CON'T
"...560
What did the apostles teach?
Peter: "Servants [slaves], be subject to your masters with all fear; not only to the good and gentle, but also to the froward" (1 Peter ii, 18).
Paul: "Let as many servants [slaves] as are under the yoke count their own masters worthy of all honor" (1 Timothy vi, 1). "Servants, be obedient to them that are your masters according to the flesh, with fear and trembling" (Ephesians vi, 5).
The Rev. Dr. Wilbur Fisk, president of Wesleyan University, says: "The New Testament enjoins obedience upon the slave as an obligation due to a present rightful authority."
561
Did he favor marriage?
Matthew: He advocated celibacy, and even self-mutilation as preferable to marriage (xix, 10-12).
Following this teaching of their Master, Christians, many of them, have condemned marriage. A Christian pope, Siricius, branded it as "a pollution of the flesh." St. Jerome taught that the duty of the saint was to "cut down by the axe of Virginity the wood of Marriage." Pascal says: "Marriage is the lowest and most dangerous condition of the Christian."
G. W. Foote of England says: "Jesus appears to have despised the union of the sexes, therefore marriage, and therefore the home. He taught that in Heaven, where all is perfect, there is neither marrying nor giving in marriage."
"Monks and nuns innumerable owe to this evil teaching their shriveled lives and withered hearts." -- Mrs. Besant.
562
What did he encourage women to do?
Luke: To leave their husbands and homes, and follow and associate with him and his roving apostles -- "Mary, called Magdalene, out of whom went seven devils, and Joanna the wife of Chuza, Herod's steward, and Susanna, and many others, which ministered unto him of their substance" (viii, 2, 3).
563
What did he say respecting children?
"Suffer little children to come unto me and forbid them not."
But it was only the children of Jews he welcomed. The afflicted child of a Gentile he spurned as a dog. When the woman of Canaan desired him to heal her daughter, he brutally replied: "It is not meet to take the children's bread and cast it to the dogs" (Matthew xv, 26). The soldiers who spit on Jesus in Pilate's hall did not do a meaner thing than Jesus did that day. And if he afterwards consented to cure the child it was not as an act of humanity to the sufferer, but as a reward for the mother's faith in him.
Concerning this brutal act of Jesus, Helen Gardener says: "Do you think that was kind? Do you think it was godlike? What would you think of a physician, if a woman came to him distressed and said, 'Doctor, come to my daughter, she is very ill. She has lost her reason, and she is all I have!' What would you think of the doctor who would not reply at all at first, and then, when she fell at his feet and worshiped him, answered that he did not spend his time doctoring dogs? Would you like him as a family physician? Do you think that, even if he were to cure the child then, he would have done a noble thing? Is it evidence of a perfect character to accompany a service with an insult? Do you think that a man who could offer such an indignity to a sorrowing mother has a perfect character, is an ideal God?"
564
He enjoined the observance of the commandment, "Honor thy father and thy mother." Did he respect it himself?
More striking examples of filial ingratitude are not to be found than are exhibited in the Gospel history of Jesus Christ. When visiting Jerusalem with his parents, he allows them to depart for home without him, thinking that he is with another part of the company, and when they return to search for him and find him, he manifests no concern for the trouble he has caused; when during his ministry his mother and brothers are announced, he receives them with a sneer, at the marriage feast, when his mother kindly speaks to him, he brutally exclaims, "Woman, what have I to do with thee?" Throughout the Four Gospels not one respectful word to that devoted mother is recorded. Even in his last hours, when the mental anguish of that mother must have equaled his own physical suffering, not one word of comfort or farewell greeting escapes from his lips; but the same studied disrespect that has characterized him all his life is exhibited here.
565
Did he not promote domestic strife?
"Suppose ye that I am come to give peace on earth? I tell you, Nay, but rather division for from henceforth there shall be five in one house divided, three against two, and two against three. The father against the son, and the son against the father, the mother against the daughter, and the daughter against the mother, the mother-in-law against her daughter-in-law, and the daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law" (Luke xii, 51-53).
"Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword. For I am come to set a man at variance against his father, and the daughter against her mother, and the daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law" (Matthew x, 34, 35).
566
What did he require of his disciples?
"If any man come to me, and hate not his father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brethren and sisters, yea, and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple" (Luke xiv, 26).
It is scarcely possible in this age of enlightenment and unbelief to realize what sorrows and miseries these accursed teachings of Christ once caused. The eminent historian Lecky, in his History of European Morals, has attempted to describe some of their awful consequences. From his pages I quote the following:
"To break by his ingratitude the heart of the mother who had borne him, to persuade the wife who adored him that it was her duty to separate from him forever, to abandon his children, uncared for and beggars, to the mercies of the world, was regarded by the true hermit as the most acceptable offering he could make to his God. His business was to save his own soul. The serenity of his devotion would be impaired by the discharge of the simplest duties to his family. Evagrius, when a hermit in the desert, received, after a long interval, letters from his father and mother. He could not bear that the equable tenor of his thought should be disturbed by the recollection of those who loved him, so he cast the letters unread into the fire. A man named Mutius, accompanied by his only child, a little boy of eight years old, abandoned his possessions and demanded admission into a monastery. The monks received him, but they proceeded to discipline his heart. 'He had already forgotten that he was rich; he must next be taught to forget that he was a father' His little child was separated from him, clothed in dirty rags, subjected to every form of gross and wanton hardship, beaten, spurned and ill-treated. Day after day the father was compelled to look upon his boy wasting away with sorrow, his once happy countenance forever stained with tears, distorted by sobs of anguish. But yet, says the admiring biographer, 'though he saw this day by day, such was his love for Christ, and for the virtue of obedience, that the father's heart was rigid and unmoved' (Vol. II, 125, 126).
"He [St. Simeon Stylites] had been passionately loved by his parents, and, if we may believe his eulogist and biographer, he began his saintly career by breaking the heart of his father, who died of grief at his flight. His mother, however, lingered on. Twenty-seven years after his disappearance, at a period when his austerities had made him famous, she heard for the first time where he was and hastened to visit him. But all her labor was in vain. No woman was admitted within the precincts of his dwelling, and he refused to permit her even to look upon his face. Her entreaties and tears were mingled with words of bitter and eloquent reproach 'My son,' she is represented as having said 'why have you done this? I bore you in my womb, and you have wrung my soul with grief. I gave you milk from my breast, you have filled my eyes with tears. For the kisses I gave you, you have given me the anguish of a broken heart; for all that I have done and suffered for you, you have repaid me by the most cruel wrongs.' At last the saint sent a message to her to tell her that she would soon see him. Three days and three nights she had wept and entreated in vain, and now, exhausted with grief and age and privation, she sank feebly to the ground and breathed her last sigh before that inhospitable door. Then for the first time the saint, accompanied by his followers, came out. He shed some pious tears over the corpse of his murdered mother, and offered up a prayer consigning her soul to heaven" (ibid., 130).
567
Did he not indulge in vituperation and abuse?
"Ye fools and blind" (Matthew xxiii, 17).
"Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites" (14).
"All that ever came before me are thieves and robbers" (John x, 8).
"Ye serpents, ye generation of vipers, how can ye escape the damnation of hell?" (Matthew xxiii, 33.)
Regarding these abusive epithets of Christ, Prof. Newman says: "The Jewish nation may well complain that they have been cruelly slandered by the gospels. The invectives have been burnt into the heart of Christendom, so that the innocent Jews, children of the dispersion, have felt in millennial misery -- yes, and to this day feel -- the deadly sting of these fierce and haughty utterances" (Jesus Christ, p. 25).
568
Relate his treatment of the Pharisee who invited him to dine with him.
Luke: "And as he spake, a certain Pharisee besought him to dine with him; and he went in, and sat down to meat. And when the Pharisee saw it, he marveled that he had not first washed before dinner. And the Lord said unto him, now do ye Pharisees make clean the outside of the cup and the platter, but your inward part is full of ravening and wickedness, Ye fools ... hypocrites!" (xi, 37-44.)
Was such insolence of manners on the part of Jesus calculated to promote the interest of the cause he professed to hold so dear at heart? Supposing a Freethinker were to receive an invitation to dine with a Christian friend and were to repay the hospitality of his host with rudeness and abuse, interrupting the ceremony of "grace" with an oath or a sneer, and showering upon the head of his friend such epithets as "hypocrite" and "fool." Would such insolent behavior have a tendency to gain for him the world's esteem or aid the cause he represents? And are we to approve in a God conduct that we regard as detestable in a man? It may be urged that God is not subject to the rules of human conduct. Grant it; but is it necessary for him in order to exhibit his divine character to assume the manners of a brute?
569
Do the Pharisees deserve the sweeping condemnation heaped upon them by Christ and his followers?
In marked contrast to the diatribes of Jesus is the testimony of Josephus: "Now, for the Pharisees, they live meanly [plainly] and despise delicacies in diet, and they follow the conduct of reason; and what that prescribes to them as good for them, they do; and they think they ought earnestly to strive to observe reason's dictates for practice.... The cities give great attestations to them on account of their entire virtuous conduct, both in the actions of their lives, and their discourses also" (Antiquities, Book xviii, chap. i, sec. 3).
Paul, the Christian, when arraigned before Agrippa, believed that no loftier testimonial to his character could be adduced than the fact that he had been a Pharisee (Acts xxvi, 4, 5).
570
What is said in regard to his purging the temple?
John: "And the Jews' Passover was at hand, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem, and found in the temple those that sold oxen and sheep and doves, and the changers of money sitting and when he had made a scourge of small cords, he drove them all out of the temple, and the sheep, and the oxen; and poured out the changers' money, and overthrew the tables" (ii, 13-15).
No currency but the Jewish was accepted in the temple while doves, lambs, and other animals were required for offerings. These persons performed the very necessary office of supplying the Jews with offerings and exchanging Jewish coins for the Roman money then in general circulation. What right he had to interfere with the lawful business of these men, and especially in the manner in which he did, it is difficult to understand.
571
Describe the cursing of the fig tree.
Matthew: "Now in the morning as he returned into the city, he hungered. And when he saw a fig tree in the way, he came to it, and found nothing thereon, but leaves only, and said unto it, let no fruit grow on thee henceforward for ever. And presently the fig tree withered away" (xxi, 18, 19).
Jesus cursed a living tree and it died; Mohammed blessed a dead tree and it lived. The alleged conduct of Jesus on many occasions, notably his harsh treatment of his mother, his abuse of the Pharisees, his purging the temple and his cursing the fig tree, is not the conduct of a rational being, but rather that of a madman. If these stories be historical they would indicate that he was not wholly responsible for his words and acts. Dr. Jules Soury, of the University of France, believes that he was the victim of an incurable mental disorder. In a work on morbid psychology, entitled Studies on Jesus and The Gospels, Dr. Soury cites a long array of seemingly indisputable facts in support of his theory. From his preface to the work, I quote the following:
"Jesus the God, gone down in his glory, like a star sunk beneath the horizon but still shedding a few faint rays on the world, threw a halo round the brow of Jesus the Prophet. In the dull glow of that twilight, in the melancholy but charming hour when everything seemed wrapped in vague, ethereal tints, Jesus appeared to Strauss and Renan such as he had shown himself to his first disciples, the Master par-excellence, a man truly divine. Then came the night; and as darkness descended on those flickering gospel beginnings there remained nought to be descried through the obscurity of dubious history, but dimly looming, the portentous outline of the gibbet and its victim.
"In the present work Jesus makes his appearance, perhaps for the first time, as a sufferer from a grave malady, the course of which we have attempted to trace.
"The nervous, or cerebral disorder, at first congestive and then inflammatory, under which he labored, was not only deep-seated and dangerous -- it was incurable. Among us at the present time that affection may be seen daily making kings, millionaires, popes, prophets, saints, and even divinities of poor fellows who have lost their balance; it has produced more than one Messiah.
"If we be right in the interpretation of data which has been followed in the study of morbid psychology, Jesus, at the time of his death, was in a somewhat advanced stage of this disorder. He was, to all appearance, cut off opportunely; the gibbet saved him from actual madness.
"The diagnosis which we have ventured to draw is based on three sets of facts which are attested by the most ancient and trustworthy of the witnesses of his career.
"1. Religious excitement, then general in Palestine, drove Jesus to the wilderness, where he lived some time the life of a recluse, as those who considered themselves to have the prophetic mission often did. Carried away with the idea that he was divinely inspired to proclaim the coming of the Messiah he left his own people and his native place, and, attended by a following of fishermen and others of the same class, went about among the towns and villages of Galilee announcing the speedy approach of the Kingdom of Heaven.
"2. After having proclaimed the coming of the Messiah, like other contemporary Jewish prophets, Jesus gradually came to look upon himself as the Messiah, the Christ. He allowed himself to be called the Son of David, the Son of God, and had among his followers one, if not more, of those fanatical Sicarii, so graphically described by Josephus, who were waiting for the deliverance of Israel from the yoke of Rome. Progressive obliteration of the consciousness of his personal identity marks the interval between the somewhat vague revelation which he made to his disciples at the foot of Mount Hermon and the day when, before Caiaphas and before Pilate, he openly declared that he was the Messiah, and by that token the King of the Jews.
"3. The cursing of the fig tree whereon there were no figs, because 'the time of figs was not yet,' the violent conduct toward the dealers and changers at the temple, were manifestly foolish acts. Jesus had come to believe that everything was permitted him, that all things belonged to him, that nothing was too hard for him to do. For a long time he had given evident signs of perversion of the natural affections, especially with respect to his mother and brethren. To the fits of anger against the priests and religious ministers of his nation, to the ambitious extravagance of his words and acts, to the wild dream of his Messianic grandeur, there rapidly supervened a characteristic depression of the mental faculties and strength, a giving way of the intellectual and muscular flowers.
"Each of those periods in the career of Jesus corresponds to a certain pathological state of his nervous system.
"By reacting on the heart, the religious excitement he labored under and the attendant functional exacerbations had the immediate effect of accelerating the circulation, unduly dilating the blood vessels, and producing cerebral congestion.
"Chronic congestion of the brain, subjectively considered, is always attended in the initial stage with great increase of the moral consciousness, extraordinary activity of the imagination, often leading to hallucinations, and later on with absurdly exaggerated, frequently delirious ideas of power and greatness. That stage is also usually characterized by irritability and fits of passion.
"Objectively considered what is observable is hypertrophy of the cellules and nerve-tubes, excessive cerebral plethora and vascularity due to the great efflux of blood and superabundant nutrition of the encephalon. Inflammation of the meningeal covering, and of the brain itself, is, sooner or later, a further result of the chronic congestion. The vessels, turgid and loaded with blood, permit the transudation of the blood globules; the circulation becomes impeded, then arrested, with the result of depriving the cortical cerebral substance of arterial blood, which is its life; the histological elements undergo alteration, degenerate, become softened, and as the disorganization proceeds are finally reduced to inert detritus.
"The brain may remain capable more or less well of performing its functions when deprived to a large extent of its necessary food, but not so when the cerebral cellules are disorganized. Dementia consequently is the rational sequel of the congestive stage. To the destruction of the cortical substance supervenes partial or total loss of consciousness, according to the extent of the lesion. Such portions of the encephalon as continue capable of performing any duty being in a state of hyperaemia, there is often delirium more or less intense up to the last.
"The process of the disorder is irregular; remissions occur during which the reasoning faculties seem to be recovered. But whether the duration extends only to a few months or to several years, the increasing weakness of the patient, the intellectual and muscular decay, the cachetic state into which he falls, the lesions of other organs performing essential functions which ensue, bring life to a close, and frequently without suffering.
"This is how Jesus would have ended had he been spared the violent death of the cross."
Nearly all the religious founders have been affected to a greater or less extent, with insanity. Genius itself is closely allied to insanity -- is indeed, in many cases, a form of insanity. Moreau de Tours in his La Psychologie Morbide (p. 234) says: "The mental disposition which causes a man to be distinguished from his fellows by the originality of his mind and conceptions, by his eccentricity, and the energy of his affective faculties, or by the transcendence of his intelligence, take their rise in the very same organic conditions which are the source of the various mental perturbations whereof insanity and idiocy are the most complete expressions." Buddha, Mohammed, and probably Jesus, united with certain strong mental and moral characteristics, a form of insanity which manifested itself in a sort of religious madness -- a madness that was contagious and which has attacked and afflicted the greater portion of the human race.
572
Did he not teach the doctrine of demoniacal possession and exorcism?
Synoptics: He did.
After alluding to the prevalency of superstition among the Jews of this period, Renan says: "Jesus on this point differed in no respect from his companions. He believed in the devil, whom he regarded as a kind of evil genius, and he imagined, like all the world, that nervous maladies were produced by demons who possessed the patient and agitated him" (Life of Jesus, p. 59). Dr. Geikie says: "The New Testament leaves us in no doubt of the belief, on the part of Jesus and the Evangelists, in the reality of these demoniacal possessions" (Life of Christ, Vol. II, p. 573).
Demonology was born of ignorance and superstition. In this debasing superstition Jesus believed. It was a part of his religion, and has remained a part of Christianity, for while the more intelligent of his professed disciples have outgrown this superstition they have to the same extent outgrown Christianity. The more ignorant, the more depraved, and, at the same time, the more devout of his followers, still accept it.
Regarding this superstition, the author of Supernatural Religion says: "The diseases referred to by the gospels, and by the Jews of that time, to the action of devils, exist now, but they are known to proceed from purely physical causes. The same superstition and medical ignorance would enunciate the same diagnosis at the present day. The superstition and ignorance, however, have passed away, and, with them, the demoniacal theory. In that day the theory was as baseless as in this. It is obvious that, with the necessary abandonment of the theory of 'possession' and demoniacal origin of disease, the largest class of miracles recorded in the gospels is at once exploded. The asserted cause of the diseases of this class, said to have been miraculously healed, must be recognized to be a mere vulgar superstition" (p. 159).
Prof. Huxley, in one of his essays, discussing the Gadarene miracle, says: "When such a story as that about the Gadarene swine is placed before us, the importance of the decision, whether it be accepted or rejected, cannot be overestimated. If the demonological part of it is to be accepted, the authority of Jesus is unmistakably pledged to the demonological system current in Judea in the first century. The belief in devils who possess men and can be transferred from men to pigs becomes as much a part of Christian dogma as any article of the creeds."
573
What became of the swine into which Jesus ordered the devils to go?
Matthew. "And behold, the whole herd of swine ran violently down a steep place into the sea, and perished in the waters" (viii, 32).
It may be pertinent to inquire what these inoffensive animals had done that they should merit such cruelty, or what their owner had done that his property should be thus wantonly destroyed.
In his narrative of this miracle Fleetwood says: "The spectators beheld, at a distance, the torments these poor creatures suffered; with what amazing rapidity they ran to the confines of the lake, leaped from the precipices into the sea, and perished in the waters" (Life of Christ, p. 121).
In striking contrast to the religion of Buddha, the religion of Christ has made its adherents cruel and unmerciful. To this Christian writer the torture and destruction of these domestic animals is no more than the burning of a field of stubble. In this miracle he sees only a manifestation of love and kindness on the part of his Savior. Referring to the request of the inhabitants that he depart from their country, he says: "The stupid request of the Gadarenes was complied with by the blessed Jesus, who, entering the ship, returned to the country from whence he came, leaving them a valuable pledge of his love, and us a noble pattern of perseverance in well-doing, even when our kindnesses are condemned or requited with injuries" (ibid., p. 122).
574
What did Jesus say to the strange Samaritan woman whom he met at the well?
"Thou hast had five husbands; and he whom thou now hast is not thy husband" (John iv, 18).
"Christ here makes himself a wandering gypsy, or Bohemian fortune teller, and I much wonder that our gypsies do not account themselves the genuine disciples of Jesus, being endowed with like gifts, and exercising no worse arts than he himself practiced." -- Woolston. |
