34. The refusal of its advocates to correct its acknowledged errors. That the clergy are controlled by mercenary motives rather than a love of truth is attested by the fact that they continue to teach the admitted errors of the Bible. Our Authorized version, it is conceded by Christian scholars, contains hundreds of errors. That the Revisers corrected many of these errors is admitted. Yet the clergy cling to these errors and refuse to accept a corrected text. The principal reasons assigned for retaining the Old version instead of adopting the New are these: 1. The English of three hundred years ago possesses a certain charm which distinguishes the Bible from more modern works and secures for it a greater reverence. 2. Its division into chapters and verses renders it more convenient. 3. The adoption of the New would expose the errors of the Old, suggest the possible fallibility of the New, and sow the seeds of doubt. Thus expediency prompts them to teach the acknowledged errors of man in preference to what they claim to be the truths of God. This proves the human character of the Bible and the insincerity of its professed exponents.
35. Its authority maintained by fraud and force. For sixteen hundred years—from the time that Constantine, to gain a political advantage over his rivals, became a convert to the Christian faith—corruption and coercion have been the predominant agents in maintaining its supremacy. Fagot, and sword, and gun, and gibbet, and rack and thumbscrew, and every artifice that cunning and falsehood could devise, have been used to uphold the dogma of this book’s divinity. To-day, in nearly every nation of Europe, the powers of the state are employed to compel allegiance to it. And in this free Republic, everywhere, with bribe and threat, the authorities are invoked to force its bloody and filthy pages into the hands of innocent school girls to pollute with superstition, lust, and cruelty their young and tender minds. These deeds of violence, these pious frauds, these appeals to the civil powers, all prove it to be the work of man and not the word of God.
36. The intelligence of the world for the most part rejects it. If the Bible were divine the wise would be the best qualified to realize and appreciate the fact; for while all may err the judgment of the intelligent is better than the judgment of the ignorant. In Christendom the ignorant nearly all believe the Bible to be the infallible word of God, every verse of which is to be accepted literally. A more intelligent class reject the objectionable portions of it, or give to them a more rational and humane interpretation. Those of the highest intelligence—the great leaders of the world in national affairs, in the domain of literature, in science and philosophy, and in Biblical and religious criticism—the Washingtons and Lincolns, the Franklins and Jeffersons, the Fredericks and Napoleons, the Gambettas and Garibaldis; the Shakespeares and Byrons, the Goethes and Schillers, the Carlyles and Emersons, the Eliots and de Staëls; the Humboldts and Darwins, the Huxleys and Haeckels, the Drapers and Tyndalls, the Comtes and Spencers; the Humes and Gibbons, the Voltaires and Renans, the Bauers and Strausses, the Paines and Ingersolls—all these reject its divinity. A Gladstone is an anomaly.
Dr. Watson of Scotland gives frank expression to a fact of which his fellow clergymen are fully cognizant, but which they are loth to admit. He says: “The great, and the wise, and the mighty, are not with us. These men, the master minds, the imperial leaders among men are outside our most Christian church.”
The ignorant suppose that the intelligent accept the Bible; because the intelligent, dependent in a large degree upon the ignorant, and knowing that of all passions religious prejudice and hatred are the worst, do not care to arouse their antagonism by an unnecessary avowal of their disbelief. This is especially true of men in public life. But these men think; and to their intellectual friends they talk.
In his “History of the Bible,” Bronson C. Keeler says: “The only men distinguished for their learning who now believe it to be the inspired word of God, are the men who are, either directly or indirectly, making their living out of it.” Do these learned divines themselves believe it? Nearly every intelligent clergyman entertains and confidentially expresses opinions regarding the Bible which he dare not proclaim from the pulpit. But master and slave are alike growing weary—the master of his duplicity, the slave of his burden. Emancipation for both is approaching. To-day the clergy smile when they meet; some day they will laugh outright, this stupendous farce will be ended, and man will be free.
INDEX.
AARON, rod of, [309];
other tricks, [310].
ABBOTT, Dr. Lyman, on Isaiah and Cyrus, [85];
on Davidic authorship of Psalms, [96].