* Mark xvi, 16.
Can freedom and the bible live under the same roof? Would it be safe to speak according to knowledge, when "damnation" is the penalty for so doing? Was it to encourage honesty, liberty of conscience and tolerance that so Asiatic and despotic a command as the above has been translated into all the languages of the earth? Would not the bible have been a more helpful book if it had said: "Do not believe upon insufficient evidence, for to do so is to prefer error to truth"? But there is not a single bible that contains so daring a commandment. If a man may not "Speak according to knowledge," he can not act according to conscience, and a religion which denies to us these two rights instead of saving us, destroys us body and soul.
The only difference, in respect to freedom of worship, between the New Testament and the Old is that, while the New Testament postpones the punishment of the free thinker until the day of judgment, the Old Testament proceeds to "damn" him here and now:
If thy brother, the son of thy mother, or thy son, or thy daughter, or the wife of thy bosom, or thy friend, which is as thine own soul, entice thee secretly, saying, Let us go and serve other gods... Thou shalt not consent unto him, nor hearken unto him; neither shall thine eye pity him, neither shalt thou spare, neither shalt thou conceal him: but thou shalt surely kill him; thine hand shall be first upon him to put him to death, and afterwards the hand of all the people. And thou shalt stone him with stones that he die. *
* Deuteronomy xiii, 6-10.
It brings tears into my eyes to think of Europe and America upon their knees, with blanched cheeks and trembling lips, before such a text. Why retain so unjust and tyrannical a commandment in a book which the people are asked to love and obey? And why translate such evil words into all the tongues of man? What has happened to the European races—to the descendants of the glorious Greeks and the proud Romans—that they can fawn over a book that commands a mother to kill her child for not believing as she does? Surely a blight of some kind must have fallen upon both the heart and intellect of the Western world—else how explain the gilt-edged bibles, containing these inhuman texts by the score, which young and old carry in their pockets, and almost worship?
But the full import of this text is in the words we have printed in italics: "Neither shall thine eye pity him." It seems as though the being who gave the commandment feared that the natural affections might lead fathers or mothers to hesitate dipping their hands in the blood of their own sons and daughters; hence, the imperative, "Neither shall thine eye pity him." Yes, the heart must turn into a stone, even as the head must be stunned, before anyone can be a good Jew or a good Christian.