Having been a Christian believer myself, I have the warmest sympathy for all who still wear the yoke of superaturalism. But I have no pity for error. I will not consult its pleasure. I will not spare it. Before any of my readers condemn me for speaking openly, and without reservation, I trust they will think of something else I could have said about the bible which would have been better than the truth. And as I am going to make the bible speak for itself, I am sure no one will charge me with misrepresenting the facts.
But I have no business to be concerned about either pleasing or displeasing anybody. I am going to tell the truth, even if it hurts. If telling the truth hurts me, it is I, and not the truth, that has to get out of the way; if it hurts you, it is you, and not the truth, that has to be sacrificed.
Not "truth for truth's sake," but "truth for humanity's sake," is the better motto, argue certain teachers; but is there a better way of serving humanity than through truth? Even as "Art for art's sake" will give humanity the highest art, "Truth for truth's sake" will give to the world the only bread it can live by.
A Word with the Jews
AS the bible is the work of Jewish authors, and as I say quite a little about Jews and Judaism in this book, I wish to take the pains to explain my position in advance. Rationalism is much indebted to the educated Jew. Even more is the Jew indebted to Rationalism. The only miracle in the history of Israel was performed by Rationalism. All the bible miracles are nothing in comparison. Rationalism has saved the Jew from his greatest enemy—the bible. It is to the great credit of the Jew that he has survived his "holy" book. No people have suffered more from it than the chosen people. The bible has made the Jew a wanderer and an alien in every country. When thinking of the martyrdom of this race through the centuries, the poet Heine exclaimed: "Judaism is not a religion; Judaism is a misfortune." * The same poet congratulates himself upon the hastening departure of Jehovah: "It is the old Jehovah himself that is preparing for death. Hear ye not the bells resounding? Kneel down, they are bringing the sacraments to a dying God."
* Heine: Philosophy and Religion in Germany.
The great strides which the modern Jew has made in culture as well as in commerce, he owes to his emancipation from the influence of the bible. The more he disobeys the bible the more universal he becomes in his sympathies and tastes. With the crushing load of the bible taken off his shoulders, the Jew is swift in responding to the most beneficent influences of environment. Away from Judaism lies the salvation of the Jew. It was in Europe and America, among the Gentiles, and not in Palestine, that the Jew discovered himself. Not until he turned his back upon Jehovah and his book did the Jew leap forth to conquer in art, in literature, in science, and in all the graces that help to make genius and virtue attractive. I do not say that all persecution and prejudice will end when Jew and Christian cease to follow the teachings of the bible, but surely the most formidable obstacles to the fraternization of the races shall be removed. It is a service to humanity to try to free the Jew from the rabbinical yoke, and the Christian from that of the priest. The rabbi is as much a schismatic as the priest. The parent of both is the bible.
Once for all, I beg the readers of this book to know that I do not believe for a moment that the Jews ever taught the absurdities, or practiced the atrocities, with which the bible credits them. I do not believe they ever started on an expedition to murder babes and sucklings, or to capture girls for their harems, for which acts the bible praises them. Like the Catholics and the Protestants, the Jews, inspired by these same scriptures, have committed many follies through the centuries, but I am positive in my own mind that the terrible Old Testament picture of the Jew is a libel against humanity, as well as against the Jews.