v. Ezekiel xiv, 9

vi. Jeremiah xviii, 11.

In one of his letters, St. Paul does not hesitate to write that God purposely causes people to believe in a lie that he may have an excuse to damn them for not believing the truth. That people could read such a passage without protest and abhorrence, shows how effective has been the blight of this Asiatic cult upon the mind and heart of the western world. "And for this cause," writes the Apostle Paul, "God shall send them strong delusion, that they should believe a lie: that they all might be damned." *

The God who in the Old Testament hardened the heart of Pharaoh that he might ruin him and his people, leads people, in the New Testament, to hug a delusion to their souls that he might damn them. And this is the being who is not only to be our pattern for morality, but it shall also be considered impossible for any one to be better than he is. To try to improve on this "divine" pattern is blasphemy, both to the Jew and the Christian.

To teach that no one can be better than Jehovah, as he is depicted in the bible, is the most hopeless pessimism. Morality is born of hope and courage. It is the idea of human perfectibility and the idea of progress which give wings to human effort. The bible denies to man the privilege to transcend the ideals of the past, or to be better than his Asiatic gods.

* II Thessalonians ii, 11, 12.

IV. Righteousness in the Bible

_What doth the Lord require of thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God_. *

* Micah vi, 8.

|THIS, and similar passages, are often quoted to give the bible a reputation. Many commentators, Mathew Arnold among them, contend that righteousness is the major key-note of the Old Testament. To prove this, the above passage from the prophet Micah is often quoted. Another text which these commentators are fond of quoting reads as follows:

_And to him that ordereth his conversation aright will I show the salvation of God._ *

* Psalms 1, 23.

To deserve this salvation by a life of righteousness, it is claimed, was the one all-permeating thought of the "people of the bible." But this last passage from the Psalms occurs only once in the Old Testament, and it is a little strange that there should be just one reference to the thought which is said to permeate the whole bible. However, that is not the real answer to the conclusions drawn from this passage. By consulting the margin of the Revised Version of the bible, which, too, is the work of Christian scholars and has this advantage over the Authorized Version, that it is more accurate--by consulting, then, the latest and more accurate translation of the bible, we find that the text reads:

_Whosoever offereth the sacrifice of thanksgiving glorifieth me, and prepareth a way that I may show him the salvation of God._

There is nothing here about "righteousness," or ethical conduct, or conversation. It was the English translators who gave the text its moral tone.

Let us now examine the text which opens this chapter. It declares that God requires of his people justice, mercy and humility. The word which has been translated into English as "mercy" is _hesed_. It is difficult to believe that this word meant in Hebrew what we understand by "mercy." In the one hundredth and thirty-sixth Psalm, David, whose character we explain in this book, thus praises the _hesed_, or "mercy" of God:

_To him that smote Egypt in their first-born; for his mercy (hesed) endureth forever._ *

Surely no modern moralist would think of attributing the wholesale murder of all the first-born in a land to the "mercy" of God! In the same vein, David, while praising Jehovah's "mercy" for "overthrowing Pharaoh and his host, in the Red sea," for "slaying great kings," and "famous kings," whom God killed in battle and whose lands he gave to the Jews, he exclaims, "For his hesed (mercy) endureth forever." We associate with the idea of "mercy," tenderness, compassion and charity. What makes "mercy" or charity a great quality is that it is, as a rule, bestowed upon the unfortunate, and even the undeserving. But to describe killing people in their sleep, or throwing down stones from heaven to destroy soldiers defending their homes, ** or to drown a nation trying to recover their property from the Jews who had "spoiled the Egyptians," before fleeing the land, as acts of "mercy," is to make of morality a mockery. What is the difference between the red Indian extolling Manitou for the scalps he has given him, and David singing:

* Psalms cxxxvi, 10.

** Joshua x, ii.

_To him that smote Egypt in their first-born:

For his mercy endureth forever._ *

* Consult Chilperic's article in The Reformer, Vol. VI, page 664.

Who would for a moment hesitate between these lines of David and

```_The quality of mercy is not strained;

```It droppeth, as the gentle rain from heaven

```Upon the place beneath:_

of Shakespeare?

It is not our purpose to show that the Old Testament knows nothing of "mercy" in the modern sense of the word, but that the word _hesed_ in the bible text, which figures in the English translation of this text as "mercy," means something quite different. Following the lead of the great Hebrew scholar, Gesenius, Chilperic makes the word _hesed_ in this text from Micah, synonymous with our word "piety." What Jehovah desires of his people, then, is not clemency, but piety; not the love of man, but the love of God. It is the duty of man to God, not the duty of man to his fellows, the world over, that the Jewish prophet has in mind. The first-born of Egypt and all the other foes of Israel were destroyed as a reward for the piety of the chosen people. It is for this David praises the hesed of the Lord. In the same way, the "do justly" in the text has also a purely ceremonial meaning. The word "justly" in the translation is not the English of the Hebrew word in the text, which is _mishpat_. The Jews used the word in the sense of the law, or the judgments and ordinances, of Jehovah. What the Lord requires, then, in this text from Micah, which the commentators make so much of, is "to perform the law, to love piety, and to submit to Jehovah." And when the prophet quotes the Semitic God as saying: "I desired hesed (mercy), and not sacrifice; and the knowledge of God more than burnt offerings," * he means just what the modern revivalist means when he says: "All your morality can not save you. What God insists upon is _piety_." If further evidence be required to know that what we understand by justice, love, charity, had no place in the vocabulary of the bible writers, there is the story narrated in I Samuel, xv. This "moral" teacher, Samuel, orders King Saul, in the name of Jehovah, to slaughter the Amalekites, "both man and woman, infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and ass." The king, in carrying out this program, manages to spare the lives of the best of the cattle; he also allows the Amalekite king to escape alive. Whereupon, Jehovah is so provoked that, "it repenteth me that I have set up Saul to be king," he says. Then Samuel goes to see the king, who relates to him how he had consumed the Amalekites by putting everything to the sword. "And Samuel said, What meaneth then this bleating of the sheep in mine ears and the lowing of the oxen which I hear?" The king replied that the best of the sheep and of the oxen were reserved "_to sacrifice unto the Lord_." Observe now the answer which the prophet of God gave to the king:

* Hosea vi, 6.

_Hath the Lord as great delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices, as in obeying the voice of the Lord? Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice, and to hearken than the fat of rams._

Now we understand what it is that the Lord demands; so did Saul, after Samuel had explained it to him, for "Samuel hewed Agag (the king whose life had been spared) in pieces before the Lord in Gilgal." From a human point of view, it would have been more moral to sacrifice to God the cattle Saul had saved than to "hew in pieces" a human being, but that is the morality of man; to be moral in the bible sense is to do as God commands, whether what he commands you to kill be a sheep or a human being. Morality, according to the bible, means unquestioning obedience. Addressing a monster revival meeting, the Christian preacher declared that: "Violation of the sixth commandment, cursing, theft, drunkenness, and even murder, are pardonable sins, but refusal to accept the Son of God is an eternal barrier to the heavenly kingdom." *

* The Toledo News-Bee, May 17, 1911.

That is our definition of immorality.

V. The Ten Commandments

|IT is the claim of both Jews and Christians that the Ten Commandments form the foundation, not only for the moral and civil laws of our country, but of the civilized world as well. Some bibliolaters, in their zeal, go so far as to say that there was no morality in the world before the Ten Commandments were announced. That is to say, in their opinion, morality is but a few thousand years old. Why, the world itself, according to the bible chronology, is nearly six thousand years old. Are we to understand, then, that until the time of Moses the world managed to get along without any morality at all?

But we know that the world is very much older than six thousand years, and that there were great empires and a civilization which was already old, long long before the Jews arrived. Egypt was at the zenith of her culture when the sons of Jacob appeared within her gates to beg for bread, and Babylonia and Persia were world-empires when the Jews were still slaves. But to admit that there was any morality before Moses, is to give up the bible. What need could there be of a moral law coming down from heaven, if there were one already growing out of the earth? No deity is needed to find for us what was never lost, or to give us what we already possessed. To admit, therefore, that there were ancient nations who flourished and waxed strong in art and commerce, in culture and character, long before the Ten Commandments descended from the clouds, would be fatal to the claim that there can be no morality without the bible.

The defenders of the bible find themselves in a very embarrassing position. They can not deny Egypt, Assyria, Persia, Greece, Rome; but if they admit the greatness and glory of these empires, what becomes of their claim that morality was first given to the world by Moses in the wilderness? There is only one way out of the dilemma: Refuse to discuss the question. And that is practically the tactics of the bible champions at present. It is absolutely impossible to find any more an educated and respectable churchman who is willing to debate the question before an audience of inquirers. Silence is their one remaining asset.

It is related in the bible that the Ten Commandments were written on two tables of stone by the deity himself. But in a fit of anger, Moses, in whose custody the documents in stone were placed, "cast the tables out of his hands, and brake them beneath the mount." * This was a device to account for the nonexistence of the tables. If ever there were a time when a miracle would have been in order, it was when Moses dropped the commandments. After forty days of labor, Jehovah delivers the moral law, and not wishing to entrust the work of taking down his dictation to Moses, he inscribes them on imperishable stone, with his own hand. And then they fall and break, like any schoolboy's slate. The slates should not have broken--and they would not have broken--if all the other miracles told in the bible are true. To have miracles without number when we do not need them, and then to refuse the one miracle that could have saved the handwriting of God, is a fatal argument against the miraculous.

* Exodus xxxii, 19.

It is true that Moses was summoned to the mountain for a new set of tables and commandments, but as I shall proceed to explain, the second Ten Commandments were not written by the deity. His handwriting was irretrievably lost by the breaking of the first tables. We have miracles to preserve shoes and garments, and dead men's bones, but none to save the writing of God. Thus it is that all the "original" documents of the prophets and the apostles have perished, while the real wood of the cross and the coat of Jesus have been miraculously preserved.

In Exodus, thirty-second chapter, verse sixteen, we read:

_And the tables were the work of God, and the writing was the writing of God, graven upon the tables._

But what was the use? The tables broke, and the writing is lost. Why go to all that trouble to produce original documents, only to lose them so shortly after they are finished? The thirty-fourth chapter and the twenty-seventh and twenty-eighth verses of the book of Exodus inform us that the second collection of Commandments which were given to replace the broken tables of stone, were not written by Jehovah, but by Moses:

_And the Lord said unto Moses, write thou these words... And he (Moses) was there with the Lord forty days and forty nights... And he wrote upon the tables the words of the covenant, the ten commandments._ *

* Exodus xxxiv, 27, 28.

But not only were the new commandments not in God's handwriting, but they were also totally different from the first Ten Commandments. Thus it was not only the divine writing that perished, but also the moral law as first given. It is true that Moses reports what the lost commandments were, but if he could remember them, why was it necessary for him to go up the Mount for a transcript of them? The unpleasant conclusion is forced upon our minds that not only had Moses forgotten what the broken tables of stone contained, but Jehovah, himself, could not remember them. Where, then, did Moses get the Ten Commandments which he says were on the broken slates? I do not know. If he reported them from memory, and his memory were reliable, why was a second set of slates ordered, that the Lord might write on them "the words that were in the first tables, which thou breakest"? * If a second series of commandments were given, as the text plainly states, because the first series was lost, how did Moses reproduce the lost commandments? Could he have put the fragments of the broken tables together, restoring thereby the handwriting of God? Really, it is not history that the bible gives us, but gossip.

It has already been shown that the deity did not write the second version of the moral law with his own hand, although he promised he would. Let me now present the second version of the Ten Commandments, to show that Jehovah had forgotten just as completely as had Moses, the first Ten Commandments which he himself had inscribed on the slates.=

* Exodus xxxiv, 1, abbreviated.

_Exodus XXXIV.

1. Thou shalt worship no other god: for the Lord, whose name is Jealous, is a Jealous God.

2. Thou shalt make thee no molten gods.

3. The feast of unleavened bread shalt thou keep.

4. Every firstling that is male is mine. And the first fruits of the land thou shalt bring unto the Lord.

5. Six days thou shalt work, but on the seventh day thou shalt rest.

6. Thou shalt observe the feast of weeks.

7. Thrice in the year shall all your men children (women not wanted) appear before the Lord God.

8. Thou shalt not offer the blood of my sacrifice with leaven.

9. The sacrifice of the passover shall not be left over till the morning.

10. Thou shalt not seethe a kid in his mother's milk._

That these were the commandments given to take the place of those unfortunately lost appears by the text that follows, and which we ask permission to quote again:

_And the Lord said unto Moses, Write thou these words:

... And he wrote upon the tables the words of the covenant, the ten commandments._ *

* Exodus xxxiv, 27.

By comparing these two pronouncements, only a very slight resemblance can be discovered between them. In both documents, God is jealous, and the feast of Sabbaths and weeks is ordered to be scrupulously observed. There is not a single commandment in the second deliverance which can be described as ethical in its import. It is a "moral law" without the remotest suggestion of morality in it. Nothing is said about the duty of man to himself, his neighbor, or his posterity. The Ten Commandments which were broken and lost contained, at least, prohibitory clauses against murder, theft, adultery, and the bearing of false witness against one's neighbor. Even though these interdictions had in view the protection of the Jew only, as the conduct of Israel toward other peoples plainly shows; and even though only a portion of the lost decalogue concerned itself with morality at all, the others being of a theological and ceremonial character, still they, at least, have the _appearance_ of being a moral law, while the second decalogue is not even that.

And why are there ten commandments? The Protestants split the first commandment which forbids the worship of other gods and the making of graven images into two separate commandments; the Catholics, on the other hand, divide the last commandment, which says, "Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's house," or wife, or ox, or ass, into two, by separating the wife from the ass and the ox. "Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's wife," is a commandment by itself in the Catholic bible, while, as explained, the Protestant bible makes no distinction between a man's ox, ass and wife. Of course, we prefer the Catholic manipulation of the bible, in this respect, to that of the Protestants, who are more jealous of the favor of Jehovah than of that of woman. But by what authority do these sects go about splitting the divine commandments? Only recently Cardinal Gibbons expressed great horror at the suggestion of certain Protestants that the Ten Commandments should be abbreviated and modernized. "What blasphemy," exclaimed the cardinal. Yet, his church was guilty of that very kind of "blasphemy" when it separated what God had joined together--the ass, the ox and the wife.

VI. The Commandments Broken

|THE most telling criticism against the bible as an ethical work is that, while every one of its moral commandments are deliberately countermanded and cancelled and allowed to be, yes, ordered to be, broken, not one of the ceremonial or theological commandments was for a single time even suspended, or its neglect winked at, by the all-seeing Jehovah. The man who gathered kindling wood on the seventh day, or called on other gods, or ate his totem, or forgot his taboo, or omitted the Abrahamic rite, or ate fat, or forgot his blood offerings, or married a Gentile, or ate leavened bread on certain days, or approached too near to a priest or the candlesticks, was never allowed to escape punishment; while the thief, the murderer, the debauchee, the falsifier, the traitor, the assassin, was again and again applauded and rewarded with special favors. The commandment, "Thou shalt not kill," was barely spelled out in full when the Lord orders a saturnalia of murder.

_Thus saith the Lord God of Israel, Put every man his sword by his side, and go in and out from gate to gate throughout the camp, and slay every man his brother, and every man his companion, and every man his neighbor... even every man upon his son._ *

Who can have patience with such a book? What has become of the intellect of Europe that it can go to such a book for its morality? In one of Napoleon's unpublished letters, addressed to Junot, after giving secret instructions about the movement against Lisbon, he adds, "Shoot, say, sixty persons." ** If that makes him a monster, what shall we say of a being who asks fathers to murder their sons, and sons their fathers, in cold blood, and that, too, immediately after he had said, "Thou shalt not kill." But why was this bacchanalia of bloodshed ordered? The answer will cause a shudder: "That he (Jehovah) may bestow upon you a blessing this day." *** To kill was an act of worship. To please God was better than to spare one's children from the edge of the sword. God demanded murder, and not until he was obeyed would he "bless" them! Do we need any further proof that there is only one commandment in the bible: "Thou shalt obey the Lord thy God," that is to say, the priest. If he forbids murder, obey him; if he commands murder, obey him. But the most important point about all this is that both the giving and the breaking of a "moral" commandment is for the purpose of furthering the theological and ritualistic interests. "And the Lord plagued the people," that is to say, he ordered this internecine murder--why? Not because they had violated any of the "moral" commandments, but, mark the excuse given, "because they made the calf." **** The most abominable thing in the sight of this priest-made God, is not immorality, but infidelity.

* Exodus xxxii, 27-29.

** Lettres Médités de Napoleon. Le cestre.

*** Exodus xxxii, 29.

**** Exodus xxxii, 35.

It would be easy to enumerate the so-called "moral" commandments, one after the other, and show how every one of them was ordered broken when the interests of the creed required it. "Thou shalt not steal" was revoked again and again, and a thousand encouragements offered to seize the land and goods of others. The commandment "Thou shalt not commit adultery" was made a mockery of by the express instruction to make a raid on neighboring countries and carry off the young girls by force. * We have reason to be ashamed of Europe, of the Aryan races, for wanting to place such a book into the hands of young and old as the Word of God.

* Numbers xxxi, 18.

Indeed, without any violence, either to the letter or to the spirit of the bible, we may offer the following as the real Ten Commandments given by God to Moses:

1. Thou shalt steal everything thou canst--thou shalt plunder, and practice usury.

2. Thou shalt murder the alien and the heathen as well as thy own brother.

3. Thou shalt bear false witness.

4. Thou shalt commit adultery.

5. Thou shalt covet.

6. Thou shalt hate thy neighbor of another faith.

7. Thou shalt persecute.

8. Thou shalt be cruel, and buy and sell human beings.

9. Thou shalt be superstitious.

10. Thou shalt despise woman, but permit a man to marry as many wives, and keep as many concubines as his fancy dictates. And let a man divorce his wife whenever it shall please him to do so.

Space fails us to quote all the texts in the bible which support the above commandments. It would be like reproducing the greater portions of the bible to offer even a partial list of the direct and indirect ways in which the bible lends its authority, as well as encouragement, to the commission of what we would consider criminal acts. Moreover, it would be a very unpleasant task to repeat, or to call attention to, those parts of the bible which this phase of my subject leads me into. And yet I do not see how I can altogether shirk the disagreeable task. The reader has no idea how big a part of the bible is unreadable. If anybody undertook to bring out a cleanly version of the bible for family use, he would soon find that the Old Testament, at least, would have to be left out, almost completely. Dr. Thomas Inman says: "A long experience in life and a retentive memory would lead me to say that the bible, as we have it, is the first book which leads many youths astray." *

That Jehovah ordered his people to _steal_, is clearly indicated by the following text:

_When ye go, ye shall not go empty: But every woman shall borrow of her neighbour, and of her that sojourneth in her house, jewels of silver and jewels of gold, and raiment: and ye shall put them upon your sons and upon your daughters; and ye shall spoil the Egyptians!_

What they were ordered to do to the Egyptians, they were ordered to do to all the nations they could lay their hands upon. The lands and goods of others were to be seized by force. Stealing was forbidden if the property belonged to a Jew; it was sanctioned if the property belonged to the "heathen."

_Murder_ is plainly commanded in the following text:

_Slay every man his brother, and every man his companion and every man his neighbour._ **

* Ancient Faiths, etc., Vol. II, page 77.

** Exodus iii, 21, 22.

There is hardly a page in the Old Testament which is not red with bloodshed.

_Lying_ was approved by the deity. Moses was commanded to tell a falsehood to Pharaoh, as were many of the other prophets advised to practice deception. Despite all the plagues which God is said to have sent upon the Egyptians to prove his might and power to deliver his people out of bondage, it was found necessary, as a last resort, to tell a lie to the king of Egypt to induce him to permit their departure. Upon being asked by Pharaoh why and where they wanted to go, Moses answered:

_The God of the Hebrews hath met with us: let us go, we pray thee, three days' journey into the desert, and sacrifice unto the Lord our God; lest he fall upon us with pestilence, or with the sword._ *

While planning to go on an expedition to seize the lands which their God had promised them, they tell Pharaoh that they only desire to hold some kind of a prayer-meeting in the desert, after which they would come back, supposedly to return the jewels of gold and silver they had borrowed from the neighbors. The falsehood was effective when all the miracles had failed. The Egyptians actually, if the story is true, allowed the Jews to rob them before they left.

God also commanded Samuel to lie:

_And the Lord said unto Samuel... I will send thee to Jesse the Bethlemite: for I have provided me a king among his sons. And Samuel said, How can I go? if Saul hear it, he will kill me. And the Lord said, Take a heifer with thee, and say, I am come to sacrifice to the Lord._ **

In the same way, the bible, it is to be regretted, sanctions sexual immorality.

_And the Lord said to Hosea, Go take unto thee a wife of whoredom._ ***

Again, the Lord commands:

_When thou goest forth to war against thine enemies, and the Lord thy God hath delivered them into thine hands, and thou hast taken them captive, and seest among the captives a beautiful woman, and hast a desire unto her... thou shalt go in unto her, and be her husband, and she shall be thy wife. And it shall be, if thou have no delight in her, then thou shalt let her go whither she will._ ****

Not a word is said about obtaining the woman's consent. And the following:

_But all the women children that have not known a man by lying with him, keep alive for yourselves._ (v)

* Exodus v, 3.

** Samuel xvi, 1, 2.

*** Hosea i, 2.

**** Deuteronomy xxi, 10-14.

v. Numbers xxxi, 18.

Such texts show how indifferent the bible is to what we understand by morality.

As to _coveting_: The whole of the biblical instructions was nothing more than a continuous encouragement to the Jews to covet everything that was their neighbors, from the jewelry of the Egyptian, to the lands, the cattle, the homes and daughters of the nations of the earth:

_And Abram fell on his face: and God talked with him, saying... I will give unto thee, and to thy seed after thee, the land wherein thou art a stranger, all the land of Canaan, for an everlasting possession. *

For all the land which thou seest, to thee will I give it, and to thy seed for ever._ **

But it will be impossible to command people to rob and slay their neighbors, and to covet their homes and women, without at the same time, commanding them to _hate_ them.

_Ye shall not eat of anything that dieth of itself; thou shalt give it unto the stranger... that he may eat it; or thou mayest sell it unto an alien. ***

Thou shalt not lend upon usury to thy brother.... unto a stranger thou mayest lend upon usury._ ****

Jesus improved upon the Old Testament by calling upon his followers to include in their hatred the members of their own family:

_If any man come to me, and hate not his father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters, yea, and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple._ (v)

* Genesis xvii, 3, 8.

** Genesis xiii, 15.

*** Deuteronomy xiv, 21.

**** Deuteronomy xxiii, 19, 20.

v. Luke xiv, 26.

Religious _persecution_ is openly sanctioned both in the Old and the New Testaments. Every expression of independence, or disagreement with the priesthood, was blasphemy, and punishable by death.

_And he that blasphemeth the name of the Lord, he shall surely be put to death, and all the congregation shall certainly stone him: as well the stranger, as he that is born in the land, when he blasphemeth the name of the Lord, shall be put to death._ *

The Bible gives a very long list of "blasphemies" for which the death penalty is ordered--from failing to circumcise one's children, to gathering sticks on the Sabbath. And as to those professing a different faith, the commandment was as follows:

_These are the statutes and judgments, which ye shall observe to do in the land, which the Lord God of thy fathers giveth thee to possess it, all the days that ye live upon the earth.

Ye shall utterly destroy all the places, wherein the nations which ye shall possess served their gods, upon the high mountains, and upon the hills, and under every green tree:

And ye shall overthrow their altars, and break their pillars and burn their groves with fire; and ye shall hew down the graven images of their gods, and destroy the names of them out of that place._ **

* Leviticus xxiv, 16.

** Deuteronomy xii, 1-4.

Could intolerance go further than that! Other peoples are not to have any gods at all. Even as their lands will be taken away from them, so shall their gods. And since their Jehovah never intended to be the god of anybody else but a Hebrew, it followed that the Jews were the only people privileged to own a god.

Why should "all the high places," where the other nations served their gods, be destroyed? Did not Moses go to Mount Sinai, a high place, to worship Jehovah? Why may not a Gentile have his own high place, as well as a Jew? Surely, the heathen gods on their mountains could not possibly have given a more unmerciful set of commandments than those which Jehovah dictated to Moses. There was no breadth in the God of the Jews. _Live and let live, or Think and let think_, is the conquest of modern thought for which we are indebted to Rationalism. We say it, reluctantly, but say it we must, Jehovah was a bigot. How long will the Jews continue to profess a religion which requires of them to live in Europe and America, and in the twentieth century, according to the ways of the desert? If Gentiles, in every country, are in great numbers forsaking Christianity, let the exodus of the Jews from the synagogue be equally earnest and pronounced.

_Cruelty_ was to be the accompaniment of religious persecution.

The descriptions of acts of cruelty against the stranger seem to have given positive pleasure to the writers of the bible, for they enter into the most repulsive details in narrating them:

_For the Lord shall sell Sisera into the hand of a woman.... Howbeit Sisera fled away on his feet to the tent of Jael the wife of Heber the Kenite: for there was peace between Jabin the king of Hazor and the house of Heber the Kenite.

And Tael went out to meet Sisera, and said unto him, Turn in, my lord, turn in to me; fear not. And when he had turned in unto her into the tent, she covered him with a mantle... Then Jael Heber's wife took a nail of the tent, and took an hammer in her hand, and went softly unto him, and smote the nail into his temples, and fastened it into the ground: for he was fast asleep and weary. So he died.... Behold, Sisera lay dead, and the nail was in his temples._ *

* Judges iv, 9, 17-23.

For this act of treacherous cruelty Jael was sainted:

_Blessed above women shall Jael the wife of Heber the Kenite be, blessed shall she be above women in the tent.... She put her hand to the nail, and her right hand to the workmen's hammer; and with the hammer she smote Sisera, she smote off his head, when she had pierced and stricken through his temples.... So let all thine enemies perish, O Lord._ *

_Superstitions_ of the most degrading type are recommended and their daily practice sanctioned. Though they claimed to be on talking terms with the deity, they had, nevertheless, to cast lots, and resort to sorcery and divination, to find out the mind of the Lord.

_Take me an heifer of three years old, and a she goat of three years old, and a ram of three years old, and a turtledove, and a young pigeon.

And he took unto him all these, and divided them in the midst, and laid each piece one against another: but the birds divided he not.... And it came to pass, that, when the sun went down, and it was dark, behold a smoking furnace, and a burning lamp that passed between those pieces.

In the same day the Lord made a covenant with Abram._ **

Could anything be more meaningless?

... _And it came to pass, when Moses held up his hand, that Israel prevailed: and when he let down his hand, Amalek prevailed.

But Moses' hands were heavy; and they took a stone, and put it under him, and he sat thereon; and Aaron and Hur stayed up his hands, the one on the one side, and the other on the other side; and his hands were steady until the going down of the sun.

And Joshua discomfited Amalek and his people with the edge of the sword._ **

* Judges v, 24-31.

** Exodus xvii, 11-13.

Only the most hopeless ignorance could credit such a performance.

And Jesus thought that by self-mutilation one could become a candidate for heaven:

_For there are some eunuchs, which were so born from their mother's womb: and there are some eunuchs, which were made eunuchs of men: and there be eunuchs, which have made themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven's sake. He that is able to receive it, let him receive it.

And the four beasts said, Amen._

VII. Thou Shalt Despise Women

|THE most unfortunate person in the whole bible is a woman. How is it then that the bible has come to be regarded as really the emancipator of woman? Well, that is only one of many fictions about the "Holy" book. Not only is the responsibility for the fall of man, and the existence of such a place as hell, thrown upon woman, because she ate of the forbidden tree; but she is also introduced as a mere fragment of man, made out of one of his ribs. As soon as born she was sold into perpetual slavery.

_Thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee._*

* Genesis iii, 16.

Never once did God promise a daughter to any of his favorites. And girls are completely left out from the family chronicle. In biblical genealogies there are no women. "The Hebrew word used in the bible for 'female,'" says Joseph McCabe, "can not with decency be translated literally into English." Women were strictly excluded from the service of Jehovah. Nor were they privileged to repair to Jerusalem on the stated occasions required, by the national worship to appear before Jehovah. It is no wonder that under these conditions the women of the bible, as Lecky says, were "of a low order, and certainly far inferior to those of Roman history, or Greek poetry." Paul was inspired to command: "Let the woman learn in silence with all subjection.... I suffer not a woman to teach (Paul never could have dreamed of our public schools), nor to usurp authority over the man, but to be in silence." *

In the Old Testament motherhood is an act deserving atonement, and rules are given how a woman shall apply for absolution, as it were, after childbirth. If her offspring were a boy, the punishment was lighter than when she gave birth to a girl. **

* I Timothy ii, 11, 12.

** Leviticus xii, 2-5.

The commandment for a man to sell his daughter into slavery, as also the institution of polygamy, and concubinage and divorce, extensively practiced by the leaders in the Holy Bible, show what precious little interest Jehovah took in the welfare of woman. The bible continued for centuries--down to the time of the Renaissance--to keep woman in subjection. Even to-day, one of the greatest obstacles in the path of woman is the bible. In a sermon at Saint Crantock's, preached only six years ago, the vicar offered the following reasons for opposing the granting to women the rights and opportunities enjoyed by man:

_(1) Man's priority of creation. Adam was first formed, then Eve.

(2) The manner of creation. The man is not of the woman, but the woman of the man.

(3) The purport of creation. The man was not created for the woman, but the woman for the man.

(4) Results in creation. The man is the image of the glory of God, but woman is the glory of man.

(5) Woman's priority in the fall. Adam was not deceived; but the woman, being deceived, was in the transgression.

(6) The marriage relation. As the church is subject to Christ, so let the wives be to their husbands.

(7) The headship of man and woman. The head of every man is Christ, but the head of the woman is man._

For this one sin alone--its insult and injustice to woman--we should never make our peace with the bible. Worse than all its miracles, fables, absurdities, immoralities, contradictions, indecencies, is its tyranny over woman because she is _weak_. This is unpardonable.

It is no defense to say that allowance must be made for the remote times in which these barbarities were committed. It is not the morality of the "times" but the morality of an infallible book that is under discussion. Moreover, why could not the people who daily saw God and heard from him, be at least as decent as their "heathen" neighbors? The Midianites, whose virgin daughters Moses ordered his followers to abduct, after all the rest of the inhabitants had been put to death, had sheltered Moses for forty years when he fled for his life from Egypt. * Their hospitality is repaid by Moses in this unspeakable fashion. Why could not Moses be as honorable and humane as the Midianites? Even by the admissions of the bible itself, the nations whom Jehovah ordered to be exterminated were very much more hospitable than the Jews. Had Assyria, Egypt, Babylonia or Persia followed the example of the Jews, there would not have been any Jews left in the world to-day. And the fact that, after long years of captivity in heathen countries, when permission was given the Jews to return to Jerusalem, many of them refused to do so, preferring a foreign country to their own, is decisive proof that the "heathen" did not treat the Jews so unmercifully as Jehovah wanted the Jews to treat the heathen. I can protest against the massacre of the Christians by the Turks, or of the Jews by the Christians, because I do not believe the bible is binding upon my conscience. But how can a Christian or a Jew plead for liberty of conscience? How can a Jew or a Christian protest against being massacred while hugging to his bosom a book which commands and approves of the most inhuman treatment of one people by another?

* Exodus ii, 15.

My forehead throbs as I quote these forbidden texts, and my pulse rises. But I have the consolation that the book is not true, that the wild stories it tells about Jews and Christians had no basis in history. If I could only get the devout Jews and Christians to realize this!

VIII. The Sermon on the Mount

|HOWEVER imperfect the teachings of others in the Old and New Testament might be, it is urged that Jesus himself is the one infallible revelation of God, and that even if everything else is lost, nothing is really lost so long as Jesus abides. This is the remaining consolation of the apologists of the bible. No reasons are given as to why, in an inspired book, there should be only one person who is really inspired. Nor do these "new theologians" stop to think that such an admission is equivalent to a plea of guilty--for if no one but Jesus in the bible is to be trusted, then Jesus can not be trusted either. In plain words Jesus tells his hearers that they must believe in him, because Moses and the prophets testify of him. Repeatedly Jesus expressed his unquestioning belief in the Old Testament. He had come not to destroy the law of Moses, but to fulfil it. And he expressly told them, that there was no necessity for any one to come down from heaven to teach the people, for "if they hear not Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded, though one rose from the dead." * But if "Moses and the prophets" are not to be depended upon, what becomes of Jesus' testimony of them? Jesus says "Moses and the prophets were of God," the "new theologians" say they were not. In the meantime, the same "new theologians" say that Jesus knew what he was talking about.

But the "new theologians," who have nearly thrown overboard everything else, still cling, or pretend to cling, so ardently to Jesus as a moral teacher, because of the supposed beauty of the Sermon on the Mount, and the other teachings of Jesus. This is not the first time that the present writer makes the Sermon on the Mount a subject for comment. ** There are many fine passages in the collection of utterances attributed to Jesus, but we have the same objection against the moral teachings of Jesus that we have against the moral teachings of Moses and the prophets. The best in Jesus' sermons are to be found in the Old Testament, and there is enough of the worst in the Old Testament in the sayings attributed to Jesus to make his teachings unfit, in the main, for universal uses.

* Luke xvi, 31.

** Consult the author's Is the Morality of Jesus Sound.

On one theme all parts of the bible are in perfect unison--God comes before man. To us this is the negation of morality. "Blessed are the pure in heart," preaches Jesus; and why are the pure blessed? "Because," is the answer, "they shall see God." There is not a word said about the social worth of personal and public purity of heart. Not a word that to be pure is to bless the world in which one lives, or that by being pure we help to make life on earth sweeter and more lovable. The idea that to be pure in thought and conduct is the way to serve humanity, and make this earth a heaven, does not occur to Jesus at all. He is not interested either in humanity or in this earth. His eyes are fixed upon the mists beyond. His one thought is of the invisible God, not of man who is made of flesh and blood.

And when the "purity" required is examined, it will be found that, in consonance with the Old Testament, purity of belief is what is meant by it. The thief on the cross would see God, not because he was pure in heart, but because he believed before he died. In the same way the other virtues are recommended, not for their civic values, not as the means of social well-being and blessedness, but as auxiliaries to piety, namely, to the worship of God.

That Jesus had no message to man is seen in his attempt to shift the center of gravity, so to speak, from this world to the next. He would take away from man the world in the hand, for the one hidden away in the clouds. "Blessed are ye that hunger now," cries Jesus to the starving multitude, "for ye shall be filled." * But _when?_ It reads very much like the vague and airy promises which a politician makes to his constituents when he is bidding for votes. "Give us bread _now_," cry the poor. Can the famished eat a promise for bread? But Jesus was not interested in helping them "now." He had come to reveal God and his glory, not to make the world a happy home for man. He prayed for and predicted the speedy destruction of the world; why, then, should he labor for its betterment? And in his "next world" is there really going to be no more poverty? Let us read what Jesus says:

_Blessed are ye that hunger now: for ye shall be filled.... Woe unto you that are full! for ye shall hunger._ **

* Luke vi, 21.

** Luke vi, 21-25.

In the dim, distant day those who hunger now will have all that they can eat, but those who now are filled will starve. What then is the advantage of that future day over the now? Instead of doing away with hunger, it is to be shifted on to another set of people. There will be just as much poverty in the beautiful future Jesus predicts, as there is to-day, only the people who are poor here, will be rich there, and the rich now, will be the poor then. Is there any inspiration in such a prospect? Is it not like clinging to a straw, to expect help from such haphazard utterances as these? What a serious world desires to know is not how to "beat around the bush," but how to remedy real evils. By taking the bread from one man and giving it to another, we neither add to the quantity of food, nor diminish the stress of poverty. Yet that is precisely the solution Jesus proposes with such a flourish of trumpets. Is it any wonder that people do not care for his heaven, or that humanity has turned away from Jesus to look for help elsewhere? Again Jesus says:

_Blessed are ye that weep now, for ye shall laugh.... Woe unto you that laugh now! for ye shall mourn and weep._ *

* Luke vi, 21-25.

Is it not fantastic? Jesus seems to believe that to laugh _now_ is a crime; and yet he holds it up as a future reward to those who weep now. There is an oriental saying that the food which each one that comes into the world needs, is set apart for him by Allah; he may eat it all at once, and starve the rest of his life, or use it moderately, and have enough to last him all the days of his life. Likewise, Jesus appears to be of the belief that there is just so much happiness set apart for man; he can take it in this world, and go to _hades_ in the next; or he can make this world a place of mourning, and go to heaven in the next. Therefore, "Woe to those who want their heaven here, for they shall be tormented forever after, and blessed are those who mourn and weep here, for they shall laugh in the hereafter." Is this sense?

According to Jesus, as long as a man is weeping and mourning he is "blessed," but as soon as he begins to laugh, then "woe" unto him. In the same way, a man is "blessed" as long as he is hungry, but the moment he is "filled" Jesus turns upon him with a "woe unto you." Who could fail to draw the conclusion from such teaching that to help people to be happy now, is to expose them to the "woe unto you" of God, and to help people out of poverty now, is to bring upon their heads the curse of the future; and that, therefore, we should let the poor be the poor, and the rich, the rich--leaving it to the unknown future to settle all accounts. Such a teacher deserves to have only the unthinking for his disciples.

One Sunday in June, about three years ago, I went to hear the Rev. Dr. Aked, of the Fifth Avenue Baptist Church, in New York city. For his scripture lesson he read the parable of the "Wheat and the Tares." * This is about a farmer who sows good seed in his field. But while he was asleep, his enemies came and sowed tares among the wheat. As the blades sprang up "and brought forth fruit, then appeared the tares also." The farm-hands, when they saw this, asked the owner for permission to destroy the tares. "Nay," replied the master, "lest while ye gather up the tares, ye root up also the wheat with them. Let both grow together until the harvest: and in the time of harvest I will say to the reapers, Gather ye together first the tares, and bind them in bundles to burn them: but gather the wheat into my barn."

* Matthew xiii, 24-30.

What edification is there in such a story? To bring a church full of people together--tired, busy, perplexed, hungering for ideas, for truth, for beauty--only to tell them that the tares must not be touched or separated even from the wheat until some day in the future, some judgment day in the clouds, when the Lord of the harvest shall gather up the tares to be burned, and the wheat to be deposited in his chests! Could anything be more destructive of human endeavor and hope than this shifting of all responsibility upon God and the future? If the parable has any meaning, it is this: Let every field become rank with weeds, and let nothing be done to destroy the weeds _now_--the future will take care of that. The _future_ is the one great asset of the priest. "Wait until you die," is his answer to every challenge to show present results.

The weeds injure the wheat during the time that the crop is growing, and not after it is ready to be harvested. What is gained by burning up the tares when they can no longer hurt the wheat and after they have done all the harm they could to the grain by stealing sun and moisture from them? Besides, there is just as much danger of gathering up the wheat with the tares at harvest time as there is of rooting up the wheat with the tares while they are growing together. Why postpone the purging process? Why let a child, for example, grow up to be a criminal to be hanged, if there is a way of saving him from evil associations earlier in life? What farmer or educator will follow the advice of Jesus, to let the bad and the good alone until judgment day?

Suppose, instead of such an unprofitable story, with its impracticable lesson, and its suggestion of _laissez faire_, the preacher had read the page from Ralph Waldo Emerson, which contains a grander passage than is to be found in the whole bible, "My freedom is part of my faith"; or suppose he had read to his audience the page from Thomas Paine in which occurs that thrilling and musical pæan, "Where liberty is not, there is my country"--and why? Not to wait until some distant day, but to bring about and share with them now, and here, the blessings of liberty; or suppose the preacher had greeted his hearers with the words of Goethe, "In the whole, the good, the true, the beautiful, resolve to live." Would he not have read to them from a better bible?

But the gem in the Sermon on the Mount is supposed to be the, "But I say unto you, that ye resist not evil; but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also." * This advice is supplemented with the "Love your enemies," which is claimed to be the noblest utterance in all religious literature. The philosophy underlying these commandments is the same which we found in the parable of the "Wheat and the Tares." Even as the tares are to be allowed to have their way in a wheat field, evil is not to be resisted in the world of men, but let alone. It is not the business of man, according to Jesus, to effect reforms; he must leave it all to God. In his own time, and in his own way, God will fill the hungry and punish the rich; he will burn the tares and save the wheat; and he will reward the good and destroy the evil.

* Matthew v, 39.

This Asiatic fatalism is quite consistent with the belief in an all-wise and powerful being at the head of affairs. If God were not almighty, we might assist him in his work; or if he were not all-wise, we might enlighten him on some things, but being almighty, and all-wise, he does not wish any meddling on our part. Besides, if we resist evil, or weed the tares, or fight poverty and misery, we might think that it is our efforts which have made the world better. But that is taboo. Really, Jesus is quite right; there is no room for human effort where an infinite being is doing things. The plea that God wants us to help him, because if we neglect to do our part, neither will he do his, is nonsensical. An attitude of passivity is alone becoming to a believer. To bestir oneself about the tares, or the evil in the world, is to show that one has lost faith in the Lord of the harvest. "Stand still and see the salvation of the Lord," is the word of inspiration.

And could anything be more pessimistic than "Resist not evil?" If not the evil, what then shall man resist? Nothing? But he will fall into decay unless he resists the forces that menace his well being. And why was man made a moral agent or created in the "divine" image if he is to let the powers of darkness have their way, instead of girding himself for battle against them? But the decline of man is desired because that is the only way the world may come to an end, and God and his heaven ushered in. Such is the philosophy of Jesus.

If God does not wish us to "resist evil," pray what is the devil's pleasure? We have been told that the devil always wants us to do the things which God has forbidden. Does he, then, want us to resist evil? Not to resist the agencies of evil, is not to resist the devil, if there is such a being; and not to resist the devil is to surrender to him, which is just what he would want us to do.

The Sermon on the Mount, if complied with, would lead the world to an _impasse_. We must not resist the Holy Spirit, according to Jesus, and, according to the same teacher, we must not resist evil either. But unless the Holy Spirit and evil are the same, how can we be as hospitable or as passive toward the one as toward the other? We must stand still and let God work in us his purposes, says the bible, and, according to the same book, we are to be equally passive to the operations of the Evil One. Is such advice intelligible? Could anything be more confusing and bewildering to the moral sense than so contradictory a commandment? If the gospel writers had put in Jesus' mouth the words, "I am the darkness of the world," they would not have been very far wrong.

Why resist not evil? If evil is evil, and if we have power to resist it, why may we not do so? What is morality but the exercise of the power of resistance against evil? The idea that by resisting evil we become evil ourselves, as Tolstoi maintains, is as much a conundrum as the text itself. Did not Jesus resist the devil in the wilderness? Did he not drive the evil spirits out of his patients? Did he not denounce the scribes and Pharisees who would not accept his Messiaship? And did he not scourge the money-changers out of the temple court, and overturn their tables by sheer physical force? Why did he resist evil himself? And did such resistance degrade him?

In all probability, the reason we are warned against resisting evil is that evil is one of the agencies God works by, and, therefore, to resist it is to rebel against God. But not to resist evil is to do evil. "If any man," says Jesus, in this famous sermon, "will sue thee at the law, and take away thy coat, let him have thy cloak also." * But there need be no law courts, even, to go to, if we will only notify the robbers in advance that they may have all they can lay their hands on. Why not strip ourselves for the benefit of the oppressor and thereby save him also from the trouble of suing us for anything? Is the above advice given for the benefit of the honest man or the robber? Surely the latter will not object to being given more than he sought to steal. And why should an honest man labor to possess anything, since he must permit the thief and the brigand to enjoy all the fruits of his own economy and thrift? By what process of ratiocination does Jesus arrive at the conclusion that the man of fraud and violence should not only not be denied any demand he may make upon us, but that he should have more, nay all we have earned and saved. Is not this nihilism?

* Matthew v, 40.

No extraordinary intelligence is needed to see what would happen to the state that decided to live up to the teachings of Christ. Every precaution to protect our homes and families would be condemned as unchristian. Instead of throwing the burglar out, or arousing the police to pursue and arrest him, we must thank him for giving us an opportunity to practice the rare "virtue" of giving also the other coat, as well as of turning also the other cheek to him. If the brigand strikes us once, we must encourage him for a second blow; if he has killed but one member of the family, he must be pampered into further indulgence in his bloody pastime. Is this the Christian religion? Surely it is not the religion of common sense. But Jesus does not seem to reflect upon the consequences to the robbers themselves of this policy of non-resistance, and of giving freely to him that would borrow of us. In order to be able to take or borrow of one's neighbor, that neighbor must have something. But to encourage the having of things, the possessor of things must be protected. Jesus, by taking away this protection, endangers the creation of wealth of any kind. What is the robber or the beggar to take when there is nothing to take? And there will be nothing to take when the industrious are sacrificed to the lazy and the vicious. Jesus strikes at the roots of civilization by his doctrine of "let alone." And that is really what he is after. Wealth, culture, liberty, help to make us fonder of this world than of the next, fonder of things than of God! And that, a jealous religion will not tolerate.

We are aware of the many ingenious explanations proposed to retain the Sermon on the Mount in the creeds, though it is diligently excluded from life. Praise the Sermon on the Mount, but do not practice it, seems to express the attitude of the church. Jesus is not supposed to have really meant what he said about "turning the other cheek," or allowing the oppressor his way. What he was trying to say, argue the commentators, was that we should be patient under provocation, not given to seeking vengeance; and that we should be generous to the indigent and the unfortunate. That was what Jesus wanted to say, according to defenders of the bible; but instead of saying that, he said something so totally different that a large army of commentators is kept busy trying to excuse and explain what he really said.

The world needs a teacher _who can say what he means, and mean what he says_. If his commentators can make themselves understood why could not Jesus? Besides, it is not right to be patient with wrong, or generous to the oppressor. Shakespeare's thought was very much more wholesome when he said that kindness to the guilty is injustice to the honest.

Instead of these nihilistic or pessimistic utterances, which no self-respecting nation will translate into daily life, suppose Jesus had said, "Not to resist crime is also a crime." Suppose he had said, "If ever evil, or darkness, or poverty, is to be conquered, it will be by the efforts of man only." But Jesus was trying to put man to sleep, not to provoke him into action against the enemies of his progress. Compare the three simple but puissant commandments of Volney, the author of "The Ruins," to the whimsical ethics of the Sermon on the Mount:

I.-- _Preserve thyself!_

This is the first task to which man must apply his head and hands. He must preserve himself. A thousand things conspire against his life. He is beset by dangers and temptations. Under every stone lurks a menace to his well being. He must compel a place for himself in nature, and be able to hold it against all rivals.

II.-- _Instruct thyself!_

Mark the positiveness of both commandments. By being active, not by passivity, will man succeed, both in self-preservation and self-instruction. Once we are confident of our standing in nature, and reasonably sure of our daily bread, it is our high privilege to start on the quest for knowledge. "Instruct thyself!" Knowledge is the all-conquering weapon. Know thyself, thy fellows, thy world. The sun is the light of the body; knowledge is the light of the mind.

III.--_Moderate thyself!_

Having conquered the means which assure self-preservation, and having through much labor acquired science--the intellectual sun which turns man's night into day--the next virtue, the practice of which alone can enable man to enjoy the life he has learned to preserves, and the arts and pleasures he has created through knowledge, is to put a wholesome check upon his appetites by exercising moderation. Not until a man can moderate himself does he really become a moral, that is to say, a superior, being--a conqueror who can hold his possessions. In one of his romances, Voltaire makes the first man ask his Maker what he must do to get the most beauty and joy out of life. The answer to this question is also Voltaire's: "Practice Moderation."

How simple are all the commandments of Reason compared with the contradictions of Revelation! There is not one word of Reason ever spoken which has lost either its authority or beauty, while it is admitted by the believers themselves that more than half of the divine Revelation has become obsolete. To the question, "Why do not men obey the ordinances and commandments in the Old Testament?" the answer of the churches is, "The times have changed," or, "They were meant only for the Jews." Revelations grow old and expire. Reason, like the sun, rises daily to give unto each day its daily light. If Rationalists ever succeed in building a Hall of Reason, the two commandments which they will inscribe over its entrance will never need revision:

1. _Speak according to knowledge._

2. _Act according to conscience._

IX. The Parables of Jesus

|JESUS is supposed to be the vein of gold in the bible. As already intimated, if the whole book is of God, it is difficult to see why certain portions of it should be more or less godly than others. Among the parables of Jesus, that of the "Prodigal Son" is said to be one of the most inspiring. It is the story of a young man who borrows in advance his portion of his father's wealth, while the latter is still living, and leaves home. After wasting his inheritance by riotous living, he finds himself face to face with starvation. The worst thing happens to him that might happen to a pious Jew--he is compelled to take care of a herd of swine, and to eat of their food. In this condition, he remembers that his father is still rich, with plenty of servants, and food for everybody. He decides to go back to him, just as he is, and to throw himself upon his mercy. It never occurs to him to try and make for himself a good reputation before he returns to his father, or to earn back the wealth he has squandered by a life of debauchery. Why should he? It is not his father's respect he wants, but his forgiveness. His foolish father does just as the prodigal expected; he gives him a royal welcome. A ring is slipped on his finger, the richest robe is thrown over his shoulders, and the fatted calf is killed for him.

Nobody will claim that the good-for-nothing son deserved all these honors. Indeed, it is quite plainly insinuated that he is honored for being a repentant sinner, unlike his elder brother, who had no need of repentance, because he remained at home and did his duty. To eat the "fatted calf," it is necessary to be a great sinner, suing for mercy. For the honest, who have no need to cry for forgiveness, there are no banquets. This is shown by the treatment accorded the other son, who had not asked for his portion of the inheritance, and had not wasted his years and money in self-indulgence, who had not deserted his aged father, but stood at his side in the home and the vineyard, doing also the work of the younger brother who had run away from home. No favors are conferred upon him, no feast is given in his honor, and strangest of all, he is not even invited to the party. It is by accident that he finds out about the costly banquet at which his prodigal brother was being entertained, while he himself was toiling in the fields. Who ate the fatted calf? Not the man who raised it, but the man who had lost all claim upon the fruits of his brother's or father's toil. Is this the way to encourage virtue? Rob the honest son who has not shirked labor--who has been faithful, devoted and frugal--to feast the prodigal, who has already consumed one fortune and is now begging for another? _Begging_, I say, for the idea of earning one is very disagreeable to prodigals. As long as there is a "father" who is willing to treat his prodigal son better than the worthy son, prodigals will not be wanting in the world.

And this is the gem of the collection over which we are supposed to go into ecstasies!

But we must read between the lines; the purpose of Jesus, or whoever was the author of the parable, was to show that the greater the sinner, greater still is the welcome that awaits him. And this welcome is not to be deserved, or earned through merit; it is given as a favor. God, whom the father in the parable typifies, cares little for character. People must not flatter themselves that they are saved because they deserve it. Look at the worthy elder son who had done his duty: he was not invited to the feast. Look at the prodigal son, who had descended to the level of the swine; he was "dined and wined." Now we understand why the malefactor on the cross was saved, and all his crimes wiped out in the twinkling of an eye. Had he been a better man than he was, or had he been innocent of the crimes for which he was crucified, there would have been no chance for him. Nor does Jesus say a word about the subsequent conduct of the forgiven prodigal? Did he make amends for the harm he had done to others by his selfishness? Was he really a changed character after he was _feted?_ Not a word. The promise Jesus holds out to the sinner is not reform, but forgiveness.

Let us take another parable: A very rich farmer, or landlord, goes out early in the morning to hire laborers for his vineyard. He hired some very early in the day; others about the noon hour, and others again as late as "the eleventh hour," that is to say, just an hour before the close of day. When the laborers came to receive their pay for the day's work, the landlord paid the man who had put in a full day just as much as he paid those who had only worked for one short hour. Naturally, the men who had borne the brunt of the hot day, and had done most of the work, complained. To which the lord of the vineyard made this reply: "Is it not lawful for me to do what I will with mine own? Is thine eye evil, because I am good?" * And turning to his disciples, Jesus said: "So the last shall be first, and the first last; for many be called, but few chosen." ** The full meaning of which is that an employer's or the Lord's whim is law.

* Matthew xx, 15.

** Matthew xx, 16.

What man of affairs can derive any benefit from such a parable? But the object of Jesus, in this, as in the former parable, is to show the independence of God of what we would call the moral law. God is not bound by any considerations of justice. He is an oriental who showers favors or withholds them just as his pleasure dictates. And whatever he gives is a _favor_, and not a debt which he must pay because of any merit on the part of anybody. If wages are to be distributed according to the quality and quantity of the work done, then what is there left for God to do?

To Jesus, God was something like a Turkish sultan of the olden days who exalted his barber to the rank of a grand vizier, and humbled the vizier to the level of a keeper of his stables, all in one night, to show that his pleasure is above any consideration of justice and character. But this is not morality; this is caprice. To pay the man who has worked only for one hour as much as the man who has worked all day long, is to rob the latter of his dues. The Asiatics may submit to it, but the American or European laborer will not. Because he is the sultan, or because he is God, is no excuse for such eccentricity. No; you are not at liberty to pay as you please, or to make contracts which sacrifice justice to whim.

In the parable of Lazarus and Dives, the fondness of the bible for the worthless, the fallen, the good for nothing, so to speak, becomes all the more evident. At the door of a rich man sits a miserable beggar. He is not only poor, but also diseased. Like many an oriental _fakir_, he is covered with sores, which by their stench attract the hungry dogs to his person. There he sits all day long--a menace to the public health, and an object of disgust. When this beggar dies, he is carried by angels straight to Abraham's bosom; It is, of course, a pity he had to remain on earth so long before entering Paradise. But what had he done to deserve so great a reward? We might as well ask what the prodigal son had done to deserve the "fatted calf," or the "eleventh-hour laborer" to deserve a full day's wages.

Nor is it true that Lazarus was saved for the inner beauty of his character. As I have shown elsewhere, * by refusing a few drops of water to cool the parched tongue of the man who had given him of the crumbs of his table on earth, Lazarus proved himself to be as small of soul as he was leprous of body. But the point of the parable is to show that a man is saved, not because he deserves salvation, but because God takes a fancy to him. And the more unworthy the subject, the better it illustrates that it is whim, and not justice, that presides over the destinies of man. We may plead with justice; against whim we are helpless. It is the sense of this helplessness of man in the hands of a whimsical God that makes Christianity so pessimistic. Of course, for the "elect" favor and whim are better than law and justice; and for the mediocre and the sinner, it is a good thing that merit or character does not count for anything before God. But what about those who have no other "pull" than their own self-respect and honor? And the dogma of total depravity has been invented to relieve the duty of being just to any one, since all mankind deserves to be damned.

* Is the Morality of Jesus Sound.

The same indifference to reason is shown in the next parable: A certain slave owed his king the enormous sum of ten thousand talents. In round numbers a talent is worth one thousand dollars. Accordingly this slave was indebted to his royal master for the sum of ten million dollars. A _slave_ owing more money than any one king ever owned in Jesus' day! How he incurred this impossible debt is not explained. But the king pressed the slave for payment. Whereupon the slave fell at his sovereign's feet and begged for mercy. As expected, the king, with a wave of his hand, makes the slave a present of the ten million dollars which he owes, thereby canceling the entire indebtedness. Does this not remind us of the parable of the prodigal son? Even as he was forgiven the waste and debauchery which had disgraced him, this slave is quickly freed from his obligation. The motive in making the debt a fabulous one was to emphasize the generosity of the sovereign. This brings us to the conclusion already announced, that great sinners are preferred to little ones, because they help to show more directly that it is not character or personal merit that saves, or even helps a man with God, but pure patronage on the part of the deity. Salvation is a favor. That is the burden of the parables of Jesus.

The slave, however, fails to be as generous toward his debtors as his lord was to him. Instead of canceling their obligations as his own had been, he cast them into prison. When the king heard of this he summoned the slave into his presence, and said to him: "O thou wicked servant, I forgave thee all that debt, because thou desiredst me. Should not thou also have had compassion on thy fellow servant, even as I had pity on thee?" * In other words, debtors should be allowed to keep what they have borrowed for the mere asking. The whole tenor of the parable is antisocial. To follow such teaching is to head toward bankruptcy. There will be no lenders, if there are to be no collections. Once more Jesus sacrifices the worthy members of society to the spendthrifts and the prodigals. The man who can lend is the real benefactor, not the borrower; but Jesus is interested in saving the latter, and in such a way as to ruin the former. But the shortsightedness of this policy, as already pointed out, is seen in its effects upon the creator and conserver of wealth--he will stop saving, and then what is the borrower going to do? Jesus' advice practically amounts to this: "Allow your debtors to defraud you." But the process will kill the debtor as well as the lender.

If Jesus really wanted to encourage mendicancy, and to make this earth a paradise for the beggar, he could not have served his purpose better than by such a parable, or by the advice to "Give to him that ask-eth thee, and from him that would borrow of thee turn not thou away." ** The beggar could not wish for a stronger endorsement of his profession. Everything belongs to the beggar, and he is to have what he wants, not for any work he may do in return, but because he wants it.

* Matthew xviii, 32-33.

** Matthew v, 42.

In the Lord's Prayer, one of the petitions reads: "Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors," which really means, "We have allowed our neighbors to impose upon us; you must allow us, Lord, to impose upon you." Jesus could have found a hundred other ways of recommending compassion for the weak and the unfortunate, if that were really what he was aiming at. But his purpose was to show that the borrower, the beggar, the prodigal, the good-for-nothing, are the favored children of God. It is not the strong, the self-reliant, the industrious, the successful, whom God has chosen for his kingdom, but "the foolish of this world." And why? The question has already been answered: to show that it is not merit or character that saves, but the grace of God. By saving the worthless, God gets all the glory; while if he saved the strong and the virtuous, it might be said that it was their character which helped to save them. "My name is Jealous," * saith the Lord.

* Exodus xxxiv, 14.

But Jesus does not forget to speak a good word also for the robber. Indeed the beggar and the robber belong to the same profession. And if anything, the robber's is the more respectable calling. He does not whine and weep and, cant as the beggar does, to get his neighbor's goods; he takes it by force, or craft, which is better than pious prating. The robber risks his life, shows skill and daring, and is not so prosaic, or at all sanctimonious, like the beggar. But, in the final analysis, they are partners in business. They are both agreed that their rich neighbors must not object to part with their possessions on demand. If Jesus had the beggar in his mind when he commanded, "Give to him that asketh thee, and from him that would borrow of thee turn thou not away," he had the welfare of the highway robber in mind when he commanded: "If any man take away thy coat, let him have thy cloak also." In the parable of the Good Samaritan, which, from our point of view, comes nearest to being the most innocent and harmless among the parables, while Jesus deservedly lauds the humanity of the Samaritan toward his fellow man, who had fallen among thieves, there is not a word said in condemnation of the robber. A splendid opportunity to denounce the lax conditions which made life and property insecure, which encouraged plunder and murder along the highways of travel and commerce, was overlooked by Jesus. He fails to call upon the authorities to take measures to prevent the repetition of such crimes as he has been describing. He does not call upon the officers of the law to pursue and catch the thief, and mete out to him the punishment he deserves. Nothing of this. He praises the pity, the compassion of the Samaritan, which praise was well deserved, but a man has not done his best when he has helped a victim of the robbers to a dinner and a bed--he must protect future travelers from such outrages by assisting in the arrest and prompt punishment of the criminal. But Jesus is not interested in reforming robbers, or converting beggars into productive citizens. In fact, one reading between the lines can not avoid the conclusion that Jesus would let the robbers alone, inasmuch as they give the good Samaritan a chance to practice piety and to show compassion. The beggar and the robber you always have with you, Jesus seems to say, for how can men be kind and forgiving without them?

In conclusion, the lesson of the parables, to an unprejudiced mind, is this: the more worthless and degraded a man, the more loaded down with debts, the more dangerous he is to his fellows, the more suitable he will be to prove that God saves whom he wishes, independent of the question of merit, and that "the righteousness of man is as filthy rags." * A more opprobrious phrase could not have been used to express utter contempt for human virtues. According to the Gospel, "the whores and harlots," as well as beggars and robbers, ** "shall enter the kingdom of God," "before the righteous, or the wise of this world." *** But upon what grounds?

* Isaiah lxiv, 6.

** "Jesus saith unto them, Verily I say unto you, That the publicans and the harlots go into the Kingdom of God before you."--Matthew xxi, 31.

*** For God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise.'--I Corinthians i, 27. Paul also states that the way to be wise is by becoming a fool: "... let him become a fool, that he may be wise."--I Corinthians iii, 18.

"It is my whim."