26. We again call attention to Paul's declaration that God sent the people a strong delusion that they might believe a lie and be damned. Think of a just and righteous God deluding people in order to damn them! The doctrine is certainly blasphemous. It is enough to charge a demon with such acts as this. Some writers suppose that Paul did not mean what is here literally expressed; but it is probable he did, for it is the old Jewish idea that every thing that takes place is the achievement of a God. We must assume that the devil who now attends to such business, had not been sworn into office at that time. Hence he supposed that Jehovah still attended to such business.
27. One indelible stigma on Paul's character is found in his indorsement of the pagan and Jewish rite of circumcision,—a cruel and bloody custom,—which no truly enlightened and sensible man would lend his sanction to perpetuate, much less perform with his own hands, as Paul did on Timotheus (Acts xvi. 3). Paul also contradicts himself with respect to the matter. He says, "If ye be circumcised, Christ shall profit you nothing" (Gal. v. 2). Yet he afterward performed the act on Timotheus, as stated above. This is preaching one doctrine and practicing another.
28. Paul said that he was a Roman citizen; but no Jew could be a full Roman citizen till the reign of Philip or Decius, long after. He also passed for Paul of Tarsus; but Tarsus was not a Roman city at that time, nor until about a hundred years after ward. This was being all things to all men in order to gain a few proselytes; and truly he carries out the doctrine quite well. At one time he professes to be a Roman (Acts xxii. 26); at another time he professes to be a Pharisee, and says that his parents were Pharisees (see Acts xxiii. 5); and then, again, he was an apostle of Jesus Christ (Acts xv. 10).
29. Paul uses some rather doughy arguments on the subject of the resurrection. He says that on the last day, at the sound of the trumpet, we shall all be raised, the dead in Christ first (1 Cor. xv. 52). We are also told that "this mortal shall put on immortality." We are compelled to believe, from the language here used, that Paul believed in the sleep of the soul in the grave; and the resurrection of the natural body is a ridiculous absurdity and a physical impossibility. The sleep of the soul is a still worse assumption. Why should the soul lay in the ground covered with filth and worms? What possible benefit could it derive from laying in a state of insensibility for centuries? And what would become of it if some one should remove the decomposed remains of the body, and all the earth contiguous, to some other locality, or toss it into a running stream? And this has been done. What becomes of the soul in such a case? Does it float down the stream with the physical debris? If so, where will it stop? and how will it be found in the day of resurrection?
30. And the doctrine of the resurrection is attended with still greater difficulties and logical obstructions. The physical body, according to Paul, is to become a spiritual body. But a portion of the body is consumed by worms during the process of decomposition in the grave; and those worms, when they die, are consumed by other worms. Will it not, then, require a search-warrant in the day of resurrection to find all those worms, and to gather every minute particle of the old body together to form the spiritual body? Why not make the new body of a stone or a stump, or some other material, instead of the old, decayed, decomposed body? It would require a miracle in either case. Cases have been reported of Christian missionaries being eaten up by cannibals. The flesh of the Christian in such cases becomes a part of the physical body of the cannibal; and the cannibal will, according to Christian theology, come forth unto "the resurrection of damnation," and will take a portion of the body of the missionary with him to the bottomless pit. How will it be obtained? A serious difficulty, certainly! How is it to be met and surmounted? Many other logical difficulties lie in the way of making a practical application of the doctrine.
31. When Paul calls our physical tenements "vile bodies" (see Phil. iii. 21), he reveals the old pagan idea of the body being sinful. They looked upon it as a kind of prison for the soul, and a thing to be hated and contemned as you would a tyrant with a rope around your neck. This error discloses great ignorance of the functions of the human body, and its relation to the soul or mind. It would be impossible to have a pure soul in a vile body. Here Paul discloses still further ignorance of science.
There are other acts and other erroneous doctrines, which mark the practical life of Paul, that are quite obnoxious to criticism; as, for example, the curse he pronounced upon Ely mas, whom he stigmatized as a sorcerer, though he does not prove he was one, but says that was his name by interpretation (Acts xiii. 8). This act, which it is stated produced total blindness, must be regarded as an act of bigotry and intolerance. Elymas is not charged with any crime or immoral conduct; and, so far as we can learn his history, he was an honest, upright man: but he sought "to turn away the deputy from the faith" (Acts xiii. 8); that is, like the Greek philosophers, he attempted to point out the absurdity of some of Paul's doctrines. There is something very significant in the statement of Paul, that some of his doctrines were "to the Greeks foolishness" (1 Cor. i. 23); for they were a learned, intelligent, and sensible nation of people. And no such nation ever has, or ever will, accept as true and sound doctrine some of the theological nonsense and absurd doctrines which Paul preached. Future generations will wonder that such doctrines were ever taught by people claiming to be sensible and intelligent.
The circumstance which Paul relates of a viper coming out of a bundle of sticks, and fastening on his hand without inflicting a deadly wound, evinces a degree of superstition which no philosopher could entertain. The assumption is, that God, after bestowing upon the reptile the disposition and means of defending itself, interposed by a divine act to prevent their action.
Christ and his apostles (including Paul), instead of studying and understanding the laws of nature, were constantly looking for something to contravene them, and set them aside. Of course they were honest in this; but it shows their want of scientific knowledge, which was characteristic of the age.
The circumstance of Paul's handkerchief and apron healing the sick, as related in Acts xix. 12, is evidently regarded as another interposition of divine power. But cases are frequently performed in this manner in various parts of this country by Dr. Newton and other healers, who impart their magnetic aura to a handkerchief, or some article of clothing, or a piece of paper, and send it to the sick, who are cured as effectually as those were by Paul's magnetized handkerchief; for it was undoubtedly his magnetism imparted to the handkerchief that effected the cures. Modern science is solving the mysteries and miracles of the past.