Chapter IV: Part II: I. The Tercentenary of the English Bible (2)

Nor does the plea that, because "I feel it in my heart that the bible is divine," make it so. If "I feel it in my heart" were enough to prove anything true, other bibles would be as true as ours. The Turk and the Chinaman "feel it" in their hearts about their gods as we do about ours. The argument from _feeling_ practically dispenses with knowledge, and leads to intellectual nihilism.

V. In defense of the bible it is further urged that, it being "a heavenly treasure in an earthen vessel," allowance should be made for the unavoidable imperfections which have crept into its pages. God was the author, man was the amanuensis, they say, and, therefore, the defects of the bible should be charged to the account of man. But why should a heavenly treasure be enclosed in an earthen vessel? Are there no heavenly vessels? Was not Jesus as divine as his father? Why could not he have committed the revelation to writing? Why leave it to unknown and unreliable reporters to transcribe a divine message? If the reporters were not unreliable, then what is the complaint? But if reliable reporters could not be found, the deity could just as easily, and very much more safely, have written the whole of his message with his own hand. Besides, a heavenly treasure which an earthen vessel can spoil is not very heavenly. If the incorruptible can be corrupted, then it is not any different from any other corruptible thing. Alas! for the infallible book which has to be protected against printers' or revisers' mistakes. Let us have a better bible--one that no earthen vessel can contaminate.

VI. Finally, "Why not dwell upon the truths in the bible and let alone the errors?" is another of the "strong arguments" of the bible defenders. "There are truths enough in the bible, and to spare," say they. "Why, then, waste time on its imperfections?" But it all depends upon how serious the imperfections are. It is not the number of errors, but their importance that counts. One serious blemish in a book would be enough to condemn the whole book. The strength of a chain is in its weakest link. It is no comfort to think that there are many more sound links in the chain than weak ones. When the defects in the bible are pointed out, it is no answer to say that many, or even most, of its parts are all right. But this leads us to the next important question.

IV. How to Test a Book

|THE character of a book is determined not by its best, but by its worst parts. This sounds paradoxical, but let us see if it is not true. The bulk of a book may be composed of harmless and even of wholesome matter, but if there is in it even half a page of questionable teaching, the book becomes unsafe. One may write magnificently of liberty and the rights of man, for instance, but if anywhere in the book, even though only for once, assassination be recommended as a political weapon, that one idea would give to the whole work a dangerous tendency. Indeed, the good parts of such a book, if anything, add to the mischief it might do, because they help to give it an air of respectability. In the same way, a comedy, or a drama, may be perfectly proper in nearly all its parts, but if it offends good taste, or attacks morality in a single line, the play is bad. One indelicate scene in a production will bring upon its author the just condemnation of the public. Likewise, a novel may be crowded with helpful philosophical reflections, but the least vulgarity in it would make the book a menace.

We are not taking the position that such books or plays should never be read or acted, but that they should never be given an _unqualified_ endorsement. The bible is given an unqualified endorsement. To deserve it, it ought not only to be good in the main, but good altogether. We shall see if the bible is good even in the main; but before we take up that phase of the subject let me give you a few more illustrations to show that it is not true of the bible only that its worst parts determine its character, but also of the men in it who are held up for our emulation. If any one of our physical organs is in an unhealthy or perilous condition, the health of the whole body is in question. The soundness of all our other parts can not excuse the alarming symptoms of the affected organ. The insurance companies will reject our application if, though perfectly well in all our other organs, we are seriously affected in any one of them.

By the same rule is measured a man's intellectual parts. It is not the thousand sensible things a man says, but the one absurd or impossible statement he advances which gives us the gauge of his intellect. To the objection that the rule which we have been applying would do a great injustice if applied to such a man as Alfred Russel Wallace, for instance, who though an eminent scientist, and the rival of Charles Darwin, was also a firm believer in spiritualism, the answer is that the example cited proves the inadvisability of endorsing any book or man, unqualifiedly. Only an infallible book, or an infallible man, could command such endorsement. The bible, therefore, must be perfect in everything, else its unqualified endorsement by the clergy is a real danger.

But not only the physical and the intellectual, but also the moral character of a man is ascertained by this rule. One act of treachery or murder is enough to put a man behind the bars. Before such a man may be restored to society he must reform, and, likewise, before a book may be given full endorsement, the objectionable and the absurd must be eliminated therefrom. In the same way, before any man could be held up as a perfect example, he must be above the charge of even a single serious defect. If you would have your play staged, cut out the offending lines; if you would have your bible read in the home and the school, and the characters therein depicted, admired and followed, cut out the scandalous stories and the immoral teachings it contains. You will not do this? Then both science and morality have the right to condemn your book, and forbid its use in the public schools, by the help of the courts. We hope that in the near future the civilized world will avail itself of this right, by taking steps to render the bible as harmless in church and Sunday-school as it now is in the public schools. This can be done by breaking down the _unqualified endorsement_ which the sectarian interests of the country have given the book. Unveil the bible! and its glamour will vanish.

The most telling proofs in favor of the Rationalist position on the bible are the admissions which, from time to time, the defenders of the bible themselves make. The editors of the _Oberlin College Magazine_, which is a religious publication, in an article on "Bible Hero Classics," suggest that parts of the bible should be excluded from the mails:

_Modern scholarship has so changed the point of view with which the bible is regarded, that one no longer has the confidence, in sending the "seeker after God" to the bible to believe that he will certainly find Him there. The Old Testament is a complete literature with units of varying value. Much of it is incomprehensible to the ordinary reader. Parts of it should be excluded from the mails._

Prof. Dr. Charles Henderson, the chaplain of the University of Chicago, expresses his utter contempt for certain parts of the bible: "John the Baptist's God was no better than our devil. The things which made Solomon and David saints in their own day would land them in the penitentiary in ours." *

* Reported in the Tribune, Chicago.

The bible quotes God as saying that David was a man after His own heart, but this divine tells us David was a criminal. Could a more damaging admission be made by a clergyman? And yet the book that can mistake a scoundrel for a saint is to be placed in the hands of our children at a very tender age, and foisted upon the whole nation as "the sublimest of books," to quote the words of another divine. * A book concerning which its own friends can hold such diametrically opposite opinions can not be, at least, a very honest book. Honest people speak or write to be understood. If what one reader of the bible calls God, another calls the devil; or if to one reader David is a great saint, while to another he is only a scamp, deserving a long term in jail, then, surely, either we can not understand the bible, in which case the book is worthless; or the bible was not meant to be understood, which leads to the same conclusion.

* Editor Sunday School Times.

The Rev. J. Biresley, writing in the _Christian World_, pays, unconsciously, a great tribute to the Rationalist: "More than thirty years ago I listened to a lecture by Charles Bradlaugh on 'Is the Bible True'? His assertions shocked the orthodox among his hearers, and yet there was scarcely one of them which the biblical students of to-day would not accept." What a compliment this is to the courage of the Rationalist. He dared to shock the orthodox at a time when they had the power to persecute him unto death. And what an admission this is, of the intellectual and moral superiority of the heretic to the believer! It takes "thirty years" of dilly-dallying before Christian scholars will admit that the persecuted heretic was in the right. Is it any wonder that the world is losing respect for priest and preacher and honoring the heretics as the pioneers of the golden day of truth?

To the churches we say: "If you would save the bible, separate the good from the bad, and the false from the true. Do not print them all in one volume as the 'Holy Bible.' If you have not the courage to call any part of the bible bad, or any of its statements false--we shall do it for you."

Speak According to Knowledge

|THERE are also good things in the bible. It would be regrettable, indeed, to believe it possible for a book of the size of the bible to be wholly bad. Literature is life; and it would be as impossible to find a people with a literature wholly bad, as it would be to find a people with an infallible literature. Together with the _Vedas_ of India, the _Avesta_ of the Pharisees, the _Five Kings_ of the Chinese, the Buddhist _Tri Pitikes_, and the Moslem _Koran_, the Jewish-Christian scriptures contain many splendid passages.

In all ancient literature we run across bits of fine poetry and eloquence. It would really be impossible to collect all the literature of a people, of whatever race or period in history, into one volume, without finding in the collection many a precious gem. The cry of a man in distress is always touching, be he Jew or Hindu. The love of man for home and fatherland, for wife and child, for truth and freedom, in any book, is sublime. Friendship is the one rose without a thorn, wherever it blooms. A melody does not have to be inspired, to be sung in all lands. We weep for the sufferings of a savage of ten thousand years ago, and we laugh with the men of wit and humor of every race and clime. We have no prejudice against the bible. All we demand is the liberty to read it as we do any other literature: To enjoy what is noble and inspiring in it, and to reject what is false and degrading. It is the object of our efforts to make it perfectly proper, as well as safe, for any one to read and tell the truth about the bible. No man shall be compelled to agree with it upon penalty of losing his standing in the community now, or his "soul" in the hereafter.

In comparing one book with another, we must bear in mind that it is not the ideas in which they agree, but those in which they disagree, that justifies their existence. All the seven bibles of the world * forbid crime and recommend the virtues. Are they, then, all equally worthy? If the important thing is sameness of teaching, why is not one bible enough? But there are many bibles, because it is the differences that preserve, as well as distinguish, one book from another. We would never be able to tell wherein the bible of Confucius was superior to the Moslem Koran, or the Koran to the Avesta of Zoroaster, or again, the book of science to the creeds, if we confined our investigations to the things held in common by them all. It is by the things in which they _disagree_ that their real character is revealed.

* The seven bibles of the world are the Koran of the
Mohammedans, the Tri Pitikes of Buddhists, the Five Kings of
the Chinese, the three Vedas of the Hindus, the Zend Avesta
of the Persians, the Eddas of Scandinavia, and Old and New
Testaments of the Christians.

"Thou shalt love thy neighbor" is in all the bibles, but "Speak according to knowledge" is not in any of the bibles--it is found only in the bible of science, and that is the difference between religion, which builds on _faith_, and science, which builds on _knowledge_.

In this one difference is the glory of science, a glory which is not shared by any of the sectarian bibles of the world.

"Speak according to knowledge" and "Speak according to knowledge." That is to say, "Let your tongue keep pace with your mind," are the two commandments for which one looks in vain in the Jewish-Christian bible. Neither Moses nor Jesus ever thought of commanding, or at least of permitting, people to confine their statements and beliefs to the facts--of never dogmatizing about the unknown, which vice has converted the world into a babel of discord, hatred and persecution. Never did either of these teachers think of inculcating so sweet, so sane, so wholesome, so modest, so reverent, so peaceful, a command as is expressed in the caution which science has posted up at every turn of the road: Speak according to knowledge.

Nor does the bible allow people to speak their true thoughts. Could any book be guilty of a greater offense against the highest ethics? All the Ten Commandments and the Sermon on the Mount can not make up for this failure of the bible to encourage, yea; and to command, in unmistakably plain and persuasive language, liberty of thought and speech as the only guarantee of honesty in religion, and as the only enemy which falsehood fears. On the other hand, how can any book be called good, much less the best, in all the world, which contains such a passage as the following:

_He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved; but he that believeth not shall be damned._ *

* Mark xvi, 16.

Can freedom and the bible live under the same roof? Would it be safe to speak according to knowledge, when "damnation" is the penalty for so doing? Was it to encourage honesty, liberty of conscience and tolerance that so Asiatic and despotic a command as the above has been translated into all the languages of the earth? Would not the bible have been a more helpful book if it had said: "Do not believe upon insufficient evidence, for to do so is to prefer error to truth"? But there is not a single bible that contains so daring a commandment. If a man may not "Speak according to knowledge," he can not act according to conscience, and a religion which denies to us these two rights instead of saving us, destroys us body and soul.

The only difference, in respect to freedom of worship, between the New Testament and the Old is that, while the New Testament postpones the punishment of the free thinker until the day of judgment, the Old Testament proceeds to "damn" him here and now:

_If thy brother, the son of thy mother, or thy son, or thy daughter, or the wife of thy bosom, or thy friend, which is as thine own soul, entice thee secretly, saying, Let us go and serve other gods... Thou shalt not consent unto him, nor hearken unto him; neither shall thine eye pity him, neither shalt thou spare, neither shalt thou conceal him: but thou shalt surely kill him; thine hand shall be first upon him to put him to death, and afterwards the hand of all the people. And thou shalt stone him with stones that he die_. *

* Deuteronomy xiii, 6-10.

It brings tears into my eyes to think of Europe and America upon their knees, with blanched cheeks and trembling lips, before such a text. Why retain so unjust and tyrannical a commandment in a book which the people are asked to love and obey? And why translate such evil words into all the tongues of man? What has happened to the European races--to the descendants of the glorious Greeks and the proud Romans--that they can fawn over a book that commands a mother to kill her child for not believing as she does? Surely a blight of some kind must have fallen upon both the heart and intellect of the Western world--else how explain the gilt-edged bibles, containing these inhuman texts by the score, which young and old carry in their pockets, and almost worship?

But the full import of this text is in the words we have printed in italics: "_Neither shall thine eye pity him_." It seems as though the being who gave the commandment feared that the natural affections might lead fathers or mothers to hesitate dipping their hands in the blood of their own sons and daughters; hence, the imperative, "Neither shall thine eye pity him." Yes, the heart must turn into a stone, even as the head must be stunned, before anyone can be a good Jew or a good Christian.