III. The Bible and Magic
STILL another word, the explanation of which would greatly help us to understand the bible, is the word magic. A magician, according to Voltaire, is a man who pretends to possess the secret of doing what nature can not do. Another Frenchman defines magic as the "strategy of the savage." There is not very much difference between these two definitions. Magic is the weapon, or the art, or the science, of the savage against the powers of nature. The magician claims to be able to "go one better" than nature, or to bring nature to terms. If there is a drought, the magician offers to compel rain from the stubborn skies; if the plague is upon the land, the magician bids it steal away; if wild beasts attack his hut, the magician throws a spell over them and makes them harmless. Fire will not burn, water will not drown, the grave can not hold its prey, and even the gods become helpless at a word from the magician. Magic, in a sense, is the coup d'etat of the savage.
When one country is at war with another, the best generalship consists in finding out the tactics of the enemy with a view of beating him at his own game. Likewise, the aim of the magician is to steal the secret of the gods and then play the part of a god not only better than the gods themselves, but against them as well. Is not man wonderful!
In one sense, magic is science in the making. But while science seeks to control nature through knowledge, magic resorts to spells, charms, incantations and concoctions. In other words, magic is dishonest science.
Now, much as I regret to say it, the bible is more than tainted with this kind of science. Not a word is there in the bible about studying the laws of nature, for study is not necessary where there is magic. The real thing, science, is made superfluous by the imitation article—magic. Thus the bible, by its preference for a false science, postponed, if it did not succeed in defeating altogether, the intellectual evolution of man.
Scarcely anything happens in the bible in a natural way. Miracles are so many, and so frequent, that there is practically no nature in the bible. The dead arise, the rivers flow backward, the sea turns into dry land, sticks change into serpents, the axe head floats on the water, walls and fortifications fall at the sound of a trumpet, animals talk, virgins become mothers, sun and moon are arrested and then set free, and a universe is produced out of nothing, with as little ado as a magician requires to pull a rabbit out of his sleeve.
We are in the land of magic. Nature is suspended, and the supernatural is in full swing.
I read the other day of a country farmer who went to see a celebrated conjurer perform his wonders. He saw the "wizard" pick money out of the air, shoot watches into people's pockets, change copper into gold and silver, and perform a hundred other equally marvelous feats. As he was leaving the charmed presence of the juggler, he expressed his surprise that so resourceful a man should be under the necessity of giving performances to earn a living. He could not understand why a man whose touch turned everything to gold should collect dimes at the box office. Of course, the explanation is perfectly simple: The wonders which the conjurer performs are sham wonders. In the same way, the miracles in the bible never help anybody nor accomplish anything because they are sham miracles. The bush which bums, and yet is not consumed, is a sham bush—the bush is not a bush, and the fire is not real fire. The few loaves and fishes with which Jesus fed a great multitude were sham loaves and fishes, and the multitude which, though hungry, could not exhaust the food, was a sham multitude. Sham bread, sham multitude, sham hunger! Such are the wonders of the conjurer or the magician in or outside the bible. If Jesus really possessed the power of multiplying a few loaves into an exhaustless supply of bread, why is there then any poverty in the world?