An analysis of religious belief

by viscount John Russell Amberley

Subdivision 3.—The Apocalypse.

The author of the Apocalypse, or Book of Revelation, who professes to have seen the vision he describes at Patmos, gives himself the name of John; a circumstance which led in former times to the belief that the work was the composition of John the disciple of Jesus. It is a rather late production, having been written subsequently to the establishment by Paul of Gentile Christian communities in various parts of Asia. It also presupposes the existence of a sect of heretics termed Nicolaitanes, who had arisen in some places, and was therefore probably not written until some time after the foundation of these churches by the great apostle.

The author endeavors to add lustre to his work by proclaiming at its outset that it was committed to writing under the direct inspiration of Jesus Christ himself, who dictated it to him, or rather showed it to him, when he was "in the Spirit on the Lord's day." Notwithstanding this exalted authorship, it is a production of very inferior merits indeed. It is conceived in that style of overloaded allegory of which the art consists in concealing the thought of the writer under images decipherable only by an initiated few. The Book of Daniel is an example of the same kind of thing. A false interest is excited by this style from the mere difficulty of comprehending the meaning. How widely it differs from that mode of allegory which possesses a real literary justification, may be shown by comparing the Apocalypse with the "Pilgrim's Progress." In Bunyan, the thought is revealed under clear and transparent images; in John, it is concealed under obscure and turbid ones. Hence there have been endless interpretations of the Apocalypse; there has been only one of the "Pilgrim's Progress." That characteristic which Holy Writ has been shown to possess of calling forth a multitude of comments and speculations upon its meaning belongs in a preëminent degree to the Revelation of John.

After writing by the instructions of Christ a letter to each of the Seven Churches, the author proceeds to describe his vision. There was a throne in heaven, upon which God himself was seated. He had the singular appearance of a jasper and a sardine stone. Beasts, elders, angels, saints, and a promiscuous company besides were around the throne, engaged in performing the ceremonies of the celestial court. Various works were executed according to orders by the attendant angels. A beast then arises out of the sea, and is worshiped by those whose names are not in Christ's book. "Babylon the Great," under the form of a harlot, is judged and put an end to. An angel comes down from heaven and binds "that old serpent, which is the Devil and Satan," for a thousand years. During this millennium Christ reigns on earth, and all who have been martyrs for his sake, or have not worshiped the beast, rise from the dead to reign with him. After the thousand years are over Satan is unfortunately released from prison, and does a great deal of mischief, but is ultimately recaptured again and cast into a lake of fire and brimstone. A second resurrection, for the unprivileged multitude, now takes place. All the dead stand before God, and are judged by reference to the records which have been carefully kept in heaven in books provided for the purpose. All who are not in the book of life are thrown into the lake of fire, to which death and hell are consigned also. The inspired seer is now shown a new heaven, a new earth, and a new Jerusalem which comes down from heaven. For a moment he rises from the extremely commonplace level upon which he usually moves to an eloquent picture of that happier world in which "God shall wipe away all tears from" the eyes of men; when "there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain." The book concludes with a curse upon any one who shall in any manner tamper with it, either by way of addition or erasure, and with a promise from Jesus that he will come quickly.

Subdivision 4.—The God of Christendom.

Although the God whom Jesus thought himself commissioned to represent, and in whom his disciples believed, is the historical continuation of the Jehovah of Hebrew Scripture, yet his character is in many important aspects widely different. No longer the arbitrary and irascible personage who continually interfered with the current of human affairs, rewarding here, punishing there; now overthrowing a monarch, now destroying a nation; he exercises a calmer and more equitable sway over the destinies of the world. As the servile occupants of the bench in former days too often combined the functions of prosecutors with those of judges, so Jehovah in the ancient times of Israel had sometimes thrown off the judicial dignity to act with all the animus of a party to the cause. This was natural perhaps where the subject-matter of the inquiry was the worship and honor to be paid to himself. It was natural that he should take a strong personal interest in such cases; but as all opposition (among the Jews at least) had passed away, and he remained in exclusive possession of the throne, he could afford to treat the charges with which he had now to deal—mere infractions of morality, for example—in a much more impartial spirit.

In addition to this cause of transformation, the natural growth of religious feeling had tended to replace the older deity by a modified conception, and Jesus, falling in in this respect with the course of thought already in progress, contributed to effect a still further modification in the same direction. Hence, although there is nowhere an absolute break between the old and the new conceptions, the God of the New Testament is practically a very different person from the God of the Old. We cannot conceive him doing the same things. The worst action, in the way of interference in mundane matters, of which the God of the New Testament is guilty, is, perhaps, the sudden slaughter of Ananias and Sapphira. But what is this to such enormities as the deluge, the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, or the commission of bears to devour little children who had ridiculed the baldness of a prophet? Horrors like these, so consistent with the general mode of procedure of the ancient Jehovah, are wholly incompatible with the characteristics so often ascribed to the more recent God. According to the theories of the New Testament, the crime committed by the Jews in executing Jesus was at least as great as the crimes for which the antediluvians and the Sodomites had been so ruthlessly exterminated. Yet we cannot imagine Jesus as even wishing for the extermination of his contemporaries by water or by fire. The God whose love for mankind he had been teaching could not for a moment be thought of as consenting to such a course. While Elijah the Tishbite is represented as positively praying for the instant death of one hundred men who came to him with a message from his king, Jesus, on the contrary, is depicted as actually healing the only one of his enemies who had been in any way injured in effecting his arrest. Plainly when the conduct of the prophets is thus dissimilar, the deity whom they represent on earth is dissimilar also.

Another very marked alteration to be observed in passing from the character of Jehovah to that of God, is the emancipation of the object of worship from the limits of race. Jehovah was altogether a Jew. He kept the Sabbath-day; he loved fasts and festivals; he believed strongly in the virtue of circumcision; he was interested not so much in the general well-being of the human species, as in the success of the single people of whom he was the true leader in battle and the ultimate sovereign at home. What happened to all the remainder of mankind was to him a matter of trivial moment, although it might suit him occasionally to use them as instruments either for the chastisement or the restoration to favor of his beloved Israel. But God in the New Testament has largely cast off the special features of his race, and although he sometimes betrays his Judaic origin, he is in the main cosmopolite in his sympathies and impartial in his behavior. Though by no means catholic in religion, but holding exclusively to a single faith, he receives all who embrace that faith, of whatever nation, within the range of his favor. This great and deeply important change, though begun by Jesus, was in the main the work of Paul. If it was Jesus who constructed the tabernacle, it was Paul who built the temple.

While, however, there is an enormous improvement if we compare the administration of human affairs by Jehovah and by God, there is nevertheless a blot upon the character of God which suffices, if rigorously balanced against the failings of Jehovah, to outweigh them all. It is the eternity of the punishment which he inflicts in a future life. No amount of sophistry can ever justify the creation of beings whose lives are to terminate in endless suffering. But while the reality of condemnation to such endless suffering would be a far more gigantic crime than any of the merely terrestrial penalties inflicted by the Hebrew Jehovah, the belief in such endless suffering is quite consistent with a much higher general conception of the divinity than the one that coëxisted with the belief in those terrestrial penalties. The explanation of this apparent paradox is to be found in the fact that the necessary injustice of eternal punishment is not very easily perceived; that, in fact, it is not understood at all in the ruder stages of social evolution, and not by every individual even in so advanced a society as our own. Some degree of punishment for offenses is felt to be requisite; and it is not observed without considerable reflection that that punishment in order to be just must needs be finite; must needs, if imposed by absolute power, aim at the ultimate reformation of the criminal, not at his ultimate misery. And it takes a far higher degree of mental cultivation to feel this than it takes to feel the injustice of the violent outbursts attributed in the Old Testament to Jehovah. Tradition and custom alone could have prevented Jesus and his disciples from feeling shocked at these; while it was intellectual capacity which was needed to enable them to reject eternal punishment as incompatible with justice. Add to these considerations the very important fact that the conduct conducing to salvation, and avoiding condemnation in the future state, was supposed to be known to all men beforehand, being fixed by unalterable rules; while the conduct necessary to ensure the terrestrial rewards, and escape the terrestrial penalties of the Old Testament, was not known till the occasion arose; sometimes not till after it had arisen. Thus, Jesus lays down in his teaching both the rules to be observed by human beings if they would obtain the approbation of his Father, and the exact manner in which the violation of those rules will be visited upon them if they fail to repent and obtain forgiveness. But Jehovah only made his rules from time to time, and never announced beforehand what his punishments would be. Who, for instance, could tell what he would do to the Israelites for worshiping the golden calf? who could say whether he would treat gathering sticks on the Sabbath, as to which there was as yet no law, as a capital crime? still more, who could imagine that he would visit the action of a monarch in taking a census of Israel by a pestilence inflicted on the unoffending people? Plainly it was a very rude notion of deity indeed which was satisfied to suppose an arbitrary interposition in all such cases. The God of the New Testament may be more cruel, but he is also more consistent. If I may venture on a homely comparison, I should say that the Jehovah of the Israelites is like a capricious Oriental despot, whose subjects' lives are in his hand, while the God of Christendom rather resembles a judge administering a Draconian code in which there should be no gradations between capital punishment and entire acquittal. The laws may in fact demand more bloodshed than the tyrant; but their existence and administration by fixed rules would undoubtedly imply that a people had reached a higher grade of civilization. Moreover, exactly as government conducted by laws is capable of improvement by modification of the legislative enactments, while despotic government is essentially vicious, so the character of God admits of easy adaptation to the needs of a more cultivated state, while that of Jehovah can by no possibility be rendered consistent with a high ideal of divinity.

Such adaptation of the Christian God has actually taken place to a very large extent. The doctrine of Purgatory, leaving only the most incorrigible offenders to be consigned to hell, was already a considerable step in advance of the teaching of the New Testament. It got rid of the fundamental weakness in the conception of Jesus, wherein there was no proportion of punishment to offense; every sin, small or great, was either absolutely forgiven or punished to the uttermost extent. It effected the same beneficent change as Romilly effected in the English law. Precisely as our former code punished even trifling crimes with death or not at all, so the God of Jesus punished sin either eternally or not at all. Precisely as the excessive severity of English law led to the entire acquittal of many criminals who should have received some degree of punishment, so the excessive severity of God led to the belief and hope that many sinners would be entirely pardoned who should in justice have received some measure of correction. Thus, in both these cases, the undue harshness of the threatened penalty tended to defeat the very object in view.