
with every
development of human progress, and the Christ of the highest
Christianity
of the day is far other than the Christ of Augustine, of
Thomas à
Kempis, of Luther, or Knox; the strivings after light, after
knowledge,
after holiness, of the noblest sons of men have been
called by
them a following of Jesus; Jesus is baptized in human tears,
crucified in
human pains, glorified in human hopes. Because of all this,
because he is
dear to human hearts and identified with human struggles,
therefore he
should be gently spoken of by all who feel the bonds of
the
brotherhood of man; the dogma of his Deity must be assailed, must be
overthrown,
because it is false, because it destroys the unity of God,
because it
veils from us the Eternal Spirit, the source of all things,
but he
himself should be reverently spoken of, so far as truthfulness
permits, and
this dogma, although persistently battled against, should
be attacked
without anger and without scorn.
There are
other doctrines which, while degrading in regard to man's
conception of
God, and therefore deserving of reprobation, yet enshrine
great moral
truths and have become bound up with ennobling lessons; such
is the
doctrine of the Atonement, which enshrines the idea of selfless
love and of
self-sacrifice for the good of humanity. There are others
again against
which ridicule and indignation may rightly be brought to
bear, which
are concessions to human infirmity, and which belong to the
childhood of
the race; man may be laughed out of his sacraments and out
of his
devils, and indignantly reminded that he insults God and degrades
himself by
placing a priesthood or mediator between God and his own
soul. But
there is one dogma of Orthodox Christianity which stands
alone in its
atrocity, which is thoroughly and essentially bad, which is
without one
redeeming feature, which is as blasphemous towards God as
it is
injurious to man; on it therefore should be poured out unsparingly
the bitterest
scorn and the sharpest indignation. There is no good human
emotion
enlisted on the side of an Eternal Hell; it is not hallowed by
human love or
human longings, it does not enshrine human aspirations,
nor is it the
outcome of human hopes. In support of this no appeal
can be made
to any feeling of the nobler side of our nature, nor does
eternal fire
stimulate our higher faculties: it acts only on the lower,
baser, part
of man; it excites fear, distrust of God, terror of his
presence; it
may scare from evil occasionally, but can never teach good;
it sees God
in the lightning-flash that slays, but not in the sunshine
which
invigorates; in the avalanche which buries a village in its fall,
but not in
the rich promise of the vineyard and the joyous beauty of
the summer
day. Hell has driven thousands half-mad with terror, it
has driven
monks to the solitary deserts, nuns to the sepulchre of the
nunnery, but
has it ever caused one soul of man to rejoice in the Father
of all, and
pant, "as the hart panteth after the water-springs, for the
presence of
God"?
-------Cardiff Theosophical Society in Wales-------
206 Newport Road, Cardiff, Wales, UK CF24-1DL
It is only
just to state, in attacking this as a Christian doctrine,
that, though
believed in by the vast majority of Christians, the most
enlightened
of that very indefinite body repudiate it with one voice.
It is well
known how the great Broad-Church leader, Frederick Denison
Maurice,
endeavoured to harmonize, on this point, his Bible and his
strong moral
sense, and failed in so doing, as all must fail who would
reconcile two
contradictories. How he fought with that word "eternal,"
struggled to
prove that whatever else it might mean it did _not_ mean
everlasting
in our modern sense of the word: that "eternal death" being
the
antithesis to "eternal life" must mean a state of ignorance of
the Eternal
One, even as its opposite was the knowledge of God: that
therefore men
could rise from eternal death, aye, did so rise every
day in this
life, and might so rise in the life to come. Noble was
his protest
against this awful doctrine, fettered as he was by undue
reverence
for, and clinging to, the Bible. His appeal to the moral sense
in man as the
arbiter of all doctrine has borne good fruit, and his
labours have
opened a road to free thought greater than he expected or
even hoped. Many
other clergymen have followed in his steps. The word
"eternal"
has been wrangled over continually, but, however they arrive
there, all
Broad Churchmen unite in the conclusion that it does not,
cannot, shall
not, mean literally lasting for ever. This school of
thought has
laid much stress on the fondness of Orientals for imagery;
they have
pointed out that the Jewish word Gehenna is the same as Ge
Hinnom, or
valley of Hinnom, and have seen in the state of that valley
the materials
for "the worm that dieth not and the fire that is not
quenched:"
they show how by a natural transition the place into which
were thrown
the bodies of the worst criminals became the type of
punishment in
the next world, and the valley where children were
sacrificed to
Moloch gave its name to the infernal abode of devils. From
that valley
Jesus drew his awful picture, suggested by the pale lurid
fires ever
creeping there, mingling their ghastly flames with the
decaying
bodies of the dishonoured dead. In all this there is probably
much truth,
and many Broad Churchmen are content to accept this
explanation,
and so retain their belief in the supernatural character
of the Bible,
while satisfying their moral sense by rejecting its most
immoral
dogma.
Among the
evangelicals, only one voice, so far as I know, is heard
to protest
against eternal torture; and all honour is due to the Rev.
Samuel
Minton, for his rare courage in defying on this point the opinion
of his
"world," and braving the censure which has been duly inflicted on
him. He seems
to make "eternal" the equivalent of "irremediable" in some
cases and of
"everlasting" in others. He believes that the wicked will
be literally
destroyed, burnt up, consumed; the fact that the fire is
eternal by no
means implies, he remarks, that that which is cast into
the fire
should be likewise eternal, and that the fire is unquenchable
does not
prove that the chaff is unconsumable. "Eternal destruction" he
explains as
irreparable destruction, final and irreversible extinction.
This theory
should have more to recommend it to all who believe in
the
supernatural inspiration of the Bible, than the Broad Church
explanation;
it uses far less violence towards the words of Scripture,
and, indeed,
a very fair case may be made out for it from the Bible
itself.
It is
scarcely necessary to add to this small list of dissentients from
orthodox
Christianity, the Unitarian body; I do not suppose that there
is such a
phenomenon in existence as a Unitarian Christian who believes
in an eternal
hell.
-------Cardiff Theosophical Society in Wales-------
206 Newport Road, Cardiff, Wales, UK CF24-1DL
With these
small exceptions the mass of Christians hold this dogma, but
for the most
part carelessly and uncomprehendingly. Many are ashamed of
it even while
duteously confessing it, and gabble over the sentences in
their creed
which acknowledge it in a very perfunctory manner. People
of this kind
"do not like to talk about hell, it is better to think of
heaven."
Some Christians, however, hold it strongly, and proclaim their
belief
boldly; the members of the Evangelical Alliance actually make the
profession of
it a condition of admittance into their body, while many
High Church
divines think that a sharp declaration of their belief in
it is needed
by loyalty towards God and "charity to the souls of men." I
wish I could
believe that all who profess this dogma did not realize
it, and only
accepted it because their fathers and mothers taught it to
them. But
what can one say to such statements as the following, quoted
from Father
Furniss by W. R. Greg in his splendid "Enigmas of Life:" I
take it as a
specimen of Roman Catholic _authorized_ teaching. Children
are asked:
"How will your body be when the devil has been striking it
every moment
for a hundred million years without stopping?" A girl of
eighteen is
described as dressed in fire; "she wears a bonnet of fire.
It is pressed
down all over her head; it burns her head; it burns into
the skull; it
scorches the bone of the skull and makes it smoke." A
boy is
boiled: "Listen! there is a sound just like that of a kettle
boiling....
The blood is boiling in the scalded veins of that boy. The
brain is
boiling and bubbling in his head. The marrow is boiling in his
bones."
Nay, even the poor little babies are not exempt from torture:
one is in a
red hot oven, "hear how it screams to come out; see how it
turns and
twists about in the fire.... You can see on the face of this
little
child"--the fair pure innocent baby-face--"what you see on the
faces of all
in hell--despair, desperate and horrible." Surely this
man realized
what he taught, but then he was that half-human being--a
priest.
Dr. Pusey,
too, has a word to say about hell: "Gather in mind all that
is most
loathsome, most revolting--the most treacherous, malicious,
coarse,
brutal, inventive, fiendish cruelty, unsoftened by any remains
of human
feeling, such as thou couldst not endure for a single hour....
hear those
yells of blaspheming, concentrated hate as they echo along
the lurid
vault of hell."
-------Cardiff Theosophical Society in Wales-------
206 Newport Road, Cardiff, Wales, UK CF24-1DL
Protestantism
chimes in, and Spurgeon speaks of hell: "Wilt thou think
it is easy to
lie down in hell, with the breath of the Eternal fanning
the flames?
Wilt thou delight thyself to think that God will invent
torments for
thee, sinner?" "When the damned jingle the burning irons of
their
torment, they shall say, 'for ever;' when they howl, echo cries,
'for
ever.'"
I may allude,
to conclude my quotations, to a description of hell which
I myself
heard from an eminent prelate of the English Church, one who is
a scholar and
a gentleman, a man of moderate views in Church matters,
by no means a
zealot in an ordinary way. In preaching to a country
congregation
composed mainly of young men and girls, he warned them
specially
against sins of the flesh, and threatened them with the
consequent
punishment in hell. Then, in language which I cannot
reproduce,
for I should not dare to sully my pages by repeating what
I then
listened to in horrified amazement, there ensued a description
drawn out in
careful particulars of the state of the suffering body in
hell, so
sickening in its details that it must suffice to say of it that
it was a
description founded on the condition of a corpse flung out on
a dungheap
and left there to putrefy, with the additional horror of
creeping,
slowly-burning flames; and this state of things was to go
on, as he
impressed on them with terrible energy, for ever and ever,
"decaying
but ever renewing."
I should
almost ask pardon of tender-hearted men and women for laying
before them
language so abominable; but I urge on all who are offended
by it that
this is the teaching given to our sons and daughters in the
present day.
Father Furniss, Dr. Pusey, Mr. Spurgeon, an English Bishop,
surely these
are honoured names, and in quoting them I quote from the
teaching of
Christendom. Nor mine the fault if the language be unfit for
printing. I
_quote_, because if we only assert, Christians are quick to
say,
"you are misrepresenting our beliefs," and I quote from writers of
the present
day only, that none may accuse me of hurling at Christians
reproaches
for a doctrine they have outgrown or softened down. Still, I
own that it
seems scarcely credible that a man should believe this and
remain sane;
nay, should preach this, and walk calmly home from his
Church with
God's sunshine smiling on the beautiful world, and after
preaching it
should sit down to a comfortable dinner and very likely
a quiet pipe,
as though hell did not exist, and its awful misery and
fierce
despair.
-------Cardiff Theosophical Society in Wales-------
206 Newport Road, Cardiff, Wales, UK CF24-1DL
It is said
that there is no reason that we should not be contented in
heaven while
others suffer in hell, since we know how much misery there
is in this
world and yet enjoy ourselves in spite of the knowledge.
I say,
deliberately, of every one who does realise the misery of this
world and
remains indifferent to it, who enjoys his own share of the
good things
of this life, without helping his brother, who does not
stretch out
his hand to lift the fallen, or raise his voice on behalf of
the
down-trodden and oppressed, that that man is living a life which is
the very
antithesis of a Divine life--a life which has in it no beauty
and no
nobility, but is selfish, despicable, and mean. And is this the
life which we
are to regard as the model of heavenly beauty? Is the
power to lead
this life for ever to be our reward for self-devotion
and
self-sacrifice here on earth? Is a supreme selfishness to crown
unselfishness
at last? But this is the life which is to be the lot of
the righteous
in heaven. Snatched from a world in flames, caught up in
the air to
meet their descending Lord, his saints are to return with him
to the heaven
whence he came; there, crowned with golden crowns, they
are to spend
eternity, hymning the Lamb who saved them to the music
of golden
harps, harps whose melody is echoed by the curses and the
wailings of
the lost; for below is a far different scene, for there the
sinners are
"tormented with fire and brimstone in the presence of the
holy angels
and the presence of the Lamb; and the smoke of their torment
ascendeth up
for ever and ever, and they have no rest day nor night."
It is worth
while to gaze for a moment at the scene of future felicity;
there is the
throne of God and rejoicing crowds: "Rejoice over her, thou
heaven, and
ye holy apostles and prophets," so goes out the command, and
they rejoice
because "God has avenged them on her," and again they
said
"Alleluia, and her smoke rose up for ever and ever." Truly God
must harden
the hearts of his saints in heaven as of old he hardened
Pharaoh's
heart, if they are to rejoice over the anguished multitude
below, and to
bear to live amid the lurid smoke ascending from the
burning
bodies of the lost. To me the idea is so unutterably loathsome
that I marvel
how Christians endure to retain such language in their
sacred books,
for I would note that the awful picture drawn above is not
of my doing;
it is not the scoffing caricature of an unbeliever, _it is
heaven as
described by St. John the divine_. If this heaven is true I do
not hesitate
to say that it is the duty of every human being to reject
it utterly
and to refuse to enter it. We might even appeal to Christians
by the
example of their own Jesus, who could not be content to remain in
heaven
himself while men went to hell, but came down to redeem them from
endless
suffering. Yet they, who ought to imitate him, who do, many
of them, lead
beautiful lives of self-devotion and compassion, are
suddenly, on
death, to lose all this which makes them "partakers of the
Divine
Nature," and are to be content to win happiness for themselves,
careless that
millions of their brethren are in woe unspeakable. They
are to
reverse the aim of their past lives, they are to become selfish
instead of
loving, hard instead of selfless, indifferent instead of
loving, hard
instead of tender. Which is the better reproduction of the
"mind of
Christ," the good Samaritan tending the wounded man, or the
stern
Inquisitor gloating over the fire which consumes heretics to the
greater glory
of God? Yet the latter is the ideal of heavenly virtue.
Never will
they who truly love man be content to snatch at bliss for
themselves
while others suffer, or endure to be crowned with glory while
they are
crowned with thorns. Better, far better, to suffer in hell and
share the
pains of the lost, than to have a heart so hard, a nature
so degraded,
as to enjoy the bliss of heaven, rejoicing over, or even
disregarding,
the woes of hell.
-------Cardiff Theosophical Society in Wales-------
206 Newport Road, Cardiff, Wales, UK CF24-1DL
But there is
worse than physical torture in the picture of hell; pain is
not its
darkest aspect. Of all the thoughts with which the heart of man
has outraged
the Eternal Righteousness, there is none so appalling, none
so
blasphemous, as that which declares that even one soul, made by the
Supreme Good,
shall remain during all eternity, under the power of
sin. Divines
have wearied themselves in describing the horrors of the
Christian
hell; but it is _not_ the furnace of flames, _not_ the undying
worm, _not_
the fire which never may be quenched, that revolt us most;
hideous as
are these images, they are not the worst terror of hell. Who
does not know
how St. Francis, believing himself ordained to be lost
everlastingly,
fell on his knees and cried, "O my God, if I am indeed
doomed to
hate thee during eternity, at least suffer me to love thee
while I live
here." To the righteous heart the agony of hell is a far
worse one
than physical torture could inflict: it is the existence of
men and women
who might have been saints, shut out from hope of holiness
for evermore;
God's children, the work of his hands, gnashing their
teeth at a
Father who has cast them down for ever from the life he might
have given;
it is Love everlastingly hated; good everlastingly trampled
under foot;
God everlastingly baffled and defied; worst of all, it is
a room in the
Father's house where his children may hunger and thirst
after
righteousness, but never, never, can be filled.
"Depart, O sinner, to the chain!
Enter the eternal cell;
To all that's good and true and right,
To all that's fair and fond and bright,
To all of holiness and right,
Bid thou thy last farewell."
Would to God
that Christian men and women would ponder it well and think
it out for
themselves, and when they go into the worst parts of our
great cities
and their hearts almost break with the misery there, then
let them
remember how that misery is but a faint picture of the endless,
hopeless,
misery, to which the vast majority of their fellow-men are
doomed.
Christian
reader, do not be afraid to realise the future in which you
say you
believe, and which the God of Love has prepared for the home of
some of his
children. Imagine yourself, or any dear to you, plunged
into guilt
from which there is no redeemer, and where the voice cannot
penetrate of
him that speaks in righteousness, mighty to save. In the
well-weighed
words of a champion of Christian orthodoxy, think there is
no reason to
believe that hell is only a punishment for past offences;
in that dark
world sin and misery reproduce each other in infinite
succession.
"What if the sin perpetuates itself, if the prolonged misery
may be the
offspring of the prolonged guilt?" Ponder it well, and, if
you find it
true, then cast out from your creed the belief in a Jesus
who loved the
lost; blot out from your Bible every verse that speaks of
a Father's
heart; tear from your Prayer-books every page that prays to a
Father in
heaven. If the lowest of God's creatures is to be left in the
foul embraces
of sin for ever, God cannot be the Eternal Righteousness,
the
unconquerable Love. For what sort of Righteousness is that which
rests idly
contented in a heaven of bliss, while millions of souls
capable of
righteousness are bound by it in helpless sin; what sort of
love is that
which is satisfied to be repulsed, and is willing to be
hated? As
long as God is righteous, as long as God is love, so long is
it impossible
that men and women shall be left by him forever in a
state to
which our worst dens of earth are a very paradise of beauty and
purity. Bible
writers may have erred, but "Thou continuest holy, O Thou
worship of
Israel!" There is one revelation that cannot err, and that
is written by
God's finger on every human heart. What man recoils from
doing, even
at his lowest, can never be done by his Creator, from whose
inspiration
he draws every righteous thought. Is there one father,
however
brutalized, who would deliberately keep his child in sin because
of a childish
fault? one mother who would aimlessly torture her son,
keeping him
alive but to torment? Yet this, nothing less,--nay, a
thousand
times more, for it is this multiplied infinitely by infinite
power of
torture,--this is what Christians ask us to believe about our
Father and
our God, a glimmer from the radiance of whose throne falls on
to our earth,
when men love their enemies and forgive freely those who
wrong them If
this so-called orthodox belief is right, then is their
gospel of the
Love of God to the world a delusion and a lie; if this is
true, the
teaching of Jesus to publicans and harlots of the Fatherhood
of God is a
cruel mockery of our divinest instincts; the tale of
the good
Shepherd who could not rest while one sheep was lost is the
bitterest
irony. But this awful dogma is not true, and the Love of God
cradles his
creation; not one son of the Father's family shall be left
under the
power of sin, to be an eternal blot on God's creation, an
endless
reproach to his Maker's wisdom, an everlasting and irreparable
mistake.
-------Cardiff Theosophical Society in Wales-------
206 Newport Road, Cardiff, Wales, UK CF24-1DL
No amount of
argument, however powerful, should make us believe a
doctrine from
which our hearts recoil with such shuddering horror as
they do from
this doctrine of eternal torture and eternal sin. There is
a divine
instinct in the human heart which may be trusted as an arbiter
between right
and wrong; no supernatural revelation, no miracle, no
angel from
heaven, should have power to make us accept as divine that
which our
hearts proclaim as vile and devilish. It is not true faith
to crush down
our moral sense beneath the hoof of credulity; true faith
believes in
God only as a "Power which makes for _Righteousness_" and
recks little
of threats or curses which would force her to accept that
which
conscience disapproves. And what is more, if it were possible that
God were not
what we dream, if he were not "righteous in all his ways
and holy in
all his works," then were it craven cowardice to worship him
at all. It
has been well said, "that to worship simple power, without
virtue, is
nothing but devil-worship;" in that case it were nobler to
refuse to
praise him and to take what he might send. Then indeed we
must say,
with John Stuart Mill, in that burst of passion which reads so
strangely in
the midst of his passionless logic, that if I am told that
this is
justice and love, and that if I do not call it so, God will send
me to hell,
then "to hell I'll go."
I have
purposely put first my strong reprobation of eternal hell,
because of
its own essential hideousness, and because, were it ever
so true, I
should deem myself disgraced by acknowledging it as
either loving
or good. But it is, however, a satisfaction to note the
feebleness of
the arguments advanced in support of this dogma, and to
find that
justice and holiness, as well as love, frown on the idea of an
eternal hell.
The first
argument put forth is this: "God has made a law which
man breaks;
man must therefore in justice suffer the penalty of his
transgression."
This, like so many of the orthodox arguments, sounds
just and
right, and at first we perfectly agree with it. The instinct
of justice in
our own breasts confirms the statement, and looking abroad
into the
world we see its truth proved by facts. Law is around us on
every side;
man is placed in a realm of law; he may-strive against the
laws which
encircle him, but he will only dash himself to pieces against
a rock; he is
under a code which he breaks at his peril. Here is perfect
justice, a
justice absolutely unwavering, deaf to cries, unseducible
by-flatteries,
unalloyed by favouritism: a law exists, break it, and
you suffer
the inevitable consequences. So far, then, the orthodox
argument is
sound and strong, but now it takes a sudden leap. "The
penalty of
the broken law is hell." Why? What common factor is there
between a
lie, and the "lake of fire in which all liars shall have their
part?"
Nature is absolutely against the orthodox corollary, because hell
as a
punishment of sin is purely arbitrary, the punishment might quite
as well have
been something else; but in nature the penalty of a broken
law is always
strictly in character with the law itself, and is derived
from it. Men
imagine the most extraordinary "judgment." A nation is
given to
excessive drinking, and is punished with cattle-plague; or
shows
leanings towards popery, and is chastised with cholera. It is as
reasonable to
believe this as it would be to expect that if a child fell
down stairs
he would be picked up covered with blisters from burning,
instead of
his receiving his natural punishment of being bruised.
Why, because
I lie and forget God, should I be punished with fire and
brimstone?
Fire is not derivable from truth, nor is brimstone a stimulus
to memory.
There is also a strange confusion in many minds about the
punishment of
sin. A child is told not to put his hand into the fire,
he does so,
and is burnt; the burning is a punishment, he is told; for
what? Not for
disobedience to the parent, as is generally said, but for
disregarding
the law of nature which says that fire burns. One often
hears it
said: "God's punishments for sin are not equal: one man sins
once and
suffers for it all his life, while another sins twenty times
and is not
punished at all." By no means: the two men both break a moral
law, and
suffer a moral degradation; one of them breaks in addition some
physical law,
and suffers a physical injury. People see injustice where
none exists,
because they will not take the trouble to distinguish
what laws are
broken when material punishments follow. There is nothing
arbitrary in
nature: cause and effect rule in her realm. Hell is then
unjust, in
the first place, because physical torture has nothing in
common with
moral guilt.
-------Cardiff Theosophical Society in Wales-------
206 Newport Road, Cardiff, Wales, UK CF24-1DL
It is unjust,
secondly, because it is excessive. Sin, say theologians,
is to be
punished infinitely, because sin is an offence committed
against an
infinite being. Of course, then, good must logically be
rewarded
infinitely, because it is duty offered to an infinite being.
There is no
man who has never done a single good act, so every man
deserves an
infinite reward. There is no man who has never done a single
bad act, so
every man deserves an infinite punishment. Therefore every
man deserves
both an infinite reward and an infinite punishment,
"which,"
as Euclid says, "is absurd." And this is quite enough answer to
the
proposition. But I must protest, in passing, against this notion of
"sin
against God" as properly understood. If by this expression is only
meant that
every sin committed is a sin against God, because every sin
is done
against man's higher nature, which is God in man, then indeed
there is no
objection to be made to it. But this is not what is
generally
meant by the phrase. It usually means that we are able, as it
were, to
injure God in some way, to dishonour him, to affront him, to
trouble him.
By sin we make him "angry," we "provoke him to wrath;"
because of
this feeling on his own part he punishes us, and demands
"satisfaction."
Surely a moment's reflection must prove to any
reasonable
being that sin against God in this sense is perfectly
impossible.
What can the littleness of man do against the greatness of
the Eternal!
Imagine a speck of dust troubling the depths of the
ocean, an
aphis burdening an oak-tree with its weight: each is far
more probable
than that a man could ruffle the perfect serenity of God.
Suppose I
stand on a lawn watching an ant-heap, an ant twinkles his
feelers at me
scornfully; do I fly into a passion and rush on the insect
to destroy
it, or seize it and slowly torture it? Yet I am far less
above the
level of the ant than God is above mine.
But I must
add a word here to guard against the misapprehension that
in saying
this I am depriving man of the strength he finds in believing
that he is
personally known to God and an object of his care. Were I
the ant's
creator familiar with all the workings of its mind, I
might regret,
for its sake, the pride and scorn of its maker shown by
its-action,
because it was not rising to the perfection of nature of
which it was
capable. So, in that nature in which we live and move,
which is too
great to regard anything as-little, which is around all and
in all, and
which we believe to be conscious of all, there is--I cannot
but
think--some feeling which, for want of a better term, we must call
a desire for
the growth of his creatures (because in this growth lies
their own
happiness), and a corresponding feeling of regret when they
injure
themselves. But I say this in fear and reverence, knowing that
human
language has no terms in which to describe the nature we adore,
and conscious
that in the very act of putting ideas about him into
words, I
degrade the ideas and they no longer fully answer to the
thought in my
own mind. Silent adoration befits man best in the presence
of his maker,
only it is right to protest against the more degrading
conceptions
of him, although the higher conceptions are themselves far
below what he
really is. Sin then, being done against oneself only,
cannot
deserve an eternity of torture. Sin injures man already, why
should he be
further injured by endless agony? The infliction of pain
is only
justifiable when it is the means of conveying to the sufferer
himself a
gain greater than the suffering inflicted; therefore
punishment is
only righteous when reformatory. But _endless_ torture
cannot aim at
reformation; it has no aim beyond itself, and can only
arise,
therefore, from vengeance and vindictiveness, which we have
shown to be
impossible with God. Hell is unjust, secondly, because its
punishment is
excessive and aimless. It is also unjust, because to avoid
it needs an impossible
perfection. It is no answer to this to say that
there is an
escape offered to us through the Atonement made by Jesus
Christ. Why
should I be called on to escape like a criminal from that
which I do
not deserve? God makes man imperfect, frail, sinful,
utterly
unable to keep perfectly a perfect law: he therefore fails,
and is--what?
To be strengthened? by no means; he is to go to hell. The
statement of
this suffices to show its injustice. We cavil not at the
wisdom which
made us what we are, but we protest against the idea which
makes God so
cruelly unjust as to torture babies because they are unable
to walk as
steadily as full-grown men. Hell is unjust, in the third
place,
because man does not deserve it.
To all this
it will probably be retorted, "you are arguing as though
God's justice
were the same as man's, and you were therefore capable
of judging
it, an assumption which is unwarrantable, and is grossly
presumptuous."
To which I reply: "If by God's justice you do not mean
justice at
all, but refer to some Divine attribute of which we know
nothing, all
my strictures on it fall to the ground; only, do not commit
the
inconsistency of arguing that hell is _just_, when by 'just' you
mean some
unknown quality, and then propping up your theories with
proofs drawn
from human justice. It would perhaps tend to clearness in
argument if
you gave this Divine attribute some other name, instead of
using for it
an expression which has already a definite meaning."
-------Cardiff Theosophical Society in Wales-------
206 Newport Road, Cardiff, Wales, UK CF24-1DL
The justice
of hell disposed of, we turn to the love of God. I have
never heard
it stated that hell is a proof of his great love to the
world, but I
take the liberty myself of drawing attention to it in this
light. God,
we are told, existed alone before ought was created; there
perfect in
himself, in happiness, in glory, he might have remained,
say orthodox
theologians. Then, we have a right to ask in the name of
charity, why
did he, happy himself, create a race of beings of whom the
vast majority
were to be endlessly and hopelessly miserable? Was this
love? "He
created man to glorify him." But was it loving to create those
who would
only suffer for his glory? Was it not rather a gigantic, an
inconceivable
selfishness?
"Man may
be saved if he will." That is not to the point; God foreknew
that some
would be lost, and yet he made them. With all reverence I say
it, God had
no right to create sentient beings, if of one of them it can
ever be truly
said, "good were it for that man that he had never been
born."
He who creates, imposes on himself, by the very act of creation,
duties
towards his creatures. If God be self-conscious and moral, it
is an
absolute certainty that the whole creation is moving towards
the final
good of every creature in it. We did not ask to be made; we
suffered not
when we existed not; God, who has laid existence on us
without our
consent, is responsible for our final good, and is bound by
every tie of
righteousness and justice, not to speak of love, to make
the existence
he gave us, unasked, a blessing and not a curse to us.
Parents feel
this responsibility towards the children they bring into
the world,
and feel themselves bound to protect and to make happy those
who, without
them, had not been born. But, if hell be true, then every
man and woman
is bound not to fulfil the Divine command of multiplying
the race,
since by so doing they are aiding to fill the dungeons of
hell, and
they will, hereafter, have their sons and their daughters
cursing the
day of their birth, and overwhelming their parents with
reproaches
for having brought into the world a body, which God was thus
enabled to
curse with the awful gift of an immortal soul.
We must
notice also that God, who is said to love righteousness, can
never crush
out righteousness in any-human soul. There is no one so
utterly degraded
as to be without one sign of good. Among the lowest and
vilest of our
population, we find beautiful instances of kindly feeling
and generous
help. Can any woman be more degraded than she who only
values her
womanhood as a means of gain, who drinks, fights, and steals?
Let those who
have been among such women say if they have not been
cheered
sometimes by a very ray of the light of God, when the most.
degraded has
shown kindness to an equally degraded sister, and when the
very gains of
sin have been purified by being; poured into the lap of a
suffering and
dying companion. Shall love and devotion, however feeble,
unselfishness
and sympathy, however transitory in their action, shall
these stars
of heaven be quenched in the blackness of the pit of hell?
If it be so,
then, verily, God is not the "righteous. Lord who loveth
righteousness."
-------Cardiff Theosophical Society in Wales-------
206 Newport Road, Cardiff, Wales, UK CF24-1DL
But we cannot
leave out of our impeachment of hell that it injures man,
as much as it
degrades his conceptions of God. It cultivates selfishness
and fear, two
of his basest passions. There has scarcely perhaps been
born into the
world this century a purer and more loving soul than that
of the late
John Keble, the author of the "Christian Year." Yet what a
terrible
effect this belief had on him; he must cling to his belief in
hell, because
otherwise he would have no certainty of heaven:
"But where is then the stay of
contrite hearts?
Of old they leaned on Thy eternal word;
But with the sinner's fear their hope
departs,
Fast linked as Thy great name to Thee, O
Lord;
That Name by which Thy faithful hope is
past,
That we should endless be, for joy or
woe;--
And if the treasures of Thy wrath could
waste,
Thy lovers must their promised heaven
forego."
That is to
say in plain English: "I cannot give up the certainty of
hell for
others, because if I do I shall have no certainty of heaven for
myself; and I
would rather know that millions of my brethren should
be tormented
for ever, than remain doubtful about my own everlasting
enjoyment."
Surely a loving heart would say, instead, "O God, let
us all die
and remain unconscious for ever, rather than that one soul
should suffer
everlastingly." The terrible selfishness of the Christian
belief
degrades the noblest soul; the horror of hell makes men lose
their self-control,
and think only of their personal safety, just as
we see men
run wild sometimes at a shipwreck, when the gain of a minute
means life.
The belief in hell fosters religious pride and hatred, for
all religious
people think that they themselves at least are sure of
heaven. If
then they are going to rejoice through all eternity over
the
sufferings of the lost, why should they treat them with kindness or
consideration
here? Thus hell, becomes the mother of persecution;
for the
heretic, the enemy of the Lord, there is no mercy and no
forgiveness.
Then the saints persuade themselves that true charity
obliges them
to persecute, for suffering may either save the heretic
himself by
forcing him to believe, or may at least scare others from
sharing his
heresy, and so preserve them from eternal fire. And they
are right, if
hell is true. Any means are justifiable which may save man
from that
horrible doom; surely we should not hesitate to knock a man
down, if by
so doing we preserved him from throwing himself over a
precipice.
-------Cardiff Theosophical Society in Wales-------
206 Newport Road, Cardiff, Wales, UK CF24-1DL
Belief in
hell takes all beauty from virtue; who cares for obedience
only rendered
through fear? No true love of good is wrought in man by
the fear of
hell, and outward respectability is of little worth when the
heart and the
desires are unpurified. We may add that the fear of hell
is a very
slight practical restraint; no man thinks himself really bad
enough for
hell, and it is so far off that every one intends to repent
at the last
and so escape it. Far more restraining is the proclamation
of the stern
truth that, in the popular sense of the word, there is no
such thing as
the "forgiveness of sins;" that as a man sows, so shall he
reap, and
that broken laws avenge themselves without exception.
Belief in
hell stifles all inquiry into truth by setting a premium
on one form
of belief, and by forbidding another under frightful
penalties..
"If it be true, as it is true, that all who do not believe
this shall
perish everlastingly, then, I ask, _is it not worth while to
believe?_"
So says a clergyman of the Church of England. Thus he presses
his people to
accept the dogma of the Deity of Jesus, not because it
is-true, but
because it is dangerous to deny it. And this-difficulty
meets us
every day. If we urge inquiry, we are told "it is dangerous;"
if we suggest
a difficulty, we are told "it is safer to believe;" and
so this
doctrine of hell chains down men's faculties and palsies their
intellects,
and they dare not seek for truth at all, lest he who is
Truth should
cast them into hell for it.
It may
perhaps be said by many that I have attacked this dogma with
undue
vehemence, and with excessive warmth. I attack it thus, because I
know the harm
that it is doing, because it saddens the righteous heart
and clouds
the face of God. Only those who have realised hell, and
realising it,
have believed in it, know the awful shadow with which it
darkens the
world. There are many who laugh at it, but they have not
felt its
power, and they forget that a dogma which is only ludicrous
to them is
weighing heavily on many a tender heart and sensitive brain.
Hell drives
many mad: to others-it is a life-long horror. It pales the
sunlight with
its lurid flames; it blackens the earth with the smoke of
its torment;
it makes the Devil an actual presence; it transforms God
into an
enemy, eternity into an awful doom. It takes the spring out of
all
pleasures; it poisons all enjoyments; it spreads gloom over life,
and enshrouds
the tomb in horror unspeakable. Only those who have
felt the
anguish of this nightmare know what it is to wake up into the
sunlight, and
find it is only a disordered dream of the darkness; they
only know the
glorious liberty of heart and soul, with which they lift
up smiling
faces to meet the smile of God, when they can say from the
depths of
their glad hearts, "I believe that God is Light, and in Him is
no darkness at
all; I believe that all mankind is safe, cradled in the
everlasting
arms."
-------Cardiff Theosophical Society in Wales-------
206 Newport Road, Cardiff, Wales, UK CF24-1DL
ON
INSPIRATION
THERE is a
certain amount of difficulty in defining the word
Inspiration:
it is used in so many different senses by the various
schools of
religious thought, that it is almost necessary to know the
theological opinions
of the speaker before being quite sure of his
meaning when
he talks of a book as being inspired. In the halcyon days
of the
Church, when faith was strong and reason weak, when priests had
but to
proclaim and laymen but to assent, Inspiration had a distinct and
a very
definite meaning. An inspired man spoke the very words of God:
the Bible was
perfect from the "In the beginning" of Genesis to the
"Amen"
of Revelation: it was perfect in science, perfect in history,
perfect in
doctrine, perfect in morals. In that diamond no flaw was
to be seen;
it sparkled with a spotless purity, reflecting back in
many-coloured
radiance the pure white light of God. But when the
chemistry of
modern science came forward to test this diamond, a
murmuring
arose, low at first, but irrepressible. It was scrutinised
through the
microscope of criticism, and cracks and flaws were
discovered in
every direction; then, instead of being enshrined on
the altar,
encircled by candles, it was brought out into the searching
sunlight, and
the naked eye could see its imperfections. Then it was
tested anew,
and some bold men were heard to whisper, "It is no diamond
at all, God
formed in ages past; it is nothing but paste, manufactured
by man;"
and the news passed from mouth to mouth, until the whisper
swelled into
a cry, and many voices echoed, "This is no diamond at all."
And so things
are to-day; the battle rages still; some maintain their
jewel is
perfect as ever, and that the flaws are in the eyes that look
at it; some
reluctantly allow that it is imperfect, but still consider
it a diamond;
others resolutely assert that, though valuable for its
antiquity and
its beauty, it is really nothing but paste.
To take first
the really orthodox theory of inspiration, generally
styled the
"plenary" or "verbal" inspiration of the Bible. It was well
defined
centuries since by Athenagoras; according to him the inspired
writers
"uttered the things that were wrought in them when the Divine
Spirit moved
them, the Spirit using them as a flute-player would blow
into the
flute." The same idea has been uttered in powerful poetry by a
writer of our
own day:--
"Then thro' the mid complaint of my
confession,
Then thro' the pang and passion of my
prayer,
Leaps with a start the shock of His
possession,
Thrills me and touches, and the Lord is
there.
Scarcely I
catch the words of His revealing, Hardly I hear Him, dimly
understand;
Only the power that is within me pealing, Lives on my lips
and beckons
to my hand."
The idea is
exactly the same as that of the Pagan prophetesses: they
became
literally possessed by a spirit, who used their lips to declare
his own
thoughts; so orthodox Christians believe that it is no longer
Moses or
Isaiah or Paul that speaks, but the Spirit of the Father that
speaks in
them. This theory is held by all strictly orthodox believers;
this and this
only is from their lips, inspiration; hard pressed on the
subject they
will allow that the Spirit inspires all good thoughts "in
a
sense," but they will be very careful in declaring that this is only
inspiration
in a secondary sense, an inspiration which diners in kind as
well as in
degree from the inspiration of the writers of the Bible. By
this
mechanical theory, so to speak, it is manifest that all possibility
of error is
excluded; thus, when Matthew quotes from the Old Testament
an utterly
irrelevant historical reference--"when Israel was a child,
then I loved
him and _called my son out of Egypt_", as a prophecy of the
alleged
flight of Jesus into Egypt, and his subsequent return from that
country into
Palestine--we find Dr. Wordsworth, Right Reverend Father
in God, and
Bishop of Lincoln, gravely telling us that "the Holy Spirit
here declares
what had been in His own mind when He uttered these words
by Hosea. And
who shall venture to say that he knows the mind of the
Spirit better
than the Spirit Himself?" Dr. Pusey again, standing
valiantly,
after the manner of the man, to every Church dogma, however
it may be
against logic, against common sense, against reason, or
against
charity, makes a very reasonable inquiry of those who believe
in an outward
and supernatural inspiration, and yet object to the term
verbal.
"How," he asks, "can thought be conveyed to a man's mind except
through
words?" The learned doctor's remark is indeed a very pertinent
one, as
addressed to all those who believe in an exterior revelation.
Thoughts
which are communicated from without can only become known
to man
through the medium of words: even his own thoughts only become
appreciable
to him when they are sufficiently distinct to be clothed
in words (of
course not necessarily _spoken_ words); and we can only
exclude from
this rule such thoughts as may be presented to the mind
through
mental sight or hearing: e.g., music might probably be composed
mentally by
imagining the _sounds_, or mechanical contrivances invented
by imagining
the _objects_; but any argument, any story, which is,
capable of
reproduction in writing, must be thought out in words.
A moment's
thought renders this obvious; if a man is arguing with a
Frenchman in
his own language, he must, to render his arguments clear
and powerful,
_think_ in French. Now, if the Bible be inspired so as to
insure
accuracy, how can this be done except through words; for many
of the facts
recorded must, from the necessity of the case, have been
unknown to
the writers. Suppose for a moment that the Biblical account
of the
creation of the world were true, no man in that case could
possibly have
thought it out for himself. Only two theories can
reasonably be
held regarding this record: one, that it is true, which
implies
necessarily that it is literally true and verbally inspired,
since the
knowledge could only have come from the Creator, and, being
communicated
must have come in the form of words, which words being
God's, must
be literally true; the other, that it ranks with other
ancient
cosmogonies, and is simply the thought of some old writer,
giving his
idea as to the origin of the world around him. I select
the account
of the Creation as a crucial test of the verbal theory of
inspiration,
because any other account in the Bible that I can think of
has a human
actor in it, and it might be maintained--however unlikely
the
hypothesis--that a report was related or written down by one who had
been present
at the incident reported, and the inspiration of the final
writer may be
said to consist in re-writing the previous record which he
may be
directed to incorporate in his own work. But no one witnessed
the creation
of the world, save the Creator, or, at the most, He and
His angels,
and the account given of it must, if true, be word for word
divine; or,
if false--as it is--must be nothing more than human
fancy. We
must push this argument one step further. If the account was
communicated
only to the man's _mind_, in words rising internally to
the inward
ear alone, how could the man distinguish between these
divine
thoughts rising in his mind, and his own human thoughts rising in
exactly the
same manner? Thoughts rise in our minds, we know not how; we
only become
conscious of them when they are there, and, as far as we can
judge, they
are produced quite naturally according to certain laws. But
how is it
possible for us to distinguish whence these thoughts come?
There they
are, ours, not another's--ours as the child is the father's
and mother's,
the product of their own beings. If my thought is not
mine, but
God's, how am I to know this? it is produced within me as my
own, and the
source of one thought is not distinguishable from that of
another.
Thus, those who believe in the accuracy of the Bible are step
by step
driven to allow that not only are words necessary, but spoken
words; if the
Bible be supernaturally inspired at all, then must God
have spoken
not only in human words but also in human voice; if the
Bible be
supernaturally inspired at all, it must be verbally inspired,
and be
literally accurate about every subject on which it treats.
-------Cardiff Theosophical Society in Wales-------
206 Newport Road, Cardiff, Wales, UK CF24-1DL
Unfortunately
for the maintainers of verbal inspiration, their theory is
splendidly
adapted for being brought before the bar of inexorable fact.
It is worth
while to remark, in passing, that the infallibility of
the Bible has
only remained unchallenged where ignorance has reigned
supreme; as
soon as men began to read history and to study nature,
they also
began to question scriptural accuracy, and to defy scriptural
authority.
Infallibility can only live in twilight: so far, every
infallibility
has fallen before advancing knowledge, save only the
infallibility
of Nature, which is the infallibility of God Himself.
Protestants
consider Roman Catholics fools, in that they are not able to
see that the
Pope cannot be infallible, because one Pope has cursed
what another
Pope has blessed. They can see in the case of others that
contradiction
destroys infallibility, but they cannot see the force of
the same
argument when applied to their own pope, the Bible. Strong in
their
"invincible ignorance," they bring us a divinely-inspired book;
"good,"
we answer; "then is your book absolutely true, and it will
square with
all known truth in science and history, and will, of course,
never be
self-contradictory." The first important question which arises
in our minds
as we open so instructive a book as a revelation from on
high, refers
naturally to the Great Inspirer. The Bible contains, as
might indeed
be reasonably expected, many statements as to the nature
of God, and
we inquire of it, in the first place, the character of its
Author. May
we hope to see Him in this world? "Yes," answers Exodus.
"Moses
in days gone by spoke to God face to face, and seventy-four
Israelites
saw Him, and eat and drank in His presence." We have scarcely
taken in this
answer when we hear the same voice proceed: "No; for God
said thou
canst not see my face, for there shall no man see me and live;
while John
declares that no man hath seen Him, and Paul, that no man
neither hath
nor can see Him." Is He Almighty? "Yes," says Jesus. "With
God all
things are possible." "No," retorts Judges; "for He could
not
drive out the
inhabitants of the valley, _because_ they had chariots of
iron."
Is He just? "Yes," answers Ezekiel. "The son shall not bear the
iniquity of
the father; the soul that sinneth _it_ shall die." "No,"
says Exodus.
"The Lord declares that He visits the iniquity of the
fathers upon
the children." Is He impartial? "Yes," answers Peter. "God
is no
respecter of persons." "No;" says Romans, "for God loved
Jacob and
hated Esau
before they were born, that His purpose of _election_ might
stand."
Is He truthful? "Yes; it is impossible for God to lie," says
Hebrews.
"No," says God of Himself, in Ezekiel. "I, the Lord, have
deceived that
prophet." Is He loving? "Yes," sings the Psalmist. "He
is loving
unto every man, and His tender mercy is over all His works."
"No,"
growls Jeremiah. "He will not pity, nor spare, nor have mercy on
them." Is
he easily pacified when offended? "Yes," says the Psalmist.
"His
wrath endureth but the twinkling of an eye." "No," says
Jeremiah.
"Ye have
kindled a fire in His anger that shall burn for ever." Unable
to discover
anything reliable about God, doubtful whether he be just or
unjust,
partial or impartial, true or false, loving or fierce, placable
or
implacable, we come to the conclusion that at all events we had
better be
friends with Him, and surely the book which reveals His will
to us will at
least tell us in what way He desires us to approach Him.
Does He
accept sacrifice? "Yes," says Genesis: "Noah sacrificed and God
smelled a
sweet savour;" and Samuel tells us how God was prevailed on to
take away a
famine by the sacrifice of seven men, hanged up before the
Lord. In our
fear we long to escape from Him altogether and ask if this
be possible?
"Yes," says Genesis. "Adam and his wife hid from Him in the
trees, and He
had to go-down from His heaven to see if some evil deeds
were rightly
reported to Him." "No," says Solomon. "You cannot hide from
Him, for His
eyes are in every place." So we throw up in despair all
hope of
finding out anything reliable about Him, and proceed to search
for some
trustworthy history. We try to find out how man was made. One
account tells
us that he was made male and female, even in the image of
God Himself;
another that God made man alone, and subsequently formed
a woman for
him out of one of his own ribs. Then we find in one
chapter that
the beasts were all made, and, lastly, that God made "His
masterpiece,
man." In another chapter we are told that God having made
man thought
it not good to leave him by himself, and proceeded to make
every beast
and fowl, saying that he would make Adam a help-meet for
him; on
bringing them to Adam, however, none was found worthy to mate
with him, so
woman was tried as a last experiment. As we read on we find
evident marks
of confusion; double, or even treble, accounts of the same
incident, as,
for instance, the denying a wife and its consequences.
Then we see
Moses fearing Pharaoh's wrath, and flying out of Egypt to
avoid the
king's wrath, and not venturing to return until after his
death, and
are therefore surprised to learn from Hebrews that he forsook
Egypt by
faith, _not fearing_ the wrath of the king. Then we come across
numberless
contradictions in Kings and Chronicles, in prophecy and
history.
Ezekiel prophecies that Nebuchadnezzar shall conquer Tyrus, and
destroy it
and _take all its riches_; and a few chapters afterwards it
is recorded
that he did accordingly attack Tyrus but failed, and that as
he got _no
wages_ for this attack he should have Egypt for his failure.
In the New
Testament the contradictions are endless; Joseph, the
husband of
Mary, had two fathers, Jacob and Heli; Salah is in the same
predicament,
for although the son of Canaan, Arphaxad begat him. When
John was cast
into prison, Jesus _began_ to preach, although He had been
preaching and
gaining disciples while John was still at large. Jesus
sent the
Twelve to preach, telling them to take a staff, and yet bidding
them to take
none. He eat the Passover with His disciples, although He
was crucified
before that feast. He had one title on his cross, but
it is
verbally inspired in four different ways. He rose with many
variations of
date and time, and ascended the same evening, although He
subsequently
went into Galilee and remained on earth for forty days.
He sent word
to His disciples to meet Him in Galilee, and yet suddenly
appeared
among them as they sat quietly together the same evening at
Jerusalem.
Stephen's history contradicts our Old Testament. When Paul
is converted,
his companions hear a voice, although another account says
that they
heard none at all. After his conversion he goes in and out at
Jerusalem
with the Apostles, although, strangely enough, he sees none of
them, except
Peter and James. But one might spend pages in noting these
inconsistencies,
while even one of them destroys the verbal inspiration
theory. From
these contradictions I maintain that one of two things must
follow,
either the Bible is not an inspired book, or else inspiration is
consistent
with much error, as I shall presently show.
-------Cardiff Theosophical Society in Wales-------
206 Newport Road, Cardiff, Wales, UK CF24-1DL
I am quite
ready to allow that the Bible _is_ inspired, and I therefore
lay down as
my first canon of inspiration, that: "Inspiration does
not prevent
inaccuracy." I turn to the second class of orthodox
inspirationists,
who, while allowing that verbal inspiration is proved
impossible by
many trivial inconsistencies, yet affirm that God's
overruling
power ensures substantial accuracy, and that its history
and science
are perfectly true and are to be relied on. To test this
assertion,
we--after noting that Bible history is, as has been remarked
above,
continually self-contradictory--turn to other histories and
compare the
Bible with them. We notice first that many important
Biblical
occurrences are quite ignored by "profane" historians. We
are surprised
to see that while the Babylonish captivity left marks on
Israel which
are plainly seen, Egypt left no trace on Israel's names
or customs,
and Israel no trace on Egypt's monuments. The doctrine of
angels comes
not from heaven, but slips into Jewish theology from the
Persian;
while immortality is brought to light neither by Hebrew prophet
nor by the
Gospel of Jesus, but by the people among whom the Jews
resided
during the Babylonish captivity. The Jewish Scriptures which
precede the
captivity know of nothing beyond the grave; the Jewish
Scriptures
after the captivity are radiant with the light of a life
to come; to
these Jesus adds nothing of joy or hope. The very central
doctrine of
Christianity--the Godhead of Jesus--is nothing but a
repetition of
an idea of Greek philosophy borrowed by early Christian
writers, and
is to be found in Plato and Philo as clearly as in the
fourth Gospel.
Science contradicts the Bible as much as does history;
geology
laughs at its puny periods of creation; astronomy destroys its
heavens, and
asks why this little world took a week in making, while the
sun and moon
and the countless stars were rapidly turned out in twelve
hours;
natural history wonders why the kangaroos did not stay in Asia
after the
Deluge, instead of undertaking the long sea voyage to far
Australia,
and enquires how the Mexicans, and Peruvians, and others,
crossed the
wide ocean to settle in America; archaeology presents its
human bones
from ancient caves, and asks how they got there, if only
six thousand
years have passed since Adam and Eve stood alone in Eden,
gazing out on
the unpeopled earth; the Pyramids point at the negro
type distinct
and clear, and ask how it comes that it was so rapidly
developed at
first, and yet has remained stationary ever since. At last,
science gets
weary of slaying a foe so puny, and goes on its way with a
smile on its
grand, still face, leaving the Bible to teach its science
to whom it
lists. Evidence so weighty crushes all life out of this
second theory
of inspiration, and gives us a second rule to guide us in
our search:
"Inspiration does not prevent ignorance and error." We may
pass on to
the third class of inspirationists, those who believe that
the Bible is
not given to man to teach him either history or science,
but only to
reveal to him what he could not discover by the use of his
natural
faculties--_e g._ the duties of morality and the nature of God.
I must note
here the subtilty of this retreat. Driven by inexorable fact
to allow the
Bible to be fallible in everything in which we can test its
assertions,
they, by a clever strategic movement, remove their defence
to a post
more difficult to attack. They maintain that the Bible is
infallible in
points where no cannonade of facts can be brought to bear
on it. What
is this but to say, that although we can prove the Bible
to be
fallible on every point capable of proof, we are still blindly to
believe it to
be infallible where demonstrated error is, from the nature
of the case,
impossible? As regards the nature of God, we have already
seen that the
Bible ascribes to him virtue and vice indifferently. We
turn to
morality, and here our first great difficulty meets us, for when
we point to a
thing and say, "that is profoundly immoral," our opponents
retort,
"it is perfectly moral." Only the progress of humanity can prove
which of us
is in the right, though here, too, we have one great fact on
our side, and
that is, the conscience in man; already men would rather
die than
imitate the actions of Old Testament saints who did that which
was
"right in the eyes of Jehovah;" and presently they will be bold
enough to
reject in words that which they already reject in deeds. Few
would put the
Bible freely into the hands of a child, any more than
they would
give freely to the young the unpurged editions of Swift and
Sterne; and I
imagine that the most pious parents would scarcely see
with
un-mingled pleasure their son and daughter of fifteen and sixteen
studying
together the histories and laws of the Pentateuch. But taking
the Bible as
a rule of life, are we to copy its saints and its laws?
For instance,
is it right for a man to marry his half-sister, as did the
great ancestor
of the Jews, Abraham, the friend of God?--a union, by the
way, which is
forbidden by Jewish law, although said to be the source of
their race.
Is the lie of the Egyptian midwives right, because Jehovah
blessed them
for it, even as Jael is pronounced blessed by Deborah, the
prophetess,
for her accursed treachery and murder? Is the robbery of the
Egyptians
right, because commanded by Jehovah? Are the old cruel laws
of witchcraft
right, because Jehovah doomed the witch to death? Are
the ordeals
of the Middle Ages right, because derived from the laws
of Jehovah?
Is human sacrifice right, because attempted by Abraham,
enjoined by
Moses, practised by Jephthah, efficacious in turning away
God's wrath
when Saul's seven sons were offered up? Is murder right
because
Phineas wrought atonement by it, and Moses sent his murderers
throughout
the camp to stay God's anger by slaying their brethren? Is
it right that
the persons of women captives should be the prey of the
conquerors,
because the Jews were commanded by Jehovah to save alive the
virgins and
keep them for themselves, except the sixty-four reserved for
himself? Is
the man after God's own heart a worthy model for imitation?
Are Jehu's
lying and slaughter right, because right in the eyes of
Jehovah? Is
Hosea's marriage commendable, because commanded by Jehovah?
or are the
signs of Jeremiah and Ezekiel the less childish and indecent
because they
are prefaced with, "thus saith Jehovah?" Far be it from me
to detract
from the glorious morality of portions of the Bible; but if
the whole
book be inspired and infallible in its moral teaching, then,
of course,
one moral lesson is as important as another, and we have no
right to pick
and choose where the whole is divine. The harsher part of
the Old
Testament morality has burnt its mark into the world, and may
be traced
through history by the groans of suffering men and women, by
burning
witches and tortured enemies of the Lord, by flaming cities and
blood-stained
fields. If murder and rapine, treachery and lies, robbery
and violence,
were commanded long ago by Almighty God; if things are
right and
wrong only by virtue of His command, then who can say that
they may not
be right once more, when used in the cause of the Church,
and how are
we to know that Moses speaks in God's name when he commands
them, and
Torquemada only in his own? But even Christians are beginning
to feel
ashamed of some of the exploits of the "Old Testament Saints,"
and to try
and explain away some of the harsher features; we even hear
sometimes a
wicked whisper about "imperfect light," &c. Good heavens!
what
blasphemy! Imperfect light can mean nothing less than imperfect
God, if He is
responsible for the morality of these writings.
So, from our
study of the Bible we deduce another canon by which we may
judge of
inspiration:
-------Cardiff Theosophical Society in Wales-------
206 Newport Road, Cardiff, Wales, UK CF24-1DL
"Inspiration
does not prevent moral error." There is a fourth class of
inspirationists,
the last which clings to the skirts of orthodoxy, which
is always
endeavouring to plant one foot on the rocks of science, while
it balances
the other over the quicksands of orthodox super-naturalism.
The Broad
Church school here takes one wide step away from orthodoxy,
by allowing
that the inspiration of the Bible differs only in degree and
not in kind
from the inspiration common to all mankind. They recognise
the great
fact that the inspiring Spirit of God is the source whence
flow all good
and noble deeds, and they point out that the Bible itself
refers all
good and all knowledge to that one Spirit, and that He
breathes
mechanical skill into Bezaleel and Aholiab, strength into
Samson's
arms, wisdom into Solomon, as much as He breathes the ecstacy
of the
prophet into Isaiah, faith into Paul, and love into John. They
recognise the
old legends as authentic, but would maintain as stoutly
that He spoke
to Newton through the falling of an apple, as that He
spoke of old
to Elijah by fire, or to the wise men by a star. This
school try
and remove the moral difficulties of the Old Testament by
regarding the
history recorded in it as a history which is specially
intended to
unveil the working of God through all history, and so to
gradually
reveal God as He makes Himself known to the world; thus the
grosser parts
are regarded as wholly attributable to the ignorance of
men, and they
delight to see the divine light breaking slowly through
the thick
clouds of human error and prejudice, and to trace in the
Bible the
gradual evolution of a nobler faith and a purer morality.
They regard
the miracles of Jesus as a manifestation that God underlies
Nature and
works ever therein: they believe God to be specially
manifested in
Jewish history, in order that men may understand that He
presides over
all nations and rules over all peoples. To Maurice the
Bible is the
explainer of all earth's problems, the unveiler of God, the
Bread of
Life. There is, on the whole, little to object to in the Broad
Church view
of inspiration, although liberal thinkers regret that, as a
party, they
stop half way, and are still trammelled by the half-broken
chains of
orthodoxy. For instance, they usually regard the direct
revelation of
morality as closed by Jesus and His immediate followers,
although they
allow that God has not deserted His world, nor confined
His
inspiration within the covers of a book. To them, however, the Bible
is still
_the_ inspired book, standing apart by itself, differing from
all other
sacred books. From their views of inspiration, which contains
so much that
is true, we deduce a fourth rule:
-------Cardiff Theosophical Society in Wales-------
206 Newport Road, Cardiff, Wales, UK CF24-1DL
"Inspiration
is not confined to written words about God." From a
criticism of
the book, which is held by orthodox Christians, to be
specially
inspired, we have then gained some idea of what inspiration
does _not_
do. It does not prevent inaccuracy, ignorance, error, nor
is it
confined to any written book. Inspiration, then, cannot be an
overwhelming influence,
crushing the human faculties and bearing along
the subject
of it on a flood which he can neither direct nor resist. It
is a
breathing--gentle and gradual--of pure thoughts into impure hearts,
tender
thoughts into fierce hearts, forgiving thoughts into revengeful
hearts. David
calls home his banished son, and he learns that, "even as
a father
pitieth his children, so is the Lord merciful unto them that
fear
Him." Paul wishes himself accursed if it may save his brethren,
and from his
own self-sacrificing love he learns that "God will have
all men to be
saved, and to come to the knowledge of the truth." Thus
inspiration
is breathed into the man's heart. "I love and forgive, weak
as I am; what
must be the depth of the love and forgiveness of God?"
David's
fierce revenge finds an echo in his writings; for man writes,
and not God:
he defaces God by ascribing to Him the passions surging
only in his
own burning Eastern heart: then, as the Spirit moves him to
forgiveness,
his song is of mercy; for he feels that his Maker must be
better than
himself. That part of the Bible is inspired, I do not deny,
in the sense
that all good thoughts are the result of inspiration, but
only as we
share the inspiration of the Bible can we distinguish between
the noble and
the base in it, between the eternal and that which is
fast passing
away. But as we do not expect to find that inspiration,
now-a-days,
guards men from much error, both of word and deed, so we
should not
expect to find it otherwise in days gone by; nor should we
wonder that
the man who spoke of God as showing His tender fatherhood by
punishing and
correcting, could so sink down into hard thoughts of that
loving Father
as to say that it was a fearful thing to fall into His
hands. These
contradictions meet us in every man; they are the highest
and the
lowest moments of the human soul. Only as we are inspired to
love and
patience in our conduct towards men will our words be inspired
when we speak
of God.
-------Cardiff Theosophical Society in Wales-------
206 Newport Road, Cardiff, Wales, UK CF24-1DL
Having thus
seen what inspiration does not do, we must glance at what
it really is.
It is, perhaps, natural that we, rejecting, as we do,
with somewhat
of vehemence, the idea of supernatural revelation, should
oftentimes be
accused of denying all revelation and disbelieving all
inspiration.
But even as we are not atheists, although we deny the
Godhead of
Jesus, so are we not unbelievers in inspiration because we
refuse to
bend our necks beneath the yoke of an inspired Bible. For we
believe in a
God too mighty and too universal to be wrapped in swaddling
clothes or
buried in a cave, and we believe in an inspiration too mighty
and too
universal to belong only to one nation and to one age. As the
air is as
free and as refreshing to us as it was to Isaiah, to Jesus, or
to Paul, so
does the spiritual air of God's Spirit breathe so softly and
as
refreshingly on our brows as on theirs. We have eyes to see and
ears to hear
quite as much as they had in Judea long ago. "If God
be
omnipresent and omniactive, this inspiration is no miracle, but a
regular mode
of God's action on conscious Spirit, as gravitation
on
unconscious matter. It is not a rare condescension of God, but a
universal
uplifting of man. To obtain a knowledge of duty, a man is not
sent away
outside of himself to ancient documents for the only rule of
faith and
practice; the Word is very nigh him, even in his heart, and
by this word
he is to try all documents whatever.... Wisdom,
Righteous-ness,
and Love are the Spirit of God in the soul of man;
wherever
these are, and just in proportion to their power, there is
inspiration from
God.... Inspiration is the in-come of God to the
soul, in the
form of Truth through the Reason, of Right through the
Conscience,
of Love and Faith through the Affections and Religious
Element.... A
man would be looked on as mad who should claim miraculous
inspiration
for Newton, as they have been who denied it in the case of
Moses. But no
candid man will doubt that, humanly speaking, it was a
more
difficult thing to write the Principia than to write the Decalogue.
Man must have
a nature most sadly anomalous if, unassisted, he is
able to
accomplish all the triumphs of modern science, and yet cannot
discover the
plainest and most important principles of Religion and
Morality
without a miraculous inspiration; and still more so if, being
able to
discover by God's natural aid these chief and most important
principles,
he needs a miraculous inspiration to disclose minor
details."*
Thus we believe that inspiration from God is the birthright
of humanity,
and to be an heir of God it needs only to be a son of man.
Earth's
treasures are highly priced and hard to win, but God's blessings
are, like the
rain and the sunshine, showered on all-comers.
"'Tis only heaven is given away;
'Tis only God may be had for the asking;
No price is set on the lavish summer;
June may be had by the poorest
comer."
* Theodore Parker.
If
inspiration were indeed that which it is thought to be by the
orthodox
Christians, surely we ought to be able to distinguish its
sayings from
those of the uninspired. If inspiration be confined to the
Christian
Bible, how is it that the inspired thoughts were in many cases
spoken out to
the world hundreds of years before they fell from the
lips of an
inspired Jew? It seems a somewhat uncalled for miraculous
interference for
a man to be supernaturally inspired to inform the world
of some moral
truth which had been well known for hundreds of years to
a large
portion of the race. Or is it that a great moral truth bears
within itself
so little evidence of its royal birth, that it cannot be
accepted as
ruler by divine right over men until its proclamation is
signed by
some duly accredited messenger of the Most High? Then, indeed,
must God be
"more cognizable by the senses than by the soul;" and then
"the eye
or the ear is a truer and quicker percipient of Deity than the
Spirit which
came forth from Him."* Was Paul inspired when he wished
himself
accursed for his brethren's sake, but Kwan-yin uninspired, when
she said,
"Never will I seek nor receive private individual salvation;
never enter
into final peace alone?" If Jesus and the prophets were
inspired when
they placed mercy above sacrifice, was Manu uninspired
in saying
that a man "will fall very low if he performs ceremonial acts
only, and
fails to discharge his moral duties"? Was Jesus inspired when
he taught
that the whole law was comprehended in one saying, namely,
"Thou
shalt love thy neighbour as thyself?" and yet was Confucius
uninspired
when, in answer to the question, "What one word would serve
as a rule to
one's whole life?" he said, "Reciprocity; what you do not
wish done to
yourself, do not to others." Or take the Talmud and study
it, and then
judge from what uninspired source Jesus drew much of His
highest
teaching. "Whoso looketh on the wife of another with a lustful
eye, is
considered as if he had committed adultery."--(Kalah.) "With
what measure
we mete, we shall be measured again."--(Johanan.) "What
thou wouldst
not like to be done to thyself, do not to others; this
is the
fundamental law."--(Hillel.) "If he be admonished to take the
splinter out
of his eye, he would answer, Take the beam out of
thine
own."--(Tarphon.) "Imitate God in His goodness. Be towards thy
fellow-creatures
as He is towards the whole creation. Clothe the naked;
heal the
sick; comfort the afflicted; be a brother to the children of
thy
Father." The whole parable of the houses built on the rock and on
the sand is
taken out of the Talmud, and such instances of quotation
might be
indefinitely multiplied. What do they all prove? That there is
no
inspiration in the Bible? by no means. But surely that inspiration
is not
confined to the Bible, but is spread over the world; that much
in all
"sacred books" is the outcome of inspired minds at their highest,
although we
find the same books containing gross and low thoughts.
We should
always remember that although the Bible is more specially
a revelation
to us of the Western nations than are the Vedas and the
Zend-Avesta,
that it is only so because it is better suited to our modes
of thought,
and because it has-been one of the agents in our education.
* W. R. Greg.
-------Cardiff Theosophical Society in Wales-------
206 Newport Road, Cardiff, Wales, UK CF24-1DL
The reverence
with which we may regard the Bible as bound up with
many-sacred
memories, and as the chosen teacher of many of our greatest
minds and
purest characters, is rightly directed in other nations to
their own
sacred books. The books are really all on a level, with
much good and
much bad in them all; but as the Hebrew was inspired to
proclaim that
"the Lord thy God is one Lord" to the Hebrews, so was the
Hindoo
inspired to proclaim to Hindoos, "There is only one Deity, the
great
Soul." Either all are inspired, or none are. They stand on the
same footing.
And we rejoice to-believe that one Spirit breathes in all,
and that His
inspiration is ours to-day. "The Father worketh hitherto,"
although men
fancy He is resting in an eternal Sabbath. The orthodox
tells us
that, in rejecting the rule of morality laid down for us in the
Bible, and in
trusting ourselves to this inspiration of the free Spirit
of God, our
faith and our morality will alike be shifting and unstable.
But we reck
not of their warnings; our faith and our morality are only
shifting in
this sense, that, as we grow holier, and purer, and wiser,
our
conception of God and of righteousness will rise and expand with our
growth. It
was a golden saying of one of God's noblest sons that "no man
knoweth the
Father save the Son:" to know God we must resemble Him,
as we see in
the child the likeness of the parent. But in trusting
ourselves to
the guidance of the Spirit of God, we are not building the
house of our
faith on the shifting sand; rather are we "dwelling in a
city that
hath foundations, whose builder and maker is God." Wisely was
it sung of
old, "Except the Lord build the house, their labour is but
lost that
build it." Vain are all efforts of priestly coercion; vain
all toils of
inspired books; vain the utter sacrifice of reason and
conscience;
their labour is but lost when they strive to build a temple
of human
faith, strong enough to bear the long strain of time, or the
earthquake-shock
of grief. God only, by the patient guiding of His love,
by the direct
inspiration of His Spirit, can lay, stone by stone, and
timber by
timber, that priceless fabric of trust and love, which shall
outlive all
attacks and all changes, and shall stand in the human soul
as long as
His own Eternity endures.
-------Cardiff Theosophical Society in Wales-------
206 Newport Road, Cardiff, Wales, UK CF24-1DL
ON THE
RELIGIOUS EDUCATION OF CHILDREN.
IN every
transition-stage of the world's history the question of
education
naturally comes to the front. So much depends on the first
impressions
of childhood, on the first training of the tender shoot,
that it has
always been acknowledged, from Solomon to Forster, that to
"train
up a child in the way he should go" is among the most important
duties of
fathers and citizens. To the individual, to the family, to the
State, the
education of the rising generation is a question of primary
importance.
Plato began the education of the citizens of his ideal
Republic from
the very hour of their birth; the nursing child was taken
from the
mother lest injudicious treatment should mar, in the slightest
degree, the
perfection of the future warrior. On this point modern and
ancient
wisdom clasp hands, and place the education of the child among
the most
important duties of the State. The battle at present raging
between the
advocates of "secular" and "religious" education--to use
the
cant of the
day--is a most natural and righteous recognition of the vast
interests at
stake when Church or State claims the right of training the
sons and
daughters of England. No one has yet attempted to explain why
it should be
"irreligious" to teach writing, or history, or geography;
or why it
should "destroy a child's soul" to improve his mental
faculties. It
is among the "mysteries" of the faith, why it is better
for our poor
to leave' them to grow up in both moral and intellectual
darkness,
than to dissipate the intellectual darkness by some few rays
of knowledge,
and to leave the moral training to other hands. If we left
a starving
man to die because we could only give him bread, and were
unable to
afford cheese in addition, all would unite in declaiming at
our folly:
but "religious" people would rather that our street Arabs
grew up both
heathens and brutes, than that we should improve their
minds without
Christianizing their souls. Better let a lad grow up a
thief and a
drunkard, than turn him into an artizan and a freethinker.
There can
scarcely be a better proof of the unreasonableness of
Christian
doctrine, than the Christian fear of sharpening mental
faculties,
without binding them down, at the same time, in the chains
of dogma.
Only a religion founded on reason can dare to train children's
minds to the
utmost, and then leave them free to use all the power and
keenness
acquired by that training on the investigation of any religious
doctrine presented
to them. We, who have written Tekel on the Christian
faith, share
in the opinion of the Christian clergy, that man's carnal
reason is a
terrible foe to the Christian revelation; but here we begin
to differ
from them, for while they regard this reason as a child of
the devil, to
be scourged and chained down, we do homage to it as to the
fairest
offspring of the Divine Spirit, the brightest earthly reflection
of His glory,
and the nearest image of His "Person"; we would cherish
it, tend it,
nourish it, as our Father's noblest gift to humanity, as
our surest
guide and best counsellor, as the ear which hears His voice,
and the eye
which sees Him, as the sharpest weapon against superstition,
the ultimate
arbiter on earth between right and wrong. To us, then,
education is
ranged on the side of God; we welcome it freely and gladly,
because all
truth, all light, all knowledge, are foes of falsehood, of
darkness, of
ignorance. If we mistake error for truth a brighter light
will set us
right, and we only wish to be taught truth, not to be proved
right.
-------Cardiff Theosophical Society in Wales-------
206 Newport Road, Cardiff, Wales, UK CF24-1DL
Most liberal
thinkers agree in recognizing the fact that the duties of
the State in
the matter of education must, in the nature of things, be
purely
"secular:" that is to say, that while the State insists that the
future
citizen shall be taught at least the elements of learning, so as
to fit him or
her for fulfilling the duties of that citizenship, it has
no right to
insist on impressing on the mind of its pupil any set of
religious
dogmas or any form of religious creed. The abdication by the
State of the
pretended right of enforcing on its citizens any special
form of
religion, is not at all identical with the opposition by the
State to
religious teaching; It is merely a development of the very wise
maxim of the
great Jewish Teacher, to render the things of Caesar
to Caesar,
and the things of God to God. To teach reading, writing,
honesty,
regard for law, these things are Caesar's duties; to teach
religious
dogma, creed, or article, is entirely the province of the
teachers who
claim to hold the truth of God.
But my object
now is not to draw the line between the duties of Church
and State, of
school and home; nor do I wish to enter the lists of
sectarian
controversy, to break a lance in favour of a new religious
dogma. The
question is rather this: "What are the limits of the
religious
education which it is wise to impose on the young? Is any
dogmatic
teaching to be a part of their moral training, and is the
dogmatism
against which we have rebelled to be revived in a new form?
Are the
fetters which we are breaking for ourselves to be welded
together
again for the young limbs of our children? Are they to be fed
on the husks
which have starved our own religious aspirations, and which
we have
analysed, and rejected as unfit to sustain our moral and mental
vigour? On
the other hand, are our children to grow up without any
religious
teaching at all, without a ray of that sunshine which is
to most of us
the very source of our gladness, and the renewal of our
strength?"
-------Cardiff Theosophical Society in Wales-------
206 Newport Road, Cardiff, Wales, UK CF24-1DL
I think the
best way of deciding this question is to notice the gradual
development
of the childish body and mind. Nature's indications are a
sure
guide-post, and we cannot go very far wrong in following her hints.
I am now on
ground with which mothers are familiar, though perhaps few
men have
watched young children with sufficient attention to be able to
note their
gradual development. The first instincts of a baby are purely
personal: the
"not-I" is for it nonexistent: food, warmth, cleanliness,
comprise all
its needs and all our duties to it. The next stage is
when the
infant becomes conscious of the existence of something outside
itself: when,
vaguely and indistinctly, but yet decidedly, it shows
signs of
observing the things around it: to cultivate observation, to
attract
attention, slowly to guide it into distinguishing one object
from another,
are the next steps in its education. The child soon
succeeds in
distinguishing forms, and learns to attach different sounds
to different
shapes: it is also taught to avoid some things and to play
with others:
it awakes to the knowledge that while some objects give
pleasure,
others give pain: so far as material things go, it learns
to choose the
good and to avoid the evil. This power is only gained by
experience,
and is therefore acquired but gradually, and after a time,
side by side
with it, runs another lesson; slowly and gradually there
appears a
dawning appreciation of "right" and "wrong." This
appreciation
is not,
however, at first an appreciation of any intrinsic rightness or
wrongness in
any given action; it is simply a recognition on the child's
part that
some of its acts meet with approval, others with disapproval,
from its
elders. The standard of its seniors is unquestioningly
accepted by
the child. The moral sense awakes, but is completely guided
in its first
efforts by the hand of the child's teacher, as completely
as the first
efforts to walk are directed by the mother. Thus it comes
to pass that
the conscience of the child is but the reflex of the
conscience of
its parents or guardians: "right" and "wrong" in a
child's
vocabulary are in the earliest stages equivalent to "reward"
and
"punishment;" its final court of appeal in cases of morality is the
judgment of
the parent.*
* The moral sense does show itself,
however, in very young
children, in a higher form than this; for
we may often
observe in a young child an instinctive
sense of shame at
having done wrong. But the moral sense is
awakened and
educated by the parents' approval and
disapproval. This may
be proved, I think, by the fact that a
child brought up
among thieves and evil-livers will accept
their morality as
a matter of course, and will steal and lie
habitually,
without attaching to either act any idea
of wrong. The moral
sense is inherent in man, and is in no way
_given_ by the
parent; but I think that it is first
aroused and put into
action by the parent; the parent accustoms
the child to
regard certain actions as right and wrong;
this appeals to
the moral sense in the child, and the
child very rapidly is
ashamed of wrong, as wrong, and not simply
from dread of
punishment. I would be understood to mean,
in the text, that
the wish for reward is the first response
of the child to
the idea of an inherent distinction
between different
actions; this feeling rapidly developes
into the true moral
sense, which regards right as right, and
wrong as wrong.
I append this note at the suggestion of a
valued friend, who
feared that the inference might be drawn
from the text that
the moral sense was implanted by the
parent instead of
being, as it is, the gift of God.
It is perhaps
scarcely accurate to call this motive power in the child
a _moral_
sense at all; still, this recognition of some thing which
is immaterial
and intangible, and which is yet to be the guide of its
actions, is a
great step forward from the simple consciousness of outer
and material
objects, and is truly the dawn of that moral sense which
becomes in
men and women the test of right and wrong. So far we have
considered
the growing faculties of the child as regards physical and
moral
development, and I particularly wish to remark that the moral
sense appears
long before any "religious" tendency can be noted. There
is, however,
another side of the complete human character which is very
important,
but which is slow in showing itself in any healthy child; I
mean what may
be called the _spiritual_ sense, in distinction from the
moral; the
sense which is the crowning grace of humanity, the sense
which belongs
wholly to the immortal part of man: the outstretched hands
of the human
spirit groping after the Eternal Spirit; the yearning after
that
all-pervading Power which men call God. I know well that in many
precociously-pious
children this spiritual sense is forced into a
premature and
unwholesome maturity; by means of a spiritual hot-house
the
summer-fruit of piety may be obtained in the spring-time of the
childish heart.
The imitative instinct of childhood quickly reproduces
the
sentiments around it, and set phrases which meet with admiration
flow glibly
from baby-lips. But this strongly developed religious
feeling in a
child is both unnatural and harmful, and can never, because
it is unreal,
produce any lasting good effect. Yet is it none the less
true that, at
an early age, differing much in different children, the
"spiritual
sense" does show signs of awakening; that children soon begin
to wonder
about things around them, and to ask questions which can only
find their
true answer in the name of God. How to meet these questions,
how to train
this growing sentiment without crushing it on the one hand,
and without
unduly stimulating it on the other, is a source of deep
anxiety to
many a mother's heart in the present day. They are unable
to tell their
children the stories which satisfied their own childish
cravings: no
longer can they hold up before the eager faces the picture
of the manger
at Bethlehem, or dim the bright eyes with the story of the
cross on
Calvary; no longer can they fold the little hands in prayer to
the child of
Nazareth, or hush the hasty tongue with the reminder of
the obedience
of the Virgin's son. To a certain extent this is a loss.
A child
quickly seizes the concrete; the idea of the child Jesus or the
man Jesus is
readily grasped by a child's intellect; the God of the Old
Testament,
the "magnified man," is also, though more dimly, understood.
These
conceptions of the childhood of humanity suit the childhood of the
individual,
and it is far more difficult for the child to realize the
idea of God
when he is divested of these materialistic garments. Yet I
speak from
experience when I say that it is by no means impossible to
train a child
into the simplest and happiest feelings as regards the
Supreme
Being, without degrading the Divine into the human. By one name
we can speak
of God by which He will be readily welcomed to the child's
heart, and
that is the name of the Father. Most children are keenly
alive to
natural beauties, and are quick to observe birds, and flowers,
and sunshine;
at times they will ask how these things come there, and
then it is
well to tell them that they are the works of God Thus the
child's first
notions of the existence of a Power he cannot see or feel
will come to
him clothed in the things he loves, and will be free from
any
suggestion of fear.* Even those who regard God from the stand-point
of Pantheism
may use natural objects so as to train the child into a
fearless and
happy recognition of the constant working of the Spirit
of Nature,
and so guard the young mind against that shrinking from, and
terror of
God, which popular Christianity is so apt to induce. The lad
or girl who
grows up with even the habit of regarding God as the calm
and mighty
motive-power of the forces of Nature, changeless, infinite,
absolutely
trustworthy, will be slow to accept in later life the crude
conceptions
which incarnate the creative power in a virgin's womb, and
ascribe
caprice, injustice, and cruelty to the mighty Spirit of the
Universe.
* The ordinary shrinking of a child from
the idea of a
Presence which he cannot see, but which
sees him, will not
be felt by children whose only ideas about
God are that He
is the Father from whose hand come all
beautiful things. In
any home where the parents' thoughts of
God are free from
doubt and mistrust, the children's
thoughts will be the same;
religion, in their eyes, will be
synonymous with
happiness, for God and good will be
convertible terms.
There is a
deep truth in the idea of Pantheism, that "Nature is an
apparition of
the Deity, God in a mask;" that "He is the light of the
morning, the
beauty of the noon, and the strength of the sun. He is the
One, the
All... The soul of all; more moving than motion, more stable
than rest;
fairer than beauty, and stronger than strength. The power of
Nature is
God... He is the All; the Reality of all phenomena." The child
fed on this
food will have scarcely anything to unlearn, even when he
begins to
believe that God is something more than Nature; "the created
All is the
symbol of God," and he will pass easily and naturally on from
seeing God in
Nature to see Him in a higher form.
-------Cardiff Theosophical Society in Wales-------
206 Newport Road, Cardiff, Wales, UK CF24-1DL
Of course, as
a Theist, I should myself go much further than this: I
should speak
of all natural glory as but the reflection of the Deity,
or as the
robe in which He veils His infinite beauty; I should bid
my children
rejoice in all happiness as in the gift of a Father who
delights in
sharing His joy with His creatures; I should point out that
the pain
caused by ignorance of, or by breaking natural laws, is God's
way of
teaching men obedience for their own ultimate good: in the
freedom and
fulness of Nature's gifts I should teach them to see the
equal love of
God for all; through marking that in Nature's visible
kingdom no
end can be gained without labour and without using certain
laws, they
should learn that in the invisible kingdom they need not
expect to
find favouritism, nor think to share the fruits of victory
without
patient toil. To all who believe in a God who is also the Father
of Spirits
such teaching as this comes easily; as they themselves learn
of God only
through His works, so they naturally teach their children to
seek Him in
the same way.
The
questions, so familiar to every mother, "Can God see me?" "Where
is
God?"
can only be met with the simple assertion that God sees all, and
is
everywhere. For there are many childish questions which it is wisest
to meet with
statements which are above the grasp of the childish mind.
These
statements may be simply given to the child as statements which it
is too young
either to question or to understand. Nothing is gained
by trying to
smooth down spiritual subjects to the level of a child's
capacity; the
time will come later when the child must meet and answer
for itself
all great spiritual questions; the parent's care should be to
remove all
hindrances from the child's path of inquiry, but not to give
it
cut-and-dried answers to every possible question; religion, to be
worth
anything, must be a personal matter, and each must find it out for
himself; the
wise parent will endeavour to save the child from the pain
of
unlearning, by giving but little formal religious teaching; he cannot
fight the
battle for his child, but he can prevent his being crippled by
a fancied
armour which will stifle rather than protect him; he can give
a few wide
principles to direct him, without weighing him down with
guide-books.
-------Cardiff Theosophical Society in Wales-------
206 Newport Road, Cardiff, Wales, UK CF24-1DL
But even the
most general ideas of God should not be forced on a
childish
mind; they should come, so to speak, by chance; they should be
presented in
answer to some demand of the child's heart; they should
be inculcated
by stray words and passing remarks; they should form the
atmosphere
surrounding the child habitually, and not be a sudden "wind
of
doctrine." Of course all this is far more troublesome than to teach
a child a
catechism or a creed, but it is a far higher training. Dogma,
_i e_.,
conviction petrified by authority, should be utterly excluded
from the
religious education of children; a few great axiomatic truths
may be laid
down, but even in these primary truths dogmatism should be
avoided. The
parent should always take care to make it apparent that he
is stating
his own convictions, but is not enforcing them on the child
by his
authority. So far as the child is capable of appreciating them,
the reasons
for the religious conviction should be presented along with
the
conviction itself. Thus the child will see, as he grows older, that
religion
cannot be learned by rote, that it is not shut up in a book, or
contained in
creeds; he will appreciate the all-important fact that free
inquiry is
the only air in which truth can breathe; that one man's faith
cannot justly
be imposed on another, and that every individual soul has
the privilege
and the responsibility of forming his own religion, and
must either
hear God with his own ears, or else not hear Him at all.
We have
noticed that the moral sense awakes before the religious (I must
state my
repugnance to these terms, although I use them for the sake of
clearness;
but morality _is_ religion, although religion is more than
morality, and
the so-called religion which is not morality is worthless
and hateful).
There remains then to consider what we will call the
second side
of religion, although it is by far its most important side.
True religion
consists not only in feelings towards God, but also in
duties
towards men: the first, noble and blessed as they are, should, in
every healthy
religion, give place to the second; for a morally good man
who does not
believe in God at all, is in a far higher state of being
than the man
who believes in God and is selfish, cruel or unjust. Error
in faith is
forgiveable; error in life is fatal. The good man shall
surely see
God, although, for a time, his eyes be holden; the evil man,
though he
hold the noblest faith yet known, shall never taste the joy of
God, until he
turns from sin, and struggles after holiness. Faith first,
and then
morality, is the war-cry of the churches; morality above all,
and let faith
follow in good time, is the watch-word of Theism; so,
among us, the
principal part of the religious training of our children
should be
morality; religious feeling may be over-strained, or give rise
to
self-deception; religious talk may be morbid and unreal; religious
faith may be
erring, and must be imperfect; but morality is a rock which
can never be
shaken, a guide which can never mislead. Whether we are
right or
wrong in our belief about God, whether we are immortal spirits
or perishable
organizations, yet purity is nobler than vice, courage
than
cowardice, truth than falsehood, love than hate. Let us, then,
teach our
children morality above all things. Let us teach them to love
good for its
own sake, without thought of reward, and they will remain
good, even
if, in after life, they should, alas! lose all hope of
immortality
and all faith hi God. A child's natural instinct is towards
good; a tale
of heroism, of self sacrifice, of generosity, will bring
the eager
blood flushing up to a child's face and wake a quick response
and a desire
of emulation. It is therefore well to place in children's
hands tales
of noble deeds in days gone by. Nothing is easier than to
train a child
into feeling a desire to be good for the sake of being so.
There is
something so attractive in goodness, that I have found it more
effectual to
hold up the nobility of courage and unselfishness before
the child's
eyes, than to descend to punishment for the corresponding
faults. If a
child is in the habit of regarding all wrong as something
low and
degrading, he quickly shrinks from it; all mothers know the
instinctive
ambition of children to be something superior and admirable,
and this
instinct is most useful in inculcating virtue. Later in life
nothing ruins
a young man like discovering that morality and religion
are often
divorced, and that the foremost professors of religion are
less
delicately honourable and trustworthy than high-minded "worldly
men;" on
the other hand, nothing will have so beneficial an effect on
men and women
entering life, as to see that those who are most joyful in
their faith
towards God, lead the purest and most blameless lives. "Do
good, be
good" is, as has been well said, the golden rule of life;
"do
good, be good" must be the law impressed on our children's hearts.
Whatever
"eclipse of faith" may await England, whatever darkness of most
hopeless
scepticism, whatever depth of uttermost despair of God, there
is not only
the hope, but the certainty of the resurrection of religion,
if we all
hold fast through the driving storm to the sheet-anchor of
pure
morality, to most faithful discharge of all duty towards man to
love, and
tenderness, and charity, and patience. Morality never faileth;
but, whether
there be dogmas, they shall fail; whether there be creeds,
they shall
cease; whether there be churches, they shall crumble away;
but morality
shall abide for evermore and endure as long as the endless
circle of
Nature revolves around the Eternal Throne.
-------Cardiff Theosophical Society in Wales-------
206 Newport Road, Cardiff, Wales, UK CF24-1DL
NATURAL
RELIGION VERSUS REVEALED RELIGION.
ONE is almost
ashamed to repeat so trite an aphorism as the well-worn
saying that
"history repeats itself." But in studying the course taken
by the
advocates of what is called "revealed religion," in seeing their
disdain of
"mere nature," their scornful repudiation of the idea that
any poor
natural product can come into competition with their special
article,
hall-stamped by heaven itself, I feel irresistibly compelled
to glance
backwards down the long vista of history, and there I see
the conflict
of the present day raging fierce and long. I see the same