Comic Bible Sketches, Reprinted from "The Freethinker"

by G. W. Foote

We honestly admit that our purpose is to discredit the Bible as the infallible word of God. Believing as we do, with Voltaire, that despotism can never be abolished without destroying the dogmas on which it rests, and that the Bible is the grand source and sanction of them all, we are profoundly anxious to expose its pretentions. The educated classes already see through them, and the upper classes credit them just as little, although they dare not openly profess a scepticism which would imperil their privileges. But the multitude are still left to the manipulation of priests, credulous victims of the Black Army everywhere arrayed against freedom and progress. It is to liberate these from thraldom that we labor, sacrifice and suffer. Without being indifferent to what the world calls success, we acknowledge the sovereignty of loftier aims. Compared with the advancement of Freethought everything else is to us of trivial moment. It may interest, and perhaps surprise, some to learn that for the famous Christmas Number of the Freethinker which was successfully prosecuted, the editor received absolutely nothing for his work except twelve months' imprisonment, while the then registered proprietor, who suffered nine months of the same fate, actually shared with him a pecuniary loss of five pounds. We are really in deadly earnest, like all the greater soldiers of freedom who preceded us; and we employ our smaller resources of satire, as such giants as Lucian, Rabelais, Erasmus, Voltaire and Heine used theirs, for ends that reach far forward into the mighty future, and affect the welfare of unimagined generations of mankind.

Now the masses do not read learned disquisitions; they have no leisure to make themselves adequately acquainted with the history of the Bible documents; nor can they study comparative religion, trace out the analogies between Christianity and older faiths, and realise how all the elaborate developments of doctrine and ritual in modern creeds have sprung from a few simple beliefs and practices of savage superstition. But they are conversant with one or two cardinal ideas of science, and they know the principles which underlie our daily life. What is called common sense (the logic of common experience) is their philosophy, and whoever seeks to move them must appeal to them through that. Strange as it may appear, it is that very common sense which the clergy dread far more than all the disclosures of learning and all the revelations of science; the reason being, that learning and science are the privilege of a few, while common sense is the possession of all, and affects the very foundations of spiritual and political tyranny.

Ridicule is a most potent form of common-sense logic. What is the reductio ad absurdum but an appeal to admitted truths against plausible falsehoods? Reducing a thing to an absurdity is simply showing its inconsistency with what is common to both sides in a dispute; and it frequently means the exposure of a gross contradiction to the principles of sanity. Laughter, too, as Hobbes pointed out, has always an element of pride or contempt; being invariably accompanied by a feeling of superiority to its object. Whoever laughs at an absurdity is above it. He looks down on it from a loftier altitude than argument can reach. The man who laughs is safe. He can never more be in danger, unless he suffers fatty degeneration of the heart or fattier degeneration of the head. Priestcraft nourishes hope in the scientific laboratory, and feels only faint misgivings in academic halls; but it pales and withers at the smile of scepticism, and hears in a low laugh the note of the trump of doom.

Ridicule can never injure truth. What it hurts must be false. Laugh at the multiplication-table as much as you please, and twice two will still make four.

Pictorial ridicule has the immense advantage of visualising absurdities. Lazy minds, or those accustomed to regard a subject with the reverence of prejudice, read without realising. But the picture supplies the deficiency of their imagination, translates words into things, and enables them to see what had else been only a vague sound.

Christians read the Bible without realising its wonders, allowing themselves to be cheated with words. Mr. Herbert Spencer has remarked that the image of the Almighty hand launching worlds into space is very fine until you try to form a mental picture of it, when it is found to be utterly irrealisable. In the same way, the Creation Story is passable until you image the Lord making a clay man and blowing up his nose; or the story of Samson until you picture him slaying file after file of well-armed soldiers with the jaw-bone of a costermonger's pony.

Let it be observed that these Comic Bible Sketches ridicule nothing but miracles. Mr. Mathew Arnold has said that the Bible miracles are only fairy tales (very poor ones, by the way) and their reign is doomed. We only seek to hasten their deposition. Whatever the Bible contains of truth, goodness and beauty, we prize as well as its blindest devotees. But this valuable deposit of antiquity would be more useful if cleared of the rubbish of superstition. It is not the good, but the evil parts of the Bible, that are supported by its supernaturalism. Why should civilised Englishmen go walking about in Hebrew Old-Clothes? Let us heed Carlyle's stern monition:—"The Jew old-clothes having now grown fairly pestilential, a poisonous incumbrance in the path of of men, burn them up with revolutionary fire."

A word in conclusion. The editor of the "Manchester Examiner," writing over the well-Known signature of "Verax," recently published a long article, censuring the policy of aggressive Freethought, and declaring that to laugh at the absurdities of the Bible was to insult the human race. We might as well, he said, laugh at our poor ancestors, the ancient Britons, for all their mistakes and follies. Well, when the ancient Jews are not only dead, but buried like the ancient Britons; when their mistakes and follies are no longer palmed off on unsuspecting children, and imposed on grown-up men and women, as divine immortal truths; we will cease ridiculing them, and devote our attention to worthier objects. What, would "Verax" say if an ancient Briton, dressed in a full suit of war-paint, were to walk through the Manchester streets, boasting himself the pink of fashion, and insulting peaceable citizens who refused to patronise his tailor? Would he not write a racy article on the absurd phenomenon, and ask why the police tolerated such a nuisance? In like manner we publish our Comic Bible Sketches, and summon the police of thought to remove those ancient Jews who still infest our mental thoroughfares.

April, 1885.

G. W. FOOTE