Chapter 13

But that parallel is not a true one. Let us suppose that the follies of astrology and the discoveries of astronomy were bound up in one book, and called the Word of God. Let us suppose we were told that the whole book--facts, reason, folly, and falsehoods--was divinely inspired and literally true. Let us suppose that any one who denied the old crude errors of astrology was persecuted as a heretic. Let us suppose that any one denying the theory of Laplace or the theory of Copernicus would be reviled as an "Infidel." Let us suppose that the Astronomer Royal claimed infallibility, not only in matters astronomical, but also in politics and morals. Let us suppose that for a thousand years the astrological-astronomical holy government had whipped, imprisoned, tortured, burnt, hanged, and damned for everlasting every man, woman, or child who dared to tell it any new truth, and that some of the noblest men of genius of all ages had been roasted or impaled alive for being rude to the equator. Let us suppose that millions of pounds were still annually spent on casting nativities, and that thousands of expensive observatories were still maintained at the public cost for astrological rites. Let us suppose all this, and then I should say it would be quite consistent and quite logical for me to turn my verbal artillery on Greenwich Observatory.

Would the Christians listen to such a plea in any other case? Had Socialists been guilty of tyranny, or war, of massacre, or torture, of blind opposition to the truth of science, of cruel persecution of the finest human spirits for fifteen centuries, can anyone believe for a moment that Christians would heed the excuse that the founders of Socialism had not preached the atrocious policy which the established Socialist bodies and the recognised Socialist leaders had put in force persistently during all those hundreds of cruel years?

Would the Christian hearken to such a defence from a Socialist, or from a Mohammedan? Would a Liberal accept it from a Tory? Would a Roman Catholic admit it from a Jew?

Neither is it right to claim credit for the good deeds, and to avoid responsibility for the evil deeds of the divine religion.

And the fact must be insisted upon, that _all_ religion, in its very nature, makes for persecution and oppression. It is the assumption that it is wicked to doubt the accepted faith and the presumption that one religion ought to revenge or justify its God upon another religion, that leads to all the pious crimes the world groans and bleeds for.

This is seen in the Russian outrages on the Jews, and in the Moslem outrages upon the Macedonians to-day. It is religious fanaticism that lights and fans and feeds the fire. Were all the people in the world of one, or of no, religion to-day, there would be no Jews murdered by Christians and no Christians murdered by Moslems in the East. The cause of the atrocities would be gone. The cause is religion.

Why is religious intolerance so much more fierce and bitter than political intolerance? Just because it _is_ religious. It is the supernatural element that breeds the fury. It is the feeling that their religion is divine and all other religions wicked: it is the belief that it is a holy thing to be "jealous for the Lord," that drives men into blind rage and ruthless savagery.

We have to regard two things at once, then: the good influences of Christ's ethics, and the evil deeds of those who profess to be His followers.

As to what some Christians call "the Christianity of Christ," I suggest that the teachings of Christ were imperfect and inadequate. That they contain some moral lessons I admit. But some of the finest and most generally admired of those lessons do not appear to have been spoken by Christ, and for the rest there is nothing in His ethics that had not been taught by men before, and little that has not been extended or improved by men since His era.

The New Testament, considered as a moral and spiritual guide for mankind, is unsatisfactory. For it is based upon an erroneous estimate of human nature and of God.

I am sure that it would be easy to compile a book more suitable to the needs of Man. I think it is a gross blunder to assume that all the genius, all the experience, all the discovery and research; all the poetry, morality, and science of the entire human race during the past eighteen hundred years have failed to add to or improve the knowledge and morality of the first century.

Mixed with much that is questionable or erroneous, the New Testament contains some truth and beauty. Amid the perpetration of much bloodshed and tyranny, Christianity has certainly achieved some good. I should not like to say of any religion that all its works were evil. But Christ's message, as we have it in the Gospels, is neither clear nor sufficing, and has been obscured, and, at times almost obliterated, by the pomps and casuistries of the schools and churches. And just as it is difficult to discover the actual Jesus among the conflicting Gospel stories of His works and words, so it is almost impossible to discover the genuine authentic Christian religion amid the swarm of more or less antagonistic sects who confound the general ear with their discordant testimonies.

CHRISTIANITY AND CIVILISATION

It is a common mistake of apologists to set down all general improvements and signs of improvements to the credit of the particular religion or political theory they defend. Every good Liberal knows that bad harvests are due to Tory government. Every good Tory knows that his Party alone is to thank for the glorious certainties that Britannia rules the waves, that an Englishman's house is his castle, and that journeymen tailors earn fourpence an hour more than they were paid in the thirteenth century.

Cobdenites ascribe every known or imagined improvement in commerce, and the condition of the masses, to Free Trade. Things are better than they were fifty years ago: Free Trade was adopted fifty years ago. _Ergo_--there you are.

There is not a word about the development of railways and steamships, about improved machinery, about telegraphs, the cheap post and telephones; about education and better facilities of travel; about the Factory Acts and Truck Acts; about cheap books and newspapers; and who so base to whisper of Trade Unions, and Agitators, and County Councils?

So it is with the Christian religion. We are more moral, more civilised, more humane, the Christians tell us, than any human beings ever were before us. And we owe this to the Christian religion, and to no other thing under Heaven.

But for Christianity we never should have had the House of Peers, the _Times_ newspaper, the Underground Railway, the _Adventures of Captain Kettle_, the Fabian Society, or Sir Thomas Lipton.

The ancient Greek Philosophers, the Buddhist missionaries, the Northern invaders, the Roman laws and Roman roads, the inventions of printing, of steam, and of railways, the learning of the Arabs, the discoveries of Copernicus, Galileo, Newton, Herschel, Hunter, Laplace, Bacon, Descartes, Spencer, Columbus, Karl Marx, Adam Smith; the reforms and heroisms and artistic genius of Wilberforce, Howard, King Asoka, Washington, Stephen Langton, Oliver Cromwell, Sir Thomas More, Rabelais, and Shakespeare; the wars and travels and commerce of eighteen hundred years, the Dutch Republic, the French Revolution, and the Jameson Raid have had nothing to do with the growth of civilisation in Europe and America.

And so to-day: science, invention, education, politics, economic conditions, literature and art, the ancient Greeks and Oriental Wisdom, and the world's Press count for nothing in the moulding of the nations. Everything worth having comes from the pulpit, the British and Foreign Bible Society, and the _War Cry_.

It is not to our scientists, our statesmen, our economists, our authors, inventors, and scholars that we must look for counsel and reform: such secular aid is useless, and we shall be wise to rely entirely upon His Holiness the Pope and His Grace the Archbishop of Canterbury.

In the England of the Middle Ages, when Christianity was paramount, there was a cruel penal code, there was slavery, there were barbarous forest laws, there were ruthless oppression and insolent robbery of the poor, there were black ignorance and a terror of superstition, there were murderous laws against witchcraft, there was savage persecution of the Jews, there were "trial by wager of battle," and "question" of prisoners by torture.

Many of these horrors endured until quite recent times. Why did Christianity with its spiritual and temporal power, permit such things to be?

Did Christianity abolish them? No. Christianity nearly always opposed reform. The Church was the enemy of popular freedom, the enemy of popular education; the friend of superstition and tyranny, and the robber baron.

Those horrors are no more. But Christianity did not abolish them. They were abolished by the gradual spread of humane feelings and the light of knowledge; just as similar iniquities were abolished by the spread of humane doctrines in India, centuries before the birth of Christ.

Organised and authoritative religion the world over makes for ignorance, for poverty and superstition. In Russia, in Italy, in Spain, in Turkey, where the Churches are powerful and the authority is tense, the condition of the people is lamentable. In America, England, and Germany, where the authority of the Church is less rigid and the religion is nearer Rationalism, the people are more prosperous, more intelligent, and less superstitious. So, again, the rule of the English Church seems less beneficial than that of the more rational and free Nonconformist. The worst found and worst taught class in England is that of the agricultural labourers, who have been for centuries left entirely in the hands of the Established Church.

It may be urged that the French, although Catholics, are as intelligent and as prosperous as any nation in the world. But the French are a clever people, and since their Revolution have not taken their religion so seriously. Probably there are more Sceptics and Rationalists in France than in any other country.

My point is that the prosperity and happiness of a nation do not depend upon the form of religion they profess, but upon their native energy and intelligence and the level of freedom and knowledge to which they have attained.

It is because organised and authoritative religion opposes education and liberty that we find the most religious peoples the most backward. And this is a strange commentary upon the claim of the Christians, that their religion is the root from which the civilisation and the refinement of the world have sprung.

CHRISTIANITY AND ETHICS

Christianity, we are told, inaugurated the religion of humanity and human brotherhood. But the Buddhists taught a religion of humanity and universal brotherhood before the Christian era; and not only taught the religion, but put it into practice, which the Christians never succeeded in doing, and cannot do to-day.

And, moreover, the Buddhists did not spread their religion of humanity and brotherhood by means of the sword, and the rack, and the thumb-screw, and the faggot; and the Buddhists liberated the slave, and extended their loving-kindness to the brute creation.

The Buddhists do not depend for the records of their morality on books. Their testimony is written upon the rocks. No argument can explain away the rock edicts of King Asoka.

King Asoka was one of the greatest Oriental kings. He ruled over a vast and wealthy nation. He was converted to Buddhism, and made it the State religion, as Constantine made Christianity the State religion of Rome. In the year 251 B.C., King Asoka inscribed his earliest rock edict. The other edicts from which I shall quote were all cut more than two centuries before our era. The inscription of the Rupuath Rock has the words: "Two hundred and fifty years have elapsed since the departure of the teacher." Now, Buddha died in the fifth century before Christ.

The Dhauli Edict of King Asoka contains the following:

Much longing after the things [of this life] is a disobedience, I again declare; not less so is the laborious ambition of dominion by a prince who would be a propitiator of Heaven. Confess and believe in God, who is the worthy object of obedience.

From the Tenth Rock Edict:

Earthly glory brings little profit, but, on the contrary, produces a loss of virtue. To toil for heaven is difficult to peasant and to prince, unless by a supreme effort he gives up all.

This is from the Fourteenth Edict:

Piyadasi, the friend of the Devas, values alone the harvest of the next world. For this alone has this inscription been chiselled, that our sons and our grandsons should make no new conquests. Let them not think that conquests by the sword merit the name of conquests. Let them see their ruin, confusion, and violence. True conquests alone are the conquests of _Dharma_.

Rock Edict No. 1 has:

Formerly in the great refectory and temple of King Piyadasi, the friend of the Devas, many hundred thousand animals were daily sacrificed for the sake of food meat... but now the joyful chorus resounds again and again that henceforward not a single animal shall be put to death.

The Second Edict has:

In committing the least possible harm, in doing abundance of good, in the practice of pity, love, truth, and likewise purity of life, religion consists.

The Ninth Edict has:

Not superstitious rites, but kindness to slaves and servants, reverence towards venerable persons, self-control with respect to living creatures... these and similar virtuous actions are the rites which ought indeed to be performed.

The Eighth Edict has:

The acts and the practice of religion, to wit, sympathy, charity, truthfulness, purity, gentleness, kindness.

The Sixth Edict has:

I consider the welfare of all people as something for which I must work.

The Dhauli Edict has:

If a man is subject to slavery and ill-treatment, from this moment he shall be delivered by the king from this and other captivity. Many men in this country suffer in captivity, therefore the stupa containing the commands of the king has been a great want.

Is it reasonable to suppose that a people possessing so much wisdom, mercy, and purity two centuries before Christ was born could need to borrow from the Christian ethics?

Mr. Lillie says of King Asoka:

He antedates Wilberforce in the matter of slavery. He antedates Howard in his humanity towards prisoners. He antedates Tolstoy in his desire to turn the sword into a pruning-hook. He antedates Rousseau, St. Martin, Fichte in their wish to make interior religion the all in all.

King Asoka abolished slavery, denounced war, taught spiritual religion and purity of life, founded hospitals, forbade blood sacrifices, and inculcated religious toleration, two centuries before the birth of Christ.

Centuries before King Asoka the Buddhists sent out missionaries all over the world.

Which religion was the borrower from the other--Buddhism or Christianity?

Two centuries before Christ, King Asoka had cut upon the rocks these words:

I pray with every variety of prayer for those who differ with me in creed, that they, following after my example, may with me attain unto eternal salvation. And whoso doeth this is blessed of the inhabitants of this world; and in the next world endless moral merit resulteth from such religious charity --_Edict XI_.

How many centuries did it take the Christians to rise to that level of wisdom and charity? How many Christians have reached it yet?

But the altruistic idea is very much older than Buddha, for it existed among forms of life very much earlier and lower than the human, and has, indeed, been a powerful factor in evolution.

Speaking of "The Golden Rule" in his _Confessions of Faith of a Man of Science_, Haeckel says:

In the human family this maxim has always been accepted as self-evident; as ethical instinct it was an inheritance derived from our animal ancestors. It had already found a place among the herds of apes and other social mammals; in a similar manner, but with wider scope, it was already present in the most primitive communities and among the hordes of the least advanced savages. Brotherly love--mutual support, succour, protection, and the like--had already made its appearance among gregarious animals as a social duty; for without it the continued existence of such societies is impossible. Although at a later period, in the case of man, these moral foundations of society came to be much more highly developed, their oldest prehistoric source, as Darwin has shown, is to be sought in the social instincts of animals. Among the higher vertebrates (dogs, horses, elephants, etc.), as among the higher articulates (ants, bees, termites, etc.), also, the development of social relations and duties is the indispensable condition of their living together in orderly societies. Such societies have for man also been the most important instrument of intellectual and moral progress.

It is not to revelation that we owe the ideal of human brotherhood, but to evolution. It is because altruism is better than selfishness that it has survived. It is because love is stronger and sweeter than greed that its influence has deepened and spread. From the love of the animal for its mate, from the love of parents for their young, sprang the ties of kindred and the loyalty of friendship; and these in time developed into tribal, and thence into national patriotism. And these stages of altruistic evolution may be seen among the brutes. It remained for Man to take the grand step of embracing all humanity as one brotherhood and one nation.

But the root idea of fraternity and mutual loyalty was not planted by any priest or prophet. For countless ages universal brotherhood has existed among the bison, the swallow, and the deer, in a perfection to which humanity has not yet attained.

For a fuller account of this animal origin of fraternity I recommend the reader to two excellent books, _The Martyrdom of Man_, by Winwood Reade (Kegan Paul), and _Mutual Aid_, by Prince Kropotkin (Heinemann).

But the Christian claims that Christ taught a new gospel of love, and mercy, and goodwill to men. That is a great mistake. Christ did not originate one single new ethic.

The Golden Rule was old. The Lord's Prayer was old. The Sermon on the Mount was old. With the latter I will deal briefly. For a fuller statement, please see the R.P.A. sixpenny edition of Huxley's _Lectures and Essays_, and _Christianity and Mythology_, by J. M. Robertson.

Shortly stated, Huxley's argument was to the following effect:

That Mark's Gospel is the oldest of the Synoptic Gospels, and that Mark's Gospel does not contain, nor even mention, the Sermon on the Mount. That Luke gives no Sermon on the Mount, but gives what may be called a "Sermon on the Plain." That Luke's sermon differs materially from the sermon given by Matthew. That the Matthew version contains one hundred and seven verses, and the Luke version twenty-nine verses.

Huxley's conclusion is as follows:

"Matthew," having a _cento_ of sayings attributed--rightly or wrongly it is impossible to say--to Jesus among his materials, thought they were, or might be, records of a continuous discourse and put them in a place he thought likeliest. Ancient historians of the highest character saw no harm in composing long speeches which never were spoken, and putting them into the mouths of statesmen and warriors; and I presume that whoever is represented by "Matthew" would have been grievously astonished to find that any one objected to his following the example of the best models accessible to him.

But since Huxley wrote those words more evidence has been produced. From the Old Testament, from the Talmud, and from the recently-discovered _Teaching of the Twelve Apostles_ (a pre-Christian work) the origins of the Sermon on the Mount have been fully traced.

Agnostic criticism now takes an attitude towards this sermon which may be thus expressed:

1. The sermon never was preached at all. It is a written compilation.

2. The story of the mount is a myth. The name of the mount is not given. It is not reasonable to suppose that Jesus would lead a multitude up a mountain to speak to them for a few minutes. The mountain is an old sun-myth of the Sun God on his hill, and the twelve apostles are another sun-myth, and represent the signs of the Zodiac.

3. There is nothing in the alleged sermon that was new at the time of its alleged utterance.

Of course, it may be claimed that the arrangement of old texts in a new form constitutes a kind of originality; as one might say that he who took flowers from a score of gardens and arranged them into one bouquet produced a new effect of harmony and beauty. But this credit must be given to the compilers of the gospels' version of the Sermon on the Mount.

Let us take a few pre-Christian morals.

Sextus said: "What you wish your neighbours to be to you, such be also to them."

Isocrates said: "Act towards others as you desire others to act towards you."

Lao-tze said: "The good I would meet with goodness, the not-good I would also meet with goodness."

Buddha said: "Hatred does not cease by hatred at any time: hatred ceases by love."

And again: "Let us live happily, not hating those who hate us."

In the Talmud occur the following Jewish anticipations of Christian morals:

Love peace, and seek it at any price.

Remember that it is better to be persecuted than persecutor.

To whom does God pardon sins?--To him who himself forgives injuries.

Those who undergo injuries without returning it, those who hear themselves vilified and do not reply, who have no motive but love, who accept evils with joy; it is of them that the prophet speaks when he says the friends of God shall shine one day as the sun in all his splendour.

It is not the wicked we should hate, but wickedness.

Be like God, compassionate, merciful.

Judge not your neighbour when you have not been in his place.

He who charitably judges his neighbour shall be charitably judged by God.

Do not unto others that which it would be disagreeable to you to suffer yourself, that is the main part of the law; all the rest is only commentary.

From the Old Testament come such morals as:

Let him give his cheek to him that smiteth him (Lam. iii. 30).

Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself (Lev. xix. 18).

He that is of a lowly spirit shall obtain honour (Prov. xxix. 23)

The meek shall inherit the land (Ps. xxxvii 11).

History and ancient literature prove that Christianity did not bring a new moral code, did not inaugurate peace, nor purity, nor universal brotherhood, did not originate the ideal human character: but checked civilisation, resisted all enlightenment, and deluged the earth with innocent blood in the endeavour to compel mankind to drink old moral wine out of new theological bottles.

Three of the greatest blessings men can have are freedom, liberty of conscience, and knowledge. These blessings Christianity has not given, but has opposed.

It is largely to the ancient Greeks and Romans, to the Arabs and the Indians, to patriots, heroes, statesmen, scholars, scientists, travellers, inventors, discoverers, authors, poets, philanthropists, rebels, sceptics, and reformers that the world owes such advance as it has made towards liberty and happiness and universal loving-kindness.