Part 7 (1/2)
*** Matt, xxv, 41.
Far from love is this horrid notion of eternal torment. And yet the popular preachers of to-day talk first of love and then of
”h.e.l.l, a red gulf of everlasting fire, Where poisonous and undying worms prolong Eternal misery to those hapless slaves, Whose life has been a penance for its crimes.”
In reading the sayings attributed to Jesus, all must be struck by the pa.s.sage which so extraordinarily influenced the famous Origen.* If he understood it aright, its teachings are most terrible. If he understood it wrongly, what are we to say for the wisdom of teaching which expresses so vaguely the meaning which it rather hides than discovers by its words? The general intent of Christ's teaching seems to be an inculcation of neglect of this life, in the search for another. ”Labor not for the meat which perisheth, but for that meat which en-dureth unto everlasting life.”** ”Take no thought for your life, what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink; nor yet for your body, what ye shall put on....
take no thought, saying, what shall we eat? or what shall we drink? or wherewithal shall we be clothed?.... But seek ye first the Kingdom of G.o.d and his righteousness, and all these things shall be added unto you.” The effect of these texts, if fully carried out, would be most disastrous; they would stay all scientific discoveries, prevent all development of man's energies. It is in the struggle for existence here that men are compelled to become acquainted with the conditions which compel happiness or misery. It is only by the practical application of that knowledge, that the wants of society are understood and satisfied, and disease, poverty, hunger, and wretchedness, prevented. Jesus subst.i.tutes ”I believe,” for ”I think,” and puts ”watch and pray,”
instead of ”think and act.” Belief is made the most prominent feature, and is, indeed, the doctrine which pervades, permeates, and governs all Christianity. It is represented that, at the judgment, the world will be reproved ”Of sin because they believe not.” This teaching is most disastrous; man should be incited to active thought: belief is a cord which would bind him to the teachings of an uneducated past.
* Matt. xix, 12.
** Matt, xxiv, 41.
Thought, mighty thought, mighty in making men most manly, will burst this now rotting cord, and then--shaking off the cobwebbed and dust-covered traditions of dark old times, humanity shall stand crowned with a most glorious diadem of facts, which, like gems worn on a bright summer's day, shall grow more resplendent as they reflect back the rays of truth's meridian sun. Fit companion to blind belief in slave-like prayer. Men pray as though G.o.d needed most abject entreaty ere he would grant them justice. What does Jesus teach on this? What is his direction on prayer? ”After this manner pray ye: Our Father, which art in heaven.” Do you think that G.o.d is the Father of all, when you pray that he will enable you to defeat some other of his children, with whom your nation is at war? And why ”which art in Heaven?” Where is Heaven?
you look upward, and if you were at the antipodes, would look upward still. But that upward would be downward to us. Do you know where Heaven is, if not, why say ”which art in Heaven?” Is G.o.d infinite, then he is in earth also, why limit him to Heaven? ”Hallowed be thy name.” What is G.o.d's name? and if you know it not, how can you hallow it? How can G.o.d's name be hallowed even if you know it? ”Thy kingdom come.” What is G.o.d's kingdom, and will your praying bring it quicker? Is it the Judgment day, and do you say ”Love one another,” pray for the more speedy arrival of that day on which G.o.d may say to your fellow, ”depart ye cursed into everlasting fire?” ”Thy will be done on earth, as it is in heaven.” How is G.o.d's will done in heaven? If the devil be a fallen angel, there must have been rebellion even there. ”Give us this day our daily bread,” Will the prayer get it without work? No. Will work get it without the prayer?
Yes? Why pray then for bread to G.o.d, who says, ”Blessed be ye that hunger.... woe unto you that are full?” ”And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors.” What debts have you to G.o.d? Sins? Samuel Taylor Coleridge says, ”A sin is an evil which has its ground or origin in the agent, and not in the compulsion of circ.u.mstances. Circ.u.mstances are compulsory, from the absence of a power to resist or control them: and if the absence likewise be the effect of circ.u.mstances.... the evil derives from the circ.u.mstances.... and such evil is not sin.”* Do you say that you are independent of all circ.u.mstances, that you can control them, that you have a free will? Mr. Buckle says that the a.s.sertion of a free will ”involves two a.s.sumptions, of which the first, though possibly true, has never been proved, and the second is unquestionably false. These a.s.sumptions are that there is an independent faculty, called consciousness, and that the dictates of that faculty are infallible.”** ”And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.” Do you think G.o.d will possibly lead you into temptation? if so, you can not think him all-good, if not all-good he is not G.o.d, if G.o.d, the prayer is a blasphemy.
* ”Aids to Reflection,” 1843, p. 200.
** ”History of Civilization,” vol. i, p. 14.
I close this paper with the last scene in Jesus' life, not meaning that I have--in these few pages--fully examined his teachings; but hoping that enough is even here done to provoke inquiry and necessitate debate, Jesus, according to the general declaration of Christian divines, came to die, and what does he teach by his death? The Rev. F. D. Maurice it is, I think, who well says, ”That he who kills for a faith must be weak, that he who dies for a faith must be strong.” How did Jesus die?
Giordano Bruno, and Julius Caesar Vanini, were burned for Atheism. They died calm, heroic defiant of wrong. Jesus, who could not die, courted death, that he, as G.o.d, might accept his own atonement, and might pardon man for a sin which he had not committed, and in which he had no share.
The death he courted came, and when it came he could not face it, but prayed to himself that he might not die. And then, when on the cross, if two of the gospels do him no injustice, his last words--as there recorded--were a bitter cry of deep despair, ”My G.o.d, my G.o.d, why hast thou forsaken me?” The Rev. Enoch Mellor, in his work on the Atonement, says, ”I seek not to fathom the profound mystery of these words. To understand their full import would require one to experience the agony of desertion they express.” Do the words, ”My G.o.d, my G.o.d, why hast thou forsaken me?” express an ”agony” caused by a consciousness of ”desertion?” Doubtless they do; in fact, if this be not the meaning conveyed by the despairing death-cry, then there is in it no meaning whatever. And if those words do express a ”bitter agony of desertion,”
then they emphatically contradict the teachings of Jesus. ”Before Abraham was, I am.” ”I and my father are one.” ”Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy G.o.d.” These were the words of Jesus, words conveying (together with many other such texts) to the reader an impression that divinity was claimed by the man who uttered them. If Jesus had indeed been G.o.d, the words ”My G.o.d, my G.o.d,” would have been a mockery most extreme. G.o.d could not have deemed himself forsaken by himself. The dying Jesus, in that cry, confessed himself either the dupe of some other teaching, a self-deluded enthusiast, or an arch-imposter, who, in the bitter cry, with the wide-opening of the flood-gates through which life's stream ran out, confessed aloud that he, at least, was no deity, and deemed himself a G.o.d-forsaken man. The garden scene of agony is fitting prelude to this most terrible act. Jesus, who is G.o.d, prays to himself, in ”agony he prayed most earnestly.”* He refuses to hear his own prayers, and he, the omnipotent, is forearmed against his coming trial by an angel from heaven, who ”strengthened” the great Creator. Was Jesus the son of G.o.d?
Praying, he said, ”Father, the hour is come, glorify thy Son, that thy Son also may glorify thee.”** And was he glorified? His death and resurrection most strongly disbelieved in the very city where they happened, if, indeed, they ever happened at all. His doctrines rejected by the only people to whom he preached them. His miracles denied by the only nation where they are alleged to have been performed; and he himself thus on the cross, crying out, ”My G.o.d, my G.o.d, why hast thou forsaken me?” Surely no further comment is needed on this head, to point more distinctly to the most monstrous mockery the text reveals.
* Luke, xxii, 44.
** John, xvii, 2.
To those who urge that the course I take is too bold, or that the problems I deal with are two deep or sacred, I will reply in Herschel's version of Schiller,
Wouldst thou reach perfection's goal, Stay not! rest not!
Forward strain, Hold not hand, and draw not rein.
Perseverance strikes the mark, Expansion clears whatever is dark, Truth in the abyss doth dwell, My say is said--now fare the well.
THE TWELVE APOSTLES.
All, good Christians, indeed all Christians--for are there any who are not models of goodness?--will desire that their fellow-creatures who are unbelievers should have the fullest possible information, biographical or otherwise, as to the twelve persons specially chosen by Jesus to be his immediate followers. It is not for the instruction of the believer that I pen this brief essay; he would be equally content with his faith in the absence of all historic vouchers. Indeed a pious wors.h.i.+per would cling to his creed not only without testimony in its favor, but despite direct testimony against it. It is to those not within the pale of the church that I shall seek to demonstrate the credibility of the history of the twelve apostles. The short biographical sketch here presented is extracted from the first five books of the New Testament, two of which at least are attributed to two of the twelve. It is objected by heretical men who go as far in their criticisms on the Gospels as Colenso does with the Pentateuch, that not one of the gospels is original or written by any of the apostles; that, on the contrary, they were preceded by numerous writings, since lost or rejected, these in their turn having for their basis the oral tradition which preceded them. It is alleged that the four gospels are utterly anonymous, and that the fourth gospel is subject to strong suspicions of spuriousness. It would be useless to combat, and I therefore boldly ignore these attacks on the authenticity of the text, and proceed with my history. The names of the twelve are as follows: Simon, surnamed Peter; Andrew, his brother; James and John, the sons of Zebedee; Andrew; Philip; Bartholomew; Matthew; James, the son of Alphaeus; Simon, the Canaanite; Judas Iscariot; and a twelfth, as to whose name there is some uncertainty; it was either Lebbaeus, Thaddaeus, or Judas. It is in Matthew alone (x, 3) that the name of Lebbaeus is mentioned thus: ”Lebbaeus, whose surname was Thaddaeus.” We are told, on this point, by able biblicists, that the early MSS. have not the words ”whose surname was Thaddaeus,” and that these words have probably been inserted to reconcile the gospel according to Matthew with that attributed to Mark.
How good must have been the old fathers who sought to improve upon the Holy Ghost by making clear that which inspiration had left doubtful! In the English version of the Rheims Testament used in this country by our Roman Catholic brethren, the reconciliation between Matthew and Mark is completed by omitting the words ”Lebbaeus whose surname was,” leaving only the name ”Thaddaeus” in Matthew's text. This omission must be correct, being by the authority of an infallible church. If Matthew x, 3, and Mark iii, 18, be pa.s.sed as reconciled, although the first calls the twelfth disciple Lebbaeus, and the second gives him the name Thaddaeus, there is yet the difficulty that in Luke vi, 16, corroborated by John xiv, 22, there is a disciple spoken of as ”Judas, not Iscariot.”
”Judas, the brother of James.” Commentators have endeavored to clear away this last difficulty by declaring that Thaddaeus is a Syriac word, having much the same meaning as Judas. This has been answered by the objection that if Matthew's Gospel uses Thaddaeus in lieu of Judas, then he ought to speak of Thaddaeus Iscariot, which he does not; and it is further objected also that while there are some grounds for suggesting a Hebrew original for the gospel attributed to Matthew, there is not the slightest pretense for alleging that Matthew wrote in Syriac. It is to be hoped that the unbelieving reader will not stumble on the threshold of his study because of a little uncertainty as to a name. What is in a name? The Jewish name which we read as Jesus is really Joshua, but the name to which we are most accustomed seems the one we should adhere to.
Simon Peter being the first named among the disciples of Jesus, deserves the first place in this notice. The word ”Simon” may be rendered, if taken as a Greek name, _flatnose_ or _ugly_. Some of the ancient Greek and Hebrew names are characteristic of peculiarities in the individual, but no one knows whether Peter's nose had anything to do with his name.
Simon is rather a Hebrew name, but Peter is Greek, signifying a _rock_ or _stone_. Peter is supposed to have the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and his second name may express his stony insensibility to all appeals by infidels for admittance to the celestial regions. Lord Byron's ”Vision of Judgment” is the highest known authority as to Saint Peter's celestial duties, but this n.o.bleman's poems are only fit for very pious readers. Peter, ere he became a parson, was by trade a fisher, and when Jesus first saw Peter, the latter was in a vessel fis.h.i.+ng with his brother Andrew, casting a net into the sea of Galilee, Jesus walking by the sea said to them, ”Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men.”* The two brothers did so, and they became Christ's disciples. The successors of Peter have since reversed the apostles' early practice: instead of now casting their nets into the sea, the modern representatives of the disciples of Jesus draw the sees into their nets, and, it is believed, find the result much more profitable. When Jesus called Peter no one was with him but his brother Andrew; a little further on, the two sons of Zebedee were in a s.h.i.+p with their father mending nets. This is the account of Peter's call given in the gospel according to Matthew, and as Matthew was inspired by the Holy Ghost, who is identical with G.o.d the Father, who is one with G.o.d the Son, who is Jesus, the account is doubtless free from error. In the Gospel according to John, which is likewise inspired in the same manner, from the same source, and with similar infallibility, we learn that Andrew was originally a disciple of John the Baptist, and that when Andrew first saw Jesus, Peter was not present, but Andrew went and found Peter who, if fis.h.i.+ng, must have been angling on land, telling him ”we have found the Messiah,” and that Andrew then brought Peter to Jesus, who said, ”Thou art Simon, the son of Jonas; thou shalt be called Cephas.” There is no mention in this gospel narrative of the sons of Zebedee being a little further on, or of any fis.h.i.+ng in the sea of Galilee. This call is clearly on land, whether or not near the sea of Galilee does not appear.