The theory that all the world was lost through a curious and enterprising lady, eating an apricot or an apple, and that three thousand or more years after, mankind had to be redeemed by the murder of an innocent Jew, is of a nature to make men afraid to believe in a deity accused of contriving so dreadful a scheme.
Though this reasoning will seem to many an argument against the existence of God whereas it is merely against the attributes of deity, as ascribed to him by Christianity. If God be not moral, in the human sense of the term, he may as well be not moral at all. It is only he whose principles of justice, men can understand, that men can trust. Prof. T. H. Huxley, conspicuous for his clearness of view and dispassionateness of judgment, was of this opinion, and said: "The suggestion arises, if God is the cause of all things he is responsible for evil as well as for good, and it appears utterly irreconcilable with our notions of justice that he should punish another for that which he has in fact done himself." The poet concurs with the philosopher when he exclaims:
"The loving worm within its clod,
Were diviner than a loveless God Amid his worlds."*
* Browning.
Christianity indeed speaks of the love of God in sending his son to die for the security of others. But not less is the heart of the intelligent and humane believer torn with fear, as he thinks what must be the character of that God who could only be thus appeased. The example of self-sacrifice is noble—but is it noble in any one who deliberately creates the necessity for it? The better side of Christianity seems overshadowed by the worse.
7. Future life is uncertain, being unprovable and seemingly improbable, judging from the dependence of life on material conditions. Christians themselves do not seem confident of another existence. If they were sure of it, who of them would linger here when those they love and honor have gone before? Ere we reach the middle of our days, the joy of every heart lies in some tomb. If the Christian actually believed that the future was real, would he hang black plumes over the hearse, and speak of death as darkness? No! the cemeteries would be hung with joyful lights, the grave would be the gate of Paradise. Every one would find justifiable excuse for leaving this for the happier world. All tenets which are contradicted by reason had better not be.
Many preachers now disown, in controversy, these doctrines, but until they carry the professions of the platform into the statute book, the rubric, and the pulpit, such doctrines remain operative, and the Churches remain answerable for them. Nonconformists do not protest against a State Church on account of its doctrines herein enumerated. When the doctrines which conflict with reason and humanity are disowned by authority, ecclesiastical and legal, in all denominations, the duty of controverting them as impediments to progress will cease.
It may be said in reply to what is here set forth as tenets of Christian Scripture, that the writer follows the letter and not the spirit of the word. Yes, that is what he does. He is well aware of the new practice of seeking refuge in the "spirit," of "expanding" the letter and taking a "new range of view." He however holds that to drop the "letter" is to drop the doctrine. To "expand" the "letter" is to change it. New "range of view" is the term under which desertion of the text is disguised. But "new range" means new thought, which in this insidious way is put forward to supersede the old. The frank way is to say so, and admit that the "letter" is obsolete—is gone, is disproved, and that new views which are truer constitute the new letter of progress. The best thing to do with the "dead hand" is to bury it. To try to expand dissolution is but galvanising the corpse and tying the dead to the living.
CHAPTER VI. STATIONARINESS OF CRITICISM
"Zeal without knowledge is like expedition to a man in the
dark."
—John Newton.