The Science, History, Morality and Religion of the Bible.

Passing now from these facts concerning the Bible from what we may call a literary point of view, I pass on to the graver considerations that relate to science, history, morality and religion. And, in the first place, I would lay stress on the fact that we have in the Bible, on the most important of all subjects, the character of God Himself, the gravest possible contradictions. It is indeed, wonderful that any one can believe that the volume came from God, seeing that the pictures presented of God Himself are utterly at variance with one another. In one book He is described as a dreadful Being who commands the most horrible slaughters, and who takes the part of a favoured people against the rest of mankind; in another book He is a God of love, and the Father of all men, whose tender mercies are over all His works. How are we to account for this if the Bible is the inspired and infallible word of God?

The explanation which is sometimes offered, that God adapted His revelation to man's capacity, and that from time to time He gave man what we find in the Bible, because he was not able to receive anything better, makes God the author of error, confusion, and contradiction. It is surely far more reasonable to conclude that the errors in the Bible were the natural results of ignorance on the part of man. These inconsistencies and errors in the Bible are very perplexing so long as people hold that it is all the word of God; and many distressing attempts have to be made to reconcile these inconsistencies and to disguise these errors. But the moment we accept the simple fact, that the Bible is a record of men's thoughts, men's experiences, and men's hopes and fears, all is plain page 15 and all is useful. The very errors have a value as showing us how men have' groped after truth, and the very inconsistencies are precious, as showing us the progress men have made in seeking after God. The fact is, we lose the chief uses of the Bible so long as we regard it as the word of God; but it begins to be intensely valuable, and to be all alive with interest, the moment we accept it as the word of man.

Then, just as we might expect, we further find that the Bible contains a variety of passages which conspicuously betray the scientific ignorance, the defective morality, and the very limited religious insight of the writers of them. What are we say about the Biblical accounts of the creation of the world in six days, 6000 years ago; the nature of the heavenly bodies as mere lights and signs in the firmament, subordinate to the earth; the origin of man, and the date of his appearance upon the earth, and the familiar conversations of God with His creatures? What can we do with the statement that the children of Israel, to the number of more than two millions,—a multitude equal to the united populations of Liverpool, Manchester, Birmingham, Leicester, Sheffield, Hull, and Bristol,—wandered about in a wilderness for 40 years with their flocks and herds, without fodder and with only miracle to depend upon for bread and water?—and what of this verse,—" And I have led you forty years in the wilderness: your clothes are not waxen old upon you, and thy shoe is not waxen old upon thy foot." What shall we say of such stories as that found in II. Chronicles xiii, that the army of the king of Judah, consisting of 400,000 men slew, of the army of the king of Israel, 500,000 men,—and all "chosen" men? The figures are foolish in their wantonness. What respect can we have for a story like that in Numbers xiv, which tells us that Jehovah was only kept from indulging his rage by a stimulation of His vanity that puts Him in the meanest possible light? What are we to say about the amazing stories that appear in almost every book,—some of them grotesque, like the story of Balaam and the ass, or Jonah and the whale; many of them childish, both for their simplicity and their ignorance, like the story of the fall of the walls of Jericho and of the halting of the sun; while too many are indecent or positively immoral, like the story of the Lord's command to Hosea to go and take unto him "a wife of whoredoms" (Hosea i. 2) or the story of the Lord's command to Ezekiel concerning barley cakes and dung (Ezekiel iv. 12, 15)? The books of Joshua and Judges are full of the details of savage warfare, horrible slaughter, and fearful crime; and the greater the ferocity the more emphatic is the assertion that the Almighty commanded it or condoned it.

In an earlier book (Exodus xxi. 20, 21) we read that God Himself uttered these words:—"And if a man smite his servant, or his maid, with a rod, and he die under his hand; he shall be surely punished. Notwithstanding, if he continue a day or two, he shall not be punished: for he is his money." Can we really believe anything so derogatory to God as that He expressly condoned cruelty page 16 and murder because the victim was the murderer's "money," in other words his slave? In the same book (chapter vii. 18) we are told that God hardened Pharaoh's heart, and then punished him for doing what the hardened heart led him to do. Is that a reasonable or righteous thing to ask us to believe? In the book of Numbers (xv. 32.6) we are told that God actually commanded a man to be stoned to death, for gathering sticks on the Sabbath: "and all the congregation brought him without the camp, and stoned him with stones, and he died; as the Lord commanded Moses." What a clear case of enlisting the sanction of Jehovah's name for a stern mortal lawgiver's discipline I In the same book (xxxi. 1-18), in the very midst of a series of assertions that "the Lord spake unto Moses," we find the following horrible story. The Lord commanded Moses and his bands to "avenge the children of Israel of the Midianites," and they did it. But they were too merciful for Moses (or the Lord) although they "slew all the males," took captive all the women and children, appropriated all their goods and cattle, and burnt up all their cities wherein they dwelt, for so the ghastly record runs. So he was angry with them, and cried, "Have ye saved all the women alive?" and then issued this horrible order,—" Now therefore kill every male among the little ones, and kill every woman that hath known man by lying with him. But all the women children, that have not known a man by lying with him, keep alive for yourselves." And they did it; keeping alive "for themselves" not less than 32,000 virgins (verse 85). Why, for doing things not a tithe as fiendish, the English people were nearly goaded to drive the Turks out of Europe: and yet, a verse or two on, the Lord goes on speaking to His favourite servant again, and with every appearance of approval. I say it is an insult to human nature to ask us to condone this: it is blasphemy against God to call the record His inspired word.

Or what shall we say of the horrible record in Deuteronomy xiii., where we are told that God commanded His chosen people to murder any one who proposed to worship any other God, even though the heretic were a brother, a son, or a daughter, or "the wife of thy bosom"; and where, further, it is commanded that any city guilty of worshiping any God but Jehovah shall be utterly destroyed with fire, its inhabitants all having previously been slain, because of "the fierceness of the anger" of Jehovah? Is it not true faith in God that leads us to see in all this only the ferocious spirit of a ruthless religious fanatic who mistook his own fierce and pitiless spirit for the spirit of the Lord?

Or what shall we say of the story which tells us that God tried Abraham by telling him to murder his only son? Only a demon would issue such a command; and only a man utterly unacquainted with the sanctity and supremacy of conscience would ever entertain the question of obeying it. Or what shall we say of the ferocious curse in Jeremiah (xlviii. 10) respecting those who failed to utterly annihilate the Moabites—" Cursed be he that doeth the work of the Lord negligently, and cursed be he that keepeth back his sword page 17 from blood: "—evidently the brutal curse of a ferocious destroyer, but here attributed to Jehovah. What can any rational and really religious human being say to the atrocities recorded in Numbers xvi., where we find Jehovah acting like an almighty demon, in causing the earth to open and swallow Koran, Dathan, and Abiram, and their houses, their wives, and their little children, and in burning up with miraculous fire two hundred and fifty "princes of the assembly, famous in the congregation, men of renown," for merely telling Moses and Aaron that they were too forward; and where we also find Him the next day killing 14,700 persons with a plague, simply because they murmured at the destruction of the day before? Or what of Numbers xxv., where we find Him commanding Moses to cut off the heads of certain persons, and to "hang them up before the Lord against the sun," that His "fierce anger" might "be turned away;" where also He is represented as destroying 24,000 more with a plague, and as specially blessing a sort of Israelitish Bashi-Bazouk who ran a woman "through her belly"? What is the good of talking about the infallibility of such a book? The only thing we have to do is to make a stand for the honour of a righteous God, and to do what we should do if we found these statements in any other book,—repudiate them, with grief and shame that anybody ever believed them. I know full well that within a page or two you will find statements just as beautiful as these are hideous; but that does not touch the question, except to shew the truth of the statement, that the Bible is a composite work, and that it has in it things good and bad, true and false, beautiful and ugly, lovely and hateful.

I have an intense repugnance to quoting these passages at all, and would fain avoid it: but how is it to be avoided? If people will persist in declaring that the Bible, from beginning to end, is God's word; and if, in saying that, they try to make it the master of the conscience and the ruler of the mind, and even try to make religious outlaws of us when we let conscience and reason guide us, we have no choice, we are absolutely obliged to do what is necessary to prove that this book is a human book, bright and helpful, it is true, with human aspiration, trust, and love, but also stained and marred with human passion, sin, and error.

Again; it must be perfectly evident that very many things in the Bible relate only to local circumstances and transient needs—nay, belong only to long-outgrown phases of civilization, humanity, and culture. To these belong a vast proportion of the rules and regulations contained in the books of Exodus, Leviticus, and Numbers;—rules and regulations concerning diet, social life, worship, and trade, some of which were doubtless wise enough in their day, but all of which are now either antiquated, ridiculous, or pernicious. Who, for instance, can attribute to the Almighty the regulation that the hare shall not be eaten, because he "divideth not the hoof" (Lev. xi. G), and that the swine shall not be eaten, only because "he cheweth not the cud" (Lev. xi. 7), or that shell fish shall be con- page 18 sidered "an abomination "(Lev. xi. 10-12)? How ridiculous to call that a final and perfect revelation of the will of God which forbids the eating of oysters I How ridiculous, too, the supposition that the Creator Himself did not know the real habits and nature of the hare, but blundered in describing it as a creature that "cheweth the cud,"—the Creator Himself misled by the motion of the creature's lips and jaws! Or who can believe that God denounced the man who should eat the blood with the flesh of any animal, as one against whom He would set His face, and who should be cut off from among His people (Lev. xvii. 10)? What is the use of telling me that this is a portion of the infallible word of God? I deny it; and I deny it just because I believe in God, and trust Him, and love Him. Or who can believe that the Almighty, after making the most solemn preparations to shew Himself to Moses, did so only to give him minute directions, extending through seven chapters, concerning upholstery and joinery, about boxes, and tables, and rings, and lamps, and loops, and bowls, and curtains, and candlesticks, and rams' skins, and badgers' skins, and pans, and shovels, and basons, and clothes? (Exodus xxv.-xxxi.)

Now, how are we to account for all this? It is perfectly easy to account for it if you take the book as it stands, and for what it it is, as a curious, instructive, but very composite and unequal collection of ancient records, each one reflecting a stage of civilization or a state of mind—each one telling, not of a revelation made by God, but of a discovery or thought on the part of man. If we see and understand that, all will be clear. Then, even the errors, the blemishes, and the atrocities will take their place as objects of interest; for then we shall not only be able to account for them but to find a use for them. No longer driven to explain them away, or to deny them, we shall give them their true place in the great process of human development; so that every word of the Bible will become valuable, as a record of some phase of the progress of the mind of man.

The Bible, thus understood, will become increasingly precious. It will gather pathos the more we find in it a record of the hopes and fears, the sins and sorrows, the wisdom and folly of struggling humanity; it will then live before our eyes with ever new meanings; its very imperfections will be storehouses of wisdom and knowledge; and the living present, gaining light from the past but trusting in God for itself, will find Him a God near at hand and not afar off.

I have spoken freely of the defects and errors of the Bible, but let it be remembered that I have had to do this only because of the untenable claims made on its behalf. I have already said that I see the other side. I go farther. I say that the Bible still stands as the book to which we must go for the noblest utterances of adoration, the most pathetic confessions of sin, the sweetest expressions of trust, the most tender and passionate pleadings of the heart in its yearnings after God, while, in the teachings of Jesus, we have that which the world can never hope or wish to make antiquated or outgrow.