Arrows of Freethought Part 6

Mountebank Talmage has just preached a funeral sermon on General Joshua.

It is rather behind date, as the old warrior has been dead above three thousand years. But better late than never. Talmage tells us many things about Joshua which are not in the Bible, and some sceptics will say that his panegyric is a sheer invention. They may, however, be mistaken. The oracle of the Brooklyn Jabbernacle is known to be inspired. G.o.d holds converse with him, and he is thus enabled to supply us with fresh facts about Jehovah's fighting-c.o.c.k from the lost books of Jasher and the Wars of the Lord.

Joshua, says Talmage, was a magnificent fighter. We say, he was a magnificent butcher. Jehovah did the fighting.

He was the virtual commander of the Jewish hosts; he won all their victories; and Joshua only did the slaughter. He excelled in that line of business. He delighted in the dying groans of women and children, and loved to dabble his feet and hands in the warm blood of the slain.

No "Chamber of Horrors" contains the effigy of any wretch half so bloodthirsty and cruel.

According to Talmage, Joshua "always fought on the right side." Wars of conquest are never right. Thieving other people's lands is an abominable crime. The Jews had absolutely no claim to the territory they took possession of, and which they manured with the blood of its rightful owners. We know they said that G.o.d told them to requisition that fine little landed estate of Canaan. Half the thieves in history have said the same thing. We don't believe them. G.o.d never told any man to rob his neighbor, and whoever says so lies. The thief's statement does not suffice. Let him produce better evidence. A rascal who steals and murders cannot be believed on his oath, and 'tis more likely that he is a liar than that G.o.d is a scoundrel.

Talmage celebrates "five great victories" of Joshua. He omits two mighty achievements. General Joshua circ.u.mcised a million and a half Jews in a single day. His greatest battle never equalled that wonderful feat. The amputations were done at the rate of over a thousand a minute. Samson's jaw-bone was nothing to Joshua's knife. This surprising old Jew was as great in oratory as in surgery. On one occasion he addressed an audience of three millions, and everyone heard him. His voice must have reached two or three miles. No wonder the walls of Jericho fell down when Joshua joined in the shout. We dare say the Jews wore ear-preservers to guard their tympanums against the dreadful artillery of his speech.

Joshua's first victory, says Tahnage, was conquering the spring freshet of Jordan. As a matter of fact, Jehovah transacted that little affair.

See, says Talmage, "one mile ahead go two priests carrying a _glittering box_ four feet long and two feet wide. It is the Ark of the Covenant."

He forgets to add that the Jew G.o.d was supposed to be inside it. Jack in the box is nothing to G.o.d in a box. What would have happened if the Ark had been buried with Jehovah safely fastened in? Would his G.o.ds.h.i.+p have mouldered to dust? In that case he would never have seduced a carpenter's wife, and there would have been no G.o.d the Son as the fruit of his adultery.

Talmage credits General Joshua with the capture of Jericho. The Bible says that Jehovah overcame it. Seven priests went blowing rams' horns round the city for seven days. On the seventh day they went round it seven times. It must have been tiresome work, for Jericho was a large city several miles in circ.u.mference. But priests are always good "Walkers." After the last blowing of horns all the Jews shouted "Down Jericho, down Jericho!" This is Talmage's inspired account. The Bible states nothing of the kind. Just as the Islamites cry "Allah, Il Allah,"

it is probable that the Jews cried "Jahveh, Jahveh." But Talmage and the Bible both agree that when their shout rent the air the walls of Jericho fell flat--as flat as the fools who believe it.

Then, says Talmage, "the huzza of the victorious Israelites and the groan of the conquered Canaanites commingle!" Ah, that groan! Its sound still curses the Bible G.o.d. Men, women and children, were murdered.

The very cattle, sheep and a.s.ses, were killed with the sword. Only one woman's house was spared, and she was a harlot.

It is as if the German army took Paris, and killed every inhabitant except Cora Pearl. This is inspired war, and Talmage glories in it. He would consider it an honor to be bottle-washer to such a pious hero as General Joshua. When Ai was taken, all its people were slaughtered, without any regard to age or s.e.x. Talmage grins with delight, and cries "Bravo, Joshua!" The King of Ai was reserved for sport. They hung him on a tree and enjoyed the fun. Talmage approves this too. Everything Joshua did was right. Talmage is ready to stake his own poor little soul on that.

Joshua's victory over the five kings calls forth a burst of supernatural eloquence. Talmage pictures the "catapults of the sky pouring a volley of hailstones" on the flying Amorites, and words almost fail him to describe the glorious miracle of the lengthening of the day in order that Jehovah's prize-fighters might go on killing. One pa.s.sage is almost sublime. It is only one step off. "What," asks Talmage, "is the matter with Joshua? Has he fallen in an apoplectic fit? No. He is in prayer."

Our profanity would not have gone to that length. But we take Talmage's word for it that prayer and apoplexy are very much alike.

The _five_ kings were decapitated. "Ah," says Talmage, "I want five more kings beheaded to-day, King Alcohol, King Fraud, King l.u.s.t, King Superst.i.tion, and King Infidelity." Soft, you priestly calumniator!

What right have you to a.s.sociate Infidelity with fraud and l.u.s.t? That Freethought, which you call "infidelity," is more faithful to truth and justice than your creed has ever been. And it will not be disposed of so easily as you think. You will never behead us, but we shall strangle you. We are crus.h.i.+ng the life out of your wretched faith, and your spasmodic sermons are only the groans of its despair.

Talmage's boldest step on the line which separates the ludicrous from the sublime occurs in his peroration. He makes General Joshua conquer Death by lying down and giving up the ghost, and then asks for a headstone and a foot-stone for the holy corpse. "I imagine," he says, "that for the head it shall be the sun that stood still upon Gibeon, and for the foot the moon that stood still in the valley of Ajalon." This is about the finest piece of Yankee buncombe extant. If the sun and moon keep watch over General Joshua's grave, what are we to do? When we get to the New Jerusalem we shall want neither of these luminaries, for the glory of the Lord will s.h.i.+ne upon us. But until then we cannot dispense with them, and we decidedly object to their being retained as perpetual mourners over Joshua's grave. If, however, one of them must do service, we humbly beg that it may be the moon. Let the sun illumine us by day, so that we may see to transact our affairs. And if ever we should long to behold "pale Dians beams" again, we might take Talmage as our guide to the unknown grave of General Joshua, and while they played softly over the miraculous two yards of turf we should see his fitting epitaph--Moons.h.i.+ne.

GOING TO h.e.l.l.

(June, 1882.)

Editing a Freethought paper is a dreadful business. It brings one into contact with many half-baked people who have little patent recipes for hastening the millennium; with ambitious versifiers who think it a disgrace to journalism that their productions are not instantly inserted; with discontented ladies and gentlemen who fancy that a heterodox paper is the proper vehicle for every species of complaint; and with a mult.i.tude of other bores too numerous to mention and too various to cla.s.sify. But the worst of all are the anonymous bores, who send their insults, advice, or warnings, through the post for the benefit of the Queen's revenue. We generally pitch their puerile missives into the waste-paper basket; but occasionally we find one diverting enough to be introduced to our readers. A few days ago we received the following lugubrious epistle, ostensibly from a parson in Worcesters.h.i.+re, as the envelope bore the postmark of Tything.

"The fool hath said in his heart 'there is no G.o.d'--I have seen one of your blasphemous papers; and I say solemnly, as a clergyman of the Church of England, that I believe you are doing the work of the Devil, and are on the road to h.e.l.l, and will spend eternity with the Devil, unless G.o.d, in his mercy, lead you, by the Holy Spirit, to _repentance_.

Nothing is impossible, with him. A Dean in the Church of England says, 'Be wise, and laugh not through a speck of time, and then wail through an immeasurable eternity.' Except you change your views you will most certainly hear Christ say, at the Judgment Day, 'Depart ye cursed into everlasting fire prepared for the Devil and his angels.' (Matt, xxv.)"

This is a tolerably warm, though not very elegant effusion, and it is really a pity that so grave a counsellor should conceal his name; for if it should lead to our conversion, we should not know whom to thank for having turned us out of the primrose path to the everlasting bonfire.

Our mentor a.s.sures us that with G.o.d nothing is impossible. We are sorry to learn this; for we must conclude that he does not take sufficient trouble with parsons to endow them with the courage of their convictions, or to make them observe the common decencies of epistolary intercourse.

This anonymous parson, who acts like an Irish "Moonlighter," and masks his ident.i.ty while venting his spleen, presumes to antic.i.p.ate the Day of Judgment, and tells exactly what Jesus Christ will say to us on that occasion. We are obliged to him for the information, but we wonder how he obtained it. The twenty-fifth of Matthew, to which he refers us, contains not a word about unbelievers. It simply states that certain persons, who have treated the Son of Man very shabbily in his distress, shall be sent to keep company with Old Nick and his imps. Now, we have never shown the Son of Man any incivility, much less any inhumanity, and we therefore repudiate this odious insinuation. Whenever Jesus Christ sends us a message that he is sick, we will pay him a visit; if he is hungry, we will find him a dinner; if he is thirsty, we will stand whatever he likes to drink; if he is naked, we will hunt him up a clean s.h.i.+rt and an old suit; and if he is in prison, we will, according as he is innocent or guilty, try to procure his release, or leave him to serve out his term. We should be much surprised if any parson in the three kingdoms would do any more Some of them, we believe, would see him condemned (new version) before they would lift a finger or spend sixpence to-help him.

We are charged with doing the work of the Devil. This is indeed news. We never knew the Devil required any a.s.sistance. He was always very active and enterprising, and quite able to manage his own business.

And although his rival, Jehovah, is so dotingly senile as to yield up everything to his mistress and her son, no one has ever whispered the least hint of the Devil's decline into the same abject position. But if his Satanic Majesty needed our aid we should not be loth to give it, for after carefully reading the Bible many times from beginning to end, we have come to the conclusion that he is about the only gentleman in it.

We are "on the road to h.e.l.l." Well, if we must _go_ somewhere, that is just the place we should choose. The temperature is high, and it would no doubt at first be incommodious. But, as old Sir Thomas Browne says, afflictions induce callosities, and in time we should get used to anything.

When once we grew accustomed to the heat, how thankful we should be at having escaped the dreary insipidity of heaven, with its perpetual psalms, its dolorous trumpets, its gruesome elders, and its elderly beasts! How thankful at having missed an eternity with Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, David, and all the many blackguards and scoundrels of the Bible!

How thankful at having joined for ever the society of Rabelais, Bruno, Spinoza, Voltaire, Thomas Paine, John Stuart Mill, and all the great poets, sages and wits, who possess so much of that carnal wisdom which is at enmity with the pious folly of babes and sucklings!

On the whole, we think it best to keep on our present course. Let the bigots rave and the parsons wail. They are deeply _interested_ in the doctrine of heaven and h.e.l.l beyond the grave. We believe in heaven and h.e.l.l on this side of it; a h.e.l.l of ignorance, crime, and misery; a heaven of wisdom, virtue, and happiness. Our duty is to promote the one and combat the other. If there be a just G.o.d, the fulfilment of that duty will suffice; if G.o.d be unjust, all honest men will be in the same boat, and have the courage to despise and defy him.

CHRISTMAS EVE IN HEAVEN.

(December, 1881.)

Christmas Eve had come and almost gone. It was drawing nigh midnight, and I sat solitary in my room, immersed in memory, dreaming of old days and their buried secrets. The fire, before which I mused, was burning clear without flame, and its intense glow, which alone lighted my apartment, cast a red tint on the furniture and walls. Outside the streets were m.u.f.fled deep with snow, in which no footstep was audible.

All was quiet as death, silent as the grave, save for the faint murmur of my own breathing. Time and s.p.a.ce seemed annihilated beyond those four narrow walls, and I was as a coffined living centre of an else lifeless infinity.

My reverie was rudely broken by the staggering step of a fellow-lodger, whose devotion to Bacchus was the one symptom of reverence in his nature. He reeled up stair after stair, and as he pa.s.sed my door he lurched against it so violently that I feared he would come through. But he slowly recovered himself after some profane mutterings, reeled up the next flight of stairs, and finally deposited his well-soaked clay on the bed in his own room immediately over mine.

After this interruption my thoughts changed most fancifully. Why I know not, but I began to brood on the strange statement of Saint Paul concerning the man who was lifted up into the seventh heaven, and there beheld things not lawful to reveal. While pondering this story I was presently aware of an astonis.h.i.+ng change. The walls of my room slowly expanded, growing ever thinner and thinner, until they became the filmiest transparent veil which at last dissolved utterly away. Then (whether in the spirit or the flesh I know not) I was hurried along through s.p.a.ce, past galaxy after galaxy of suns and stars, separate systems yet all mysteriously related.

Swifter than light we travelled, I and my unseen guide, through the infinite ocean of ether, until our flight was arrested by a denser medium, which I recognised as an atmosphere like that of our earth. I had scarcely recovered from this new surprise when (marvel of marvels!) I found myself before a huge gate of wondrous art and dazzling splendor.

At a word from my still unseen guide it swung open, and I was urged within. Beneath my feet was a solid pavement of gold. Gorgeous mansions, interspersed with palaces, rose around me, and above them all towered the airy pinnacles of a matchless temple, whose points quivered in the rich light like tongues of golden fire. The walls glittered with countless rubies, diamonds, pearls, amethysts, emeralds, and other precious stones; and lovely presences, arrayed in s.h.i.+ning garments, moved noiselessly from place to place. "Where am I?" I e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed, half faint with wonder. And my hitherto unseen guide, who now revealed himself, softly answered, "In Heaven."

Thereupon my whole frame was agitated with inward laughter. I in Heaven, whose fiery doom had been prophesied so often by the saints on earth! I, the sceptic, the blasphemer, the scoffer at all things sacred, who had laughed at the legends and dogmas of Christianism as though they were incredible and effete as the myths of Olympus! And I thought to myself, "Better I had gone straight to h.e.l.l, for here in the New Jerusalem they will no doubt punish me worse than there." But my angelic guide, who read my thought, smiled benignly and said, "Fear not, no harm shall happen to you. I have exacted a promise of safety for you, and here no promise can be broken." "But why," I asked, "have you brought me hither, and how did you obtain my guarantee of safety?" And my guide answered, "It is our privilege each year to demand one favor which may not be refused; I requested that I might bring you here; but I did not mention your name, and if you do nothing outrageous you will not be noticed, for no one here meddles with another's business, and our rulers are too much occupied with foreign affairs to trouble about our domestic concerns." "Yet," I rejoined, "I shall surely be detected, for I wear no heavenly robe." Then my guide produced one from a little packet, and having donned it, I felt safe from the fate of him who was expelled because he had not on a wedding-garment at the marriage feast.

As we moved along, I inquired of my guide why he took such interest in me; and he replied, looking sadly, "I was a sceptic on earth centuries ago, but I stood alone, and at last on my death-bed, weakened by sickness, I again embraced the creed of my youth and died in the Christian faith. Hence my presence in Heaven. But gladly would I renounce Paradise even for h.e.l.l, for those figures so lovely without are not all lovely within, and I would rather consort with the choicer spirits who abide with Satan and hold high revel of heart and head in his court. Yet wishes are fruitless; as the tree falls it lies, and my lot is cast for ever." Whereupon I laid my hand in his, being speechless with grief!

We soon approached the magnificent temple, and entering it we mixed with the mighty crowd of angels who were witnessing the rites of wors.h.i.+p performed by the elders and beasts before the great white throne. All happened exactly as Saint John describes. The angels rent the air with their acclamations, after the inner circle had concluded, and then the throne was deserted by its occupants.

My dear guide then led me through some narrow pa.s.sages until we emerged into a s.p.a.cious hall, at one end of which hung a curtain. Advancing towards this with silent tread, we were able to look through a slight aperture, where the curtain fell away from the pillar, into the room beyond. It was small and cosy, and a fire burned in the grate, before which sat poor dear G.o.d the Father in a big arm-chair. Divested of his G.o.dly paraphernalia, he looked old and thin, though an evil fire still gleamed from his cavernous eyes. On a table beside him stood some phials, one of which had seemingly just been used. G.o.d the Son stood near, looking much younger and fresher, but time was beginning to tell on him also. The Ghost flitted about in the form of a dove, now perching on the Father's shoulder and now on the head of the Son.

Presently the ma.s.sive bony frame of the Father was convulsed with a fit of coughing; Jesus promptly applied a restorative from the phial, and after a terrible struggle the cough was subdued. During this scene the Dove fluttered violently from wall to wall. When the patient was thoroughly restored the following conversation ensued:--

Jesus.--Are you well now, my Father?

Jehovah.--Yes, yes, well enough. Alack, how my strength wanes! Where is the pith that filled these arms when I fought for my chosen people?

Where the fiery vigor that filled my veins when I courted your mother?

(Here the Dove fluttered and looked queer.)

Jesus.--Ah, sire, do not speak thus. You will regain your old strength.

Jehovah.--Nay, nay, and you know it. You do not even wish me to recover, for in my weakness you exercise sovereign power and rule as you please.

Jesus.--O sire, sire!