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Title: Religion without superstition / by Hartley Williams.

Author: Williams, Hartley Sir, 1843-1929.

Published: George Robertson & Company, Melbourne, 1885

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Religion Without
Superstition
BY
HARTLEY WILLIAMS
" He who begins by loving Christianity better than Truth, will proceed by loving
his own sect or church better than Christianity, and end in loving himself better
than all."— Coleridge.
" If inquiry shakes for a time the belief that is rested only upon prejudice, it
finally settles it on the broader and more solid basis of conviction."— White's
Bampton Lectures.
GEORGE ROBERTSON & COMPANY, LIMITED
MELBOURNE, SYDNEY, AND ADELAIDE
1885

INTRODUCTION.

THE scheme of this work is, first to discuss one by one the cardinal and fundamental doctrines of Popular Christianity —such as those of "the Trinity," " the Deity of Jesus," " the Actual and Very Sonship of Jesus to God," " the Incarnation," " the Inspiration of the Bible," " the Atonement," and " the Advent;" to endeavour to satisfy the reader that these doctrines are mere crude superstitions, and that their effect is to disfigure and obscure pure and true religion. This portion of the scheme is contained in the four earlier parts. Secondly, to demonstrate that when these misconceptions have been cleared away, the residue left is pure Theism, and that the Theistic is the purest as well as the only rational and scientific form of belief. If the reader should, while perusing any of the first four parts, form the opinion that I have written with the object of throwing discredit upon Religion, a glance over the first few pages of the last part, will, I feel sure, satisfy him that such an opinion is both hasty and erroneous.

CONTENTS

PREFACE.

I THINK there can be but little doubt that there exist in the present day a considerable number of persons who have either thrown off religion altogether on account of the incredibilities attaching to popular theology, or who know not what to believe by reason of the pressing and everincreasing doubts with which their intelligences are assailed. If it be possible to reclaim the former from atheism or agnosticism, or to make the path to God plainer for the latter, no effort ought to be spared, no labour can be too great. Impressed by this feeling, I have ventured on the task of endeavouring, by disentangling religion from its superstitions, to prove to the one class that they can hold and maintain a pure, simple, rational, religious faith independently of those incredibilities which are mainly and primarily responsible for the existence of the atheist, and of endeavouring to solve and remove for the latter the doubts which perplex their minds, and which oppress them in their efforts to seek, through the gloom and the mists which surround them, the pure and unfading light of truth. This most serious and difficult task I shall, under the blessing of God, hope to perform, not by means of abstruse and subtle arguments such as metaphysicians love to use, but by the instrumentality of facts, and of plain inferences fairly and legitimately drawn from facts, set forth in language which I hope may be popular, clear, and simple. I have no hesitation in expressing the opinion that the chief impediments and obstacles to what may justly be regarded as a pure, warm, and simple faith in that " Power" or " Supreme Will" which, for want of a better definition, we call " God," are the multifarious doctrines, the diverse dogmas of diverse churches, the many and various creeds of those numerous religious sects who—each claiming Biblical authority for its own doctrines,* but dogmatizing, as superstitious or unscriptural, those peculiar to its neighbour—all range themselves under the banner of Christianity; and the incredibilities attaching not to the Christian faith, but to the Christian faith as we are expected to accept it, originating in the tendency and desire of the early Christians (in common with Buddhists and other religious sects of the world) to magnify the founder of a good, pure, and ennobling faith, after his death, into a God; for that purpose necessitating the creation of a supernatural origin—of miraculous works—producing reports and narratives coloured by the imagination and exaggerated by the religious enthusiasm of the narrator. Is it a matter for surprise that as the Christian following increased and years rolled on, and churches became established, the superstitions, so created, gathered force, became more wide-spread, added to, fostered, and supported by the manufacture and enunciation of doctrines and dogmas unknown to the faith of the founder of Christianity, untraceable in the religion of Jesus? It is these creations—these doctrines, and these dogmas which for century after century have been building up barrier upon barrier against our knowledge and understanding of " The Supreme," which have for so long oppressed and obscured our belief in God— that I shall endeavour to show are discredited, unworthy of belief, unsupported by legitimate evidence, opposed to reason. If this prove to be the case it is our plain and Baptists reject it as unscriptural, but insist upon adult baptism and total immersion as the only scriptural doctrine. The Society of Friends or Quakers rejects both as unscriptural, with some force, on the ground that John the Baptist declared " I indeed baptize you with water, but he that cometh after me shall baptize you with the Holy Ghost and with fire." obvious duty to reject them all; by rejecting them we shall not only lose nothing but we shall secure a bright, pure, rational faith—a faith rendered ten thousand times stronger by reason of its purification from superstition and corruption—a faith which is the faith of all others, to be clung to, cherished and maintained as long as man exists—belief, trust in, and love for the All-loving, All-righteous, All-wise, Universal Spirit called God.

I therefore ask those who honestly desire to ascertain truth, to lay aside, for the time being at any rate, that which they have been taught by others to believe—to struggle to teach themselves, to think for themselves, to apply the pure light of reason to the investigation of a subject, which, on account of the momentous interests involved in it, is entitled to at least the same amount of consideration and thought as that which we devote to the business of everyday life: unless, indeed, the consideration and examination of the matters which I propose to discuss are approached under these conditions, examination and consideration are useless. To those who have a firm religious faith, even though it be clouded by superstition and oppressed by dogma—to those who are content without question to imbibe as truth what they are taught by others, to bind themselves as to their form of belief by creeds in the formation of which recent centuries have had neither voice nor part—to those who fear that by using that most precious gift of God, their reason, for the purpose of endeavouring to find truth, they may discover that many of the fundamental doctrines of the faith which they profess form no part of a revelation from God, but are merely the creation and imposition of man, this work is not addressed. To the doubter who is trying to grope his way to the light, but cannot; to the Atheist, who believes in nothing, neither in a Supreme Power, nor in a future life, I tender the perusal and consideration of this volume. The result, I trust, may be a perception, followed in due course by that reflection which may lead to conviction, that the incredibilities and superstitions of the popular theology, its dogmas and its doctrines, are clearly separable from, and totally unnecessary to, a rational belief in that One Almighty Power whose grand attributes of universal, inexhaustible, infinite love, power, justice, mercy, and wisdom have been clouded and obscured to man's mental vision by "Incarnations," "Atonements," "Trinities," "Intercessions and Mediations," "Justifications by faith," " Sacraments." I believe that when the Christian faith has been passed through the retort of reason, the residuum will be found to be that clear, pure, simple faith, which, offering no insult to, is in accord with our intelligence— opposed to no scientific truth or universal law, and which but for that tendency to magnify with its attendant results, to which I have already alluded, might now be, and would probably have been, the almost universal belief of the civilized world. I believe a reaction is at length setting in against dogmatic Theology. Truth, as it always must, is gradually beginning to prevail over superstition. What is opposed to reason, the man who fearlessly uses God's best gift refuses to credit; what is in accordance with reason, and not opposed to universal law, he ungrudgingly accepts. The sincere and pure Theist is none the less Christian, because, while trying to lead the same pure, unselfish, blameless, and noble life that Jesus led, he declines to accept the doctrine of his deity. The Christian Theist, who regards Jesus as man, considers, and rightly from his point of view, that it is within his power to attain to the life of, and to follow the example of, Christ. The Trinitarian, who holds Jesus to be God, can have no such reasonable expectation, no such rational hope. The former can rationally regard the life of Jesus with warm admiration, with earnest respect, with sincere gratitude. The latter detracts largely, if not wholly, from the merits of that life by holding Jesus to be God.

I have no doubt that, in the course of dealing with the various doctrines forming the subject of this work I may at times unconsciously reproduce in my own words, without the usual and customary signs of acknowledgment, the ideas of others, whose writings I may have read or whose words I may have heard. In that not improbable event I feel sure the concession will be made to me of not having so erred wittingly, and indulgence extended to me, on account of the pressure upon my time by other duties, for doubtless many imperfections in the treatment of those matters which I now proceed to discuss.

HARTLEY WILLIAMS.

MELBOURNE, February, I885.

* One sect, in support of a particular dogma, insists upon an absolutely literal interpretation of Scripture, and vetoes the application of reason; in support of another, takes the most extensive liberties with the language of the Bible even when the language is unambiguous; in support of a third, for which no Biblical authority can be found, or which may even be said to be opposed to the authority of Scripture, calls in the aid of that reason, the use of which, in regard to other dogmas, it absolutely interdicts. Not to multiply instances: the Roman Catholic Church insists upon the sacrament of extreme unction and its efficacy, upon the authority of a verse to be found in the epistle of St. James which says, " Is any man sick among you, let him bring in the priests of the Church and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord " (James v. I4); creates the doctrine of purgatory because reason, it is said, revolts at the idea of an erring child being consigned to eternal flames with a hardened criminal, because to have hell only for the wicked and heaven for the good would be inconsistent with the justice of God; and insists upon the doctrine of transubstantiation because the literal reading of the I4th chapter of Mark demands it. The Church of England and other Protestant sects—not agreeing with transubstantiation, which they argue is cannibalistic—reject the literal reading of Mark xiv., and read the words as if " the sign of" or " symbol of" were in the text, which they are not. So with baptism. Having only two sacraments, of which baptism is one, the Church of England insists upon the necessity and regenerating efficacy of infant baptism. The

RELIGION WITHOUT SUPERSTITION.
Part I
THE DOCTRINE OF THE TRINITY—THE DEITY
OF JESUS CHRIST.

" By Education most have been misled,
So they believe because they so were bred.
The Priest continues what the nurse began,
And thus the child imposes on the man."—Dryden.

" Doctrinal questions seem unsusceptible of general agreement, not from the abundance, but, from the want of premises. The arguments by which different sects defend their tenets, consist mainly of texts of Scripture which must be susceptible of various interpretations, since they actually receive various interpretations. The Trinitarians think that the eternal co-existence of God the Father and God the Son is the Scriptural doctrine. The Arians think the Begetter must have existed before the Begotten. The Latin Church believes that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son. The Greek Church believes that the Holy Spirit proceeds only from the Father. Each of these opinions has been supported by hundreds of learned, conscientious, and diligent inquirers; each has been adopted by millions of enthusiastic votaries; each has been propagated by violence and resisted by endurance; each has had its doctors, its persecutors, and its martyrs."—Edinburgh Review.

THE Doctrine of the Trinity is the fundamental doctrine of all the numerous sects professing the Christian faith, with the exception, I believe, of only two—the Christian Unitarians and the Moravians. The former repudiate the doctrine—hence their designation. The latter neither affirm it or deny it. It has therefore been well called the trade mark of the Christian churches, and it is the doctrine of all others to which they most tenaciously cling. Their prayer books—their hymn books —their liturgies—their creeds—their articles—their confessions of faith are stocked with it. It is to be found passim in all the implements of their faith, except in the Bible. The sayings of Jesus ex relatione (after his death) the disciples, as set forth in the four primary books of the New Testament—the four Gospels—are not only silent as to this doctrine, but are absolutely inconsistent with it, and expressly disaffirm it. This may appear to be, and no doubt is, a startling proposition to those who have never honestly inquired into this matter for themselves. I venture to think, however, that I shall be able satisfactorily to prove that—even assuming, for the sake of the argument, that the Bible is the inspired revelation of God (which, it will be allowed, is making a very liberal concession to the exponents of the doctrine)—not only is there no authority in the Bible for the doctrine, except an interpolated verse or two which have been proved to be forgeries, perpetrated for the express purpose of creating authority, but that the authority of the Bible, and the reported sayings of Jesus, are both inconsistent with it, and directly opposed to it. Further, that the doctrine is polytheistic—idolatrous—unintelligible—impossible. The most succinct and accurate statement of it, as held by the Church of Rome, the Church of England, and other Protestant denominations, is that " the Godhead consists of three distinct and separate persons, each one of whom is God—God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost—that all three are co-eternal and co-equal— and that all three are One God." If authority be asked for this, I need only refer to Article I. of the Articles of the Church of England, the Liturgies of the Churches of England and Rome, and the Creed of St. Athanasius.*

My first proposition then is this

" Assuming the Bible to be the inspired revelation of God, the doctrine of the Trinity is not supported by it, and, further, the authority of both the old and new covenants is inconsistent with it and opposed to it."

To establish this I intend to prove—

(I) That according to the Bible there is only one God, and that beside Him there is no other God; in other words, that the religion of the Bible is monotheistic, and in this respect resembling that of the Jews and Unitarians.

(2) That there is no mention of God the Son† in the Bible, nor does Jesus state that he is either God the Son or the God; but on the other hand expressly disclaims the title.

(3) That there is no mention of God the Holy Ghost in the Bible; or, so as not to lay myself open to the charge of playing with words, of God the Spirit or God the Holy Spirit, nor is the Ghost—or the Spirit, ever called God in the Bible.

(4) That Jesus himself distinctly denies the doctrine of co-equality with God or the Father.

(5) That the doctrine of co-eternity with God or the Father cannot be reconciled with the statements of Scripture.

The satisfactory affirmation of I, of 2, or of 3, it will be readily seen, must be fatal to the doctrine of the Trinity— so indeed of 4 or 5 to the doctrine as taught and set forth in the services of, and as promulgated and maintained by, the churches.

" According to the Bible there is only one God, and beside Him there is no other God."

Before commencing to cite passages from Scripture, I desire to present to the reader's mind two not unimportant probabilities, as they appear to me to be, supporting this branch of the proposition. The first is this—If the Bible be, as for the purpose of discussing this doctrine I am assuming it to be, the inspired revelation of God—and if God was not the only God; if there existed such a system in heaven as either a Duality or Trinity of the Godhead; if there were three distinct persons in heaven, God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost, and yet all one God—is it not highly incredible that the God who walked and talked with Adam and Abraham and others of the patriarchs; who spoke to Moses out of a burning bush and afterwards face to face; who was unceasingly in communication with judges and prophets throughout the whole of the Old Testament, oftentimes upon trivial subjects, at other times upon matters of more or less importance, should not only have made no mention or suggestion whatever of God the Son, or of the fact of the existence of a Son—or of God the Holy Ghost—or of the Holy Ghost, or of the Spirit as being anything distinct or separate from God Himself, but should also have, time after time, distinctly and unequivocally declared that He and He alone was God, and that beside Him was no other God? Secondly, if any such system did exist in heaven, would it not be reasonable to suppose that Jesus would have made some mention of so notable a system to those disciples with whom he was continually discussing God—his nature—the arrangements of Heaven— his and their relation to God—the form of prayer to be used when addressing God? But he does nothing of the kind. Would it be unreasonable to expect that, assuming the existence of a triumvirate in Heaven, Jesus in the new revelation, as it is called, should have stated the fact of its existence and the nature of its functions in dear and unmistakable terms? But he not only neither hints nor states it, but his sayings and teachings are directly opposed to the existence of either Trinity or Duality. To put it shortly, we have God throughout the Old Testament constantly revealing Himself and His attributes to man, demanding of man a clear, unequivocal, and emphatic recognition of Him as the only true God, breathing no suggestion of this fundamental doctrine of the churches. Then we have Jesus in the New Testament taking God's place and continuing the process of revelation which God had been so long engaged in, and we find Jesus teaching his own chosen band of disciples pure monotheism, repudiating the doctrines of co-equality and co-eternity on the part of himself or of any one else with the Father, and maintaining and upholding the perfect and absolute Unity of God.

I now proceed to refer to a few of the vast number of texts that may be found in both the Old and New Testaments or covenants, establishing the affirmative of this branch of the proposition, concluding the references by citing and dealing with the texts that Trinitarians place reliance upon as establishing the doctrine of the Trinity. Those passages claimed as supporting a duality, or the Deity of Jesus, I shall refer to and deal with when discussing the next branch of the proposition.

DEUT. iv. 39.—The Lord he is God in heaven above, and upon the earth beneath, There is none else.*

DEUT. vi. 4.—Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God is one Lord. (Or, literally, Jehovah our Lord is one Jehovah.)

2 SAM. vii. 22.—For there is none like thee, neither is there any God beside thee.

I KINGS viii. 60.—That the people may know that the Lord is God, and that there is none else.

I CHRON'. xvii. 20.—O Lord, there is none like thee, neither is there any God beside thee.

2 KINGS xix. 19.—O Lord our God, save us out of his hand, that all the earth may know that thou art the Lord God, even thou only.

ISA. xliii. 10, 11.—Before me there was no God formed; neither shall there be after me. /, even I, am the Lord., and beside me there is no Saviour.

ISA. xliv. 8.—Is there a God beside me? Yea, there is no God; I know not any.

HOSEA. xiii. 4.—I am the Lord thy God, and thou shalt know no God but me. For there is no Saviour beside me.

MATT. xix. 17.—Why callest thou me good? There is none good but one, that is God.

MARK xii. 32.—There is one God, and there is none other but He.

JOHN xvii. 3.—This is life eternal, that they might know thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent.

I COR. viii. 4.—There is none other God but one.

JAMES ii. 19.—Thou believest that there is one God — thou doest well.

There is no text in the Old Testament to which Trinitarians can refer, as either expressly or by implication, establishing the doctrine of the Trinity, and I believe there are only two in the four Gospels and in those Epistles which are alleged to have been written by the disciples, to which they do or can refer. One of these—if it were not a forgery, as has been clearly proved—is certainly—assuming that the Bible is the inspired revelation of God—an express authority; the other—it is argued—is so by necessary implication. I now proceed to deal with both. The first is the verse which is known as "the three heavenly witnesses —" There are three that bear record in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost: and these three are one," I John v. 7. Most unfortunately for the exponents of the doctrine, this verse, which is the only express authority in the whole Bible for the Trinity, is an interpolation in, and falsification of, the epistle of so gross a character, that even the orthodox committee who performed the labour of revising the New Testament have, in the revised edition, without word or comment, omitted this admittedly spurious verse. It has been ascertained that, "out of 113 extant Greek manuscripts containing the First Epistle of John, II2 do not contain the text. It only exists in one, and that one is of date the twelfth century." In other words, this remarkable text makes its first appearance I,200 years after Jesus Christ, and is little more than 600 years old.* Why, it may be asked, was this forgery committed, except for the express purpose of creating, if possible, a distinct Biblical authority (none existing) for the doctrine of the Trinity? The second and only other text is the verse—" Go ye, therefore, and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them into [see revised version] the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost"—Matt, xxviii. 19. This verse, it is contended, by necessary implication establishes the same doctrine. Does it? In the first place, the verse, it will be observed, is absolutely silent as to the deity of either the Son or the Spirit—-also, as to the attributes of either the Son or the Spirit, as to who or what they are; in short, gives us no information whatever about them. Taken per se, it does not, and cannot, establish the Trinity of the Godhead (and it is only that doctrine that I am at present concerned with), and there is no other passage supporting the Trinity which the verse I am criticising can be taken in connection with, except that which has been rejected as a forgery.

But, independently of this view, this is one of those verses which may be and is capable of various interpretations. The Trinitarians, in reading it, start by assuming that which they have no right to assume, viz., that the Son is God and the Spirit is God, and, after making this tolerably large assumption, proceed to spell the verse out as evidence of the Trinity. If Jesus Christ ever made use of these words* (and in accordance with what I have already stated I am bound to assume that he did), a natural and reasonable construction of the verse, without doing that violence to it with which the Trinitarians I think may be fairly charged, is, that the disciples were told by Jesus Christ to goforth and baptize (in what way, or by what mode, is not stated, or whether infants are to be made disciples by the process) all persons into the name of God, as their Father and God, into his (Jesus Christ's) own name as followers and disciples of his (the words, it will be observed, are " make disciples of all nations"), and into the name of the Spirit of God, as being part and parcel of the God. Indeed, many learned and celebrated Trinitarian writers attribute some such meaning as this to the verse. Parkhurst says—"To be baptized into the name is to be baptized into the faith or confession, or in token of one's faith;" and Blomfield says—"To be baptized into the name of any one is to be bound to observe the religious observances instituted by him."

Having now dealt with the only genuine verse which can, even by a strained construction, be said to allude to the doctrine of the Trinity, I will now conclude this branch of my proposition with an extract relative to this verse from a small work called " Texts and Margins" : —"The evangelist's words are usually regarded as an allusion to the doctrine of the Trinity. It will be reasonable so to understand them, if that doctrine were anywhere else to be found distinctly taught as a doctrine of the new religion. But there is no instance in which it is so, and it is incredible that the Teacher, at the very moment of his departure from the earth, in the last words which he addressed to his disciples, should now suddenly speak to them in these terms of a mysterious doctrine so inconsistent with their own ancient monotheistic faith, and for which he had not in any way prepared their minds. It is remarkable that all the four Gospels are equally destitute of traces of this great ecclesiastical doctrine, which, indeed, is known historically to have been the growth of a long subsequent age. Of this statement the reader who will only take the trouble to examine the Gospels for himself will find abundant evidence—abundant evidence, that is to say, in the plain fact that the doctrine of the Trinity is nowhere in the Gospels to be seen, either expressly stated or even obscurely alluded to. This is equally true of the rest of the New Testament."

" There is no mention of God the Son in the Bible—
nor does Jesus state that he is either God the Son
or the God, but disclaims the title."

In dealing with this branch of my proposition, i must, from the very terms of it, necessarily deal also with the question of the Deity of Jesus, but again, before citing and distinguishing texts bearing upon the subject, I desire very briefly to draw the reader's attention to the two probabilities arising from the internal evidence of the Bible against the existence of a Trinity, for the purpose of applying them, also, to the initial consideration of this further proposition. If God the Son was begotten of the Father from everlasting—not made—reigned in heaven as God from everlasting, sitting on the right hand of the Father, having a distinct personality from the Father—why should there be absolute silence upon his existence throughout the whole of the inspired revelation of God contained in the Old Testament? How comes it that we find declaration after declaration in the inspired volume absolutely inconsistent with and opposed to any such notion as a duality of the Godhead? And why, if God omitted during so many hundreds of years to mention so important a circumstance, did not Jesus Christ, assuming him to be the inspired messenger of God—a fortiori if he were the Son of God in the sense contended for by the so-called orthodox—tell his chosen few in clear and unmistakable terms that he was also the God—that he reigned in heaven with God as God—that he was God the Son— co-eternal and co-equal with God the Father—that there were (if not three) two who reigned in heaven as Gods, the Father and He, the Son, distinct persons, but one God? If such were the fact, having regard to all that he is alleged to have told or did tell the disciples about the Father, the nature of God, and of the kingdom of Heaven, the omission seems well-nigh incredible. Independently of this, however, I think I shall be able satisfactorily to show that Jesus personally disclaimed the title—that he taught pure Unitarianism, and that he repudiated in express terms the attribute of co-equality with the Father. I proceed, as before, to cite passages in support, concluding also, as before, with examining and dealing with those texts contained in the Gospels and those Epistles written by the disciples which are chiefly relied upon as establishing the doctrine of the duality of the Godhead and of the Deity of Jesus.

I commence by asserting that which is at last now generally admitted, that nowhere in the Bible is the term o 6u)s (the God) ever applied to Jesus, either by himself or by any of his reporters. That term is throughout the Bible applied exclusively to the Father. This it will be conceded, is to start with a highly significant fact.

The Lord's Prayer, as it is called—Matthew vi. 9 and following verses—" Our Father which art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come." Jesus is, in the chapter cited, specially instructing his disciples how to pray, and what form of prayer to use, and whom to pray to. Verse 6, "When thou hast shut thy door pray to thy Father which is in secret." This is claimed to be Jesus' own special prayer, framed by him for the use of his followers. In it there is not only no mention of God the Son, but it is prefaced by an explicit injunction to the disciples to pray to the Father. Hallowed be The Father's name—The Father's kingdom come—The Father's will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Jesus' prayer is one of the very few prayers in the services of the various Christian churches which contain no mention whatever of any one else except the Father. Why, then, it may be asked, do the so-called Christian churches not adhere to the mode and form of prayer prescribed by their founder? Do they pretend to derive from the sayings and teachings of Jesus any authority for the following:—" Oh God the Son, Redeemer * of the world, have mercy upon us, miserable sinners "—" Oh God the Holy Ghost," &c.—" Oh holy, blessed and glorious Trinity, three persons," &c.—and for the string of prayers that the morning and evening services of the Church of England, and of other so-called Christian churches, contain addressed to Jesus—" Oh Christ, hear us!"—" Christ have mercy upon us!"—"From our enemies defend us, oh ChristGraciously hear us, oh Christ! Graciously hear us, oh Lord Christ!" and for the continual use of the expression, "Through our blessed Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ"?

To continue the citation of texts:—

MATT. xix. 17.Why callest thou me good? There is none good but one—that is the God (o 0toc).

MARK xiii. 32.—Of that day or hour knoweth no one—not even the angels in heaven, neither the Son, but the Father.

JOHN xx. 17.—I ascend unto my Father, and your Father; and my God, and your God.

JOHN v. 19.—The Son can do nothing of himself (if this verse be read with that of Mark xiii. 32 and John xiv. 28 it will be seen that Jesus clearly repudiates the notion of co-equality with the Father).

JOHN xvii. 3.—This is life eternal, that they should know Thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom Thou hast sent (drawing, it will be seen, a marked distinction between the Father as the only true God, and Jesus as His messenger).

JOHN xiv. 28.—My Father is greater than I.

LUKE x. 22.—All things are delivered to me of my Father.

LUKE xxiii. 46.—Father, into Thy hands I commend my spirit.

MARK xv. 34.—My God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken (or forgotten) me?

JOHN v. 30.—I can of my own self do nothing; I seek not my own will but the will of the Father which hath sent me.

i COR. iii. 23.—Ye are Christ's, and Christ is God's.

i COR. viii. 6.—To us there is but one God, the Father, of whom are all things.

I COR. xi. 3.—The head of every inan is Christ, and the head of Christ is God.*

I TIM. ii. 5.—There is one God, and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus.

MARK xii. 32, 33, 34.—Well, Master, thou hast said the truth, for there is one God, and there is none other but He.

Though there are in the New Testament many other texts of similar import I think I may safely proceed now to deal with the principal texts which are relied upon by the orthodox as proving that Jesus is also the God, though they are forced to admit that not once in the whole of the New Testament is the expression (the God) ever applied to Jesus, or to anyone but the Father; nor is Jesus, throughout, ever designated as God the Son.

As supporting the doctrine of the Deity of Jesus

JOHN x. 30.—I and my Father are one.

JOHN xvii. II.—Holy Father, keep through Thine own name those whom Thou hast given me, that they may be one, as we are.

Dealing with these two texts first, I think it will be seen at a glance that they afford a good illustration of the manner in which the plain and ordinary meaning of texts of Scripture is perverted, and grossly perverted, to suit a particular doctrine. Indeed the second of the two texts (John xvii. n) gives a perfectly clear explanation of the meaning of the first. The Trinitarians say these texts denote unity of essence. If so, then all fol lowers of Jesus are also one in essence with God the Father, " that they may be one, as we are " (one). An ordinary rule of construction requires that the same construction shall be placed on similar expressions used in the same document unless an intention to the contrary, to be gathered from the document itself, clearly appears; and common sense suggests that the expressions used in these texts clearly denote, and only denote, unity of communion —in love, in purity, in charity—unity in purpose. So in John xvii. 21—"That they all may be one as Thou, Father, art in me and I in Thee, that they also may be one in us also in Galatians iii. 28—" For ye are all one in Christ Jesus." Further, without comparing the expression "I and my Father are one," in John x. 30, with either John xvii. 11 or the other verses I have referred to, if verses 3036 of John x. be read collectively it will be evident to the reader that Jesus emphatically denies the charge of the Jews that " Thou being a man makest thyself God." He, in effect, says, " If I did say I was God it would be in no other sense than that in which the word is used in the Old Testament ' I said ye are Gods; * if it was right to call those to whom the word of God came Gods—and it must be right, for the Scriptures cannot err—then what offence do I commit in saying not that I am God but that I am the Son of God?"

JOHN xiv. 6.—Jesus saith unto him, I am the way, the truth, and the life. No man cometh unto the Father but by me.

How this can be an authority for the Deity of Jesus (which is all that I am at present concerned with) is difficult of apprehension—even on the assumption that the words are to be taken in their literal sense, but the meaning of the latter part of the verse is clearly shadowed forth by the earlier. No man can come into communion with the Father unless he seeks for that communion in the way I have pointed out—that way is the true way—and by that way alone can spiritual life be attained.

I TIM. iii. 16.—And without controversy, great is the mystery of godliness. God was manifest in the flesh, &c.

Now, though this epistle was not written by one of the disciples, but by the mystic Paul, those who support the doctrine of the Deity of Jesus cling to it with the greatest tenacity, and cite it at every opportunity as if it was one of the sayings and teachings of Jesus himself. But Paul, who distinctly and unequivocally declares "To us there is but one God, the Father," never wrote the verse as it is cited. The word " God" has been evidently interpolated to support the doctrine of the Deity of Jesus, just in the same way as "the three heavenly witnesses" were interpolated to support the doctrine of the Trinity. It has been actually omitted in the recently revised version of the New Testament with this marginal note—"The word God (in the verse) rests on no sufficient ancient evidence and Bishop Marsh, a Trinitarian, makes this remarkable comment upon the verse, " This reading (God manifested) is found at first hand in not a single ancient version, except the Arabic—which is of very doubtful authority."

So, again, with the verse in i John iii. 16, " Hereby perceive we the love of God, because He laid down his life for us," also cited and strongly relied upon as proving the Deity of Jesus. The important words "of God " are likewise a dishonest rendering of the Greek for the same purpose. The faithful translation of the Greek runs— "Hereby perceive we love, because He (Christ) laid down his life for us." The revised version has also been forced to omit these words, but on this occasion, as with " the three heavenly witnesses," in silence and with no marginal note.

The 19th verse of Matthew xxviii., " Go ye, therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost."* This I have already dealt with at p. 8, to which the reader is referred. So with the three heavenly witnesses, p. 7. Then it is said that the titles, Redeemer and Saviour, alleged to be applied to Jesus in the New Testament show that he was God. Bearing in mind that it is the Deity only of Jesus that is at present being discussed, it is difficult to follow the contention. But I may state, once for all, that the title Redeemer is never applied to Jesus throughout the whole of the New Testament, but is in the Old applied to the one true and only God of the Old Testament, and to the Father in the New. And as to the title Saviour, it is frequently and continually applied to the God of the Old Testament in the Old Testament, and to the Father in the New. Even in that much perverted verse, i Tim. iv. 10, " We trust in the living God, who is the Saviour of all men, especially of those that believe," the expression is clearly used in reference to the God the Father, though it is usually misquoted as referring to Jesus. To support the statement I have made, I cite, as to Saviour, the following—

2 SAM. xxii. 2, 3.—The Lord is my rock, and my fortress, and my deliverer, the God of my rock. He is my shield, and the horn of my salvation, my refuge, my Saviour.

ISA. xliii. 3.—I am the Lord thy God, the Holy One of Israel, thy Saviour.

ISA. xliii. II.—I, even I, am the Lord; and beside me there is no Saviour.

ISA. xlv. 15.—Oh God of Israel, the Saviour.

ISA. lx. 16.—I the Lord am thy Saviour.

ST. JUDE closes his epistle—Now unto him that is able to keep you from falling, to the only wise God our Saviour be glory.

I TIM. i. I.—Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ by the commandment of God our Saviour, and of the Lord Jesus Christ, which is our Hope.

(St. Paul here draws a marked distinction between the God as our Saviour, and Jesus as our hope; and in the next verse between the Father as the God, and Jesus as our Lord or Master.)

As to " Redeemer," there is no warrant whatever to be found in Scripture for applying to Jesus this title, which, in practice, is invariably applied to Jesus, and never to God, never to the Father. Throughout the Bible, both in the Old and New Testament, it is invariably applied to God, and to Him alone.

ISA. lxiii. 16.—" Doubtless Thou art our Father, though Abraham be ignorant of us, and Israel acknowledge us not, Thou, oh Lord, art our Father, our Redeemer. Thy name is from everlasting."

ISA. xlvii. 4.—" As for our Redeemer, the Lord of Hosts is His name, the Holy One of Israel."

PSALM xix. 14.—" Let the words of my mouth, and the meditation of my heart, be acceptable in Thy sight, oh Lord, my strength and my Redeemer

PSALM lxxviii. 35.—" They remembered that God was their Rock, and the High God their Redeemer

ISA. lx. 16.—" I, the Lord, am thy Saviour and thy Redeemer

There is one other passage in Scripture which is claimed as proving that Jesus was God " In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God." (John i. i.) And the 14th verse of the same chapter, " And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us." These two verses constitute the famous Logos doctrine,* and have given rise to an infinite variety of interpretations. Most of the orthodox, as they are called, say that "The Word," in verses 1 and 14, means Jesus; and that the expression "was made flesh," in verse 14, refers to the incarnation of Jesus in the womb of Mary. Taking the Gospel of St. John by itself —in other words, without the account of the incarnation contained in St. Matthew and St. Luke—no one would ever have thought of such an interpretation. There are, however, even some orthodox divines, amongst them the famous Dr. Liddon, who, in speaking of the Logos, construe it to mean " the Thought of God," and as being something not either external to or independent of the one God. (See Liddon's " Bampton Lectures.") This doctrine, the Logos, clearly existed before the date of Christ, and long before the Gospel of St. John was written, and was a product of the early Greek philosophy. By the Greek philosophy of the day, it was regarded as something distinct from God, or by some as a second God; but (according to the best authorities) there can be little doubt but that the true conception of it by Greek philosophy was that of the power, or force, or energy of God acting in the creation of the world and in His communication with man. In this view it clearly resembles the view held by Dr. Liddon, and throws considerable light on the manner in which John used it in the verses I am now dealing with. John, taking the Logos doctrine from the Greek philosophy, as expressing the thought of God, or the manifestation of God, or the energy of God, proceeded to add that which the Greek philosophy did not state, " that the word was made flesh," thereby intending to convey the meaning that, as Jesus was a messenger from God, revealing God and His attributes to man—the thought of God, or the manifestation of God, became flesh in Jesus. In other words, as put by the writer of "Texts and Margins," "God revealed Himself to man in or through Him (Jesus) that declared Him." It appears to me that, having regard to the origin of the doctrine, and to the facts (i) that the interpretation sought to be put upon it is irreconcilable with the numerous texts to which I have drawn the reader's attention; (2) that such interpretation is entirely opposed to the plain meaning of the words put by John himself into the mouth of Jesus in John xvii. 3—" And this is life eternal that they might know Thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent" (in which it will be seen the words " the only true God," are applied by Jesus, according to John, to the Father only); (3) that the Logos doctrine is merely inserted by way of preface to John's Gospel, and not in the Gospel itself,—the view I have endeavoured to present is not only natural and rational, but also harmonious with the declarations of Scripture, of Jesus himself, and of the very Gospel in which the Logos is introduced. It will be further observed, if the first fourteen verses of the chapter be read, that the statements made as to the Word, that the Word " was, in the beginning, with God,"—" all things were made by Him, and without Him was not anything made that was made," clearly bear out the same view of " the energy," or " thought of God," while to regard these expressions as referring to Jesus, would make Jesus co-equal and co-eternal with God, which, though regarded as essential to the Deity of Jesus, are incompatible with Biblical teaching. To deal with the dogma of the co-equality of Jesus with God first, it may be sufficiently refuted by reference to the few following texts, though many of the texts I have already cited also bear upon the same point:—

MARK xiii. 32.—Of that day or hour knoweth no one—not even the angels in heaven; neither the Son, but the Father.

JOHN v. 19.—The Son can do nothing of himself.

JOHN xiv. 28.—My Father is greater than I.

MATT. xxvi. 39.—Oh! My Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me. Nevertheless, not as I will, but as thou wilt.

I COR. xi. 3.—The head of Christ is God.

Lastly, as to the co-existence or co-eternity of Christ with God, I cannot place the refutation of this doctrine before the reader more clearly than by citing for his perusal the following, from the pen of Dr. Adam Clarke:—" I trust I may be permitted to say, with all due respect for those who differ from me, that the doctrine of the Eternal Sonship of Christ is in my opinion anti-scriptural and highly dangerous. This doctrine I reject, for the following reasons—i. I have not been able to find any express declaration in the Scriptures concerning it. 2. If Christ be the Son of God, as to his divine nature, then he cannot be eternal, for Son implies a Father, and hather implies a reference to Son preceding in time, if not in nature too. Father and Son imply the idea of generation, and generation implies a time in which it was effected, and time also antecedent to such generation. 3. If Christ be the Son of God, as to his divine nature, then the Father is of necessity prior, consequently superior to him. 4. If this divine naticre were begotten of the Father, then it must be in time, i.e., there was a period in which it did not exist, and a period when it began to exist. This destroys the eternity of our Lord, and robs him at once of his Godhead. 5. To say that he was begotten from all eternity is, in my opinion, absurd; and the phrase Eternal Son is a positive self-contradiction. Eternity is that which has had no beginning, nor stands in any reference to time. Son supposes time, generation, and Father

I now come to the last branch of the proposition which I enunciated at the commencement of this discussion—"That the distinct personal existence of and deity of the Holy Ghost, or Holy Spirit, or the Spirit, is unscriptural." It appears to me to be absolute waste of labour to cite passages from Scripture to prove that the Spirit is throughout the Bible regarded as mainly a spiritual emanation Irom the Father, as part of, or as that Spirit which is the God. There is no authority whatever for the doctrine either that the Spirit is a distinct person, or that the Spirit is also God, for the doxology ''Glory be to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Ghost," or for the prayer in the Litany, " Oh, God the Holy Ghost." We are told that the whole nature of God is spiritual—that God is a spirit, and therefore the advent, as it is called, of the Spirit, or the coming of the Holy Ghost, can and must mean nothing more than the presence of God within our spiritual selves. Probably, the origin of this doctrine is traceable mainly if not solely to the detected interpolation of the verse " the three heavenly witnesses."

I have now to the best of my ability performed the major portion of the work which I undertook to perform. In so doing, I have made to the Trinitarians and the so-called orthodox the very liberal, and no doubt to many minds, the very startling, concession of the Bible being the inspired revelation of God; and though I do not pretend to have cited all the texts that could be cited in support of what I have advanced, or to have dealt with or examined all of those which may be said to be susceptible of a contrary interpretation, I believe I have fairly cited, examined, and dealt with all the principal passages of Scripture on the one side and on the other. Nor have I done more than merely illustrate by a few instances the numerous cases in which Trinitarian translators, with the view no doubt of committing pious frauds, have inserted a verse or words not existing in the so-called originals, and which by a strange coincidence were, before the detection of the falsification, or imposture—the forlorn hope of the doctrines of the Trinity, and of the Deity of the Holy Ghost, and the principal authority for the Deity of Jesus.

We find then the teaching of the whole of the Old Testament to be distinctly and unequivocally opposed to either a duality or a trinity. We have the four Gospels, which have always been regarded as the kernel of the New Testament, inasmuch as they profess to narrate to us the very teachings and sayings of Jesus, clearly designating the Father as the only living and true God—as the only fitting object of prayer and worship—as sharing co-equality and co-eternity with neither Son nor Spirit. To the same effect we have even the Gospel of Paul, the author of much not to be found in the religion of Jesus, the introducer of the metaphysical doctrines of the atonement, justification by faith, and imputed righteousness. If, then, there be no sufficient authority for " God the Holy Ghost" the doctrine of the Trinity perishes, and the Trinitarians, who constitute the great mass of the Christian churches, must dwindle into Dualitarians; and if, in addition, there be no sufficient authority for God the Son, then the doctrine of duality also vanishes, and Monotheism or Unitarianism must prevail—but the position as deduced from the Bible is, as I have endeavoured to point out, a very much higher and a very much more forcible one than that of " insufficient authority;" it is that of positive express declaration by both revelations, accepting them as such, that there is only one living and true God, that neither before Him nor after Him, or beside Him has there been or is there any other God— that He alone is supreme—He alone is eternal.

Now placing the Bible, and the notion of its being the inspired revelation of God, on the one side for the moment, freeing one's mind from the atmosphere of early training, and reasoning just as one would on matters of everyday life, what is the reader's honest opinion of this doctrine of the Trinity? Is it not that of the Unitarian, when he declared " The doctrine of the Trinity is not of God, but of man—the creation of man—purely the invention of man. It is as inconceivable in idea cts it is impossible in fact! Hallam says, in reference to the dogmatic teachings of the Churches upon this point (and well may he say so with such a sample as the Athanasian creed before his mind), " The doctrine of the Trinity is that which Theologians call inscrutable, but which they do not fail to define and analyze with the most confident dogmatism." Without question early Christianity was far more free from paganism and from the taint of superstition than the Christianity of our own time. Its purity has become corrupted, its simplicity has become obscured in the same way and by the same means, as the purity has been sullied, and the simplicity has been lost, of that Gospel which, 500 years before the birth of Jesus, was preached by Buddha, the Gospel of humanity and of good will toward men—the Gospel of purity, and charity, and peace. Many far more ancient religions than Christianity had and still have their Trinities, among which will be found the Logos as the third person of the Trinity of the Platonic creed, and Christos as the third person of that of the Gnostics. That this is not mere assertion appears from the list of Trinities which I subjoin, taken from that compiled by Mr. Arthur Lillie in his recent work, entitled " The Popular Life of Buddha —

* It maybe noted, in passing, that the Churches all call the third God and person of the Trinity the Holy Ghost—or God, the Holy Ghost; not the Spirit or the Holy Spirit. The word that is used in that which is termed the original, is the word rendered Spirit, and in the original the word rendered Spirit is frequently used by itself. Without the prefix of any adjective, the word "Ghost," it will be observed, could not well be used. It would hardly do to say God the Ghost, or the Ghost of God, so the translators having adopted the word "Ghost," as carrying with it a more mystic sound, were forced to add an adjective in places where no adjective existed in the original, and then found that there was only one adjective that could be euphoniously added to Ghost, viz.—Holy.

† Thismustnot of course be confounded with the expression Son of God.

* Throughout this work, for the sake of brevity, I frequently omit either portions of verses or words which occur in the passages cited. But in no single instance will it be found that the omission affects even in the slightest degree the sense of the quotation.

* It is somewhat singular, as showing the ignorance that prevails upon questions affecting religion, that though, in a letter recently addressed by Dean Slattery, of Geelong, to the Argus, attacking Bishop Moorhouse for, as the Dean alleged, evading in his lectures the doctrine of the Trinity and that of the Deity of Jesus, this text was cited and the strongest reliance placed upon it, no one who entered into the controversy ever questioned the genuineness or authority of the verse.

* For the purposes of the argument, I am assuming that Jesus did utter the words attributed to him in this verse, and did pronounce them after his death; but it is considered highly improbable that Jesus, after his death and just before his ascension, should have used the words attributed to him. It is considered far more probable that before his death he may have used words to his disciples of some such import, exhorting them to persuade men to love and worship God, to follow his (Christ's) precepts, to become his disciples, and to become, by leading good and pure lives, imbued and clothed with the Spirit of God. Of course, it must be borne in mind that it was many years after the death of Jesus, and after, as it is alleged, he ascended into heaven, that these words were attributed to him by the evangelist Matthew; and it is note worthy that all the three other evangelists—Mark, Luke, and John—are absolutely silent about any such last solemn command and injunction as " to baptize into the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost." Referring to this verse, Mr. Matthew Arnold, in his well-known work, " Literature and Dogma," makes the following observations:— " This first creed (the Apostles' Creed) is founded on a supposed final charge from Jesus to His Apostles—'Go ye and teach all nations, baptizing them into the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost.' We have already remarked the difference in character between the narrative, in the Gospels, of what happened before Christ's death and the narrative of what happened after it. For all words of Jesus placed after his death the internal evidence becomes pre-eminently important. He may well have said words attributed to him, but not then. So the speech to Thomas: 'Because thou hast seen me, thou has believed; blessed are they who have not seen and yet have believed,' may quite well have been a speech of Jesus, uttered on some occasion during his life, and then transferred to the story of the days after his resurrection. On the other hand, again, the prophecy of the details of Peter's death is almost certainly an addition after the event, because it is not at all in the manner of Jesus. So, too, it is extremely improbable that Jesus should have ever charged his apostles to ' baptize all nations in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost;' it is by far too systematic, and what people are fond of calling an anachronism. It is not the least like what Jesus was in the habit of saying, and it is just like what would be attributed to him as baptism and its formulas grew in importance. The genuine charge of Jesus to his disciples was almost certainly—' As my Father sent me, everfso send I you.' So that our three creeds, and with them the whole of our so-called orthodox theology, are founded upon words which Jesus, in all probability, never uttered."

* Not only, therefore, do the Christian churches clearly disobey the commandment of Jesus as to the mode and manner of prayer, and as to addressing prayer to the Father; but they also continually give to Jesus, for the purpose of carrying out their doctrine of atonement, and never to the Father, those titles which belong to the Father and not to Jesus. I shall prove hereafter that the word Redeemer which, in practice, is applied to Jesus and not to the Father, is throughout the Bible invariably applied to the Father, and never to Jesus, either by himself or by anyone else, and that the word Saviour is continually used in connection with " The God," i.e., with the . This may appear startling, but it will be found to be the fact.

* In this and all similar passages the expression in the Greek version is , which, as will be observed, has not been faithfully translated.

* This is the text as it stands in the old version, not in the revised.

* The reader will, of course, bear in mind that, so far, I am assuming that the Bible is the inspired revelation of God, and that I am endeavouring to show that so treating it the Trinity of the Godhead, the Duality of the Godhead, the Deity of Christ, &c., are doctrines not only not warranted by, but opposed to Scripture.

Part II.
THE SON OF GOD—THE INCARNATION.

" Reason is the only faculty we have wherewith to judge concerning anything—even Revelation itself; for if it contain clear immoralities or contradictions, either of these would prove it false."—Butler's Analogy of Religion.

"When Evidence is presented to our mind, Belief is not a voluntary,, but a necessary consequence; so that it is quite impossible that the mind should believe otherwise than as evidence is or is not discerned."

IN the preceding part I have dealt with the doctrine of the Trinity, and of the Deity of Jesus, God the Son as distinguished from the Son of God, and have endeavoured to prove, I trust successfully, that the teachings of those books which are claimed as the authority, and only authority in such matters, not only do not support, but are distinctly opposed to these two fundamental and principal doctrines of the Christian Churches. And so confident am I as to this, that, for the purpose of my argument, I fearlessly, upon these two points, conceded and assumed that the Bible was the inspired revelation of God. I now proceed to discuss another subject, one perhaps not so weighty as either of the two preceding, but yet of great moment; and in its discussion is necessarily involved a consideration of the doctrine of the incarnation. But neither in this, nor any subsequent part of this work, do I bind or limit myself by any such concession or assumption as I have heretofore made; though even were I to again make the concession (so far as regards Jesus being the Son of God), I think I should be able to show that the weight of the four Gospels (in which, if anywhere, we should expect to find this doctrine clearly expressed and set forth) does not sustain it in the sense in which it is entertained by the orthodox, viz., that Jesus is the actual and very Son of God, and that God is the actual Father of Jesus; but that the fair and rational interpretation of the four Gospels leads us to the conclusion that Jesus neither describes himself as, nor was, nor is the Son of God in any other sense than that in which every good man or every good woman is a son * or daughter of that God whom Jesus is reported to have described as the Father of his disciples as well as of himself—" I ascend unto my Father and your Father, and to my God and your God."— John xx. I7. I shall not, therefore, refrain from referring freely to the four Gospels to bear out the view I propound, and to negative the contrary; but as in discussing the actual and very sonship of Jesus, there is necessarily involved the subject of his incarnation, I shall have to deal with both on broad and general grounds, as well as on the basis of Scripture. In so doing I am forced to criticise portions of the narrative given by Matthew and Luke; I cannot, therefore, make the same unqualified concession of plenary inspiration of the Bible.

I shall endeavour to show—(I) that the weight of the four Gospels does not sustain the doctrine of the actual and very sonship of Jesus; (2) that the doctrine is opposed to reason and to all natural law; (3) that the doctrine of the incarnation is supported by no evidence whatever, and that the so-called evidence contained at the commencement of the narratives of Matthew and Luke is completely untrustworthy; (4) that this doctrine also is opposed to all natural law—that it is impossible in fact, revolting, and utterly incredible: and the affirmation I make is—that Jesus was the actual and very son of Joseph and Mary; but by reason of his love for God and devotion to his service, and in that sense alone, the Son of God. In reference to these propositions, before proceeding more particularly to discuss them, I desire to draw attention once more to the argument of probability as affecting the first of the propositions, and to the paramount importance of the third proposition. I once more ask—Is it unreasonable to suppose that, if Jesus was and is the actual and very Son of God from everlasting, God would not, in His numerous so-called revelations or communications made to man during a period extending over hundreds of years, have made some mention of the existence of an only Son—and would not only not have remained silent upon so important and momentous a topic, but would not have misled His chosen people by declarations and revelations which state, and of necessity imply, the sole and undivided existence of God? Further, independently of this, is it unreasonable to suppose that Jesus, if he were the actual and very Son of God, would have told his chosen few—the disciples—this momentous fact, hitherto so inexplicably unrevealed, in unequivocal and unmistakable terms? But what is it we do find? that admittedly the whole human race for long ages remained in total ignorance of any suspicion, even, of the alleged existence of the only Son of God, and so remained up to a comparatively recent period of the world's history; then was formed under the leadership of Jesus, known to have been born from the body of Mary, that small sect who, on account of their Master's extraordinary sanctity, desired to regard him as, and to make him, divine, and who, after his death, anxious to give him a divine origin, and to raise him to divine honours, attributed to him sayings and doings which might have the effect of holding him forth as being of divine or supernatural origin.

To carry into effect the yearning desire of those chosen and faithful few to have their Master and Teacher regarded as Divine, it became absolutely necessary for them to create for him who was known to be born from the body of Mary, the wife of Joseph, the carpenter—and whose life as well as that of his mother and reputed father were well and intimately known to their kinsmen and friends, as well as to the inhabitants of the village of Bethlehem and the little town of Nazareth, and the dwellers in those parts— a supernatural origin. The notion that he was the son of Mary by Joseph (by man) must be done away with—the fact that he was born from Mary's body and that Mary was the wife of Joseph, the carpenter, could not be gainsaid —but the birth from Mary's body must be attributed to a supernatural conception by Mary. For the purpose of the birth of Jesus God, or the Holy Ghost, was his father and the husband of Mary; for the purpose of the birth of his numerous brothers and sisters Joseph, the carpenter, was their father and Mary's husband.

It must here again be borne in mind that it was not till many years after Jesus' death that we have any trace of the putting forth of the miraculous conception, as far as Jesus was concerned; but, long before the birth of Jesus, in the East, in which Christianity and all the principal religions of the world have been cradled and founded, the doctrine of miraculous conception, in regard to the founder of another sect—a sect which embraces one-third of the whole civilized world—was one known to hundreds of thousands. The conception of Buddha, who was born many hundreds of years before Jesus, and who was alleged to be pre-existent in heaven, was no whit less miraculous. Queen Maya, whose mind was virginal, conceived him supernaturally, the future Buddha having entered through her right side; and in a dream or vision she was made conscious of the honour that had been accorded to her. She also was on a journey at the time of her expected labour. The moment of her conception was heralded by a salutation of angels, and after the birth of Buddha he was also presented in a temple, there being this difference between the conception of Queen Maya and that of Mary that the body of the former was transparent during her pregnancy, and she was thus enabled to see the child in her womb.* But to return to the efforts of the then small Christian sect. The making God, or God the Holy Ghost, Jesus' father and quâ Jesus the husband of Mary, placed those who desired to deify Jesus in this difficulty, that unless Jesus was also descended from the house and lineage of David they could not propound him to the world as the Jewish Messiah, and as fulfilling the declarations of the ancient prophets and seers of Israel. Thus, to fulfil their desire they made the Holy Ghost his father and the husband of Mary; to fulfil prophecy, so called, they made Joseph, the carpenter, his father and the husband of Mary.

Having thus, to a certain extent, introduced the subject of the incarnation of Jesus I propose to take the third and fourth propositions first for the obvious reason that, bearing in mind what I have already said, the whole foundation, the key, and corner stone of the doctrine of the divinity of Jesus, as the actual and very Son of God, all turn and hinge upon the answer to the question, whether this doctrine of the incarnation be truth or fable. If it be truth then the strong presumption is that Jesus had a divine origin; if it be fable then the absolute and irresistible necessity for the creation of the fable shows that without the fable (the incarnation) Jesus was the child, born according to the law of nature, of Mary and Joseph, her husband, and, in that respect, no way differingfrom any oneof his brothers—James, and Joses, and Simon, and Judas—or his sisters. To answer this question we ought, first of all, to ascertain, if possible, on what evidence (if evidence it can be called) this doctrine rests, what is the nature of the evidence, and what are the probabilities and improbabilities attaching to both the evidence and the doctrine. Bearing in mind that supernatural births and miraculous conceptions were not unknown in the East, at any rate at the time when after the death of Jesus the disciples became desirous of deifying him, what are the statements (which the orthodox are pleased to call evidence) to be found in the four Gospels or four narratives of the life of Jesus? The only two evangelists who make any mention of this all and most important fact (so to term it for the present) are Matthew and Luke. They each only mention it once—and that by way of preface to their narrative (like the Logos of John); neither of them ever afterwards refer to it again. If it was ever, in fact, reported by either of them and not afterwards added by way of preface by copyists (who made no scruple of altering ancient texts and inserting spurious verses, as has been already shown) it was reported merely on hearsay. Mark, whose narrative or biography is generally supposed to have been the earliest in point of date, makes no mention whatever of this extraordinary and most essential event, nor does the beloved disciple John, nor does Luke in the Acts of the Apostles, commonly supposed to be his production. This is the whole of the so-called evidence. Copied hearsay statements alleged to have been inserted by two only of the evangelists, in the preface to their books, not in the books themselves— with the possibility or probability of the prefaces having been inserted by others after the books were written—never mentioned by either of them in the books themselves or in Luke's other work, the Acts of the Apostles, utterly and entirely ignored by Mark, the supposed first biographer, and also by the beloved disciple John. Such is the evidence, and the whole evidence on which this primâ facie, unnatural, incredible, and impossible doctrine rests.

But if the so-called evidence be merely copied reported hearsay (even conceding it to be hearsay reported by Matthew and Luke) it is not evidence properly so-called, nor does it bear any legitimate resemblance whatever to evidence. But let us call it evidence; then what is the nature of the evidence, and what are the probabilities and improbabilities attaching to both the evidence and the doctrine? The whole of Matthew's alleged reported hearsay account is contained in the eight last verses of the first chapter (which certainly reads like a preface to the book), and there only. It is contained in the very chapter which, in order to connect Jesus with the house and lineage of David, traces the descent of Joseph (who, according to the doctrine, was not the father of Jesus) up to Abraham and through David.* Further, the writer (whoever he was), having taken the greatest care in the first I7 verses to prove that Joseph was a lineal descendant of David, for a very obvious purpose, and after stating that " Jacob begat Joseph, the husband of Mary, of whom was born Jesus, who is called Christ," proceeds in the next eight verses to state that Mary was pregnant by the Holy Ghost while she was merely engaged to Joseph, and before he married her; that Joseph seeing her in this state desired not to marry her, but was commanded by an angel of God in a dream to marry her; that he then at once became her husband, but knew her not till after Jesus was born (see verse 25), clearly implying that, after the birth of Jesus, Mary and Joseph occupied the ordinary relation of husband and wife, and disposing of the doctrine of the perpetual virginity of Mary, so tenaciously clung to by both Protestant and Romish churches, and which is not merely an assumption without a syllable in the four gospels to support it, but is directly opposed to the necessary intendment of the verse last cited. If the very summary account given in the last eight verses be correct, then Jesus was and could be neither the son of Joseph, nor the son of or descendant of David, nor man, nor the son of man. In that view, the whole of the first I7 verses are unnecessary and misleading, and Jesus had only one earthly parent, Mary, and was the son of woman (not of man), and was no connection of the house of David whatsoever. Can anyone, short of an ecclesiastical metaphysician, reconcile the two parts of this chapter; and if he can, and accepts the statement contained in the last eight verses, how can he reconcile the necessary and logical conclusion to which he is forced by accepting that statement with the oft-repeated passages, to which I shall presently refer, not contained in the prefaces to, but in the very gospels themselves, and not in two but in all of them, in which Jesus calls himself, and is described as, a man, and the son of man—as the carpenter's son, in which Mary herself describes Joseph to Jesus as his father—in which Joseph and Mary are described as his father and mother; and James, and Jonas, and Simon, and Judas, as his brothers? But so as not to dwell at too great length upon the very summary account in the preface to Matthew, let us also very briefly examine that which is the only other, contained in the preface to Luke. He begins by a preface to a preface, in which he makes the remarkable statement that, in consequence of so many persons having begun to write biographies of Jesus, he thought it was well to let Theophilus have his (Luke's) own account, so that he (Theophilus) might not be misled, but know the certainty of these things which he had been told to believe (verses I-4).

Luke then proceeds to inform Theophilus of two miraculous conceptions, telling very nearly the same story about the conception of Elisabeth and the birth of John as about the conception of Mary and the birth of Jesus. Shortly: both Elisabeth and Zacharias were long past the age, the one of child-bearing, the other of begetting, and in addition to this Elisabeth was barren; but the angel " Gabriel" came from the presence of God and appeared to Zacharias, told him that Elisabeth would bear a son in her old age, that he was to call him John, that John would be full of the Holy Ghost when in his mother's womb, and finally struck Zacharias dumb for not believing all this. Then, six months after, " Gabriel" again leaves God's presence, and visits this time Mary (not Joseph, as Matthew has it), and tells her that she shall be pregnant by the Holy Ghost of a child to be called Jesus, and also tells her what God had done to her cousin Elisabeth, concluding with a statement referring to Elisabeth, " for with God nothing shall be impossible " (verse 37). Mary then goes to see Elisabeth, salutes her, the babe leaps in Elisabeth's womb at the salutation, and Elisabeth is also filled with the Holy Ghost. With the exception of the three songs of Elisabeth, Mary, and Zacharias—to which it is unnecessary to refer—and the extraordinary statement of the angel " Gabriel" contained in verse 32, the above is substantially Luke's account. By verse 32 Gabriel is stated to have told Mary, on the occasion of his visit to her, that " the Lord God would give to Jesus the throtie of his father, David"—again clearly showing that the narrators, whoever they were, of the accounts in Matthew and Luke were trying to perform an impossibility—to give Jesus a divine origin, conceived of a virgin by the Holy Ghost, and yet to connect him with David by making Joseph the natural father of Jesus. In the only two narratives of this event, therefore, we have the same irreconcilable contradiction, and we further have, in the narrative in Luke, that which is not mentioned by anyone else, the extraordinary feature of a double miraculous conception, by Elisabeth and Mary, within six months of one another—both preceded by visits from, and conversations with, the angel Gabriel, who came twice for the express purpose, from God's presence, at an interval of six months—both accompanied with miraculous manifestations. None of the other evangelists think it worth while to mention either of these startling and stupendous miracles, nor does Jesus ever refer even to either of them. Luke alone mentions one. Luke and Matthew only mention the other, in a sort of preface to their books, in a very summary way, and never refer to the matter again; their accounts, derived as they are from hearsay, are not only widely different, but the statement of each is self-contradictory. This being the evidence, and the intrinsic nature of the evidence, is the theory that Joseph was the natural father of Jesus more reconcilable with what is contained in the four gospels than that of the impregnation of the virgin by the Holy Ghost? If Gabriel was stating what was true in Luke i. 32, Joseph must have been the natural father of Jesus; so also, if any sense or meaning is to be given to the genealogy set out in Matthew i., and to the statement contained in verse I6. But, in addition to this, I shall now proceed to examine some passages in the four gospels, for the purpose of showing that, read in an ordinary and natural sense, and giving the words contained in them their ordinary and legitimate meaning, these passages clearly and unmistakably point to the conclusion that Jesus was the actual and very child of Joseph and Mary.

In LUKE ii. 48, Mary is reported to have said to Jesus— Son, why hast thou thus dealt with us? behold, thy father (Joseph) and I have sought thee sorrowing.

LUKE ii. 27—And when the parents brought in the child Jesus, to do for him after the custom of the law.

LUKE iv. 22—And all bare witness, and wondered and said, Is not this Joseph's son?

JOHN vi. 42—Is not this Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know?

MATT. xii. 46—While he yet talked, his mother and his brethren stood without, desiring to speak with him.

MATT xiii. 55, 56—Is not this the carpenter's son? is not his mother called Mary? and his brethren—James, and Joses, and Simon, and Judas—and his sisters are they not all with us?

So in MARK vi. 3—Is not this the carpenter,* the son of Mary, the brother of James, and Joses, and of Juda, and Simon? and are not his sisters here with us?

The above are sufficient to show that in all the four Gospels Jesus is spoken of and described as the actual and very son of Joseph and Mary; that in all of them Joseph is described as his natural father, and his brothers by name and his sisters as his actual brothers and sisters in the ordinary acceptation of the term. But it is sought to neutralize the force of the passage in Luke ii. 48, by the answer of Jesus in the following verse, 49—"Wist ye not that I must be about my Father's business?" But Jesus was here in his ascetic sanctity clearly drawing the distinction between his earthly and natural father Joseph, and the spiritual fatherhood of God. It is his own mother, at any rate, who is addressing him, when she says, "Why hast thou thus dealt with us, thy father and I have sought thee sorrowing," and Jesus's reply, in effect, is, " I have now devoted myself to the service of my heavenly Father. My duty to you, my earthly parents, must now be subservient to my duty to Him." He is evidently, in verse 49, calling God his Father in the same sense in which He uses it when he is alleged to have said to the disciples, " I go to my Father, and your Father, and to my God and your God." * In similar manner it is sought to neutralize the force of Matthew xiii. 55, and Mark vi. 3, by asserting (for it is nothing better than assertion) that " brethren " and " sisters" in these verses do not mean brothers and sisters, but merely " relations." Is there, however, any reason for so liberal and free an interpretation? Those who knew Jesus and his family, mother, father, brothers, and sisters well, were speaking in terms of contempt of the family of Joseph and Mary, not of the families of other parents, and in Matthew xii. 47, Jesus, just in the same way as he, in Luke li. 49, calls God his Father, calls the disciples his mother and his brethren, evidently referring to the disciples as his spiritual mother and brethren, in contradistinction to his actual mother and brothers, who were at the time " standing without desiring to speak with him." Now what is the conclusion we, as persons of ordinary commonsense, not as metaphysicians, are forced to by a fair, impartial, rational consideration of the foregoing—surely to one at least of these—(I) that these narratives of an incarnation (not unknown in the East) have been affixed to the commencement of the two Gospels by someone, other than the writer, after they had been written; (2) or that the writers of the two Gospels were reporting a legend which they had heard rumoured, and for which there could be and was no foundation; or (3) that, for the purpose of, after his death, endeavouring to deify their Master and the founder of their sect, they either invented the story or borrowed it from a more ancient creed, and applied it to Jesus, no mention of it having been made in the lifetime of Jesus, and no allusion to it having been ever made by him. The evidence in support of this doctrine is not evidence in any legitimate sense of the word. It is the merest hearsay of the flimsiest and most meagre description, reported, it is at least doubtful by whom, years after the death of Jesus, and then by only two persons and never mentioned by either of them again; ignored by the remainder of the disciples; opposed to and contradicted by the numerous passages in the four Gospels which I have cited, and others which I have not; inconsistent with the declaration of " Gabriel," that Jesus should sit on the throne of his father David (which, by the way, he never did, never has done, and never will do, and is an evident reference to the temporal king, whom the Jewish prophets declared would come to collect and rule over Israel); inconsistent with Jesus being of the house and lineage of David; inconsistent with his being man, or the son of man (as he declared himself to be, and was declared by others to be, as I shall presently show); self-contradictory and irreconcilable as narrated by Matthew; and as narrated by Luke not only self-contradictory but widely differing.* I think we may safely and profitably dismiss the fable of the incarnation in the same way as we may dismiss the antiScriptural doctrine of the perpetual † virginity of Mary.

Now, if the doctrine of the incarnation of Jesus be rejected, he remains incontestably the child of Joseph and Mary, born in the ordinary way and begot by the ordinary means; the corner stone of his divine nature is swept away, and the whole fabric falls with it. But, assuming the reports to be correct, what is Jesus alleged to say of himself?—"Ye seek to kill me, a man that hath told you the truth, which I have heard of God," John viii. 40; also, in Matt. xvi. I3 —"Whom do men say that I, the son of man, am?" also, in speaking of himself in Matt. viii. 20—" The Son of Man hath not where to lay his head." But so as not to weary the reader with a multiplicity of texts, I may state that it has been computed that, in the new covenant alone, Jesus describes himself, and is described no less than forty times as a man, eighty times as the son of man (neither of which could he be consistently with the doctrine of the incarnation), and fifty-six times as " the sent" (or messenger) of God. He also, no doubt, very frequently is said to have described himself, and is described, as the Son of God; but this term, I venture to submit, if used, was used merely to carry out the distinctive feature or attribute of the God whom Jesus preached—" the Father of us all," " to your Father and my Father;" and, in the same sense as that in which he alludes to his disciples, " Behold my mother and my brethren." These are my brothers, not those who stand without desiring to speak to me; because these, my disciples, are also sons of God, and God is their Father, as he is my Father. Again: " Whosoever shall do the will of God, the same is my brother, and sister, and mother." From a Religious point of view, Jesus evidently regarded God as his Father* and himself as God's Son, much in the same sense as that in which Paul, in Roman viii. I4, writes—" For as many as are led by the Spirit of God they are the sons of God;" and in which it is so clearly used in I John iii. I, 2—"Beloved, now are we the sons of God, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be." When the Jews took up stones to stone him, Jesus said to them—Do ye not know that it is said of mere men in Scripture, " I said ye are gods." If that can be said of men by your law, which cannot be broken, how am I blaspheming when I say not that I am God, but merely the son of God? But we find the terms " God," " son of God," " first-born of God," " only begotten Son," used frequently in Scripture in relation to man. Psalm lxxxii.—" I have said ye are gods, and all of you are children of the Most High;" Exodus iv. I6—" And thou (Moses) shalt be to him (Aaron) instead of God;" Exodus vii. I—" And the Lord said to Moses, see, I have made thee a god to Pharaoh, and Aaron shall be thy prophet." God is described as Israel's Father, Ephraim as "the first-born" of God, and Isaac as "the only begotten son" of Abraham, though his elder brother was living. Jesus was a Jew, and had been for many years studying the Jewish Scriptures and the declarations of the Jewish prophets; had been meditating upon the falling away of his nation from the God of Righteousness, and the veiling and obscuring of God in the traditions and ceremonies, rites, doctrines, and dogmas of the Jewish priesthood; and as he had brought himself, so he desired to bring first his disciples, and then by their means others, into the same relation to God as that of a child to a loving parent. The question of the High Priest and the answer of Jesus—"Art Thou the Christ, the Son of the living God?" " Thou hast said," are said to be opposed to this view. I do not think they are, as it may be allowed that Jesus undoubtedly regarded himself as the Son of God in the light which I have suggested, and considered that that was the spiritual relation existing between himself and the Father, and desired that others should hold the same spiritual relation towards God. In short, it is tolerably clear that this is the sense in which he used the expression, apart from its being the only mode by which his declarations of himself, as the Son of God, can be read consistently with his oft-repeated declarations of himself as " man" and " the son of man."

Lastly, the doctrines of " the incarnation," and also of " the very and actual son of God," are opposed to all natural law, as well as to reason. It would not, of course, for obvious reasons, do for me to enter at all fully or minutely into this delicate aspect of the question. But, shortly and generally, God being admittedly an immaterial spirit, and the Holy Ghost or the Spirit being merely another name for that spirit called God—in other words in no way separate from or independent of God—a material Christ, or Christ in the flesh, never could have been begotten; and, if Jesus existed with God from everlasting, he could only have existed as an immaterial spirit also; and, if so, it is difficult to conceive how spirit could become flesh—or immateriality become materiality—or the infinite become finite—be conceived by and be in the womb of a woman for the natural duration of time—eat and drink—grow in stature and also in learning—fast and weep —sweat—become hungry and thirsty—fear and shrink from pain ("Oh, my Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me!")—cry out in despair (" My God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken me?")—be moved by anger—affected with the prejudices of his nation—or be ignorant of astronomic laws.

Divested of his incarnation—of his Deity—of his actual and very sonship to God, what have we left?—a noble, heroic, unselfish, self-denying, pure, God-loving, humane man — an exemplar who, being human, we may all hope to succeed in following—who merits all praise, all respect, all esteem, and love, and admiration for that, being human, he led so pure, so blameless, so noble and unselfish a life—in whose doctrines and teachings there were, as Theodore Parker so justly remarks, many misconceptions— such as those of an eternal hell, a God angry against, and revengeful upon, all who should sin or not accept the teachings of His messenger, a distinct absolutely evil Devil, and an immediate and speedy end of the world—but which, notwithstanding these errors, were beautified by his sublime faith in God and by his profound humanity. So viewed, Jesus no longer obscures or disfigures our conception of a loving, just, wise, and merciful God—of that Father whom Jesus declared to be the only true God, and whom alone he told and instructed his disciples to join with him in addressing as " Our Father which art in Heaven, hallowed be Thy name " * —who preached a gospel which, I regret to say, is not practised by many of those who profess a Christianity which is not the Christianity of Jesus—the gospel of a pure life of love and charity, and goodwill to all around us—of works of humanityf—of direct communion with an almighty and loving Father. The Christianity of to-day is not the Christianity of Jesus, but it is the Christianity of Jesus corrupted by paganism and superstition.

* I John iii. I, 2.—"Beloved, now are we the sons of God, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be."

* I am indebted for this information to a work I have already referred to, and the most recent of its kind, entitled " The Popular Life of Buddha," by Mr. Arthur Lillie. Marred as it is, no doubt to a slight extent, by a little too much hitting at Dr. Rhys Davids it is, I believe, acknowledged to be one of the most accurate and authentic works we have as to the origin and nature of the religion of Buddha, and will, I think, well repay perusal. I am well aware that some orthodox ecclesiastics have endeavoured to show, in regard to the Buddhism of Ceylon (which is regarded by most Eastern scholars as of a more recent date than the true Buddhism founded by Buddha) that it and its doctrines were borrowed from Christianity, and not Christianity and its doctrines from Buddhism (see pamphlet "Buddhism in Relation to Christianity," by the Rev. R. Collins, late of Ceylon) but Professor Seydel, after a most elaborate inquiry and review, is evidently of opinion that Christianity has borrowed from Buddhism, and, according to Mr. Arthur Lillie, this must have been the case.

* It is worthy of observation that Matthew so constructs his genealogy as to be capable of being divided into three equal parts of fourteen generations each. This is curious, to say the least of it. It is also extraordinary that Matthew, between David and Joseph, the husband of Mary, reckons only twenty-five ancestors, while Luke enumerates forty, thirty-eight of whom Matthew never mentions.

* According to Jewish custom there can be little doubt but that Joseph brought up Jesus to his own trade—that of a carpenter.

* It will be seen, on reference to the list of Trinities on p. 25, ante, that " The Father" or " All- Father" was not unknown to other creeds as the first person of the Trinity.

* In addition to the various important discrepancies in the only two accounts we are possessed of, attention may be called to the not important but striking omissions in that of Matthew as compared with that of Luke, and to the fact that in the one the angel is said to have appeared to Joseph in a dream; in the other, Joseph is quite ignored, and the archangel " Gabriel" is made to appear in propria persona to Mary.

† Though the following is the Mass of the Conception appertaining to the Church of Rome, the doctrine of the perpetual virginity of Mary is maintained also by the Protestant churches, notwithstanding the last verse of the narrative in Matthew, and the fact of the existence of other sons and daughters of Joseph and Mary, and their actual marriage:—Mass of the Conception: "Rejoice, O Virgin Mary, thou alone hast destroyed all heresies; who didst believe the words of Gabriel the Archangel. Whilst a virgin thou didst bring forth Him that was God and man; and after childbirth didst remain a pure virgin. O, Mother of God, intercede for us! "

* See note on p. 25 ante, as to the Father, or All-Father, being the first Person of the Trinities of other creeds.

* It is said by an eminent Jewish Rabbi to be a fact (and so I believe it to be) that, if portions of the ancient Jewish prayers (with which, no doubt, Jesus was perfectly well acquainted) were collected together, they would produce the Lord's Prayer.

† Matthew xxv. 34-46. What must be the awful fate of nine-tenths of the Christian Church if the test specified by Jesus as being the test of a true Christian were to be strictly applied?—of what avail then would be church-goings and genuflexions and justifications by faith, adorations of Jesus, sacrament of the last supper, baptismal regeneration, imputed righteousness, atonements for original sin?

Part III.
THE INSPIRATION OF THE BIBLE—MIRACLES.

"Reason is the only faculty we have wherewith to judge concerning anything— even Revelation itself." — Bishop Butler's Analogy of Religion.

" That the system of morals professed in the New Testament contained no maxim which had not been previously enunciated, and that some of the most beautiful passages in the apostolic writings are quotations from pagan authors, is well known to every scholar. To assert that Christianity communicated to man moral truths previously unknown, argues, on the part of the asserter, either gross ignorance, or else wilful fraud."—Buckle.

" Credulity is the disease of feeble intellect, and ill regulated minds. Believing everything, and investigating nothing, the mind accumulates errors, till its overgrown faith overmasters its untutored reason."—Brewster.

IN dealing with the subject of " the Inspiration of the Bible," I do not intend to dispute that we can collect from the Bible, a pure, beautiful, and advanced code or system of ethics; but as we can do the same from the works of Confucius, from the Talmud, or from the Buddhist Scriptures, it may be said I am not conceding much. I will, therefore, go a step further, and willingly and sincerely concede, though the point is strongly controverted and stoutly denied by critical scholars, as is apparent from the quotation above, that we can collect from the Christian Bible, a purer, more beautiful, and more advanced ethical code, than is to be obtained from any other book or books. So conceding, what is the sequence—that the Bible is the Revelation of God, or that the founder of the code or system had a purer and more enlightened perception of ethics than his predecessors or contemporaries? I think this question may be safely left to answer itself; nor do I intend in the discussion of this subject to avail myself of fine points of difference, contradiction, and variance,between one portion of Scripture and another—such as the ingenuity and industry of scholars and critics have shown to exist in bewildering abundance throughout both the Old and the New Covenant, nor of those many glaring anachronisms and manifest violations of all natural law which men of letters and of science have detected in Holy Writ, and laid bare; nor do I intend to resort to any process of subtle argument, nor to make any display of scholastic knowledge, nor to indulge in learned disquisitions. What I purpose to do is, first, to consider what the Bible, or the so-called Word of God, actually is — what it in fact represents—and then to affirm and prove that neither from the standpoint of the Old Testament, or from that of the New, or from that of both, can the Bible be that which the orthodox so dearly love to call it—the inspired volume—the Word of God—the Revelation of God.

In carrying out my purpose, I hope to express myself m clear and simple language—to take for the purpose of illustration or inference facts and statements as they stand recorded in the Bible—to give to ordinary and well-known expressions their ordinary meaning, and all I require from the reader is a small modicum of common sense, the application of reason in its most elementary and simple form, the banishment of credulity for the moment and a consideration and examination of the Bible, precisely in the same way and with the same feeling as that with which he would approach the consideration and examination of any other book. There are two classes of the orthodox who on this subject of the inspiration of the Bible each propounds a distinct, separate, and intelligible view. One class, and that the larger, declares the whole Bible to be the inspired Revelation of God; the other makes the same declaration, but in respect of a portion only of the Bible—the New Testament—making neither affirmation nor disaffirmation in respect of the Old. With these two classes, and their separate views, there is no difficulty in discussing the point at issue, because the position each takes up is distinct and intelligible. But there is a third class of the orthodox with whom it is almost impossible to discuss this question satisfactorily, and that class is the one which I describe by the term " the ecclesiastical school of metaphysicians."

The reason why it is almost impossible to meet them in argument upon this, or indeed any other theological doctrine, dogma, or tenet, is that you never can tell what exactly is the position they do take up—what their affirmation is; and when, having at length succeeded in pinning them to a particular proposition—as to inspiration or any other doctrine—you proceed to apply a crucial test, they change and rechange front with an agility that renders the chance of arriving at any tangible or definite result absolutely hopeless. Violating rules of construction and of interpretation with the most amusing (if it were not exasperating) sang froid to maintain some favourite view or tenet of their own, they give to passages, expressions, and words meanings which no one possessing only common sense, and not being a metaphysician, would ever dream of imputing. Then they say, " if you would only read Scripture as we do, and interpret it in a way that would never have occurred to you or to any other person who is not a metaphysician to interpret it, you would find that there are no contradictions, or glaring improbabilities, or absurdities, or impossibilities in the Bible; and, indeed, by frequent twisting and straining, and backing and filling, and change of front, you will find it to be all harmonious; that words do not mean what they are ordinarily supposed to mean, but something totally different; and that to be a metaphysician you must apply different rules of interpretation to the same words, in different parts of the Bible, whenever the result of not so doing might be damaging to the particular views we enunciate." According to this school, therefore, the Revelation of God is not the Scripture as you and I read it, or as ninety-nine out of every hundred men of ordinary intelligence would understand it, but is that (and that alone) which the mind of a metaphysician can evolve from it. If then we are not, for the purpose of understanding this book, to give to plain words their plain meaning—as would be the rule in the consideration of any other book—or are only to be permitted to do so in one place, and not in another—just as the portion to be considered happens to (or not to) fit—we may not feel indisposed to think that the absolute and never-varying interpretation of the Bible by the Church of Rome, and the acceptation of the dogma that that interpretation is the only true and correct interpretation, were preferable to being left to the mercy of the fancies of the ecclesiastical metaphysical school. However, whether the members of the school affirm that the whole or only a portion of the Bible is the Revelation of God—and, as I understand it, some affirm the one, some the other—they are all agreed in ignoring any fixed rule or principle of interpretation; their golden rule apparently being to adopt those interpretations which best satisfy the exigency of the particular position for the time being. Now, for the purpose of proving that I am not here dealing unfairly with this school, or exaggerating in any degree the difficulty of grappling with them in argument, or of bringing them to a point, let me illustrate what I mean, by that which will most readily make it plain, by a few out of many instances.*

Take the Old Testament first. As the account of the Creation given in the first three chapters of Genesis, cannot now be accepted as it stands by any one except those whose belief is like that of the pious old woman, who, when asked, "Do you believe that a whale swallowed Jonah?" replied, " Believe it! to be sure I do; is it not printed in the Bible? If the Bible told me that Jonah swallowed the whale, I should believe it,"—the version given with so much circumstantiality has been stated to be not a fable or legend, but an allegory. In other words, because it contains contradictions so obvious—absurdities so great—causes and results so impossible, which even the theory as to "day" not meaning "day" could not soften or remove—no fact recorded as a fact in any one of these three chapters is to be taken as such, but yet the account is not mythical, it is only allegorical. Passing by the flood, which was of such a nature that " all the mountains that were under the whole heaven were covered by it," and which is also explained away, and yet is not a legend or fable, we come to the story of the tower of Babel, in Genesis xi., which has been a source of much perplexity to the orthodox, because to take it as it stands renders it irreconcilable with the notion of God being either omnipotent or omniscient. Consequently, none of the facts there again recorded are facts; the account is purely allegorical, and it is not a fable or legend invented to account for variety of language. Again, the narrative of Balaam smiting his ass, its lengthy remonstrance with him, and the angel barring the prophet's road, is said by some to be no statement of fact but merely a parable, by others to be purely typical, the ass and its remonstrances being typical of the conscience of a man desiring to do what is evil. With the account contained in Joshua x., the school have also much difficulty but yet they are equal to the occasion. The moon did not actually stand still in the valley of Ajalon, nor the sun upon Gibeon; Joshua did pray to the Lord to suspend the heavenly bodies in their courses, and then imagined the movements were arrested. This is one of the many attempted explanations of this remarkable occurrence.

The account in 2nd Kings of Elijah and Elisha each in turn smiting Jordan with Elijah's mantle, arresting the flowing course of the river, dividing its waters; of Elijah being taken up to heaven in a chariot of fire, drawn by horses of fire; and of Elisha seeing all this, is also, according to the school, allegorical—it was merely a spiritual vision that Elisha saw.

Passing by scores of similar instances that occur in the Old Testament, at almost every step, I proceed to take a few instances in the New. "The Star in the East" that suddenly appeared, guided the wise men, and then halted over " where the young child was," has now dwindled away into a luminous body like the pillar of fire that, according to the Old Testament, guided the Israelites by night in their wanderings. It is no longer a star, but a luminous body, according to some so bright that it could be seen, and so served as a guide both by night and day;. according to others the wise men only followed it by night, rested during the day, and then followed it by night again.

In dealing with the alleged temptations of Jesus in the wilderness, it was his Divine nature that enabled him to subsist for forty days without eating anything, and without feeling hungry, it was only when the forty days were over he began, as man, to feel hungry. This view it will be seen reduces the temptation to a very small point of time. It is not till the forty days are over that he becomes " an hungered"; then the devil comes to him, tempts him, and not succeeding goes away, and then immediately Angels come and minister to Jesus. The showing by the devil to Jesus, from the top of a small hill near Jerusalem, all the kingdoms of the world in a moment of time, is explained by the assertion that this alludes to his spiritual vision, and that it does not mean that Jesus actually saw all the kingdoms of the world in a moment of time with his eyes. The statement of Jesus in Matthew xxiv. as to his coming again before the then generation should have passed away does not mean that he will so come; " generation " being merely used figuratively, but when he does come he is still to come in the clouds of heaven, and with great glory, sounds of trumpets, rushing of winds, and mourning of tribes, for all this has not yet been falsified by the event.

When Jesus retires from Jerusalem for fear of being killed, and on another occasion when he hides himself from the Jews, he does both as man; but when he refuses to leave, and fearless of his enemies, who are going about to kill him, calmly proceeds with his work for "his hour was not yet come," this is by virtue, again, of his Divine nature; so when Jesus says "land the Father are one," he is speaking as God of unity of essence, but when he prays to God, concerning the disciples, " that they may be one even as we are one," he is not alluding to unity of essence, but to unity of purpose, of design, of communion. The palpably absurd exaggeration at the end of John is endeavoured to be softened into a hyperbolic statement, not inconsistent with its being part of an inspired Gospel, and all the numerous and reiterated statements of Jesus contained in the New Testatment as to " hell " and " hell fire" " tormented in this flame," " everlasting fire prepared for the devil and his angels," " place of torment," "the fire that never shall be quenched," &c.,&c., do not bear the meaning that until the last century had been attributed to them by all the Christian churches, and which is still attributed to them by those who do not belong to the metaphysical school, but are said to merely refer to Gehenna, or the Valley of Hinnom, which is supposed to have been the name of a locality near Jerusalem, where all the filth and refuse of the city was consumed in fires which, as a rule, were kept burning. Therefore, in addition to the question which, after each amazing interpretation, rises to the lips—Who told these free and dashing Biblical critics that this or that was the meaning? we may also, in our simplicity, exclaim—Then we are not to take as the Revelation of God either what is written in the Bible nor what has been accepted for I,800 years as the meaning of the Bible, but we are to accept, as the Revelation of God, the new-fangled interpretations which, during the last half century, have been given to it by a particular class of the community. When Jesus, in the garden of Gethsemane, goes apart from the disciples and prays, three times over, the same prayer to God, within a short period of time, doing that which he told his disciples not to do—" use not vain repetitions, as the heathen do," for the reason that " your heavenly Father knoweth what things ye have need of before ye ask Him," he is so praying as man; so when he is hungry, or afraid, or is learning, or is in pain, or is being circumcised and observing other Jewish rites, or sweats, or is thirsty —all this is as man ; but when he walks on the sea, stills the tempest, is transfigured with Moses and Elias before the eyes of the disciples, and holds a conversation with them at the same time (Matthew xvii.), raises Lazarus, turns the water into wine—all this is as God. The Bible, it is true, does not say so in respect of either the one class of acts or of the other, but that is of small moment to the school, they are quite capable of supplementing the Revelation of God wherever it may be either insufficient or not as clear as they would wish it to be so far as regards their own particular views. Now, it seems to me that all this frittering away of the plain words and meaning of Scripture, these endeavours to twist and distort and hack at what is written because, as written, the orthodox controversialist feels he cannot sustain it, clearly show, in so far as the metaphysical school is concerned (though the other two classes whom I have mentioned are not affected by this view) that the Scripture, as written, is only to be taken as the Revelation of God in those portions where they say it may be so taken, and where they say it cannot be so taken there the interpretation they put upon it is to be taken as the Revelation of God.

Such methods as these, though they may reflect credit upon the ingenuity of their originators, cannot fail to cause the greatest discredit to fall upon the very doctrine which it is sought to uphold. They do more to impair the doctrine than all the attacks of the agnostics have succeeded in doing. If the school, or we, or anyone else, are or is at liberty to prune this away and that away, and to keep this or keep that, just as it suits, where is the limit? and what is to be the standard? If this be so it is evident that the only clear and intelligible course to pursue is that pursued by the two classes mentioned who, both refusing to leave to the arbitrament of man what portions of either Testament is or is not inspired, boldly maintain, the one, that the whole Bible as it stands, the other, that the New Testament as it stands, is the Inspired Revelation of God.

Having now, I think, said enough to show that the position taken up by class number three, the ecclesiastical metaphysical school, is not only untenable, but absolutely suicidal, I proceed to deal with the view maintained as to the absolute inspiration of the whole Bible, and also with the same view as regards the New Testament only. First, then, I propose very briefly to consider what is the Bible?— what does it purport to be?—what does it in fact represent? The term " Bible," like the term " Testament," comparatively speaking, is of late origin. The more correct term to describe the Old and New Testaments by is that of " the Books." The name "Bible" (which, no doubt, like the "Holy Ghost," as the effect of early training, has a sentimental and somewhat mystic effect upon people's minds) is simply a corruption of the Greek term signifying " the Books." By far the larger portion of the first book (the Old Testament), passing by its account of the order of creation, in which it contradicts the teaching of both astronomy and geology, purports to be and is nothing more nor less than a history (in which, as in many histories, truth and fiction are strangely mingled up) of the origin, rise, progress, and religion {including religious rites and ordinances) of the Jewish nation. The books, of which Moses was until recently supposed to have been the author, are now known to have been "the production of centuries;"* "the prophecies gathered under the name of Isaiah to have proceeded from several different hands; " the visions of Daniel to have been seen not in Babylon, but in Palestine." We have in the Old Testament merely an imperfect collection—the work of centuries—of scattered writings. " The earliest translators of these writings felt themselves free to make important alterations in their text, or worked upon manuscripts varying from those on which our text is founded. Ignorant copyists have been left to blunder over words they did not understand, and perplexed interpreters have had to make guesses where exact knowledge was impossible."

The second book (the New Testament) purports to be, and no doubt is. a history of the origin, rise, progress, and religion of Christianity and the Christian sect. The writings of which this book was composed were also made at different times and by different hands. " The fourth gospel, that of J ohn, from any point of view, was written considerably later than the other three." In addition to the four gospels and epistles (or letters) and book of Revelation contained in the second book (or New Testament) "were other gospels, other letters, other books of apocalyptic glory. The preface to St. Luke tells us that many had taken in hand to tell the same story, and many of these other gospels, and letters, and books, the Christian collection once contained. Do the writers of these books, which we now have in our New Testament collection, ever speak of themselves as combining to produce an authoritative exposition. Most of their productions are addressed to single individuals. Narratives of such significance as the gospel of Luke, and the book of Acts, were written for the benefit of one Theophilus, and some of St. Paul's epistles are to Timothy and Titus. Round the person of Jesus had gathered a number of stories, gradually wrought into shape by pious imagination, in which the words and deeds of the Master appear more or less distorted as they are seen through the medium of an erring memory— an unfounded expectation—a misconception of prophecy—a delusive hope." After the death of Jesus, those friends and followers who had been with him in his lifetime, " as their numbers began to thin, felt the need of recording their impressions" of Him and His sayings and discourses. As time went on, further writings were made, and letters written. By degrees they were collected, and when collected " were known under the Latin name of ' Testament.' " Even at that date the Testament so formed did not contain the epistle to the Hebrews, the epistle of James, or the Book of Revelation. " It was left for the African clergy at a council held at Carthage in A.D. 397 (nearly 400 years after the birth of Jesus) to fix, perhaps under the influence of Augustine, the limits of the New Testament as it has ever since remained." This, then (allowing for brevity), is the history of the origin, formation, and production of the first and second books of the Old and New Testament; this their purport, and this in fact what they each represent. But before going farther let me, without having recourse to the Old Testament, ask how can it be said that the New Testament so formed, so produced, is the inspired Revelation of God? Which Testament (for there have been four or five)? Which portion of which Testament? Is the one we now have, compiled as it was 400 years after Jesus, the inspired Revelation of God? Then, how comes it that we have in that compilation books and letters which were rejected in others nearer to the time of Jesus? And, again, by what authority did the council of the African clergy, in 397, issue their compilation to the Christian world as inspired Revelation?

In addition to these aspects, let us consider, at any rate as regards the first book or Old Testament, the nature and character of the writings we find contained in it, and ascertain if the doctrine of inspiration is not falsified by the internal evidence of the book itself. 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 passim throughout the Old Testament. In schools where the Bible is read and learned, 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 chapter upon chapter, that no father or mother, worthy of the name, would ever dream of reading to, or wittingly allowing a son or daughter to read. Yet because, ever since Christianity has had a Bible, the Old Testament has formed the major portion of it, 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 blood-thirsty, cruel, and brutal description, and so diffused are the characteristics of immorality and indecency, of vengeance, blood-thirstiness, 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. Of course, to do so would be at once to admit that for century after century all Christianity has been accepting and taking as God's Revelation that which is not, and would deal a most fatal blow to the whole doctrine of the inspiration of the Bible, which, as far as evidence is concerned, rests solely on the fact that the Bible has been accepted as the inspired Word of God by Christianity for so many hundreds of years. But if even one portion of that which has been so accepted is to be now rejected, the whole value of that evidence vanishes. I make the assertion " rests solely," not unmindful of the passage in 2 Tim. 3-I6, the champion verse of the orthodox upon this matter of inspiration—" all Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness." Passing by the fact that this verse as it stands is another palpable mis-translation, what does it amount to? Nothing more than a statement made "by the man Paul, in a letter to Timothy, that the writings of the Old Testament were inspired by God (for the New Testament was not brought together until long after this). It is one of those many doctrines which were enunciated by the man Paul, but which were never enunciated by Jesus—such as justification by faith, imputed righteousness, original sin. The fallible man Paul saying in a letter to Timothy that the Scriptures (even if the term as here used can be said to include both Old and New) were inspired, does not make them so; and when the value of the assertion is tested by the internal evidence of the Old Testament, and by the views both as to Old and New which are suggested in this part for the reader's consideration, I think it will be found that Paul's belief upon this point rests upon no better foundation than that of the so-called orthodox Christian. It is, however, necessary, in order to show that I make no idle assertion, to give a few instances, from the multitude at my disposal, of each class of those characteristics of the Old Testament to which I have referred. The first class I shall, for reasons sufficiently obvious, only indicate by chapter and verse: Genesis xix. 4-I2, and again 3I-38—anything more revolting than the description contained in 3I-38 it is hardly possible to conceive; nor than that contained in 2 Samuel xiii. I-I8, to say nothing of the extraordinary nature of the reply made by Tamar in verse I6; Genesis xxx. I-24; Genesis xxxviii.; Leviticus xv. I6-33; Deuteronomy xxii. I3-30; Judges xix. 22-30; 2 Samuel xi.; 2 Samuel xiii.; and for an extraordinary mixture of piety and immorality, I refer the reader to Genesis xxx.

The cruelty, bloodthirstiness, and vengeance impressed upon the pages of the Old Testament may be illustrated by references to Exodus xxi. 24—" Life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burning for burning, wound for wound, stripe for stripe;" Leviticus xx., from verse I to 2I; also, verse 27—"A man also or woman that hath a familiar spirit, or that is a wizard, shall surely be put to death; they shall stone them with stones;" Numbers xxv.— "And the Lord said unto Moses, Take all the heads of the people and hang them up before the Lord, that my fierce anger may be turned away from Israel Judges v.; Judges xi., verses 29 to 45, where Jephthah, in consideration of God delivering the children of Ammon into his hands, promises to offer to him, as a burnt offering, the first of whatever kind that might meet him on his return, with the result that he makes a burnt offering to God of his only daughter; 2 Samuel xii., verse 3I, where David (with whom the Lord was) destroys all the cities of the children of Ammon, and tortures their inhabitants to death " by putting them under saws and under harrows of iron, and under axes of iron, and by making them pass through the brickkiln;" and so throughout Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy, Joshua, I and 2 Samuel, Judges, I and 2 Kings, and I and 2 Chronicles, there is one continual description of acts of wholesale and indiscriminate butchery of men, women, and children; of horrible tortures, by mutilation or otherwise; of God's approval of these horrible acts; of His granting, by both natural and supernatural means, facilities for their commission; of filthy and unnecessary details (as a sample, the description of a fat king's, Eglon, dirt running out from his bowels after Ehud had plunged a dagger into him, and the fat had closed over it); of a fierce, passionate, angry, vengeful, furious, and cruel God. Nor does all this stop with the thirteen books I have mentioned (constituting, as they do, the greater portion of the Old Testament). Even in those Psalms of David, which are continually read and sung in all Christian churches, are contained frequent and violent imprecations upon and uncharitable wishes towards all our enemies, and appeals to God to enable us to fulfil our desire upon them. David certainly (even so far as his character is disclosed in the Psalms, and that is undoubtedly the best part of it), did not either preach or practice that gospel of humanity and goodwill which Jesus is alleged to have both preached and practised. Again, all through the books of the prophets is the same idea of an angry, jealous, furious, and vindictive God clearly perceptible. The prophet Isaiah, in chapter iii., verse I6, putting such words as these into God's mouth—" Thus saith the Lord, Because the daughters of Zion are haughty, and walk with stretched forth necks and wanton eyes, walking and mincing as they go; therefore the Lord will smite with a scab the crown of their heads, and He will discover their secret parts." And then, according to the same prophet, the Lord also goes on to say how He will take away their bracelets and bonnets, and mufflers, and earrings, and mantles, and pins, and veils; and how, instead of making them smell sweet, he will make them stink. In another chapter He (God) tells the same prophet to " Make the heart of the people fat and their ears heavy, and make them shut their eyes, lest they see with their eyes and hear with their ears, and understand with their heart, and be converted and healed." " Then, said I [the prophet Isaiah], how long, Lord?" and the Lord said, " Until the cities be wasted without inhabitant, and the houses without man, and the land be utterly desolate." Indeed, throughout the remainder ot the book of Isaiah, and throughout those of the other prophets, there is an almost unbroken series of howlings and ravings; of pourings out of all the vials of God's wrath and anger; of fierce threats of annihilation and desolation, and of horrors of every description (see the I6th chapter of Jeremiah, of which it may fairly be said ex uno disce omnes).

It appears to me almost of necessity that those who so inconsiderately declare the Old Testament to be the inspired revelation of God, can have no approximately right conception of God. Otherwise I cannot for one moment imagine that they would so blaspheme God (by which I mean derogate from His glorious attributes) by attributing to Him, who is the God " whose peace passeth all understanding," who is eminently the God of love and of goodwill toward men, to whom the most acceptable of all religions must be that of practical humanity; who is merciful; who is the God of purity, truth, charity, and justice—such attributes as those depicted on the pages of the Old Testament. Surely it is plainly manifest that those books constituting the first book of the Bible were written by men whose ideas and notions of God were purely anthropomorphic, and who had the crudest conception of what God was and is.

During the period of the later prophets that debased and debasing conception became more purified and more enlightened, and with the teaching and preaching of Jesus it became still more purified, still more enlightened; and I venture to think that during the progress of the last century a still purer and more enlightened conception of God has been present to the mind of everyone who has been honestly seeking for truth, and that with each succeeding generation more and more exalted and perfect will that conception become.

So far we have been discussing a portion only of the internal evidence, as opposed to inspiration, of the Old Testament. I propose now to briefly review other portions of the internal evidence of the Bible as affecting the theory of the inspiration of both Old and New Testament, and particularly of the latter. For I make this further assertion, that the intermingling of what is fabulous and legendary— of so-called miracles—is, throughout both books, so manifest, the contradictions and errors so great, the improbabilities so forcible, that no sane thinking man or woman can accept either the Old or the New Testament (much less both) as the inspired revelation of God. By way of the most cursory illustration, take the account of the six days of creation, with lightness and darkness on the first day, and yet no moon, or sun, or stars till the fourth day, and with all its other vulgar errors and misconceptions; Eve made out of one of Adam's ribs as a full-grown woman, and married to him almost immediately (this is absolutely more extraordinary than the incarnation of Jesus)—the Serpent and the Fall—the Flood, which covered the tops of the highest mountains under heaven—the Ark, with its extraordinary population—the ingenious legend about the Tower of Babel, by way of accounting for diversity of language, but at the same time making God neither allwise, nor all-seing, nor all-powerful—the story of Balaam's ass—of Samson, whose strength was in his hair, disappearing when his hair was cut off and growing again as his hair grew—the version of the plagues of Egypt—the passage of the Red Sea — God speaking to Moses out of the bush which was on fire,* but was not consumed—the sun and the moon standing still at Joshua's command—the miraculous conceptions † of Sarah (see the account in Genesis xviii., where God comes down, apparently in the form of a Trinity, to Abraham and Sarah, and talks and eats with them) and others of the patriarchs' wives who were barren —the miraculous conception of Manoah, who was barren, and to whom the angel of the Lord appeared, and who, after revealing the fact of her coming conception, went up to Heaven in a flame of fire (Judges xiii.)—the bringing to life* by Elisha of the dead son of the Shunammite—the parting by Elijah, and subsequently by Elisha, of the flowing waters of Jordan — the immortality † of Elijah and his ascent into Heaven in a chariot of fire drawn by horses of fire—the finding of an iron axe-head by Elisha, which was lost by a man who was in sore grief, because it was borrowed, and the causing it to swim in the Jordan (2 Kings vi.); also, in the same chapter, Elisha's defeat of the bands of the King of Syria by smiting them with blindness, Elisha being also surrounded with horses and chariots of fire—Moses's interview with God on Mount Sinai, together with his forty days'‡ fast there—the witch of Endor raising the spirit § of Samuel to interview Saul—and in the later book of prophecy, the book of Daniel, we have accounts of three men cast bound into burning fiery furnaces, and walking about unhurt in the furnace with a fourth who was not cast in—of a man who was turned into a beast for years, and eat grass, and then resumed human shape—of miraculous writings on walls—of lions who refused to eat Daniel, because God protected him, but allowed helpless and innocent women and children to be mangled and devoured by the same lions before ever they came to the bottom of the den (Daniel vi. 24).

Passing to the New Testament we have the miraculous conceptions of Elisabeth and Mary, resembling in all respects the miraculous conceptions of Manoah and others in the Old Testament; the extraordinarily ridiculous and impossible phenomenon of the star in the east, and the temptations of Jesus by Satan—all of which I have already sufficiently discussed; the opening of the heavens, the descent of the Holy Ghost in the form of a dove upon Jesus after he had been baptized by John, and the voice from heaven saying " Thou art My beloved Son," the transfiguration of Jesus, and Moses, and Elias, when they all talked together in the hearing of the disciples, and who addressed Jesus while he was being transfigured, again followed by a voice from heaven saying " this is My beloved Son;" the story of his resurrection after his death upon the cross; the miracles of raising Lazarus from the dead after corruption had set in, of turning water into wine, of walking upon the sea, of stilling the tempest; the miracles of the loaves; the sending the devil out of a maniac into 2,000 pigs, who immediately all drowned themselves in the sea; the sudden conversion of Paul* with its accompaniments of the supernatural light and the voice of Jesus, from heaven, quoting a passage from the Greek plays " it is hard for thee to kick against the pricks."

Now, all these events which I have mentioned are, it wilt be observed, absolute suspensions and violations of the regular and otherwise unvarying course of nature, and what is still more extraordinary, we can find a parallel for nearly every one of them in the Old Testament. Further, most of them are alleged to have taken place in the presence of a large number of persons, often of multitudes, yet as to much the larger portion of these events we have not more than two witnesses—as to many of them (like that of the turning the water into wine) only one—and where there is more than one the two do not agree, two or more of the four evangelists even being often absolutely silent upon the most important and remarkable events in the life of Jesus. Why this most striking paucity of, or rather absence of, witnesses? Why do those who are said to have been eyewitnesses testify to matters of minor importance and omit all mention of the more important? Why these discrepancies? If the writers were inspired, surely they must have been inspired to describe correctly and truthfully. That there is this striking paucity of testimony—that there are these startling omissions, contradictions and discrepancies as ta event after event in the life of Jesus anyone who feels disposed to take the trouble of comparing the narratives contained in the four Gospels, will readily perceive— notably as regards the more important events of Jesus' life, such as the incarnation, transfiguration, and his appearing after his resurrection; and the various alleged miracles, such as the raising of Lazarus (the most important one of all), the turning the water into wine, the miraculous loaves; but even in minor matters these inspired writers are also hopelessly at variance. Where Mark and Luke describe one blind man only as being cured, Matthew describes two. Luke describes the cure as having taken place when Jesus was going into Jericho; Matthew and Mark, who differ as to the number, disagree with Luke as to the time and place, and describe the cure as having been effected by Jesus when he was leaving the city. For the purpose of the delivery of the address called the Sermon on the Mount, Matthew makes Jesus ascend a mountain and sit on its top during the delivery. Luke states that Jesus delivered the sermon on the plain, and came down for that purpose, and that he stood while delivering it. So as to the time of the important event of Jesus' crucifixion. One evangelist gives it as the third hour, another at the sixth, and another as the ninth.

In the last chapter of his Gospel, Matthew, in describing the still more important event of the resurrection,* says, " Behold, there was a great earthquake; for the angel (one) of the Lord descended from heaven, and came and rolled back the stone from the door, and sat upon it. Mark, Luke, and John differ from Matthew, and all four differ from each other. Three of them do not mention the rolling back of the stone, or the more remarkable event of the earthquake. Mark says the angel (one) was within the sepulchre, and sitting on the right side. Luke states there were two angels, both standing; while John says they were both (two) sitting, one at the head and the other at the feet. Again, as to the women who are alleged to have been present during the occurrence, John only mentions one—Mary Magdalene; Matthew two—Mary Magdalene and the other Mary; Mark three—the two Marys and Salome. Luke magnifies the number considerably—the two Marys, Joanna, and " certain others with them." On far stronger evidence (if evidence it can be called) than that which supports any of the events or miracles to which I have been alluding, the Roman Catholic Church propound to the world their miracles, and yet the Protestant section of Christianity reject them as incredulous; why? Because they involve a violation or suspension of unvarying natural laws; because such things do not happen, and because reason refuses to give credence to them. In the presence of scores of people at the marriage feast at Cana. Jesus performs the miracle of turning the water into wine; and yet only one person bears testimony to that extraordinary performance, and in a statement, if written by John at all, written by him very many years after the death of Jesus. When Jesus walks on the sea, we must suppose by virtue of his divine nature, he would have passed the disciples, missed the ship, had they not called out to him. Those who can believe such things as these also believe that Elisha made the axe-head swim in Jordan; divided the flowing waters of Jordan with a stroke of Elijah's coat; raised the dead child of the Shunammite, and, like Jesus with the loaves and fishes, multiplied the widow's oil; that Elijah called down fire from heaven to consume the captains of fifties; also parted the waters of Jordan, and, in his life, ascended to heaven in a chariot of fire; that the sun and moon stood still at the command of Joshua; that angels came down from heaven and talked and ate with the patriarchs, and their wives and concubines, in the same way as in the New Testament they are said to have come down to, and talked with, Joseph and Zacharias, Elisabeth and Mary.

Surely, none who read, and reason upon, and criticise the Bible in precisely the same way as they are entitled to do any other book, for the legitimate purpose of ascertaining whether it is that which it is said or represented to be, on what evidence it rests, and what is the nature of the evidence, external and internal, can for one moment give credence to these stories—creations of imagination or of superstition, fables, or legends, or fancies, contradicting as they do all nature's laws, those laws being the unvarying laws of God. The reason why such a large number of Christians attach weight to these narrations is simply because they are contained in that which is now called the Bible, but which should more properly be called " the Books." They assume, without inquiry, that whatever is in the Bible must be true. The followers of Confucius, the Buddhists, the Zoroastrians, the Mahommedans, also assume that whatever is in their Bibles is true. The orthodox Christian questions the right of any or of all of these vast religious sects so to do, and throws ridicule upon their belief, and taking it for granted that his Bible is the only true Bible, and that all the other Bibles of the world are mere works of fiction, affects to look with contempt upon these poor, benighted pagans. But the Bibles of these poor pagans are records of far greater antiquity than that of the Christian, and the supernatural events, miracles, and visions recorded in them are supported by quite as much evidence (let us so call it for the moment) as that on which we are asked to credit the supernatural events, miracles, and visions of the Christian Bible. Such assumptions as these are really nothing more than that of the old woman who was quite prepared to believe that Jonah swallowed the whale had it only been so printed in the Bible. Because people have been told so they are content to imagine (I cannot legitimately use the word believe) that the Bible is the inspired revelation of God, without any reasonable or reasoning inquiry into the truth or otherwise of the statement made to them. " There is much in the Bible that is beautiful and true, but, alas, there is also much that no man in his reason can accept." If, then, the doctrines of (I) the Trinity, of (2) the Deity of Jesus, of (3) Jesus being the actual and very Son of God, of (4) the Inspiration of the Bible, all disappear, it may be asked, what is there left? What knowledge or belief can we have of or in a God? With the fall of these doctrines would not the purifying and ennobling influence of religion, would not religion itself also fall? To all of these questions I shall be able, I trust, to give complete and satisfactory answers when I come to discuss "A Pure Faith and God."

* I would ask the reader to read for himself critically the passages to which I refer as they stand in the Bible. Either to refer to the passages at length here, or to criticise fully the interpretations put upon them, would occupy more time than is at my disposal, to say nothing of space. Nor can I attempt to do more than pass in review, in the briefest possible manner, a few out of a multitude of instances.

* The quotations and information I make use of here are from the writings of Professor Carpenter.

* It is worthy of notice the significance that is attached to "fire " all through the Old Testament. It is to be kept always burning on the altar. Leviticus vi. I3.—"The fire shall ever be burning upon the altar: it shall never go out" ; God in the bush on fire; God in fire on Mount Sinai; Elijah ascending in a chariot of fire drawn by horses of fire, and calling down fire from Heaven to consume the captains of fifties; and so on throughout the Old Testament.

† It may be observed how singularly these conceptions resemble those of Elisabeth and Mary, as described by Luke.

* This equals the greatest miracle that is alleged to have been performed by Jesus—" the raising of Lazarus."

† Elijah therefore never dies: he was translated to heaven, it is a question whether this be not a more wonderful occurrence than the resurrection—it certainly is as described.

‡ Not unlike the forty days, in the wilderness, ot Jesus.

§ A medium evidently employed to interview the spirit world.

* We have no less than four accounts of this remarkable event, of which not two are alike. One from Luke, in Acts ix., a second in Acts xxii., a third in Acts xxvi., and a fourth from Paul in his Epistle to the Galatians, chapter i. It would make this note too lengthy to refer to the various discrepancies and contradictions in the four accounts—when critically examined they are very striking; but, for example, in Acts ix., it is stated that Paul's companions heard the voice speaking. In Acts xxii. 9 this is flatly contradicted. In Acts xxii. I0 it is stated that Jesus, when speaking to Paul from heaven, after quoting the passage from Euripides and Eschylus, told Paul, in answer o his question, " What shall I do, Lord? " to go to Damascus and get his instructions there from the disciples as to what he was to do, but in Acts xxvi. this again is contradicted, for it is there stated that thevoice from heaven gave him instructions in full on the spot (see verses 16, 17, and 18). Again in Acts it is stated that Paul was instructed by the disciples at Damascus in his calling, but Paul takes great pains in his Epistle to the Galatians to distinctly repudiate this, and yet Luke, who is credited with being the writer of the Acts, was one of theinspired evangelists.

* It may be noted in reference to the appearance of Jesus after the resurrection, that Mary Magdalene did not know him when she saw him, but took him for the gardener; that he appeared in another form to the two disciples, who were travelling to Emmaus, who had supper with Jesus there, but also did not know him.

Part IV.
THE ATONEMENT*—THE ADVENT.

" If an offence come out of the Truth, better is it that the offence come than the Truth be concealed."—Jerome.

"The doctrine of sacrifice or vicarious punishment is the most universal, and yet the most absurd of all religious tenets that ever entered into the mind of man. That there should be any manner of connection between the miseries of one being, and the guilt of another; or that the punishing the innocent and excusing the guilty should be a mark of God's detestation of sin; or that two acts of the highest injustice should make one act of justice, is so fundamentally wrong, so diametrically opposed to common sense, and to all our ideas of justice, that it is astonishing that so many should either believe it themselves, or impose it upon others."

In discussing the subject of the atonement, I shall endeavour, first to give the popular definition of what an atonement is; and then, secondly, proceed to give that which is more to our present purpose, a definition of the three different views of the Christian doctrine of atonement, which have been maintained by the Christian Church. The popular notion of an atonement is the doing of some act, by which one person who has been estranged from another, by the commission of some fault or injury, is reconciled to that other. This, in addition to being the popular notion of atonement, appears to me to be its true definition. What is more, the only atonement, for which there is Scriptural authority, falls within and satisfies this very definition. When one does a cruel or an unjust act, to say nothing of the commission of graver offences, one sins against what is good—in other words, against God—and is therefore estranged from God; and, supposing the person who commits the offence not to be callous or indifferent to the doing of what is wrong, he feels dissatisfied with himself, and longs to be reconciled again to the good that is in him —that is, God Then what says Scripture upon this point: " Has the Lord as great delight in burnt-offerings and sacrifices as in obeying the voice of the Lord? Behold! to obey is better than sacrifice, and to hearken than the fat of rams." David, in the Psalms, says: "For Thou desirest not sacrifice, else would I give it; Thou delightest not in burnt-offering. The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and a contrite heart, O God, Thou wilt not despise." And Micah, one of the later prophets, states that what God demands is not an offering of rams, but to " Do justly, love mercy, and walk humbly with thy God." This is the way by which man who sins is to remove the estrangement, and to reconcile, not God to him, but himself to God. This is the atonement of humanity. Humanity by its own acts creates the estrangement. God is never estranged from man; the man who sins estranges himself from God, and he can remove that estrangement, and reconcile himself to the good that is in him, by acting righteously. No doubt in this sense there may be atonement; and it appears to me that it is only in this sense such a doctrine as that of atonement can rationally be maintained. But, unfortunately, this is not the orthodox Christian's view of the doctrine; nor is it that of the Christian churches. And it is their view, or rather their views, which I now purpose to examine, and to show that they are erroneous, derogatory to an all-just, all-merciful, allloving, and omnipotent God, and that not one of them form any part of the religion of Jesus. Now, what are those views? As at present maintained they are two; as they have been maintained, three. The first and original doctrine of the atonement was created long after the death of Jesus, and as a sort of corollary to, or necessary sequence of, the doctrine of the fall. Man had fallen, and thereby became obnoxious to death. But for the Fall he would have been immortal. As another result of the Fall he was under Satan's power, and when death supervened would go to hell, and be there tormented by Satan and his angels, unless some atonement were made from him. This atonement was the sacrifice of Jesus—in other words, Jesus was to die, go down to hell, and be tormented by Satan as a substitute for the rest of the human race, and thus purchase their delivery from Satan. But by degrees this doctrine of " the Fall" has become almost altogether abandoned, chiefly for the reason that it has been proved to be absolutely untrue. Man, instead of falling, has been century by century progressing in all that is good and ennobling, and though still far from perfect, will continue to progress. With the decay of the doctrine of " the Fall " this view of the doctrine of the atonement also disappeared. Then, later, the view was propounded that Jesus was not sacrificed as a ransom to be paid to Satan for giving up his claim to torture and fry the human race, but to appease the wrath of an angry God. This view held sway amongst orthodox Christians and the Christian churches for some considerable time, and, unfortunately, still obtains amongst many of the hell-fire and devil school; but it has also in its turn, to a very considerable extent, given way to a third view, which, I think, must from its terms be the product of the metaphysical school, but which may fairly be said to be the now generally accepted view of the doctrine of the atonement. As I understand this latest development of the doctrine, it is this: That God, who is absolutely righteous, and pure, and just, could not, without derogating from these attributes, or at any rate, from that of perfect justice, forgive man for sin unless some voluntary sacrificial victim could be found for the purpose of expiating the sins which man had committed; that thus God's attribute of perfect justice would remain unblemished, for by this form of expiation it would be shown to the world that man could not disobey the laws of God—or, in other words, commit sin—without a satisfaction having to be rendered to the necessary requirements and demands of the absolute and perfect justice of God. This view has certainly a very metaphysical flavour, and was evidently resorted to in order to maintain that doctrine of the atonement (which had so frequently changed its aspect), in some form or another. Now, assuming there is Scriptural authority for the doctrine, which of the three is the Scriptural doctrine?—why all these changes and transformations?—and why has each change made with the progress of years, of civilization, and of the free use of reason, resulted in an atonement of a milder hue than its predecessor? I shall presently show that not a syllable of authority can be found throughout the whole of the doctrines and teachings of Jesus for this last or for any one of these views; but, before doing so, let me ask the question, is not even this comparatively mild and very ingenious view absolutely derogatory to an Infinitely Just, All-loving, All-merciful, and Omnipotent God?

Can we conceive that the God who is ever ready to forgive and receive the prodigal, who rejoiceth more over one sinner that repenteth than over ninety-nine just persons who need no repentance, who forgives the woman taken in adultery, in the very act, with the kindly words " Go, and sin no more," who declares by His prophets that He wants no victim, no sacrifice—that a contrite heart, the doing justly, righteously, and mercifully, is the only sacrifice He requires, refused and was unable to forgive His children for their errors until a voluntarily living victim was found to satisfy the draconian demands of His justice. Surely such a God could never win our love, could not be Omnipotent, could not be All-love, could not be All-merciful. Through all three views runs, it will be seen, the idea of propitiation by sacrifice, and this idea not given expression to, be it remembered, till many years after the death of Jesus, was really nothing less than a relapse into a remnant of the old Jewish system of sacrifice, or of the more ancient barbaric or pagan notion extending as far back as the Homeric days, of propitiating an angry or offended Deity by the sacrifice of an animal, or, in some countries, of a human being. At first Christianity was happily free from it, but by degrees this corruption crept into it and became incorporated with it, like those of the Trinity and the Deity of Jesus. Let us, however, for a moment adopt the third and latest view, that Jesus voluntarily offered himself to God as a satisfying victim, and came down to earth from heaven for that purpose, to perform the sacrifice. Then this most extraordinary and singular fact stares us in the face, that all through the various histories of the sayings and teachings of Jesus there is not one word, to be found either directly or indirectly bearing upon this the most striking, startling, and important part of his mission, or to sustain any one of the three progressive developments of this doctrine, so strangely and significantly savouring of ancient sacrificial rites. This was according to all and each of the views the grand central object of Jesus's mission. This is the message the Almighty God has sent him to deliver, and he forgets all about it. Can we then, I ask, accept any one of these transformations of the creation of a later age? If we cannot, then we must reject absolutely the doctrine of the atonement as propounded by the Christian Church, and we are brought to that and only that doctrine of atonement with which I opened this discussion, a doctrine which is in accordance with the declarations of Scripture, and, what is more, in accordance with reason and common sense.*

In discussing the doctrine of " The Advent" a very few words will suffice: the declaration alleged to have been made upon the subject by Jesus has been falsified by the event. That declaration is contained at length in Matthew xxiv., of which verses 29, 30, 31, and 34, are as follows:— " Immediately after the tribulation of those days shall the sun be darkened and the moon shall not give her light, and the stars* shall fall from, heaven, and the powers of the heavens shall be shaken; and then shall appear the sign of the Son of Man in heaven; and then shall all the tribes of the earth mourn and they shall see the Son of Man coming in the clouds of heaven with power and great glory; and he shall send forth his angels with a great sound of a trumpet, and they shall gather together his elect from the four winds. Verily I say unto you this generation shall not pass till all these things be fulfilled." If, therefore, this declaration was made by Jesus, it clearly intimates (that is if we take plain, ordinary words in their plain, ordinary meaning) that the end of all things and the advent were to take place within the lifetime of the first Christian generation. Of course orthodoxy is ready with an interpretation of and an explanation for this passage. But, unfortunately for orthodoxy and the ecclesiastical metaphysical school, neither St. Paul, nor St. Peter, nor St. John, nor St. James agree with them, but evidently take the declaration in its plain and obvious meaning. For instance, St. Paul, in I Thessalonians iv. 15, 16, 17, writes—" We which are alive and remain unto the coming of the Lord shall not prevent them which are asleep. For the Lord Himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God, and the dead in Christ shall rise first; then, we, which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them (the dead) in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air." It is clear, therefore, that the only advent of which mention is made in the New Testament has not come to pass though the time mentioned for the occurrence has long since elapsed; and, even without taking into consideration the time limit fixed by Jesus, and so distinctly referred to by Paul, the statement is in itself utterly incredible, for how could Jesus, assuming him to be the Deity and a spirit—unless, indeed, he were to go through the process of a second incarnation in a virgin's womb—be seen by all the tribes of the earth, coming on clouds, with shouts and the noise of trumpets. Matthew Arnold, in " Literature and Dogma," upon this doctrine of the advent, makes amongst others the following observations:—" The mistake of imagining that the world was to end, as St. Paul announces, within the lifetime of the first Christian generation, is palpable. But the reporters of Jesus make him announcing just the same thing, 'This generation shall not pass away, &c.' Popular theology can put a plain satisfactory sense upon this, but, as usual, through that process described by Butler (Bishop Butler) by which anything can he made to mean anything; and from this sort of process the human mind is now beginning to shrink." With this extract I think I may now leave the further consideration of the doctrines of the atonement and the advent to the reader, without proceeding to examine the retrospective propitiatory effect of the one upon those millions who had died during the thousands of years of the habitable world's history, before the birth of Jesus, as compared with its prospective propitiatory effect upon the millions of future generations; or as to the other (the advent), what is to become of the millions who are dead, but who are not the elect of Christ; for the dead who are Christ's elect are to rise first, and then those of the elect who are alive at the time are to be caught up into the air with the elect dead. But to the millions upon millions of the non-elect (including all Jews, infidels, and heretics) who are dead the pageant of the trump, and the shout, and of the stars dropping out of heaven, is apparently wholly lost; while all the other millions of the non-elect who are living, and who are called the Tribes, are to mourn and weep.

* I had just reached this point in my manuscript, when, through the kindness of a friend, I became possessed of two works, one "A Discourse of Matters Pertaining to Religion," by Theodore Parker, the other "The Religion of Evolution," by Savage. For some reasons I regret that I did not obtain the former at an earlier date, as it deals most ably with both the subjects last discussed—" The Inspiration of the Bible and Miracles." However, I have decided to leave my manuscript upon these and prior subjects as it stands, unaltered, a course which, perhaps, may be more satisfactory to the reader. But, conscious of many imperfections in my treatment of them, I gladly refer the reader to the work by Theodore Parker. The other work, " The Religion of Evolution," I utilize to some considerable extent in the discussion of the doctrine of the atonement, and in dealing with the subject of " God." It is a most charming and fascinating work, and will amply repay perusal, if for no other end than this, for its demonstration of the fact that science is the handmaid, and scientific truths are the most powerful allies, of pure religion. I also take this opportunity of acknowledging my indebtedness, for many of the quotations I have availed myself of, and for facilities I have enjoyed in the way of textual reference, to the industry and research of the editor of a work called "The Unity, Duality, and Trinity of the Godhead," virtually a report of an ecclesiastical discussion upon these points.

* The word atonement nowhere occurs now in the New Testament. It occurred once in the authorized version in Romans v. II, but in the revised version it has been omitted and the word reconciliation substituted. So, as pointed out by the writer of " Texts and Margins," the words "for Christ's sake" have now also disappeared; and the passage of the authorized version in Romans iii. 25, "whom God hath set forth to be a propitiation through faith in his blood," now reads, " Whom God hath set forth by his blood (i.e., by his death) to be a propitiation through faith." Perhaps it was these two expressions of Paul in his letter to the Romans which has suggested the various doctrines of the atonement. Paul, as I have already pointed out, not Jesus, has been the originator of many doctrines not to be found in the teachings of Jesus. It is important to bear this in mind, for the religion of Paul, which is to a great extent metaphysical, mystical, and visionary, is no more like the religion of Jesus, which is practical humanity, than the Christianity of our own day resembles the Christianity of Jesus.

* Viewed as an inspired volume the astronomical errors in the Bible are certainly surprising, but viewing the Old Testament as merely a history of the Jewish nation and their religion, and the New as a history of the founding and growth and religion of the Christian sect, compiled by man, these errors merely represent the standard of astronomical knowledge attained at the dates the first and second books were written. Evidently in the passage cited, and which is reported as the declaration of Jesus, the stars are regarded as very small bodies as compared even with our earth and moon, and the idea is that when all the laws of nature are to be thrown into disorder by the advent, the stars are to drop like fireworks out of heaven on to earth. Considering that most of, if not all, the stars we see with the naked eye are larger than our sun the fireworks would certainly be on rather a large scale. The passage cited evidently refers to the stars in the same way as they are alluded to in the work of creation, in Genesis i.—" He made the stars also," the creation of the stars being thrown in as a mere nothing after the description of the creation of the sun and the comparatively diminutive moon. The same errors are apparent in Joshua telling not the earth (which he ought to have told) to stand still, but the sun and the moon; in the description of the star in the east, and in the notion that the earth was fixed, " setting it fast forever so that it could not be moved."

Part V.
A PURE FAITH—"GOD"

"Time erases the fictions of unfounded opinions; but confirms the judgments which are in accordance with truth."—Cicero.

IT may, no doubt, have somewhat surprised my readers that I did not discuss the subject of the inspiration of the Bible first, and thus enable myself to take up a very much more advantageous position for my attack upon the doctrines of the Trinity, and of the Deity of Jesus. My reason for not so doing was the conviction I held that I should be able, even after yielding to the supporters of those doctrines the most advantageous standpoint they could take, that of the inspiration of the Bible, to prove by weapons out of their own armoury, that both doctrines are untenable. I now venture to hope that, quâ those doctrines, my conviction was not ill-founded, and I also venture the further hope, that my endeavours to show that no rational man can accept the doctrines of the actual and very sonship of Jesus to God, the incarnation, the inspiration of the Bible, the atonement, and the advent have not been altogether unsuccessful. The many minor doctrines of the so-called popular orthodoxy it would be both tedious and unnecessary to discuss, for the fall of the base, necessitates that of the superstructure. For the purpose of this discussion I shall therefore assume that I have satisfied the reader that the doctrines I have mentioned are either the creations of superstition, the inventions of imagination or sentiment, or of priestcraft, that they are corrupt excrescences on pure religion, which I am now justified in lopping off. When these corruptions are removed and put out of sight, the way is at length clear. There is nothing now to distract our attention from that bright goal to which we are rapidly approaching. The obstructions to our view have been removed; the mists have been dispelled—the gloom and the darkness have taken flight. Breathing freely the untainted air of pure truth, throwing off all our shackles, leaving for ever all our weary doubts, we at length find true rest and true peace. The light fills our mental vision with bright hope. For us, no longer bewildered by complex and devious tracks, there remains but one smooth, straight, plain, beautiful path leading us to an ever-growing and more perfect knowledge of that God who, no longer standing aloof, requires not to be approached by mediators and intercessors—by Christs and Virgin Marys; who is in constant and loving communion with all His children—the goal of all their hopes—their home—their perfect rest; whose infinite attributes of love, mercy, justice, truth, power, purity, and wisdom may now be presented to our minds invested with a grandeur, beauty, and majesty that hitherto have been blurred, blotted, dimmed, and impaired by doctrines which— inconsonant with even our finite notions of love, mercy, and justice—are destructive of the infinite attributes of the Eternal. The tempest of doubt and the billows of superstition have disappeared; we are now on the calm, blissful sea of pure theistic belief—refreshing, and invigorating in its simplicity—warm and glowing in its absolute unclouded devotion to, love for, and perfect trust in God alone—proclaimed by nature—originating in instinct—accredited by reason—fortified by science, and hailing the growth of all knowledge, the development of reason, the discoveries and researches of science as its most welcome allies. When once we have arrived at this belief, its truth and " sweet reasonableness" are so self-evident that almost at the moment of lighting upon it, it becomes a conviction. And what is it, after all, but the ancient monotheistic faith (at a more enlightened stage), before it became corrupted by paganism — the faith that early Christianity again, in the person of Jesus, purified and preached, but which in its turn likewise became corrupted by the rites, doctrines, and subtleties of the priest? As Macaulay has justly observed, " Christianity conquered paganism, but paganism infected Christianity; the rites of the Pantheon passed into her worship, and the subtleties of the Academy into her creed." It is this infection that has tended so much to obscure and paralyze the Christian's mental vision of that Supreme Will whom Jesus preached, and to whom alone he instructed his nearest friends and followers to pray. But this belief is that monotheistic faith and more, for just as the Theism of Jesus is more enlightened and purer, and more attractive and more rational, than that of Israel, so, I venture to assert, is the Theism of to-day more enlightened, purer, more attractive, and more rational than even that of Jesus. For the devil—the angry God—the God to be feared—the eternal hell—torture and torment for all but for the elect—an immediate advent or speedy end of the world, with all its paraphernalia of suns turned into blood, moons into darkness, trumpets, clouds, and shouts, to say nothing of Incarnations and Trinities and Atonements —are no part of the theistic belief of to-day. As knowledge increases, men begin to use their reason more, and by using their reason more become more independent, more selfreliant, more enlightened; and the surety of man's conception and knowledge of God and of His truth becoming, century by century, less imperfect, points to a Theism in the future correspondingly purer, more rational, and more sublime. But the orthodox Christian will say, as he has often said before, pure Theism cannot be the whole truth, because it is so cold and lifeless, and the doctrines of orthodox Christianity are so sweet, so beautiful, and so warm. And he will further say, if you adopt Theism you must adopt the Bible, because without the Bible you could not have that knowledge of God which you claim to have. I will, therefore, proceed to discuss and deal with both these positions, observing that when I come to discuss the latter I will also deal with that which forms the second subject of this part—"God."

Taking first, then, the charge made against Theism of being cold and lifeless, and the claim made forthe orthodoxdoctrines of being sweet, and beautiful, and warm; let me ask the reader, bearing in mind what I have already endeavoured (very inadequately, I feel) to say as to the beauty, and sympathy, and warmth of the theistic form of belief, to ask himself the question whether the conception of a God to whom he can always go freely and without fear, feeling sure of a ready welcome, lovingly, and with perfect trust— with whom he can always be in constant, direct, and immediate communion—who requires no access to him through others, the observance of no formalities, the profession of no creed, of no form of belief, the holding of no doctrine—to whom man is responsible, not for his belief or professions, but only for his actions—who is the God of peace that passeth all understanding—who will recompense man with happiness for every good work, act, or thought—who being infinite is infinitely just, wise, merciful, loving, and pure—who, viewed by the light of Theism, has never done or sanctioned that which can even be suggested as inconsonant with these endearing attributes, can be a cold and lifeless conception? This is part (for we can only know part of what God is) of the one picture, now let us look upon the other. A God who stands aloof—to whom our prayers have to be filtered through others, a Christ or a Virgin Mary, or through both—who could not receive the penitent or accept the offering of a contrite heart without first satisfying His attribute of infinite justice by the bloody sacrifice of His only Son—who, consistently with His attribute of infinite purity, impregnates a material virgin, resulting in her conception of a material son—who is divided into three distinct persons for some purposes, but is only one for others—who being a spirit begot a son—who is a jealous God, and visits upon innocent children the sins of their fathers. Passing by devils and hells, and places of punishment and torment—the narrow path, with its few frequenters, leading to life, and the broad path, with its multitude of passengers, going to destruction—and all the impurities and horrors, blasphemies and absurdities, which may fairly be classed as part and parcel of the orthodox Christian faith as at any rate held by a very large majority, is that conception sweet, beautiful, and warm? What is sweet?—God saying: However penitent you may be, however good your actions may be, you must not approach Me except through Christ; unless you believe that he is divine, let your life be as perfect as it may, it is all of no avail? What is beautiful?—God's only Son voluntarily offering himself as a victim for a bloody sacrifice, because God was unable to satisfy His attribute of outraged justice in any other way? or the contemplation of Jesus in the womb of a woman for the natural period of pregnancy, and then brought forth with all the natural concomitants of a natural delivery? And what, apart from the doctrine of hell-fire and the devil, is there warm in all this, unless by want of warmth is meant that the theistic belief is too pure, too simple, and too spiritual —that it does not appeal enough to the senses—that man is too material for such a spiritual conception—that to bring man into any sort of relation with God you must have some sort of go-between or link, half-human, half-divine, a God-man or God-woman? If this be what is meant by warmth, while I deny that it is warmth, I firmly believe that feeling to be the fons et origo of all the marvellous doctrines, just as it is the cause of all the rites and ceremonies, that we now find to be prevalent in so very large a number of the Christian churches.

So much for the coldness and lifelessness of the one conception, and for the sweetness, beauty, and simplicity of the other; but, before finally leaving this branch of the subject, I desire to draw attentive consideration to that which I am assured must be a cause for regret, if not pain, to all who truly love and honour God, and that is not only the tendency to make Jesus, but the fact that Jesus is made, in all the churches of orthodox Christianity, to supersede that God whom those very churches profess to love and honour as the Father. Just as the Virgin Mary in fact, though not in profession, absorbs the greater portion of the love, adoration, and gratitude of the Roman Catholic, so to Jesus is given, in reality, the greater portion of the love, adoration, and gratitude of the orthodox Protestant. In the services of the Christian churches the prayers to the Son of God, to Christ, to the Son of David, to Christ the Redeemer of the world, to Christ the Saviour of the world, are not only frequent, but are the subject of much repetition;* and the first object that meets the eye on entering a place of worship is a colossal picture of the sacrificial victim. The natural and necessary effect of all this is to thrust the God into the shade, to bring Jesus into the light, to impress upon those who worship in those churches the feeling that Jesus is their natural Help, Protector, and Saviour, and to obscure, mystify, and derogate from the conception of God. And if I be asked how it is that a theistic belief has not been more generally adopted, I answer—first, because men are only just commencing to dare to use their reason in reference to religious belief—they are only just beginning to learn to walk by themselves; and, secondly, because of the opposition of, and the efforts of, church and minister and priest. Viewed as bodies, churches, ministers, and priests feel and know that, as far as they are concerned, Theism is too pure and too simple a form of belief—that it is too plain and too easy—that it is not sufficiently complicated or mysterious. They feel and know that with such a belief prevailing the authority of the church they represent would rapidly disappear; that all those doctrines which now require so much explanation, and all those rites and ceremonies which create the necessity for priest and minister, would for ever vanish. I regret to be forced to say that I believe the church cherishes and nurses the superstitious and the mysterious; but as surely as the truths of reason must in the end prevail, so surely will theistic belief become, before long, the belief of all thinking men.*

Then as to the second position—" If you adopt iheism you must adopt the Bible, because without the Bible you could not have that knowledge of God which you now claim to have." To start with, this is not only mere assertion and assumption, but unverifiable assertion and assumption, and contrary to the fact. Had there been no Bible, man would have had just the same knowledge of God as he now possesses. That conception of God which has its birth in nature and in instinct took its place in man's heart and mind ages before the birth of Jesus, or that of a Bible in any shape or form; and with the increase of man's knowledge of nature, and of man's reasoning powers, so did that conception become enlarged and beautified. How did ancient Israel, amongst some unworthy and derogatory anthropomorphic notions of God, become, without the Bible, possessed of so many that were grand in their simplicity and beautiful in their conception?—those outpourings of Israel's heart and life towards God which have been so graphically and touchingly described by Matthew Arnold?† How did those ancient and vast religious sects, in comparison with whose antiquity Christianity is but the creation of yesterday, and with whose teeming millions the followers of Christianity are but as a handful, without the Bible get such lofty and spiritual conceptions of God as these *:—

" He is the principle of Goodness and Truth; the Eternal Source of sunshine and light; the Centre of all that exists; the Creator of all things; the Sovereign Intelligence; the All-seeing; the Just Judge."

" God appears in the best thought, in the truest speech, in the sincerest action. Through His pure spirit He giveth health, prosperity, devotion, and eternity to the universe. He is the Father of all."

" Communicate to me the least name of God, and I will return to thee His greatest."

"Recognize the mark of God in every place. The world is the image of God."

" Human thought and knowledge combined can only spell the first letter of Thy Love."

" Thou pure and perfect God! Thine is the world s beauty and dominion. Thy beauty transcends the sun, and Thy Completeness the universe of forms. I call Thee not high, nor low;—recognizing no limit to Thy being. Thou art highest, Thou art deepest, Thou art the essence of all being. How can I know Thee, who art beyond the vision of reason? Being so concealed, Thou art the more revealed to the eye of the heart. The world were an empty tablet if Thou had'st not written thereon Thine Eternal Thought."

" I am that which has been, which is, and which will be, and no one has yet lifted the veil which covers me." "Thou art the Mind that understandeth all things; Thou art the Good that doeth all things; Thou art the Father that maketh all things; Thou art Thyself."

" There is one supreme mind, which transcends all other intelligences. Moving, it cannot be shaken; distant, yet it is near. It pervades the system of worlds, and is yet infinitely beyond it."

"He exists by Himself; He is All in all, because all is in Him. The Ganges flows—it is God. The ocean roars—it is God. The cloud that thunders, the lightning that flashes—is God. As from all eternity the universe existed in the spirit of God, so to-day all that exists is in His image."

"There is only One God, omnipotent, eternal, omnipresent. He is the Great Soul, of which all others are but parts."

" God dwells with him who embraces all things with his love."

"O Thou Eternal One; Thou Perfection of Time; Thou Truest Truth; Thou changeless Essence of all change; Thou most Excellent Radiance of Mercy, I take refuge in Thee."

" We will sing that eternal, wise, all-perfect Love, which brought order out of chaos."

" God is, by nature, the Father of men; and the best men He calls His sons.

" God is the light of the heavens, and of the earth.

"Thou art the Eternal One, in whom all order is centred."

How is it that we have, after the lapse of only a tew hundred years, a far more enlightened, elevating, and larger conception of God than the early Christians or Jews had —than that which the Bible does or can teach us I It only requires the most cursory reflection upon the origin and gradual growth of the conception of God to enable any thinking man to answer these questions. And during that period of gradual growth and development ever and anon would there arise some soul-stirred glowing King, or socalled prophet, priest, or leader of the people—like a Confucius or a Buddha, a Moses, a David, or a Jesus—who proclaimed a nobler and a purer, a less material and less anthropomorphic, God than had been known before. Without discussing the evolution of God—so ably dealt with in that work (" The Religion of Evolution ") to which I have previously referred, and premising that the idea of a God was an idea that has obtained, in one shape or another, amongst nearly every nation, civilized or uncivilized, of the world, let me ask the reader to reflect for a moment upon the prevalent idea of God, Zeus, or Jupiter, in the days of ancient Greece or Rome ; then to pass rapidly on to the God of the patriarchs, who walked, and sat down, and talked, and eat, and drank with them; then to the God of the people of Israel, who was a God of war, " the Lord mighty in battle," but who did not mix so freely with, nor perform in person such material acts among, Israel, as was His custom with the patriarchs—who, in fact, at that date ceased to appear in person save only to Moses, * and to him on very rare occasions; then to the far more enlightened God of the prophets, the God who is a " just God and a Saviour," " the High God their Redeemer," who requires man only " to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God;" of whom the Hebrew psalmist says, "A broken and a contrite heart, O God, thou wilt not despise;" and of whom Samuel said, " Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice, and to hearken than the fat of rams; " who during the whole period embraced by the prophets never appears in person, but only in visions; then to the God of Jesus and the early Christians, who began to cease appearing even in visions, except on very rare occasions, but communicated by means of angelic visits; and then to the growing and more enlightened conception that most earnest thinking men and women have at the present day—a conception which, with the increase of knowledge, and with the further revelations of nature and of nature's laws, will assuredly become more enlightened still. In other words, to put it shortly, as man's knowledge of and acquaintance with nature and nature's laws progress, and as civilization and humanity advance, so has the conception of God become more exalted and enlarged, more ennobled and more sublime. But now we know only part of God—we know more than we did—just as ' our forefathers knew more than their ancestors; but all that we do know only constitutes a part. And this, if borne in mind, should, I think, mitigate the contempt with which many regard Matthew Arnold's definition of God, " the Eternal Power, not ourselves, that makes for righteousness," and should also mitigate the contempt with which that writer apparently regards the definitions of " God," by some Unitarians, as " the great First Cause," "the Supreme Will," " the great Superintending Power of the Universe," "the Moral and Intelligent Governor of the Universe; " for all these, including Matthew Arnold's, represent merely the attempts of man's finite mind to define so much of an infinite God as his finite knowledge permits man to do.,And indeed, in the very discussion of this subject, I am well aware that the use of the pronoun " he," as applied to God, may well be cavilled at as carrying the idea of personality; so may the use of the term " God," as carrying no definition of what I mean by " God." I admit all this; but I have used, and continue to use, these expressions simply for the sake of convenience.

Matthew Arnold's definition, " the Eternal Power, not ourselves, that endures for righteousness" may well represent a part of what God is; so may the expressions "the Supreme Will," " the Great First Cause," and the others I have referred to. The pure Theist conceives God to represent in Himself (if I may use this word again for convenience sake) the best of all that is known to the finite mind of man to be best, but also a great deal more and beyond that, because that which is best finitely with man is best infinitely with God; and of this, of course, man can have no conception or knowledge. Each man's conception of God varies, and must vary, and each man's conception of God must necessarily be imperfect or partial. It is, therefore, impossible to lay down any definition of God which will even satisfy man's conception of God. How then can finite mind lay down any definition which will satisfy those infinite attributes of which we have only finite knowledge? And the strongest minded of us can only by great and continuous effort avoid somewhat analogous personal conceptions of God to those which we have so plentifully placed before us both in the Old and New Testaments, like Isaiah's God in white raiment sitting on a throne. It is all very well to be told in the New Testament by the writer of St. John's gospel, whoever he may have been, that " God is a spirit." This also, in its turn, may no doubt be accepted as a partially correct definition of God, or as a definition of part of God; but in scores of other places in the New Testament appears the personal conception of God—often even in the very discourses attributed to Jesus. All these and similar attempts to define what we mean by "God" are merely man-phrases, for being men we must and can only speak as men—man making the best and fullest affirmation of God that he can according to his conception of God. In fact, the position as to definitions of God cannot be well put better than in the following words of a celebrated Unitarian minister*:—"No sane and reverent man disputes that there are depths and heights in God from all recognition of which the limitations of our faculties absolutely cut us off, but that need not stand in the way of our recognizing such elements in Him as have some faint correspondence in ourselves." Now, I stated at the outset of this discussion that belief in a God—that is, a theistic belief—is one which originates in instinct, is proclaimed by nature, is accredited by reason, and becomes fortified by the discoveries of science. Therefore, not to lay myself open, if possible, to the charge of making assertions for the purpose of avoiding argument or proof, I desire, without going too much into detail, to place before the reader the more general grounds on which these propositions are based. Though attempts have been made to prove the contrary, it is still, generally speaking, a truism that in almost every tribe and every nation, civilized or uncivilized, prevails the notion of, and belief in, that power or force which we call " God "—a belief which may fairly be called an instinctive belief, in the sense that it was not in the first instance derived from man or from the teaching of man. How then did this notion or belief originate? I think it is clear it originated in and from the teachings of nature. In the movement of the wave—in the river stream—in the wind—in the thunder —in the woods, and forests, and mountain peaks—in the earthquake, the sun, and the stars remotest nations saw and acknowledged, though often under many forms, that power which we call " God." And as time progressed, and man studied nature more and learnt more from her, and began to ponder and think upon what he saw around him, man began to entertain less crude conceptions of that which motion, noise, light, height, and density first presented to his mind. He began to be conscious that there was some one master mind to whom these, and man himself, all owed their origin. This stage of man's knowledge and belief is that which is represented by the legend of the creation contained in Genesis. That account is plainly the effort of man to give speech to his then conception of what he had so far learnt from nature. Very crude, no doubt, still that of "a magnified non-natural man "—very terrible and wrathful—revengeful, requiring to be appeased by bloody sacrifices —rejoicing in destruction; but yet not much more crude, perhaps, than was man's then knowledge of nature.

In later years, amongst the first Christians, Jesus illustrated his conception of God, as a God who is tender, merciful, and loving, from nature. It was during the solitude of his studies, when preparing for the preaching of that Gospel which he began to promulgate when thirty years of age, that he learnt those lessons about God from nature: —" Consider the lilies: they toil not, neither do they spin." " Behold the fowls of the air: they sow not, neither do they reap." And whence does man now get his conception of God as a God of love—Infinite—Omnipotent—All-wise—Just—Unchangeable—Omnipresent, save, in great measure, from his study and knowledge of nature and the laws which pervade nature—from the penetration of her secrets and the unfolding of her mysteries by science—from the revelation of her beauties—from the rythmic and mystic order of her unity —from the wonderful, but even faint, knowledge that he now possesses of time and space? Surely the God who works in nature, even as we know it now, must be a God of love —unchangeable, all-wise, omnipotent, pervading all things, all space, all time. Does not the beauty of all things that are lovely or sublime proclaim that God is love? To use the beautiful and poetic language of another*—"The voices of the rosebud in the hedge, of the stream that gurgles down the shadowy vale, of the mountain peak that throws back from its snowy crest the roseate light of the declining sun, of the clouds themselves that canopy the great orb's bed, of the silent stars that converse together in the night, of the little birds that make air tremulous with song, of the mighty music that sobs and swells and crashes down the cathedral aisle; the voices of all these carry knowledge to the awakened heart of man that Love is the law by which all things move—the pulse of the overruling Will, the method of the purpose which holds time and space together, the texture of that righteousness towards which the Eternal Purpose shapes the sum of force."

Then, has not our conception of God been not only enlarged, but rendered more enlightened and more sublime, in proportion as nature unfolded her wondrous self to the indefatigable and searching eye of science? When man, not so very long ago, concluded that the earth was fixed, that it was a flat surface, that the sun and the stars revolved round it to give it light; that our earth, and what we saw with our eyes, was the universe, could their conception of the creative power of such a universe be as enlarged, as lofty and sublime, as that of the God of the universe which astronomy has revealed, and is revealing to us day by day? To take nothing else, the very idea of " space " and distances that astronomy has given us fills the mind with wonder and with awe, clothing nature with a sublimity, a majesty, and a beauty which, otherwise, we had never known; and so with " time," as read by the researches of geology, proving, as they do, that what was until recently regarded as the creation of a few thousand years dates back from millions, if not thousands of millions, of years. Surely, as Savage observes, " Science has heightened infinitely the objects of religion, giving us a grander God, a nobler humanity, a more magnificent universe as the theatre for human action. It has destroyed the superstitions, the crudities, the falsehoods, the misconceptions of men concerning religion—for example, the doctrines of astrology, of demoniacal possession, of witchcraft; the doctrine of the material resurrection of the body, of a material hell under the surface of the ground, and many such others, science has utterly destroyed." But science has done far more than this. Science has shown us that there exists throughout space, —throughout the vast limitless universe—motion, order, beauty; that there is behind all motion, all order, all beauty, a force that produces the motion, the order, and the beauty. This, that science calls force, religion calls God. Even if we accept the theory (I use the word advisedly, for, as yet, I do not think this can claim to be a scientific truth) of scientific astronomy that the universe as it is known to us was originally mere nebulous matter or fluid—fire, mist, or gaseous fluid—what was the force or will that created the nebulous matter, created the system in accordance with which were evolved suns and planets? Science revealing to us a grander universe than was ever known before, an unity of law, an unity of order and motion, the manifestations of some secret force or will pervading all space and all time: can we, knowing this and feeling this, truly say that science has not exalted our conception of that Supreme, that Mighty Will or Force?

Thus, not only do the more recent discoveries of science, like the needle to the pole, point to an all-pervading hidden life or secret force in the unfolding universe, but the reason of every man, who uses his reason fairly, shows him a God. For, to put it no higher than this, which is equivalent to putting it at the lowest, the presumption that fairly (I will not even say necessarily) arises from all these facts and scientific truths, to which I have but cursorily referred, is that there exists throughout space, and has existed throughout all time, some force—some life—some will—some power—some master mind—some cause—such as theology calls, and we, for the sake of convenience, call "God." Let any fair thinking man turn this over in his mind, and then ask himself the question, Is not this at any rate a presumption arising from what I know,* from what I see about me in nature, from the truths which science has revealed to me? I think the question will get from reason an affirmative response. Now, if this be so—if this be merely a presumption (and it might, it seems to me, be fairly placed higher in the category of proof) —then the onus is clearly cast on those who disaffirm the existence of what we are designating God to adduce some proof to rebut that presumption; and until that be done, and up to the present it has not been done, nor do I well see how it ever can be done, the presumption (which is really a scientific presumption) according to all laws of evidence is quite sufficient to act upon, and, if sufficient to act upon, amply sufficient to justify our belief in a God, whose temple is the universe, and to whom we should accord the worship, not of lips or doctrines, or creeds or forms, ceremonies or professions, but of living practical humanity, of faithful, active, pure, unselfish lives.

But in addition to all these indicia furnished by nature and science, establishing substantial premises from which reason may fairly and legitimately infer the existence of a God, there is also the view that has been so eloquently dwelt upon by Matthew Arnold: the consciousness that each one has of there being some power within himself, but which is not of himself, working for righteousness. This differs from the scientific view that I have touched upon in this respect, that the one proves God, by the other we feel God. This other is popularly called conscience; by Matthew Arnold, " the power, not ourselves, that endures or works for righteousness;" and what both really mean, and are, is very clearly stated by a celebrated Unitarian minister in the following words:—"When I contemplate one action, a deception, a deed of violence or injustice, an imperious prohibition, uncaused by me, asserts itself within me. When I shrink from some other, a self-sacrifice, a renunciation,—an urgent exhortation pronounces itself in my soul. When I have given way to passion, rebuke from somewhere, which I cannot put aside, stings me to the quick. When I have striven against evil promptings, crushed them out of me, and turned to do the right, a voice of approval makes music in me. These utterances are not mine. They supervene upon me. They check the current of my own personal propulsion, or swell its volume, and add motive to its force. They are not mine. They are speech to me. The command, the prohibition, the approval, the rebuke, so strongly bear the mark of communication from some other than ourself, that all ages have so interpreted them. They have ever been felt to be the uttterance of a law and its sanctions, not of the man's own making. Whence then? Some have striven to show that their authority is but that of the community of men made strong by the agreement of many generations. But who that writhes in remorse, who that has the song of a glad conscience in him, does not know that it is from a higher source than man? From whom then? Irresistible impulse replies 'from God.'" Nature and science therefore furnish us with external evidence of the existence of a God. This last view furnishes us with internal evidence, as regards ourselves, of the same fact. Sweeping away, therefore, all the superstitions and misconceptions which encumber and discredit religion, and which obscure and derogate from the glorious attributes of God, we are left alone with that God, of whose existence I have endeavoured to satisfy my readers we are entitled to hold a reasonable belief. That belief is pure Theism, which I now venture to assert is the only pure faith, the only rational religious belief. "To love Justice, Purity, Goodness, Holiness, Charity, Truth, is to love God; to love them is to live them. It implies abhorrence of evil; a desire and effort to be as perfect as God, to tolerate no wrong action, wrong thought, or wrong feeling; to make the heart right, the head right, the hand right; to serve God, not with the lips only, but the life; not only in Jerusalem and Gerizim, but everywhere; not by saying, ' Lord, Lord,' 'Save us, good Lord,' but by doing God's will. The love of God implies a love which is strongest at times of trouble, which never fails when humanity goes stooping and feeble, weeping its tears of blood; a love which annihilates temptation, and in the hour of agony brings as it were an angel from the sky; an absolute trust in God, a brave unconcern for the morrow, so long as the day's duties are faithfully done. It is a love of goodness and religion for their oum sake, not for the bribe of heaven or the dread of hell. It implies a reunion of man and God, till we think God's thought, and will God's will, and so have God abiding in us, and become one with Him." Is this cold I And yet Theodore Parker was an Unitarian.

George Robertson and Company, Limited, Printers, Melbourne.

* The following are a few specimens from the service of the Church of England:—

" Son of God. we beseech thee to hear us!"

"O Christ, hear us!"

" Christ, have mercy upon us!"

" Son of David (for this purpose Joseph is, of course, Jesus' father) have mercy upon us!"

"From our enemies defend us, O Christ I Mercifully forgive the sins of thy people!"

"Graciously hear us, 0 Christ I (and, as if that was not enough) Graciously hear us, 0 Lord Christ!"

"O God the Son, Redeevier of the world, have mercy upon us, miserable sinners."

" The exceeding great love of our only Saviour, Jesus Christ."

" O Lord, the only begotten Son, Jesus Christ; O Lord Goa, JLamD of God, Son of the Father, that takest away the sins of the world, have mercy upon us. Thou that takest away the sins of the world, have mercy upon us. Thou that takest away the sins of the world, receive our prayer. Thou that sittest at the right hand of God the Father, have mercy upon us."

* In the description of the temptations of Buddha by Edwin Arnold in his "Light of Asia," the reader will find these lines:—

" And third came she who gives dark creeds their power, Sillabat-paramasa, sorceress, Draped fair in many lands as lowly Faith, But ever juggling souls with rites and prayers; The keeper of those keys which lock up Hells And open Heavens. 'Wilt thou dare,' she said, 'Put by our sacred books, dethrone our gods, Unpeople all the temples, shaking down That law which feeds the priests and props the realms?' But Buddha answered, ' What thou bidd'st me keep Is form which passes, but the free Truth stands.'"

† In his " Literature and Dogma."

* These represent the Persian, Egyptian, Hindoo, Buddhist, Grecian, and Arabian conceptions of God, and are extracted from a volume entitled " Sacred Scriptures of the World."

* According to Exodus xxxiii. 23, God on one occasion appeared to Moses in person, placing His hand over Moses' eyes, so that he should not see God's face as He passed him, but removing the hand after passing, and allowing Moses to see His (God's) hinder parts, the conception of God being evidently that of a '' magnified non-natural

* The Rev. R. A. Armstrong.

* The Rev. R. A. Armstrong.

* Mr. Savage, in his work, " The Religion of Evolution," makes the following very trenchant observations upon scientific truths as opposed to what are asserted to be religious truths:—"Science is nothing more nor less than the arranged, organized, definite, verifiable knowledge of the world. That is, anything concerning man; concerning human society; concerning the earth; concerning the animals that inhabit the earth, the grasses, the herbs, the flowers, that spring out of its soil; concerning the clouds that sweep through the air; concerning the atmosphere itself; concerning the sun and the stars. Anything that we know and can prove about any of these things is science. It is real science when it can be verified, and when it is not somebody's guess or supposition. Now, there are a great many things that are simply believed, a great many theories that are called hypotheses. They are assumed as the working implements of science. They are 7iot science until they are established. Things that are proved, and that can be proved again, are science. And here is one grand advantage that scientific truth has over any other—that which is true in science is true everywhere, and it is true always. But the reason that religion is so disputed, that it is so bandied about, that it is so fought against, is, that theology has sought to identify with religion a hundred or a thousand things that no man on earth can prove. Many of the asserted truths of religion have been heretofore 'all in the air'—truths that nobody could touch— nobody could feel—nobody could see—nobody could prove; so that you could accept them if you wished to, but you could not make it a rational necessity for another man to accept them."