God and His Book/Chapter 20
CHAPTER XX.
Biblical Self-Contradictions—Suggested Reasons for the Self-Contradictions—Biblical Obscenity—Admissions as to Biblical Obscenity—Numerical Efficiency of the Different Religions of the World.
O Lord, there is another trifle or two I should like to bring under thy notice. I do not mind thy Book being contradicted by Science; for what is Science to thee? Science often alters its tune, and I am prepared to back thee against Science any day. Let Science contradict thee as it may: that, to minds that have widely envisaged the problem of Being, is a small matter. But the worst of it is, O Lord, thou contradictest thyself, and this many times and oft. Thou beginnest thy book with self-contradictions, and, that thou mayest be consistent, thou carriest these self-contradictions right through, from Genesis to Revelation. Just by way of specimen, let us begin at the beginning. If thou hast a copy of thine own Book at hand, may I ask thee to compare the second with the first chapter of Genesis:—
| Genesis—Chap. I. | Genesis—Chap. II. |
|---|---|
| Water abundant (verses 2, 5[err 1], 6, 9, and 10). | Water deficient (verses 5 and 6). |
| Vegetation, herbs, grass, trees, produced by an almighty feat (11 and 12). | Vegetation does not grow, because, as yet, it had not rained upon the earth; neither was there any man to till the ground (5). |
| Animals created before man (20, 21, 24, and 25). | Animals created after man (19). |
| Man and woman created same day in the image of God (26 and 27). | Man created first (7). Woman created some time afterwards, from a rib taken out of the man(22). |
| Man to have dominion over all the earth (28). | Man made to keep and dress the garden (15). |
You are, no doubt, in some respects, a very good God. I have a lingering apprehension that your Book makes you much worse than you are, and that, if the said Book were competently corrected, you would appear in your true light, and command the respect of all of us. Your careless and unrevised writing has done you incalculable injury. I have heard—likely so have you—of a Georgia merchant, who, a short time ago, received the following order from a customer:—
"Please send me one dollars worth of coffy, and one dollars worth of shoogar, some small nales. My wife had a baby last nite, also two padlocks and a monkey rench."
Through her husband's careless composition this American woman was represented as bringing forth not only a baby, but two padlocks and a monkey-wrench! I apprehend it was some similarly inadvertent writing on your part, O Lord, that has given the impression that a virgin bore you a son by the Holy Ghost. I am sure you never would have given such an impression in your sane senses and with time to revise. I suspect I, even I, have had experiences somewhat similar to yours. A good many years ago I wrote, "This is Palm Sunday." The compositor set it up, "This is Sam Lundy." I felt irritated, and wrote on the margin of the proof, "Who the deuce is Sam Lundy?" To my horror when, next morning, I saw the impression which had been thrown off, a certain sentence ran, "This is Sam Lundy.—Who the deuce is Sam Lundy?" You, O Lord, in that extraordinary Book of yours, must surely have suffered from this sort of thing.
O Holy Lord! where were you brought up? Your son was born in a stable; and, if you were brought up in one, I must excuse you for the lack of refinement and even decency which characterises much of your Book. To tell you the candid truth, your Book is obscene. I could point you out passage after passage, ad nauseam which would incontrovertibly establish my assertion. But, if I were to do so, my Book would be nearly as nasty as yours; and, although it may not shock the feelings and injure the reputation of a god to write an obscene book, it would shock the feelings and injure the reputation of any ordinary human author, including the one who at present, with so much candour, addresses you.
Dens and Liguori[1] are filthier even than you; but you beat Ovid in nastiness and Boccacio in lasciviousness; only Boccacio is a smarter and more accomplished writer than the Ghost. Many writers have eclipsed the Ghost at pretty and witty voluptuousness; but, for good, clean, unornamental dirt, I will back him against any author, living or dead. Do you ask me, O Lord, to quote from your Book to establish my position? O Lord, I should rather not, unless you really insist upon my doing so.
You will have heard, O Lord, of one of your creatures of the name of R. L. Sheil? Of course you will have heard of him, for he was a person of some distinction, being the Right Honourable Richard Lalor Sheil, M.P. Well, this creature whom you "created," and whom you saw fit to exalt to the position of Member of Parliament, says:—
Many passages in Scripture are written with such force, and, I may say, with such nakedness of diction, as to render them unfit for indiscriminate perusal. There are parts of the Old Testament an which images of voluptuousness are presented to the mind on which the imagination of a youthful female ought not to be permitted to repose. I will venture to assert that the Odes of Anacreon do not display more luxury of imagination or combine more sensual associations than parts of the Old Testament The Bible contains tales of atrocity at which human nature shudders. Parts of the Holy writings consist of history and of the narration of facts of a kind that cannot be mentioned in the presence of a virtuous woman without exciting horror. Should a woman be permitted to read in her chamber what she would tremble to hear at her domestic board? Should she con over and revolve what she would rather die than utter?
And, O Lord, perhaps you would not think it, but another creature of thine, in his estimate of thy blessed Book, has also dared to be honest even to thee. You have heard, perhaps, of Judge Huntley Williams, of the Supreme Court of Victoria.[2] I am almost certain you have heard of him, for he is a judge of considerable power, and "the powers that be are ordained of God." Well, thy creature, Huntley Williams, writes thus:—
I assert, without fear of contradiction, that no English author has ever ventured to put into a book a tenth part of the filth that is to be found passing throughout the Old Testament. In schools where the Bible is read and learnt it is a well-known fact that idle and prurient-minded boys spend a considerable portion of their time in looking up and gloating over all those filthy stories with which the Old Testament teems. There are pages upon pages and chapters upon chapters that no father or mother worthy of the name would ever dream of reading to or wittingly allow a son or daughter to read. Yet, because ever since Christianity has had a Bible, the Old Testament has formed a major portion of it, and children are trained up to consider that as the revelation of the Almighty, which they are not allowed to, and do not, read, except by stealth, and which any adult even would be ashamed to be caught reading by others. Then, again, a further considerable portion of the Old Testament is of the most bloodthirsty, cruel, and brutal description; and so diffused are the characteristics, immorality and indecency, of vengeance, bloodthirstiness, and cruelty, throughout the Old Testament that, if you keep on rejecting the chapter or book in which they appear, the result will be that you will have very little left.
And, O Lord, you will perhaps, by this time, have heard of America. When you "created" the heavens and the earth you seem to have had no idea that you had created America, and neither the devil nor your son appears to have had any notion of the existence of such a continent when they went up together into a high mountain to survey "all the kingdoms of the world in a moment of time." When you "created" you seem to have "created" a good deal more than you had intended to "create." I too, O Lord, am somewhat like thee in this respect at least; I too have sometimes done more than I had intended. For instance, once, at Carlyle's Craigenputtock, I had intended to have merely leapt into the saddle; but, instead, I leapt clean over the horse's back and fell on the other side, and nearly broke my neck.
Well, in this America, which you will find in any good atlas, there lives a worm of the dust of the name of Henry Ward Beecher. He is now pretty old and tough, and it is a good while since you "created" him; so I take this opportunity of drawing your attention to him. He is the Rev. Henry Ward Beecher, and wears your livery. Well, he too has actually had the impudence to pronounce your Book not quite the sort of work to put into the hands of a young lady. Speaking of the Rev. Henry Ward Beecher, Mr. Parke Godwin says: "His rejection of the Bible as an authority in doctrine and morals is as complete as that of Herbert Spencer, or Frederic Harrison, or Tyndall, or Huxley, or Haeckel, or Monsigneur Capel." (These are all horrible persons, O Lord.) "Plymouth Pulpit is a Rationalist platform from which Mr. Moncure Conway" (another horrible person, O Lord) "might, with perfect propriety, be asked to speak." Find out America, and keep an eye on this Rev. Henry Ward Beecher.
I need not ask thee, O Lord, if thou hast heard of the Rev. Canon Richards, of Swansea. He is one of thine own servants, specially ordained by thee to help to cultivate the Welsh corner of thy vineyard. Well, thy servant, Canon Richards, recently exhorted the Swansea School Board thus: "Put only the New Testament in the hands of the children; do not give them the Old, if you have any regard for their morality." Great God, that is Canon Richard's opinion of your Book—what must be his opinion of you, the writer of it? You can settle that matter with him when you and he meet. You will make him change his opinion, or at all events his expression of it, when you get your claws into him. He does not, you will observe, seem to think the New Testament as immoral as the Old. This shows there is some hope for you yet; that, in spite of your being the "unchangeable," you improve as you go along. Peradventure, if you are spared to write yet another New Testament, you may have become as proper as the old maid I knew who blushed to look at even the naked legs of a table, and insisted that they should be draped. Keep an eye, O Lord, on that Canon Richards, of Swansea. Depend upon it, he cannot think over highly of you when he thinks so meanly of your Book. Whatever can it be he objects to? You may, in your divine wisdom, have, now and again, lapsed into the suggestively obscene; but then, in your Word, you make ample atonement for that by the pure and holy incidents connected with Onan, with Judah and the girl by the wayside, with Lot and his daughters, with the Levite and his concubine, and with the lass whose name was Tamar. The facts connected with these and many other sweet and elevated incidents should be carefully taught, illustrated by diagrams, etc., so that little children may be fitted to come unto thee, and so that thy name may be glorified. How didst thou, O Lord, come to make a canon of this man Richards? How didst thou manage to give him the impudence to consider thy Book obscene and calculated to corrupt the morals of the children of Swansea? Thou wilt, O Lord, as I have already hinted, have something to say to him some day. He evidently requires a long dose of brimstone, and to be brought into the refined society of the never-dying worm—a useful worm that, O Lord. Draw its special attention to the Rev. Canon Richards, of Swansea. But obscenity is not a subject upon which I delight to write; so, with these few words, I leave it and pass on.
Now for a more savoury subject. Thy son said, eighteen centuries ago, O Lord: "Go ye unto all the earth and preach the gospel to every creature." I should like to draw your attention to the fact that this order has not been obeyed to any very appreciable extent. Some few missionaries have obeyed the command and made a competence by selling to the "heathen" the pills of thy servant Cockle. Some other missionaries, however, have been less fortunate, and, by the "heathen," have been eaten raw and without salt. And, upon the whole, the thing has failed. I sometimes think thou hast given man up altogether as not worth any more "redeeming," as not even worth the trouble of erasing from the universe. If this be so, any figures in regard to Man would bore and irritate you. You used to do a good deal of figuring over him at one time; even the hairs of his head were all numbered. Even if you have given up counting his hairs, the following few figures in regard to him may possibly be of interest to you. The figures are by one of your own hired servants, by Bishop Fisher, and may save you some trouble in making the calculation for yourself, for mankind are not easily counted—there are always so many of them from home, and so many of them in bed, and so many of them you are apt to mistake for apes and so many for pigs.
Bishop Fisher, in a recent paper, computes the human family of the world to be 1,450,000,000 of individuals,, and divides them as follows:— 860,000,000 are Pagan, comprising 600,000,000 of Brahmo-Buddhists, or Brahmans and Buddhists, 160,000,000 of unclassified Pagans, 100,000,000 Parsees, Confucianists, Shintoists, Jains, and other smaller Pagan sects; 410,000,000 are Christians, composed of 225,000,000 Roman Catholics, 75,000,000 of the Greek Church, and 110,000,000 Protestants; 180,000,000 Mohammedans; 8,000,000 Jews. The 860,000,000 of Pagans are found chiefly in Asia and Africa, and comprise 99-100ths of the population, with scattered millions in the Americas and islands of the sea. The 410,000,000 Christians constitute the body of Europe and nine-tenths of the Americas, with a few millions in Asia, Africa, and the islands. The Mohammedans are found chiefly in Asia and Africa. The Jews are scattered in all lands, without a home or country. The Greek Christians are mainly in European Russia, with a few millions in Asia and in the smaller principalities of South-Eastern Europe, extending into Africa. Western and Southern Europe is divided between Roman Catholicism and Protestantism in proportion to three parts Romanists to two parts Protestants. The Romanists hold substantially Austria, Italy, Spain, and Portugal, with a large fraction of France, a considerable part of Germany, the larger part of Ireland, and a strong following in England. The Catholics have almost entire South and Central America, with the whole of Mexico, and a powerful constituency in the United States and Canada in North America. In America as a whole—North, Central, and South—there are over 60,000,000 Roman Catholics to about 48,000,000 Protestants. Protestantism has its principal home in Great Britain, Germany, Switzerland, the Scandinavian kingdoms of Denmark, Sweden, and Norway, and in the United States of America and the British provinces, and some of the smaller and larger islands. This is approximately a correct cast of the religious status of the world to-day. En bloc it shows two-thirds of the whole to be Pagan, or, including the Mohammedans and Jews as anti-Christian components of the Pagan fraction, three-quarters of the whole—not less than 1,050,000,000. The remaining fraction of 410,000,000—a little more than a quarter—Christians, of which fraction more than one-half is Roman Catholic, one quarter (nearly) Greek, and a trifle over a quarter Protestant. Of the race he estimates that 500,000,000 live in houses partly furnished with the appointments of civilisation; 700,000,000 in huts or caves with no furnishings; 250,000,000 have nothing that can be called a home, are barbarous and savage. The range is from the topmost round—the Anglo-Saxon civilisation, which is the highest known—down to naked savagery. The portion of the race lying below the proper line of human conditions is at the very least three-fifths of the whole, or 900,000,000.
Observe that I, O Lord, am counted in among the Christians; so are all the readers of this journal, and of all such journals over the world; and thou knowest, O Lord, the kind of Christian I am. In this England alone, O Lord, there are hundreds of thousands who think with me when they think at all; but I make thee welcome to set them down as Christians if the lie thereby involved may tend to thy glory. At the rate at which thy blessed gospel is being spread, when thinkest thou it will "cover the whole earth as the waters cover the channel of the sea"? How long, O Lord, how long?
- ↑ [Erratum: omit verse 5.]