Cannibalism.
I refuse to accept the Bible as a moral guide because it teaches the horrible custom of cannibalism.
“The fathers shall eat the sons in the midst of thee, and the sons shall eat their fathers” (Ezek. v, 10).
“And ye shall eat the flesh of your sons, and the flesh of your daughters shall ye eat” (Lev. xxvi, 29).
“And I will cause them to eat the flesh of their sons and the flesh of their daughters, and they shall eat every one the flesh of his friend” (Jer. xix, 9).
“And thou shalt eat the fruit of thine own body, the flesh of thy sons and of thy daughters.... So that the man that is tender among you, and very delicate, his eye shall be evil toward his brother, and toward the wife of his bosom, and toward the remnant of his children which he shall leave; so that he will not give to any of them the flesh of his children whom he shall eat.... The tender and delicate woman among you, which would not adventure to set the sole of her foot upon the ground for delicateness and tenderness, her eye shall be evil toward the husband of her bosom, and toward her son, and toward her daughter, ... for she shall eat them” (Deut. xxviii, 53–57).
“The hands of the pitiful women have sodden [boiled] their own children” (Lam. iv, 10).
“And the king said unto her, What aileth thee? And she answered, This woman said unto me, Give thy son that we may eat him to-day, and we will eat my son to-morrow. So we boiled my son, and did eat him. And I said unto her on the next day, Give thy son that we may eat him; and she hath hid her son” (2 Kings vi, 28, 29).
You will say that these were punishments inflicted upon these people for their sins. And you will have us believe that these punishments were just. Strange justice! a merciful God compelling a starving mother to kill and devour her own child!
“Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, ye have no life in you” (John vi, 53).
The church perpetuates the idea, if not the practice, of cannibalism. The Christian takes a piece of bread, and tries to make himself and the world believe that he is eating the body of Christ; he takes a sup of wine, and says, “This is Christ’s blood.” Your sacramental feast points to the time when savage priests gathered around the festal board and supped on human flesh and blood.
Primitive Christians, many of them, were guilty of cannibalism. In their Agapae they were accustomed to kill and eat an infant. Dr. Cave in his “Primitive Christianity” (Part III., ch. i) says:
“Epiphanius reports that the Gnostics (a sect of primitive Christians) at their meetings were wont to take an infant begotten in their promiscuous mixtures, and, beating it in a mortar, to season it with honey and pepper and some other spices and perfumes to make it palatable, and then like swine or dogs to devour it, and then to conclude all with prayer.”
Meredith, in “The Prophet of Nazareth,” says:
“So well known were those horrid vices to be carried on by Christians in their nocturnal and secret assemblies, and so certain it was thought that every one who was a Christian participated in them, that for a person to be known to be a Christian was thought a strong presumptive proof that he was guilty of these offenses.... It would appear, however, that, owing to the extreme measures taken against them by the Romans, both in Italy and in all the provinces, the Christians, by degrees, were forced to abandon entirely in their Agapae infant murders, together with every species of obscenity, retaining, nevertheless, some of them, such as the kiss of charity, and the bread and wine, which they contended was transubstantiated into real flesh and blood.”
In the remote districts of Christian Russia, where the rays of our civilization have not yet penetrated the darkness of theology, where Bible morals are still supreme, we are told that even at the present time a more terribly real form attaches to this eucharistic ceremony. From Harper’s Weekly I quote the following:
“We hear of horrid sects at present in Russia, practicing cannibal and human sacrifices with rites almost more devilish than any recorded in history. ‘The communism of the flesh of the Lamb’ and ‘the communism of the blood of the Lamb’ really seem to have been invented by the lowest demons of the bottomless pit. The subject is too revolting to be pursued in detail; it is enough to say that an infant seven days old is bandaged over the eyes, stretched over a dish, and a silver spoon thrust into the side so as to pierce the heart. The elect suck the child’s blood—that is ‘the blood of the Lamb!’ The body is left to dry up in another dish full of sage, then crushed into powder and eaten—that is ‘the flesh of the Lamb!’”