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The Pamphlet Collection of Sir Robert Stout: Volume 26

Sir,

Tour people in all parts of the world for many ages past have had the credit of being cute enough in the business of every day life, so I suppose you as one of their descendants, are not devoid of reason nor of observation. Experience must have taught you, or if not it should have, that the laws of nature are fixed, and like their Great Maker are the same yesterday, to-day, and forever, whilst at the same time you profess to believe that the Old Testament (as Christians call it) is the directly inspired word of the Great Creator of the Universe, which implies that He formerly manifested Himself to man, differently to what He now does, and wherein at the commencement, it is stated that a serpent spoke to a woman called Eve, telling her the truth, that she would not die when she ate of a certain fruit, leaving it to be inferred that He who is perfection, and to whom we are led to understand in other parts, a lie was an abomination, told that which was false, for he is represented as having said, "in the day thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die." Now, Sir, if nature's laws are fixed as science has clearly demonstrated that they are, and the biblical words reliable, we should have had serpents talking to women in succeeding ages—did you ever meet a talking serpent? I have not, and I have travelled a good deal on three continents of the globe, nor have I ever yet met with anyone who did. Again, if God is a non-respecter of persons, and the same yesterday, to-day, and forever, surely it is plain, if He appeared and spoke to Adam, Abraham, Moses, &c., in olden times as reported, He would appear and speak to others now, and if He, whom no man hath seen nor heard His voice at, any time, does not do so in our day, then we may be perfectly sure He never did. Either the book or the authorship imputed to it must be false, you can choose which you like. Do not imagine that by even imputing a lie to the page 8 Great Creator, or more properly the Great Evolver, of all things, that you can sin against God, for let me assure you, and all the world besides, that man can neither debase nor elevate the Ruler of All, he can only sin against himself; he is a perfectly free-will being within the bounds of nature's laws; he can debase himself by giving way to his animal passions, or he can elevate himself by cultivating his divine attributes, viz., love, wisdom, truth, justice, &c. The Great Lawgiver being perfection, it follows as a matter of necessity that all His laws are perfect, requiring no amending, as Jo those of man, which have to be altered to suit circumstances, owing to the eternal law of progression. God's laws being perfection, all contingencies that may arise through their working are duly provided for therein, which the writers of that book, which you revere as the direct Word of God, were unaware of, living as they did in semi-savage times. You, Sir, and your people like most other religionists, are led away by early teachings and your veneration for the antiquity of the writings of that book, forgetting that antiquity cannot make that which is false true, nor eternity, cause a truth to be a lie. I am well aware of the sacred care with which your ancient writings have been preserved and handed down, and I freely grant their genuineness as copies, but it is the fallacy and irrationality of the originals against which I protest. You must admit that there are many things in those ancient writings that, if told you by your dearest friends, as happening now, you would not believe; then, why believe them because they were written as having occurred a few thousand years ago? If their occurrence in the present day, when you can investigate them, is unworthy of belief, then surely their occurrence in olden times is equally worthy of a rational being's discrediting; and, if you still deny this, pray when did the Great Lawgiver bring in His amending act, or acts?

I have only referred to one or two of the minor circumstances of which there are hundreds equally as glaring in your belief, but sufficient I consider, to show an unprejudiced mind open to conviction, the absurdity of your religion, notwithstanding its antiquity, and by your allowing many of the more barbaric ordinances and commands of the Mosaic law to fall into disuse, you confirm my assertion. Deny it as you like, the reason God has given you, if freed from bias, tells you that what I state is the truth; you as well as I know that the voice of reason is the only voice of God that hath spoken to man now or at any time. Passing over the horrible commands which Moses is represented as having received from God, Who is Love, to murder all the males, and the females who had lain with men, belonging to the enemies of the children of Israel, but to spare the virgins, evidently for the gratification of their lustful desires; let us take the 12th chap, of Numbers where Miriam and her brother Aaran are represented to have indulged in a little scandal against Moses for having married the negro woman, and where it is also reported that the great Ruler of countless worlds, besides this small planet, is reported to have said unto Moses, "If her father had but spit in her face, should she not be ashamed seven days? let her be shut out from the camp seven days, and after that let her be received in again." Just for one moment contemplate such small talk as this being ascribed to the Great Creator! Did you ever consider if Moses wrote the five page 9 books, the authorship of which he is credited with, what an extraordinary clever man he must have been to write an account of his own death and burial? I must, however, admit that the bible is consistent in some respects. The King, to whom the authorship of the Psalms is imputed, but who acted the part of a villain so well in the case of Uriah the Hittite, in sending him to the front of the battle, with instructions to Joab to retire from him and let him be killed, in order that he the king, might retain the services of Uriah's wife, Bath-sheba, for his lustful purposes, and whom he had in Uriah's absence previously seduced, might be well termed a man after God's own heart, that is, of the Jewish deity, who sent so many plagues upon poor old Pharoah, in order to induce him to let the children of Israel depart out of Egyptian bondage, yet each time hardening his heart; that he should not let them go, and of which Deity it is written, that he will laugh at his enemies when their calamity cometh; what a hideous demon! not a God.

I should like to know whether your Deity has got tired of the smell of the fat of oxen, &c., or have you got tired of offering sweet smelling savours of this kind to your God? If the anthropomorphic deity of the bible were the God of the universe, God help mankind. Thanks be to our merciful, heavenly Father, we have incontrovertible evidences in nature and in our own experience, that both the Jewish Deity and its Satan, are mythical beings, unworthy of retention in the minds of rational beings, however much they may be hedged around by mystery, or sanctified by antiquity. It is said "distance lends enchantment to the view," and surely in the case of the Jewish records it has done so in a marked degree. To me it is evident that the demons of Adam, Abraham, Moses, and the other biblical personages have been mistaken for God, the Father of all, who is in other parts alluded to, and that through ignorance and misconception, the Almighty and the Jewish demons have been jumbled together, as all one and the same, this will explain many of the absurdities contained in the Bible. We are told in the xxii. chapter of Genesis, that God tempted Abraham to take his only son, Isaac, to the land of Moriah and there offer him for a burnt offering, and in another part that God tempteth no man, which clearly shows that it was an evil spirit that tempted Abraham to do such an absurd and wrong action. What would the Great Creator of the Universe want with the sacrifice of an innocent, little child, or all the oxen, sheep or goats in the world? Let your reason, unbiased, decide. At the 11th verse of the chapter referred to, we are told an angel or good spirit told Abraham not to injure the child, which advice he very sensibly took. You may say all this took place in order that God might try Abraham's faith, as if God, like man, did not know without trying. You may ask, has not God then revealed Himself to man? and I reply yes, in all ages and by the same means, viz : through His eternal and inscrutable laws which man terms nature's laws, and He will continue to reveal Himself to man through the same, throughout eternity and by no other means. God not being a personal deity, as man has ignorantly assumed, He requires not the glory of man, for all His works glorify Him. Who by searching can find out God, let Him be true and every man a liar. As one of your people once said to me, "if page 10 we were God's chosen people He must have had a bad lot to choose from," and I agreed with him, although I admit I have known and still have a few worthy Jews as friends, and I look upon a Jew, born more than 18 centuries ago as the greatest Reformer the world has ever witnessed, whom his ignorant countrymen murdered, but whom I am proud to call my elder brother. The simple truths which he taught and exemplified in his life, notwithstanding all their perversion and adding to since, have not been and never can be, refuted by the greatest or most learned philosophers. It is said that one-third of the Christians in the world worship a Jew, and the remaining two-thirds a Jewess, his mother, whom they have deified as the Queen of Heaven, which is quite consistent with the title given to her son, viz: "the Prince of the House of David." You may further ask, if I do not admit the Bible as the inspired word of God, how do I account for the prophecies it contains and their fulfilment? I admit the inspiration of the sublime truths which the Bible contains, but not as from God direct, but mediately through ministering angels, and as for the prophecies and their fulfilment, many of which I acknowledge; I shall explain on another occasion. Let me however, assure you if these few remarks have called forth your reason and shaken your faith in your ancient fables, that I never pull down without I can put a better edifice in the place thereof, but remember that there is a time for all things, a time for pulling down and a time for erecting, a time for scattering and a time for gathering—so have patience, Mr. Rabbi,—Moses did not bring the Children of Israel through the desert in a week, nor was Rome built in a day.