Our "friends the enemy" cheerily assure us that certain things are settled once for all in favour of Historical Christianity, and any further kicking against the fact is all in vain. If you show them
that the Mosaic Writings do not contain an original revelation to mankind, but are a Mosaic of Persian and Egyptian mythology, that the foundations of their creed are destroyed if the Fall of
Man is a fable, they will tell you that does not in the least invalidate the authority of the Bible, nor imperil the Christian revelation. Oh, no! The Church has never committed itself to any
particular interpretation. Let us throw up the sponge and continue the battle. Some of the Apologists (as they call themselves, without meaning it ironically) pretend to think they are so
secure that they can denounce any discussion of the Mosaic legends as intolerably tiresome. They affect to consider the matter past discussion. But those same "certain things" were never
more uncertain or unsettled than at the present time; and when they do get settled the occupation of those who preach them as God's truth to-day will be gone forever! If they have closed the controversy, we have just begun to open it! We have not done with the note of interrogation yet. If they have made and tied up their little bundle of old dried sticks, ours are beginning to grow,and put forth a new leaf; ours are yet green and lusty with the sap of a new life.
These people have a vision of their own, and as it was bequeathed to them they will not part with it, even though they have to close their eyes to see! They will die in the "good old faith." But that is what others of us cannot do. We have but just begun to ascertain the meaning of the good old facts that preceded the good old faith. We are finding out that names the most hallowed are spurious counterfeits of the ancient gods. We are learning that the literary fortunes of the Bible were made by Mythology, and filched from the peoples who have been spoiled as Pagans,and accursed as the spawn of Satan. There is a spirit within us that wants to see, with our eyes wide open, and will see, and must tear the bandages and blinkers off the eyes to see, each for himself,whether the traditional vision be false or true. Nature gave us eyes to see with; it was men who added the blinkers. Nature intended us to be led by our own eyes; it was men who substituted
the system of leading by the nose the mass of dough-faced humanity which church and state have tried so hard and so long to knuckle and mould for the purpose of leading it by the nose. We have found out now-a-days that even the horses pull better without than with the use of blinkers. So ignorant are many of these men of what is being thought outside their own little world, they do not even know how the battle is going against them. They are in possession of a
few crumbling out-works, and do not appear to understand that the enemy is already in the heart of the citadel itself, with the sappers and miners depositing their mental dynamite; nor care greatly, so long as the commissariat remains intact, and they can draw the usual libations! for their attitude is, "deprive us of what you please doctrinally, and resolve all our mysteries into myth, so long as you do not disestablish and disendow the Church!" So long as the out-works are standing with them inside they will not recognise defeat! And orthodox Christianity is mainly built up of out-works or scaffolding. It is not the scaffolding, however, with which the institution
was built, but one that conceals the true nature of the real building inside. The ordinary worshipper stands outside and mistakes the scaffolding for the real building, and looks upon it
as it rises tier above tier like so many landing-stages and resting-places on the upward way to heaven. It has been my aim to penetrate beyond this scaffolding, discover the secrets of the
hiding-place, and contradict the false report concerning the builders. And what we do find is that the so-called "Revealed Religion" is simply unrevealed mythology, and that a spurious system of salvation was proffered to those who would accept the ancient mythology
transmogrified into Historic Christianity, and be bribed into changing their old lamps for new ones! Orthodox preachers will go on asserting Sunday after Sunday, in the name of God, any number of things which their hearers do not believe, only they have heard them repeated so
often--past all power of impinging or impugning--until the sense is too out-wearied to rebel;things which they themselves do not believe, if they could once afford to question their own souls. The Pall Mall Gazette has lately asked the question, if you had œ100,000 to spare at
do you think would be the greatest charity to give it to? I should like to have replied, "Pension off a few of those poor slaves of the pulpit, who are forced to earn their living by preaching what they no longer believe." How little the orthodox world dreams of the new dawn that is rolling up the sky, glorious with its promise of the brighter, better day! Nay, it is already flaming through the cob-webbed windows, and trying to look in at the shut eyes of the sleepers, which are fast closed, or blinking at the splendour shining on their faces! They are still dreaming how to roll the world back the other way once more into the night of the past, even while they are passing, face upwards, beneath the radiant arch over their heads, alight with the dawn of a day that is not theirs; blind to the glory of its coming, deaf to the birds that soar and prophesy in song, senseless to an amazing
apparition of the Eternal growing visibly present in this our world of time! |
