Part 18 (2/2)

In Appletons' New _American Cyclopedia_, under the t.i.tle ”Gnostics,” it is said: ”The Gnostics numbered two cla.s.ses-the select few who were admitted to the divine secrets, and the large cla.s.s of common believers who were not able to rise above the physical condition.” The point is that the Gnostics had a _secret doctrine_ which their adversaries did not know. The recognition of Jesus as an actual person was only apparent, and hence different people differed in that respect. The doctrine came from the far East, and teachers only sought to harmonize it with the new wors.h.i.+p, as they also did with Mithraism. The real Gnostics were the spiritual men of the times, and mere externalists could not understand them. It would be amusing if it were not so serious to see men often affecting great learning, themselves not professing orthodoxy, yet vehement for what can only be called Roman ecclesiasticism. ”The letter killeth,” and ”the wise shall understand.”

Many writers on Gnosticism seem to know no more than the c.o.c.k on the dunghill knows of the jewels that lie before him. The fact is, that the writings of the so-called Fathers, and of the New Testament itself, have come down to us percolated through Roman sacerdotalism, and must be taken with many grains of allowance. There were many men named Jesus at the commencement of the Christian era, but that a Jesus was crucified and rose from the dead is not supported by a particle of evidence. The anonymous author of the great English book, _Supernatural Religion_, has shown how utterly valueless the Gospels are as sources of evidence; and where else shall we look for an historical Jesus? We can have no faith in historical ”phantoms,” ”aions,” and ”illusions.” Neither pagan nor Jewish contemporaneous history gives any countenance to the orthodox claim of a personal, crucified, and risen Jesus.

ORIGIN OF THE CHRIST STORY.

The Gospels were doubtless compiled nearly two hundred years after the beginning of the Christian era from the mythological and superst.i.tious lore that was then circulating in great abundance; and Christ himself is only a mythological personage who, if such a person ever had any existence at all, existed many centuries before the Christian era, and was very different from the Christ of the Gospels, being originally aesculapius or some other character of the like fame, and serving only as the basis of the Christian fable. It is certain that the primitive teachers of Christianity converted to their own purposes the writings of ancient poets and philosophers, mixing together the Oriental Gnosticism and Greek philosophy, and palming them on the world in a new form as things especially revealed to themselves.

It may further be remarked that at a most early period of the Christian era there appears to have been great doubts as to the real existence of Christ. The Manichees, as Augustine informs us, denied that he was a man, while others maintained that he was a man, but denied that he was a G.o.d (August. Serm. x.x.xvii. c. 12). There is, therefore, considerable force in the expressions of a modern writer that the being of no other individual mentioned in history ever labored under such a deficiency of evidence as to its reality, or ever was overset by a thousandth part of the weight of positive proof that it was a creation of imagination only, as that of Jesus Christ. His existence as a man has, from the earliest day on which it can be shown to have been a.s.serted, been earnestly and strenuously denied; and that not by the enemies of the Christian faith, but by the most intelligent, most learned, and most sincere of the Christian name who have left to the world proofs of their intelligence and learning in their writings and of their sincerity in their sufferings. The existence of no individual of the human race that was real and positive was ever by a like conflict of jarring evidence rendered equivocal and uncertain. Nothing, however, is more common than for some persons to a.s.sume an air of contempt, and to cry out that those who deny that such a person as Jesus of Nazareth ever existed are utterly unworthy of being answered. It is, truly, very convenient for them thus to shelter themselves by a.s.suming his existence as incontrovertible, instead of fairly meeting historical facts which, to say the least, render his existence very problemetical. It is to no purpose to urge that it might as well be denied that no such a person as Alexander the Great or Napoleon Bonaparte ever existed as to set at defiance the evidence of the existence of Jesus. For the existence of neither Alexander nor Napoleon was miraculous, and there never was on earth one other real personage whose existence, as a real personage, was denied and disclaimed even as soon as ever it was a.s.serted, as was the case with respect to the a.s.sumed personality of Christ. But the only common character that runs through the whole body of the evidence of heretics is, that they, one and all, from first to last, deny the existence of Jesus Christ as a man, and, professing their faith in him as a G.o.d and Saviour, yet uniformly and consistently hold the whole story of his life and actions to be allegorical. The very earliest Christian writings that have come down to us are of a controversial character and written in attempted refutation of heresies. These heresies must therefore have been of so much earlier date and prior prevalence; they could not have been considered of sufficient consequence to have called (as they seem to have done) for the entire devotion and enthusiastic zeal of the orthodox party to extirpate or keep them under, if they had not acquired deep root and become of serious notoriety-an inference which leads directly to the conclusion that they were of anterior origination to any date that has. .h.i.therto been ascribed to the Gospel history.

In accordance with the notion that Christ was a phantom, the writer of the Commentaries which are attributed to Clement of Alexandria, apparently quoting from the Gospel of Nicodemus, tells us that an apostle attempted to touch the body of Christ, but in so doing found no hardness of flesh and met with no resistance from it, although he thrust his hand into the inner part of it. A similar idea is conveyed by Luke where he says that Christ _vanished_ out of the sight of his disciples, but yet shortly after stood in the midst of them-a notion consistent only with that of an apparition (Luke 24: 31, 36). Similar remarks may be made on the words of Christ to Thomas and Mary; to the latter he says, ”Touch me not, for I have not yet ascended to my Father that is, I am not to be felt;” and to the former he says, ”Reach hither thy hand, and thrust it into my side” (John 20:17, 27). Both these expressions, contradictory as they are with regard to Jesus, still show that the writer knew something of the notion entertained that Christ was a _phantom_. Luke (24: 37, 39) also has words proving the same point, where he says that the disciples, when they saw Christ after his resurrection, thought they had seen a spirit and that he told them to handle him. Marcion of Pontus, who flourished about A. D. 127, believed Christ not to have been born of a virgin and to have grown up gradually, but that he took the form of a man and _appeared_ as a man without being born, and at once showed himself in Galilee in full maturity. Manes also, according to the testimony of Socrates and others, ”denied that Christ was ever really born or had real human flesh, but a.s.serted that he was a mere phantom.” (See Lardner's _Credibility_, vol. ii. p. 141.) For men who entertained this notion of ”the person of Christ,” his sufferings, death, and resurrection were of course a delusion-were only in appearance. Thus, according to Father Apelles, who wrote about A. D.

160, Christ was _not born_, nor was his body like ours, but consisted of aerial and ethereal particles. Very probably, Apelles did not think it unlikely that a body composed of such subtile matter as this should rise from the grave and be capable of pa.s.sing not only through the smallest aperture, but even through solid matter. Barnabas, the companion of Paul, in his Gospel had another way of disposing of the question of the resurrection-namely, by denying that Christ was crucified at all, but was taken up into the third heaven by four angels; that it was Judas Iscariot who was crucified in his stead; and that Christ will not die till the very end of the world (Toland's _Nazarenus_, Letter i. chap. v.

p. 17.) The _Basilidians_, about the commencement of the second century, disposed in a similar manner of the miracle of the resurrection by a.s.serting that it was not Christ, but Simon of Cyrene, who was crucified instead of Jesus.

Such are some of the various opinions of the origin of the story of Christ's resurrection. They are placed before the reader that he may have a choice of theories. After matured reflection, however, he will, most probably, come to the conclusion that this tale originated in the same manner as ”The Gospel of the Birth of Mary,” ”The Gospels of the Infancy of Christ,” ”The Gospel of Nicodemus,” the epistolary correspondence of Christ and Abgarus, of the Virgin Mary and Ignatius, together with hundreds of other similar productions of the ages when facts were not so much appreciated as fables in the form of books. If he arrive at this conclusion, he will see no reason to believe that such a personage as the Christ of the Gospels was ever crucified, much less raised from the dead.

ANCIENT ENIGMAS.

It is amusing to observe how, in ancient times, the dark, enigmatical, and allegorical style was practised, particularly in the East, by all public teachers, both Jews and Gentiles. By this means they explained away the fabulous tales current regarding their G.o.ds, and discoursed on every branch of knowledge known to them. They deemed religion a mystery not to be publicly explained, and always delivered its dogmas clothed in dark allegories (_Oie. de Nat. Deor. lib. ii. iii.; Spencer de Legibus Heb., p. 182; Clerici Hist. Eccles.,_ p. 23). The Egyptians and Chaldeans were noted for their dark sayings (_Simon Hist cru. des Comment_, p. 4). Gale (_Opuscula Mythologica_) gives an account of several ancient books expressly written as instructions to interpret allegories. The Greek poets, Homer not excepted, are by their scholiasts regarded as treating of their G.o.ds in a mystical style. The Stoic philosophers dressed the whole heathen theology in allegorical language (_Cic. de Nat. Deor_., lib. ii.). The Pythagorean philosophy was taught in enigmatical expressions, the meaning of which was studiously concealed from the vulgar mind, and revealed even to the initiated only gradually as their years of maturity were thought to qualify them for its reception. Plato and his followers in the groves of Academia practised the same mode of teaching religion, especially theogony. The writings attributed to Paul the apostle, as has been shown, are replete with mystical and enigmatical expressions. This he confesses, saying that he spoke ”the wisdom of G.o.d in a mystery,” ”comparing spiritual things with spiritual” (1 Cor. 2: 7, 13). Accordingly, he regards the history of Isaac and Ishmael as an allegory (Gal. 4: 22-25), which he condescends to explain. The primitive Fathers of Christianity pursued the same mode of communicating instruction and of defending their religion against the pagans. Justin Martyr, Clement of Alexandria, Irenaeus, Tertullian, Origen, all of them, were very expert in this occult system, in imitation of the heathen philosophers, by whom most of them had been educated. Eusebius (_Hist. Eccles_.y lib. vi. c. 19), citing what he is pleased to call the a.s.sertions of Porphyry, writes that Origen, having been educated in Greek literature, intermingled it with the fictions of Christianity, that he dealt in the works of Plato, Numenius, Cranius, Apollophanes, Longinus Moderatus, Nico-machus, Chaeremon, and Cornutus, and that he derived from these pagan authors the allegorical mode of interpretation usual in the mysteries of the Greeks, and applied it to the Jewish Scriptures. Thus, Origen's mode of teaching was identical with that of the pagans-a mode commended even by the learned Dodwell (_Letters of Advice_, etc., p. 208), who says that the pagan mystical arts of concealment are of use toward understanding the Scriptures. The Jewish rabbis also delivered their doctrines in the same obscure and mystical manner, as their Talmud, Cabala, Gemara, and other books, besides what we call the Hebrew Scriptures, amply show. The religious teachers of all the nations of antiquity thus delighting in dark sayings, it is therefore by no means wonderful that the writers of the Gospels, whoever they were, attribute similar enigmas to Jesus. This accounts, in a measure, for the obscurity of the Gospels, while, however, it traces their origin to a pagan source.

G.o.dS OF VIRGIN BIRTH.

It is in perfect harmony with what has long ago been demonstrated by some of the most critical writers, not only in English, but also in other languages-namely, that the New Testament has been collected by Eclectic monks-particularly Egyptian monks of Jewish extraction connected with the Alexandrian college-from various legendary tales and other doc.u.ments then afloat, which they modified to answer their own purposes, and which since their time have been considerably altered to suit the requirements of different religious communities.

The Christian apologists of the second and third centuries evinced no lack of knowledge on this point. Justin Martyr, as already cited, in addressing a Roman emperor, says that the Christians, by declaring Jesus to be the Son of G.o.d, born of a virgin, said no more than the Romans said of those whom they styled the 24 sons of Jupiter, such as Mercury, Bacchus, Hercules, Pollux, and Castor; and as to Jesus, he repeats, having been born of a virgin, the pagans had their Perseus, son of Jove and the virgin Danae, to balance this feature. Creusa, daughter of Erectheus, was visited by the G.o.d Apollo, and in consequence became the mother of the G.o.d Ja.n.u.s. A Chinese virgin by means of the rays of the sun-regarded as a deity-became the mother of the G.o.d Fo, who acted as a mediator between his followers and another superior G.o.d. The Hindoo virgin Rohini in like miraculous manner gave birth to a G.o.d, one of the Brahman trinity. Another Hindoo virgin, Devaci, as already observed, having had an intercourse with the deity Yasudeva, became the mother of an incarnate G.o.d whose name was Chrishna; whose birth was announced by the appearance of a new star; whose life, when an infant, was sought in vain by the reigning tyrant of the country; whose princ.i.p.al exploits were killing a terrible serpent, holding a mountain on the tip of his finger, was.h.i.+ng the feet of the Brahmans, saving mult.i.tudes by his miraculous power, raising many from the dead, dying to save the world from sin and darkness, rising from the dead, and then ascending to his heavenly seat in Vaicontha (Sir Wm. Jones's Asiatic Researches, vol. i.

pp. 259-273). Somonocodom, who, according to the sacred books of the Talapoins of Siam, was destined to save the world, was another personage who had a virgin mother. The followers of Plato about two hundred years after his death, but more than a century before the Christian era, reported that he had been born of a virgin.

The most ancient Alexandrian chronicles, which furnish ample proofs of the universal prevalence of our gospel religion in Egypt for ages before the Christian era, testify as follows: ”To this day Egypt has consecrated the pregnancy of a virgin and the nativity of her son, whom they annually present in a cradle to the adoration of the people; and when King Ptolemy, three hundred and fifty years before our Christian era, demanded of the priests the significancy of this religious ceremony, they told him it was a mystery.” (See _Christian Mythology Unveiled_, p. 94.)

Indeed, the fabulous lore of ancient times is teeming with the amours of G.o.ds with virgins and the results thereof. Some writers have intimated that such births were the consequences of the artful intrigues of the pagan priests with holy virgins; but Dupuis, Albert, Alphonso, Boulanger, and others have clearly shown ”that these and similar tales, which are revolting to common sense if taken literally, were originally, in Oriental learning, astronomical and other allegories, conveying the most sublime truths then known touching the revolutions of the heavenly bodies and other physical and moral facts, while their meaning in after ages was gradually perverted to answer other ends.”

THE EPISTLES SILENT CONCERNING THE WORDS AND WORKS OF JESUS.

It is a most remarkable fact that in none of the Epistles is there any mention made of the various wonderful things narrated in the Gospels as having been said and done by Christ. Indeed, there is scarcely an allusion made in them to those astounding details with which every page of the Gospels is replete. No mention is made in them of what the Gospels state that Christ declared _regarding the day of judgment_-nothing about Christ's preternatural birth, his baptism, his temptation by Satan, his denunciations of the different existing sects, his precepts, his parables, his intimate acquaintance with publicans, with Magdalene, with Mary and other women. Not one of his miracles is detailed, and nothing is said of the marvellous circ.u.mstances which attended his crucifixion and death, such as the sun darkening, the earth quaking, the temple rending, rocks cleaving asunder, graves opening, the dead rising and walking the streets of Jerusalem. These are matters which, one would imagine, should occupy a very prominent position in all the Epistles-should be relied upon by the writers respectively as facts with which to attest and establish the truth of their doctrines, and which would, of themselves, suffice to convince and convert the most incredulous and obdurate mind. In the Epistles ascribed to Peter, James, and John, who are said to have been eye- and ear-witnesses of what Christ did and said, one would expect, certainly, to find frequent details of the marvellous things said of Jesus in the Gospels. But Peter does not so much as allude to the keys of heaven and h.e.l.l which the Gospels say were given him to keep, nor even to the fact that Jesus, walking on the sea, enabled him also to do so and saved him from drowning. Neither does he tell those to whom he writes that Jesus conferred his blessing upon him when he p.r.o.nounced him ”the Christ, the Son of the living G.o.d;” nor that Jesus, after he had suspiciously asked him three times whether he loved him, and had as often received affirmative answers, charged him to feed his flock. Of course we cannot expect him to have recorded in his Epistles that Jesus graced him with the epithet ”Satan,” or that he denied the same Jesus thrice. If it was the son of Zebedee who wrote ”the General Epistle of James” (about the authors.h.i.+p of which Christians have not as yet agreed), it would not seem too great a tribute to his divine Master for him to refer to some of his mighty words and deeds which he must have witnessed. Or if the author is the brother of Jesus (which is not very likely, since all his relatives except his mother shunned him), he could deplore the fact that he and his brothers-Joses, Simon, and Judas-_did not believe_ in the pretensions of their divine brother, Jesus. But the very name of Jesus is mentioned, and that casually, only thrice in the whole Epistle. John, ”the beloved disciple,” could in one of his Epistles, or at least in that which it is agreed he wrote-to the confirmation of the genuineness of Matthew, Mark, and Luke's Gospels-have adverted to that curious incident of his mother asking Jesus to allow him and his brother James to sit on each side of him in his kingdom; or could, with a mixture of joy and sorrow, ruminate on the pleasure he had felt in accompanying Peter to prepare the last Pa.s.sover which they had eaten with their divine Master, and bemoan the fatal disaster which shortly after overtook his Lord. But he writes not one word about these remarkable events, or about anything that occurred personally between him and Jesus. Indeed, the writers of the Epistles totally ignore the contents of the Gospels. How, then, is this fact to be accounted for? Did the writers of the Epistles-whoever they were-know anything at all about the contents of the present Gospels? Are we not ent.i.tled to infer that either the churches, etc. to which these Epistles were addressed were much older than the date of the Gospels, and even than the time at which the Christ of the Gospels was born, or that, if the present Gospels then existed, the authors of the Epistles knew nothing of them?

CONCLUSION.

We have seen that, so limited was the knowledge of Jesus of futurity, he falsely prophesied the end of the world, the time of his own resurrection, the perpetual praise of a woman who poured upon him a box of ointment, and the signs which believers in Christianity would manifest. We have also seen that a vast number of his precepts and doctrines were obscure, contradictory, bigoted, absurd, and untrue, and that much of his conduct was open to criticism. We have further seen that he was deficient in knowledge of natural philosophy; that he borrowed the best part of his doctrine from heathen mythology; that his life, his teaching, and his practices were identical with those of heathen monks who had preceded him; that, like many other human beings, he feared death; that neither his own neighbors, nor kinsmen, nor even his disciples, believed that he was, either in nature or power, superior to other mortals; and that he himself avowed that the purpose for which he had been ushered into the world was to send strife, division, fire, and sword on earth, and to make ”brother deliver up brother to death, and the father the child, and incite children to rise up against their parents and cause them to be put to death” (Matt. 10: 21).

Such has been the result of our inquiry. But let it not be supposed that there was nothing to admire in the alleged character and teachings of the ideal Jesus. There are many exceedingly tender things mingled with the arrogant and severe. His character, made up from many models, could not be otherwise than inconsistent and contradictory. It is a perfect mosaic, but such has been the reverence for Jesus, in view of the extraordinary claims made for him, that men have closed their eyes to his imperfections and faults, while they have greatly magnified his virtues. We have known many persons in our day who as far excelled Jesus in every n.o.ble and manly quality as the civilization and morality of the nineteenth century are superior to those of the first. It has been well said that Jesus, whether a person or an impersonation, will continue to be the leader just so long as he _leads_; but he no longer leads. It is found (a.s.suming his personality) that he taught nothing but what had been taught with equal distinctness before him, and that he taught much not suited to this commercial age and to the wants of this nineteenth century. While many persons profess to be disciples of Jesus, yet n.o.body even pretends to conform their lives to his alleged teachings. Properly speaking, there is not now a real Christian upon the face of the earth, as no one attempts to practise the extreme precepts Christ is said to have laid down in the so-called Sermon on the Mount. What is called Christianity is proved and admitted to be an evolution from various religions which were before it. The good in every religion is the same, and men will go on weeding out the impure and imperfect, the fittest only surviving. Christianity claims to be an infallible divine revelation, and that it is complete in itself, and of course admits of no progress. This is the difficulty between the old orthodoxy and the new orthodoxy of the creeds. The Church carries no flag of truce. It says, You _must_ believe! True men answer, We _cannot_ believe the impossible and the absurd. There can be no doubt as to who will survive in this struggle for existence. The ”spirit of truth” is coming, and it will ”teach in all things.”

CHAPTER XV. BLOOD-SALVATION

_”And almost all things are by the law purged with blood; and without the shedding of blood there is no remission.”-Heb. 9: 22. ”The blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from all sin.”-! John 1: 5._

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