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The Pamphlet Collection of Sir Robert Stout: Volume 1

A Gross Error

A Gross Error.

Christians not only consider all those who disbelieve the Bible to be the Word of God, bad and wicked, but are under the impression that it is in consequence of those persons being wicked that they doubt. A greater mistake was never made.

Suppose I do not believe the worthless matter stated in the the fourteenth chapter of Judges, headed "Samson's riddle," is it because I am wicked? No. It is because I cannot believe that an allwise and good God had any more to do with "Samson's riddle" than he has with the riddles of school-boys.

Again we are told,—"Then went Samson to Gaza, and saw there an harlot; and went in unto her, and Samson lay till midnight, and arose at midnight, and took the doors of the gate of the city, and the two posts, and went away with them, bar and all"

Now what have I to do with Samson, the harlot, or the gateposts either? Oh, by the way, I forgot the "bar."

The clergy have led their dupes to believe that all morality is drawn from the Bible:—Hence their poor victims conclude that every man and woman who does not believe in the Bible must be immoral. Nothing could be further from the truth.

I am well aware that a few moral precepts are recorded in the New Testament, said to have been uttered by Jesus. But they had been taught long before his time.

Were there more of the moral precepts to be found in the Gospels, which had been taught by the Pagans long before the Christian era, and less of the absurd sayings of Jesus, the New Testament would be a more valuable book.

Jesus says, "Take therefore no thought for the morrow." "Take no thought for your life, what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink; nor yet for your body what ye shall put on."

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Now what could be more absurd? or what could have a more demoralising tendency than the above precept?

Again Jesus says, "Resist not evil." "But whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also."

Commentators try to persuade us that all that is to be understood by "resist not evil," revenge not evil by a malicious retaliation.

If there was nothing wrong, there would be nothing for commentators to amend.

If Jesus said one thing and meant something else, as these commentators make out that he did, then I trust if Jesus comes again to preach, that he will say what he does mean, so that Christians may not have to bum and dungeon each other in order to get at the meaning of what he might happen to say.