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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Truth About Jesus Is He a Myth?
+by Mangasar Magurditch Mangasarian
+
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+Title: The Truth About Jesus Is He a Myth?
+
+Author: Mangasar Magurditch Mangasarian
+
+Release Date: July, 2004  [EBook #6107]
+[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule]
+[This file was first posted on November 7, 2002]
+
+Edition: 10
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK, THE TRUTH ABOUT JESUS IS HE A MYTH? ***
+
+
+
+
+Juliet Sutherland, Charles Franks and the Online Distributed Proofreading
+Team.
+
+
+
+THE TRUTH ABOUT JESUS IS HE A MYTH?
+
+ILLUSTRATED
+
+_M. M. Mangasarian_
+
+[Illustration: Woman Crucified. In the Church of St. Etienne, France.
+For a Long Time This Bearded Woman Was Supposed to be the Christ]
+
+
+
+
+
+_If it is not historically true that such and such things happened
+in Palestine eighteen centuries ago, what becomes of Christianity?
+--Thomas Huxley._
+
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+PART I
+
+A PARABLE
+IN CONFIDENCE
+IS JESUS A MYTH?
+THE PROBLEM STATED
+THE CHRISTIAN DOCUMENTS
+VIRGIN BIRTHS
+THE ORIGIN OF THE CROSS
+SILENCE OF CONTEMPORARY WRITERS
+THE STORY OF JESUS A RELIGIOUS DRAMA
+THE JESUS OF PAUL NOT THE JESUS OF THE GOSPELS
+IS CHRISTIANITY REAL?
+
+PART II
+
+IS THE WORLD INDEBTED TO CHRISTIANITY?
+
+PAGANISM AND CHRISTIANITY, OR CHRISTIANITY
+NOT SUITED TO WESTERN RACES
+
+PART III
+
+SOME MODERN OPINIONS OF JESUS
+A RHETORICAL JESUS
+"WE OWE EVERYTHING TO JESUS"
+A LIBERAL JEW PRAISES JESUS
+
+APPENDIX--REPLIES TO CLERICAL CRITICS
+
+
+
+
+_By education most have been misled,
+So they believe because they were so bred;
+The priest continues what the nurse began,
+And thus the child imposes on the man_.
+DRYDEN.
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE
+
+
+The following work offers in book form the series of studies on the
+question of the historicity of Jesus, presented from time to time
+before the Independent Religious Society in Orchestra Hall. No effort
+has been made to change the manner of the spoken, into the more
+regular form of the written, word.
+
+                        M. M. MANGASARIAN.
+
+ORCHESTRA HALL
+CHICAGO
+
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: Picture in Herculaneum, of the Days of Pompeii, Showing
+Cupid Crowned with a Cross.]
+
+
+
+
+
+PART I.
+
+
+
+
+A PARABLE
+
+
+
+I am today twenty-five hundred years old. I have been dead for nearly
+as many years. My place of birth was Athens; my grave was not far from
+those of Xenophon and Plato, within view of the white glory of Athens
+and the shimmering waters of the Aegean sea.
+
+After sleeping in my grave for many centuries I awoke suddenly--I
+cannot tell how nor why--and was transported by a force beyond my
+control to this new day and this new city. I arrived here at daybreak,
+when the sky was still dull and drowsy. As I approached the city I
+heard bells ringing, and a little later I found the streets astir with
+throngs of well dressed people in family groups wending their way
+hither and thither. Evidently they were not going to work, for they
+were accompanied by their children in their best clothes, and a
+pleasant expression was upon their faces.
+
+"This must be a day of festival and worship, devoted to one of their
+gods," I murmured to myself.
+
+Looking about me I saw a gentleman in a neat black dress, smiling, and
+his hand extended to me with great cordiality. He must have realized I
+was a stranger and wished to tender his hospitality to me. I accepted
+it gratefully. I clasped his hand. He pressed mine. We gazed for a
+moment silently into each other's eyes. He understood my bewilderment
+amid my novel surroundings, and offered to enlighten me. He explained
+to me the ringing of the bells and the meaning of the holiday crowds
+moving in the streets. It was Sunday--Sunday before Christmas, and the
+people were going to "the House of God."
+
+"Of course you are going there, too," I said to my friendly guide.
+
+"Yes," he answered, "I conduct the worship. I am a priest."
+
+"A priest of Apollo?" I interrogated.
+
+"No, no," he replied, raising his hand to command silence, "Apollo is
+not a god; he was only an idol."
+
+"An idol?" I whispered, taken by surprise.
+
+"I perceive you are a Greek," he said to me, "and the Greeks," he
+continued, "notwithstanding their distinguished accomplishments, were
+an idolatrous people. They worshipped gods that did not exist. They
+built temples to divinities which were merely empty names--empty
+names," he repeated. "Apollo and Athene--and the entire Olympian lot
+were no more than inventions of the fancy."
+
+"But the Greeks loved their gods," I protested, my heart clamoring in
+my breast.
+
+"They were not gods, they were idols, and the difference between a god
+and an idol is this: an idol is a thing; God is a living being. When
+you cannot prove the existence of your god, when you have never seen
+him, nor heard his voice, nor touched him--when you have nothing
+provable about him, he is an idol. Have you seen Apollo? Have you
+heard him? Have you touched him?"
+
+"No," I said, in a low voice.
+
+"Do you know of any one who has?"
+
+I had to admit that I did not.
+
+"He was an idol, then, and not a god."
+
+"But many of us Greeks," I said, "have felt Apollo in our hearts and
+have been inspired by him."
+
+"You imagine you have," returned my guide. "If he were really divine
+he would be living to this day."
+
+"Is he, then, dead?" I asked.
+
+"He never lived; and for the last two thousand years or more his
+temple has been a heap of ruins."
+
+I wept to hear that Apollo, the god of light and music, was no
+more--that his fair temple had fallen into ruins and the fire upon his
+altar had been extinguished; then, wiping a tear from my eyes, I said,
+"Oh, but our gods were fair and beautiful; our religion was rich and
+picturesque. It made the Greeks a nation of poets, orators, artists,
+warriors, thinkers. It made Athens a city of light; it created the
+beautiful, the true, the good--yes, our religion was divine."
+
+"It had only one fault," interrupted my guide.
+
+"What was that?" I inquired, without knowing what his answer would be.
+
+"It was not true."
+
+"But I still believe in Apollo," I exclaimed; "he is not dead, I know
+he is alive."
+
+"Prove it," he said to me; then, pausing for a moment, "if you produce
+him," he said, "we shall all fall down and worship him. Produce Apollo
+and he shall be our god."
+
+"Produce him!" I whispered to myself. "What blasphemy!" Then, taking
+heart, I told my guide how more than once I had felt Apollo's radiant
+presence in my heart, and told him of the immortal lines of Homer
+concerning the divine Apollo. "Do you doubt Homer?" I said to him;
+"Homer, the inspired bard? Homer, whose inkwell was as big as the sea;
+whose imperishable page was Time? Homer, whose every word was a drop
+of light?" Then I proceeded to quote from Homer's _Iliad_, the Greek
+Bible, worshipped by all the Hellenes as the rarest Manuscript between
+heaven and earth. I quoted his description of Apollo, than whose lyre
+nothing is more musical, than whose speech even honey is not sweeter.
+I recited how his mother went from town to town to select a worthy
+place to give birth to the young god, son of Zeus, the Supreme Being,
+and how he was born and cradled amid the ministrations of all the
+goddesses, who bathed him in the running stream and fed him with
+nectar and ambrosia from Olympus. Then I recited the lines which
+picture Apollo bursting his bands, leaping forth from his cradle, and
+spreading his wings like a swan, soaring sunward, declaring that he
+had come to announce to mortals the will of God. "Is it possible," I
+asked, "that all this is pure fabrication, a fantasy of the brain, as
+unsubstantial as the air? No, no, Apollo is not an idol. He is a god,
+and the son of a god. The whole Greek world will bear me witness that
+I am telling the truth." Then I looked at my guide to see what
+impression this outburst of sincere enthusiasm had produced upon him,
+and I saw a cold smile upon his lips that cut me to the heart. It
+seemed as if he wished to say to me, "You poor deluded pagan! You are
+not intelligent enough to know that Homer was only a mortal after all,
+and that he was writing a play in which he manufactured the gods of
+whom he sang--that these gods existed only in his imagination, and
+that today they are as dead as is their inventor--the poet."
+
+By this time we stood at the entrance of a large edifice which my
+guide said was "the House of God." As we walked in I saw innumerable
+little lights blinking and winking all over the spacious interior.
+There were, besides, pictures, altars and images all around me. The
+air was heavy with incense; a number of men in gorgeous vestments were
+passing to and fro, bowing and kneeling before the various lights and
+images. The audience was upon its knees enveloped in silence--a
+silence so solemn that it awed me. Observing my anxiety to understand
+the meaning of all this, my guide took me aside and in a whisper told
+me that the people were celebrating the anniversary of the birthday of
+their beautiful Savior--Jesus, the Son of God.
+
+"So was Apollo the son of God," I replied, thinking perhaps that after
+all we might find ourselves in agreement with one another.
+
+"Forget Apollo," he said, with a suggestion of severity in his voice.
+"There is no such person. He was only an idol. If you were to search
+for Apollo in all the universe you would never find any one answering
+to his name or description. Jesus," he resumed, "is the Son of God. He
+came to our earth and was born of a virgin."
+
+Again I was tempted to tell my guide that that was how Apollo became
+incarnate; but I restrained myself.
+
+"Then Jesus grew up to be a man," continued my guide, "performing
+unheard-of wonders, such as treading the seas, giving sight, hearing
+and speech to the blind, the deaf and the dumb, converting water into
+wine, feeding the multitudes miraculously, predicting coming events
+and resurrecting the dead."
+
+"Of course, of your gods, too," he added, "it is claimed that they
+performed miracles, and of your oracles that they foretold the future,
+but there is this difference--the things related of your gods are a
+fiction, the things told of Jesus are a fact, and the difference
+between Paganism and Christianity is the difference between fiction
+and fact."
+
+Just then I heard a wave of murmur, like the rustling of leaves in a
+forest, sweep over the bowed audience. I turned about and
+unconsciously, my Greek curiosity impelling me, I pushed forward
+toward where the greater candle lights were blazing. I felt that
+perhaps the commotion in the house was the announcement that the God
+Jesus was about to make his appearance, and I wanted to see him. I
+wanted to touch him, or, if the crowd were too large to allow me that
+privilege, I wanted, at least, to hear his voice. I, who had never
+seen a god, never touched one, never heard one speak, I who had
+believed in Apollo without ever having known anything provable about
+him, I wanted to see the real God, Jesus.
+
+But my guide placed his hand quickly upon my shoulder, and held me
+back.
+
+"I want to see Jesus," I hastened, turning toward him. I said this
+reverently and in good faith. "Will he not be here this morning? Will
+he not speak to his worshippers?" I asked again. "Will he not permit
+them to touch him, to caress his hand, to clasp his divine feet, to
+inhale the ambrosial fragrance of his breath, to bask in the golden
+light of his eyes, to hear the music of his immaculate accents? Let
+me, too, see Jesus," I pleaded.
+
+"You cannot see him," answered my guide, with a trace of embarrassment
+in his voice. "He does not show himself any more."
+
+I was too much surprised at this to make any immediate reply.
+
+"For the last two thousand years," my guide continued, "it has not
+pleased Jesus to show himself to any one; neither has he been heard
+from for the same number of years."
+
+"For two thousand years no one has either seen or heard Jesus?" I
+asked, my eyes filled with wonder and my voice quivering with
+excitement.
+
+"No," he answered.
+
+"Would not that, then," I ventured to ask, impatiently, "make Jesus as
+much of an idol as Apollo? And are not these people on their knees
+before a god of whose existence they are as much in the dark as were
+the Greeks of fair Apollo, and of whose past they have only rumors
+such as Homer reports of our Olympian gods--as idolatrous as the
+Athenians? What would you say," I asked my guide, "if I were to demand
+that you should produce Jesus and prove him to my eyes and ears as you
+have asked me to produce and prove Apollo? What is the difference
+between a ceremony performed in honor of Apollo and one performed in
+honor of Jesus, since it is as impossible to give oracular
+demonstration of the existence of the one as of the other? If Jesus is
+alive and a god, and Apollo is an idol and dead, what is the evidence,
+since the one is as invisible, as inaccessible, and as unproducible as
+the other? And, if faith that Jesus is a god proves him a god, why
+will not faith in Apollo make him a god? But if worshipping Jesus,
+whom for the best part of the last two thousand years no man has seen,
+heard or touched; if building temples to him, burning incense upon his
+altars, bowing at his shrine and calling him "God," is not idolatry,
+neither is it idolatry to kindle fire upon the luminous altars of the
+Greek Apollo,--God of the dawn, master of the enchanted lyre--he with
+the bow and arrow tipped with fire! I am not denying," I said, "that
+Jesus ever lived. He may have been alive two thousand years ago, but
+if he has not been heard from since, if the same thing that happened
+to the people living at the time he lived has happened to him, namely--if
+he is dead, then you are worshipping the dead, which fact stamps
+your religion as idolatrous."
+
+And, then, remembering what he had said to me about the Greek
+mythology being beautiful but not true, I said to him: "Your temples
+are indeed gorgeous and costly; your music is grand; your altars are
+superb; your litany is exquisite; your chants are melting; your
+incense, and bells and flowers, your gold and silver vessels are all
+in rare taste, and I dare say your dogmas are subtle and your
+preachers eloquent, but your religion has one fault--_it is not
+true_."
+
+[Illustration: Swastika. Earlier Form of the Cross. ]
+
+[Illustration: The Lamb in the Holy Sepulchre, Mosaic of the IV
+Century, Sarcophagus of Luc de Bearn. Showing the Lamb on the Cross.]
+
+
+
+
+IN CONFIDENCE
+
+
+
+I shall speak in a straightforward way, and shall say today what
+perhaps I should say tomorrow, or ten years from now,--but shall say
+it today, because I cannot keep it back, because I have nothing better
+to say than the truth, or what I hold to be the truth. But why seek
+truths that are not pleasant? We cannot help it. No man can suppress
+the truth. Truth finds a crack or crevice to crop out of; it bobs up
+to the surface and all the volume and weight of waters can not keep it
+down. Truth prevails! Life, death, truth--behold, these three no power
+can keep back. And since we are doomed to know the truth, let us
+cultivate a love for it. It is of no avail to cry over lost illusions,
+to long for vanished dreams, or to call to the departing gods to come
+back. It may be pleasant to play with toys and dolls all our life, but
+evidently we are not meant to remain children always. The time comes
+when we must put away childish things and obey the summons of truth,
+stern and high. A people who fear the truth can never he a free
+people. If what I will say is the truth, do you know of any good
+reason why I should not say it? And if for prudential reasons I should
+sometimes hold back the truth, how would you know _when_ I am telling
+what I believe to be the truth, and when I am holding it back for
+reasons of policy?
+
+The truth, however unwelcome, is not injurious; it is error which
+raises false hopes, which destroys, degrades and pollutes, and which,
+sooner or later, must be abandoned. Was it not Spencer, whom Darwin
+called "our great philosopher," who said, "Repulsive as is its aspect,
+the hard fact which dissipates a cherished illusion is presently found
+to contain the germ of a more salutary belief?" Spain is decaying
+today because her teachers, for policy's sake, are withholding the
+disagreeable truth from the people. Holy water and sainted bones can
+give a nation illusions and dreams, but never,--strength.
+
+A difficult subject is in the nature of a challenge to the mind. One
+difficult task attempted is worth a thousand commonplace efforts
+completed. The majority of people avoid the difficult and fear danger.
+But he who would progress must even court danger. Political and
+religious liberty were discovered through peril and struggle. The
+world owes its emancipation to human daring. Had Columbus feared
+danger, America might have slept for another thousand years.
+
+I have a difficult subject in hand. It is also a delicate one. But I
+am determined not only to know, if it is possible, the whole truth
+about Jesus, but also to communicate that truth to others. Some people
+can keep their minds shut. I cannot; I must share my intellectual life
+with the world. If I lived a thousand years ago, I might have
+collapsed at the sight of the burning stake, but I feel sure I would
+have deserved the stake.
+
+People say to me, sometimes, "Why do you not confine yourself to moral
+and religious exhortation, such as, 'Be kind, do good, love one
+another, etc.'?" But there is more of a moral tonic in the open and
+candid discussion of a subject like the one in hand, than in a
+multitude of platitudes. We feel our moral fiber stiffen into force
+and purpose under the inspiration of a peril dared for the advancement
+of truth.
+
+"Tell us what you believe," is one of the requests frequently
+addressed to me. I never deliver a lecture in which I do not, either
+directly or indirectly, give full and free expression to my faith in
+everything that is worthy of faith. If I do not believe in dogma, it
+is because I believe in freedom. If I do not believe in one inspired
+book, it is because I believe that all truth and only truth is
+inspired. If I do not ask the gods to help us, it is because I believe
+in human help, so much more real than supernatural help. If I do not
+believe in standing still, it is because I believe in progress. If I
+am not attracted by the vision of a distant heaven, it is because I
+believe in human happiness, now and here. If I do not say "Lord,
+Lord!" to Jesus, it is because I bow my head to a greater Power than
+Jesus, to a more efficient Savior than he has ever been--Science!
+
+"Oh, he tears down, but does not build up," is another criticism about
+my work. It is not true. No preacher or priest is more constructive.
+To build up their churches and maintain their creeds the priests
+pulled down and destroyed the magnificent civilization of Greece and
+Rome, plunging Europe into the dark and sterile ages which lasted over
+a thousand years. When Galileo waved his hands for joy because he
+believed he had enriched humanity with a new truth and extended the
+sphere of knowledge, what did the church do to him? It conspired to
+destroy him. It shut him up in a dungeon! Clapping truth into jail;
+gagging the mouth of the student--is that building up or tearing down?
+When Bruno lighted a new torch to increase the light of the world,
+what was his reward? The stake! During all the ages that the church
+had the power to police the world, every time a thinker raised his
+head he was clubbed to death. Do you think it is kind of us--does it
+square with our sense of justice to call the priest constructive, and
+the scientists and philosophers who have helped people to their
+feet--helped them to self-government in politics, and to self-help in
+life,--destructive? Count your rights--political, religious, social,
+intellectual--and tell me which of them was conquered for you by the
+priest.
+
+"He is irreverent," is still another hasty criticism I have heard
+advanced against the rationalist. I wish to tell you something. But
+first let us be impersonal. The epithets "irreverent," "blasphemer,"
+"atheist," and "infidel," are flung at a man, not from pity, but from
+envy. Not having the courage or the industry of our neighbor who works
+like a busy bee in the world of men and books, searching with the sweat
+of his brow for the real bread of life, wetting the open page before
+him with his tears, pushing into the "wee" hours of the night his
+quest, animated by the fairest of all loves, "the love of truth",--we
+ease our own indolent conscience by calling him names. We pretend
+that it is not because we are too lazy or too selfish to work as hard
+or think as freely as he does, but because we do not want to be as
+irreverent as he is that we keep the windows of our minds shut. To
+excuse our own mediocrity we call the man who tries to get out of the
+rut a "blasphemer." And so we ask the world to praise our indifference
+as a great virtue, and to denounce the conscientious toil and thought
+of another, as "blasphemy."
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: The Lamb Standing Upon the Gospels. VIII Century.]
+
+IS JESUS A MYTH?
+
+
+
+What is a myth? A myth is a fanciful explanation of a given
+phenomenon. Observing the sun, the moon, and the stars overhead, the
+primitive man wished to account for them. This was natural. The mind
+craves for knowledge. The child asks questions because of an inborn
+desire to know. Man feels ill at ease with a sense of a mental vacuum,
+until his questions are answered. Before the days of science, a
+fanciful answer was all that could be given to man's questions about
+the physical world. The primitive man guessed where knowledge failed
+him--what else could he do? A myth, then, is a guess, a story, a
+speculation, or a fanciful explanation of a phenomenon, in the absence
+of accurate information.
+
+Many are the myths about the heavenly bodies, which, while we call
+them myths, because we know better, were to the ancients truths. The
+Sun and Moon were once brother and sister, thought the child-man; but
+there arose a dispute between them; the woman ran away, and the man
+ran after her, until they came to the end of the earth where land and
+sky met. The woman jumped into the sky, and the man after her, where
+they kept chasing each other forever, as Sun and Moon. Now and then
+they came close enough to snap at each other. That was their
+explanation of an eclipse. (Childhood of the World.--Edward Clodd.)
+With this mythus, the primitive man was satisfied, until his
+developing intelligence realized its inadequacy. Science was born of
+that realization.
+
+During the middle ages it was believed by Europeans that in certain
+parts of the world, in India, for instance, there were people who had
+only one eye in the middle of their foreheads, and were more like
+monsters than humans. This was imaginary knowledge, which travel and
+research have corrected. The myth of a one-eyed people living in India
+has been replaced by accurate information concerning the Hindoos.
+Likewise, before the science of ancient languages was perfected--before
+archaeology had dug up buried cities and deciphered the hieroglyphics
+on the monuments of antiquity, most of our knowledge concerning the
+earlier ages was mythical, that is to say, it was knowledge not based
+on investigation, but made to order. Just as the theologians still
+speculate about the other world, primitive man speculated about this
+world. Even we moderns, not very long ago, believed, for instance, that
+the land of Egypt was visited by ten fantastic plagues; that in one
+bloody night every first born in the land was slain; that the angel of
+a tribal-god dipped his hand in blood and printed a red mark upon the
+doors of the houses of the Jews to protect them from harm; that Pharaoh
+and his armies were drowned in the Red Sea; that the children of Israel
+wandered for forty years around Mount Sinai; and so forth, and so forth.
+But now that we can read the inscriptions on the stone pages dug out of
+ancient ruins; now that we can compel a buried world to reveal its
+secret and to tell us its story, we do not have to go on making myths
+about the ancients. Myths die when history is born.
+
+It will be seen from these examples that there is no harm in myth-
+making if the myth is called a myth. It is when we use our fanciful
+knowledge to deny or to shut out real and scientific knowledge that
+the myth becomes a stumbling block. And this is precisely the use to
+which myths have been put. The king with his sword and the priest with
+his curses, have supported the myth against science. When a man
+_pretends_ to believe that the _Santa Claus_ of his childhood is real,
+and tries to compel also others to play a part, he becomes positively
+immoral. There is no harm in believing in _Santa Claus_ as a myth, but
+there is in pretending that he is real, because such an attitude of
+mind makes a mere trifle of truth.
+
+Is Jesus a myth? There is in man a faculty for fiction. Before history
+was born, there was myth; before men could think, they dreamed. It was
+with the human race in its infancy as it is with the child. The
+child's imagination is more active than its reason. It is easier for
+it to fancy even than to see. It thinks less than it guesses. This
+wild flight of fancy is checked only by experience. It is reflection
+which introduces a bit into the mouth of imagination, curbing its pace
+and subduing its restless spirit. It is, then, as we grow older, and,
+if I may use the word, riper, that we learn to distinguish between
+fact and fiction, between history and myth.
+
+In childhood we need playthings, and the more fantastic and _bizarre_
+they are, the better we are pleased with them. We dream, for instance,
+of castles in the air--gorgeous and clothed with the azure hue of the
+skies. We fill the space about and over us with spirits, fairies,
+gods, and other invisible and airy beings. We covet the rainbow. We
+reach out for the moon. Our feet do not really begin to touch the firm
+ground until we have reached the years of discretion.
+
+I know there are those who wish they could always remain children,--living
+in dreamland. But even if this were desirable, it is not possible.
+Evolution is our destiny; of what use is it, then, to take up arms
+against destiny?
+
+Let it be borne in mind that all the religions of the world were born
+in the childhood of the race.
+
+Science was not born until man had matured. There is in this thought a
+world of meaning.
+
+Children make religions.
+
+Grown up people create science.
+
+The cradle is the womb of all the fairies and faiths of mankind.
+
+The school is the birthplace of science.
+
+Religion is the science of the child.
+
+Science is the religion of the matured man.
+
+In the discussion of this subject, I appeal to the mature, not to
+the child mind. I appeal to those who have cultivated a taste for
+truth--who are not easily scared, but who can "screw their courage to
+the sticking point" and follow to the end truth's leading. The multitude
+is ever joined to its idols; let them alone. I speak to the discerning
+few.
+
+There is an important difference between a lecturer and an ordained
+preacher. The latter can command a hearing in the name of God, or in
+the name of the Bible. He does not have to satisfy his hearers about
+the reasonableness of what he preaches. He is God's mouthpiece, and no
+one may disagree with him. He can also invoke the authority of the
+church and of the Christian world to enforce acceptance of his
+teaching. The only way I may command your respect is to be reasonable.
+You will not listen to me for God's sake, nor for the Bible's sake,
+nor yet for the love of heaven, or the fear of hell. My only
+protection is to be rational--to be truthful. In other words, the
+preacher can afford to ignore common sense in the name of Revelation.
+But if I depart from it in the least, or am caught once playing fast
+and loose with the facts, I will irretrievably lose my standing.
+
+[Illustration: In Use Upon Heathen Altars Centuries Before
+Christianity.] Our answer to the question, Is Jesus a Myth? must
+depend more or less upon original research, as there is very little
+written on the subject. The majority of writers assume that a person
+answering to the description of Jesus lived some two thousand years
+ago. Even the few who entertain doubts on the subject, seem to hold
+that while there is a large mythical element in the Jesus story,
+nevertheless there is a historical nucleus round which has clustered
+the elaborate legend of the Christ. In all probability, they argue,
+there was a man called Jesus, who said many helpful things, and led an
+exemplary life, and all the miracles and wonders represent the
+accretions of fond and pious ages.
+
+Let us place ourselves entirely in the hands of the evidence. As far
+as possible, let us be passive, showing no predisposition one way or
+another. We can afford to be independent. If the evidence proves the
+historicity of Jesus, well and good; if the evidence is not sufficient
+to prove it, there is no reason why we should fear to say so; besides,
+it is our duty to inform ourselves on this question. As intelligent
+beings we desire to know whether this Jesus, whose worship is not only
+costing the world millions of the people's money, but which is also
+drawing to his service the time, the energies, the affection, the
+devotion, and the labor of humanity,--is a myth, or a reality. We
+believe that all religious persecutions, all sectarian wars, hatreds
+and intolerance, which still cramp and embitter our humanity, would be
+replaced by love and brotherhood, if the sects could be made to see
+that the God-Jesus they are quarreling over is a myth, a shadow to
+which credulity alone gives substance. Like people who have been
+fighting in the dark, fearing some danger, the sects, once relieved of
+the thraldom of a tradition which has been handed down to them by a
+childish age and country, will turn around and embrace one another. In
+every sense, the subject is an all-absorbing one. It goes to the root
+of things; it touches the vital parts, and it means life or death to
+the Christian religion.
+
+[Illustration: Ascension of Jesus, Ninth Century.]
+
+[Illustration: Juno Nursing Her Divine Child, Mars.]
+
+
+
+
+THE PROBLEM STATED
+
+
+Let me now give an idea of the method I propose to follow in the study
+of this subject. Let us suppose that a student living in the year 3000
+desired to make sure that such a man as Abraham Lincoln really lived
+and did the things attributed to him. How would he go about it?
+
+A man must have a birthplace and a birthday. All the records agree as
+to where and when Lincoln was born. This is not enough to prove his
+historicity, but it is an important link in the chain.
+
+Neither the place nor the time of Jesus' birth is known. There has
+never been any unanimity about this matter. There has been
+considerable confusion and contradiction about it. It cannot be proved
+that the twenty-fifth of December is his birthday. A number of other
+dates were observed by the Christian church at various times as the
+birthday of Jesus. The Gospels give no date, and appear to be quite
+uncertain--really ignorant about it. When it is remembered that the
+Gospels purport to have been written by Jesus' intimate companions,
+and during the lifetime of his brothers and mother, their silence on
+this matter becomes significant. The selection of the twenty-fifth of
+December as his birthday is not only an arbitrary one, but that date,
+having been from time immemorial dedicated to the Sun, the inference
+is that the Son of God and the Sun of heaven enjoying the same
+birthday, were at one time identical beings. The fact that Jesus'
+death was accompanied with the darkening of the Sun, and that the date
+of his resurrection is also associated with the position of the Sun at
+the time of the vernal equinox, is a further intimation that we have
+in the story of the birth, death, and resurrection of Jesus, an
+ancient and nearly universal Sun-myth, instead of verifiable
+historical events. The story of Jesus for three days in the heart of
+the earth; of Jonah, three days in the belly of a fish; of Hercules,
+three days in the belly of a whale, and of Little Red Riding Hood,
+sleeping in the belly of a great black wolf, represent the attempt of
+primitive man to explain the phenomenon of Day and Night. The Sun is
+swallowed by a dragon, a wolf, or a whale, which plunges the world
+into darkness; but the dragon is killed, and the Sun rises triumphant
+to make another Day. This ancient Sun myth is the starting point of
+nearly all miraculous religions, from the days of Egypt to the
+twentieth century.
+
+[Illustration: The Persian God, Mithra. All the Gods Have the Solar
+Disc Around Their Heads, Showing That Sun-Worship Was One of the
+Earliest Forms of Religion.]
+
+The story which Mathew relates about a remarkable star, which sailing
+in the air pointed out to some unnamed magicians the cradle or cave in
+which the wonder-child was born, helps further to identify Jesus with
+the Sun. What became of this "performing" star, or of the magicians,
+and their costly gifts, the records do not say. It is more likely that
+it was the astrological predilections of the gospel writer which led
+him to assign to his God-child a star in the heavens. The belief that
+the stars determine human destinies is a very ancient one. Such
+expressions in our language as "ill-starred," "a lucky star,"
+"disaster," "lunacy," and so on, indicate the hold which astrology
+once enjoyed upon the human mind. We still call a melancholy man,
+_Saturnine_; a cheerful man, _Jovial_; a quick-tempered man,
+_Mercurial_; showing how closely our ancestors associated the
+movements of celestial bodies with human affairs. [Footnote: Childhood
+of the World.--Edward Clodd.] The prominence, therefore, of the sun
+and stars in the Gospel story tends to show that Jesus is an
+astrological rather than a historical character.
+
+That the time of his birth, his death, and supposed resurrection is
+_not_ verifiable is generally admitted.
+
+This uncertainty robs the story of Jesus, to an extent at least, of
+the atmosphere of reality.
+
+The twenty-fifth of December is celebrated as his birthday. Yet there
+is no evidence that he was born on that day. Although the Gospels are
+silent as to the date on which Jesus was born, there is circumstantial
+evidence in the accounts given of the event to show that the twenty-
+fifth of December could not have been his birthday. It snows in
+Palestine, though a warmer country, and we know that in December there
+are no shepherds tending their flocks in the night time in that
+country. Often at this time of the year the fields and hills are
+covered with snow. Hence, if the shepherds sleeping in the fields
+really saw the heavens open and heard the angel-song, in all
+probability it was in some other month of the year, and not late in
+December. We know, also, that early in the history of Christianity the
+months of May and June enjoyed the honor of containing the day of
+Jesus' birth.
+
+[Illustration: Isis Nursing Her Divine Child, 3000 B. C.]
+
+Of course, it is immaterial on which day Jesus was born, but why is it
+not known? Yet not only is the date of his birth a matter of
+conjecture, but also the year in which he was born. Matthew, one of
+the Evangelists, suggests that Jesus was born in King Herod's time,
+for it was this king who, hearing from the Magi that a King of the
+Jews was born, decided to destroy him; but Luke, another Evangelist,
+intimates that Jesus was born when Quirinus was ruler of Judea, which
+makes the date of Jesus' birth about fourteen years later than the
+date given by Matthew. Why this discrepancy in a historical document,
+to say nothing about inspiration? The theologian might say that this
+little difficulty was introduced purposely into the scriptures to
+establish its infallibility, but it is only religious books that are
+pronounced infallible on the strength of the contradictions they
+contain.
+
+Again, Matthew says that to escape the evil designs of Herod, Mary and
+Joseph, with the infant Jesus, fled into Egypt, Luke says nothing
+about this hurried flight, nor of Herod's intention to kill the infant
+Messiah. On the contrary he tells us that after the forty days of
+purification were over Jesus was publicly presented at the temple,
+where Herod, if he really, as Matthew relates, wished to seize him,
+could have done so without difficulty. It is impossible to reconcile
+the flight to Egypt with the presentation in the temple, and this
+inconsistency is certainly insurmountable and makes it look as if the
+narrative had no value whatever as history.
+
+When we come to the more important chapters about Jesus, we meet with
+greater difficulties. Have you ever noticed that the day on which
+Jesus is supposed to have died falls invariably on a Friday? What is
+the reason for this? It is evident that nobody knows, and nobody ever
+knew the date on which the Crucifixion took place, if it ever took
+place. It is so obscure and so mythical that an artificial day has
+been fixed by the Ecclesiastical councils. While it is always on a
+Friday that the Crucifixion is commemorated, the week in which the day
+occurs varies from year to year. "Good Friday" falls not before the
+spring equinox, but as soon after the spring equinox as the full moon
+allows, thus making the calculation to depend upon the position of the
+sun in the Zodiac and the phases of the moon. But that was precisely
+the way the day for the festival of the pagan goddess Oestera was
+determined. The Pagan Oestera has become the Christian Easter. Does
+not this fact, as well as those already touched upon, make the story
+of Jesus to read very much like the stories of the Pagan deities.
+
+The early Christians, Origin, for instance, in his reply to the
+rationalist Celsus who questioned the reality of Jesus, instead of
+producing evidence of a historical nature, appealed to the mythology
+of the pagans to prove that the story of Jesus was no more incredible
+than those of the Greek and Roman gods. This is so important that we
+refer our readers to Origin's own words on the subject. "Before
+replying to Celsus, it is necessary to admit that in the matter of
+history, however true it might be," writes this Christian Father, "it
+is often very difficult and sometimes quite impossible to establish
+its truth by evidence which shall be considered sufficient."
+[Footnote: Origin _Contre Celse._ 1. 58 et Suiv. Ibid.] This is a
+plain admission that as early as the second and third centuries the
+claims put forth about Jesus did not admit of positive historical
+demonstration. But in the absence of evidence Origin offers the
+following metaphysical arguments against the sceptical Celsus: 1. Such
+stories as are told of Jesus are admitted to be true when told of
+pagan divinities, why can they not also be true when told of the
+Christian Messiah? 2. They must be true because they are the
+fulfillment of Old Testament prophecies. In other words, the only
+proofs Origin can bring forth against the rationalistic criticism of
+Celsus is, that to deny Jesus would be equivalent to denying both the
+Pagan and Jewish mythologies. If Jesus is not real, says Origin, then
+Apollo was not real, and the Old Testament prophecies have not been
+fulfilled. If we are to have any mythology at all, he seems to argue,
+why object to adding to it the mythus of Jesus? There could not be a
+more damaging admission than this from one of the most conspicuous
+defenders of Jesus' story against early criticism.
+
+Justin Martyr, another early Father, offers the following argument
+against unbelievers in the Christian legend: "When we say also that
+the Word, which is the first birth of God, was produced without sexual
+union, and that he, Jesus Christ, our teacher, was crucified, died,
+and rose again, and ascended into heaven, we propound nothing
+different from what you believe regarding those whom you esteem sons
+of Jupiter." [Footnote: First Apology, Chapter xxi (Anti-Nicene
+Library).] Which is another way of saying that the Christian mythus is
+very similar to the pagan, and should therefore be equally true.
+Pressing his argument further, this interesting Father discovers many
+resemblances between what he himself is preaching and what the pagans
+have always believed: "For you know how many sons your esteemed
+writers ascribe to Jupiter. Mercury, the interpreting word (he spells
+this word with a small _w_ while in the above quotation he uses a
+capital _w_ to denote the Christian incarnation) and teacher of
+all; Aesculapius...who ascended to heaven; one Hercules...and
+Perseus;...and Bellerophon, who, though sprung from mortals, rose to
+heaven on the horses of Pegasus." [Footnote: Ibid.] If Jupiter can
+have, Justin Martyr seems to reason, half a dozen divine sons, why
+cannot Jehovah have at least one?
+
+[Illustration: The Unsexed Christ, Naked In the Church of St. Antoine,
+Tours, France.]
+
+Instead of producing historical evidence or appealing to creditable
+documents, as one would to prove the existence of a Caesar or an
+Alexander, Justin Martyr draws upon pagan mythology in his reply to
+the critics of Christianity. All he seems to ask for is that Jesus be
+given a higher place among the divinities of the ancient world.
+
+To help their cause the Christian apologists not infrequently also
+changed the sense of certain Old Testament passages to make them
+support the miraculous stories in the New Testament. For example,
+having borrowed from Oriental books the story of the god in a manger,
+surrounded by staring animals, the Christian fathers introduced a
+prediction of this event into the following text from the book of
+Habakkuk in the Bible: "Accomplish thy work in the midst of the
+_years_, in the midst of the years make known, etc." [Footnote: Hab.
+iii. 2.] This Old Testament text appeared in the Greek translation as
+follows: "Thou shalt manifest thyself in the midst of _two animals_"
+which was fulfilled of course when Jesus was born in a stable. How
+weak must be one's case to resort to such tactics in order to command
+a following! And when it is remembered that these follies were deemed
+necessary to prove the reality of what has been claimed as the most
+stupendous event in all history, one can readily see upon how fragile
+a foundation is built the story of the Christian God-man.
+
+Let us continue: Abraham Lincoln's associates and contemporaries are
+all known to history. The immediate companions of Jesus appear to be,
+on the other hand, as mythical as he is himself. Who was Matthew? Who
+was Mark? Who were John, Peter, Judas, and Mary? There is absolutely
+no evidence that they ever existed. They are not mentioned except in
+the New Testament books, which, as we shall see, are "supposed" copies
+of "supposed" originals. If Peter ever went to Rome with a new
+doctrine, how is it that no historian has taken note of him? If Paul
+visited Athens and preached from Mars Hill, how is it that there is no
+mention of him or of his strange Gospel in the Athenian chronicles?
+For all we know, both Peter and Paul may have really existed, but it
+is only a guess, as we have no means of ascertaining. The uncertainty
+about the apostles of Jesus is quite in keeping with the uncertainty
+about Jesus himself.
+
+The report that Jesus had twelve apostles seems also mythical. The
+number twelve, like the number seven, or three, or forty, plays an
+important role in all Sun-myths, and points to the twelve signs of the
+Zodiac. Jacob had twelve sons; there were twelve tribes of Israel;
+twelve months in the year; twelve gates or pillars of heaven, etc. In
+many of the religions of the world, the number twelve is sacred. There
+have been few god-saviors who did not have twelve apostles or
+messengers. In one or two places, in the New Testament, Jesus is made
+to send out "the seventy" to evangelize the world. Here again we see
+the presence of a myth. It was believed that there were seventy
+different nations in the world--to each nation an apostle. Seventy
+wise men are supposed to have translated the Old Testament, sitting in
+seventy different cells. That is why their translation is called
+"_the Septuagint_" But it is all a legend, as there is no evidence of
+seventy scholars working in seventy individual cells on the Hebrew
+Bible. One of the Church Fathers declares that he saw these seventy
+cells with his own eyes. He was the only one who saw them.
+
+That the "Twelve Apostles" are fanciful may he inferred from the
+obscurity in which the greater number of them have remained. Peter,
+Paul, John, James, Judas, occupy the stage almost exclusively. If Paul
+was an apostle, we have fourteen, instead of twelve. Leaving out
+Judas, and counting Matthias, who was elected in his place, we have
+thirteen apostles.
+
+The number forty figures also in many primitive myths. The Jews were
+in the wilderness for forty years; Jesus fasted for forty days; from
+the resurrection to the ascension were forty days; Moses was on the
+mountain with God for forty days. An account in which such scrupulous
+attention is shown to supposed sacred numbers is apt to be more
+artificial than real. The biographers of Lincoln or of Socrates do not
+seem to be interested in numbers. They write history, not stories.
+
+Again, many of the contemporaries of Lincoln bear written witness to
+his existence. The historians of the time, the statesmen, the
+publicists, the chroniclers--all seem to be acquainted with him, or to
+have heard of him. It is impossible to explain why the contemporaries
+of Jesus, the authors and historians of his time, do not take notice
+of him. If Abraham Lincoln was important enough to have attracted the
+attention of his contemporaries, how much more Jesus. Is it reasonable
+to suppose that these Pagan and Jewish writers knew of Jesus,--had
+heard of his incomparably great works and sayings,--but omitted to
+give him a page or a line? Could they have been in a conspiracy
+against him? How else is this unanimous silence to be accounted for?
+Is it not more likely that the wonder-working Jesus was unknown to
+them? And he was unknown to them because no such Jesus existed in
+their day.
+
+Should the student, looking into Abraham Lincoln's history, discover
+that no one of his biographers knew positively just when he lived or
+where he was born, he would have reason to conclude that because of
+this uncertainty on the part of the biographers, he must be more
+exacting than he otherwise would have been. That is precisely our
+position. Of course, there are in history great men of whose
+birthplaces or birthdays we are equally uncertain. But we believe in
+their existence, not because no one seems to know exactly when and
+where they were born, but because there is overwhelming evidence
+corroborating the other reports about them, and which is sufficient to
+remove the suspicion suggested by the darkness hanging over their
+nativity. Is there any evidence strong enough to prove the historicity
+of Jesus, in spite of the fact that not even his supposed companions,
+writing during the lifetime of Jesus' mother, have any definite
+information to give.
+
+But let us continue. The reports current about a man like Lincoln are
+verifiable, while many of those about Jesus are of a nature that no
+amount of evidence can confirm. That Lincoln was President of these
+United States, that he signed the Emancipation Proclamation, and that
+he was assassinated, can be readily authenticated.
+
+But how can any amount of evidence satisfy one's self that Jesus was
+born of a virgin, for instance? Such a report or rumor can never even
+be examined; it does not lend itself to evidence; it is beyond the
+sphere of history; it is not a legitimate question for investigation.
+It belongs to mythology. Indeed, to put forth a report of that nature
+is to forbid the use of evidence, and to command forcible
+acquiescence, which, to say the least, is a very suspicious
+circumstance, calculated to hurt rather than to help the Jesus story.
+
+The report that Jesus was God is equally impossible of verification.
+How are we to prove whether or not a certain person was God? Jesus may
+have been a wonderful man, but is every wonderful man a God? Jesus may
+have claimed to have been a God, but is every one who puts forth such
+a claim a God? How, then, are we to decide which of the numerous
+candidates for divine honors should be given our votes? And can we by
+voting for Jesus make him a God? Observe to what confusion the mere
+attempt to follow such a report leads us.
+
+A human Jesus may or may not have existed, but we are as sure as we
+can be of anything, that a virgin-born God, named Jesus, such as we
+must believe in or be eternally lost, is an impossibility--except to
+credulity. But credulity is no evidence at all, even when it is
+dignified by the name of _faith_. Let us pause for a moment to
+reflect: The final argument for the existence of the miraculous Jesus,
+preached in church and Sunday-school, these two thousand years, as the
+sole savior of the world, is an appeal to faith--the same to which
+Mohammed resorts to establish his claims, and Brigham Young to prove
+his revelation. There is no other possible way by which the virgin-
+birth or the _godhood_ of a man can be established. And such a faith
+is never free, it is always maintained by the sword now, and by
+hell-fire hereafter.
+
+Once more, if it had been reported of Abraham Lincoln that he
+predicted his own assassination; that he promised some of his friends
+they would not die until they saw him coming again upon the clouds of
+heaven; that he would give them thrones to sit upon; that they could
+safely drink deadly poisons in his name, or that he would grant them
+any request which they might make, provided they asked it for his
+sake, we would be justified in concluding that such a Lincoln never
+existed. Yet the most impossible utterances are put in Jesus' mouth.
+He is made to say: "Whatsoever ye shall ask in my name that will I
+do." No man who makes such a promise can keep it. It is not sayings
+like the above that can prove a man a God. Has Jesus kept his promise?
+Does he give his people everything, or "whatsoever" they ask of him?
+But, it is answered, "Jesus only meant to say that he would give
+whatever he himself considered good for his friends to have." Indeed!
+Is that the way to crawl out of a contract? If that is what he meant,
+why did he say something else? Could he not have _said_ just what
+he _meant_, in the first place? Would it not have been fairer not
+to have given his friends any occasion for false expectations? Better
+to promise a little and do more, than to promise everything and do
+nothing. But to say that Jesus really entered into any such agreement
+is to throw doubt upon his existence. Such a character is too wild to
+be real. Only a mythical Jesus could virtually hand over the
+government of the universe to courtiers who have petitions to press
+upon his attention. Moreover, if Jesus could keep his promise, there
+would be today no misery in the world, no orphans, no childless
+mothers, no shipwrecks, no floods, no famines, no disease, no crippled
+children, no insanity, no wars, no crime, no wrong! Have not a
+thousand, thousand prayers been offered in Jesus' name against every
+evil which has ploughed the face of our earth? Have these prayers been
+answered? Then why is there discontent in the world? Can the followers
+of Jesus move mountains, drink deadly poisons, touch serpents, or work
+greater miracles than are ascribed to Jesus, as it was promised that
+they would do? How many self-deluded prophets these extravagant claims
+have produced! And who can number the bitter disappointments caused by
+such impossible promises?
+
+George Jacob Holyoake, of England, tells how in the days of utter
+poverty, his believing mother asked the Lord, again and again--on her
+knees, with tears streaming from her eyes, and with absolute faith in
+Jesus' ability to keep His promise,--to give her starving children
+their daily bread. But the more fervently she prayed the heavier grew
+the burden of her life. A stone or wooden idol could not have been
+more indifferent to a mother's tears. "My mind aches as I think of
+those days," writes Mr. Holyoake. One day he went to see the Rev. Mr.
+Cribbace, who had invited inquirers to his house. "Do you really
+believe," asked young Holyoake to the clergyman, "that what we ask in
+faith we shall receive?" "It never struck me," continues Mr. Holyoake,
+"that the preacher's threadbare dress, his half-famished look, and
+necessity of taking up a collection the previous night to pay expenses
+showed that faith was not a source of income to him. It never struck
+me that if help could be obtained by prayer no church would be needy,
+no believer would be poor." What answer did the preacher give to
+Holyoake's earnest question? The same which the preachers of today
+give: "He parried his answer with many words, and at length said that
+the promise was to be taken with the provision that what we asked for
+would be given, _if God thought it for our good."_ Why then, did not
+Jesus explain that important _proviso_ when he made the promise? Was
+Jesus only making a half statement, the other half of which he would
+reveal later to protect himself against disappointed petitioners. But
+he said: "If ye ask anything in my name, I will do it," and "If it
+were not so, I would have told you." Did he not mean just what he
+said? The truth is that no historical person in his senses ever made
+such extraordinary, such impossible promises, and the report that
+Jesus made them only goes to confirm that their author is only a
+legendary being.
+
+When this truth dawned upon Mr. Holyoake he ceased to petition Heaven,
+which was like "dropping a bucket into an empty well," and began to
+look _elsewhere_ for help. [Footnote: Bygones Worth Remembering.--George
+Jacob Holyoake] The world owes its advancement to the fact that men no
+longer look to Heaven for help, but help themselves. Self-effort, and
+not prayer, is the remedy against ignorance, slavery, poverty, and
+moral degradation. Fortunately, by holding up before us an impossible
+Jesus, with his impossible promises, the churches have succeeded only
+in postponing, but not in preventing, the progress of man. This is a
+compliment to human nature, and it is well earned. It is also a promise
+that in time humanity will be completely emancipated from every phantom
+which in the past has scared it into silence or submission, and
+
+    "A loftier race than e'er the world
+     Hath known shall rise
+     With flame of liberty in their souls,
+     And light of science in their eyes."
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: Portion of Manuscript Supposed to Be Copy of Lost
+Originals.]
+
+THE CHRISTIAN DOCUMENTS
+
+
+
+The documents containing the story of Jesus are so unlike those about
+Lincoln or any other historical character, that we must be doubly
+vigilant in our investigation.
+
+The Christians rely mainly on the four Gospels for the historicity of
+Jesus. But the original documents of which the books in the New
+Testament are claimed to be faithful copies are not in existence.
+_There is absolutely no evidence that they ever were in existence_.
+This is a statement which can not be controverted. Is it conceivable
+that the early believers lost through carelessness or purposely
+_every_ document written by an apostle, while guarding with all
+protecting jealousy and zeal the writings of anonymous persons? Is
+there any valid reason why the contributions to Christian literature
+of an inspired apostle should perish while those of a nameless scribe
+are preserved, why the original Gospel of Matthew should drop quietly
+out of sight, no one knows how, while a supposed copy of it in an
+alien language is preserved for many centuries? Jesus himself, it is
+admitted, did not write a single line. He had come, according to
+popular belief, to reveal the will of God--a most important mission
+indeed, and yet he not only did not put this revelation in writing
+during his lifetime, and with his own hand, which it is natural to
+suppose that a divine teacher, expressly come from heaven, would have
+done, but he left this all-important duty to anonymous chroniclers,
+who, naturally, made enough mistakes to split up Christendom into
+innumerable factions. It is worth a moment's pause to think of the
+persecutions, the cruel wars, and the centuries of hatred and
+bitterness which would have been spared our unfortunate humanity, if
+Jesus himself had written down his message in the clearest and
+plainest manner, instead of leaving it to his supposed disciples to
+publish it to the world, when he could no longer correct their
+mistakes.
+
+Moreover, not only did Jesus not write himself, but he has not even
+taken any pains to preserve the writings of his "apostles," It is well
+known that the original manuscripts, if there were any, are nowhere to
+be found. This is a grave matter. We have only supposed copies of
+supposed original manuscripts. Who copied them? When were they copied?
+How can we be sure that these copies are reliable? And why are there
+thousands upon thousands of various readings in these, numerous
+supposed copies? What means have we of deciding which version or
+reading to accept? Is it possible that as the result of Jesus' advent
+into our world, we have only a basketful of nameless and dateless
+copies and documents? Is it conceivable, I ask, that a God would send
+his Son to us, and then leave us to wander through a pile of dusty
+manuscripts to find out why He sent His Son, and what He taught when
+on earth?
+
+The only answer the Christian church can give to this question is that
+the original writings were purposely allowed to perish. When a
+precious document containing the testament of Almighty God, and
+inscribed for an eternal purpose by the Holy Ghost, disappears
+altogether there is absolutely no other way of accounting for its
+disappearance than by saying, as we have suggested, that its divine
+author must have intentionally withdrawn it from circulation. "God
+moves in a mysterious way" is the last resort of the believer. This is
+the one argument which is left to theology to fight science with.
+Unfortunately it is an argument which would prove every cult and "ism"
+under the heavens true. The Mohammedan, the Mazdaian, and the Pagan
+may also fall back upon faith. There is nothing which faith can not
+cover up from the light. But if a faith which ignores evidence be not
+a superstition, what then is superstition? I wonder if the Catholic
+Church, which pretends to believe--and which derives quite an income
+from the belief--that God has miraculously preserved the wood of the
+cross, the Holy Sepulchre, in Jerusalem, the coat of Jesus, and quite
+a number of other mementos, can explain why the original manuscripts
+were lost. I have a suspicion that there were no "original"
+manuscripts. I am not sure of this, of course, but if nails, bones and
+holy places could be miraculously preserved, why not also manuscripts?
+It is reasonable to suppose that the Deity would not have permitted
+the most important documents containing His Revelation to drop into
+some hole and disappear, or to be gnawed into dust by the insects,
+after having had them written by special inspiration.
+
+Again, when these documents, such as we find them, are examined, it
+will be observed that, even in the most elementary intelligence which
+they pretend to furnish, they are hopelessly at variance with one
+another. It is, for example, utterly impossible to reconcile Matthew's
+genealogy of Jesus with the one given by Luke. In copying the names of
+the supposed ancestors of Jesus, they tamper with the list as given in
+the book of Chronicles, in the Old Testament, and thereby justly
+expose themselves to the charge of bad faith. One evangelist says
+Jesus was descended from Solomon, born of "her that had been the wife
+of Urias." It will be remembered that David ordered Urias killed in a
+cowardly manner, that he may marry his widow, whom he coveted.
+According to Matthew, Jesus is one of the offspring of this adulterous
+relation. According to Luke, it is not through Solomon, but through
+Nathan, that Jesus is connected with the house of David.
+
+Again, Luke tells us that the name of the father of Joseph was _Heli;_
+Matthew says it was _Jacob_. If the writers of the gospels were
+contemporaries of Joseph they could have easily learned the exact name
+of his father.
+
+Again, why do these biographers of Jesus give us the genealogy of
+Joseph if he was not the father of Jesus? It is the genealogy of Mary
+which they should have given to prove the descent of Jesus from the
+house of David, and not that of Joseph. These irreconcilable
+differences between Luke, Matthew and the other evangelists, go to
+prove that these authors possessed no reliable information concerning
+the subjects they were writing about. For if Jesus is a historical
+character, and these biographers were really his immediate associates,
+and were inspired besides, how are we to explain their blunders and
+contradictions about his genealogy?
+
+A good illustration of the mythical or unhistorical character of the
+New Testament is furnished by the story of John the Baptist. He is
+first represented as confessing publicly that Jesus is the Christ;
+that he himself is not worthy to unloose the latchet of his shoes; and
+that Jesus is the Lamb of God, "who taketh away the sins of the
+world." John was also present, the gospels say, when the heavens
+opened and a dove descended on Jesus' head, and he heard the voice
+from the skies, crying: "He is my beloved Son, in whom I am well
+pleased."
+
+Is it possible that, a few chapters later, this same John forgets his
+public confession,--the dove and the voice from heaven,--and actually
+sends two of his disciples to find out who this Jesus is, [Footnote:
+Matthew xi.] The only way we can account for such strange conduct is
+that the compiler or editor in question had two different myths or
+stories before him, and he wished to use them both.
+
+A further proof of the loose and extravagant style of the Gospel
+writers is furnished by the concluding verse of the Fourth Gospel:
+"There are also many other things which Jesus did, the which, if they
+should be written, every one, I suppose that even the world itself
+could not contain the books that should be written." This is more like
+the language of a myth-maker than of a historian. How much reliance
+can we put in a reporter who is given to such exaggeration? To say
+that the world itself would be too small to contain the unreported
+sayings and doings of a teacher whose public life possibly did not
+last longer than a year, and whose reported words and deeds fill only
+a few pages, is to prove one's statements unworthy of serious
+consideration.
+
+And it is worth our while to note also that the documents which have
+come down to our time and which purport to be the biographies of
+Jesus, are not only written in an alien language, that is to say, in a
+language which was not that of Jesus and his disciples, but neither
+are they dated or signed. Jesus and his twelve apostles were Jews; why
+are all the four Gospels written in Greek? If they were originally
+written in Hebrew, how can we tell that the Greek translation is
+accurate, since we can not compare it with the originals? And why are
+these Gospels anonymous? Why are they not dated? But as we shall say
+something more on this subject in the present volume, we confine
+ourselves at this point to reproducing a fragment of the manuscript
+pages from which our Greek Translations have been made.[Footnote: See
+page 57.] It is admitted by scholars that owing to the difficulty of
+reading these ancient and imperfect and also conflicting texts, an
+accurate translation is impossible. But this is another way of saying
+that what the churches call the Word of God is not only the word of
+man, but a very imperfect word, at that.
+
+The belief in Jesus, then, is founded on secondary documents, altered
+and edited by various hands; on lost originals, and on anonymous
+manuscripts of an age considerably later than the events therein
+related--manuscripts which contradict each other as well as
+themselves. Such is clearly and undeniably the basis for the belief in
+a historical Jesus. It was this sense of the insufficiency of the
+evidence which drove the missionaries of Christianity to commit
+forgeries.
+
+If there was ample evidence for the historicity of Jesus, why did his
+biographers resort to forgery? The following admissions by Christian
+writers themselves show the helplessness of the early preachers in the
+presence of inquirers who asked for proofs. The church historian,
+Mosheim, writes that, "The Christian Fathers deemed it a pious act to
+employ deception and fraud." [Footnote: Ecclesiastical Hist., Vol. I,
+P. 247.]
+
+Again, he says: "The greatest and most pious teachers were nearly all
+of them infected with this leprosy." Will not some believer tell us
+why forgery and fraud were necessary to prove the historicity of
+Jesus. Another historian, Milman, writes that, "Pious fraud was
+admitted and avowed" by the early missionaries of Jesus. "It was an
+age of literary frauds," writes Bishop Ellicott, speaking of the times
+immediately following the alleged crucifixion of Jesus. Dr. Giles
+declares that, "There can be no doubt that great numbers of books were
+written with no other purpose than to deceive." And it is the opinion
+of Dr. Robertson Smith that, "There was an enormous floating mass of
+spurious literature created to suit party views." Books which are now
+rejected as apochryphal were at one time received as inspired, and
+books which are now believed to be infallible were at one time
+regarded as of no authority in the Christian world. It certainly is
+puzzling that there should be a whole literature of fraud and forgery
+in the name of a historical person. But if Jesus was a myth, we can
+easily explain the legends and traditions springing up in his name.
+
+The early followers of Jesus, then, realizing the force of this
+objection, did actually resort to interpolation and forgery in order
+to prove that Jesus was a historical character.
+
+One of the oldest critics of the Christian religion was a Pagan, known
+to history under the name of Porphyry; yet, the early Fathers did not
+hesitate to tamper even with the writings of an avowed opponent of
+their religion. After issuing an edict to destroy, among others, the
+writings of this philosopher, a work, called _Philosophy of Oracles,_
+was produced, in which the author is made to write almost as a
+Christian; and the name of Porphyry was signed to it as its author.
+St. Augustine was one of the first to reject it as a forgery.
+[Footnote: Geo. W. Foote. Crimes of Christianity.] A more astounding
+invention than this alleged work of a heathen bearing witness to
+Christ is difficult to produce. Do these forgeries, these apocryphal
+writings, these interpolations, freely admitted to have been the
+prevailing practice of the early Christians, help to prove the
+existence of Jesus? And when to this wholesale manufacture of doubtful
+evidence is added the terrible vandalism which nearly destroyed every
+great Pagan classic, we can form an idea of the desperate means to
+which the early Christians resorted to prove that Jesus was not a
+myth. It all goes to show how difficult it is to make a man out of a
+myth.
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: The Goddess Mother in the Grecian Pantheon.]
+
+VIRGIN BIRTHS
+
+
+
+Stories of gods born of virgins are to be found in nearly every age
+and country. There have been many virgin mothers, and Mary with her
+child is but a recent version of a very old and universal myth. In
+China and India, in Babylonia and Egypt, in Greece and Rome, "divine"
+beings selected from among the daughters of men the purest and most
+beautiful to serve them as a means of entrance into the world of
+mortals. Wishing to take upon themselves the human form, while
+retaining at the same time their "divinity," this compromise--of an
+earthly mother with a "divine" father--was effected. In the form of a
+swan Jupiter approached Leda, as in the guise of a dove, or a
+_Paracletus,_ Jehovah "overshadowed" Mary.
+
+A nymph bathing in a river in China is touched by a lotus plant, and
+the divine Fohi is born.
+
+In Siam, a wandering sunbeam caresses a girl in her teens, and the
+great and wonderful deliverer, Codom, is born. In the life of Buddha
+we read that he descended on his mother Maya, "in likeness as the
+heavenly queen, and entered her womb," and was "born from her right
+side, to save the world." [Footnote: Stories of Virgin Births.
+Reference: Lord Macartney. Voyage dans 'interview de la Chine et en
+Tartarie. Vol. I, P. 48. See also Les Vierges Meres et les Naissance
+Miraculeuse. P. Saintyves. P. 19, etc.] In Greece, the young god
+Apollo visits a fair maid of Athens, and a Plato is ushered into the
+world.
+
+In ancient Mexico, as well as in Babylonia, and in modern Corea, as in
+modern Palestine, as in the legends of all lands, virgins gave birth
+and became divine mothers. [Footnote: Stories of Virgin Births.
+Reference: Lord Macartney. Voyage dans 'interview de la Chine et en
+Tartarie. Vol. I, P. 48. See also Les Vierges Meres et les Naissance
+Miraculeuse. P. Saintyves. P. 19, etc.]
+
+But the real home of virgin births is the land of the Nile. Eighteen
+hundred years before Christ, we find carved on one of the walls of the
+great temple of Luxor a picture of the _annunciation, conception and
+birth_ of King Amunothph III, an almost exact copy of the
+annunciation, conception and birth of the Christian God. Of course no
+one will think of maintaining that the Egyptians borrowed the idea
+from the Catholics nearly two thousand years before the Christian era.
+"The story in the Gospel of Luke, the first and second chapters is,
+"says Malvert, "a reproduction, 'point by point,' of the story in
+stone of the miraculous birth of Amunothph." [Footnote: Science and
+Religion P. 96.]
+
+[Illustration: The Annunciation, Birth, and Adoration of Amenophis of
+Egypt, Nearly 2000 Years Before Christ.]
+
+Sharpe in his Egyptian Mythology, page 19, gives the following
+description of the Luxor picture, quoted by G. W. Foote in his _Bible
+Romances,_ page 126: "In this picture we have the annunciation, the
+conception, the birth and the adoration, as described in the first and
+second chapters of Luke's Gospel." Massey gives a more minute
+description of the Luxor picture. "The first scene on the left hand
+shows the god Taht, the divine Word or Loges, in the act of hailing
+the virgin queen, announcing to her that she is to give birth to a
+son. In the second scene the god Kneph (assisted by Hathor) gives life
+to her. This is the Holy Ghost, or Spirit that causes conception....Next
+the mother is seated on the midwife's stool, and the child is supported
+in the hands of one of the nurses. The fourth scene is that of the
+adoration. Here the child is enthroned, receiving homage from the gods
+and gifts from men." [Footnote: Natural Genesis. Massey, Vol.  II, P.
+398.] The picture on the wall of the Luxor temple, then, is one of the
+sources to which the anonymous writers of the Gospels went for their
+miraculous story. It is no wonder they suppressed their own identity
+as well as the source from which they borrowed their material.
+
+Not only the idea of a virgin mother, but all the other miraculous
+events, such as the stable cradle, the guiding star, the massacre of
+the children, the flight to Egypt, and the resurrection and bodily
+ascension toward the clouds, have not only been borrowed, but are even
+scarcely altered in the New Testament story of Jesus.
+
+[Illustration: The Nativity of the God Dionysius, Museum of Naples. ]
+
+That the early Christians borrowed the legend of Jesus from earthly
+sources is too evident to be even questioned. Gerald Massey in his
+great work on Egyptian origins demonstrates the identity of Mary, the
+mother of Jesus, with Isis, the mother of Horus. He says: "The most
+ancient, gold-bedizened, smoke-stained Byzantine pictures of the
+virgin and child represent the mythical mother as Isis, and not as a
+human mother of Nazareth." [Footnote: Vol. ii, P. 487.] Science and
+research have made this fact so certain that, on the one hand
+ignorance, and on the other, interest only, can continue to claim
+inspiration for the authors of the undated and unsigned fragmentary
+documents which pass for the Word of God. If, then, Jesus is stripped
+of all the borrowed legends and miracles of which he is the subject;
+and if we also take away from him all the teachings which collected
+from Jewish and Pagan sources have been attributed to him--what will
+be left of him? That the ideas put in his mouth have been culled and
+compiled from other sources is as demonstrable as the Pagan origin of
+the legends related of him.
+
+Nearly every one of the dogmas and ceremonies in the Christian cult
+were borrowed from other and older religions. The resurrection myth,
+the ascension, the eucharisty, baptism, worship by kneeling or
+prostration, the folding of the hands on the breast, the ringing of
+bells and the burning of incense, the vestments and vessels used in
+church, the candles, "holy" water,--even the word _Mass_ were all
+adopted and adapted by the Christians from the religions of the
+ancients. The Trinity is as much Pagan, as much Indian or Buddhist, as
+it is Christian. The idea of a Son of God is as old as the oldest
+cult. The sun is the son of heaven in all primitive faiths. The
+physical sun becomes in the course of evolution, the Son of
+Righteousness, or the Son of God, and heaven is personified as the
+Father on High. The halo around the head of Jesus, the horns of the
+older deities, the rays of light radiating from the heads of Hindu and
+Pagan gods are incontrovertible evidence that all gods were at one
+time--the sun in heaven.
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: Prehistoric Crosses Discovered in Pagan Sepulchres
+(Italy).]
+
+THE ORIGIN OF THE CROSS
+
+
+
+Only the uninformed, of whom, we regret to say, there are a great
+many, and who are the main support of the old religions, still believe
+that the cross originated with Christianity. Like the dogmas of the
+Trinity, the virgin birth, and the resurrection, the sign of the cross
+or the cross as an emblem or a symbol was borrowed from the more
+ancient faiths of Asia. Perhaps one of the most important discoveries
+which primitive man felt obliged never to be ungrateful enough to
+forget, was the production of fire by the friction of two sticks
+placed across each other in the form of a cross. As early as the stone
+age we find the cross carved on monuments which have been dug out of
+the earth and which can be seen in the museums of Europe. On the coins
+of later generations as well as on the altars of prehistoric times we
+find the "sacred" symbol of the cross. The dead in ancient cemeteries
+slept under the cross as they do in our day in Catholic churchyards.
+
+[Illustration: House of Goodness, with Cross. Egyptian, 2000 B. C.]
+
+In ancient Egypt, as in modern China, India, Corea, the cross is
+venerated by the masses as a charm of great power. In the Musee
+Guimet, in Paris, we have seen specimens of pre-Christian crosses. In
+the Louvre Museum one of the "heathen" gods carries a cross on his
+head. During his second journey to New Zealand, Cook was surprised to
+find the natives marking the graves of their dead with the cross. We
+saw, in the Museum of St. Germain, an ancient divinity of Gaul, before
+the conquest of the country by Julius Caesar, wearing a garment on
+which was woven a cross. In the same museum an ancient altar of Gaul
+under Paganism, had a cross carved upon it. That the cross was not
+adopted by the followers of Jesus until a later date may be inferred
+from the silence of the earlier gospels, Matthew, Mark and Luke, on
+the details of the crucifixion, which is more fully developed in the
+later gospel of John. The first three evangelists say nothing about
+the nails or the blood, and give the impression that he was hanged.
+Writing of the two thieves who were sentenced to receive the same
+punishment, Luke says, "One of the malefactors that was _hanged_ with
+him." The idea of a bleeding Christ, such as we see on crosses in
+Catholic churches, is not present in these earlier descriptions of the
+crucifixion; the Christians of the time of Origin were called "the
+followers of the god who was hanged." In the fourth gospel we see the
+beginnings of the legend of the cross, of Jesus carrying or falling
+under the weight of the cross, of the nail prints in his hands and
+feet, of the spear drawing the blood from his side and smearing his
+body. Of all this, the first three evangelists are quite ignorant.
+
+[Illustration: Pagan Priest of Herculaneum Wearing the Cross.]
+
+[Illustration: Cross of the Chinese Emperor Fou-Hi,2953 Years Before
+Christ.]
+
+[Illustration: Discovered in Newgrange, Ireland. An Ancient Pagan
+Cross.]
+
+Let it be further noted that it was not until eight hundred years
+after the supposed crucifixion that Jesus is seen in the form of a
+human being on the cross. Not in any of the paintings on the ancient
+catacombs is found a crucified Christ. The earliest cross bearing a
+human being is of the eighth century. For a long time a lamb with a
+cross, or on a cross, was the Christian symbol, and it is a lamb which
+we see entombed in the "holy sepulchre." In more than one mosaic of
+early Christian times, it is not Jesus, but a lamb, which is bleeding
+for the salvation of the world. How a lamb came to play so important a
+role in Christianity is variously explained. The similarity between
+the name of the Hindu god, _Agni_ and the meaning of the same word in
+Latin, which is a lamb, is one theory. Another is that a ram, one of
+the signs of the zodiac, often confounded by the ancients with a lamb,
+is the origin of the popular reverence for the lamb as a symbol--a
+reverence which all religions based on sun-worship shared. The lamb in
+Christianity takes away the sins of the people, just as the paschal
+lamb did in the Old Testament, and earlier still, just as it did in
+Babylonia.
+
+[Illustration: Used by a Priest of Bacchus, Showing the Cross.]
+
+[Illustration: Engraving of the XI Century.]
+
+[Illustration: Lamb on Cross.]
+
+[Illustration: From a Picture in the Church of Genest. A Lamb Carrying
+the Cross.]
+
+[Illustration: The Lamb and the Cross, IX Century.]
+
+To the same effect is the following letter of the bishop of Mende, in
+France, bearing date of the year 800 A. D.: "Because the darkness has
+disappeared, and because also Christ is a real man, Pope Adrian
+commands us to paint him under the form of a man. The lamb of God must
+not any longer be painted on a cross, but after a human form has been
+placed on the cross, there is no objection to have a lamb also
+represented with it, either at the foot of the cross or on the
+opposite side." [Footnote: Translated from the French of Didron.
+Quoted by Malvert.] We leave it to our readers to draw the necessary
+conclusions from the above letter. How did a lamb hold its place on
+the cross for eight hundred years? If Jesus was really crucified, and
+that fact was a matter of history, why did it take eight hundred years
+for a Christian bishop to write, "now that Christ is a real man,"
+etc.? Today, it would be considered a blasphemy to place a lamb on a
+cross.
+
+On the tombstones of Christians of the fourth century are pictures
+representing, not Jesus, but a lamb, working the miracles mentioned in
+the gospels, such as multiplying the loaves and fishes, and raising
+Lazarus from the dead.
+
+[Illustration: Mosaic of St. Praxedes, V Century, Showing the Lamb
+Christ.]
+
+[Illustration: The Lamb Slowly Becoming Human.]
+
+[Illustration: The Lamb Multiplying the Loaves and Fishes, IV Century
+Sarcophagus.]
+
+The first representations of a human form on the cross differ
+considerably from those which prevail at the present time.
+
+[Illustration: The Lamb Resurrecting Lazarus, IV Century Sarcophagus.]
+
+While the figure on the modern cross is almost naked, those on the
+earlier ones are clothed and completely covered. Wearing a flowing
+tunic, Jesus is standing straight against the cross with his arms
+outstretched, as though in the act of delivering an address.
+Frequently, at his feet, on the cross, there is still painted the
+figure of a lamb, which by and by, he is going to replace altogether.
+Gradually the robe disappears from the crucified one, until we see him
+crucified, as in the adjoining picture, with hardly any clothes on,
+and wearing an expression of great agony.
+
+[Illustration: Modern Christ.]
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: Christ and the Twelve Apostles, Carrying Swastikas and
+Solar Discs Instead of the Cross. Sarcophagus, Milan.]
+
+THE SILENCE OF PROFANE WRITERS
+
+
+
+In all historical matters, we cannot ask for more than a
+_reasonable_ assurance concerning any question. In fact, absolute
+certainty in any branch of human knowledge, with the exception of
+mathematics, perhaps, is impossible. We are finite beings, limited in
+all our powers, and, hence, our conclusions are not only relative, but
+they should ever be held subject to correction. When our law courts
+send a man to the gallows, they can have no more than a reasonable
+assurance that he is guilty; when they acquit him, they can have no
+more than a reasonable assurance that he is innocent. Positive
+assurance is unattainable. The dogmatist is the only one who claims to
+possess absolute certainty. But his claim is no more than a groundless
+assumption. When, therefore, we learn that Josephus, for instance, who
+lived in the same country and about the same time as Jesus, and wrote
+an extensive history of the men and events of his day and country,
+does not mention Jesus, except by interpolation, which even a
+Christian clergyman, Bishop Warburton, calls "a rank forgery, and a
+very stupid one, too," we can be reasonably sure that no such Jesus as
+is described in the New Testament, lived about the same time and in
+the same country with Josephus.
+
+The failure of such a historian as Josephus to mention Jesus tends to
+make the existence of Jesus at least reasonably doubtful.
+
+Few Christians now place any reliance upon the evidence from Josephus.
+The early Fathers made this Jew admit that Jesus was the Son of God.
+Of course, the admission was a forgery. De Quincey says the passage is
+known to be "a forgery by all men not lunatics." Of one other supposed
+reference in Josephus, Canon Farrar says: "This passage was early
+tampered with by the Christians." The same writer says this of a third
+passage: "Respecting the third passage in Josephus, the only question
+is whether it be partly or entirely spurious." Lardner, the great
+English theologian, was the first man to prove that Josephus was a
+poor witness for Christ.
+
+In examining the evidence from profane writers we must remember that
+the silence of one contemporary author is more important than the
+supposed testimony of another. There was living in the same time with
+Jesus a great Jewish scholar by the name of Philo. He was an
+Alexandrian Jew, and he visited Jerusalem while Jesus was teaching and
+working miracles in the holy city. Yet Philo in all his works never
+once mentions Jesus. He does not seem to have heard of him. He could
+not have helped mentioning him if he had really seen him or heard of
+him. In one place in his works Philo is describing the difference
+between two Jewish names, Hosea and Jesus. Jesus, he says, means
+saviour of the people. What a fine opportunity for him to have added
+that, at that very time, there was living in Jerusalem a saviour by
+the name of Jesus, or one supposed to be, or claiming to be, a
+saviour. He could not have helped mentioning Jesus if he had ever seen
+or heard of him.
+
+We have elsewhere referred to the significant silence of the Pagan
+historians and miscellaneous writers on the wonderful events narrated
+in the New Testament. But a few remarks may be added here in
+explanation of the supposed testimony of Tacitus.
+
+The quotation from Tacitus is an important one. That part of the
+passage which concerns us is something like this:--"They have their
+denomination from _Chrestus,_ put to death as a criminal by Pontius
+Pilate during the reign of Tiberius." I wish to say in the first place
+that this passage is not in the _History_ of Tacitus, known to the
+ancients, but in his _Annals,_ which is not quoted by any ancient
+writer. The _Annals_ of Tacitus were not known to be in existence
+until the year 1468. An English writer, Mr. Ross, has undertaken, in
+an interesting volume, to show that the _Annals_ were forged by an
+Italian, Bracciolini. I am not competent to say whether or not Mr.
+Ross proves his point. But is it conceivable that the early Christians
+would have ignored so valuable a testimony had they known of its
+existence, and would they not have known of it had it really existed?
+The Christian Fathers, who not only collected assiduously all that
+they could use to establish the reality of Jesus--but who did not
+hesitate even to forge passages, to invent documents, and also to
+destroy the testimony of witnesses unfavorable to their cause--would
+have certainly used the Tacitus passage had it been in existence in
+their day. _Not one of the Christian Fathers_ in his controversy with
+the unbelievers has quoted the passage from Tacitus, which passage is
+the church's strongest proof of the historicity of Jesus, outside the
+gospels.
+
+But, to begin with, this passage has the appearance, at least, of
+being penned by a Christian. It speaks of such persecutions of the
+Christians in Rome which contradict all that we know of Roman
+civilization. The abuse of Christians in the same passage may have
+been introduced purposely to cover up the identity of the writer. The
+terrible outrages against the Christians mentioned in the text from
+Tacitus are supposed to have taken place in the year 64 A. D.
+According to the New Testament, Paul was in Rome from the year 63 to
+the year 65, and must, therefore, have been an eye-witness of the
+persecution under Nero. Let me quote from the Bible to show that there
+could have been no such persecution as the Tacitus passage describes.
+The last verse in the book of Acts reads: "And he (Paul) abode two
+whole years in his own hired dwelling, and received all that went in
+unto him, preaching the kingdom of God, and teaching things concerning
+the Lord Jesus Christ with all boldness, _none forbidding him_." How
+is this picture of peace and tranquility to be reconciled with the
+charge that the Romans rolled up the Christians in straw mats and
+burned them to illuminate the streets at night, and also that the
+lions were let loose upon the disciples of Jesus?
+
+Moreover, it is generally known that the Romans were indifferent to
+religious propaganda, and never persecuted any sect or party in the
+name of religion. In Rome, the Jews were free to be Jews; why should
+the Jewish Christians--and the early Christians were Jews--have been
+thrown to the lions? In all probability the persecutions were much
+milder than the Tacitus passage describes, and politics was the real
+cause.
+
+Until not very long ago, it was universally believed that William Tell
+was a historical character. But it is now proven beyond any reasonable
+doubt, that Tell and his apple are altogether mythical.
+Notwithstanding that a great poet has made him the theme of a powerful
+drama, and a great composer devoted one of his operas to his heroic
+achievements; notwithstanding also that the Swiss show the crossbow
+with which he is supposed to have shot at the apple on his son's head--he
+is now admitted to be only a legendary hero. The principal arguments
+which have led the educated world to revise its views concerning William
+Tell are that, the Swiss historians, Faber and Hamurbin, who lived shortly
+after the "hero," and who wrote the history of their country, as Josephus
+did that of his, do not mention Tell. Had such a man existed before their
+time, they could not have failed to refer to him. Their complete silence
+is damaging beyond help to the historicity of Tell. Neither does the
+historian, who was an eye witness of the battle of Morgarten in 1315,
+mention the name of Tell. The Zurich Chronicle of 1497, also omits to
+refer to his story. In the accounts of the struggle of the Swiss against
+Austria, which drove the former into rebellion and ultimate independence,
+Tell's name cannot be found. Yet all these arguments are not half so
+damaging to the William Tell story, as the silence of Josephus is to the
+Jesus story. Jesus was supposed to have worked greater wonders and to have
+created a wider sensation than Tell; therefore, it is more difficult to
+explain the silence of historians like Josephus, Pliny and Quintilian;
+or of philosophers like Philo, Seneca and Epictetus, concerning Jesus,
+than to explain the silence of the Swiss chroniclers concerning Tell.
+
+
+
+
+THE JESUS STORY A RELIGIOUS DRAMA
+
+
+
+We have now progressed far enough in our investigation to pause a
+moment for reflection before we proceed any further. I am conscious of
+no intentional misrepresentation or suppression of the facts relating
+to the question in hand. If I have erred through ignorance, I shall
+correct any mistake I may have made, if some good reader will take the
+trouble to enlighten me. I am also satisfied that I have not commanded
+the evidence, but have allowed the evidence to command me. I am not
+interested in either proving or disproving the existence of the New-
+Testament Jesus. I am not an advocate, I am rather an umpire, who
+hears the evidence and pronounces his decision accordingly. Let the
+lawyers or the advocates argue _pro_ and _con_. I only weigh,--and I
+am sure, impartially,--the evidence which the witnesses offer. We have
+heard and examined quite a number of these, and, I, at least, am
+compelled to say, that unless stronger evidence be forthcoming, a
+historical Jesus has not been proven by the evidence thus far taken
+in. This does not mean that there is no evidence whatever that Jesus
+was a real existence, but that the evidence is not enough to prove it.
+
+To condemn or to acquit a man in a court of law, there must not only
+be evidence, but enough of it to justify a decision. There is some
+evidence for almost any imaginable proposition; but that is not
+enough. Not only does the evidence offered to prove Jesus'
+historicity, already examined, fail to give this assurance, but, on
+the contrary, it lends much support to the opposite supposition,
+namely, that in all probability, Jesus was a myth--even as Mithra,
+Osiris, Isis, Hercules, Sampson, Adonis, Moses, Attis, Hermes,
+Heracles, Apollo of Tyanna, Chrishna, and Indra, were myths.
+
+The story of Jesus, we are constrained to say, possesses all the
+characteristics of the religious drama, full of startling episodes,
+thrilling situations, dramatic action and _denouement_. It reads more
+like a play than plain history. From such evidence as the gospels
+themselves furnish, the conclusion that he was no more than the
+principal character in a religious play receives much support. Mystery
+and morality plays are of a very ancient origin. In earlier times,
+almost all popular instruction was by means of _Tableaux vivant_.
+
+As a great scenic or dramatic performance, with Jesus as the hero,
+Judas as the villain--with conspiracy as its plot, and the trial, the
+resurrection and ascension as its _finale_, the story is intelligent
+enough. For instance, as the curtain rises, it discloses upon the
+stage shepherds tending their flocks in the green fields under the
+moonlit sky; again, as the scene shifts, the clouds break, the heavens
+open, and voices are heard from above, with a white-winged chorus
+chanting an anthem. The next scene suggests a stable with the cattle
+in their stalls, munching hay. In a corner of the stable, close to a
+manger, imagine a young woman, stooping to kiss a newly born babe.
+Anon appear three bearded and richly costumed men, with presents in
+their hands, bowing their heads in ecstatic adoration. Surely enough
+this is not history: It does not read like history. The element of
+fiction runs through the entire Gospels, and is its warp and woof.
+A careful analysis of the various incidents in this _ensemble_ will
+not fail to convince the unprejudiced reader that while they possess
+all the essentials for dramatic presentation, they lack the
+requirements of real history.
+
+The "opened-heavens," "angel-choirs," "grazing flocks," "watchful
+shepherds," "worshiping magicians," "the stable crib," "the mother and
+child," "the wonderful star," "the presents," "the anthem"--all these,
+while they fit admirably as stage setting, are questionable material
+for history. No historical person was ever born in so spectacular a
+manner. The Gospel account of Jesus is an embellished, ornamental,
+even sensationally dramatic creation to serve as an introduction for a
+legendary hero. Similar theatrical furniture has been used thousands
+of times to introduce other legendary characters. All the Savior Gods
+were born supernaturally. They were all half god, half man. They were
+all of royal descent. Miracles and wonders attended their birth. Jesus
+was not an exception. We reject as mythical the birth-stories about
+Mithra, and Apollo. Why accept as history those about Jesus? It rests
+with the preachers of Christianity to show that while the god-man of
+Persia, or of Greece, for example, was a myth, the god-man of
+Palestine is historical.
+
+The dramatic element is again plainly seen in the account of the
+betrayal of Jesus. Jesus, who preaches daily in the temples, and in
+the public places; who talks to the multitude on the mountain and at
+the seaside; who feeds thousands by miracle; the report of whose
+wonderful cures has reached the ends of the earth, and who is often
+followed by such a crush that to reach him an opening has to be made
+in the ceiling of the house where he is stopping; who goes in and out
+before the people and is constantly disputing with the elders and
+leaders of the nation--is, nevertheless, represented as being so
+unknown that his enemies have to resort to the device of bribing with
+thirty silver coins one of his disciples to point him out to them, and
+which is to be done by a kiss. This might make a great scene upon the
+stage, but it is not the way things happen in life.
+
+Then read how Jesus is carried before Pilate the Roman governor, and
+how while he is being tried a courier rushes in with a letter from
+Pilate's wife which is dramatically torn open and read aloud in the
+presence of the crowded court. The letter, it is said, was about a
+dream of Pilate's wife, in which some ghost tells her that Jesus is
+innocent, and that her husband should not proceed against him. Is this
+history? Roman jurisprudence had not degenerated to that extent as to
+permit the dreams of a woman or of a man to influence the course of
+justice. But this letter episode was invented by the playwright--if I
+may use the phrase--to prolong the dramatic suspense, to complicate
+the situation, to twist the plot, and thereby render the impression
+produced by his "piece" more lasting. The letter and the dream did not
+save Jesus. Pilate was not influenced by his dreaming wife. She
+dreamed in vain.
+
+In the next place we hear Pilate pronouncing Jesus guiltless; but,
+forthwith, he hands him over to the Jews to be killed. Does this read
+like history? Did ever a Roman court witness such a trial? To
+pronounce a man innocent and then to say to his prosecutors: "If you
+wish to kill him, you may do so," is extraordinary conduct. Then,
+proceeding, Pilate takes water and ostentatiously washes his hands, a
+proceeding introduced by a Greek or Latin scribe, who wished, in all
+probability, to throw the blame of the crucifixion entirely upon the
+Jews. Pilate, representing the Gentile world, washes his hands of the
+responsibility for the death of Jesus, while the Jews are made to say,
+"His blood be upon us and our children."
+
+Imagine the clamoring, howling Jews, trampling on one another,
+gesticulating furiously, gnashing their teeth, foaming at the mouth,
+and spitting in one another's face as they shout, "Crucify him!
+Crucify him!" A very powerful stage setting, to be sure--but it is
+impossible to imagine that such disorder, such anarchy could be
+permitted in any court of justice. But think once more of those
+terrible words placed in the mouths of the Jews, "His blood be upon us
+and our children." Think of a people openly cursing themselves and
+asking the whole Christian world to persecute them forever--"His blood
+be upon _us and our children_."
+
+Next, the composers of the gospels conduct us to the Garden of
+Gethsemane, that we may see there the hero of the play in his agony,
+fighting the great battle of his life alone, with neither help nor
+sympathy from his distracted followers. He is shown to us there, on
+his knees, crying tears of blood--sobbing and groaning under the
+shadow of an almost crushing fear. Tremblingly he prays, "Let this cup
+pass from me--if it be possible;" and then, yielding to the terror
+crowding in upon him, he sighs in the hearing of all the ages, "The
+spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak," precisely the excuse given
+by everybody for not doing what they would do if they could. Now, we
+ask in all seriousness, is it likely that a God who had come down from
+heaven purposely to drink that cup and to be the martyr-Savior of
+humanity--would seek to be spared the fate for which he was ordained
+from all eternity?
+
+The objection that Jesus' hesitation on the eve of the crucifixion, as
+well as his cry of despair on the cross, were meant to show that he
+was as human as he was divine, does not solve the difficulty. In that
+event Jesus, then, was merely acting--feigning a fear which he did not
+feel, and pretending to dread a death which he knew could not hurt
+him. If, however, Jesus really felt alarmed at the approach of death,
+how much braver, then, were many of his followers who afterwards faced
+dangers and tortures far more cruel than his own! We honestly think
+that to have put in Jesus' mouth the words above quoted, and also to
+have represented him as closing his public career with a shriek on the
+cross: "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" was tantamount to
+an admission by the writers that they were dealing with a symbolic
+Christ, an ideal figure, the hero of a play, and not a historical
+character.
+
+It is highly dramatic, to be sure, to see the sun darkened, to feel
+the whole earth quaking, to behold the graves ripped open and the dead
+reappear in their shrouds--to hear the hero himself tearing his own
+heart with that cry of shuddering anguish, "My God! my God!"--but it
+is not history. If such a man as Jesus really lived, then his
+biographers have only given us a caricature of him. However beautiful
+some of the sayings attributed to Jesus, and whatever the source they
+may have been borrowed from, they are not enough to prove his
+historicity. But even as the Ten Commandments do not prove Moses to
+have been a historical personage or the author of the books and deeds
+attributed to him, neither do the parables and miracles of Jesus prove
+him to have once visited this earth as a god, or to have even existed
+as a man.
+
+Socrates and Jesus! Compare the quite natural behavior of Socrates in
+prison with that of Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane. The Greek sage
+is serene. Jesus is alarmed. The night agony of his soul, his tears of
+_blood_, his pitiful collapse when he prays, "if it be possible let
+this cup pass from me,"--all this would be very impressive on the
+boards, but they seem incredible of a real man engaged in saving a
+world. Once more we say that the defense that it was the man in Jesus
+and not the god in him that broke down, would be unjust to the memory
+of thousands of martyrs who died by a more terrible death than that of
+Jesus. As elsewhere stated, but which cannot be too often emphasized,
+what man would not have embraced death with enthusiasm,--without a
+moment's misgiving, did he think that by his death, death and sin
+would be no more! Who would shrink from a cross which is going to save
+millions to millions added from eternal burnings. He must be a
+phantom, indeed, who trembles and cries like a frightened child
+because he cannot have the crown without the cross! What a spectacle
+for the real heroes crowding the galleries of history! It is difficult
+to see the shrinking and shuddering Savior of the world, his face
+bathed in perspiration, blood oozing out of his forehead, his lips
+pale, his voice breaking into a shriek, "My God, my God, why hast thou
+forsaken me!"--it is difficult to witness all this and not to pity
+him. Poor Jesus! he is going to save the world, but who is going to
+save _him?_
+
+If we compare the trial of Jesus with that of Socrates, the fictitious
+nature of the former cannot possibly escape detection. Socrates was so
+well known in Athens, that it was not necessary for his accusers to
+bribe one of his disciples to betray him. Jesus should have been even
+better known in Jerusalem than Socrates was in Athens. He was daily
+preaching in the synagogues, and his miracles had given him an
+_eclat_ which Socrates did not enjoy.
+
+Socrates is not taken to court at night, bound hand and feet. Jesus is
+arrested in the glare of torchlights, after he is betrayed by Judas
+with a kiss; then he is bound and forced into the high priest's
+presence. All this is admirable setting for a stage, but they are no
+more than that.
+
+The disciples of Socrates behave like real men, those of Jesus are
+actors. They run away; they hide and follow at a distance. One of them
+curses him. The cock crows, the apostate repents. This reads like a
+play.
+
+In the presence of his judges, Socrates makes his own defense. One by
+one he meets the charges. Jesus refused, according to two of the
+evangelists, to open his mouth at his trial. This is dramatic, but it
+is not history. It is not conceivable that a real person accused as
+Jesus was, would have refused a great opportunity to disprove the
+charges against him. Socrates' defense of himself is one of the
+classics. Jesus' silence is a conundrum. "But he answered nothing,"
+"But Jesus as yet answered nothing," "And he answered him never a
+word," is the report of two of his biographers. The other two
+evangelists, as is usual, contradict the former and produce the
+following dialogues between Jesus and his judges, which from beginning
+to end possess all the marks of unreality:
+
+_Pilate_.--"Art thou the King of the Jews?"
+
+_Jesus_.--"Sayest thou this thing of thyself, or did others tell it
+thee of me?"
+
+_Pilate_--"Art thou a King?"
+
+_Jesus_.--"Thou sayest that I am a King."
+
+Is it possible that a real man, not to say the Savior of the world,
+would give such unmeaning and evasive replies to straightforward
+questions? Does it not read like a page from fiction?
+
+In the presence of the priests of his own race Jesus is as indefinite
+and sophistical as he is before the Roman Pilate.
+
+_The Priests_--"Art thou the Christ--tell us?"
+
+_Jesus._--"If I tell you ye will not believe me."
+
+_The Priests_.--"Art thou the Son of God?"
+
+_Jesus_.--"Ye say that I am."
+
+In the first answer he refuses to reveal himself because he does not
+think he can command belief in himself; in his second answer he either
+blames them for saying he was the Son of God, or quotes their own
+testimony to prove that he is the Son of God. But if they believed he
+was God, would they try to kill him? Is it not unthinkable? He
+intimates that the priests believe he is the Son of God--"Ye say that
+I am." Surely, it is more probable that these dialogues were invented
+by his anonymous biographers than that they really represent an actual
+conversation between Jesus and his judges.
+
+Compare in the next place the manner in which the public trials of
+Socrates and Jesus are conducted. There is order in the Athenian
+court; there is anarchy in the Jerusalem court. Witnesses and accusers
+walk up to Jesus and slap him on the face, and the judge does not
+reprove them for it. The court is in the hands of rowdies and
+hoodlums, who shout "Crucify him," and again, "Crucify him." A Roman
+judge, while admitting that he finds no guilt in Jesus deserving of
+death, is nevertheless represented as handing him over to the mob to
+be killed, after he has himself scourged him. No Roman judge could
+have behaved as this Pilate is reported to have behaved toward an
+accused person on trial for his life. All that we know of civilized
+government, all that we know of the jurisprudence of Rome, contradicts
+this "inspired" account of a pretended historical event. If Jesus was
+ever tried and condemned to death in a Roman court, an account of it
+that can command belief has yet to be written.
+
+Again, when we come to consider the random, disconnected and
+fragmentary form in which the teachings of Jesus are presented, we
+cannot avoid the conclusion that he is a _dramatis persona_ brought
+upon the stage to give expression not to a consistent, connected and
+carefully worked-out thought, but to voice with many breaks and
+interruptions, the ideas of his changing managers. He is made to play
+a number of contradictory roles, and appears in the same story in
+totally different characters.
+
+One editor or compiler of the Gospel describes Jesus as an ascetic and
+a mendicant, wandering from place to place, without a roof over his
+head, and crawling at eventide into his cave in the Mount of Olives.
+He introduces him as the "Man of Sorrows," fasting in the wilderness,
+counseling people to part with their riches, and promising the Kingdom
+of Heaven to Lazarus, the beggar.
+
+Another redactor announces him as "eating and drinking" at the
+banquets of "publicans and sinners,"--a "wine-bibbing" Son of Man.
+"John the Baptist came neither eating nor drinking, but the Son of Man
+came both eating and drinking," which, if it means anything, means
+that Jesus was the very opposite of the ascetic John.
+
+A partisan of the doctrine of non-resistance puts in Jesus' mouth the
+words: "Resist not evil;" "The meek shall inherit the earth," etc.,
+and counsels that he who smites us on the one cheek should be
+permitted to strike us also on the other, and that to him who robs us
+of an undergarment, we should also hand over our outer garments.
+
+Another draws the picture of a militant Jesus who could never endorse
+such precepts of indolence and resignation. "The kingdom of heaven is
+taken by _violence_," cries this new Jesus, and intimates that no
+such beggar like Lazarus, sitting all day long with the dogs and his
+sores, can ever earn so great a prize. With a scourge in his hands
+this Jesus rushes upon the traders in the temple-court, upturns their
+tables and whips their owners into the streets. Surely this was
+resistance of the most pronounced type. The right to use physical
+force could not have been given a better endorsement than by this
+example of Jesus.
+
+It will not help matters to say that these money-changers were
+violating a divine law, and needed chastisement with a whip. Is not
+the man who smites us upon the cheek, or robs us of our clothing,
+equally guilty? Moreover, these traders in the outer courts of the
+synagogue were rendering the worshipers a useful service. Just as
+candles, rosaries, images and literature are sold in church vestibules
+for the accommodation of Catholics, so were doves, pigeons and Hebrew
+coins, necessary to the Jewish sacrifices, sold in the temple-courts
+for the Jewish worshiper. The money changer who supplied the pious Jew
+with the only sacred coin which the priests would accept was not very
+much less important to the Jewish religion than the rabbi. To have
+fallen upon these traders with a weapon, and to have caused them the
+loss of their property, was certainly the most inconsistent thing that
+a "meek" and "lowly" Jesus preaching non-resistance could have done.
+
+Again; one writer makes Jesus the teacher _par excellence_ of peace.
+He counsels forgiveness of injuries not seven times, but seventy times
+that number--meaning unlimited love and charity. "Love your enemies,"
+"Bless them that curse you," is his unusual advice. But another hand
+retouches this picture, and we have a Jesus who breaks his own golden
+rule. This other Jesus heaps abuse upon the people who displease him;
+calls his enemies "vipers," "serpents," "devils," and predicts for
+them eternal burnings in sulphur and brimstone. How could he who said,
+"Come unto me all ye that are heavy laden," say also, "Depart from me
+ye _cursed_?" Who curses them? How can there be an everlasting hell in
+a universe whose author advises us to love our enemies, to bless them
+that curse us, and to forgive seventy times seven? How could the same
+Jesus who said, "Blessed are the peacemakers," say also, "I came not
+to bring peace, but a sword?" Is it possible that the same Jesus who
+commands us to love our _enemies_, commands us also to "hate" father,
+mother, wife and child, for "his name's sake?" Yes! the same Jesus who
+said, "Put up thy sword in its sheath," also commands us to sell our
+effects and "buy a sword."
+
+Once more: A believer in the divinity of Jesus--I am going to say--invents
+the following text: "The Father and I are _one_." An opponent to this
+Trinitarian dogma introduces a correction which robs the above text of
+its authority: "The Father is greater than I," and makes Jesus admit
+openly that there are some things known to the father only. It is
+difficult not to see in these passages the beginnings of the terrible
+controversies which, starting with Peter and Paul, have come down to
+our day, _and which will not end_ until Jesus shall take his place among
+the mythical saviors of the world.
+
+To harmonize these many and different Jesuses into something like
+unity or consistency a thousand books have been written by the clergy.
+They have not succeeded. How can a Jesus represented at one time as
+the image of divine perfection, and at another as protesting against
+being called "good," for "none is good, save one, God,"--how can these
+two conceptions be reconciled except by a resort to artificial and
+arbitrary interpretations? If such insurmountable contradictions in
+the teachings and character of another would weaken our faith in his
+historicity, then we are justified in inferring that in all
+probability Jesus was only a name--the name of an imaginary stage
+hero, uttering the conflicting thoughts of his prompters.
+
+Again, such phrases as, "and he was caught up in a cloud,"--describing
+the ascension and consequent disappearance of Jesus, betray the
+anxiety of the authors of the Gospels to bring their marvelous story
+to a close. Not knowing how to terminate the career of an imaginary
+Messiah, his creators invented the above method of dispatching him.
+"He was caught up in a cloud,"--but for that, the narrators would have
+been obliged to continue their story indefinitely.
+
+In tragedy the play ends with the death of the hero, but if the
+biographers of Jesus had given a similar excuse for bringing their
+narrative to a _finale_, there would have been the danger of their
+being asked to point out his grave. "He was caught up in a cloud,"
+relieved them of all responsibility to produce his remains if called
+upon to do so, and, at the same time, furnished them with an excuse to
+bring their story to a close.
+
+It would hardly be necessary, were we all unbiased, to look for any
+further proofs of the mythical and fanciful nature of the Gospel
+narratives than this expedient to which the writers resorted. To
+questions, "Where is Jesus?" "What became of his body?" etc., they
+could answer, "He was caught up in a cloud." But a career that ends in
+the clouds was never begun on the earth.
+
+[Illustration: Coin of the XII Century, Showing Halo Around Lamb's
+Head.]
+
+Let us imagine ourselves in Jerusalem in the year One, of the
+Christian era, when the apostles, as it is claimed, were proclaiming
+Jesus as the Messiah, crucified and risen. Desiring to be convinced
+before believing in the strange story, let us suppose the following
+conversation between the apostles and ourselves. We ask:
+
+How long have you known Jesus?
+
+I have known him for one year.
+
+And I for two.
+
+And I for three.
+
+Has any of you known him for more than three years?
+
+No.
+
+Was he with his apostles for one year or for three?
+
+For one.
+
+No, for three.
+
+You are not certain, then, how long Jesus was with his apostles.
+
+No.
+
+How old was Jesus when crucified?
+
+About thirty-one.
+
+No, about thirty-three.
+
+No, he was much older, about fifty.
+
+You cannot tell with any certainty, then, his age at the time of his
+death.
+
+No.
+
+You say he was tried and crucified in Jerusalem before your own eyes,
+can you remember the date of this great event?
+
+We cannot.
+
+Were you present when Jesus was taken down from the cross?
+
+We were not.
+
+You cannot tell, then, whether he was dead when taken down.
+
+We have no personal knowledge.
+
+Were you present when he was buried?
+
+We were not, because we were in hiding for our lives.
+
+You do not know, therefore, whether he was actually buried, or where
+he was buried.
+
+We do not.
+
+Were any of you present when Jesus came forth from the grave?
+
+Not one of us was present,
+
+Then, you were not with him when he was taken down from the cross; you
+were not with him when he was interred, and you were not present when
+he rose from the grave.
+
+We were not.
+
+When, therefore, you say, he was dead, buried and rose again, you are
+relying upon the testimony of others?
+
+We are.
+
+Will you mention the names of some of the witnesses who saw Jesus come
+forth from the tomb?
+
+Mary Magdalene, and she is here and may be questioned.
+
+Were you present, Mary, when the angels rolled away the stone, and
+when Jesus came forth from the dead?
+
+No, when I reached the burying place early in the morning, the grave
+had already been vacated, and there was no one sleeping in it.
+
+You saw him, then, as the apostles did, _after_ he had risen?
+
+Yes.
+
+But you did not see anybody rise out of the grave.
+
+I did not.
+
+Are there any witnesses who saw the resurrection?
+
+There are many who saw him after the resurrection.
+
+But if neither they nor you saw him dead, and buried, and did not see
+him rise, either, how can you tell that a most astounding and
+supposedly impossible miracle had taken place between the time you saw
+him last and when you saw him again two or three days after? Is it not
+more natural to suppose that, being in a hurry on account of the
+approaching Sabbath, Jesus, if ever crucified, was taken down from the
+cross before he had really died, and that he was not buried, as rumor
+states, but remained in hiding; and his showing himself to you under
+cover of darkness and in secluded spots and in the dead of night only,
+would seem to confirm this explanation.
+
+You admit also that the risen Jesus did not present himself at the
+synagogues of the people, in the public streets, or at the palace of
+the High Priest to convince them of his Messiahship. Do you not think
+that if he had done this, it would then have been impossible to deny
+his resurrection? Why, then, did Jesus hide himself after he came out
+of the grave? Why did he not show himself also to his enemies? Was he
+still afraid of them, or did he not care whether they believed or not?
+If so, why are _you_ trying to convert them? The question waits for a
+reasonable answer; Why did not Jesus challenge the whole world with
+the evidence of his resurrection? You say you saw him occasionally, a
+few moments at a time, now here, and now there, and finally on the top
+of a mountain whence he was caught up in a cloud and disappeared
+altogether. But that "cloud" has melted away, the sky is clear, and
+there is no Jesus visible there. The cloud, then, had nothing to hide.
+It was unnecessary to call in a cloud to close the career of your
+Christ. The grave is empty, the cloud has vanished. Where is Christ?
+In heaven! Ah, you have at last removed him to a world unknown, to the
+undiscovered country. Leave him there! Criticism, doubt,
+investigation, the light of day, cannot cross its shores. Leave him
+there!
+
+[Illustration: St. Margaret of the Catholic Church, Westminster,
+England.]
+
+[Illustration: The Goddess Astarte Carrying a Cross, British Museum.]
+
+
+
+
+THE JESUS OF PAUL
+
+
+
+The central figure of the New Testament is Jesus, and the question we
+are trying to answer is, whether we have sufficient evidence to prove
+to the unbiased mind that he is historical. An idea of the
+intellectual caliber of the average churchman may be had by the nature
+of the evidence he offers to justify his faith in the historical
+Jesus. "The whole world celebrates annually the nativity of Jesus; how
+could there be a Christmas celebration if there never was a Christ?"
+asks a Chicago clergyman. The simplicity of this plea would be
+touching were it not that it calls attention to the painful
+inefficiency of the pulpit as an educator. The church goer is trained
+to believe, not to think. The truth is withheld from him under the
+pious pretense that faith, and not knowledge, is the essential thing.
+A habit of untruthfulness is cultivated by systematically sacrificing
+everything to orthodoxy. This habit in the end destroys one's
+conscience for any truths which are prejudicial to one's interest. But
+is it true that the Christmas celebration proves a historical Jesus?
+
+We can only offer a few additional remarks to what we have already
+said elsewhere in these pages on the Pagan origin of Christmas. It
+will make us grateful to remember that just as we have to go to the
+Pagans for the origins of our civilized institutions--our courts of
+justice, our art and literature, and our political and religious
+liberties--we must thank them also for our merry festivals, such as
+Christmas and Easter. The ignorant, of course, do not know anything
+about the value and wealth of the legacy bequeathed to us by our
+glorious ancestors of Greek and Roman times, but the educated can have
+no excuse for any failure to own their everlasting indebtedness to the
+Pagans. It will be impossible today to write the history of
+civilization without giving to the classical world the leading role.
+But while accepting the gifts of the Pagan peoples we have abused the
+givers. A beneficiary who will defame a bounteous benefactor is
+unworthy of his good fortune. I regret to say that the Christian
+church, notwithstanding that it owes many of its most precious
+privileges to the Pagans, has returned for service rendered insolence
+and vituperation. No generous or just institution would treat a rival
+as Christianity has treated Paganism.
+
+Both Christmas and Easter are Pagan festivals. We do not know, no one
+knows, when Jesus was born; but we know the time of the winter
+solstice when the sun begins to retrace his steps, turning his radiant
+face toward our earth once more. It was this event, a natural,
+demonstrable, universal, event, that our European ancestors celebrated
+with song and dance--with green branches, through which twinkled a
+thousand lighted candles, and with the exchange of good wishes and
+gifts. Has the church had the courage to tell its people that
+Christmas is a Pagan festival which was adopted and adapted by the
+Christian world, reluctantly at first, and in the end as a measure of
+compromise only? The Protestants, especially, conveniently forget the
+severe Puritanic legislation against the observance of this Pagan
+festival, both in England and America. It is the return to Paganism
+which has given to Christmas and Easter their great popularity, as it
+is the revival of Paganism which is everywhere replacing the Bible
+ideas of monarchic government with republicanism. And yet, repeatedly,
+and without any scruples of conscience, preacher and people claim
+these festivals as the gifts of their creed to humanity, and quote
+them further to prove the historical existence of their god-man,
+Jesus. It was this open and persistent perversion of history by the
+church, the manufacture of evidence on the one hand, the suppression
+of witnesses prejudiced to her interests on the other, and the
+deliberate forging of documents, which provoked Carlyle into referring
+to one of its branches as _the great lying Church_.
+
+We have said enough to show that, in all probability--for let us not
+be dogmatic--the story of Jesus,--his birth and betrayal by one of his
+own disciples, his trial in a Roman court, his crucifixion,
+resurrection and ascension,--belongs to the order of imaginative
+literature. Conceived at first as a religious drama, it received many
+new accretions as it traveled from country to country and from age to
+age. The "piece" shows signs of having been touched and retouched to
+make it acceptable to the different countries in which it was played.
+The hand of the adapter, the interpolator and the reviser is
+unmistakably present. As an allegory, or as a dramatic composition,
+meant for the religious stage, it proved one of the strongest
+productions of Pagan or Christian times. But as real history, it lacks
+the fundamental requisite--probability. As a play, it is stirring and
+strong; as history, it lacks naturalness and consistency. The
+miraculous is ever outside the province of history. Jesus was a
+miracle, and as such, at least, we are safe in declaring him un-
+historical.
+
+We pass on now to the presentation of evidence which we venture to
+think demonstrates with an almost mathematic precision, that the Jesus
+of the four gospels is a legendary hero, as unhistorical as William
+Tell of Switzerland. This evidence is furnished by the epistles
+bearing the signature of Paul. He has been accepted as not only the
+greatest apostle of Christianity, but in a sense also the author of
+its theology. It is generally admitted that the epistles bearing the
+name of Paul are among the oldest apostolical writings. They are older
+than the gospels. This is very important information. When Paul was
+preaching, the four gospels had not yet been written. From the
+epistles of Paul, of which there are about thirteen in the Bible--making
+the New Testament largely the work of this one apostle--we learn that
+there were in different parts of Asia, a number of Christian churches
+already established. Not only Paul, then, but also the Christian
+church was in existence before the gospels were composed. It would be
+natural to infer that it was not the gospels which created the church,
+but the church which produced the gospels. Do not lose sight of the
+fact that when Paul was preaching to the Christians there was no
+written biography of Jesus in existence. There was a church without
+a book.
+
+In comparing the Jesus of Paul with the Jesus whose portrait is drawn
+for us in the gospels, we find that they are not the same persons at
+all. This is decisive. Paul knows nothing about a miraculously born
+savior. He does not mention a single time, in all his thirteen
+epistles, that Jesus was born of a virgin, or that his birth was
+accompanied with heavenly signs and wonders. He knew nothing of a
+Jesus born after the manner of the gospel writers. It is not
+imaginable that he knew the facts, but suppressed them, or that he
+considered them unimportant, or that he forgot to refer to them in any
+of his public utterances. Today, a preacher is expelled from his
+denomination if he suppresses or ignores the miraculous conception of
+the Son of God; but Paul was guilty of that very heresy. How explain
+it? It is quite simple: The virgin-born Jesus was not yet
+_invented_ when Paul was preaching Christianity. Neither he, nor
+the churches he had organized, had ever heard of such a person. The
+virgin-born Jesus was of later origin than the Apostle Paul.
+
+Let the meaning of this discrepancy between the Jesus of Paul, that is
+to say, the earliest portrait of Jesus, and the Jesus of the four
+evangelists, be fully grasped by the student, and it should prove
+beyond a doubt that in Paul's time the story of Jesus' birth from the
+virgin-mother and the Holy Ghost, which has since become a cardinal
+dogma of the Christian church, was not yet in circulation. Jesus had
+not yet been Hellenized; he was still a Jewish Messiah whose coming
+was foretold in the Old Testament, and who was to be a prophet like
+unto Moses, without the remotest suggestion of a supernatural origin.
+
+No proposition in Euclid is safer from contradiction than that, if
+Paul knew what the gospels tell about Jesus, he would have, at least
+once or twice during his long ministry, given evidence of his
+knowledge of it. The conclusion is inevitable that the gospel Jesus is
+later than Paul and his churches. Paul stood nearest to the time of
+Jesus. Of those whose writings are supposed to have come down to us,
+he is the most representative, and his epistles are the _first_
+literature of the new religion. And yet there is absolutely not a
+single hint or suggestion in them of such a Jesus as is depicted in
+the gospels. The gospel Jesus was not yet put together or compiled,
+when Paul was preaching.
+
+Once more; if we peruse carefully and critically the writings of Paul,
+the earliest and greatest Christian apostle and missionary, we find
+that he is not only ignorant of the gospel stories about the birth and
+miracles of Jesus, but he is equally and just as innocently ignorant
+of the _teachings_ of Jesus. In the gospels Jesus is the author of the
+Sermon on the Mount, the Lord's Prayer, the Parable of the Prodigal
+Son, the Story of Dives, the Good Samaritan, etc. Is it conceivable
+that a preacher of Jesus could go throughout the world to convert
+people to the teachings of Jesus, as Paul did, without ever quoting a
+single one of his sayings? Had Paul known that Jesus had preached a
+sermon, or formulated a prayer, or said many inspired things about the
+here and the hereafter, he could not have helped quoting, now and
+then, from the words of his master. If Christianity could have been
+established without a knowledge of the teachings of Jesus, why, then,
+did Jesus come to teach, and why were his teachings preserved by
+divine inspiration? But if a knowledge of these teachings of Jesus is
+indispensable to making converts, Paul gives not the least evidence
+that he possessed such knowledge.
+
+But the Apostle Paul, judging from his many epistles to the earliest
+converts to Christianity, which are really his testimony, supposed to
+have been sealed by his blood, appears to be quite as ignorant of a
+Jesus who went about working miracles,--opening the eyes of the blind,
+giving health to the sick, hearing to the deaf, and life to the dead,--as
+he is of a Jesus born of a virgin woman and the Holy Ghost. Is not
+this remarkable? Does it not lend strong confirmation to the idea that
+the miracle-working Jesus of the gospels was not known in Paul's time,
+that is to say, the earliest Jesus known to the churches was a person
+altogether different from his namesake in the four evangelists. If
+Paul knew of a miracle-working Jesus, one who could feed the multitude
+with a few loaves and fishes--who could command the grave to open, who
+could cast out devils, and cleanse the land of the foulest disease of
+leprosy, who could, and did, perform many other wonderful works to
+convince the unbelieving generation of his divinity,--is it
+conceivable that either intentionally or inadvertently he would have
+never once referred to them in all his preaching? Is it not almost
+certain that, if the earliest Christians knew of the miracles of
+Jesus, they would have been greatly surprised at the failure of Paul
+to refer to them a single time? And would not Paul have told them of
+the promise of Jesus to give them power to work even greater miracles
+than his own, had he known of such a promise. Could Paul really have
+left out of his ministry so essential a chapter from the life of
+Jesus, had he been acquainted with it? The miraculous fills up the
+greater portion of the four gospels, and if these documents were
+dictated by the Holy Ghost, it means that they were too important to
+be left out. Why, then, does not Paul speak of them at all? There is
+only one reasonable answer: A miracle-working Jesus was unknown to
+Paul.
+
+What would we say of a disciple of Tolstoi, for example, who came to
+America to make converts to Count Tolstoi and never once quoted
+anything that Tolstoi had said? Or what would we think of the
+Christian missionaries who go to India, China, Japan and Africa to
+preach the gospel, if they never mentioned to the people of these
+countries the Sermon on the Mount, the Parable of the Prodigal Son,
+the Lord's Prayer--nor quoted a single text from the gospels? Yet
+Paul, the first missionary, did the very thing which would be
+inexplicable in a modern missionary. There is only one rational
+explanation for this: The Jesus of Paul was not born of a virgin; he
+did not work miracles; and he was not a teacher. It was after his day
+that such a Jesus was--I have to use again a strong word--_invented_.
+
+It has been hinted by certain professional defenders of Christianity
+that Paul's specific mission was to introduce Christianity among the
+Gentiles, and not to call attention to the miraculous element in the
+life of his Master. But this is a very lame defense. What is
+Christianity, but the life and teachings of Jesus? And how can it be
+introduced among the Gentiles without a knowledge of the doctrines and
+works of its founder? Paul gives no evidence of possessing any
+knowledge of the teachings of Jesus, how could he, then, be a
+missionary of Christianity to the heathen? There is no other answer
+which can be given than that the Christianity of Paul was something
+radically different from the Christianity of the later gospel writers,
+who in all probability were Greeks and not Jews. Moreover, it is known
+that Paul was reprimanded by his fellow-apostles for carrying
+Christianity to the Gentiles. What better defense could Paul have
+given for his conduct than to have quoted the commandment of Jesus--
+
+"Go ye into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature."
+And he would have quoted the "divine" text had he been familiar with
+it. Nay, the other apostles would not have taken him to task for
+obeying the commandment of Jesus had they been familiar with such a
+commandment. It all goes to support the proposition that the gospel
+Jesus was of a date later than the apostolic times.
+
+That the authorities of the church realize how damaging to the reality
+of the gospel Jesus is the inexplicable silence of Paul concerning
+him, may be seen in their vain effort to find in a passage put in
+Paul's mouth by the unknown author of the book of _Acts_, evidence
+that Paul does quote the sayings of Jesus. The passage referred to is
+the following: "It is more blessed to give than to receive." Paul is
+made to state that this was a saying of Jesus. In the first place,
+this quotation is not in the epistles of Paul, but in the _Acts_, of
+which Paul was not the author; in the second place, there is no such
+quotation in the gospels. The position, then, that there is not a
+single saying of Jesus in the gospels which is quoted by Paul in his
+many epistles is unassailable, and certainly fatal to the historicity
+of the gospel Jesus.
+
+Again, from Paul himself we learn that he was a zealous Hebrew, a
+Pharisee of Pharisees, studying with Gamaliel in Jerusalem, presumably
+to become a rabbi. Is it possible that such a man could remain totally
+ignorant of a miracle worker and teacher like Jesus, living in the
+same city with him? If Jesus really raised Lazarus from the grave, and
+entered Jerusalem at the head of a procession, waving branches and
+shouting, "hosanna"--if he was really crucified in Jerusalem, and
+ascended from one of its environs--is it possible that Paul neither
+saw Jesus nor heard anything about these miracles? But if he knew all
+these things about Jesus, is it possible that he could go through the
+world preaching Christ without ever once referring to them? It is more
+likely that when Paul was studying in Jerusalem there was no
+miraculous Jesus living or teaching in any part of Judea.
+
+If men make their gods they also make their Christs. [Footnote:
+Christianity and Mythology. J. M. Robertson, to whom the author
+acknowledges his indebtedness, for the difference between Paul's Jesus
+and that of the Gospels.] It is frequently urged that it was
+impossible for a band of illiterate fishermen to have created out of
+their own fancy so glorious a character as that of Jesus, and that it
+would be more miraculous to suppose that the unique sayings of Jesus
+and his incomparably perfect life were invented by a few plain people
+than to believe in his actual existence. But it is not honest to throw
+the question into that form. We do not know who were the authors of
+the gospels. It is pure assumption that they were written by plain
+fishermen. The authors of the gospels do not disclose their identity.
+The words, _according_ to Matthew, Mark, etc., represent only the
+guesses or opinions of translators and copyists.
+
+Both in the gospels and in Christian history the apostles are
+represented as illiterate men. But if they spoke Greek, and could also
+write in Greek, they could not have been just plain fishermen. That
+they were Greeks, not Jews, and more or less educated, may be safely
+inferred from the fact that they all write in Greek, and one of them
+at least seems to be acquainted with the Alexandrian school of
+philosophy. Jesus was supposedly a Jew, his twelve apostles all
+Jews--how is it, then, that the only biographies of him extant are all
+in Greek? If his fishermen disciples were capable of composition in
+Greek, they could not have been illiterate men, if they could not have
+written in Greek--which was a rare accomplishment for a Jew, according
+to what Josephus says--then the gospels were not written by the
+apostles of Jesus. But the fact that though these documents are in a
+language alien both to Jesus and his disciples, they are unsigned and
+undated, goes to prove, we think, that their editors or authors wished
+to conceal their identity that they may be taken for the apostles
+themselves.
+
+In the next place it is equally an assumption that the portrait of
+Jesus is incomparable. It is now proven beyond a doubt that there is
+not a single saying of Jesus, I say this deliberately, which had not
+already been known both among the Jews and Pagans. [Footnote:
+Sometimes it is urged by pettifogging clergymen that, while it is true
+that Confucius gave the Golden Rule six hundred years before Jesus, it
+was in a negative form. Confucius said, "Do not unto another what you
+would not another to do unto you." Jesus said, "Do unto others," etc.
+But every negative has its corresponding affirmation. Moreover, are
+not the Ten Commandments in the negative? But the Greek sages gave the
+Golden Rule in as positive a form as we find it in the Gospels. "And
+may I do to others as I would that others should do to me," said
+Plato.--Jowett Trans., V.--483. P.
+
+Besides, if the only difference between Jesus and Confucius, the one a
+God, the other a mere man, was that they both said the same thing, the
+one in the negative, the other in the positive, it is not enough to
+prove Jesus infinitely superior to Confucius. Many of Jesus' own
+commandments are in the negative: "Resist not evil," for instance.]
+And as to his life; it is in no sense superior or even as large and as
+many sided as that of Socrates. I know some consider it blasphemy to
+compare Jesus with Socrates, but that must be attributed to prejudice
+rather than to reason.
+
+And to the question that if Jesus be mythical, we cannot account for
+the rise and progress of the Christian church, we answer that the
+Pagan gods who occupied Mount Olympus were all mythical beings--mere
+shadows, and yet Paganism was the religion of the most advanced and
+cultured nations of antiquity. How could an imaginary Zeus, or
+Jupiter, draw to his temple the elite of Greece and Rome? And if there
+is nothing strange in the rise and spread of the Pagan church; in the
+rapid progress of the worship of Osiris, who never existed; in the
+wonderful success of the religion of Mithra, who is but a name; if the
+worship of Adonis, of Attis, of Isis, and the legends of Heracles,
+Prometheus, Hercules, and the Hindoo trinity,--Brahma, Shiva,
+Chrishna,--with their rock-hewn temples, can be explained without
+believing in the actual existence of these gods--why not Christianity?
+Religions, like everything else, are born, they grow old and die. They
+show the handiwork of whole races, and of different epochs, rather
+than of one man or of one age. Time gives them birth, and changing
+environments determine their career. Just as the portrait of Jesus we
+see in shops and churches is an invention, so is his character. The
+artist gave him his features, the theologian his attributes.
+
+What are the elements out of which the Jesus story was evolved? The
+Jewish people were in constant expectation of a Messiah. The belief
+prevailed that his name would be Joshua, which in English is Jesus.
+The meaning of the word is _savior_. In ancient Syrian mythology,
+Joshua was a Sun God. The Old-Testament Joshua, who "stopped the Sun,"
+was in all probability this same Syrian divinity. According to
+tradition this Joshua, or Jesus, was the son of Mary, a name which
+with slight variations is found in nearly all the old mythologies.
+Greek and Hindoo divinities were mothered by either a Mary, Meriam,
+Myrrah, or Merri. Maria or Mares is the oldest word for sea--the
+earliest source of life. The ancients looked upon the sea-water as the
+mother of every living thing. "Joshua (or Jesus), son of Mary," was
+already a part of the religious outfit of the Asiatic world when Paul
+began his missionary tours. His Jesus, or anointed one, crucified or
+slain, did in no sense represent a new or original message. It is no
+more strange that Paul's mythological "savior" should loom into
+prominence and cast a spell over all the world, than that a mythical
+Apollo or Jupiter should rule for thousands of years over the fairest
+portions of the earth.
+
+It is also well known that there is in the Talmud the story of a
+Jesus, Ben, or son, of Pandira, who lived about a hundred years before
+the Gospel Jesus, and who was hanged from a tree. I believe this Jesus
+is quite as legendary as the Syrian Hesous, or Joshua. But may it not
+be that such a legend accepted as true--to the ancients all legends
+were true--contributed its share toward marking the outlines of the
+later Jesus, hanged on a cross? My idea has been to show that the
+materials for a Jesus myth were at hand, and that, therefore, to
+account for the rise and progress of the Christian cult is no more
+difficult than to explain the widely spread religion of the Indian
+Chrishna, or of the Persian Mithra. [Footnote: For a fuller discussion
+of the various "christs" in mythology read Robertson's Christianity
+and Mythology and his Pagan Christs.]
+
+Now, why have I given these conclusions to the world? Would I not have
+made more friends--provoked a warmer response from the public at
+large--had I repeated in pleasant accents the familiar phrases about
+the glory and beauty and sweetness of the Savior God, the Virgin-born
+Christ? Instead of that, I have run the risk of alienating the
+sympathies of my fellows by intimating that this Jesus whom
+Christendom worships today as a god, this Jesus at whose altar the
+Christian world bends its knees and bows its head, is as much of an
+idol as was Apollo of the Greeks; and that we--we Americans of the
+twentieth century--are an idolatrous people, inasmuch as we worship a
+name, or at most, a man of whom we know nothing provable.
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: Italian Sculpture of the X Century.]
+
+IS CHRISTIANITY REAL?
+
+
+
+It is assumed, without foundation, as I hope to show, that the
+religion of Jesus alone can save the world. We are not surprised at
+the claim, because there has never been a religion which has been too
+modest to make a similar claim. No religion has ever been satisfied to
+be _one_ of the saviors of man. Each religion wants to be the _only_
+savior of man. There is no monopoly like religious monopoly. The
+industrial corporations with all their greed are less exacting than
+the Catholic church, for instance, which keeps heaven itself under
+lock and key.
+
+But what is meant by salvation? Let us consider its religious meaning
+first. An unbiased investigation of the dogmas and their supposed
+historical foundations will prove that the salvation which
+Christianity offers, and the means by which it proposes to effect the
+world's salvation, are extremely fanciful in nature. If this point
+could be made clear, there will be less reluctance on the part of the
+public to listen to the evidence on the un-historicity of the founder
+of Christianity.
+
+We are told that God, who is perfect, created this world about half a
+hundred centuries ago. Of course, being perfect himself the world
+which he created was perfect, too. But the world did not stay perfect
+very long. Nay, from the heights it fell, not slowly, but suddenly,
+into the lowest depths of degradation. How a world which God had
+created perfect, could in the twinkling of an eye become so vile as to
+be cursed by the same being who a moment before had pronounced it
+"good," and besides be handed over to the devil as fuel for eternal
+burnings, only credulity can explain. I am giving the story of what is
+called the "plan of salvation," in order to show its mythical nature.
+In the preceding pages we have discussed the question, Is Jesus a
+Myth, but I believe that when we have reflected upon the story of
+man's fall and his supposed subsequent salvation by the blood of
+Jesus, we shall conclude that the function, or the office, which Jesus
+is said to perform, is as mythical as his person.
+
+The story of Eden possesses all the marks of an allegory. Adam and
+Eve, and a perfect world _suddenly_ plunged from a snowy whiteness
+into the blackness of hell, are the thoughts of a child who
+exaggerates because of an as yet undisciplined fancy. Yet, if Adam and
+Eve are unreal, theologically speaking, Jesus is unreal. If they are
+allegory and myth, so is Jesus. It is claimed that it was the fall of
+Adam which necessitated the death of Jesus, but if Adam's fall be a
+fiction, as we know it is, Jesus' death as an atonement must also be a
+fiction.
+
+In the fall of Adam, we are told, humanity itself fell. Could anything
+be more fanciful than that? And what was Adam's sin? He coveted
+knowledge. He wished to improve his mind. He experimented with
+forbidden things. He dared to take the initiative. And for that
+imaginary crime, even the generations not yet born are to be forever
+blighted. Even the animals, the flowers and vegetables were cursed for
+it. Can you conceive of anything more mythical than that? One of the
+English divines of the age of Calvin declared that original sin,--Adam's
+sin imputed to us,--was so awful, that "if a man had never been born
+he would yet have been damned for it." It is from this mythical sin
+that a mythical Savior saves us. And how does he do it? In a very
+mythical way, as we shall see.
+
+When the world fell, it fell into the devil's hands. To redeem a part
+of it, at least, the deity concludes to give up his only son for a
+ransom. This is interesting. God is represented as being greatly
+offended, because the world which he had created perfect was all in a
+heap before him. To placate himself he sacrificed his son--not
+himself.
+
+But, as intimated above, he does not intend to restore the whole world
+to its pristine purity, but only a part of it. This is alarming. He
+creates the whole world perfect, but now he is satisfied to have only
+a portion of it redeemed from the devil. If he can save at all, pray,
+why not save all? This is not an irrelevant question when it is
+remembered that the whole world was created perfect in the first
+place.
+
+The refusal of the deity to save all of his world from the devil would
+lead one to believe that even when God created the world perfect he
+did not mean to keep all of it to himself, but meant that some of it,
+the greater part of it, as some theologians contend, should go to the
+devil! Surely this is nothing but myth. Let us hope for the sake of
+our ideals that all this is no more than the childish prattle of
+primitive man.
+
+But let us return to the story of the fall of man; God decides to save
+a part of his ruined perfect world by the sacrifice of his son. The
+latter is supposed to have said to his father: "Punish me, kill me,
+accept my blood, and let it pay for the sins of man." He thus
+interceded for the _elect_, and the deity was mollified. As Jesus
+is also God, it follows that one God tried to pacify another, which is
+pure myth. Some theologians have another theory--there is room here
+for many theories. According to these, God gave up his son as a
+ransom, not to himself, but to the devil, who now claimed the world as
+his own. I heard a distinguished minister explain this in the
+following manner: A poor man whose house is mortgaged hears that some
+philanthropist has redeemed the property by paying off the mortgage.
+The soul of man was by the fall of Adam mortgaged to the devil. God
+has raised the mortgage by abandoning his son to be killed to satisfy
+the devil who held the mortgage. The debt which we owed has been paid
+by Jesus. By this arrangement the devil loses his legal right to our
+souls and we are saved. All we need to do is to believe in this story
+and we'll be sure to go to heaven. And to think that intelligent
+Americans not only accept all this as inspired, but denounce the man
+who ventures to intimate modestly that it might be a myth, as a
+blasphemer! "O, judgment!" cries Shakespeare, "thou hast fled to
+brutish beasts, and men have lost their reason."
+
+The morality which the Christian church teaches is of as mythical a
+nature as the story of the fall, and the blood-atonement. It is not
+natural morality, but something quite unintelligible and fictitious.
+For instance, we are told that we cannot of ourselves be righteous. We
+must first have the grace of God. Then we are told that we cannot have
+the grace of God unless he gives it to us. And he will not give it to
+us unless we ask for it. But we cannot ask for it, unless he moves us
+to ask for it. And there we are. We shall be damned if we do not come
+to God, and we cannot come to God unless he calls us. Besides, could
+anything be more mythical than a righteousness which can only be
+imputed to us,--any righteousness of our own being but "filthy rags?"
+
+The Christian religion has the appearance of being one great myth,
+constructed out of many minor myths. It is the same with
+Mohammedanism, or Judaism, which latter is the mischievous parent of
+both the Mohammedan and the Christian faiths. It is the same with all
+supernatural creeds. Myth is the dominating element in them all.
+Compared with these Asiatic religions how glorious is science! How
+wholesome, helpful, and luminous, are her commandments!
+
+If I were to command you to believe that Mount Olympus was once
+tenanted by blue-eyed gods and their consorts,--sipping nectar and
+ambrosia the live-long day,--you will answer, "Oh, that is only
+mythology." If I were to tell you that you cannot be saved unless you
+believe that Minerva was born full-fledged from the brain of Jupiter,
+you will laugh at me. If I were to tell you that you must punish your
+innocent sons for the guilt of their brothers and sisters, you will
+answer that I insult your moral sense. And yet, every Sunday, the
+preacher repeats the myth of Adam and Eve, and how God killed his
+innocent son to please himself, or to satisfy the devil, and with
+bated breath, and on your knees, you whisper, _Amen._
+
+How is it that when you read the literature of the Greeks, the
+literature of the Persians, the literature of Hindoostan, or of the
+Mohammedan world, you discriminate between fact and fiction, between
+history and myth, but when it comes to the literature of the Jews, you
+stammer, you stutter, you bite your lips, you turn pale, and fall upon
+your face before it as the savage before his fetish? You would
+consider it unreasonable to believe that everything a Greek, or a
+Roman, or an Arab ever said was inspired. And yet, men have been
+hounded to death for not believing that everything that a Jew ever
+said in olden times was inspired.
+
+I do not have to use arguments, I hope, to prove to an intelligent
+public that an infallible book is as much a myth as the Garden of
+Eden, or the Star of Bethlehem.
+
+A mythical Savior, a mythical Bible, a mythical plan of salvation!
+
+When we subject what are called religious truths to the same tests by
+which we determine scientific or historical truths, we discover that
+they are not truths at all; they are only opinions. Any statement
+which snaps under the strain of reason is unworthy of credence. But it
+is claimed that religious truth is discovered by intuition and not by
+investigation. The believer, it is claimed, feels in his own soul--he
+has the witness of the spirit, that the Bible is infallible, and that
+Jesus is the Savior of man. The Christian does not have to look into
+the arguments for or against his religion, it is said, before he makes
+up his mind; he knows by an inward assurance; he has proved it to his
+own deepermost being that Jesus is real and that he is the only
+Savior. But what is that but another kind of argument? The argument is
+quite inadequate to inspire assurance, as you will presently see, but
+it is an argument nevertheless. To say that we must believe and not
+reason is a kind of reasoning, This device of reasoning against
+reasoning is resorted to by people who have been compelled by modern
+thought to give up, one after another, the strongholds of their
+position. They run under shelter of what they call faith, or the
+"inward witness of the spirit," or the intuitive argument, hoping
+thereby to escape the enemy's fire, if I may use so objectionable a
+phrase.
+
+What is called faith, then, or an intuitive spiritual assurance, is a
+species of reasoning; let its worth be tested honestly.
+
+In the first place, faith or the intuitive argument would prove too
+much. If Jesus is real, notwithstanding that there is no reliable
+historical data to warrant the belief, because the believer feels in
+his own soul that He is real and divine, I answer that, the same mode
+of reasoning--and let us not forget, it is a kind of _reasoning_--would
+prove Mohammed a divine savior, and the wooden idol of the savage a god.
+The African Bushman trembles before an image, because he feels in his
+own soul that the thing is real. Does that make it real? The Moslem
+cries unto Mohammed, because he believes in his innermost heart that
+Mohammed is near and can hear him. He will risk his life on that assurance.
+To quote to him history and science to prove that Mohammed is dead and
+unable to save, would be of no avail, for he has the witness of the
+spirit in him, an intuitive assurance, that the great prophet sits on
+the right hand of Allah. An argument which proves too much, proves
+nothing.
+
+In the second place, an intuition is not communicable. I may have an
+intuition that I see spirits all about me this morning. They come,
+they go, they nod, they brush my forehead with their wings. But do
+_you_ see them, too, because I see them? There is the difference
+between a scientific demonstration and a purely metaphysical
+assumption. I could go to the blackboard and assure you, as I am
+myself assured, that two parallel lines running in the same direction
+will not and cannot meet. That is demonstration. A fever patient when
+in a state of delirium, and a frightened child in the dark, see
+things. We do not deny that they do, but their testimony does not
+prove that the things they see are real.
+
+"What is this I see before me?" cries Macbeth, the murderer, and he
+shrieks and shakes from head to foot--he draws his sword and rushes
+upon Banquo's ghost, which he sees coldly staring at him. But is that
+any proof that what he saw we could see also? Yes, we could, if we
+were in the same frenzy! And it is the revivalist's aim, by creating a
+general excitement, to make everybody _see things_. "Doctor, Doctor,
+help! they are coming to kill me; there they are--the assassins,--one,
+two, three--oh, help," and the patient jumps out of bed to escape the
+banditti crowding in upon him. But is that any reason why the
+attending physician, his pulse normal and his brow cool, should
+believe that the room is filling up with assassins? I observe people
+jump up and down, as they do in holiness meetings; I hear them say
+they see angels, they see Jesus, they feel his presence. But is that
+any evidence for you or me? An intuitive argument is not communicable,
+and, therefore, it is no argument at all.
+
+Our orthodox friends are finally driven by modern thought, which is
+growing bolder every day, to the only refuge left for them. It is the
+one already mentioned. Granted that Jesus was an imaginary character,
+even then, as an ideal, they argue, he is an inspiration, and the most
+effective moral force the world has ever known. We do not care, they
+say, whether the story of his birth, trial, death, and resurrection is
+myth or actual history; such a man as Jesus may never have existed,
+the things he is reported as saying may have been put in his mouth by
+others, but what of that--is not the picture of his character perfect?
+Are not the Beatitudes beautiful--no matter who said them? To
+strengthen this position they call our attention to Shakespeare's
+creations, the majority of whom--Hamlet, Othello, Lear, Portia,
+Imogen, Desdemona, are fictitious. Yet where are there grander men, or
+finer women? These children of Shakespeare may never have lived, but,
+surely, they will never die. In the same sense, Jesus may be just as
+ideal a character as those of Shakespeare, they say, and still be "the
+light of the world." A New York preacher is reported as saying that if
+Christianity is a lie, it is a "glorious lie."
+
+My answer to the above is that such an argument evades instead of
+facing the question. It is receding from a position under cover of a
+rhetorical manoeuvre. It is a retreat in disguise. If Christianity is
+a "glorious lie," then call it such. The question under discussion is,
+Is Jesus Historical? To answer that it is immaterial whether or not he
+is historical, is to admit that there is no evidence that he is
+historical. To urge that, unhistorical though he be, he is,
+nevertheless, the only savior of the world, is, I regret to say, not
+only evasive,--not only does it beg the question, but it is also
+clearly dishonest. How long will the tremendous ecclesiastical
+machinery last, if it were candidly avowed that it is doubtful whether
+there ever was such a historical character as Jesus, or that in all
+probability he is no more real than one of Shakespeare's creations?
+What! all these prayers, these churches, these denominations, these
+sectarian wars which have shed oceans of human blood--these
+unfortunate persecutions which have blackened the face of man--the
+fear of hell and the devil which has blasted millions of lives--all
+these for a Christ who may, after all, be only a picture!
+
+Neither is it true that this pictorial Jesus saved the world. He has
+had two thousand years to do it in, but as missionaries are still
+being sent out, it follows that the world is yet to be saved. The
+argument presented elsewhere in these pages may here be recapitulated.
+
+There was war before Christianity; has Jesus abolished war?
+
+There was poverty and misery in the world before Christianity; has
+Jesus removed these evils?
+
+There was ignorance in the world before Christianity; has Jesus
+destroyed ignorance?
+
+There were disease, crime, persecution, oppression, slavery,
+massacres, and bloodshed in the world before Christianity; alas, are
+they not still with us?
+
+_When Jesus shall succeed in pacifying his own disciples; in healing
+the sectarian world of its endless and bitter quarrels, then it will
+be time to ask what else Jesus has done for humanity._
+
+If the world is improving at all, and we believe it is, the progress
+is due to the fact that man pays now more attention to _this_ life
+than formerly. He is thinking less of the other world and more of
+this. He no longer sings with the believer:
+
+    The world is all a fleeting show
+       For man's delusion given.
+     Its smiles of joy, its tears of woe,
+     Deceitful shine, deceitful flow,
+       There's nothing true but heaven.
+
+How could people with such feelings labor to improve a world they
+hated? How could they be in the least interested in social or
+political reforms when they were constantly repeating to themselves--
+
+     I'm a pilgrim, and I'm a stranger--
+     I can tarry, I can tarry, but a night.
+
+That these same people should now claim not only a part of the credit
+for the many improvements, but all of it--saying that, but for their
+religion the "world would now have been a hell," [Footnote: Rev. Frank
+Gunsaulus, of the Central Church, Chicago. See A New Catechism.--M. M.
+Mangasarian.] is really a little too much for even the most serene
+temperament.
+
+Which of the religions has persecuted as long and as relentlessly as
+Christianity?
+
+Which of the many faiths of the world has opposed Science as
+stubbornly and as bitterly as Christianity?
+
+In the name of what other prophets have more people been burned at the
+stake than in the names of Jesus and Moses?
+
+What other revelation has given rise to so many sects, hostile and
+irreconcilable, as the Christian?
+
+Which religion has furnished as many effective texts for political
+oppression, polygamy, slavery, and the subjection of woman as the
+religion of Jesus and Paul?
+
+Is there,--has there ever been another creed which makes salvation
+dependent on belief,--thereby encouraging hypocrisy, and making honest
+inquiry a crime?
+
+To send a thief to heaven from the gallows because he believes, and an
+honest man to hell because he doubts, is that the virtue which is
+going to save the world?
+
+The claim that Jesus has saved the world is another myth.
+
+A _pictorial_ Christ, then, has not done anything for humanity to
+deserve the tremendous expenditure of time, energy, love, and
+devotion, which has for two thousand years taxed the resources of
+civilization.
+
+The passing away of this imaginary savior will relieve the world of an
+unproductive investment.
+
+We conclude: Honesty, like charity, must begin at home. Unless we can
+tell the truth in our churches we will never tell the truth in our
+shops. Unless our teachers, the ministers of God, are honest, our
+insurance companies and corporations will have to be watched. Permit
+sham in your religious life, and the disease will spread to every
+member of the social body. If you may keep religion in the dark, and
+cry "hush," "hush," when people ask that it be brought out into the
+light, why may not politics or business cultivate a similar partiality
+for darkness? If the king cries, "rebel," when a citizen asks for
+justice, it is because he has heard the priest cry, "infidel," when a
+member of his church asked for evidence. Religious hypocrisy is the
+mother of all hypocrisies. Cure a man of that, and the human world
+will recover its health.
+
+Not so long ago, nearly everybody believed in the existence of a
+personal devil. People saw him, heard him, described him, danced with
+him, and claimed, besides, to have whipped him. Luther hurled his
+inkstand at him, and American women accused as witches were put to
+death in the name of the devil. Yet all this "evidence" has not saved
+the devil from passing out of existence. What has happened to the
+devil will happen to the gods. Man is the only real savior. If he is
+not a savior, there is no other.
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: The Hindu Trinity.]
+
+
+
+
+
+PART II.
+
+
+
+
+IS THE WORLD INDEBTED TO CHRISTIANITY?
+
+
+
+"But," says the believer, again, as a last resort, "Jesus, whether
+real or mythical, has certainly saved the world, and is its only
+hope." If this assertion can be supported with facts, then surely it
+would matter very little whether Jesus really lived and taught, or
+whether he is a mere picture. Although even then it would be more
+truthful to say we have no satisfactory evidence that such a teacher
+as Jesus ever lived, than to affirm dogmatically his existence, as it
+is now done. Whatever Jesus may have done for the world, he has
+certainly not freed us from the obligation of telling the truth. I
+call special attention to this point. Because Jesus has saved the
+world, granting for the moment that he has, is no reason why we should
+be indifferent to the truth. Nay, it would show that Jesus has not
+saved the world, if we can go on and speak of him as an actual
+existence, born of a virgin and risen from the dead, and in his name
+persecute one another--oppose the advance of science, deny freedom of
+thought, terrorize children and women with pictures of hell-fire and
+seek to establish a spiritual monopoly in the world, when the evidence
+in hand seems clearly to indicate that such a person never existed.
+
+We shall quote a chapter from Christian history to give our readers an
+idea of how much the religion of Jesus, when implicitly believed in,
+can do for the world. We have gone to the earliest centuries for our
+examples of the influence exerted by Christianity upon the ambitions
+and passions of human nature, because it is generally supposed that
+Christianity was then at its best. Let us, then, present a picture of
+the world, strictly speaking, of the Roman Empire, during the first
+four or five hundred years after its conversion to Christianity.
+
+We select this specific period, because Christianity was at this time
+fifteen hundred years nearer to its source, and was more virile and
+aggressive than it has ever been since.
+
+Shakespeare speaks of the uses of adversity; but the uses of
+prosperity are even greater. The proverb says that "adversity tries a
+man." While there is considerable truth in this, the fact is that
+prosperity is a much surer criterion of character. It is impossible to
+tell, for instance, what a man will do who has neither the power nor
+the opportunity to do anything. "Opportunity," says a French writer,
+"is the cleverest devil." Both our good and bad qualities wait upon
+opportunity to show themselves. It is quite easy to be virtuous when
+the opportunity to do evil is lacking. Behind the prison bars, every
+criminal is a penitent, but the credit belongs to the iron bars and
+not to the criminal. To be good when one cannot be bad, is an
+indifferent virtue.
+
+It is with institutions and religions as with individuals--they should
+be judged not by what they pretend in their weakness, but by what they
+do when they are strong. Christianity, Mohammedanism and Judaism, the
+three kindred religions--we call them kindred because they are related
+in blood and are the offspring of the same soil and climate--these
+three kindred religions must be interpreted not by what they profess
+today, but by what they did when they had both the power and the
+opportunity to do as they wished.
+
+When Christianity, or Mohammedanism, was professed only by a small
+handful of men--twelve fishermen, or a dozen camel-drivers of the
+desert--neither party advocated persecution. The worst punishment
+which either religion held out was a distant and a future punishment;
+but as soon as Christianity converted an Emperor, or Mohammed became
+the victorious warrior,--that is to say, as soon as, springing forth,
+they picked up the sword and felt their grip sure upon its hilt, this
+future and distant punishment materialized into a present and
+persistent persecution of their opponents. Is not that suggestive?
+Then, again, when in the course of human evolution, both Christianity
+and Mohammedanism lost the secular support--the throne, the favor of
+the courts, the imperial treasury--they fell back once more upon
+future penalties as the sole menace against an unbelieving world. As
+religion grows, secularly speaking, weaker, and is more completely
+divorced from the temporal, even the future penalties, from being both
+literal and frightful, pale into harmless figures of speech.
+
+It was but a short time after the conversion of the Emperor
+Constantine, that the following edict was published throughout the
+provinces of the Roman Empire:
+
+"O ye enemies of truth, authors and counsellors of death--we enact by this
+law that none of you dare hereafter to meet at your conventicles...nor
+keep any meetings either in public buildings or private houses. We
+have commanded that all your places of meeting--your temples--be pulled
+down or confiscated to the Catholic Church."
+
+The man who affixed his signature to this edict was a monarch, that is
+to say, a man who had the power to do as he liked. The man and
+monarch, then, who affixed his imperial signature to this _first_
+document of persecution in Europe--the first, because, as Renan has
+beautifully remarked, "We may search in vain the whole Roman law
+before Constantine for a single passage against freedom of thought,
+and the history of the imperial government furnishes no instance of a
+prosecution for entertaining an abstract doctrine,"--this is glory
+enough for the civilization 'which we call _Pagan_ and which was
+replaced by the Asiatic religion--the man and the monarch who fathered
+the first instrument of persecution in our Europe, who introduced into
+our midst the crazed hounds of religious wars, unknown either in
+Greece or Rome, Constantine, has been held up by Cardinal Newman as "a
+pattern to all succeeding monarchs." Only an Englishman, a European,
+infected with the malady of the East, could hold up the author of such
+an edict,--an edict which prostitutes the State to the service of a
+fad--as "a pattern."
+
+If we asked for a modern illustration of what a church will do when it
+has the power, there is the example of Russia. Russia is today
+centuries behind the other European nations. She is the most
+unfortunate, the most ignorant, the most poverty-pinched country, with
+the most orthodox type of Christianity. What is the difference between
+Greek Christianity, such as prevails in Russia, and American
+Christianity! Only this: The Christian Church in Russia has both the
+power and the opportunity to do things, while the Christian church in
+America or in France has not. We must judge Christianity as a religion
+by what it does in Russia, more than by what it does not do in France
+or America. There was a time when the church did in France and in
+England what it is doing now in Russia, which is a further
+confirmation of the fact that a religion must be judged not by what it
+pretends in its weakness, but by what it does when it can. In Russia,
+the priest can tie a man's hands and feet and deliver him up to the
+government; and it does so. In Protestant countries, the church, being
+deprived of all its badges and prerogatives, is more modest and
+humble. The poet Heine gives eloquent expression to this idea when he
+says: "Religion comes begging to us, when it can no longer burn us."
+
+There will be no revolution in Russia, nor even any radical
+improvement of existing conditions, so long as the Greek Church has
+the education of the masses in charge. To become politically free, men
+must first be intellectually emancipated. If a Russian is not
+permitted to choose his own religion, will he be permitted to choose
+his own form of government? If he will allow a priest to impose his
+religion upon him, why may he not permit the Czar to impose despotism
+upon him? If it is wrong for him to question the tenets of his
+religion, is it not equally wrong for him to discuss the laws of his
+government? If a slave of the church, why may he not be also a slave
+of the state? If there is room upon his neck for the yoke of the
+church, there will be room, also, for the yoke of the autocracy. If he
+is in the habit of bending his knees, what difference does it make to
+how many or to whom he bends them?
+
+Not until Russia has become religiously emancipated, will she conquer
+political freedom. She must first cast out of her mind the fear of the
+church, before she can enter into the glorious fellowship of the free.
+In Turkey, all the misery of the people will not so much as cause a
+ripple of discontent, because the Moslem has been brought up to submit
+to the Sultan as to the shadow on earth of Allah. Both in Russia and
+Turkey, the protestants are the heretics. The orthodox Turk and the
+orthodox Christian permit without a murmur both the priest and the
+king to impose upon them at the point of a bayonet, the one his
+religion, and the other his government. It is only by taking the
+education of the masses out of the hands of the clergy that either
+country can enjoy any prosperity. Orthodoxy and autocracy are twins.
+
+Let me now try to present to you a picture of the world under
+Christianity about the year 400 of the present era. Let us discuss
+this phase of the subject in a liberal spirit, extenuating nothing,
+nor setting down aught in malice. Please interpret what I say in the
+next few minutes metaphorically, and pardon me if my picture is a
+repellant one.
+
+We are in the year of our Lord, 400:
+
+I rose up early this morning to go to church. As I approached the
+building, I saw there a great multitude of people unable to secure
+admission into the edifice. The huge iron doors were closed, and upon
+them was affixed a notice from the authorities, to the effect that all
+who worshiped in this church would, by the authority of the state, be
+known and treated hereafter as "infamous heretics," and be exposed to
+the extreme penalty of the law if they persisted in holding services
+there. But the party to which I belonged heeded not the prohibition,
+but beat against the doors furiously and effected an entrance into the
+church. The excitement ran high; men and leaders shouted, gesticulated
+and came to blows. The Archbishop was urged to ascend his episcopal
+throne and officiate at the altar in spite of the formal interdiction
+against him. He consented. But he had not proceeded far when soldiers,
+with a wild rush, poured into the building and began to discharge
+arrows at the panic-stricken people. Instantly pandemonium was let
+loose. The officers commanding the soldiers demanded the head of the
+offending Archbishop. The worshipers made an attempt to resist; then
+blood was shed, the sight of which reeled people's heads, and, in an
+instant, the sanctuary was turned into a house of murder. Taking
+advantage of the uproar, the Archbishop, assisted by his secretaries,
+escaped through a secret door behind the altar.
+
+[Illustration: Engraving of XV Century Representing the Trinity.]
+
+On my way home from this terrible scene, I fell upon a procession of
+monks. They were carrying images and relics, and a banner upon which
+were inscribed these words: "The Virgin Mary, Mother of God." As they
+marched on, their number increased by new additions. But suddenly they
+encountered another band of monks, carrying a different banner,
+bearing the same words which were on the other party's banner, but
+instead of "The Virgin Mary, Mother of God," their banner read: "The
+Virgin Mary, Mother of Jesus Christ." The two processions clashed, and
+a bloody encounter followed; in an instant images, relics and banners
+were all in an indiscriminate heap. The troops were called out again,
+but such was the zeal of the conflicting parties that not until the
+majority of them were disabled and exhausted, was tranquility
+restored.
+
+Looking about me, I saw the spire of a neighboring church. My
+curiosity prompted me to wend my steps thither. As soon as I entered,
+I was recognized as belonging to the forbidden sect, and in an instant
+a hundred fists rained down blows upon my head. "He has polluted the
+sanctuary," they cried. "He has committed sacrilege." "No quarter to
+the enemies of the true church," cried others, and it was a miracle
+that, beaten, bruised, my clothes torn from my back, I regained the
+street. A few seconds later, looking up the streets, I saw another
+troop of soldiers, rushing down toward this church at full speed. It
+seems that while I was being beaten in the main auditorium, in the
+baptistry of the church they were killing, in cold blood, the
+Archbishop, who was suspected of a predilection for the opposite
+party, and who had refused to retract or resign from his office. The
+next day I heard that one hundred and thirty-seven bodies were taken
+out of this building.
+
+Seized with terror, I now began to run, but, alas, I had worse
+experiences in store for me. I was compelled to pass the principal
+square in the center of the city before I could reach a place of
+safety. When I reached this square, it had the appearance of a
+veritable battlefield. It was Sunday morning, and the partisans of
+rival bishops, differing in their interpretation of theological
+doctrines, were fighting each other like maddened, malignant
+creatures. One could hear, over the babel of discordant yells,
+scriptural phrases. The words, "The Son is equal to the Father," "The
+Father is greater than the Son," "He is begotten of the same substance
+as the Father," "He is of like substance, but not of the same
+substance," "You are a heretic," "You are an atheist," were invariably
+accompanied with blows, stabs and sword thrusts, until, as an eye-
+witness, I can take an oath that I saw the streets leading out of the
+square deluged with palpitating human blood. Suddenly the commander of
+the cavalry, Hermogenes, rode upon the scene of feud and bloodshed. He
+ordered the followers of the rival bishops to disperse, but instead of
+minding his authority, the zealots of both sides rushed upon his
+horse, tore the rider from the saddle and began to beat him with clubs
+and stones which they picked up from the street. He managed to escape
+into a house close by, but the religious rabble surrounded the house
+and set fire to it. Hermogenes appeared at the window, begging for his
+life. He was attacked again, and killed, and his mangled body dragged
+through the streets and rushed into a ditch.
+
+The spectacle inflamed me, being a sectarian myself. I felt ashamed
+that I was not showing an equal zeal for _my_ party. I, too, longed to
+fight, to kill, to be killed, for my religion. And, anon! the
+opportunity presented itself. I saw, looking up the street to my
+right, a group of my fellow-believers, who, like myself, shut out of
+their own church by the orthodox authorities, armed with whips loaded
+with lead and with clubs, were entering a house. I followed them. As
+we went in, we commanded the head of the family and his wife to
+appear. When they did, we asked them if it was true that in their
+prayers to Mary they had refrained from the use of the words, "The
+mother of God." They hesitated to give a direct answer, whereupon we
+used the club, and then, the scourge. Then they said they believed in
+and revered the blessed virgin, but would not, even if we killed them,
+say that she was the mother of God. This obstinacy exasperated us and
+we felt it to be our religious duty, for the honor of our divine
+Queen, to perpetrate such cruelties upon them as would shock your
+gentle ears to hear. We held them over slowly burning fires, flung
+lime into their eyes, applied roasted eggs and hot irons to the
+sensitive parts of their bodies, and even gagged them to force the
+sacrament into their mouths.....As we went from house to house, bent
+upon our mission, I remember an expression of one of the party who
+said to the poor woman who was begging for mercy: "What! shall I be
+guilty of defrauding the vengeance of God of its victims?" A sudden
+chill ran down my back. I felt my flesh creep. Like a drop of poison
+the thought embodied in those words perverted whatever of pity or
+humanity was left in me, and I felt that I was only helping to secure
+victims with which to feed the vengeance of God!
+
+[Illustration: Trinity in XIII Century.]
+
+I was willing to be a monster for the glory of God!
+
+The Christian sect to which I belonged was one of the oldest in
+Christendom. Our ancestors were called the Puritans of the fourth and
+fifth centuries. We believe that no one can be saved outside of our
+communion. When a Christian of another church joins us, we re-baptize
+him, for we do not believe in the validity of other baptisms. We are
+so particular that we deny our cemeteries to any other Christians than
+our own members. If we find that we have, by mistake, buried a member
+of another church in our cemetery, we dig up his bones, that he may
+not pollute the soil. When one of the churches of another denomination
+falls into our hands, we first fumigate the building, and with a sharp
+knife we scrape the wood off the altars upon which other Christian
+priests have offered prayers. We will, under no consideration, allow a
+brother Christian from another church to commune with us; if by
+stealth anyone does, we spare not his life. But we are persecuted just
+as severely as we persecute, ourselves. [Footnote: This sect
+(Donatist) and others, lasted for a long time, and made Asia and
+Africa a hornet's nest,--a blood-stained arena, of feud and riot and
+massacre, until Mohammedanism put an end, in these parts of the world,
+not only to these sects, but to Christianity itself.]
+
+As the sun was setting, fatigued with the holy Sabbath's religious
+duties, I started to go home. On my way back, I saw even wilder,
+bloodier scenes, between rival ecclesiastical factions, streets even
+redder with blood, if possible, yea, certain sections of the city
+seemed as if a storm of hail, or tongues of flame had swept over them.
+Churches were on fire, cowled monks attacking bishops' residences,
+rival prelates holding uproarious debates, which almost always
+terminated in bloodshed, and, to cap the day of many vicissitudes, I
+saw a bear on exhibition which had been given its freedom by the
+ruler, as a reward for his faithful services in devouring heretics.
+The Christian ruler kept two fierce bears by his own chamber, to which
+those who did not hold the orthodox faith were thrown in his presence
+while he listened with delight to their groans.
+
+When I reached home, I was panting for breath. I had lived through
+another Sabbath day. [Footnote: If the reader will take the pains to
+read Dean Milman's History of Christianity, and his History of Latin
+Christianity; also Gibbon's Downfall of the Roman Empire, and
+Mosheim's History of Christianity, he will see that we have
+exaggerated nothing. The Athanasian and the Arian, the Donatist and
+Sabellian, the Nestorian and Alexandrian factions converted the early
+centuries into a long reign of terror.]
+
+I feel like covering my face for telling you so grewsome a tale. But
+if this were the fourth or the fifth century, instead of the
+twentieth, and this were Constantinople, or Alexandria, or Antioch,
+instead of Chicago, I would have spent just such a Sunday as I have
+described to you. In giving you this concentrated view of human
+society in the great capitals of Christendom in the year 400, I have
+restrained, rather than spurred, my imagination. Remember, also, that
+I have confined my remarks to a specific and short period in history,
+and have excluded from my generalization all reference to the
+centuries of religious wars which tore Europe limb from limb,--the
+wholesale exterminations, the crusades, which represented one of the
+maddest spells of misguided and costly zeal which ever struck our
+earth, the persecution of the Huguenots, the extermination of the
+Albigenses and of the Waldenses,--the massacre of St. Bartholomew, the
+Inquisition with its red hand upon the intellect of Europe, the
+Anabaptist outrages in Germany, the Smithfield fires in England, the
+religious outrages in Scotland, the Puritan excesses in America,--the
+reign of witchcraft and superstition throughout the twenty centuries--I
+have not touched my picture with any colors borrowed from these
+terrible chapters in the history of our unfortunate earth. I have also
+left out all reference to Papal Rome, with its dungeons, its stakes,
+its massacres and its burnings. I have said nothing of Galileo,
+Vanini, Campanella or Bruno. I have passed over all this in silence.
+You can imagine, now, how much more repellant and appalling this
+representation of the Roman world under Christianity would have been
+had I stretched my canvas to include also these later centuries.
+
+But I tremble to be one-sided or unjust, and so I hasten to say that
+during the twenty centuries' reign of our religion, the world has also
+seen some of the fairest flowers spring out of the soil of our earth.
+During the past twenty centuries there have been men and women,
+calling themselves Christians, who have been as generous, as heroic
+and as deeply consecrated to high ideals as any the world has ever
+produced. Christianity has, in many instances, softened the manners of
+barbarians and elevated the moral tone of primitive peoples. It gives
+us more pleasure to speak of the good which religions have
+accomplished than to call attention to the evil they have caused. But
+this raises a very important question. "Why do you not confine
+yourself," we are often asked, "to the virtues you find in
+Christianity or Mohammedanism, instead of discussing so frequently
+their short-comings? Is it not better to praise than to blame, to
+recommend than to find fault?" This is a fair question, and we may
+just as well meet it now as at any other time.
+
+Such is the economy of nature that no man, or institution or religion,
+can be altogether evil. The poet spoke the truth when he said: "There
+is a soul of goodness in things evil." Evil, in a large sense, is the
+raw material of the good. All things contribute to the education of
+man. The question, then, whether an institution is helpful or hurtful,
+is a relative one. The character of an institution, as that of an
+individual, is determined by its ruling passion. Despotism, for
+instance, is generally considered to be an evil. And yet, a hundred
+good things can be said of despotism. The French people, over a
+hundred years ago, overthrew the monarchy. And yet the monarchy had
+rendered a thousand services to France. It was the monarchy that
+created France, that extended her territory, developed her commerce,
+built her great cities, defended her frontiers against foreign
+invasion, and gave her a place among the first-class nations of
+Europe. Was it just, then, to pull down an institution that had done
+so much for France?
+
+Why did the Americans overthrow British rule in this country? Had not
+England rendered innumerable services to the colony? Was she not one
+of the most progressive, most civilizing influences in the modern
+world? Was it just, then, that we should have beaten out of the land a
+government that had performed for us so many friendly acts?
+
+Referring once more to the case of Russia: Why do the awakened people
+in that country demand the overthrow of the autocracy? Is there
+nothing good to be said of Russian autocracy? Have not the Czars loved
+their country and fought for her prosperity? Have they not brought
+Russia up to her present size, population and political influence in
+Europe? Have they not beautified her cities and enacted laws for the
+protection of their subjects? Is it right, then, in spite of all these
+things that autocracy has done for Russia, to seek to overthrow it?
+
+Once more: Why do the missionaries go into India and China and Japan
+trying to replace the ancestral religion of these people with the
+Christian faith? Why does the missionary labor to overthrow the
+worship of Buddha, Confucius and Zoroaster? Have not these great
+teachers helped humanity? Have they not rendered any services to their
+countrymen? Are there no truths in their teachings? Are there no
+virtues in their lives? Is it right, then, that the missionary should
+criticise these ancient faiths?
+
+[Illustration: Conception of Trinity, Ninth Century.]
+
+Let us take an example from nearer home. We were talking some years
+ago with a gentleman who had just returned from Dowie's Zion. He was
+surprised to find there a clean, orderly and well-behaved people,
+apparently quite happy. He said that after his experiences there, he
+would rather do business with Dowie and his men than with the average
+member of other religious bodies. He found the Dowieites honest,
+reliable and peaceful. Now, all this may be true, and I hope it is;
+but what of it? Dowieism is an evil, notwithstanding this recital of
+its virtues. It is an evil, because it arrests the intellectual
+development of man, because it makes dwarfs of the people it converts,
+because it pinches the forehead of each convert into that of either a
+charlatan or an idiot. We regret to have to use these harsh terms. But
+Dowieism is denounced, because it brings up human beings as if they
+were sheep, because it robs them of the most glorious gift of life,
+the freedom to grow, Dowieism is an evil, because it makes the human
+race mediocre by contracting its intellect down to the measure of a
+creed. We would much rather that the Dowieites smoked and drank and
+swore, than that they should fear to think. There is hope for a bad
+man. There is no hope for the stupid.
+
+In the case of an institution or a religion, then, it is not by adding
+up the debit and credit columns and striking a balance sheet that the
+question whether it has helped or hurt mankind is to be determined. We
+cannot, for instance, place ninety-nine vices in one column, and a
+hundred virtues in another, and conclude therefrom that the
+institution or the religion should be preserved. Nor, conversely
+speaking, can we place a hundred vices against ninety-nine virtues,
+and, therefore, condemn, the institution. Even as a man is hanged for
+one act in his life, in spite of the thousand good acts which may be
+quoted against the one evil deed, so an institution or a religion is
+honored or condemned, as we said above, for its _ruling passion_.
+Mohammedanism, Judaism and Christianity have done much good, just as
+other religions have, but they are condemned today by modern thought,
+because they are a conspiracy against reason--because they combat
+progress, as if it were a crime!
+
+Another criticism frequently advanced against us is that we fail to
+realize that all the evil of which Christianity is said to have been
+the cause, is only the result of human ignorance and passion. When
+attention is called, for instance, to the intolerance and stubborn
+opposition to science, of Christianity, the answer given is, that this
+conduct is not only not inspired by the spirit of Christianity, but
+that it is in direct contradiction to its teachings. The Christians
+claim that all the luminous chapters in history have been inspired by
+their religion, all its sorrowful and black pages have been written by
+the passions of men. But this apology, which, we regret to say, is in
+every preacher's mouth, is not an honest one. In our opinion, both
+Mohammedanism and Christianity, as also Judaism, are responsible for
+the evil as well as the good they have accomplished in the world. They
+are responsible for the lives they have destroyed, as for the lives
+they have saved. They are responsible for the passions they have
+aroused,--for the hatred, the persecutions and the religious wars of
+the centuries, as for the piety and charity they have encouraged.
+
+The central idea in all the three religions mentioned above, is that
+God has revealed his will to man. There is, we say frankly, the root
+of all the evil which religion has inflicted upon our unfortunate
+earth. The poison is in both the flower and the fruit which that idea
+brings forth. If it be true that God has revealed his will, that he
+has told us, for instance, to believe in the Trinity, the atonement,
+the fall of man, and the dogma of eternal punishment, and we refuse to
+do so, will we not, then, be regarded as the most odious, the most
+heinous, the most rebellious, the most sacrilegious, the most stiff-
+necked, the most criminal people in the world? Think of refusing to
+believe as God has dictated to us! Think of saying _no!_ to one's
+Creator and Father in Heaven! Think of the consequences of differing
+with God, and tempting others to do the same! Is it at all strange
+that during the early centuries of Christianity, the people who
+hesitated to agree with the deity, or to believe as he wanted them to,
+were looked upon as incarnate fiends, as the accomplices of the devil
+and the enemies of the human race, and were treated accordingly?
+
+The doctrine of salvation by faith makes persecution inevitable. If to
+refuse to believe in the Trinity, or in the divinity of Christ, is a
+crime against God and will be punished by an eternity of hell in the
+next world, and if such a man endangers the eternal salvation of his
+fellows, is it not the duty of all religious people to endeavor to
+exterminate him and his race, now arid here? How can Christian people
+tolerate the rebel against their God, when God himself has pronounced
+sentence of death against him? Why not follow the example of the
+deity, as set forth in the persecutions of the Old Testament?
+
+When we have a God for a teacher, the highest and surest virtue is
+unconditional acquiescence. Judaism, Mohammedanism and Christianity,
+in giving us a God for a teacher, have taken away from us the liberty
+to think for ourselves. Each one of these three religions makes
+unconditional obedience the price of the salvation it offers, but do
+you know what other word in the English language unconditional
+obedience is a synonym of?--Silence! A dumb world, a tongue-tied
+humanity alone can be saved! The good man is the man on his knees with
+his mouth in the dust. But silence is sterility! Silence is slavery!
+Think, then, of the character of a religion which makes free speech,
+free thought, a crime--which hurls hell against the Protestant!
+
+There is a third question to be answered: It is true, they say to us,
+that there are many things in the Koran, the Old Testament and the
+New, which are really injurious, and which ought to be discarded, but
+there are also many beautiful principles, noble sentiments and high
+educational maxims in these scriptures. Why not, then, dwell upon
+these, and pass in silence over the objectionable teachings of these
+religions? It is not necessary to repeat again that in all so-called
+sacred scriptures, there are glorious truths. It could not have been
+otherwise. All literature, whether secular or religious, is the voice
+of man and sweeps the whole compass of human love and hope. We have no
+objection to quoting from the Veddas, the Avestas, the Koran or the
+Bible; nor do we hesitate to admire and enjoy and praise generously
+the ravishingly beautiful utterances of the poets and prophets of all
+times and climes. Nevertheless, it remains true that the modern world
+finds more practical help and inspiration in secular authors, in the
+books of science and philosophy, than in these so-called inspired
+scriptures. Jesus, who is popularly believed to have preached the
+Sermon on the Mount, has said little or nothing which can help the
+modern world as much as the scientific revelations of a student like
+Darwin, or of a philosopher like Herbert Spencer, or of a poet like
+Goethe or Shakespeare. We know this will sound like blasphemy to the
+believer, but a moment's honest and fearless reflection will convince
+everyone of the fact that neither Mohammed nor Jesus had in view
+modern conditions when they delivered their sermons. Jesus could have
+had no idea of a world outside of his little Palestine. The thought of
+the many races of the world mingling together in one country could
+never have occurred to him. His vision did not embrace the vista of
+two thousand years, nor did his mind rise to the level of the problems
+which today tax the brain and heart of man. Jesus believed implicitly
+that the world would speedily come to an end, that the sun and the
+moon would soon fall from the face of the sky, and that people living
+then in Palestine would not taste of death before they saw "the Son of
+Man return upon the clouds." Jesus had no idea of a progressive
+evolution of humanity. It was beyond him to conceive the consolidation
+of the nations into one fellowship, the new resources which science
+would tap, or the new energies which human industry would challenge.
+Jesus was in peaceful ignorance of the social and international
+problems which confront the world of today. The Sermon on the Mount,
+then, which is said to be the best in our gospels, can be of little
+help to us, for it could not have been meant for us. And it is very
+easy to show that the modern world ignores, not out of disrespect to
+Jesus, but by the force of circumstances and the evolution of society,
+the principles contained in that renowned sermon.
+
+I was waiting for transportation at the corner of one of the principal
+streets of Chicago, the other day, when, looking about me, I saw the
+tremendous buildings which commerce and wealth have reared in our
+midst. On one hand was a savings bank, on the other a colossal
+national bank, and up and down the street a thousand equally solid and
+substantial buildings, devoted to the interests of commerce and
+civilization. To bring out and emphasize the wide breach between the
+man who preached the Sermon on the Mount, and progressive and
+aggressive, busy and wealthy, modern Chicago, I took the words of
+Jesus and mentally inscribed them upon the walls of these buildings.
+Upon the savings bank--and a savings bank represents economy,
+frugality, self-sacrifice, self-restraint,--the desire of the people
+to provide for the uncertainties of the future, to lay by something
+for the education of their children, for the maintenance of their
+families when they themselves have ceased to live,--I printed upon the
+facade of this institution, figuratively speaking, these words of the
+Oriental Jesus:
+
+"Take no thought of the morrow, for the morrow will take care of
+itself."
+
+And upon the imposing front of the national bank, I wrote: "Lay not up
+for yourselves treasures on earth." If we followed these teachings,
+would not our industrial and social life sink at once to the level of
+the stagnating Asiatics?
+
+Pursuing this comparison between Jesus and modern life, I inscribed
+upon the handsome churches whose pews bring enormous incomes, and on
+the palatial residences of Bishops, with salaries of from twenty-five
+to a hundred thousand dollars, these words:
+
+"How hardly shall a rich man enter into the kingdom of Heaven," and,
+"It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a
+rich man to enter the kingdom of Heaven."
+
+In plain words, the gospel condemns wealth, and cries, "Woe unto you
+rich," and "Sell all thou hast and give it to the poor," which, by the
+way, would only be shifting the temptation of wealth from one class to
+another. Buckle was nearer the truth, and more modern in spirit, when
+he ascribed the progress of man to the pursuit of truth and the
+acquisition of wealth.
+
+But let us apply the teachings of Jesus to still other phases of
+modern life. Some years ago our Cuban neighbors appealed to the United
+States for protection against the cruelty and tyranny of Spanish rule.
+We sent soldiers over to aid the oppressed and down-trodden people in the
+Island. Now, suppose, instead of sending iron-clads and admirals,--Schley,
+Sampson and Dewey,--we had advised the Cubans to "resist not evil,"
+and to "_submit_ to the powers that be," or suppose the General of our
+army, or the Secretary of our navy, had counseled seriously our
+soldiers to remember the words of Jesus when fighting the Spaniards:
+"If a man smite thee on one cheek," etc. Write upon our halls of
+justice and courthouses and statute books, and on every lawyer's desk,
+these solemn words of Jesus: "He that taketh away thy coat, let him
+have thy cloak also."
+
+Introduce into our Constitution, the pride and bulwark of our
+liberties, guaranteeing religious freedom unto all,--these words of
+Paul: "If any man preach any other gospel than that which I have
+preached unto you, let him be accursed." Think of placing nearly fifty
+millions of our American population under a curse!
+
+Tell this to the workers in organized charities: "Give to every man
+that asketh of thee," which, if followed, would make a science of
+charity impossible.
+
+To the workingmen, or the oppressed seeking redress and protesting
+against evil, tell this: "Blessed are they that are persecuted," which
+is equivalent to encouraging them to submit to, rather than to resist,
+oppression.
+
+ Or upon our colleges and universities, our libraries and laboratories
+consecrated to science, write the words: "The wisdom of this world is
+foolishness with God," and "God has chosen the foolish to confound the
+wise."
+
+Ah, yes, the foolish of Asia, it is true, succeeded in confounding the
+philosophers of Europe. Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, Jesus, did
+replace Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Seneca, Cicero, Caesar and the
+Antonines! But it was a trance, a spell, a delirium only, and it did
+not last,--it could not last. The charm is at last broken. Europe is
+forever free from the exorcism of Asia.
+
+I believe the health and sanity and virtue of our Europe would
+increase a hundred fold, if we could, from this day forth, cease to
+pretend professing by word of mouth what in our own hearts and lives
+we have completely outgrown. If we could be sincere and brave; if our
+leaders and teachers would only be honest with themselves and honest
+with the modern world, there would, indeed, be a new earth and a new
+humanity.
+
+But the past is past. It is for us to sow the seeds which in the day
+of their fruition shall emancipate humanity from the pressing yoke of
+a stubborn Asiatic superstition, and push the future even beyond the
+beauty and liberty of the old Pagan world!
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: Figures on a Phoenician Vase, Showing the Use of the
+Cross, Evidently in Some Ceremony of a Religious Nature.]
+
+CHRISTIANITY AND PAGANISM
+
+
+
+Christianity as an Asiatic cult is not suitable to European races. To
+prove this, let us make a careful comparison between Paganism and
+Christianity. There are many foolish things, and many excellent
+things, in both the Pagan and the Christian religions. We are not
+concerned with particular beliefs and rites; it is Paganism as a
+philosophy of life, and Christianity as a philosophy of life, that we
+desire to investigate. And at the threshold of our investigation we
+must bear in mind that Paganism was born and grew into maturity in
+Europe, while Asia was the cradle of Christianity. It would be
+superfluous to undertake to prove that in politics, in government, in
+literature, in art, in science, in the general culture of the people,
+Europe was always in advance of Asia.
+
+Do we know of any good reason, when it comes to religion, why Asia
+should be incomparably superior to anything Europe has produced in
+that line? Unless we believe in miracles, the natural inference would
+be that a people who were better educated in every way than the
+Asiatics should have also possessed the better religion. I admit that
+this is only inferential, or _a priori_ reasoning, and that it still
+remains to be shown by the recital of facts, that Europe not only
+ought to have produced a better religion than Asia, but that she
+did.
+
+In my opinion, between the Pagan and Christian view of life there is
+the same difference that there is between a European and an Asiatic.
+What makes a Roman a Roman, a Greek a Greek, and a Persian a Persian?
+That is a very interesting, but also a very difficult question. Why
+are not all nations alike? Why is the oak more robust than the spruce?
+What are the subtle influences which operate in the womb of nature,
+where "the embryos of races are nourished into form and
+individuality?" I cannot answer that question satisfactorily, and I am
+not going to attempt to answer it at all. We know there is a radical
+difference between the European and the Asiatic; we know that Oriental
+and Occidental culture are the antitheses of each other, and nowhere
+else is this seen more clearly than in their interpretations of the
+universe, that is to say, in their religions.
+
+In order to understand the Oriental races, we must discover the
+standpoint from which they take their observations.
+
+But first, it is admitted, of course, that there are Europeans who are
+more Asiatic in their habits of life and thought than the Asiatics
+themselves, and, conversely, there are Asiatics who in spirit, energy
+and progressiveness are abreast of the most advanced representatives
+of European culture.
+
+Nor has Asia been altogether barren; she has blossomed in many spots,
+and she nursed the flame of civilization at a time when Europe was not
+yet even cradled.
+
+To show the intellectual point of view of the Asiatic, let me quote a
+passage from the Book of Job, which certainly is an Oriental
+composition, and one of the finest:
+
+"How, then, can man be justified with God, or how can he be clean that
+is born of a woman? _Man that is a worm, and the son of man, which
+is a worm_."
+
+This, then, is the standpoint of the Oriental. He believes he is a
+poor little worm. His philosophy must necessarily _trail_ in the dust.
+A worm cannot have the thoughts of an eagle; a worm cannot have the
+imagination of a _Titan_; a worm sees the world only as a worm may.
+This is the angle of vision of the Asiatic. He calls himself a worm,
+and naturally his view of life shrinks to the limits of his
+standpoint. To he perfectly fair, however, we must admit there are
+passages in all the bibles of the Orient which are as daring as those
+found in any European book, but they represent only the strayings of
+the Oriental mind, not its normal pulse. The habitual accent of the
+Oriental is that man, calling a woman his mother, is a worm. In the
+Psalms of David, or whoever wrote the book, we read these words: "_I
+am a worm, and not a man_." What did the Oriental see in the worm,
+which induced him to select it out of all things as the original, so
+to speak, of man? The worm _crawls_ and _creeps_ and _writhes_.
+Nothing is so distressing as to see its helpless wiggling--and its
+home is in the dust; dirt is its daily food. Moreover, it is in danger
+of being stamped or trampled into annihilation at any instant. A worm
+_represents the minimum_ of worth,--the dregs in the cup of existence;
+it is the scum or the froth of life, which one may blow into the air.
+It is impossible to descend lower than this in self-abasement.
+
+When the Oriental, therefore, says that man is a worm or "I am a
+worm," he is just as much _obeying the cumulative_ pressure of his
+Asiatic ancestry, and voicing the inherited submission of the Oriental
+mind, as Prometheus, with the vulture at his breast, and shaking his
+hand in the face of the gods, expresses the revolt of the European
+mind. The normal state for the Asiatic is submission; for the European
+it is independence. Slavery has a fascination for the children of the
+east. The air of independence is too sharp for them. They crave a
+master, a Sultan or a Czar, who shall own them body and soul. Through
+long practice, they have acquired the art of servility and flattery,
+of salaams and prostrations--an art in which they have become so
+efficient that it would be to them like throwing away so much capital
+to abandon its practice. They expect to go to Heaven on their knees.
+This is not said to hurt the feelings of the races of the Orient. We
+are explaining the influence of absolutism upon the products and
+tendencies of the human mind. The religion of the Orient, then,
+notwithstanding its many beautiful features like its politics, is a
+_product of the suppressed_ mind, which finds in the creeping worm of
+the dust the measure of its own worth. How different is the European
+from the Asiatic in this respect! The latter crawls upon the stage of
+this magnificent universe with the timidity, hesitancy and tremblings
+of a worm. True to his bringing up, he falls prostrate, overwhelmed by
+the marvelous immensities opening before him and the abysses yawning
+at his feet. He contracts and dwindles in size, imploring with
+outstretched hands to be spared because he is a poor worm. It is a
+part of his religion or philosophy that if he admits he is nothing but
+a worm, the dread powers will not consider him a rival or a rebel, but
+will look upon him as a confirmed subject, and permit him to live.
+This is his art, the strategy by which he hopes to secure his
+salvation.
+
+There has never been a republic in Asia, which is another way of
+saying that the Asiatic mind has never asserted its independence.
+Hence its thought smacks of slavery. In politics, as in religion, the
+Asiatic has always been passive. He has never been an actor, but only
+a spectator. It is his to nod the head, fold the arms and bend the
+knee. On earth he must have a king and a pope, and in heaven an Allah
+or a Jehovah. He has not been created for himself, but for the glory
+of his earthly and heavenly Lords. This radical difference between
+European self-appreciation and Asiatic self-depreciation furnishes the
+key to the problem under discussion.
+
+Paganism is the religion of a self-governing race. Buddhism, Judaism,
+Mohammedanism, and Christianity are religions born on a soil where man
+is owned by another. It will be impossible to imagine Marcus Aurelius,
+for instance, crawling upon his knees before any being, or calling
+himself a worm. One must have in his blood the taint of a thousand
+years of slavery, before he can stoop so low. Marcus Aurelius was a
+gentleman. The European conception of a gentleman implies self-respect
+and independence; the Oriental conception of a gentleman implies self-
+abasement and acquiescence. The Oriental gentleman is a man who serves
+his king as though he were his slave.
+
+But observe now how the Oriental proceeds to pull down his mind to the
+level of his body, which he has likened to a worm. When I was still a
+Presbyterian minister, I was invited to address a Sunday-school camp-
+meeting at Asbury Park in New Jersey. There were other speakers
+besides myself; one of them, known as a Sunday-school leader, had
+brought with him a chart of the human heart, which, when he arose to
+address the children, he spread on a blackboard before them: "This is
+a picture of your heart before you have accepted Jesus. What do you
+think of it?" he asked the school. "It is all black," was the answer;
+and it was. He had drawn a totally black picture to represent the
+heart of the child before conversion.
+
+In all the literature of Pagandom, there is not the least intimation
+of so fearful an idea as the total depravity of human nature. The
+Pagans never thought, spoke, or heard of such a thing. It was
+inconceivable to them; they would have recoiled from it as from a
+species of barbarism. How radically different, then, must European
+culture have been from the Asiatic. There is a gulf well-nigh
+impassible between the thought of a free-born citizen and that of the
+oppressed and enslaved Oriental.
+
+But let us continue. Not satisfied with thinking of himself as a worm,
+and of his intellectual and moral nature as totally degraded, the
+Oriental strikes with the same paralyzing stroke, at _the world in
+which he lives_, until it, too, withers and becomes an ugly and
+heinous thing. He calls the world a "vale of tears," ruled by the
+powers of darkness, and groaning under a primeval curse. "The world,
+the flesh and the devil" become a trio of iniquity and sin. Some of
+you in your earlier days must have sung that Methodist hymn which
+represents the world as a snare and a delusion:
+
+    "The world is a fleeting show
+     For man's illusion given."
+
+Given! Think of believing that the world has been purposely given us
+to lead us astray. The thought staggers the mind. It suggests a
+terrible conspiracy against man. For his ruin, sun, moon and stars co-
+operate with the devil. Help! we cry, as we realize our inability to
+cope with the tremendous powers hurling themselves against us like
+billows of the raging sea, and taking our breath away. It suggests
+that we are placed in a world which has been made purposely beautiful,
+in order to tempt us into sin. Think of such a belief! It is that of a
+slave. It is Asiatic; it is not European. Neither you nor I, in all
+our readings, have ever come across any such attitude toward nature in
+Pagan literature. The Greeks and the Romans loved nature and made
+lovely gods out of. every running brook, caressing zephyr, dancing
+wave, glistening dew, sailing cloud, beaming star, beautiful woman, or
+brave man. The Oriental suspects nature and regards her smiles--the
+shining of the sun, the perfume of the meadows, the swell of the sea,
+the fluttering of the branches tipped with blossoms, the emerald
+grass, the sapphire sky--looks upon all these as the seductive
+advances of a prostitute in whose embrace lurks death!
+
+But, once more; not satisfied with dragging the world down to the
+plane of his totally depraved nature, and that again to the level of
+the worm, the Asiatic projects his fatal thought into the next world
+and, crossing the grave, that silent and painless home of a tired
+race, he crowds the beyond with a thousand thousand pains and aches
+and horrors and fires--with sulphur and brimstone and burning hells.
+His frightened imagination invokes dark and infernal beings without
+number, fanning with their dark wings the very air he breathes. This
+is too revolting to think of. Poor slave! Inured to suffering,--to the
+lash, to oppression's crushing heel,--he dare not dream of a painless
+future, of a quiet, peaceful sleep at life's end, nor has he the
+divine audacity to invent a new world wherein the misery and slavery
+of his present existence will be impossible,--where all his tyrants
+will be dead, where he shall taste of sweet freedom and become himself
+a god. In his timidity and shrinking submission, with the spring of
+his heart broken, his spirit crushed, all independence strangled in
+his soul,--he puts in the biggest corner of his heaven even,--a
+_hell_!
+
+Nor does he pause there, but, stinging his slave imagination once
+more, he declares that this future of torture and hell-fire is
+_everlasting_. He cannot improve upon that. Deeper in degradation
+he cannot descend. That is the darkest thought he can have, and,
+strange to say, he hugs it to his bosom as a mother would her child.
+The doctrine of hell is the thought of a slave and of a coward. No
+free-horn man, no brave soul could ever have invented so abhorrent an
+idea. Only under a regime of absolutism, only under an Oriental Sultan
+whose caprice is law, whose vengeance is terrible, whose favors are
+fickle, whose power is crushing, whose greed is insatiable, whose
+torture instruments are without number, and whose dark dungeons always
+resound with the rattling of chains and the groans of martyrs--only
+under such a regime could man have invented an unending hell. But we
+were mistaken when we said that hell was the darkest that the Asiatic
+was capable of. He has grafted upon the European mind a belief which
+is darker still.
+
+Is there anything more precious in human life than children? The
+sternest heart melts, the fiercest features relax, at the sight of an
+innocent, sweet, laughing, frolicking babe in its mother's arms. Look
+at its glorious eyes, so full of surprises, so deep, so appealing!
+Look at the soft round hands, the little feet, the exquisite mouth,
+opening like a bud! Hear its prattle, which is nothing but the mind
+beginning to stir! Watch its gestures, the first language of the
+child! See it with its tiny arms about its mother's neck. Mark its joy
+when it is kissed. What else in our human world is more beautiful,
+more divine? And yet, and yet, the slave creed of Asia has drawn into
+its burning net of damnation even the cradle. John Burroughs describes
+how in a Catholic cemetery near where he lives he was shown a
+neglected, unkept corner, used for the burial of unbaptized children.
+Consecrated ground is denied to them, and so their poor bodies are
+huddled together in this profane plot, unblessed and unsaved. I do not
+wish to live in a world where such absurdities are not only
+countenanced, but where they are exalted even to the dignity of a
+religion!
+
+O holy children! O sweet children! huddled together in unconsecrated
+ground, and thus exposed to the cruelty of indescribable demons! Can
+you hear me? I am a man of compassion. I can forgive the murderer. I
+can pardon and pity the meanest wretch and take him into my arms, but
+I confess that even if I had a heart as big as the ocean, I could not,
+I would not, forgive the creed that can be guilty of such inhumanity
+against you,--dear, innocent ones, who were born to breathe but for a
+moment the harsh air of this world! When such gloom overpowers me and
+wrings from my lips such hard words, I find some little respite in
+contemplating the old Pagan world in its best days. I hasten for
+consolation to my Pagan friends, and in their sanity find healing for
+my bruised heart.
+
+In one of his letters, the Greek Plutarch says this about children,
+which I want you to compare with what St. Augustine, the
+representative of the Asiatic creed, says on the same subject. "It is
+irreligious," writes Plutarch, "to lament for those pure souls (the
+children) who have passed into a better life and a happier dwelling
+place." [Footnote: Plutarch Ad Uxorem. Comp. Lecky's History of
+European Morals. Vol. I.] Compare this Pagan tenderness for children
+with the Asiatic doctrine of infant damnation but recently thrown out
+of the Presbyterian creed. Yet, if St. Augustine is to be believed, it
+is a heresy to reject the damnation of unbaptized infants: "Whosoever
+shall tell," writes this Father of the church, "that infants shall be
+quickened in Christ who died without partaking in his sacrament, does
+both contradict the apostles' teaching and condemn the whole church."
+[Footnote: St. Augustine Epist. 166.] It is infinitely more religious
+to disagree with the apostles and the church, if that is their
+teaching. The Pagan view of children is the holier view. The doctrine
+of the damnation of children could only find lodgment in the brain of
+a slave or a madman. It is Asiatic and altogether foreign to the
+culture of Europe.
+
+All that we have advanced thus far may be summed up in one phrase:
+Asia invented the idea that man is a _fallen_ being. This idea, which
+is the _dors espinal_,--the backbone--of Christianity, never for once
+entered the mind of the European. We have already quoted from Job and
+the Psalms; the following is from the book of Jeremiah: "The heart is
+deceitful above all things and desperately wicked." This is one of the
+texts upon which the doctrine of the fall of man is based. We repeat
+that only under a religion of slavery, where one slave vies with
+another to abase himself before his lords and masters, could such an
+idea have been invented. There is not a man in all our sacred
+scriptures who could stand before the deity erect and unabashed, or
+who could speak in the accents of a Cicero who said, "We boast justly
+of our own virtue, which we could not do if we derived it from the
+deity and not from ourselves," or this from Epictetus, "It is
+characteristic of a wise man that he looks for all his good and evil
+from himself." Such independence was foreign to a race that believed
+itself _fallen_.
+
+In further confirmation of our position, it may be said that the
+models which the Pagans set up for emulation were men like themselves,
+only nobler. The models which the Orientals set up for imitation, on
+the other hand, were supernatural beings, or men who were supposed to
+possess supernatural powers. The great men for the Oriental are men
+who can work miracles, who possess magical powers, who possess secrets
+and can know how to influence the deity,--Moses, Joshua, David,
+Joseph, Isaiah, Jesus, Paul,--all demi-divinities. The Pagans, on the
+other hand, selected natural men, men like themselves, who had earned
+the admiration of their fellows. Let me quote to you Plutarch's
+eloquent sentence relative to this subject: "Whenever we begin an
+enterprise or take possession of a charge, or experience a calamity,
+we place before our eyes the examples of the greatest men of our own
+or of bygone ages, and we ask ourselves how Plato, or Epaminondas, or
+Lycurgus, or Agesilaus, would have acted. Looking into these
+personages, as into a faithful mirror, we can remedy our defects in
+word or deed."
+
+The Westminster Catechism, which in its essentials is a resume of our
+Asiatic religion, emphasizes the doctrine of the fall of man, of which
+the Pagan world knew nothing, and refused to believe it until priests
+succeeded in dominating the mind of Europe: "The catechism following
+the Scripture teaches that...we are not only a disinherited family,
+but we are personally depraved and demoralized." [Footnote:
+Westminster Catechism, Comments.] Goodness! the Oriental imagination,
+abused by slavery, cannot rid itself of the idea of being
+disinherited, turned out into the cold, orphaned and smitten with
+moral sores from head to foot. To the Pagan, such a description of man
+would have been the acme of absurdity. Again: "It (the fall) affirms
+that he (man) is all wrong, in all things and all the time."
+[Footnote: Westminster Catechism, Comments.] If this was comforting
+news to the Asiatic, the Pagan world would have rejected the idea as
+unworthy of men in their senses. Once more: "All mankind by their fall
+lost communion with God, are under his wrath and curse, and so made
+liable to all miseries in this life and to the pains of hell forever."
+[Footnote: Westminster Catechism, Comments.] And this is the Gospel we
+have imported from Asia!
+
+Is it not pathetic? Could slavery ever strike a deeper bottom than
+that? Standing before his owner, the Asiatic, of his own choice, hands
+himself over to be degraded, to be placed in chains and delivered up
+to the torments of hell forever. I despair of man. I would cry my
+heart out if I permitted myself to dwell upon the folly and stupidity
+and slavery of which man voluntarily makes himself the victim. Think
+of it! A man and a woman, nobody knows where or when, are supposed to
+have tasted of the fruit of a tree; the Oriental mind, with its
+crouching imagination, pounces upon this flimsy, fanciful tale with
+the appetite of a carrion crow, and exalts it to the dignity of an
+excuse for the eternal damnation of a whole world. I am dazed! I can
+say no more!
+
+Let us recapitulate. The Oriental distrust of the natural man, born of
+self-depreciation, which is the fruit of prolonged slavery, develops
+into a sort of mental canker spreading at a raging pace until the
+whole universe, with its glorious sun and stars, becomes an object of
+horror and loathing. Not satisfied with thinking of himself as a worm,
+of his intellectual and moral nature as totally depraved, he
+communicates his disease to the world in which he lives until it, too,
+shrinks and wastes away. Then the disease, finding no more on this
+side of the grave to feed upon, leaps over the grave and converts the
+beyond, the virgin worlds, into an _inferno_ with which to satiate its
+fear. Indeed frightful are the thoughts of a slave people!
+
+Let me now, in conclusion, call your attention to another difference
+between the Occidental and the Oriental mind. When the body is feeble
+or ill-nourished, it is less liable to resist disease; likewise when the
+mind is alarmed, cowed, or pinched with fear, it becomes more exposed
+to superstition. Superstition is the disease of the mind. It will keep
+away from robust minds, as physical disease from a body in health. Now,
+the Asiatic mind, scared into silence and subjection,--starved to a
+mere shadow of what it should be, falls an easy prey to all the maladies
+that mind is heir to. The European mind, on the other hand, with room
+and air to move and grow in, develops a vitality which offers resistance
+to all attacks of mental disease. That explains why superstition thrives
+with ignorance and slavery, and expires when science and liberty gain
+the ascendency. Sanitary precautions prevent physical disease; knowledge
+and liberty constitute the therapeutics of the mind. Why is the Oriental
+so prone or partial to miracle and mystery? His mind is sick. To believe
+is easier to him than to reason. He follows the line of the least
+resistance: he has invented faith that he may not have to think. The
+mental cells in his brain are so starved, so devitalized, that they have
+to be whipped into movement. Only the bizarre, the monstrous, the
+supernatural,--demons, ghosts, dream worlds, miracles and mysteries,--can
+hold his attention. Not science, but metaphysics, barren speculation,--is
+the product of the Oriental mind. The philosopher Bacon describes the
+Asiatic when he speaks of men who "have hitherto dwelt but little, or
+rather only slightly touched upon experience, whilst they have wasted
+much time on theories and fictions of the imagination."
+
+Again: I sometimes think that if it be true that monotheism, the idea
+of one God, was first discovered in Asia, it must have been suggested
+to them by the regime of Absolutism, under which they lived. Unlike
+Asia, democratic Europe believed in a republic of gods. Polytheism is
+more consonant with the republican idea, than monotheism. If we would
+let the American President rule the land without the aid of the two
+houses of congress or his cabinet ministers, his power would be
+infinitely more than it is now, but his gain would be the people's
+loss. His increased power would only represent so much more power
+taken away from the people. One God means not only more slaves, but
+more abject, more helpless ones. One God is a centralization which
+reduces man's liberty to a minimum. With more gods, and gods at times
+disagreeing among themselves, and all bidding for man's support, man
+would count for more. The Greeks could not tolerate a Jehovah, or an
+Allah, before whom the Oriental rabble bent the knee. "Allah knows,"
+exclaims the Moslem; that is why the Mohammedans continue in
+ignorance. "Allah is great," cries again the Turk. That is why he
+himself is small. The more powerful the sovereign, the smaller the
+subject.
+
+Now this leads us to a final reflection upon the difference between
+the mind brought up under restraint,--in slavery,--and the mind of the
+free. "The Pagan," to quote Lecky, "believed that to become acceptable
+to the deity, one must be virtuous;" the Asiatic doctrine, on the
+contrary, taught that "the most heroic efforts of human virtue are
+insufficient to avert a sentence of eternal condemnation, unless
+united with an implicit belief" in the dogmas of religion. In other
+words, the noblest of men cannot be saved by his own merits of
+character alone, for even when we have done our best, we are but
+"unprofitable slaves," quoting a Bible text. Only by the merits of
+Christ, or by the grace of God, can any man be saved. Have you ever
+paused to think of the purport of this piece of Orientalism? It wipes
+out every imaginable claim or right of man. Even when he is just and
+great and good, he has no rights, he is as vile as the vilest. Only
+the favor of the king can save,--only the grace of God, who can save
+the thief on the cross if he so pleases. Is he not absolute? If he
+extends his scepter, you live; if he smiles you are spared; if he
+patronizes you, you are fortunate. He says, live! you live. He says,
+die! you die. This is the apotheosis of despotism exalted into a
+revelation.
+
+What, then, is our creed, but the thoughts of an eastern slave
+population, cringing before the throne of a Sultan, and one by one
+signing away their liberties? "The foundation of all real grandeur is
+a spirit of proud and lofty independence," says Buckle; but that is
+not the spirit of Asia, or of its religion. It is, and we ought to try
+to keep it, the spirit of the Western world.
+
+I cannot imagine how we in this country, born of sturdy parents, born
+of the freedom-loving Pagans of Rome and Greece, born of men who shook
+their hands in the face of heaven, and pulled the gods off their
+thrones when they violated the rights of man,--I cannot understand how
+we have thrown overboard the proud, lofty spirit of independence of
+the Pagans,--our forefathers, and taken upon our necks the strangling
+yoke of the slave-thought of Asia!
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: Christ, Half Woman, at Baptism in Jordan. Cathedral of
+Chartres, France.]
+
+
+
+
+
+PART III.
+
+
+
+
+SOME MODERN OPINIONS ABOUT JESUS.
+
+_Christianity "dwells with noxious exaggeration about the person of
+Jesus."_--Emerson.
+
+
+
+Christmas is the season in the year when pulpit and press dwell, with
+what Emerson calls "noxious exaggeration," about the work and life, as
+well as the person of Jesus. We have, lying before us, the Christmas
+sermon of so progressive a teacher as the Rev. Jenkin Lloyd Jones.
+[Footnote: Unitarian-Independent preacher of All Souls Church,
+Chicago.] Here is his text: "And the Word became flesh and dwelt among
+us, and we beheld his glory, glory as of the only begotten from the
+Father."--John 1:14. How our educated neighbor can find food for sober
+reflection in so mystical and metaphysical an effusion, is more than
+we can tell. Who is the _Word_ that became flesh? And when did the
+event take place? What does it mean to be the "only begotten from
+the Father?" We know what it means in the orthodox sense, but what
+does it mean from the Unitarian standpoint of Mr. Jones? But the text
+faithfully reflects the discourse which follows. It is replete with
+unlimited compliments to this _Word_ which became flesh and assumed
+the name of Jesus. The following is a fair sample:
+
+"I am compelled to think of Jesus of Nazareth as an epoch-making soul,
+an era-forming spirit, a character in whom the light of an illustrious
+race and a holy ancestry was focalized, a personality from which
+radiated that subtle, creative power of the spirit which defies all
+analysis, which baffles definition, which overflows all words."
+
+Goodness! this is strong rhetoric, and we regret that the evidence
+justifying so sweeping an appreciation has been withheld from us.
+Although the doctor says that Jesus "defies all analysis, baffles
+definition and overflows all words," he nevertheless proceeds to
+devote fifteen pages to the impossible task. "I am compelled to think
+of him as one who won the right of preeminence in the world's
+history," continues Mr. Jones, as if he had not said enough.
+
+That is a definite claim, and personally, we would be glad to see it
+made good. But truth compels us to state that the claim is unjust.
+Without entering into the question of the authenticity of the gospels,
+a question which we have discussed at some length in our pamphlet on
+the "Worship of Jesus," we beg to submit that there is nothing in the
+gospels,--the only records which speak of him,--to entitle him to the
+"right of preeminence in the world's history." No one knows better
+than Mr. Jones that the sayings attributed to Jesus--the finest of
+them--are to be found in the writings of Jewish and Pagan teachers
+antedating the birth of Jesus by many centuries.
+
+Was it, then, for his "works," if not for his "words," that Jesus "won
+the right of preeminence in the world's history"? What did he do that
+was not done by his predecessors? Was he the only one who worked
+miracles? Had the dead never been raised before? Had the blind, and
+the lame, and the deaf, remained altogether neglected before Jesus
+took compassion upon them? Moreover, what credit is there in opening
+the eyes of the blind or in raising the dead by miracle? Did it cost
+Jesus any effort to perform miracles? Did it imply a sacrifice on his
+part to utilize a small measure of his _infinite_ power for the
+good of man? Who, if he could by miracle feed the hungry, clothe the
+naked and give light and sound to the blind and deaf, would be selfish
+enough not to do so? If Mr. Jones does not believe in miracles, then
+Jesus contributed even less than many a doctor contributes today to
+the welfare of the world. More poor and diseased people are visited
+and medicined gratuitously by a modern physician in one month, than
+Jesus cured miraculously in the two or three years of his career.
+Jesus, if he was "the only begotten of God," as Mr. Jones' text
+states, was not in any danger of contracting disease himself, which is
+not the case with the doctors and nurses who extend their services to
+people afflicted with contagious and abhorrent diseases. Moreover,
+Jesus' power must have come to him divinely, while we have to study,
+labor, and conquer with the sweat of our brow any power for good that
+we may possess. If Jesus as a God opened the eyes of the blind, would
+it not have been kinder if he had prevented blindness altogether? If
+Jesus can open the eyes of the blind, then, why is there blindness in
+the world? How many of the world's multitude of sufferers did Jesus
+help? Which of us, if he had the divine power, would not have extended
+it unto every suffering child of man? Of what benefit is it to open
+the eyes of a few blind people, two thousand years ago, in one
+country, when he could, by his unique divinity, have done so much
+more? Mr. Jones falls into the orthodox habit of not applying to Jesus
+the same canons of criticism by which _human_ beings are judged.
+
+But perhaps the "preeminence of Jesus" lay in his willingness to give
+his life for us. Noble is every soul who prefers truth and duty to
+life. But was Jesus the only one, or even the first to offer himself
+as a sacrifice upon the altar of humanity? If Jesus died for us, how
+many thousands have died for him--and by infinitely more cruel deaths?
+It is easier for an "only begotten" of God, himself a God--who knows
+death can have no power over him--who sees a throne prepared for him
+in heaven--who is sure of rising from the dead on the third day--to
+face death, than for an ordinary mortal. Yet Jesus showed less
+courage, if his reporters are reliable, than almost any martyr whose
+name shines upon memory's golden page.
+
+The European churches are full of pictures showing Jesus suffering
+indescribable agonies as the critical hour draws nigh. We saw, in
+Paris, a painting called "The Holy Face," _La Sainte Face_, which
+was, truly, too horrible to look upon; big tears of blood trickling
+down his cheeks, his head almost drooping over his chest, an
+expression of excruciating pain upon his features, his eyes fairly
+imploring for help,--he is really breaking down under the weight of
+his cross. Compare this picture with the serenity of Socrates drinking
+the hemlock in prison!
+
+Nor would it do to say that this is only the Catholic way of
+representing Jesus in his passion. The picture is in the gospels, it
+may be seen in the Garden of Gethsemane and on the cross with all its
+realism. Far be it from us to withhold from Jesus, if he really
+suffered as the gospels report, one iota of the love and sympathy he
+deserves, but why convert the whole world into a black canvas upon
+which to throw the sole figure of Jesus? Which of us, poor, weak,
+sinful though we are, would not be glad to give his life, if thereby
+he could save a world? Do you think we would mourn and groan and weep
+tears of blood, or collapse, just when we should be the bravest, if we
+thought that by our death we would become the divine Savior of all
+mankind? Would we stammer, "Let this cup pass from me, if it be
+possible," or tear our hearts with a cry of despair: "My God, my God,
+why hast thou forsaken me," if we knew that the eternal welfare of the
+human race depended upon our death? If the Russian or Japanese soldier
+can take his home and wife and children,--his hopes and loves, his
+life,--his all,--and throw them into the mouth of the cannon, dying
+with a shout upon his lips,--who would hesitate to do the same, when
+not the salvation of one country alone, but of the whole world,
+depended upon it? There are examples of heroism in the annals of man
+which would bring the blush to the cheeks of Jesus, if his biographers
+have not abused his memory.
+
+Wherein, then, was the "preeminence" of Jesus? Upon what grounds does
+Mr. Jones claim, with "unlimited rhetoric," to use his own expression,
+for Jesus "the right of preeminence in the world's history?"
+
+While there is neither a commendable saying nor an act attributed to
+Jesus in our gospels which teachers older than himself had not already
+said or done, there are some things in which his seniors clearly
+outshine him. King Asoka, for instance, the Buddhist sovereign of
+India, 250 years before Jesus, in one of his edicts chiseled on the
+rocks of India, declared against human slavery and offered the sweet
+gift of liberty to all in captivity. Jesus used the word slave in one
+of his parables (improperly translated servant), without expressing
+himself on the subject, except to intimate that when a slave does all
+his duty faithfully, even then he is only an "unprofitable slave,"
+unworthy of the thanks of his master. There was slavery of the worst
+kind in the world of Jesus, and yet he never opened his mouth to
+denounce the awful curse. It is claimed that Jesus' doctrine of love
+was indirectly a condemnation of slavery. Even then, inasmuch as other
+and earlier teachers did more than strike only indirectly at the
+ancient evil,--for they not only taught the brotherhood of man, too,
+but expressed themselves, besides, positively on the subject of
+slavery,--they have a prior claim to the "right of preeminence" in the
+world's history, if they cared anything about ranks and titles.
+
+The doctrine of humanity to animals, our dumb neighbors, is a positive
+tenet in Buddhism; is it in Christianity?
+
+Two and a half centuries before Jesus, under the influence of Buddha's
+teaching, King Asoka convened a religious Parliament, offering to each
+and every representative of other religions, absolute religious
+liberty. Is there any trace of such tolerance in any of the sayings of
+Jesus? On the contrary, the claim of Jesus that he is the light, the
+way, the truth, and that no man can come to the father except through
+him, leaves no room for the greatest of all boons--liberty, without
+which every promise of religion is only a mockery and a cheat. Not
+even heaven and eternal life can be accepted as a consideration for
+the loss of liberty. The liberty of teaching is alien to a teacher who
+claims, as Jesus did, that he alone is infallible, and that all who
+came before him were "thieves and robbers."
+
+Of course, Mr. Jones will deny that Jesus ever said any of the things
+ascribed to him which spoil his ideal picture of him. But he finds his
+ideal Jesus, whose personality "defies analysis, baffles definition
+and overflows all words," in the gospels; if these are not reliable,
+what becomes of his argument? If the writers of our gospels bear false
+witness against Jesus when they represent him as "cursing the fig
+tree," as calling his enemies liars and devils, as calling the
+Gentiles dogs, as claiming equality with God, as menacing with
+damnation all who disagree with him,--what security have we that they
+speak truthfully when they put the beatitudes in his mouth? We have no
+more reliable authority for attributing to Jesus the beatitudes than
+we have for holding him responsible for the curses attributed to him
+in the gospels.
+
+To return to our comparison between Jesus and his illustrious
+colleagues. It is with cheerful praise and generous pleasure that we
+express our admiration for many of the sayings, parables, and precepts
+attributed to Jesus. The fact that they are much older than Jesus,
+more universal than Christianity, only enhances their value and
+reflects glory upon the human race, a glory of which Jesus, too, as a
+brother, if he ever existed, has his share. We love and admire every
+teacher who has a message for humanity; we feel our indebtedness to
+them and would deem ourselves fortunate if we could contribute to the
+advancement of their noble influence; but we have no idols, and in our
+pantheon, truth is above all. We have no hesitation to sacrifice even
+Jesus to the Truth. If we were in India, and some Hindoo preacher
+spoke of Buddha, as Mr. Jones does of Jesus, as a "personality defying
+all analysis, baffling definition and overflowing all words"--one who
+has "won the right to preeminence in the world's history,"--we would
+protest against it, in the interest of Jesus and other teachers, as we
+now protest against Mr. Jones' Jesus, in the interest of truth. We
+have a suspicion, however, that if Mr. Jones, or preachers of his
+style, were Hindoos, they would speak of Buddha, as they now, being
+Christians, speak of Jesus--echoing in both instances the
+_popular_ opinion.
+
+The best way to illustrate Mr. Jones' style of reasoning is to quote a
+few examples from his sermon:
+
+"The story of the Good Samaritan has had a power beyond the story of
+the senseless blighting of the fig tree; the ages have loved to think
+of Jesus talking with the woman at the well more than they have loved
+to think of him as manufacturing wine at Cana. No man is so orthodox
+but that he reads more often the Sermon on the Mount than he does the
+story of the drowning of the pigs."
+
+But if he did not "drown the pigs," the reporter who says he did might
+have also collected from ancient sources the texts in the Sermon on
+the Mount and put them in Jesus' mouth.
+
+Again:
+
+"The dauntless crusaders who now in physical armament and again in the
+more invulnerable armament of the spirit, went forth, reckless of
+danger, regardless of cost, to rescue the world from heathen hands or
+to gather souls into the fold of Christ."
+
+We can hardly believe Mr. Jones speaking of "rescuing the world from
+_heathen_ hands," etc. Who were the heathen? And think of
+countenancing the craze of the crusades, which cost a million lives to
+possess the empty sepulchre of a mythical Savior! Is it one of the
+merits of Christianity that it calls other people "heathen," or that
+it kills them and lays waste their lands for an empty grave?
+
+Once more:
+
+"Jesus had tremendous expectations....He believed mightily in the
+future, not as some glory-rimmed heaven after death, but as a
+conquering kingdom of love and justice. Jesus took large stock in
+tomorrow; he laughed at the prudence that never dares, the mock
+righteousness of the ledger that presumes to balance the books and pay
+all accounts up to date. He knew that the prudence of commerce, the
+thrift of trade, the exclusive pride of the synagogue, must be broken
+through with a larger hope and a diviner enterprise. He believed there
+was to be a day after today and recognized his obligation to it; he
+acknowledged the debt which can never be paid to the past and which is
+paid only by enlarging the resources of the future. Life, to Jesus,
+was an open account; he was a forward looker; he was honest enough to
+recognize his obligations to the unborn. Perhaps this adventurous
+spirit in the realms of morals, even more than his heart of love, has
+made him the superlative leader of men."
+
+We sincerely wish all this were true, and would be glad to have Mr.
+Jones furnish us with the texts or evidences which have led him to his
+conclusions. Would not his adjectives be equally appropriate in
+describing any other teacher he admires? "Jesus had tremendous
+expectations." Well, though this is somewhat vague as a tribute to
+Jesus, we presume the preacher means that Jesus was an optimist. The
+reports, unfortunately, flatly contradict Mr. Jones. Jesus was a "man
+of sorrows." He expressly declared that this earth belonged to the
+devil, that the road which led to destruction was crowded, while few
+would enter the narrow gates of life. He said: "Many are called but
+few are chosen;" he told his disciples to confine their good work to
+the lost sheep of the House of Israel, and intimated that it were not
+wise to take the bread of children (his people) and give it to the
+dogs (other people). The "Go ye into all the world" is a post-
+resurrection interpolation, and Mr. Jones does not believe in the
+miracle of the resurrection. Jesus looked forward to the speedy ending
+and destruction of the world, "when the sun and moon would turn black,
+and the stars would fall;" and he doubted whether he would find any
+faith in the world when "the son of man cometh"; and it was Jesus who
+expected to say to the people on his left, "depart from me, ye cursed,
+into _everlasting_ punishment." This is the teacher, whose pessimism
+is generally admitted, of whom Mr. Jones says that, he had "tremendous
+expectations."
+
+"He believed there was to be a day after today, and recognized his
+obligation to it," writes Mr. Jones in his indiscriminate laudation of
+Jesus. Is that why he said "Take no thought of the morrow," and
+predicted the speedy destruction of the world? "He acknowledged the
+debt which can never be paid to the past." A sentence like this has
+all the ear-marks of a glittering generality. Did Jesus show gratitude
+to the past when he denounced all who had preceded him in the field of
+love and labor as "thieves and robbers?" Equally uncertain is the
+following: "He was honest enough to recognize his obligations to the
+unborn." How does our clerical neighbor arrive at such a conclusion?
+From what teaching or saying of Jesus does he infer his respect for
+the rights of posterity? Indeed, how could a teacher who said, "He
+that believeth not shall be damned," he described as recognizing the
+rights of future generations? To menace with damnation the future
+inquirer or doubter is to seek to enslave as well as to insult the
+generations yet to be born, instead of "recognizing his obligations"
+to them. The Jesus Mr. Jones is writing about is not in the gospels.
+
+"Do you ask me if I am a 'Christian'?" writes Mr. Jones, and he
+answers the question thus: "I do not know. Are you? If anyone is
+inclined to give me that high name, with the spiritual and ethical
+connotation in mind, I am complimented and will try to merit it." As
+our excellent neighbor is still in the dark, and does not know whether
+or not, or in what sense he is a Christian--unless he is allowed to
+define the word himself,--and as he also intimates that he would like
+to be a _Jesus_ Christian, but not a Church Christian, we humbly
+beg to express this opinion: The American churches of today,
+notwithstanding all their shortcomings, are, on every question of
+ethics and science, of charity and the humanities, far in advance of
+Jesus, and that in these churches there are men and women who in
+breadth of mind and nobility of spirit are as good, and even better
+than Jesus.
+
+Does our neighbor grasp our meaning? Charging all the bad in a
+religion to the account of man, and attributing all the good to God,
+or to a demi-god, is, after all, only a dodge. Had not the disciples
+of Jesus been braver than their master, his religion would not have
+come down to us. And had the Christian church lived up to the letter
+of this Semitic teacher, Europe would never have embraced
+Christianity. By modernizing Jesus, by selecting his more essential
+teachings, and relegating his eccentricities to the background, by
+making his name synonymous with the best aspirations of humanity, by
+idealizing his character and enclosing it with a human halo, the
+churches have saved Jesus from oblivion. Jesus was a tribal teacher,
+the church universalized him; Jesus had no gospel for women, the
+church has after much hesitation and wavering converted him to the
+European attitude toward women; Jesus was silent on the question of
+slavery, the churches have urged him with success to champion the
+cause of the bondsman; Jesus denounced liberty of conscience when he
+threatened with hell-fire the unbeliever; but the churches have won
+him over to the modern secular principle of religious tolerance; Jesus
+believed only in the salvation of the elect, but the church to a
+certain extent has succeeded in reconciling him to the larger hope;
+Jesus was an ascetic, preferring the single life to the joys of the
+home, and fasting and praying to the duty and privilege of labor, but
+the church in America and Protestant Europe at least has made Jesus a
+lover and a seeker of wealth and knowledge, the two great forces of
+civilization. No longer does Jesus say, "hate your father and mother;"
+no longer does he cry in our great thoroughfares, "blessed are the
+poor;" no longer is his voice heard denouncing this world as belonging
+to the devil. The modern church, modernized by science, has in turn
+modernized the gospels. And yet Mr. Jones prefers to be a Christian
+such as Jesus was. He is repeating one of those phrases which
+apologists use when they give God all the praise and man all the
+blame.
+
+In conclusion: Mr. Jones admits that Christianity is not unique, that
+Buddha conquered greater tyrannies than Christ; that "humility and
+self-sacrifice...have world-wide foundations;" but he draws no
+conclusions from these important facts, but returns in a hurry to say
+that Jesus is the "finest and dearest stream swelling the mighty tide
+of history." The only objection we have to Mr. Jones' Jesus is that he
+is not real.
+
+
+
+
+ANOTHER RHETORICAL JESUS
+
+
+
+The Rev. W. H. H. Boyle, of St. Paul, improves even on Mr. Jones'
+superlative tribute to Jesus. He says:
+
+"Can you imagine such a thing as a black sun, or the reversal of
+creation or the annihilation of primal light? Then, give rest to
+imagination and soberly think what it would mean to have the spiritual
+processes of two millenniums reversed, to have the light of life in
+the unique personally of Jesus forever eclipsed."
+
+Here is an idolator, indeed. To make an idol of his Jesus he takes a
+sponge, and without a twinge of conscience, wipes out all the beauty
+and grandeur of the ancient world. Has this gentleman never heard of
+Greece? During a short existence, in only two centuries and a half,
+that little land of Greece achieved triumphs in the life of the mind
+so unparalleled as to bring all the subsequent centuries upon their
+knees before it. In philosophy, in poetry,--lyrical, epical,
+dramatic,--in sculpture, in statesmanship, in ethics, in literature,
+in civilization,--where is there another Greece?
+
+Oh, land of Sophocles! whose poetry is the most perfect flower the
+earth has ever borne,--of Phidias and Praxiteles! whose immortal
+children time cannot destroy, though the gods are dead--whose
+masterpieces the earth wears as the best gem upon her brow,--of
+Aristotle! the intellect of the world,--of Socrates! the _parens
+philosophiae_, and its first martyr!--of Aristides! the Just--of
+Phocion and Epaminondas!--of Chillon and Anarcharchis! whose devotion
+to duty and beauty have perfumed the centuries! O, Athens, the bloom
+of the world! Hear this sectarian clergyman, in his black Sunday
+robes, closing his eyes upon all thine immortal contributions, pulling
+down like a vandal, as did the early Christians, the libraries and
+temples, the culture and civilization of the ancient world--the
+monuments of thy unfading glory--to build therewith a pedestal for his
+mythical Christ!
+
+I can imagine the reverend advocate saying: "But there was slavery in
+Greece, and immorality, too,"--of course, and is the Christian world
+free from them? Has Christ after two thousand years abolished war?
+Indeed, he came to bring, as he says, "not peace, but a sword!" Has
+Jesus healed the world of the maladies for which we blame the Pagan
+world? Has he made humanity free? Has he saved the world from the fear
+of hell? Has he redeemed man from the blight of ignorance? Has he
+broken the yoke of superstition and priest-craft? Has he even
+succeeded in uniting into one loving fold his own disciples? How,
+then, can this clergyman, with any conscience for truth, compare a
+world deprived of the god of his sect, to a tomb--to a blind man
+groping under a blackened sun? Must a man rob the long past in order
+to provide clothing for his idol? Must he close his eyes upon all
+history before he can behold the beauty of his own cult?
+
+But let us quote again:
+
+"To efface from the statute books of Christendom every law which has
+its basal principle in Christian ethics; to abolish every institution
+which ministers to human need and misfortune in the name of Him whose
+sympathy is the heart of the divine; to lower every sense of moral
+obligation between man and man to the old level of Paganism to silence
+the great oratorios which have made music the echo of the divine; to
+take down from the galleries of the world the sacred canvases with
+which genius has sanctified them; to obliterate from memorial
+symbolism the cross of sublime renunciation which has been the rebuke
+of human selfishness; to disband every organization which makes
+prayer, through the merit of one great name, the hand of man upon the
+arm of God--you may be able to think of an ocean without a harbor, of
+a sky without a sun, of a garden without a flower, of a face without a
+smile, of a home without a mother; but, can you think of a world with
+holiness and happiness in it and Jesus gone out of it? You cannot,
+'Then, come, let us adore him,'" etc., etc.
+
+Observe how this special pleader avoids breathing so much as a word
+about any of the many evils which may be laid at the door of his
+religion with as much show of reason as the benefits he enumerates.
+
+What about the dark ages which held all Europe for the space of a
+thousand years in the clutches of an ignorance the like of which no
+other religion in the world had known?
+
+What about the atrocious inquisition to which no other religion in the
+world had ever been able to give the swing that Christianity did?
+
+What about the persecution and burning of helpless women as witches?
+Is there anything as infamous as that in any religion outside of ours?
+
+What about the wholesale massacres in the name of the true faith?
+
+What about the centuries of religious wars, the most imbecile as well
+as the most bloody, from the effects of which Germany, France, Italy
+and England are still suffering today?
+
+And need we also call attention to that obstinate resistance to
+science and progress, which rewarded every discoverer of a new power
+for man, with the halter or the stake, which filled the dungeons with
+the _elite_ of Europe,--which even dug open graves to punish the
+bones of the dead savants and illuminators of man?
+
+The Pagans, in their gladitorial games, sacrificed the lives of
+slaves: Christianity made a holocaust of the noblest intellects of
+Europe.
+
+And shall we speak of the bigotry, the fanaticism, the bitter
+sectarian prejudices which to this day embitter the life of the world?
+Are not these, too, the fruits of Christianity?
+
+We know the answer which the reverend gentleman would make to this:
+"All the evils you speak of are chargeable, not to Christianity, but
+to its abuse." But we have already shown that that argument won't do.
+We might as well say that all the evil of Paganism was due to its
+abuse. The mere fact that Christianity lent itself to such fearful
+distortions, and was capable of arousing the worst passions in man on
+such a fearful scale, is condemnation enough. It shows that there was
+in it a potentiality for evil beyond compare. Moreover, wherein does a
+"divine" religion differ from a man-made cult, if it is equally
+powerless to protect itself against perversion? In what sense is Jesus
+a god, while all his rivals were "mere men," if he is as helpless to
+prevent the abuse of his teachings as they were? But it would not be
+difficult to show that the characteristic crimes we have scheduled are
+the direct inspiration of a religion claiming exclusiveness and
+infallibility. Such texts as, "there is no other named given under
+heaven by which men can be saved;" "Let such an one (the man who will
+not be converted) be like a heathen and a publican to you;" John's
+advice to refrain from saying "God speed" to the alien in faith; the
+bible command not to "suffer a witch to live;" and many of the dogmas
+which might be cited,--corrupted the sympathies, perverted the
+judgment of the noblest, while at the same time they stung the evil-
+minded into something like madness. The world knew nothing of the
+tyranny of dogma, or religious oppression and persecution,
+comparatively speaking, until the advent of the Jewish-Christian
+Church.
+
+"Verily I say unto you, it shall be more tolerable for the land of
+Sodom and of Gomorrah, in the day of judgment, than for that city,"
+said Jesus, speaking of the people who might not accept his teachings.
+How can Christianity be a religion of love, and how can it believe in
+tolerance, when it threatens the unbeliever with a fate worse than
+that of Sodom and Gomorrah?
+
+The benefits which the Rev. Boyle parades as the direct fruit of his
+cult, did not appear until after the Renaissance, that is to say,--the
+return to Pagan culture and ideals. The art and science and the
+humanities which he praises, followed upon the gradual decline of the
+Jewish-Christian religion which had already destroyed two
+civilizations.
+
+But Greece and Rome triumphed. To this day, if we need models in
+poetry, in art, in philosophy, in literature, in politics, in
+patriotism, in service to the public, in heroism and devotion to
+ideals--we must go to the Greeks and the Romans. Not that these
+nations were by any means perfect, but because they have not been
+surpassed. In our colleges and schools, when we wish to bring up our
+children in the ways of wisdom and beauty, we do not give them the
+Christian fathers to read, we give them the Pagan classics.
+
+We ask this St. Paul clergyman to read Gibbons' tribute to Pagan Rome:
+"If a man was called upon to fix a period in the history of the world
+during which the condition of the human race was most happy and
+prosperous, he would without hesitation name that which elapsed from
+the death of Domitian to the accession of Commodus." This period
+included such men and rulers as Nerva, Trajan, Adrian, Antoninus Pius,
+and above all, the greatest of them all--the greatest ruler our earth
+has ever owned--Marcus Aurelius Antoninus. Let the Rev. W. H. H. Boyle
+look over the names of the kings of Israel and of Christian France,
+Spain, Italy and England, and find among them any one that can come up
+to the stature of these Pagan monarchs.
+
+
+
+
+"WE OWE EVERYTHING TO JESUS"
+
+
+
+But, behold! another clergyman with the claim that the modern world
+owes all its joy and cheer, during the Christmas season, "to the babe
+in Bethlehem." "What was it that brought about such a condition that
+crowds the stores, that overflows the mails, and loads the express
+with packages of every description? The little babe in Bethlehem set
+all this in motion,--the wreath, the holly, are all from him."
+
+When we read the above and more to the same effect, we wrote to the
+Rev. W. A. Bartlett, [Footnote: Pastor First Congregational Church,
+Chicago.] the author of the words quoted, asking him if he was
+correctly reported. We reproduce herewith a copy of our letter:
+
+DEC, 20, 1904.
+_Rev. W. A. Bartlett,
+Washington Boul. and Ann St., Chicago_
+
+DEAR MR. BARTLETT: In the report of your sermon of last Sunday you are
+represented as claiming that it is to the "babe in Bethlehem" we owe
+the Christmas festival, the giving of presents, etc., etc. I write to
+ascertain whether this report has stated your position correctly? I am
+sure you know that Christmas is only a recomposition of an old Pagan
+festival, and that "giving presents" at this season is a much older
+practice than Christianity. Of course, you do not believe that
+Christmas is celebrated in December and on the 25th of the month
+because Jesus was born on that day. You know as well as I do of the
+Pagan festivals celebrated in the month of December throughout the
+Roman Empire--celebrations which were accompanied with the giving and
+receiving of presents. Moreover, you know also, as every student does,
+that in the Latin countries of Europe it is not on Christmas day, but
+on New Year's day, that presents are exchanged. Surely you would not
+claim that for New Year's day, too, the world is indebted to the
+Bethlehem babe. You must also have known that the use of the evergreen
+and the holy was in vogue among the Druids of Pagan times. Be kind
+enough, therefore, to give me, if I am not asking too much, the facts
+which led you to make the statement to which I have called your
+attention, and believe me, with great respect, etc.
+
+To this neighborly letter the reverend gentleman did not condescend to
+send an acknowledgment. We knocked at his door, as it were, and he, a
+minister of the Gospel, declined to open it unto us. Clergymen, as a
+rule, say that they are happy when people will let them preach the
+gospel to them. In our case, we saved the clergyman from calling upon
+us, we called upon him--that is to say, we wrote and gave him an
+opportunity to enlighten us, to bring his influence to bear upon us,
+to open our eyes to the error of our ways,--and he would have nothing
+to do with us. Was not our soul worth saving? Did the Rev. W. A.
+Bartlett consider us beyond hope? We ask this clergyman to place his
+hand upon his conscience and ask himself whether he did the brotherly
+thing in not returning a friendly and kindly answer to our honest
+inquiry for truth. But he did not answer us, because he had no real
+faith in his gospel. It was not good enough for an inquirer.
+
+But the clergyman, according to reports, made an attempt on the Sunday
+following the receipt of our letter, before his congregation, to
+answer indirectly our question. He denied that "Christmas was a
+recomposition of an old Pagan festival," and said that the early
+Christians "fasted and wept" because of these Pagan festivals, and
+that as early as the second century, the birth of Jesus was
+commemorated. In short, he pronounced it "a distortion of history" to
+assign to the Christmas festival a Pagan origin. In his great work on
+the _History of Civilization,_ Buckle says this, to which we call
+Dr. Bartlett's attention: "As soon as eminent men grown unwilling to
+enter any profession, the luster of that profession will be tarnished;
+first its reputation will be lessened, then its power abridged." We
+fear this is true of Mr. Bartlett's profession.
+
+How can Christian ministers hope to engage the interest of the reading
+public if they themselves abstain from reading? Ask a secular
+newspaper about the origin of the Christmas celebration, and _it_
+will tell you the truth. On the very Sunday that Dr. Bartlett was
+denouncing, in his church, our claim that the Pagans gave us the
+December season of joy and merry-making, as "a distortion of history,"
+and editorial in the _Chicago Tribune_ said this:
+
+But the festive character of the celebration, the giving of presents,
+the feasting and merriment, the use of evergreen and holly and
+mistletoe, are all remnants of Pagan rites.
+
+Continuing, the same editorial called attention to the antiquity of
+the institution:
+
+Long before the shepherds on the Judean plains saw the star rise in
+the east and heard the tidings of "Peace on earth, good will to man,"
+the Roman populace surged through the streets at the feast of Saturn,
+giving themselves up to wild license and boisterous merry making. They
+exchanged presents, they decorated their dwellings and temples with
+green boughs; slaves were given special privileges, and the spirit of
+good will was abroad among men. This Roman Saturnalia came at the
+winter solstice, the same as does our Christmas day, while the birth
+of Christ is widely believed to have taken place at some other season
+of the year.
+
+But Dr. Bartlett may have had in mind the quotation from Anastasius:
+
+"Our Lord, Jesus Christ, was born of the Holy Virgin, Mary, in
+Bethlehem, at one o'clock in the afternoon of December 25th,"--appearing
+to quote from some old manuscript which, unfortunately, is not to be
+found anywhere. But Clement of Alexandria, in the year 210 A. D.,
+dismisses all guesses as to when Jesus was born,--the 18th of April,
+19th of May, etc.,--as products of reckless speculation. March 28th
+is given as Jesus' birthday in _De Pascha Computius_, in the year 243.
+Jan. 5th is the date defended by Epiphanius. Baradaens, Bishop of
+Odessa, says: "No one knows exactly the day of the nativity of our
+Lord: this only is certain from what Luke writes, that he was born in
+the night." Poor Dr. Bartlett, his December 25th does not receive
+support from the Fathers.
+
+For our clerical brother's sake, we quote some more from the
+_Tribune_ editorial:
+
+Primeval man looked upon the sun as the revelation of divinity. When
+the shortest day of the year was passed, when the sun began his march
+northward, the primitive man rejoiced in the thought of the coming
+seedtime and summer, and he made feasts and revelry the mode of
+expressing the gladness of his heart. Among the sun worshipers of
+Persia, among the Druids of the far north, among the Phoenicians,
+among the Romans, and among the ancient Goths and Saxons the winter
+solstice was the occasion of festivities. Many of them were rude and
+barbarous, but they were all distinguished by hearty and profuse
+hospitality.
+
+And yet our neighbor calls it "distortion of history" to connect
+Christmas with the Pagan festival, celebrated about this time. We
+quote once more from the Secular press:
+
+The Christian church did not abolish these heathen ceremonies, but
+grafted upon them a deeper spiritual meaning. For this reason
+Christmas is an institution which memorializes the best there was in
+Pagan man. Its good cheer, its charity, its sports, its feasting, and
+the features which most endear it to children are all the heritage of
+our Pagan ancestors.
+
+How refreshing this, compared with the clergyman's silence, or cry of
+"distortion." But in one thing the doctor is correct. The early
+Christians did bewail the Pagan festivals, as they did everything else
+that was Pagan. But it did not help them at all; they were compelled
+to acquiesce. The Christians have "fasted and prayed" also against
+science, progress, and modern thought, but what good has it done? They
+asked God to hook Theodore Parker's tongue; to overthrow Darwin, and
+to confound the wisdom of this world, but the prayer remains
+unanswered. Yes, the doctor is right, the church has "fasted and
+prayed" against religious tolerance, against the use of Sunday as a
+day of recreation,--the opening of galleries and libraries on that
+day, the advancement of women, the emancipation of the negro, the
+secularization of education, the revision of old creeds, and a
+thousand other things. But their opposition has only damaged their own
+cause. They did try to suppress the Pagan festival, which we call
+Christmas, and the Puritans in this country, until recently, abstained
+from all recognition of the day, and called it "Popery," and
+"Paganism," but their efforts bore no fruit. Dr. Bartlett, if he will
+read, will learn that for many years, in England and in this country,
+the observance of Christmas was forbidden by law under severe
+penalties. As to our being indebted for the cheer and merriment of the
+December festival to the "Bethlehem babe," the doctor must inform
+himself of those acts of Parliament which, under the Puritan regime,
+compelled people to mourn on Christmas day and to abstain from
+merrymaking. In Christian Connecticut, for a man to have a sprig of
+holly in his house on Christmas day was a finable crime. In
+Massachusetts, any Christian detected celebrating Christmas was fined
+five shillings and costs. But, see, having failed to suppress these
+good institutions, they now turn about and claim that they have always
+believed in them, and that, in fact, we would not now be enjoying any
+one of these benefits but for the Christian Church.
+
+In conclusion, we have one other word to say to the three clerical
+teachers from whose writings we have quoted. Against them we are
+constrained to bring the charge of looseness in thought. They seem to
+have little conscience for evidence. Mr. Jones says, for instance:
+
+"In short, I am compelled to think that this Light of Souls, this
+saving and redeeming spirit, was the loved and loving child of Joseph,
+the carpenter, and the loyal wife Mary. I believe this,
+notwithstanding the stories of immaculate conceptions, star-guided
+magi, choiring angels and adoring shepards that gathered around the
+birth-night."
+
+Which is another way of saying that he is "compelled to believe"
+against the evidence, merely because it is his pleasure or interest to
+do so. This is not very edifying, to be sure. Mr. Jones takes all his
+information about Joseph and Mary and Jesus from the gospels, and yet
+the gospels clearly contradict his conclusions. Mary, the mother of
+Jesus, gives her word of honor that Joseph was not the father of her
+child, and Joseph himself testifies that he is not Jesus' father, but
+Mr. Jones pays no attention to their testimony; he wishes Joseph to be
+the father of Jesus, and that ought to be sufficient evidence, he
+thinks. We quote from the gospel:
+
+"Now the birth of Jesus Christ was on this wise: When his mother Mary
+had been betrothed to Joseph, before they came together she was found
+with child of the Holy Ghost. And Joseph, her husband, being a
+righteous man, and not willing to make her a public example, was
+minded to put her away privily. But when he thought on these things,
+behold, an angel of the Lord appeared unto him in a dream, saying,
+Joseph, thou son of David, fear not to take unto thee Mary thy wife;
+for that which is conceived in her is of the Holy Ghost."
+
+Now, if Joseph admits he was not Jesus' father, and Mary corroborates
+his testimony (See Luke, 1st chapter), Jesus was, if he ever lived,
+and the records which give Mr. Jones his ideal Jesus are reliable, the
+son of a man who has succeeded in concealing his identity, unless, of
+course, we believe in the virgin birth. If the real father of Jesus
+had come forth and owned his son, and Mary had acknowledged that he
+was the father of her child, what would have become of Christianity?
+We hope these clergymen who have dwelt, as Emerson says, "with noxious
+exaggeration about the person of Jesus," will reflect upon this, and
+while doing so, will they not also remember this other saying of the
+Concord philosopher: "The vice of our theology is seen in the
+claim...that Jesus was something different from a man."
+
+We take our leave of the three clergymen, assuring them that in what
+we have said we have not been actuated, in the least, by any personal
+motive whatever, and that we have only done to them what we would have
+them do to us.
+
+[Illustration: Head of a God with Horns. Museum of St. Germain.]
+
+
+
+
+A LIBERAL JEW ON JESUS
+
+FELIX ADLER, PRAISES JESUS
+
+
+
+That it is very easy for scholars to follow the people instead of
+leading them, and to side with the view that commands the majority,
+receives fresh confirmation from the recent utterances of the founder
+of the Ethical Culture Society in New York. Professor Adler, the son
+of a rabbi, and at one time a freethinker, has slowly drifted into
+orthodox waters, after having tried for a period of years the open
+seas, and has become a more enthusiastic champion of the god of the
+Christians than many a Christian scholar whom we could name. The
+pendulum in the Adler case has swung clear to the opposite side. We do
+not find fault with a man because he changes his views, we only ask
+for reasons for the change. It will be seen by the following extracts
+from Adler's printed lectures that he has made absolutely no critical
+study of the sources of the Jesus story, but has merely, and hurriedly
+at that, accepted the conventional estimate of Jesus and enlarged upon
+it. Jesus is entitled to all the praise which is due him, but it must
+first be shown that in praising him we are not sacrificing the truth.
+Praising any man at such a cost is merely flattering the masses and
+bowing to the fashion of the day.
+
+Let us hear what Professor Adler has to say about Jesus. He writes:
+
+It has been said that if Christ came to New York or Chicago, they
+would stone him in the very churches. It is not so! If Christ came to
+New York or Chicago, the publicans and sinners would sit at his feet!
+For they would know that he cared for them better than they in their
+darkness knew how to care for themselves, and they would love him as
+they loved him in the days of yore.
+
+This would sound pious in the mouth of a Moody or a Torrey, but, we
+confess, it sounds like affectation in the mouth of the free thinking
+son of a rabbi. That Prof. Adler enters here into a field for which
+his early Jewish training has not fitted him, is apparent from the
+hasty way in which he has put his sentences together. "It has been
+said," he writes, "that if Christ came to New York or Chicago, they
+would stone him in the very churches. It is not so." Why is it not so?
+And he answers: "If Christ came to New York or Chicago, the publicans
+and sinners would sit at his feet." But what has the reception which
+publicans and sinners might give Jesus to do with how _the churches_
+would receive him? He proves that Jesus would not be stoned in the
+churches of New York and Chicago by saying that the "publicans and
+sinners would sit at his feet." Does he mean that "New York and
+Chicago churches" and "publicans and sinners" are the same thing?
+"Publicans and sinners" might welcome him, and still the churches
+might stone him, which in fact, according to Adler's own admission,
+was the case in Jerusalem, where the synagogues conspired against
+Jesus, while Mary Magdalene sat at his feet. Nor are his words about
+"the publicans and sinners loving Jesus as they loved him in the
+days of yore" edifying. Who does he mean by the "publicans and
+sinners," and how many of them loved Jesus in the days of yore, and
+why should this class of people have felt a special love for him?
+
+On the question of the resurrection of Jesus, Prof. Adler says this:
+
+"It is sometimes insinuated that the entire Christian doctrine depends
+on the accounts contained in the New Testament, purporting that Jesus
+actually rose on the third day and was seen by his followers; and that
+if these reports are found to be contradictory, unsupported by
+sufficient evidence, and in themselves incredible, then the bottom
+falls out of the belief in immortality as represented by
+Christianity."
+
+It was the Apostle Paul himself who said that "if Jesus has not risen
+from the dead, then is our faith in vain,--and we are, of all men,
+most miserable." So, you see, friend Adler, it is not "sometimes
+insinuated," as you say, but it is openly, and to our thinking,
+logically asserted, that if Jesus did not rise from the dead, the
+whole fabric of Christian eschatology falls to the ground. But we must
+remember that Prof. Adler has not been brought up a Christian. He has
+acquired his Christian predilections only recently, so to speak, hence
+his unfamiliarity with its Scriptures. Continuing, the Professor says:
+
+"But similar reports have arisen in the world time and again,
+apparitions of the dead have been seen and have been taken for real;
+and yet such stories, after being current for a time, invariably have
+passed into oblivion. Why did this particular story persist, despite
+the paucity and the insufficiency of the evidence? Why did it get
+itself believed and take root?"
+
+What shall we think of such reasoning from the platform of a
+presumable rationalist movement? Does not the Professor know that the
+story of the resurrection of Jesus is not original, but a repetition
+of older stories of the kind? Had the world never heard of such after-
+death apparitions before Jesus' day, it would never have invented the
+story of his resurrection. And how does the Professor know that the
+story of Jesus' resurrection is not going to meet the same fate which
+has overtaken all other similar stories? Is it not already passing
+into the shade of neglect? Are not the intelligent among the
+Christians themselves beginning to explain the resurrection of Jesus
+allegorically, denying altogether that he rose from the dead in a
+literal sense? Moreover, the pre-Christian stories of similar
+resurrections lived to an old age,--two or three thousand years--before
+they died, and the story of Jesus' resurrection has yet to prove its
+ability to live longer. All miraculous beliefs are disappearing, and
+the story of the Christian resurrection will not be an exception. But
+Prof. Adler's motive in believing that the story of the resurrection
+of Jesus shall live, is to offer it as an argument for immortality,
+and in so doing he strains the English language in lauding Jesus. He
+says:
+
+"In my opinion, people believed in the resurrection of Jesus because
+of the precedent conviction in the minds of the disciples that such a
+man as Jesus could not die, because of the conviction that a
+personality of such superlative excellence, so radiant, so
+incomparably lofty in mien and port and speech and intercourse with
+others, could not pass away like a forgotten wind, that such a star
+could not be quenched."
+
+We regret to say that there are as many assumptions in the above
+sentence as there are lines in it. Of course, if we are for
+emotionalism and not for exact and accurate conclusions, Adler's
+estimate of Jesus is as rhetorical as that of Jones or Boyle, but if
+we have any love for historical truth, there is not even the shadow of
+evidence, for instance, that the disciples could not believe "that
+such a man as Jesus could die." On the contrary, the disciples left
+him at the cross and fled, and believed him dead, until it was
+reported to them that he had been seen alive, and even then "some
+doubted," and one wished to feel the flesh with his fingers before he
+would credit his eyes. Jesus had to eat and drink with them, he had to
+"open their eyes," and perform various miracles before they would
+believe that he was not dead. The text which says that the apostles
+hesitated to believe in the resurrection because "as yet they knew not
+the scripture, that he would rise from the dead," shows conclusively
+how imaginary is the idea that there was a "precedent conviction" in
+the minds of the disciples that such a man as Jesus could not die.
+Apparently it was all a matter of prophecy, not of moral character at
+all. Yet in the face of all the evidence to the contrary, Prof. Adler
+tells his Carnegie Hall audience, who unfortunately are even less
+informed in Christian doctrine than their leader, that "there was a
+precedent conviction in the minds of the disciples that such a man as
+Jesus could not die." And what gave the disciples this supposed
+"precedent conviction?" "That a personality of such superlative
+excellence, so radiant, so incomparably lofty in mien and port and
+speech and intercourse with others, could not pass away like a
+forgotten wind, that such a star could not be quenched." We are simply
+astonished, and grieved as well, to see the use which so enlightened a
+man as Prof. Adler makes of his gifts. Will this Jewish admirer of the
+god of Christendom kindly tell us wherein Jesus was superlatively
+excellent, or incomparably lofty in mien and port and speech and
+intercourse with others? Was there a weakness found in men like
+Buddha, Confucius, Socrates, etc., from which Jesus was free? That
+Jesus created no such ideal impression upon his disciples, is shown by
+the fact that they represented him as a sectarian and an egotist who
+denounced all who had preceded him as unworthy of respect and to be
+despised. And how could a man whose public life did not cover more
+than two or three years of time, and who lived as a celibate and a
+monk, returning every night to his cave in the Mount of Olives, taking
+no active part in the business life--supporting no family or parents,
+assuming no civil or social duties--how can such a man, we ask, be
+held up as a model for the men and women of today? Jesus, according to
+his biographers, believed he could raise the dead, and announced
+himself the equal of God. "I and my father are one," he is reported to
+have said; and one of his apostles writes: "He (Jesus) thought it no
+robbery to be equal to God." Either this report is true, or it is not.
+If it is, what shall we think of a man who thought he was a god and
+could raise the dead? If the report is not true, what reliance can we
+place in his biographers when the things which they affirm with the
+greatest confidence are to be rejected?
+
+Yet Prof. Adler, swept off his feet by the popular and conventional
+enthusiasm about Jesus, describes him as "a personality of such
+superlative excellence, so radiant, so incomparably lofty in mien and
+port and speech and intercourse with others," that his followers could
+not believe he was a mere mortal. But where is the Jesus to correspond
+to this rhetorical language? He is not in the anonymous gospels. There
+we find only a fragmentary character patched or pieced together, as it
+were, by various contributors--a character made up of the most
+contradictory elements, as we have tried to show in the preceding
+pages. The Jesus of Adler is not in history, he is not even in
+mythology. There is no one of that name and answering that description
+in the four gospels.
+
+That a loose way of speaking grows upon one if one is not careful, and
+that sounding phrases and honest historical criticism are not the same
+thing, will be seen by Prof. Adler's lavish praise of John Calvin. He
+speaks of him in terms almost as glowing as he does of Jesus. He calls
+Calvin "that mighty and noble man."
+
+That Calvin ruled Geneva like a Russian autocrat; that he was "mighty"
+in a community in which Jacques Gruet was beheaded because he had
+"danced," and also because he had committed the grave offense of
+saying that "Moses was only a man and no one knows what God said to
+him," and in which Michael Servetus was burned alive for holding
+opinions contrary to those which the Genevan pope was interested
+in,--is readily conceded. But was Calvin "mighty" in a beneficent
+sense? Did his power save people from the Protestant inquisition?
+Was not the Geneva of his day called _the Protestant Rome?_ And if
+he did not use his powerful influence to further religious tolerance
+and intellectual honesty; if he did not use his position to save men
+from the grip of superstition and the fear of hell, how can Prof. Adler
+refer to him as "that mighty and noble man--John Calvin?"
+
+It is not our purpose to grudge Calvin any compliments which Felix
+Adler wishes to pay him. What we grieve to see is, that he should,
+indirectly at least, recommend to the admiration of his readers a man
+who, if he existed today and acted as he did in the Geneva of the
+sixteenth century, would be regarded by every morally and
+intellectually awakened man, as a criminal. Has not Felix Adler
+examined the evidence which incriminates Calvin and proves him beyond
+doubt as the murderer of Servetus? "If he (Servetus) comes to Geneva,
+I shall see that he does not escape alive," wrote John Calvin to
+Theodore Beza. And he carried out his fearful menace; Servetus was put
+to death by the most horrible punishment ever invented--he was burned
+alive in a smoking fire. What did this mighty and noble man do to save
+a stranger and a scholar from so atrocious a fate? Let his eulogist,
+Prof. Adler, answer. It will not do to say that those were different
+times. A thousand voices were raised against the wanton and cruel
+murder of Servetus, but Calvin's was not among them. In fact, when
+Calvin himself was a fugitive and a wanderer, he had written in favor
+of religious tolerance, but no sooner did he become the Protestant
+pope of Geneva, than he developed into an exterminator of heresy by
+fire. Such is the "mighty and noble man" held up for our admiration.
+"Mighty" he was, but we ask again, was he mighty in a noble sense?
+
+Had Calvin been considered a "mighty and noble man" by the reformers
+who preceded Prof. Adler, there would have been no Ethical Culture
+societies in America today. Prof. Adler is indebted for the liberties
+which he enjoys in New York to the Voltaires and the Condorcets, who
+regarded Calvin and his "isms" as pernicious to the intellectual life
+of Europe, and did all they could to lead the people away from them.
+Think of the leader of the Ethical Societies exalting a persecutor, to
+say nothing of his abominable theology, or of his five _aliases,_
+as "that mighty and noble man;--John Calvin!" We feel grateful to
+Prof. Adler for organizing the Ethical Societies in American, but we
+would be pleased to have him explain in what sense a man of Calvin's
+small sympathies and terrible deeds could be called both "noble and
+mighty." [Footnote: See "The Kingdom of God in Geneva Under Calvin."--M.
+M. Mangasarian.]
+
+It was predicted some years ago that the founder of the Ethical
+Societies will before long return to the Jewish faith of his fathers.
+However this may be, we have seen, in his estimate of Jesus and John
+Calvin, evidences of his estrangement from rationalism, of which in
+his younger days he was so able a champion. In his criticism of the
+Russian scientist, Metchnikoff, of the Pasteur Institute in Paris,
+Prof. Adler, endorsing the popular estimate of Jesus, accepts also the
+popular attitude toward science. He appears to prefer the doctrine of
+special creation to the theory of evolution. We would not have
+believed this of Felix Adler if we did not have the evidence before
+us. We speak of this to show the relation between an exaggerated
+praise of a popular idol, and a denial of the conclusions of modern
+science. It is the popular view which Prof. Adler champions in both
+instances. In his criticism of Metchnikoff's able book, _The Nature
+of Man,_ Prof. Adler writes:
+
+And to account for the reason in man, this divine spark that has been
+set ablaze in him, it is not sufficient to point to an ape as our
+ancestor. If we are descended from an anthropoid ape on the physical
+side, we are not descended from him in any strict sense of the word on
+our rational side; for as life is born of life, so reason is born of
+reason, and if the anthropoid ape does not possess reason as we
+possess it, it cannot be said that on our rational side we are his
+progeny.
+
+If the above had been written fifty years ago, when the doctrine of
+evolution was a heresy, or by an orthodox clergyman of today, we would
+have taken no note of it. But coming as it does from the worthy
+founder of the Ethical Movement in America, it deserves attention.
+"If," says Dr. Adler, "we are descended from an anthropoid ape on the
+physical side, we are not descended from him in any strict sense of
+the word on our rational side." He is not sure, evidently, that even
+physically man is the successor of the anthropoid ape, but he is sure
+that "we are not descended from him...on our rational side." Is Dr.
+Adler, then, a dualist? Does he believe that there are two eternal
+sources, from one of which we get our bodies, and from the other our
+"rational side?" And why cannot Dr. Adler be a monist? He answers,
+"for as life is born of life, so reason is born of reason, and if the
+anthropoid ape does not possess reason as we possess it, it cannot be
+said that on our rational side we are his progeny." Not so, good
+doctor! There is no life without reason. Do we mean to say that the
+jelly-fish, the creeping worm, or the bud on the tree has reason? Yes;
+not as much reason as a horse or a dog, and certainly not as much as a
+Metchnikoff or an Adler, but these lower forms of life could not have
+survived but for the element of rationality in them. We may call this
+instinct, sensation, promptings of nature, but what's in a name? The
+difference between a pump and a watch is only a difference of
+mechanism. The stone and the soul represent different stages of
+progression, not different substances. If a charcoal can be
+transformed into a diamond, why may not nature, with the resources of
+infinity at her command, refine a stone into a soul? Let us not marvel
+at this; it is not less thinkable than the proposition of two
+independent sources of life, the one physical, the other rational. If
+"life is born of life," where did the first life come from? Let us
+have an answer to that question. And if, as the professor says,
+"reason is born of reason," how did the first reason come? Is it not
+very much simpler to think in monistic terms, than to separate life
+from reason, and mind from matter, as Prof. Adler does in the words
+quoted above? Why cannot mind be a state of matter? What objection is
+there to thinking that matter, refined, elevated, ripened, cultured,
+becomes both sentient and rational? If matter can feel, can see, can
+hear, can it not also think? Does not the horse see, hear and think?
+There is no lowering of the dignity of man to say that he tastes with
+his palate, sees with his eyes, hears with his ears, and thinks with
+the gray matter in his brain. Remove his optic nerve and he becomes
+blind, destroy the ganglia in his brain, and he becomes mindless. Gold
+is as much matter as the dust, but it is very much more precious; so
+is mind infinitely more precious than the matter which can only feel,
+see, taste or hear. "If the anthropoid ape does not possess reason as
+we possess it, it cannot be said that on our rational side we are his
+progeny," says Dr. Adler: But, suppose we were to say that if our
+remote African or Australian savage ancestors did not possess reason
+as we possess it, "it cannot be said that on our rational side we are
+their progeny," The child in the cradle does not possess reason "as we
+do," any more than does the anthropoid ape, but the beginnings of
+reason are in both. Let the worm climb and he will overtake man. This
+is a most hopeful, a most beautiful gospel. Its spirit is not one of
+isolation and exclusiveness from the rest of nature, but one of
+fellowship and sympathy. We are all--plants, trees, birds, bugs,
+animals--all members of one family, children at various ages and
+stages of growth of the same great mother,--Nature. We quote again:
+
+"When I ask him (Metchnikoff) whence do I come, he points to the
+simian stage which we have left behind; but I would look beyond that
+stage to some ultimate fount of being, to which all that is highest in
+me and in the world around me can be traced, a source of things equal
+to the best that I can conceive."
+
+But if there is "some ultimate fount of being," to which our "highest"
+nature "can be traced," whence did our lower nature come? Is Prof.
+Adler trying to say God? We do not object to the word, we only ask
+that he give the word a more intelligible meaning than has yet been
+given. If God is the "ultimate fount of being to which all that is
+highest in us can be traced," who or what is the ultimate fount to
+which all that is lowest in us can be traced? Let us have the names of
+the two ultimate founts of being, and also to what still more ultimate
+founts _these_ founts may be traced.
+
+In our opinion Dr. Adler has failed to do justice to Prof.
+Metchnikoff. It is no answer to the Darwinian Theory, which the
+Russian scientist accepts in earnest, and in all its fullness,--not
+fractionally, as Adler seems to do--to say that it does not explain
+everything. No one claims that it does. Not all the mystery of life
+has been cleared. Evolution has offered us only a new key, so to
+speak, with which to attempt the doors which have not yielded to
+metaphysics. And if the key has not opened all the doors, it has
+opened many. Prof. Adler seems to think that the doctrine of evolution
+explains only the physical descent of man; for the genesis of the
+spiritual man, he looks for some supernatural "fount" in the skies.
+Well, that is not science; that is theology, and Adler's estimate of
+Jesus is just as theological as his criticism of evolution.
+
+
+
+
+APPENDIX
+
+
+
+The argument in this volume will be better understood if we give to
+our readers the comments and criticisms which our little pamphlet,
+_Jesus a Myth,_ and _The Mangasarian-Crapsey Debate on the Historicity
+of Jesus, _[Footnote: Price, 25c. Independent Religious Society,
+Orchestra Hall, Chicago.] called forth from orthodox and liberal
+clergymen. We shall present these together with our reply as they
+appeared on the Sunday Programs of the Independent Religious Society.
+
+Criticism is welcome. If the criticism is just, it prevents us from
+making the same mistake twice; if it is unjust, it gives us an
+opportunity to correct the error our critic has fallen into. No one's
+knowledge is perfect. But the question is, does a teacher suppress the
+facts? Does he insist on remaining ignorant of the facts?
+
+
+
+
+FROM THE SUNDAY PROGRAMS
+
+I
+
+
+Now that the debate on one of the most vital questions of modern
+religious thought--The Historicity of Jesus--is in print, a few
+further reflections on some minor points in Dr. Crapsey's argument may
+add to the value of the published copy.
+
+REV. DR. CRAPSEY: "Now, I say this is the great law of religious
+variation, that in almost every instance, indeed, I think, in every
+single instance in history, all such movements begin with a _single_
+personality." (P. 5, _Mangasarian-Crapsey Debate._)
+
+ANSWER: The only way this question can be settled is by appealing to
+history. Mithraism is a variant religion, which at one time spread
+over the Roman Empire and came near outclassing Christianity. Yet,
+Mithra, represented as a young man, and worshiped as a god, is a myth.
+How, then, did Mithraism arise?
+
+Religions, as well as their variations, appear as new branches do upon
+an old tree. The new branch is quite as much the product of the soil
+and climate as the parent tree. Like Brahmanism, Judaism, Shinto and
+the Babylonian and Egyptian Cults, which had no _single_ founders,
+Christianity is a _deposit_ to which Hellenic, Judaic and Latin
+tendencies have each contributed its quota.
+
+But the popular imagination craves a Maker for the Universe, a founder
+for Rome, a first man for the human race, and a great chief as the
+starter of the tribe. In the same way it fancies a divine, or semi-
+divine being as the author of its _credo._
+
+Because Mohammed is historical, it does not follow that Moses is also
+historical. That argument would prove too much.
+
+REV. DR. CRAPSEY: "We would be in the same position that the
+astronomers were when they discovered the great planet Uranus--from
+their knowledge of the movements of these bodies they were convinced
+that these perturbations could be occasioned by nothing less than a
+great planet lying outside of the then view of mankind."(P. 6,
+_Ibid._)
+
+ANSWER: But the astronomers did not rest until they converted the
+_probability_ of a near-by planet into _demonstration._ Jesus is still
+a probability.
+
+REV. DR. CRAPSEY: "We have of Jesus a very distinctly outlined
+history. There is nothing vague about him." (P. 12, _Ibid_.)
+
+ANSWER: But in the same sentence the doctor takes all this back by
+adding: "There are a great many things in his history that are not
+historical." If so, then we do not possess "a very distinctly outlined
+history," but at best a mixture of fact and fiction.
+
+REV. DR. CRAPSEY: "We can follow Jesus' history from the time that he
+entered upon his public career until the time that career closed, just
+as easily as we can follow Caesar, etc." (P. 12, _Ibid_.)
+
+ANSWER: How long was "the time from the opening of Jesus' public
+career until the time that it closed?"--One year!--according to the
+three gospels. It sounds quite a period to speak of "following his
+public career" from beginning to end, especially when compared with
+Caesar's, until it is remembered that the entire public career of
+Jesus covers the space of only one year. This is a most decisive
+argument against the historicity of Jesus. With the exception of one
+year, his whole life is hid in impenetrable darkness. We know nothing
+of his childhood, nothing of his old age, if he lived to be old, and
+of his youth, we know just enough to fill up a year. Under the
+circumstances, there is no comparison between the public career of a
+Caesar or a Socrates covering from fifty to seventy years of time, and
+that of a Jesus of whose life only one brief year is thrown upon the
+canvas.
+
+An historical Jesus who lived only a year!
+
+REV. DR. CRAPSEY: The Christ I admit to be purely mythological....the
+word Christ, you know, means the anointed one....they (the Hebrews)
+expected the coming of that Christ....But that is purely a mythical
+title. (_The Debate_--P. 35.)
+
+ANSWER: Did the Hebrews then expect the coming of a _title?_ Were
+they looking forward to seeing the ancient throne of David restored by
+a _title?_ By Messiah or Christ the Jews did not mean a _name,_ but a
+man--a real flesh and bone savior, anointed or appointed by heaven.
+
+But if the 'Christ' which the Hebrews expected was "purely mythical,"
+what makes the same 'Christ' in the supposed Tacitus passage
+historical? The New Testament Jesus is Jesus Christ, and the apostle
+John speaks of those "who confess not that Jesus Christ is come in the
+flesh"--mark his words--not Christ, but _Jesus Christ._ The apostle
+does not separate the two names. There were those, then, in the early
+church who denied the historicity, not of a _title_,--for what meaning
+would there be in denying that a _title_ "is come in the flesh,"--but
+of a person, known as _Jesus Christ._
+
+And what could the doctor mean when he speaks of a _title_ being
+"mythological?" There are no mythological titles. Titles are words,
+and we do not speak of the historicity or the non-historicity of
+words. We cannot say of words as we do of men, that some are
+historical and others are mythical. William Tell is a myth--not the
+name, but the man the name stands for. _William_ is the name of
+many real people, and so is _Tell._ There were many anointed kings,
+who are historical, and the question is, Is Jesus Christ--or
+Jesus the Anointed--also historical? To answer that Jesus is
+historical, but The Anointed is not, is to evade the question.
+
+When Mosheim declares that "The prevalent opinion among early
+Christians was that Christ existed in appearance only," he could not
+have meant by 'Christ' only a title. There is no meaning in saying
+that a man's title "existed in appearance only?"
+
+We do not speak of a title being born, or crucified; and when some
+early Christians denied that Jesus Christ was ever born or ever
+crucified, they had in mind not a _title_ but a _person._
+
+In conclusion: If the 'Christ' by whom the Hebrews meant, not a mere
+name, but a man, was "purely mythological," as the reverend debater
+plainly admits (see pages 35, 36 of _The Debate_)--that is, if when
+the Hebrews said: "Christ _is_ coming," they were under the influence
+of an illusion,--why may not the Christians when they say that
+'Christ' _has_ come, be also under the influence of an illusion? The
+Hebrew illusion said, Christ was coming; the Christian illusion says,
+Christ has come. The Hebrews had no evidence that 'Christ' was coming,
+although that expectation was a great factor in their religion; and
+the Christians have no more evidence for saying 'Christ' has come,
+although that belief is a great factor in _their_ religion.
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+
+The minister of the South Congregational Church, who heard the debate,
+has publicly called your lecturer an "unscrupulous sophist," who
+"practices imposition upon a popular audience" and who "put forth
+sentence after sentence which every scholar present knew to be a
+perversion of the facts so outrageous as to be laughable."
+
+As one of the leading morning papers said, the above "is not a reply
+to arguments made by Mr. Mangasarian."
+
+Invited by several people to prove these charges, the Reverend
+replies: "In the absence of any full report of what he (M. M.
+Mangasarian) said, or of any notes taken at the time, I am unable to
+furnish you with quotations." When the Reverend gentleman was
+addressing the public his memory was strong enough to enable him to
+say, "sentence after sentence was put forth by Mr. Mangasarian which
+every scholar present knew to be a perversion of the facts." But when
+called upon to mention a few of them, his memory forsakes him. Our
+critic is not careful to make his statements agree with the fact.
+
+One instance, however, he is able to remember which "when it fell upon
+my ears," he writes, "it struck me with such amazement, that it
+completely drove from my mind a series of most astonishing statements
+of various sorts which had just preceded it."
+
+We refrain from commenting on the excuse given to explain so
+significant a failure of memory. The instance referred to was about
+the denial of some in apostolic times that "Jesus Christ is come in
+the flesh." But as Mr. Mangasarian had hardly spoken more than twenty
+minutes when he touched upon this point, it is not likely that it
+could have been "preceded by a series of most astonishing statements
+of various sorts."
+
+And what was the statement which, while it crippled his memory, it did
+not moderate his zeal? We will let him present it himself; "I refer to
+the use he made of one or two passages in the New Testament,
+mentioning some who deny 'that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh.' 'So
+that,' he went on to say, 'there were those even among the early
+Christians themselves who denied that Jesus had come in the flesh. Of
+course, they were cast out as heretics.' _Here came an impressive
+pause,_ and then without further explanation or qualification, he
+proceeded to something else."
+
+This is his most serious complaint. Does it justify hasty language?
+
+St. John writes of those who "confessed not that Jesus Christ is come
+in the flesh." The natural meaning of the words is that even in
+apostolic times some denied the flesh and bone Jesus, and regarded him
+as an idea or an apparition--something like the Holy Ghost. All church
+historians admit the existence of sects that denied the New Testament
+Jesus--the Gnostics, the Essenes, the Ebionites, the Marcionites, the
+Cerinthians, etc.
+
+As the debate is now in print, further comment on this would not be
+necessary.
+
+Incidents like the above, however, should change every lukewarm
+rationalist into a devoted soldier of truth and honor.
+
+To us, more important than anything presented on this subject, is this
+evidence of the existence of a very early dispute among the first
+disciples of Jesus on the question of whether he was real or merely an
+apparition. The Apostle John, in his epistle, clearly states that even
+among the faithful there were those _who confess not that Jesus Christ
+is come in the flesh._ This is very important. As early as John's
+time, if he is the writer of the epistle, Jesus' historicity was
+questioned.
+
+The gospel of John also hints at the existence in the primitive church
+of Christians who did not accept the reality of Jesus. When doubting
+Thomas is told of the resurrection, he answers that he must feel the
+prints of the nails with his fingers before he will believe, and Jesus
+not only grants the wishes of this skeptical apostle, but he also eats
+in the presence of them all, which story is told evidently to silence
+the critics who maintained that Jesus was only a spirit, "the Wisdom
+of God," an emanation, a light, and not real flesh and bones.
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+
+The same clergyman, to whom a copy of the _Mangasarian-Crapsey Debate_
+was sent, has written a five page criticism of it.
+
+The strength of a given criticism is determined by asking: Does it in
+any way impair the soundness of the argument against which it is
+directed? Critics have discovered mistakes in Darwin and Haeckel, but
+are these mistakes of such a nature as to prove fatal to the theory of
+evolution?
+
+To be effective, criticism must be aimed at the _heart_ of an
+argument. A man's life is not in his hat, which could be knocked off,
+or in his clothes--which could be torn in places by his assailant
+without in the least weakening his opponent's position. It is the blow
+that disables which counts.
+
+To charge that we have said 'Gospel,' where we should have said
+'Epistle,' or 'Trullum' instead of 'Trullo'; that it was not Barnabas,
+but Nicholas who denied the Gospel Jesus, and that there were
+variations of this denial, does not at all disprove the fact that,
+according to the Christian scriptures themselves, among the apostolic
+followers there were those to whom Jesus Christ was only a phantom.
+
+Milman, the Christian historian, states that the belief about Jesus
+Christ "adopted by almost all the Gnostic sects," was that Jesus
+Christ _was but an apparent human being, an impassive phantom,_
+(_History of Christianity._ Vol. 2, P. 61). Was ever such a view
+entertained of Caesar, Socrates or of any other historical character?
+
+On page 28 of _The Debate_ we say: "The Apostle John complains of
+those....who confess not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh." To
+this the clergyman replies:
+
+"The Apostle John never made any such complaint. Critical scholarship
+is pretty well agreed that he did not write the epistles ascribed to
+him."
+
+We have a lecture on "How the Bible was Invented," and this
+clergyman's admission that at least parts of the bible _are_
+invented is very gratifying.
+
+In a former communication, this same clergyman tried to prove that the
+Apostle John's complaint does not at all imply a denial of the
+historical Jesus. In his recent letter he denies that the apostle ever
+made such a complaint.
+
+John did not write the epistles, then, which the Christian church for
+two thousand years, and at a cost of millions of dollars, and at the
+greater sacrifice of truth and progress has been proclaiming to the
+world as the work of the inspired John!
+
+The strenuous efforts to get around this terrible text in the "Holy
+Bible," show what a decisive argument it is. Every exertion to meet it
+only tightens the text, like a rope, around the neck of the belief in
+the historical Jesus. Our desire, in engaging in this argument, is to
+turn the thought and love of the world from a mythical being, to
+humanity, which is both real and present.
+
+On page 22 of _The Debate,_ we say: "St. Paul tells us that he lived
+in Jerusalem at a time when Jesus must have been holding the attention
+of the city; yet he never met him." To this the clergyman replies:
+
+"Paul tells us nothing of the kind. In a speech which is put into the
+mouth of Paul"--_put into the mouth of Paul!_ Is this another instance
+of forgery? John did not write the epistles, and Paul's speech in the
+Book of Acts was put into his mouth! Will the clergyman tell us which
+parts of the bible are _not_ invented?
+
+Let us make a remark: The church people blame us for not believing in
+the trustworthiness of the bible; but when we reply that if the bible
+is trustworthy, then Paul must have been in Jerusalem with Jesus, and
+John admits that some denied the historical Jesus, we are blamed for
+not knowing better than to prove anything by quoting Paul and John as
+if everything they said was trustworthy.
+
+In other words, only those passages in the bible are authentic which
+the clergy quote; those which the rationalists quote are spurious. In
+the meantime, the authentic as well as the spurious passages together
+compose the churches' _Word of God_.
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+
+In a letter of protest to Mr. Mangasarian, Rabbi Hirsch, of this city,
+asks: "Was it right for you to assume that I was correctly reported by
+the _News?"_ After stating what he had said in his interview with
+the reporter, the Rabbi continues: "But said I to the reporter all
+these possible allusions do not prove that Jesus existed....You see
+in reality I agreed with you. I personally believe Jesus lived. But I
+have no proof for this beyond my feeling that the movement with which
+the name is associated could even for Paul not have taken its
+nomenclature without a personal substratum. But, and this I told the
+reporter also, this does not prove that the Jesus of the Gospels is
+historical." Rabbi Hirsch writes in this same letter that he did not
+say Jesus was mentioned in the Rabbinical Books. The News reports the
+Rabbi as saying, "But we know through the Rabbinical Books that Jesus
+lived."
+
+A committee from our Society waited on the editor of the _Daily News_
+for an explanation. The editor promised to locate the responsibility
+for the contradiction.
+
+As the report in the _News_ was allowed to stand for four days without
+correction, and as Rabbi Hirsch did not even privately, by letter or
+by phone, disclaim responsibility for the article, to Mr. Mangasarian,
+the latter claims he was justified in assuming that the published
+report was reliable. But it is with pleasure that the Independent
+Religious Society gives Rabbi Hirsch this opportunity to explain his
+position. We hope he will also let us know whether he said to the
+reporter: "I do not believe in Mr. Mangasarian's argument that
+Christianity has inspired massacres, wars and inquisitions. It is a
+stock argument and not to the point." This is extraordinary; and as
+the Rabbi does not question the statement, we infer that it is a
+correct report of what he said. Though we have room for only one
+quotation from the Jewish-Christian Scriptures, it will be enough to
+show the relation of religion to persecution:
+
+"And thou shalt consume all the people which the Lord, thy God, shall
+deliver thee; thine eye shall have no pity upon them."
+
+Why were women put to death as witches? Why were Quakers hanged? For
+what "economic and political reasons," which the Rabbi thinks are
+responsible for persecution, was the blind Derby girl who doubted the
+Real Presence, burned alive at the age of twenty-two?
+
+
+
+
+V
+
+
+The Rev. W. E. Barton, of Oak Park, is one of the ablest
+Congregational ministers in the West. He has recently expressed
+himself on the Mangasarian-Crapsey Debate. Let us hear what he has to
+say on the historicity of Jesus.
+
+The Reverend gentleman begins by an uncompromising denial of our
+statements, and ends by virtually admitting all that we contend for.
+This morning we will write of his denials; next Sunday, of his
+admissions.
+
+"Mr. Mangasarian," says Dr. Barton, "has not given evidence of his
+skill as a logician or of his accuracy in the use of history." Then he
+proceeds to apologize, in a way, for the character of his reply to our
+argument, by saying that "Mr. Mangasarian's arguments, fortunately, do
+not require to be taken very seriously, for they are not in themselves
+serious."
+
+Notwithstanding this protest, Dr. Barton proceeds to do his best to
+reply to our position.
+
+In _The Debate_ we call attention to the fact that according to the
+New Testament, Paul was in Jerusalem when Jesus was teaching and
+performing his miracles there. Yet Paul never seems to have met Jesus,
+or to have heard of his teachings or miracles. To this Dr. Barton
+replies: "We cannot know and are not bound to explain where Paul was
+on the few occasions when Jesus publicly visited Jerusalem."
+
+The above reply, we are compelled to say, much to our regret, is not
+even honest. Without actually telling any untruths, it suggests
+indirectly two falsehoods: First, that Jesus was not much in
+Jerusalem--that he was there only on a few occasions; and that,
+therefore, it is not strange that Paul did not see him or hear of his
+preaching or miracles; and second, that Paul was absent from the city
+when Jesus was there. The question is not how often Jesus visited
+Jerusalem, but how conspicuous was the part he played there. He may
+have visited Jerusalem only once in all his life, yet if he preached
+there daily in the synagogues; if he performed great miracles there;
+if he marched through the streets followed by the palm-waving
+multitude shouting _Hosanna,_ etc.; if he attacked the high-priest and
+the pharisees there, to which latter class Paul belonged; and if he
+was arrested, tried and publicly executed there; and if his teaching
+stirred the city from center to circumference,--it would not be honest
+to intimate that the "few" times Jesus visited Jerusalem, Paul was
+engaged elsewhere.
+
+The Reverend debater attempts to belittle the Jerusalem career of
+Jesus, by suggesting that he was not there much, when according to the
+Gospels, it was in that city that his ministry began and culminated.
+
+Again, to our argument that Paul never refers to any of the teachings
+of Jesus, the Reverend replies: "Nor is it of consequence that Paul
+_seldom_ quotes the words of Jesus." _"Seldom"_---would imply that
+Paul quotes Jesus sometimes. We say Paul gives not a single quotation
+to prove that he knew of a teaching Jesus. He had heard of a
+crucified, risen, Christ--one who had also instituted a bread and wine
+supper, but of Jesus as a _teacher_ and of his _teaching,_ Paul is
+absolutely ignorant.
+
+But by saying "Paul _seldom_ quotes Jesus," Dr. Barton tries to
+produce the impression that Paul quotes Jesus, though not very often,
+which is not true. There is not a single miracle, parable or moral
+teaching attributed to Jesus in the Gospels of which Paul seems to
+possess any knowledge whatever.
+
+Nor is it true that it is of no consequence that "Paul seldom quotes
+the words of Jesus." For it proves that the Gospel Jesus was unknown
+to Paul, and that he was created at a later date.
+
+Once more; we say that the only Jesus Paul knew was the one he met in
+a trance on his way to Damascus. To this the pastor of the First
+Congregational Church of Oak Park replies in the same we-do-not-care-
+to-explain style. He says: "Nor is it of consequence that Paul values
+comparatively lightly, having known him in the flesh."
+
+The words "Paul valued comparatively lightly" are as misleading as the
+words "Paul _seldom_ quotes Jesus." Paul _never_ quotes Jesus'
+teachings, and he _never_ met Jesus in the flesh. The clergyman's
+words, however, convey the impression that Paul knew Jesus in the
+flesh, but he valued that, knowledge "comparatively lightly," that is
+to say, he did not think much of it. And Dr. Barton is one of the
+foremost divines of the country.
+
+And now about his admissions:
+
+
+
+
+VI
+
+
+I. "The Gospels, by whomever written," says the clergyman, "are
+reliable." By _whomever_ written! After two thousand years, it is
+still uncertain to whom we are indebted for the story of Jesus. What,
+in Dr. Barton's opinion, could have influenced the framers of the life
+of Jesus to suppress their identity? And why does not the church
+instead of printing the words, "The Gospel according to Matthew or
+John," which is _not true,_--print, "The Gospel by _whomever_
+written"?
+
+II. "At the very least, four of Paul's epistles are genuine," says the
+same clergyman. Only four? Paul has thirteen epistles in the bible,
+and of only four of them is Dr. Barton certain. What are the remaining
+nine doing in the Holy Bible? And which 'four' does the clergyman
+accept as doubtlessly "genuine?" Only yesterday all thirteen of Paul's
+letters were infallible, and they are so still wherever no questions
+are asked about them. It is only where there is intelligence and
+inquiry that "four of them" at least are reliable. As honesty and
+culture increase, the number of inspired epistles decreases. What the
+Americans are too enlightened to accept, the church sends to the
+_heathen_.
+
+III. "It is true that early a sect grew up which....held that Jesus
+could not have had a body of carnal flesh; but they did not question
+that he had really lived." According to Dr. Barton, these early
+Christians did not deny that Jesus had really lived,--they only denied
+that _Jesus could have had a body of carnal flesh_. We wonder how many
+kinds of flesh there are according to Dr. Barton. Moreover, does not
+the bible teach that Jesus was tempted in all things, and was a man of
+like passions, as ourselves? The good man controls his appetites and
+passions, but his flesh is not any different from anybody else's. If
+Jesus did not have a body like ours, then he did not exist as a human
+being. Our point is, that if the New Testament is reliable, in the
+time of the apostles themselves, the Gnostics, an influential body of
+Christians, denied that Jesus was any more than an imaginary
+existence. "But," pleads the clergyman, "these sects believed that
+Jesus was real, though not carnal flesh." What kind of flesh was he
+then? If by _carnal_ the Gnostics meant 'sensual,' then, the apostles
+in denouncing them for rejecting a carnal Jesus, must have held that
+Jesus was carnal or sensual. How does the Reverend Barton like the
+conclusion to which his own reasoning leads him?
+
+IV. "It is true that there were literary fictions in the age following
+the apostles." This admission is in answer to the charge that even in
+the first centuries the Christians were compelled to resort to forgery
+to prove the historicity of Jesus. The doctor admits the charge,
+except that he calls it by another name. The difference between
+fiction and forgery is this: the former is, what it claims to be; the
+latter is a lie parading as a truth. Fiction is honest because it does
+not try to deceive. Forgery is dishonest because its object is to
+deceive. If the Gospel was a novel, no one would object to its
+mythology, but pretending to be historical, it must square its claims
+with the facts, or be branded as a forgery.
+
+V. "We may not have the precise words Jesus uttered; the portrait may
+be colored;....tradition may have had its influence; but Jesus was
+real." A most remarkable admission from a clerical! It concedes all
+that higher criticism contends for. We are not sure either of Jesus'
+words or of his character, intimates the Reverend preacher. Precisely.
+
+In commenting on our remark that in the eighth century "Pope Hadrian
+called upon the Christian world to think of Jesus as a man," Dr.
+Barton replies with considerable temper: "To date people's right to
+think of Jesus as a man from that decree is not to be characterized by
+any polite term." Our neighbor, in the first place, misquotes us in
+his haste. We never presumed to deny anyone the right to think of
+Jesus what he pleased, before or after the eighth century. (_The
+Debate,_ p. 28.) We were calling attention to Pope Hadrian's order
+to replace the lamb on the cross by the figure of a man. But by what
+_polite_ language is the conduct of the Christian church--which to
+this day prints in its bibles "Translated from the Original Greek,"
+when no _original_ manuscripts are in existence--to be characterized?
+
+Dr. Barton's efforts to save his creed remind us of the Japanese
+proverb: "It is no use mending the lid, if the pot be broken."
+
+
+
+
+VII
+
+
+The most remarkable clerical effort thus far, which _The Mangasarian-
+Crapsey Debate_ has called forth, is that of the Rev. E. V. Shayler,
+rector of Grace Episcopal Church of Oak Park.
+
+"In answer to your query, which I received, I beg to give the
+following statement. Facts, not theories. The date of your own letter
+1908 tells what? 1908 years after what? The looking forward of the
+world to Him."
+
+Rev. Shayler has an original way of proving the historicity of Jesus.
+Every time we date our letters, suggests the clergyman, we prove that
+Jesus lived. The ancient Greeks reckoned time by the Olympiads, which
+fact, according to this interesting clergyman, ought to prove that the
+Olympic games were instituted by the God Heracles or Hercules, son of
+Zeus; the Roman Chronology began with the building of Rome by Romulus,
+which by the same reasoning would prove that Romulus and Remus, born
+of Mars, and nursed by a she-wolf, are historical.
+
+Rev. Shayler has forgotten that the Christian era was not introduced
+into Europe until the sixth century, and Dionysius, the monkish author
+of the era, did not compute time from the birth of Jesus, but from the
+day on which the Virgin Mary met an angel from heaven. This date
+prevailed in many countries until 1745. Would the date on a letter
+prove that an angel appeared to Mary and hailed her as the future
+Mother of God? According to this clergyman, scientists, instead of
+studying the crust of the earth and making geological investigations
+to ascertain the probable age of the earth, ought to look at the date
+in the margin of the bible which tells exactly the world's age.
+
+Rev. Shayler continues: "The places where he was born, labored and
+died are still extant, and have no value apart from such testimony."
+
+While this is amusing, we are going to deny ourselves the pleasure of
+laughing at it; we will do our best to give it a serious answer. If
+the existence of such a country as Palestine proves that Jesus is
+real, the existence of Switzerland must prove that William Tell is
+historical; and the existence of an Athens must prove that Athene and
+Apollo really lived; and from the fact that there is an England, Rev.
+Shayler would prove that Robin Hood and his band really lived in 1160.
+
+The Reverend knows of another 'fact' which he thinks proves Jesus
+without a doubt:
+
+"A line of apostles and bishops coming right down from him by his
+appointment to Anderson of Chicago," shows that Jesus is historical.
+It does, but only to Episcopalians. The Catholics and the other sects
+do not believe that Anderson is a descendant of Jesus. Did the priests
+of Baal or Moloch prove that these beings existed?
+
+The Reverend has another argument:
+
+"The Christian Church--when, why and how did it begin?" Which
+Christian church, brother? Your own church began with Henry the Eighth
+in 1534, with persecution and murder, when the king, his hands wet
+with the blood of his own wives and ministers, made himself the
+supreme head of the church in England. The Methodist church began with
+John Wesley not much over a hundred years ago; the Presbyterian church
+began with John Calvin who burned his guest on a slow fire in Geneva
+about three hundred years ago; and the Lutheran church began with
+Martin Luther in the sixteenth century, the man who said over his own
+signature: "It was I, Martin Luther, who slew all the peasants in the
+Peasants War, for I commanded them to be slaughtered....But I throw
+the responsibility on our Lord God who instructed me to give this
+order;" and the Roman Catholic church, the parent of the smaller
+churches--all chips from the same block--began its real career with
+the first Christian Emperor, Constantine, who hanged his father-in-
+law, strangled his brother-in-law, murdered his nephew, beheaded his
+eldest son, and killed his wife. Gibbon writes of Constantine that
+"the same year of his reign in which he convened the council of Nice
+was polluted by the execution, or rather murder, of his eldest son."
+
+But our clerical neighbor from Oak Park has one more argument: "Why is
+Sunday observed instead of Saturday?" Well, why? Sun-day is the day of
+the Sun, whose glorious existence in the lovely heavens over our heads
+has never been doubted; it was the day which the Pagans dedicated to
+the Sun. _Sunday_ existed before the Jesus story was known,--the
+anniversary of whose supposed resurrection falls in March one year,
+and in April another. If Jesus rose at all, he rose on a certain day,
+and the apostles must have known the date. Why then is there a
+different date every year?
+
+Rev. Shayler concludes: "Haven't time to go deeper now," and he
+intimates that to deny his 'facts' is either to be a fool or a "liar."
+We will not comment on this. We are interested in arguments, not in
+epithets.
+
+
+
+
+VIII
+
+
+One of our Sunday programs, the other day, found its way into a
+church. It went farther; it made its appearance in the pulpit.
+
+"In my hand I hold the notice of a publication bearing the title _Is
+Jesus a Myth?"_ said Dr. Boyle. "This, too, just as though Paul never
+bore testimony."
+
+This gave the clergyman a splendid opportunity to present in clear and
+convincing form the evidence for the reality of Jesus. But one thing
+prevented him:--the lack of evidence.
+
+Therefore, after announcing the subject, he dismissed it, by remarking
+that Paul's testimony was enough.
+
+The Rev. Morton Culver Hartzell, in a letter, offers the same
+argument. "Let Mr. Mangasarian first disprove Paul," he writes. The
+argument in a nutshell is this: Jesus is historical because he is
+guaranteed by Paul.
+
+But _who_ guarantees Paul?
+
+Aside from the fact that the Jesus of Paul is essentially a different
+Jesus from the gospel Jesus there still remains the question, Who is
+Paul? Let us see how much the church scholars themselves know about
+Paul:
+
+"The place and manner and occasion of his death are not _less
+uncertain_ than the facts of his later life...The chronology of
+the rest of his life is as uncertain...We have no means of knowing
+when he was born, or how long he lived, or at what dates the several
+events of his life took place."
+
+Referring to the epistles of Paul, the same authority says: "The chief
+of these preliminary questions is the genuineness of the epistles
+bearing Paul's name, which _if they be his_"--yes, IF--
+
+The Christian scholar whose article on Paul is printed in the
+_Britannica_, and from which we are now quoting, gives further
+expression to this uncertainty by adding that certain of Paul's
+epistles "have given rise to disputes which cannot easily be settled
+in the absence of collateral evidence...The pastoral epistles...have
+given rise to still graver questions, and are probably even _less_
+defensible."
+
+Let the reader remember that the above is not from a rationalist, but
+from the Rev. Edwin Hatch, D. D., Vice-Principal, St. Mary Hall,
+Oxford, England.
+
+Were we disposed to quote rationalist authorities, the argument
+against Paul would be far more decisive. But we are satisfied to rest
+the case on orthodox admissions alone.
+
+The strongest argument then of clergymen who have attempted an answer
+to our position is something like this:
+
+Jesus is historical because a man by the name of Paul says so, though
+we do not know much about Paul.
+
+It is just such evidence as the above that led Prof. Goldwin Smith to
+exclaim: "Jesus has flown. I believe the legend of Jesus was made by
+many minds working under a great religious impulse--one man adding a
+parable, another an exhortation, another a miracle story;"--and George
+Eliot to write: "The materials for a real life of Christ do not
+exist."
+
+In the effort to untie the Jesus-knot by Paul, the church has
+increased the number of knots to two. In other words, the church has
+proceeded on the theory that two uncertainties make a certainty.
+
+We promised to square also with the facts of history our statement
+that the chief concern of the church, Jewish, Christian, or
+Mohammedan, is not righteousness, but orthodoxy.
+
+
+
+
+IX
+
+
+Speaking in this city, Rev. W. H. Wray Boyle of Lake Forest, declared
+that unbelief was responsible for the worst crimes in history. He
+mentioned the placing.
+
+--"of a nude woman on a pedestal in the city of Paris.
+
+--"the assassination of William McKinley.
+
+--"The same unbelief sent a murderer down the isle of a church in
+Denver to pluck the symbol of the sacrament from the hands of a priest
+and slay him at the altar."
+
+The story of a "nude woman," etc., is pure fiction, and that the two
+murders were caused by unbelief is mere assumption. To help his creed,
+the preacher resorts to fable. We shall prove our position by quoting
+_facts_:
+
+I. HYPATIA [Footnote: See Author's, The Martyrdom of Hypatia.] was
+dragged into a Christian church by monks in Alexandria, and before the
+altar she was stripped of her clothing and cut in pieces with oyster
+shells, and murdered. Her innocent blood stained the hands of the
+clergy, who also handle the Holy Sacraments. She was murdered not by a
+crazed individual but by the orders of the bishop of Alexandria. How
+does the true story of Hypatia compare with the fable of "a nude woman
+placed on a pedestal in the city of Paris?" The Reverend must answer,
+or never tell an untruth again.
+
+Hypatia was murdered in church, and by the clergy, because she was not
+orthodox.
+
+II. POLTROT, the Protestant, in the 16th century assassinated
+Francois, the Catholic duke of Guise, in France, and the leaders of
+the church, instead of disclaiming responsibility for the act,
+publicly praised the assassin, and Theodore Beza, the colleague of
+Calvin, promised him a crown in heaven. (_De l'etat etc, P. 82._
+Quoted by Jules Simon.)
+
+III. JAMES CLEMENT, a Catholic, assassinated Henry III. For this act
+the clergy placed his portrait on the altar in the churches between
+two great lighted candle-sticks. Because he had killed a heretic
+prince, the Catholics presented the assassin's mother with a purse.
+(_Esprit de la Ligue I. III. P. 14._)
+
+If it was unbelief that inspired the murder of McKinley, what inspired
+the assassins of Hypatia and Henry III?
+
+We read in the Bible that Gen. Sisera, a heathen, having lost a
+battle, begged for shelter at the tent of Jael, a friendly woman, but
+of the Bible faith. Jael assured the unfortunate stranger that he was
+safe in her tent. The tired warrior fell asleep from great weariness.
+Then Jael picked a tent-peg and with a hammer in her hand "walked
+softly unto him, and smote the nail into his temples, and fastened it
+into the ground...So he died."
+
+The BIBLE calls this assassin "blessed above women." (_Judge IV. 18,
+etc._) She had killed a heretic.
+
+In each of the instances given above, the assassin is honored because
+he committed murder in the interest of the faith. We ask this
+clergyman and his colleagues who are only too anxious to charge every
+act of violence to unbelief in their creeds--What about the crimes of
+_believers_?
+
+
+
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK, THE TRUTH ABOUT JESUS IS HE A MYTH? ***
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