Satires and Profanities

by James Thomson; G. W. Foote

It is worth noting that while our Christian advocates insist with all their might, such as it is, upon the resurrection of Jesus, they willingly pass over as lightly as possible, if they do not altogether ignore, a similar miracle guaranteed by the very same authority. In Matt, xxvii., 52, 53, it stands recorded among the marvels following the death of Jesus: “And the graves were opened; and many bodies of the saints which slept arose, and came out of their graves after his resurrection, and went into the holy city, and appeared unto many.” The reader of Shakespeare will remember the prodigies anterior to the death of Julius Cæsar when—

“The sheeted dead
Did squeak and gibber in the Roman streets.”

This prodigal multiplicity and superfluity of resurrections seems to have been not a little embarrassing to modern Christian champions, though doubtless it did not in the least trouble the primitive non-scientific believers, to whom nothing was more natural than the unnatural, including the supernatural and the infranatural. An apologist of our days who must affirm the one resurrection, seeing that his whole religion is based upon it, and who, though valiantly defying science, seeks to conciliate historical possibility, finds his task quite heavy enough in accounting for the facts that the risen Jesus “was seen of above five hundred brethren at once,” and yet that no record of his rising can be found beyond the limits of the New Testament. But the difficulties of the poor apologist are enormously increased if he must further contend that many bodies of the saints came out of their graves, and went into the holy city, and appeared unto many, and still there is no external evidence. We are surely at the utmost limits of the possible in conceiving that Jesus could appear unto five hundred of the brethren at once (there is no hint elsewhere that he had so many permanent followers in his lifetime; in Acts i., 15, we find that there were about one hundred and twenty gathered after the ascension), without the priests and the Roman officials hearing of the apparition and investigating it. But if many others rose from their graves and appeared to many, it is absolutely impossible that anyone in Jerusalem could be ignorant of the miracle; equally impossible that Pilate and his officers did not investigate it, and equally impossible that finding it real he did not report it with the evidence to Rome, for the Empire was a thoroughly organised State, and the Romans were a thoroughly practical and business-like people. Once in the imperial archives, the record of the miracle would have spread everywhere; all subsequent historians would have related it, all subsequent writers referred to it. So it is no wonder that, recoiling from these manifold impossibilities, the Christian advocates prefer to dwell on the one resurrection as if it were unique, and avoid dwelling on the others that by the very same testimony immediately followed it. It is very significant that neither in the Acts nor in the Epistles is there any allusion to these resurrections. When Peter and the others were preaching the resurrection of Christ, why did they not adduce and produce some of these many, risen saints, whose visible, tangible, living and speaking evidence would have been irresistible?

Just as the resurrection of Jesus could be accepted without misgiving by the non-scientific early Christians, to whom miracles appeared among the most frequent occurrences of life, so could the ascension. Their earth was a plane, vaulted by the sky, lamped by the little sun and moon and stars; above this vault was Heaven, where their God dwelt enthroned; they knew nothing of the law of gravitation; their Christ, standing in the flesh on the Mount of Olives, floated up through this vault to sit enthroned beside his Father in the most natural supernatural manner. We can conceive and sympathise with this simple faith; but it is hard to conceive and sympathise with the blind faith, which seems wilfully blind, of the modem educated Christians. It has been often remarked that Copernicus and Kepler and Newton have destroyed all the old mythologies, including of course the mythology of both the Old and New Testaments. With the earth no longer the universe of mortal life, between a Heaven above its domed firmament and a Hades like a vast dungeon beneath, but a quite infinitesimal grain of sand involved by an infinitesimal drop of dew, floating and revolving in an ocean of space boundless in heighth and depth and breadth, amidst innumerable other spherules, most of which visible are very much greater than itself, and at inconceivable distances from it; with man no longer the lord of the creation, for whose service all things were made, but an animalcule inexpressibly small, living for a moment inexpressibly brief, with limitless time before his beginning and limitless time beyond his end; the Christian mythology and system, among others, because ineffably absurd. Where is the Heaven for its God? where the Hell for its Devil? Where is above? Where beneath? Whence came the winged angels, with their wrings which would not enable them to fly?

If Jesus had ascended and continued to ascend with the speed of light, he might be ascending now and go 011 ascending for millions and millions of years, and still not reach a heavenly region beyond the range of our telescopes I And think of the scheme of the Atonement in the system of the universe, as we are learning to know it now—try to conceive an infinite and eternal God of this infinite and eternal Whole sacrificing his only son for the salvation of us most insignificant insects on our most insignificant earth! The immense conceptions of science dwarf these petty conceptions of mythology to a littleness which reduces them beneath consideration, which in our days reduces them even beneath contempt.

Naturally the churches have always hated and resisted science, and the theologians have seldom dared to face its conclusions. They ignore the immensities, and confine their vision to the pages of a single book, to a history whose chronology counts not six thousand years. But, as I have remarked, even this minute field they cannot hold against the sceptic, who has made them abandon all the rest of the universe. Why did their risen Lord only slink about among his own disciples, appearing to these but at flying instants: why did he not, with his well-known features and with the wounds of the nails and the spear in his body, confront the chief priests and Pilate and the whole of Jerusalem, and compel them to acknowledge and bear enduring witness to his resurrection? Why did he not summon all the people from the highest to the lowest to the solemn spectacle of his ascension, securing multitudinous and permanently recorded evidence such as none of us could doubt? We might go on asking Why? and Why? and Why? in this fashion on a hundred points, confident that to not one of our questions could the Christian apologist give a straightforward and satisfactory answer. As the scheme of the Atonement is presented to us, God sacrificed his only son that all mankind might be saved through belief in him; yet not merely neglected to secure trustworthy evidence and certain record of this supreme fact and the miracles attesting it, but adopted every means possible to make the evidence untrustworthy, the record uncertain, the miracles and the sacrifice incredible.

[SOME MUSLIM LAWS AND BELIEFS]

(1876.)

The following notes are drawn from E. W. Lane’s charming and instructive “Manners and Customs of the Modem Egyptians” (fifth and standard ed., 1860), a worthy companion to Sir Gardner Wilkinson’s book on the Ancient Egyptians, and written about forty years since, before steam-communication had materially changed that people. The muédoins, whose summons to prayer is one of the few audible charms of the East to a western, are generally chosen from the blind, in order that the harems and terraces of houses may not be overlooked from the minarets. Our callers to prayer are generally blind also; but this is because few clearsighted men will in these days accept the office. The imams or priests and other religious officials are all paid from the funds of their respective mosques, and not by any contributions exacted from the people: a lesson to us with our State Church. The imâms have no authority above other persons, and enjoy no respect save for reputed learning and piety; they are not a distinct order of men set apart for the ministry, but may resign or be displaced, losing with the office the title of imâm; they chiefly obtain their living by other means than service in the mosque (for which their salaries are as a rule only about a shilling a month), many of them being tradesmen: here surely are several good lessons for us. The mosques are open all day, and the great mosque El-Azhar all night; the Muslims have great reverence for them, yet in many of the larger ones persons lounge, chat, eat, sleep, spit, sew, etc.: another lesson to us with our churches nearly always closed and useless. The Muslim does not abstain from business on the Friday, his Sabbath, except during the time of prayer, and for this he has the authority of the Kur-ân: when will our bigoted Sabbatarians learn so much liberal wisdom from him? The Prophet did not forbid women to attend public prayers in the mosques, but pronounced it better for them to pray in private; in Cairo they are not admitted to the public prayers, it being thought that their presence would inspire a wrong sort of devotion. The result is that few women in Egypt pray at all. If ours were in like case, how many churches and chapels would attract large congregations? The Egyptians, like the modern Arabs, are not a truthful people, but there are some oaths which few would falsely take; such as swearing three times by “God the Great,” or on a copy of the Kur-ân “By what this contains of the word of God!”—I wonder whether the Christian Englishmen are few who falsely swear by God and on the Bible. Mr. Lane witnessed many instances of forbearance in persons of the middle and lower classes when grossly insulted; and often heard an Egyptian say on receiving a blow from an equal, “God bless thee,” “God requite thee good,” “Beat me again”: how many of the Christians obey in like manner one of the plainest precepts of Christ? In general a quarrel terminates by one or both of them saying “Justice is against me”; often after this they recite together the first chapter of the Kur-ân; and then, sometimes, embrace and kiss one another. If a similar custom prevailed here there would be little serious quarrelling; for the men would all avoid disputes save with pretty girls and charming women, and would always make it up very quickly with them. The Muslim believes that there have been six great Prophets and Apostles—Adam, Noah, Abraham, Moses, Jesus, Mohammed; each of whom received a revealed law or system of religion and morality, each of the first five abrogated and superseded by the next, though all were the same in essentials. Thus the Jews from the time of Moses to that of Christ, and the Christians (if they did not accept the corrupt and idolatrous doctrine of the divinity of Jesus) from the time of Christianity to that of Mohammed, were true believers. Of course the last is the greatest Prophet, and since his revelation the Muslims only have been the faithful. The Pentateuch, Psalms and Gospels, though of divine origin, have been so much altered as to contain very little of the true Word of God; but the Kur-ân is supposed to have suffered no essential change whatever. Jesus was born of a pure virgin by the miraculous operation of God, without any father human or divine. When he had fulfilled the object of his mission, he was taken up to God from the Jews who sought to slay him, and another man, on whom God had stamped the likeness of Jesus, was crucified in his stead. He will come again upon earth, to establish the Muslim religion and perfect peace and security, after having killed Anti-Christ, and to be a sign of the approach of the last day. In all these doctrines the Muslims are decidedly more consistent and liberal, as well as somewhat less superstitious than the Christians, with their God-man and trinity in unity, their damnation of Mohammed as a mere impostor and of his religion, El Islam, as a vile fabrication of stolen materials. “The Egyptians pay a superstitious reverence not to imaginary beings alone: they extend it to certain individuals of their own species; and often to those who are justly the least entitled to such respect. An idiot or a fool is vulgarly regarded by them as a being whose mind is in heaven, while his grosser part mingles among ordinary mortals; consequently, he is considered an especial favorite of heaven. Whatever enormities a reputed saint may commit (and there are many who are constantly infringing precepts of their religion) such acts do not affect his fame for sanctity: for they are considered as the results of the abstraction of his mind from worldly things; his soul, or reasoning faculties, being wholly absorbed in devotion, so that his passions are left without control. Lunatics who are dangerous to society are kept in confinement; but those who are harmless are generally regarded as saints. Most of the reputed saints of Egypt are either lunatics, or idiots, or impostors.” wonder whether this applies at all, and if it does, to what extent, to the countless saints of our Most Holy Catholic Church of Christendom. In Egypt, as in other countries of the East, Muslims, Christians, and Jews adopt each other’s superstitions, while they abhor the leading doctrines of each other’s faith. “In sickness, the Muslim sometimes employs Christian and Jewish priests to pray for him: the Christians and Jews, in the same predicament, often call in Muslim saints for the like purpose!” So much human nature is there in man, not to speak of woman. The Muslims profoundly reverence the Kur-ân, yet will quote it on the most trivial occasions in jest as well as on the most important in earnest. They are generally fond of conversing on religion among themselves; and the most prevalent mode of entertaining a party of guests among the higher middle classes, in Cairo, is the recital of the whole of the Kur-ân, which is chanted by special persons hired for the purpose, or other religious exercises. This chanting of the Kur-ân takes up about nine hours. When will our fashionable Bibliolaters issue invitations for the treat of hearing poor curates or scripture readers intone the whole of the Bible, or even so much of it at a time as might be got through in nine hours? When, oh when?

Ladies will learn with approval that it is thought improper, and even disreputable, for a man to be single. Mr. Lane was a bachelor during his first two visits to Egypt; and in the former of these, having to change his residence, engaged another house. The lease was duly signed and some money paid in advance, but the inhabitants of the neighborhood (who were mostly descendants of the Prophet) would not have an unmarried man in their midst. The agent said they would gladly admit him if he would but purchase a female slave, thus redeeming himself from the opprobrium of not possessing a wife of some sort. He managed to secure a house in a less scrupulous quarter, but had to engage that no creature wearing a hat should visit him. The Sheykh or chief of this quarter often urged him to marry; Lane objected that he intended to live in Egypt only a year or two longer. The Sheykh answered, with great moral force and earnestness, that a handsome young widow a few doors off would be glad to marry him, on the express understanding that he should divorce her on going away; while of course he could do so earlier if she did not suit him. Now this young widow, in spite of her religion and veil, had several times contrived (the Sage saith that there is nothing a woman cannot contrive, except to refrain from contriving) to let our Oriental Englishman catch a glimpse of her very pretty face; and the miserable bachelor was reduced to plead that she was the very last woman he would like to marry pro tempore, for he felt sure that once wed he could never make up his mind to part with her. Doubtless all our single men, and especially our Christian young men, would much rather be deemed disreputable and denied decent lodgings than establish their character for virtue and respectability by buying female slaves, however cheap, or marrying nice young widows divorcible at pleasure!