“And what appears more unfortunate than all your past evils, is, you have put to death, through mistake, your last refuge, the true Messiah. There are, at the present time, upwards of one hundred millions of Christians who maintain and believe that the same Jesus whom ye slew and hanged on a tree, is in truth both Lord and Christ, the same whom your nation so long and so earnestly looked for. If, then, faith in that Christ whom you rejected, has opened the kingdom of heaven to the Christian world, while your whole race is shut ont, the Christians owe you a debt of everlasting gratitude, for by this sacrifice they are to enter into the Supper of the Lamb, and your unfortunate race have the door closed against them. But do not despair, for the Infidels of the present day are your friends. They will make all right They will, if you attend to them, convince you that your forefathers were imposed on, when in a state of ignorance, by some artful impostor, who persuaded them that the seed of Abram was chosen by God to the exclusion of all other people and nations.
“In the infancy of your nation, Moses, or some other artful leader, took advantage of your inexperience, and by antedating miracles said to have been performed in behalf of your ancestors by Jehovah, but which never were performed, and which at the time was incapable of refutation, your nation imbibed the reality that the seed of Abram was the chosen of the Lord. This conviction for thousands of years has been received, and has been handed down from father to Son till the present time. Yes, ye seed of Abram, (by this name I address you,) by considering yourselves the chosen people of God, this conviction has been your perpetual curse. Your faith in the ancient accounts of those miracles and wonders, wrought in your behalf by Moses, has been your fatal delusion. You consider it not possible for your fore-, fathers to have been deceived; for, say you, the miracles and wonders were performed before your whole nation.
“In this consists your error. There is no certainty as to who wrote the history of the wonders, said to have been wrought in your behalf, nor at what time they were first recorded. But the internal evidence of the books ascribed to Moses, fully prove him not to have been the author. The same evidence also proves that the first five books were not written till after the reign of the first kings of Israel. So that, by antedating the wonders recorded to have taken place in the infancy of your nation, and then by a cunning impostor to have been subsequently presented for the first time to the Jews, giving them an account of those wonders of old, an ignorant nation would be likely to believe them; and in that case a whole people would be converted at once, giving credit to an absurdity producing an influence in the world which has far exceeded any imposture that ever has been Saddled on the human race. The dreadful error into which your forefathers fell, and by handing down to their posterity the foolish story of your being a chosen people, the greatest curse which could befal you, you have, without doubt, been the most unfortunate people on earth; for by considering yourselves God’s chosen people, you have despised the rest of the human race, and you have in return been persecuted and plundered. You have been treated by all nations as outcasts.
“On the ground-work of your having been chosen by the supposed God of the universe, the world has assumed an appearance very unlike to what it would have had, if no such imposition had been practised on your progenitors. Wars innumerable have taken place, and rivers of blood have flowed through the earth, occasioned by theological strife. Religious quarrels, ending in the application of the rack and torture, and persecutions in quick succession, have been the result, and thousand of horrid cruelties have taken place in every age, all in consequence of that curse of all curses, the belief that God has a chosen people. Although it had doubtless been thought by your nation the highest possible honor to be chosen by the Lord, this has proved your greatest misfortune; for from this source, Christianity has been produced. You may exult in the idea, that you have in your sacred books, the doctrine of but one God, notwithstanding your religion and its Christian offspring has been more cruel and intolerant than any on earth. According to your own books, your nation and the God who chose them, were forever at war; your people continually rebelling and receiving chastisement, till, at last, you are to appearance forsaken. But as has been before mentioned, the Infidels are your friends; for, by means of free discussion, and the diffusion of useful knowledge, they will ultimately destroy that intolerant spirit which has been the earth’s greatest curse, and you will eventually, with the rest of the human family, open your eyes, and discover the folly and absurdity of believing in a God “partial, vengeful, and unjust.” And then you will be no longer Jews, but will become men.”
[CHAPTER IX.]
IN the preceding chapter we have endeavored to ascertain the object of Christ’s coming into the world, but without being able to arrive at any positive conclusion. As it respected the Jews, they did, and they had a right to expect, that his, coming would be to them a blessing; and not, by any means, that it would prove disastrous in its consequences. It is, by Christians, contended that the primary object of the Messiah’s advent was, to die for sinners; by which death he would make an atonement for the sins of the world. In this view of the case, (and the Scriptures seem to bear it out,) the Jews were altogether deceived, and are therefore objects of pity. The kingdom of heaven being opened to the world at large, to both Jew and Gentile, the Jews were unsuspectingly shut out. That Christ did not intend to convince the Jews that he was the Messiah, seems to be warranted from the manner of his preaching to them; his violence, and the abusive language he used, being calculated to prejudice them against him. And again, if Christ was to become a sacrifice for sin by expiring On the cross, somebody must put him to death, and the Jews are said to have been his executioners. The Jews, therefore, did that which the divine mind intended they should do. But such double-dealing and deception, in order to entrap the Jews, could never have originated with the Great Eternal, the unchangeable ruler of all things.
In reading the history of Jesus, (written nobody knows by whom, or whether by his authority or not,) we must judge of him by the account as it stands. It certainly appears strange that we have no intimation that Jesus gave any orders to his Apostles to write, or in any way to transmit to posterity an account of his life or doctrines. And it appears more singular, when we consider in how particular a manner the laws of Moses were written, which, without doubt, is what kept the Jews from being divided into a number of sects. But so neglected were the sayings and doings of Jesus, that, soon after his death, forty or fifty Gospels were abroad; an equal number of sects sprang up, and the various religious dogmas were introduced, which, till the present day, have divided the Christian world, and, at times, have produced wars, persecutions, and blood. On so important a subject as the salvation of the human race, it might reasonably be expected that the founder of Christianity would have left some documents to guard against so destructive an evil. This entire neglect, if not positive proof against the divine mission of Jesus, must create doubts leading to the conclusion that the Christian religion is deficient as to the evidence of its divine origin. It appears from the Gospels that Jesus was a moral reformer; that the priests and rulers were proud, haughty, and of wicked dispositions; that the founder of the Christian religion exposed their hypocritical pretensions, and that, by thus exciting their malice, he fell a victim. This has been the fate of hundreds of moral reformers, in different ages and nations.
Christians, of all sects, could they be brought to reason impartially on the mission of Jesus, would have their faith shaken, from the following considerations:—Admitting, as all Christians do, that the Jewish religion is of divine authority, and had for ages been by the Jews considered as such, to set that aside and introduce another, required authority from heaven, but such authority was never given. The bare word of Jesus, that he was the sum and substance of the law of Moses both moral and ceremonial, seems to be insufficient. The Jews, however base or immoral they were, as a nation never showed a want of faithfulness when their religion was assailed. So that it appears, that to do away with the form of worship, and introduce a new order of things, required something more than the obscure sayings of Jesus, who was but little known at the time of his death. If, by the coming of Christ, a new dispensation was to supersede the old, then the highest and the most incontrovertible authority should be produced. But this was not the case, for Jesus often charged those whom he had cured of some disease, “to tell no man” how they were made whole: as much as to say, “Keep secret with respect to the person who restored you to your former state.” We need not wonder that the Jews rejected Jesus, seeing that he assumed an authority higher than that of Moses; for, at the giving of the law on the mountain, it was Jehovah himself who spake to them. The Jews, then, considered that the same God who gave the law, and he alone, must change it, or introduce another, and not a person whose object in coming they could not comprehend, and who taught doctrines, a very great portion of which, were of a threatening and menacing character.
And, finally, so little did Christ’s disciples understand of his divine mission, that, when he was betrayed, Peter, the boldest of them all, became alarmed, and denied any knowledge of him. This was very strange in Peter, if it was a fact that he heard Moses and Elias, at a former time, conversing with his Divine Master. But be that as it may, Jesus is reported to have suffered death on the cross, one of his disciples informing against him to the rulers, for the paltry sum of thirty pieces of silver, and another swearing he never knew him. This has often happened, when a bold reformer has been taken into custody; his followers would disown and forsake him; but it is not likely that Peter would thus have acted, had he witnessed the mighty deeds said to have been done by Jesus. I remember hearing an Unitarian minister remark, that “If Moses could return from the dead, how he would be surprised to read what was written of him after his death; and that he would say that the wonderful things reported of him, he knew nothing about.” This, no doubt, would be the case with Jesus, as all his mighty works are recorded of him, but none were recorded by him.
As his resurrection was the key-stone of the Christian arch, some observations on that all-important event will be made. Whatever Jesus communicated to his disciples respecting his rising from the dead, during his life, is not recorded; but it appears that his death entirely frustrated their expectations. The resurrection of Jesus presented the most favorable opportunity to dispel all doubts of the Messiahship of him whom the Jews had put to death as an impostor. It will be in order, then, to observe what steps were taken by Jesus, after his resurrection, to convince the Jews, and the world at large, that his mission was from heaven. This, of all times, was the fittest to convince the Jews of their unfortunate mistake. The short account given in the Gospels, does not afford much light on that subject. But if the Jews, as a nation, had still retained their unbelief, such incredulity must soon have given way by his continuing among them.