It is of divine authority that "every beast, every creeping thing, and every fowl, and whatsoever creepeth upon the earth after their kinds, went forth out of the ark" (Gen. viii., 19), and that Noah, lest his god should not have had his appetite for slaughter satiated by the putrifying masses of the drowned dead, scattered over the face of the whole earth, took "of every clean beast and of every clean fowl" (v. 20), and offered up his puny sacrifice by fire from the few living things left from the huge sacrifice by water. It is blasphemy to deny that as the fumes of the roasting animals went up "the Lord smelled a sweet savor" (v. 21), and gratefully declared: "neither will I again smite any more every thing living, as I have done" (v. 21). So that god appears to have made man, then to have repented that he made him, then to have destroyed him, and then to have been half sorry once more, declaring that he would not do it again. And this is the god in "whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning" (James i., 17). It certainly required a revelation to tell us so.
It is of divine authority that the "fear" and "dread" of man is on every "beast of the earth, and upon every fowl of the air, upon all that moveth upon the earth, and upon all the fishes of the sea" (Gen. ix., 2). This fear is not very evident in the tiger as he tears a man in pieces, in the vulture who picks out the eyes of the dying traveller, in the shark who snaps in twain the swimming sailor; yet it is consoling to know that they are all trembling with dread of their prey as they swallow the toothsome morsel. The "covenant which is between me and you and every living creature of all flesh" (Gen. ix., 15) is rather funny; if it were not blasphemy to deny it I should scarcely have conceived of god entering into a covenant with, say, a black-beetle. The covenant is not of much use to individuals apparently, though entered into with "every" one of them, for though god promises that he will not again drown them all en masse, he gives no pledge as to drowning in detail, and this is quite as unpleasant to the victims.
It is blasphemy to deny that 4,130 years ago "the whole earth was of one language and of one speech" (Gen. xi., 1), and the whole science of philology is therefore a delusion and a snare. As "they"-the whole earth-"journeyed from the east," they "found a plain," and made up their minds to build "a city and a tower whose top may reach unto heaven" (verses 2 and 4). It is blasphemy to deny that god-who at that time appears to have known little about the laws of gravitation or the difficulty of breathing, say, five miles up-thought they might succeed, and, being omnipresent, he changed his place, and "came down to see the city and the tower which the children of men builded." In order to prevent the appearance of the top of the tower in heaven-heaven being above the firmament, the firmament having the stars set in it, and the nearest fixed star being 5,480,490,000,000 miles away, so that if they had directed their tower towards this star, and had built at the rate of ten miles a day, it would have taken them more than 1,501,504,109 years to reach heaven, that is, they would have had to build for 1,501,599,979 years onwards from the present time-god being afraid that they would storm his realm, took the trouble to confound their language, so that they might not understand each other's speech. When we read of the Titans trying to storm heaven, we know that the story is a myth; but the same fable is "Bible truth" in Genesis, and it is blasphemy to deny it, foolish as it is.
It is blasphemy to deny that when Terah was 70 years of age he begat Abram (Gen. xi., 26), and that he died when he was 205 years of age (verse 32); it is blasphemy to deny that Abram was 75 years old when he departed out of Haran and went into Canaan (Gen. xii., 4, 5); it is blasphemy to deny that Abram stayed in Haran until after his father's death (Acts vii., 4); that is, it is blasphemy to deny that the 135 years of Terah's life are of exactly the same length as the 75 years of Abram's life. Anyone who believes not that 135=75 will be damned. Moral, parents should not allow their children to learn arithmetic, for by so doing they imperil their immortal souls, and risk their committal to gaol by the tender mercies of Mr. Justice North.
Sarai, about whose age there is some doubt, in consequence of the great length of her husband's years, was a very fair woman; reckoning by Terah's age, she must have been at this time at least 160 years old (supposing that she married at 15), but she seems to have been only 90 years of age at least 25 years later (Gen. xvii., 17). However, whether she was a fair woman of 160 summers, or a gay young thing of only 65, she proved to be indeed a treasure to her husband. For it is of divine authority that faithful Abraham pretended that his wife was only his sister, and allowed King Pharaoh to take her and to pay him for her "sheep, and oxen, and he-asses, and menservants, and maidservants, and she-asses, and camels" (Gen. xii., 16); it is blasphemy to deny that god plagued poor innocent "Pharaoh and his house with great plagues" because they were deceived by his friend's shameless venality and lying, and that when Pharaoh discovered the fraud, Abram took himself off with his wife and all he had gained by her sale, being, as the sacred narrative naively remarks, "very rich" (Gen. xiii., 2) after this transaction.
It is blasphemy to deny that "he [god] is faithful that promised" (Heb. x., 23); it is also blasphemy to deny that he [god] broke his promises. For he promised Abram, over and over again, that he would give to him as well as to his seed the land of Canaan (Gen. xiii., 15; xv., 7, 8; xvii., 8, etc.); yet we find that Abram was obliged to buy a sepulchre for his wife's corpse, and never inherited the land at all. Even as far as his seed was concerned, god broke the "everlasting covenant" (Gen. xvii., 9) he made, to give to "thee and to thy seed after thee, the land wherein thou art a stranger, even the land of Canaan for an everlasting possession" (Gen. v., 8), for the Jews only possessed part of this land for a short time, instead of for ever, and as defined by god, "this land, from the river of Egypt unto the great river, the river Euphrates" (Gen. xv., 18), they never had it at all. It is comforting to notice that this promise-breaking god is the same who in the person of his son declared: "he that believeth not shall be damned for as he did not keep his word in the one case perhaps he will not do so in the other.
One day, as Abram was returning from the slaughter of some of his enemies, a certain Melchizedek, named with charming appropriateness King of Peace (Heb. vii., 2), went out to meet him, and blessed him. Nothing is said in Genesis to make us regard Melchizedek as the extraordinary being that he really was; for it is blasphemy to say that Melchizedek was ever born, that he had any ancestors, that he ever died (Heb. vii., 3); like Topsy, "'spects he growed"; where he is now nobody knows; he would be a most useful "Christian antiquity," but he is not producible. On the world's stage he made but this one appearance, "positively for the first and last time." Melchizedek is a type of Jesus Christ. Jesus was born; Melchizedek was not. Jesus had a mother; Melchizedek had none. Jesus had his descent from David; Melchizedek was without descent. Jesus died; Melchizedek had no end of life. The correspondence between them is really striking. The only similarity is that they were both without any acknowledged father, and this peculiarity they share with many pagan heroes and with some less important folk.
It is blasphemy to deny that Abram, the "friend of God," took to himself his wife's maid, Hagar, and that when this poor slave was about to bear him a child he chivalrously handed her over to her jealous mistress, Sarai, saying: "Behold, thy maid is in her hand; do to her as it pleaseth thee" (Gen xvi., 6). An ordinary man, under such circumstances, would have had some tender, pitiful feeling towards the mother of his unborn child; but Abram was a saint of God, and was above all weak sentiment of that kind, so he stood quietly by while Sarai ill-treated the woman who had lain in his arms, and let her flee away into the wilderness unhelped and unpitied. God's angel drove poor Hagar back to her bondage, and after her return her son was born. At this time Abram was 86 years of age; fourteen years later Sarah had a son, Isaac, and some time after she insisted on turning out poor Ishmael, with his mother, Hagar. A sweet, womanly creature was Sarah. Abraham made no objection, but "rose up early in the morning" to send off his first-born son and his mother, and was generous enough to take "bread and a bottle of water," and to make this splendid present to Hagar "putting it on her shoulder, and the child, and sent her away." "The child" was now about fifteen years of age, and would have been a little heavy for poor Hagar to carry if he had been an ordinary well-grown boy; he was, however, curiously small for his age, for we learn that when "the water was spent in the bottle" "she cast the child under one of the shrubs" (Gen. xxi., 15). It is blasphemy to deny that Hagar carried this big baby, and threw him about like a toy.
It is blasphemy to deny that "the Lord" appeared to Abraham in the plains of Mamre, and that he, with two others, eat dressed calf, butter and milk (Gen. xviii., 1-8). It is blasphemy to say that god has parts (Art. I.), but it is difficult to understand how he eat without teeth, and swallowed without a throat; besides, what became of the eaten meat if there was no stomach to receive it? Truly, the gate is narrow which leadeth unto life, and narrow must be the brains that go in there through.
It is blasphemy to deny that god, who knows everything, did not know what was going on in Sodom and Gomorrah.