Will you again turn back to the love of Jesus as the redeeming feature of the whole? Then, I ask you, read the story of the fig-tree* withered by the hungry Jesus. The fig-tree, if he were all-powerful God, was made by him, he limited its growth and regulated its development. He prevented it from bearing figs, expected fruit where he had rendered fruit impossible, and in his infinite love was angry that the tree had not upon it that which it could not have. Tell me the love expressed in that remarkable speech which follows one of his parables, and in which he says: "For, I say unto you, that unto every one which hath shall be given, and from him that hath not, even that which he hath shall be taken away from him. But those, mine enemies, which would not that I should reign over them, bring them hither, and slay them before me."** What love is expressed by that Jesus who, if he were God, represents himself as saying to the majority of his unfortunate creatures (for it is the few who are chosen): 'Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels.'***
* Matt xxi, 18-22; Mark xi, 12-24.
** Luke xix, 26,17.
*** 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
"Hell, 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 passage 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 God 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 substitutes "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 God 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 God 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 God infinite, then he is in earth also, why limit him to Heaven? "Hallowed be thy name." What is God's name? and if you know it not, how can you hallow it? How can God's name be hallowed even if you know it? "Thy kingdom come." What is God'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 God may say to your fellow, "depart ye cursed into everlasting fire?" "Thy will be done on earth, as it is in heaven." How is God'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 God, 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 God? 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 circumstances. Circumstances are compulsory, from the absence of a power to resist or control them: and if the absence likewise be the effect of circumstances.... the evil derives from the circumstances.... and such evil is not sin."* Do you say that you are independent of all circumstances, that you can control them, that you have a free will? Mr. Buckle says that the assertion of a free will "involves two assumptions, of which the first, though possibly true, has never been proved, and the second is unquestionably false. These assumptions 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 God will possibly lead you into temptation? if so, you can not think him all-good, if not all-good he is not God, if God, 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 God, 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 God, my God, 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 God, my God, 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 God." 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 God, the words "My God, my God," would have been a mockery most extreme. God 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 God-forsaken man. The garden scene of agony is fitting prelude to this most terrible act. Jesus, who is God, 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 God? 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 God, my God, 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.