The Two Tests: The Supernatural Claims of Christianity Tried By Two Of Its Own Rules Part 9

16. Yet there are a few verses of the Old Testament, the princ.i.p.al Job xix. 25-27; Isaiah xxvi. 19; Ezek. x.x.xvii. 12, 13; Daniel xii. 2, that, as translated in the authorised version, seem to express the hope of a bodily resurrection. All these pa.s.sages are of a highly poetical character (that of Daniel is in connection with the great Jewish prince Michael), and if read in the light of the explicit declarations just quoted, it will be felt that they must be open to other constructions, and probably to other renderings than those in the present translation.

But it is no part of the present purpose to reconcile discrepancies, apparent or real; and in any case, it is clear that even these last-named pa.s.sages do not countenance such conceptions as the heaven and h.e.l.l of the New Testament. The Christian clergy, fully alive to the importance, for upholding the divine origin which they claim for their creed, of making New Testament ideas a development and fulfilment of the Old, and of showing that the deities, Mosaic and Christian, are the same, and not contradictory, have displayed much ingenuity in reconciling incongruities and in discovering resemblances in ways and by reasonings that would not have occurred to ordinary truth-seeking men; but no unbia.s.sed inquirer can fail to perceive the utter divergence between the Old and New Testament doctrine and practice, as regards a future life, and how impossible it is that both sets of ideas can have emanated from the same mind or spirit, mortal or immortal. There are thus only three possible conclusions: (1.) The Mosaic deity is the true G.o.d, not the Christian; (2.) the Christian deity is the true G.o.d, not the Mosaic; but this contradicts the Christian deity himself, who says the Mosaic deity was himself; or, (3.) neither is G.o.d, in which case there has been no revelation, and all that is left for men is either to a.s.sume the existence and attributes of a G.o.d who has never revealed himself, or to disbelieve in such existence; or to acknowledge that the question of the existence of a G.o.d is one beyond the reach of the human faculties to determine.

17. If then the resurrection of Jesus and the New Testament declarations as to a future life, are thus wholly opposed to Old Testament ideas, do they present any resemblance to the belief of heathendom?

(a.) The faith and practice of the Egyptians, in connection with their G.o.d Osiris, have already been referred to in preceding paragraph 12.

It has been well said that the ancient Egyptians, in their vivid antic.i.p.ations of the life to come, lived rather in the next world than on the banks of the Nile. The bodily resurrection also had a place in their system. The belief in the deathlessness of souls has been a marked characteristic of all the Turanian races, whether represented, as many hold, by the Egyptians, Etruscans, and Lydians of aid, or by the Chinese, Mongols, and Finns of the present day. The Etruscan sepulchral paintings represent the disembodied souls on their way to the land of spirits. Some are calm and resigned, with rods in their hands: some full of horror and dismay: attendant spirits, good and evil, contend for their possession; the good spirits are coloured red, the evil spirits black; the heads of the latter are wreathed with serpents, and they bear in their hands a hammer or mallet, which is sometimes raised as in the act of striking the woe-begone soul on the knee vainly imploring mercy, (b.) In the Zend-a-Vesta,--the ancient Persian Scriptures,--a narrow pa.s.sage, called "the bridge of the gatherer," is said to be extended over the middle of h.e.l.l, where the souls of the dead are a.s.sembled on the day after the third night from their decease. The wicked fall into the gulf beneath, the gloomy kingdom of Ahriman, and are doomed to feed upon poisoned food. The good, sustained by benign angels and spirits and the prayers of surviving friends, cross over in safety, and are greeted on the other side by the archangel, as having pa.s.sed from mortality to immortality. Thence they rise to paradise, where Ormuzd and his six holy ones sit on golden thrones, and at once join in the conflict against Ahriman and the powers of darkness. At the last day they will share the glory of the triumph of Ormuzd, when Ahriman and his angels, finally routed and overcome, will be driven into their native darkness, and virtue, harmony, and bliss will evermore prevail in the universe. The resurrection of the body is also contained in the Zend-a-Vesta, and it likewise forms part of the creed of the Magi. (c.) Of the sects into which the Jews were divided after the return from the captivity in Babylon, the writer of the Acts states: "For the Sadducees say that there is no resurrection, neither angel, nor spirit; but the Pharisees confess both:" and Josephus writes concerning the latter, "They believe that souls have an immortal vigour in them, and that under the earth there will be rewards or punishments, according as they have lived virtuously or viciously in this life; and the latter are to be detained in an everlasting prison, but that the former shall have power to revive, and live again." Elsewhere he shows that these beliefs were traditional merely: "What I would now explain is this, that the Pharisees have delivered to the people a great many observances by succession from their fathers, which are not written in the law of Moses; and for that reason it is that the Sadducees reject them, and say that we are to esteem those observances to be obligatory, which are in the written word, but are not to observe what are derived from the traditions of our fore-fathers."

18. The belief of cla.s.sical antiquity as to the condition of souls after death, is beautifully summed up by Horace in the Ode (i. 10) to Mercury, date about b.c. 24; "Grateful alike to the G.o.ds supernal and infernal, it is thine to place pious souls in blissful abodes, and to coerce the airy crowd with thy golden wand." Homer, indeed, whose poems are certainly prior to the eighth century b.c., has no Elysian fields in the land of spirits; all is indeterminate, gloomy, uncomfortable. The shade of Achilles says:

"Talk not of ruling in this dolorous gloom, Nor think vain words (he cried) can ease my doom; Rather I'd choose laboriously to bear A weight of woes and breathe the vital air, A slave to some poor hind that toils for bread, Than reign the sceptred monarch of the dead."

But, whether from contact with the East and Egypt or otherwise, more definite conceptions of the abode of disembodied spirits were afterwards formed, which have found best expression in Virgil's aeneid, written about B.C. 20. There

"The gates of h.e.l.l are open night and day, Smooth the descent, and easy is the way;"

just as in the sermon on the mount,--"Wide is the gate, and broad is the way that leadeth to destruction, and many there be which go in thereat."

At a certain point h.e.l.l is thus divided:

"The right to Pluto's golden palace guides; The left to that unhappy region tends Which to the depths of Tartarus descends."

So in the New Testament, the sheep (the saved) are on the right, the goats (the lost) on the left hand of the Son of man sitting on the throne of his glory.

The region to the left is thus described:

"These are the realms of unrelenting fate, And awful Rhadamanthus rules the state; He hears and judges each committed crime, Inquires into the manner, place, and time: The conscious wretch must all his acts reveal (Loth to confess, unable to conceal) From the first moment of his vital breath To his last hour of unrepenting death.

Straight o'er the guilty wretch the Fury shakes The sounding whip, and brandishes her snakes, And the pale sinner, with her sisters, takes.

All these within the dungeon's depth remain, Despairing pardon, and expecting pain."

Far other the region to the right:

"These holy rites performed, they took their way Where long-extended fields of pleasure lay; The verdant fields with those of heaven may vie, With ether vested and a purple sky, The blissful seats of happy souls below, Stars of their own, and their own suns they know."

19. Plutarch (about a.d. 90), referring to the tradition of the mysterious disappearance of Romulus and the suspicions of regicide aroused against the patricians, wrote,--"While things were in this disorder, a senator, we are told, of great distinction, and famed for sanct.i.ty of manners, Julius Proculus by name, who came from Alba with Romulus, and had been his faithful friend, went into the Forum, and declared, upon the most solemn oaths, before all the people, that as he was travelling on the road, Romulus met him in a form more n.o.ble and august than ever, and clad in bright and dazzling armour. Astonished at the sight, he said to him, 'For what misbehaviour of ours, O king, or by what accident, have you so untimely left us to labour under the heaviest calumnies, and the whole city to sink under inexpressible sorrow?'

To which he answered, 'It pleased the G.o.ds, my good Proculus, that we should dwell with men for a time; and after having founded a city which will be the most powerful and glorious in the world, _return to heaven, from whence we came_. Farewell, then, and go, tell the Romans that by the exercise of temperance and fort.i.tude they shall attain the highest pitch of human greatness; and I, the G.o.d Quirinus, will ever be propitious to you.' This, by the character and oath of the relater, gained credit with the Romans, who were caught with the enthusiasm, as if they had been actually inspired; and far from contradicting what they had heard, bade adieu to all their suspicions of the n.o.bility, united in the deifying of Quirinus, and addressed their devotions to him. This is very like the Grecian fables concerning Aristeas, the Proconnesian, and Cleoraedes, the Astypalesian. For Aristeas, as they tell us, expired in a fuller's shop; and when his friends came to take away the body, it could not be found. Soon after, some persons coming in from a journey, said they met Aristeas travelling towards Croton. As for Cleomedes, their account of him is that he was a man of gigantic size and strength; but behaving in a foolish and frantic manner, he was guilty of many acts of violence. At last he went into a school, where he struck the pillar that supported the roof with his fist, and broke it asunder, so that the roof fell in and destroyed the children. Pursued for this, he took refuge in a great chest, and having shut the lid upon him, he held it down so fast that many men together could not force it open; when they had cut the chest in pieces, they could not find him either dead or alive. Struck with this strange affair, they sent to consult the oracle at Delphi, and had from the priestess this answer:--

"'The race of heroes ends in Cleomedes.' It is likewise said, that the body of Alcmena was lost as they were carrying it to the grave, and a stone was seen lying on the bier in its stead. Many such improbable tales are told by writers who wanted to deify beings naturally mortal."

20. Dio Ca.s.sius relates that Livia, about a.d. 14, gave a large reward to Numericus Atticus, a senator, who affirmed that he had seen her husband, the Emperor Augustus, ascending to heaven in the same manner as Romulus had been seen by Proeulus.

21. It is thus clearly manifest that the beliefs of the Gentile nations of antiquity with reference to a future life, are similar to the New Testament ideas; in fact, the same beliefs under different guises.

So, also, the resurrection of Jesus from the dead, his subsequent appearances, and his ascension to heaven, are not without parallels in preceding and contemporary fame. The alleged appearances of Jesus to Mary Magdalene, Peter, James, Paul, and the others, rest on no evidence intrinsically stronger than the appearance of Romulus to Julius Proeulus, or of Augustus to Numericus Atticus. The fact of Livia paying money to one who reported that he had seen Augustus ascend to heaven shows how deeply this idea was rooted in Roman belief. All, therefore, who were swayed by the current Roman traditions would have seen nothing incredible in Jesus and his claims. These exactly corresponded to what they had been taught from childhood. They had merely to transfer to Jesus marvels similar to those which had formed their early faith. The rise of Christianity to be the dominant-religion of the Roman empire is often referred to as a proof of its divine origin and guidance; but uniting, as it did, the discipline, organisation, earnestness, moral authoritative-ness, and exclusive claim to the favour of G.o.d (transferring to believers of every race, but to believers alone, that divine favour which was previously the peculiar possession of the seed of Abraham),--all derived from the synagogue,--uniting these with the ancient fundamental beliefs, under another name, of the various Gentile nations, it is not difficult to discern the causes of its triumph, in an age unaccustomed to weigh evidence, and at a time when _ancient forms_ were losing their hold on the faith and allegiance of the ma.s.ses. Even in modern religious revivals, the most common manifestations are of convictions which had lost their hold on the mind, or which had become practically powerless to stir under regular ministrations, springing up into renewed vigour and intensity in some novel guise, or through a description of preaching or service out of the common.

22. And this belief in a life beyond the grave, and pretended knowledge of its conditions--under one form or other one of the most ancient and widespread conceptions of the human race--what has it led to? Inhumanity in time past, inhumanity now; bloodshed and misery, dark delusion, degrading superst.i.tion, priestly pretence, persecution and intolerance, creed exclusiveness and bigoted zeal, misdirected fervour and visionary hopes--all the offspring of this conviction--fill the records of mankind.

23. Among barbarous races the vivid realisation of the spiritual world has led to such sad misguidance of the life on earth as the following;--(a.) The custom, prevalent both in ancient and modern times, of sacrificing wives, friends, and slaves at funerals to supply the wants of the deceased in the land of spirits, or to accompany him thither, (b.) Men killing their relations "out of love," as soon as they showed signs of decrepitude, under the belief that in the next world the spirits will be vigorous or otherwise, corresponding to the state of the body at time of death, (c.) Incitement to bloodshed and war by the belief that the enemies a man killed in this world, or those of whose skulls or scalps he obtained possession, would serve him as slaves in the next; or by the more manly conviction that a warring life on earth and a glorious death in battle were the best preparations for the future state, (d.) The practice, still carried on to a frightful extent among some of the African races, of killing men to serve as messengers to their departed kindred in the other world, (e.) The various gloomy and degrading delusions through the arts of spirit-mediums, sorcerers, witches, or other pretenders to intercourse with or control over the spirit-world.

24. Among nations more advanced, the union of a.s.surance of a blissful or woeful immortality, with adherence or non-adherence to any particular banner, sect, or creed, has led--(a.) To b.l.o.o.d.y religious wars, such as those waged for the spread of Islam, the Mohammedan believing that if he fell in battle he would immediately possess a paradise of every sensual delight; or such as the Crusades, where the red cross was held to be the symbol of sure salvation. (6.) To those inhuman persecutions where men, in the name of religion and in the interest of their own souls, condemned their fellow-men to the dungeon, the stake, the gibbet, and the sword, butchers and butchered both believing that they were doing "G.o.d service." Where the sufferers in such cases were sacrificed solely to the intolerance of their adversaries, and themselves wished for no more than freedom of thought--sad their lot! But impartial inquiry reveals that, in most instances, the persecuted would have dealt the same measure to their persecutors, if the conditions of power had been reversed, all alike holding that those whose belief was, in their eyes heretical had no right to share either the chequered happiness of this life or the bliss of the world to come. Heirs of salvation on one side, heirs of d.a.m.nation on the other.

25. The belief that the immortal soul, while on earth, is enchained or imprisoned in a corrupt body, and that the more the body is attenuated and exhausted the purer, the soul will be, and the more fitted for the contemplation of divine things, has led men and women to separate themselves from their kind, to pa.s.s unnatural lives in penitential exercises and mortifications, either in solitude or among communities apart from the world. Abstinence from marriage has been a condition common to almost all these devotees, so that for the sake of the soul, fondly believed to be immortal, they forbear the enjoyment of the only means for the continuance of human life--viz., that of living over again in children and descendants. Myriads of lives have been utterly wasted and perverted by this form of the delusion, their folly receiving, for the most part, the countenance, support, and reverence of blinded contemporaries.

26. The ideas handed down from past ages, and still widely prevalent, that there are certain orders of men who have the keys of heaven and h.e.l.l, who possess such favour or influence with the invisible powers as to be able to ensure a happy or a wretched immortality, or even to alter the condition of the soul after death; or, in other quarters, that certain orders of men are the divinely appointed teachers of that doctrine or belief, on the correct acceptance or appreciation of which the state of the future life depends; or, among others, that apart from any particular clerical order there is a saving doctrine or belief, and that on its correct reception or understanding, or otherwise, eternal bliss or woe will result;--to what do such ideas tend? They are not new or peculiar to Christianity. The wors.h.i.+ppers under the ancient Persian religion are thus exhorted:--"To obtain the acceptation of this guide to salvation (the priest), you must faithfully pay him t.i.thes of all you possess, of your goods, of your lands, and of your money. If the priest be satisfied your soul will escape h.e.l.l tortures; you will secure praise in this world and happiness in the next. For the priests are the teachers of religion; they know all things and deliver all men." This is explicit and straightforward, and contrasts favourably with the more guarded phrase in which modern clergy advocate similar claims, or claims founded on the same idea, _that their ministration, in one way or other, is connected with the future lot of their hearers_. The "remedy of the soul" under one form of Christianity, the "advancement of the cause of Christ," who will repay deeds done in his service with the riches of "grace and glory", under another, are and have been the two ruling motives by which the offerings of the faithful flow into the coffers of the clergy, for the establishment, whether by states or individuals, of orders of men claiming t.i.tles of reverence from, moral control over, and direction and limitation of the knowledge and professed belief of their fellows, all under the prevailing idea "of a life to come," to happiness in which their ministrations and counsel are believed to be safe guides. Thus, unsparing generosity, steadfast devotion, self-sacrificing enthusiasm, intellectual power, love of kind, and others of the highest and best human traits, instead of being turned towards remedying the evils and inequalities of the life on earth, and of improving it to the utmost, have been utterly perverted and wasted on orders of men and ecclesiastical establishments, and observances and doctrines, all more or less connected with a future state, the fond hope of misguided mortals.

27. Such and so great, then, in brief, are among the more prominent evils that have arisen out of the ancient and widespread belief in a "life to come," of which the resurrection of Jesus, and the connected doctrines and practices, const.i.tute one important development; to which the religion of Moses was antagonistic, not, as Christians claim, antecedent, but which, under one form or other, has exercised a powerful sway under almost all, if not all, the other ancient religions.

CHAPTER VI. CONCLUSION

1. The results, then, of this inquiry are:--

(a.) It has been shown that none of the supernatural occurrences mentioned in the New Testament, as testimonies to the supernatural claims of Jesus, rest on the accordant testimony of two or three witnesses; that there is also the most serious variance between the accounts of the different writers,--not that variance resulting in substantial agreement which often characterises the statements of two independent eye-witnesses relating different impressions of the same event, but that variance which characterises illusion and man-deifying fable. Thus, a condition of ordinary proof, required by the deity of the Mosaic as well as by the deity of the Christian system, is not fulfilled. Far less does the evidence satisfy that most righteous demand ever put forward by each earnest man, for proof of the highest and strictest kind, before he yields a conscience-approved a.s.sent to occurrences and to claims professing to be specially representative of a being held to be beyond and supreme over Nature. How else but by the demand for strictest proof could special manifestations of a true G.o.d (if any such had occurred or were to occur) be distinguished from pretence and imposture? Each religious system judges the pretensions of all others by severe tests of evidence and rightful incredulity, but refuses to apply these to its own. And what sort of being can they conceive an Almighty to be who affirm that he not only commands and approves belief in supernatural events, on such evidence and on such grounds as are put forth by the New Testament compilers, or on the impa.s.sioned utterances of preachers or other emotional influences, but also that he has left those to perish in their sins who do not so believe. He, an Almighty maker of the universe, approve credulity, disapprove rightful incredulity and keen inquiry, ordain belief without conscience-satisfying evidence, less regardful of truth, less righteous than man!

(b) It has also been made clear that the New Testament deity is altogether different from the Mosaic, and that the various conceptions with reference to the supernatural claims of Jesus are of heathen (i.e., non-Mosaic) origin. A woman conceiving a child through direct intercourse with the deity, that child brought up as the reputed son of her husband, the tale of the star-gazing wise men of the East, the spirit of the Eternal appearing in a bodily shape like a dove, the ordinance of baptism, the arch-fiend Satan and his subject demons, the heaven and h.e.l.l of the New Testament, the resurrection of Jesus, his subsequent appearances, his ascension, the doctrine of a future life, all, it has been found, corresponded to the prominent religious beliefs of the various Gentile nations, and were wholly opposed to or ignored by Mosaic teaching. The claim of Christianity, therefore, to be the representative of the Mosaic deity is thus destroyed, and the alleged fulfilment of Jewish prophecy in the events of the life of Jesus is also seen, on careful examination of the details, to be altogether without foundation. There is thus no ground for that conscience-satisfying belief which might otherwise have rested on valid evidence of the power, and wonder-working, and special revelations, and faithfully fulfilled predictions of _one and the same being_ continued down through many generations of men.

2. What, then, is left to those who had cherished these beliefs, and rested on them, when their fond faith and hope are overthrown by fairly prosecuted inquiry? What, rather, is _not_ left? Their own life on earth; their fellow-men in their various relations; the good earth on which man holds the highest position and subdues to his own use; the knowledge and understanding of the material and moral laws of the universe and its harmony and order; the application of these laws, so far as they affect the well-being of man, to the alleviation of misery, to the diffusion of comfort, and to general progress, physical, moral, and intellectual,--all these remain,--sources of rejoicing and thankfulness, objects of affection, of solicitude, of admiration--ample scope for the exercise of every useful and loving and n.o.ble quality of the race. So, then, may we be taught to number the days of our brief life "that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom."