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Cornell University 
 Library 
 
 The original of tiiis book is in 
 tine Cornell University Library. 
 
 There are no known copyright restrictions in 
 the United States on the use of the text. 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924031784360 
 
REASONS 
 DEMANDING AN ANSWER. 
 
 AN INQUIRY INTO THE BASIS OF WHAT 
 IS COMMONLY CALLED 
 
 CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 LONDON: 
 W. P. COLLINS, 
 
 Scientific iSaaftgelkr, 
 157, GREAT PORTLAND STEEET, W. 
 
 1883. 
 
PREFACE 
 
 This little essay contains the matured thoughts 
 of an elderly man — " Reasons " which deserve to 
 be honestly weighed; and though various may 
 be the conclusions, good will in every case be 
 the result. 
 
 When faith in God supersedes faith in fable, 
 the consolation becomes intellectual religion 
 instead of hyperbolical fancy. But childish as- 
 sociations, reiterated impressions, and love of the 
 marvellous, are hard to be overcome, be they 
 ever so absurd. Nothing but honest and sincere 
 desire for truth can avail. God is Truth. If 
 this little book at all excites or assists that desire, 
 the author will be fully recompensed. 
 
 Let the Reader first read the Text, and 
 whenever he disputes the assertion therein, refer 
 to the Notes. Words or phrases annotated are 
 printed in the Text in italics. 
 
 H. S. 
 
REASONS DEMANDING AN ANSAYER. 
 
 I PKOTEST against the religion commonly called Note i. 
 Christian on Religious, Rational, and Historical 
 grounds : — 
 
 First: Because it founds the belief in God and 
 the duties of man upon the Bible, making them Note 2. 
 derivatives of Bible expressions ; whereas belief in 
 soDie divine supreme Energy, Power, Person or Note 3. 
 system and our relation thereto, is founded in the 
 nature of man. Religion thus becomes an intel- 
 lectual and moral necessity, an essential to hu- 
 manity far anterior to the Bible, and not depending 
 for existence on adopting Bible conjectures to the Note 4. 
 exclusion of present knowledge and ^/jom^/A^. The Notes. 
 fictions of religion cannot be its foundation nor 
 belief in them its essential. 
 
 Secondly : Because it substitutes belief in a story Note 6. 
 for faith in God, and a fictitious system for His Note 7. 
 moral and actual governance as displayed to us by 
 our reason, our senses, and our moral faculties. 
 
 Thirdly: Because by the usurpation of religion 
 and the assumption of divinity it arrogates truth to Note 8. 
 rumours, legends and theories which are probably 
 (or at least liable to be) falsehoods, thus making 
 them superior to our faculties of judgment, criti- 
 cism and moral discrimination. By thus consti- 
 tuting Bible statements into the " words of God," 
 
4 
 
 Note 9. the Bible becomes their God, which is nothing 
 
 short of book-idolatry. 
 
 To support this idolatry it is essential to believe 
 a thoroughly repugnant mythology, viz. — 
 
 That two Gods in heaven before the creation of 
 the world agreed to act various parts. One was to 
 
 Note 10, create man and doom him to everlasting misery. 
 The other was to take manhood upon himself for a 
 few years, to die a violent death and to remain 
 
 Note 11. dead for some portion of forty hours — which was to 
 propitiate the former god so far that every man 
 
 Note 12. who believes this story is to be saved and all the 
 rest are to be eternally damned. 
 
 To make this credible it again assumes that this 
 compact was fulfilled by Jesus whom forty-one 
 years after his birth it first designates as Christ the 
 
 Note 13. second personal God. 
 
 To give this super-assumption the colour of 
 rationality, it religiously demands and assumes as 
 axiomatic that every vague expression, every 
 rhapsodical denunciation, every jubilant utterance 
 
 Note 14. in the Jewish canon is to be considered as a veri- 
 table promise from God, which (of course) must be 
 
 Note 15. fulfilled by and applied to Jesus ; consequently 
 
 Note 16. to avoid the blasphemy of God being a liar, 
 every ingenious device, every contortion of fact, 
 every mythical interpretation, every imaginary ful- 
 filment of grotesque type, becomes a religious 
 necessity, and is resorted to as a religious duty to 
 
 Note 17. distort the one to the other. The audacious as- 
 sumption (the compact) and super-assumption (the 
 fulfilment) prove each other to be facts, and thus 
 the truth of Christian doctrine is established. This 
 
is Christian logic ! This is Paul's theory which was 
 dominant with the writers of the New Testament. Note is. 
 
 We have no real biography of Jesus, but only Note i9. 
 four accounts which have any pretence to authen- 
 ticity in relating a few incidents and discourses, 
 and to which Christians refer in vindication of 
 pseudo-prophecy ; whether they are condensed into 
 one or three years is unimportant, excepting to Note 20. 
 show the unreliability of the record. The gospels 
 are quite insufficient to show an immaculate, fault- 
 less, unique life ; that super-human knowledge and 
 purity directed every act and thought from his 
 cradle to his tomb, which is necessary for the 
 Christian doctrine to form a Christian God, for it 
 is not deemed sufficient to believe he was always 
 a religious, pure, contemplative person, in degree 
 very high, but in kind only equal to thousands of 
 other men. It is on this hyperbolical supposition, 
 and not on any proof of its truth, that all Christian 
 doctrines depend. 
 
 But if it is possible that the accounts which nar- Note 21. 
 rate those incidents can be non-genuine, unauthen- 
 tic, or the result of infatuation, misconception, or 
 credulity ; if error can in any way be mixed up 
 in them, then in the same degree is it probable that 
 many of the items are falsehoods, and that the 
 whole superstructure of doctrine is a fallacy, for 
 perfect undeniable truth cannot rest on such a found- 
 ation. As I am convinced that the gospels (as we 
 have them) are adulterated and unreliable, a history 
 of rumours and credulities more than of facts, that 
 they have been compiled with intensity of purpose 
 in a foreign language long after the narrated events, 
 
Note 22. interchanging and interloping for upwards of 350 
 years with a fixed fanatical aim, it would be con- 
 trary to nature if they did not select, invent and 
 exaggerate for the purpose of deifying Jesus and 
 
 Note 23. fulfilling psevdo-propJiecy. I therefore discard 
 their corroborations as insufiicient to support the 
 absurdities of Christian mythology and dogma, 
 which both reason and faith in the unity of truth 
 
 Note 24. must alike reject, viz. — 
 
 1st. That though before the foundation of the 
 world there were two coequal covenanting parties, 
 yet the whole time there were not two but only one 
 party, for the two were one ! 
 
 2nd. Christians believe in God the Father, Grod 
 the Son, God the Holy Ghost, and in the Devil the 
 God of evil, all distinct persons and complete in 
 themselves, yet they only believe in one God ! 
 believe the Father and Son to be of equal age and 
 antiquity ! 
 
 3rd. The legion of absurdities logically result- 
 ing, such as the governance of the universe daring 
 the sojourn of the Godship upon earth in the shape of, 
 and confined to, one man Jesus. The irrationality 
 of the unevidenced and irreligious assertion, that 
 the Eternal God of the universe was appeased (thus 
 implying pleased) by the unrighteous murder of an 
 innocent victim — that He was in fact a party and 
 accessory to the act. That an abnormal birth and 
 resurrection reverses the whole plan of God and 
 destiny of mankind. 
 
 That belief in this, though unsupported by any- 
 thing like evidence, changes eternal misery into 
 eternal happiness, and the detested of God into His 
 
beloved. That if belief was of such supreme im- 
 portance to us, and so pleasing to God, surely an 
 Omnipotent, perfect, righteous and merciful God 
 would have given us perfect and convincing evi- 
 dence, without which the astounding miracle would 
 be worse than void, and would be but a snare to 
 entrap the truth-searching man into disbelief and 
 consequent hell. Besides the numerous contradic- 
 tions and incongruities arising out of the essential 
 doctrines such as election, vicarious substitution, 
 effects of Baptism, transubstantiation or consubstan- 
 tiation, judgment day, resurrection of the identical 
 body, &c., &c., none of which have any ostensible 
 place in the governance of this world or any evi- 
 dence of reality — they are fabricated myths, dic- 
 tations to God, and at enmity with true and 
 expanded religion. 
 
 4th. That the "Glorious Gospel of salvation" 
 presupposes an awful, universal and eternal dam- 
 nation ; it is a mere subterfuge to get God and a 
 portion of mankind out of this most irreligious, 
 irrational and horrifying pre-assumption. 
 
 5th. To create the idea of a merciful and loving 
 God by redemption, it libels the eternal First 
 Cause by imagining Him to be a most unmitigatedly 
 malicious and whimsical demon, creating man for 
 hell, and hell for man, then partially nullifying 
 His original decree, because His wrath is appeased. 
 
 For the above reasons I repudiate Jesuism (com- 
 monly called Christianity) as a false and pernicious 
 superstition imposed on humanity by threats and Note 25. 
 bribes, and I reject the Christian system and doc- 
 trine as thoroughly repugnant to true religion, to 
 
8 
 
 reason, to evidence, and to instinct, as dishonouring 
 Notes 26, 27. to God and degrading to man, a fiction antagonis- 
 tic to sensible reality, involving scientific and re- 
 ligious absurdities by assuming principles and 
 facts -which have no existence in the ordination of 
 
 Note 28. Qod. 
 
NOTES 
 
 Note 1. 
 
 Christian was not the original name of the disciples of Jesns, 
 but it was the name of a pre-Jesus established Church, which 
 was fast superseding Paganism ; and the followers of Paul, by 
 adopting the name, appropriated to themselves the prestige, en- 
 dowments and sentiments of that religion, and thus obtained 
 many converts. Christ was not a Hebrew word or idea, but was 
 adopted as a subsequent interpretation of the word Messiah 
 (though Christ and Messiah have not the same signification) ; 
 therefore, whenever it is used in the Gospels, it only proves that 
 the writer belonged to Paul's school, and used the "interpreta- 
 tion"; it does not prove that the word was used or the idea 
 applied at the time stated, but rather proves the later and foreign 
 authorship or intermeddling. 
 
 This is not mere conjecture, but to me, a provable fact by the 
 following arguments : — The root of the idea Christ seems to me 
 to be perfection, purity, beauty. Homer names his beautiful 
 captivating captive Chryseis ; Chrishna was also the name of a 
 Hindu deity worshipped long before Jesus, and well known to 
 the Egyptian Greeks ; but the word Christ before and at the time 
 of Jesus meant " anointed one," and thence, the " chosen," " be- 
 loved," etc., most likely from the association of cleanliness and 
 purity with anointment, and " Christian '' meant a religious 
 sect who adopted anointing as a mystic rite. Now, neither 
 Jesus or any of his disciples had any claim to the name of 
 Christ or Christian on the score of anointing ; their rite was bap- 
 tism ; but about the year 42, at Antioch, his disciples were first 
 called Christians, which implies that the name of Christ was first 
 associated with Jesus, thus modifying and uniting the two beliefs 
 into one Church. Now Christ was a Grecian word and idea, 
 and Antioch was a Grecian city; Paul and Barnabas were 
 preaching to the Greeks, and assembled themselves for one 
 
10 
 
 whole year with the Church and taught much people. What 
 Church ? Evidently the pre-existing Christian Church, whose 
 name they adopted and thus gained proselytes. 
 
 Again : James v. 14 acknowledges the existence of elders in 
 an anointing or Christian Church, and exhorts them to anoint in 
 the name of the Lord whose coming draweth nigh (ver. 8^, thereby 
 uniting Disciples and Christians ; also Acts xx. 17 sent to 
 Ephesus to call the Elders; also Eph. i. 1-12 : "Paul to the 
 saints who are in Ephesus, the faithful in Christ-Jesus ; . . • we 
 who first trusted in Christ." 1 Cor. iv. 14 is tantamount to this : 
 " Though you have ten thousand instructors in Christ, yet in the 
 gospel of Jesus- Christ you have only one father, even myself." 
 " My gospel which I learned from no man " (Gal. i. 12-30). Theo- 
 philus of Antioch was a Christian who knew nothing of Jesus, 
 but relied on anointing. Titian was the same ; holy oil was 
 also the faith of the Emperor Servius (a.d. 260). Apollos 
 (Acts xviii. 24) was a preacher from Alexandria, who was 
 ignorant of Jesus until he was instructed by Paul's companions 
 Aquila and Priscilla. Also Rom. i. 8 : " To all that be in 
 Rome, called to be saints : I thank God t bat your faith is spoken 
 of throughout the whole world." What faith ? The Gospels 
 were not then written ! Paul's theories were only beginning to 
 be preached ! If they were Christians at all their Christianity 
 must have been independent of Jesus, some exaggerated rumours 
 may have reached them which some may have believed, and 
 called that credulity religion ; but the theories of atoning sacrifice, 
 vicarious propitiation, etc., which were the adaptations of Paul's 
 imagination to Jewish rites, the very essence of New Testament 
 Christianity, were not then attached to the word Christ, or to the 
 Christian belief. 
 
 Paul's preaching was entirely that Jesus is Christ, that the two 
 terms are synonymous and the ideas identical and interchangeable ; 
 that Christ — eternal perfection and purity always instigating 
 God's actions and metaphorically sitting on His right hand — 
 means Jesus, the son of David, literally doing so ; and that 
 Jesus being born and crucified is the same as the eternal prin- 
 ciple of good being born and crucified — Christ born, and Christ 
 crucified. 
 
 On this muddle of ideas hangs the whole of Paul's fanciful phi- 
 losophy which is called Christianity. Paul's three years' study 
 at Alexandria (previous to his preaching at Antioch) familiarized 
 him with Christian sublimities which have no reference to 
 
11 
 
 Jesus or his teaching, but are traceable to Plato and Philo, and 
 are quotations from Greek philosophers. In fact the teaching 
 of Jesus is ignored by Paul ; the assumed death and resurrec- 
 tion are the only facts relied on by him, enabling him fancifully 
 to apply prophecy which otherwise was a dead letter, and thus 
 to unite Hellenic thought with Jewish superstition. 
 
 Note 2. 
 
 Popular Christianity founds religion, both in belief and con- 
 duct, entirely upon the Bible, and grants Bible authority entirely 
 on its own assumption. The Bible alone testifies to itself ; it 
 requires no corroboration and repudiates even confirmation, for 
 all its assertions are by virtue of assertion made facts, and 
 all its reasonings are infallible. This is Christianity as taught 
 by the Church for 1,800 years: Believe in God because the 
 Bible tells you ; believe in six days' creation because the Bible 
 tells you ; believe in the scheme of salvation because it is de- 
 rivable from the Bible ; believe in each miracle related in the 
 Bible, as a fact, and this will react on your mind in demonstra- 
 tion of Bible supremacy, without which all your hopes and 
 beliefs collapse. Absurdity or contradiction does not authorise 
 disbelief, though to quiet disbelief you may try to reconcile ; but 
 irrationality and incongruity only enhance submission to faith, 
 for the fault is in our intellects, not in the Bible. 
 
 Thus it is that the Bible is constituted a God superior to our 
 faculties ; it is blasphemy to dispute it ; its predictions must be 
 fulfilled, whether we understand them or not ; its every expres- 
 sion is hallowed, and thus a canonical miscellany becomes the 
 object of faith, or in other words your God. Not only belief 
 but morality is by the Christian Church founded on the Bible ; 
 its dictates and derivatives constitute morality, there is no 
 appeal, no higher obedience ; whereas true morality is founded 
 on the exigencies of our nature and correct deductions therefrom, 
 which may or may not be contained in the Bible, or which may 
 be thoroughly opposed to Bible dictates. Thus for instance 
 the Bible more than permits, it glorifies polygamy, and enjoins 
 rapine. (Num. xxxi.) Kill every male and matron, but keep 
 the virgins alive for yourselves. It forbids murder, yet it orders 
 extermination without mercy, and holds up the man of God, 
 Elijah, as an example for killing two sets of fifty men for 
 bringing him a message, and Elisha for cursing little children. 
 It forbids the likeness of any animal being made and reverenced. 
 
12 
 
 yet, immediately after, orders them to make and reverence a 
 brazen serpent. It ignores both natural and rational results, 
 making events the effects of capricious whim of a petulant God, 
 or His compliant answer to some one's prayer. Thus God is 
 represented as spontaneously evil, the instigation to good being 
 human. 
 
 Note 3. 
 
 The word and the idea God is so frequently used in this 
 treatise that I think it advisable to state that I use it in its 
 most universal sense. God is to human faculty an undefinable 
 idea. We cannot entify God. Unlimited person is to us a con- 
 tradiction, and person is a compound — a result of pre-existing 
 causes and elements, and cannot be a first cause. Yet person, 
 though manifestly false and deficient, may convey to us the 
 truest conception of God which we are capable of, and for this 
 purpose I use the term personally. In both individual and 
 social infancy man's conception of government is patriarchal. 
 A government requires a personal governor, and a creation 
 requires a personal creator. Laws and results are radiations ; 
 love, loyalty, and obedience, correlative attractions. Neither 
 could exist independent of person. 
 
 But as man advances to maturity he perceives that an imper- 
 sonal republic may be substituted for a personal monarch without 
 destroying either law or loyalty. Devotion and love may exist 
 though the person be removed. A permeating principle may be 
 recognised instead of a person, diffusion instead of centralisation. 
 This may illustrate to us how it is possible that God may be 
 better defined and understood by unlimited expansion than by 
 contraction, by principle rather than person — the origin of every 
 existence, source of every truth, the soul of the universe, 
 etc. But after all these sublime titles we are not one whit 
 nearer the comprehension of the Eternal or defining the un- 
 limited. It may be asked then. What is the use of this fanciful 
 theology ? Much every way ! The conviction that the idea 
 God transcends human conception, elevates religion beyond 
 trivial rites and ceremonies, while it really adds sublimity 
 to devotion, and compels science to worship. It sweeps away 
 all false gods, grotesque superstitions, and mythological beliefs. 
 It pronounces the application of God to Jesus an impossibility 
 — an ineffable degradation of the idea, and all priestcraft and 
 pretensions to divinity sink into insignificance. 
 
 False ideas of God produce evils ; superstitions, mental degra- 
 
13 
 
 dation and baneful actions (but not hell-fire) are the results. 
 Evils are inseparable from fiillacies and imperfections. God, 
 the consummation of perfection, is alone exempt from them. 
 
 Note 4. 
 
 Christians consider that the adopting of unnatural and ir- 
 rational conjectures constitutes religion. The subjugation of 
 nature and reason to credulity in the name of religion is the very 
 life essence of their religion, the change of surmise into certainty 
 without evidence or transmuting action. For example, the 
 plague resulting from numbering the people (2 Sam. xxiv.), the 
 frequency of victory depending on striking the floor with an 
 arrow (2 Kings xiii.), (Tenterden steeple and Goodyvin sands 
 are in nature the same); the talisnaanic name of Jesus added 
 to a prayer makes it efficacious ; the blood of Jesus washing 
 away sin ; baptism the same, and such like mysticisms of which 
 the Bible is full — denying all those things is not irreligion, it is 
 not rejecting God or disputing His providence. True religion 
 demands rejection of falsehood as much as acceptance of truth. 
 Christianity inculcates "believe all things." 
 
 Note 5. 
 
 How frequently is inquiry stifled by such arguments as these. 
 Presume to arraign God's word ? The disbeliever or doubter is 
 damned ! Faith in the Gospel story is the only salvation ! It 
 is a religious duty to believe every statement, even against 
 proof ; for intellect and conflicting truths must all submit to 
 religions assTimption. Is not this excluding present knowledge 
 and thought ? The sacredness of a book being a religious con- 
 jecture, it cannot truthfully be adduced to raise its own state- 
 ments beyond conjecture. 
 
 Note 6. 
 
 For instance, Christians' consciousness of God's love toman is 
 made to depend on the belief that He gave up His only son to 
 redeem us ; if this belief is shaken, God's love, according to 
 Christian doctrine, disappears, the incongruous imagination being 
 rejected, only God's wrath remains. Christian faith in a good 
 God is entirely founded on belief in the salvation story; it re- 
 pudiates faith on any other terms, and in fact makes it impossible, 
 for faith cannot co- exist with the idea of inevitable eternal 
 
14 
 
 perdition, torture, and enmity with God ; some story of salvation 
 is necessary to neutralise damnation, and belief in that story is 
 a substitute for faith in God. 
 
 Note 7. 
 
 There is no evidence whatsoever for the salvation story 
 outside the New Testament statements, and its assertions derive 
 their authority merely from audacious assumption of inspiration. 
 The bribe held out by hope overcomes incongruities, warps 
 honest judgment, and suborns faith. The story like any other 
 fiction may be congruous in itself, and may be beautifully con- 
 ceived to attract admiration by its astounding wonderment, may 
 excite piety or heroism, and exercise imagination and ingenuity ; 
 but as there is no sensible evidence to bring it into the region of 
 reality, it still remains a fiction or fable. Symmetry in plan does 
 not prove actuality, nor grandeur of conception prove real exist- 
 ence ; therefore, admitting symmetry of plan and grandeur of 
 conception to belong to the Christian scheme is not admitting 
 or even corroborating the truth of the story ; it is equally applic- 
 able to fiction and romance. 
 
 Note 8. 
 
 It is religious assumption that transmutes statues into idols — 
 or ideal gods — and makes priests or books holy, and their inter- 
 pretations fact-controlling and super-rational. To the votary's 
 imagination enduing the wildest chimeras, either Christian or 
 pagan, with reality, in. spirit and principle all false religions are 
 the same — proving the miraculous by enduing legends with truth, 
 though devoid of evidence and not having the slightest element 
 of truth about them ; such like are the "miraculous birth," the 
 " temptation," the changing resuscitation into " resurrection," also 
 all the miracles ; they being by no means so well authenticated 
 as many of the mediaeval miracles now admitted to be false, such 
 as the curing the evil by the touch of the king, from Edward the 
 Confessor to Charles II., avouched by thousands of cases ; the facts 
 of witchcraft affirmed by thousands of judicial decrees and execu- 
 tions — surely this ought to teach us to scrutinize evidence before 
 we admit abnormal facts, or receive former belief as proof of 
 truth. If we admit Bible miracles how can we reject others as 
 impossible or nonsensical ? A principle once admitted cannot be 
 restricted to a few recorded incidents. Religious assumption 
 also juggles ideas into entities, and imaginative or conjectural into 
 
15 
 
 absolute and actual, not by acting on the things themselves 
 but on our minds, by overawing reason, nullifying sense, and 
 blinding judgment ; thus creating ideal truth without evidence 
 of fact, and then deducing fact from this spuriously created 
 " truth." Is not this the very vitality of Christian belief ? 
 
 Note 9. 
 
 Any person who considers it blasphemy to dispute the Bible 
 constitutes it a God. To any person who acknowledges it holy, 
 sacred, and super-rational, to him it is a God. Any person who 
 makes it superior to human intellect, subjugating his moral, 
 rational and religious faculties to it, thereby fabricates for him- 
 self a God superior and antagonistic to the God of humanity 
 and nature. Any person who considers that being within the 
 covers of the Bible imparts truth to its contents, is guilty of 
 as aggravated idolatry and unmitigated fetichism, as the man 
 who considers Godship contained within his idol, or that his idol 
 can impart heavenly protection and superhuman instruction. We 
 may revere the Bible as the yearnings of ignorant humanity 
 after truth, or as the pious effusions of our religious nature with- 
 out falling into Bible-idolatry. The man who subjects Bible 
 assertions to his mental digestion, absorbing what is congenial, 
 assimilating what is nutritious, and rejecting those extraneous 
 and grotesque incongruities and dogmas which truth cannot in- 
 corporate ; that man has a healthy religion. The man who from 
 reverence admits every proposition in Euclid as a truth, without 
 trying to understand or analyse, is less actuated by the spirit of 
 Euclid than the man who requires proof for every assertion. The 
 same with the Bible. 
 
 Note 10. 
 
 Christians may say " God never doomed man to hell, for that 
 would be cruelty or impotence. He only left it to Adam's free 
 will to choose ; " the mock choice, however, was preordained, so 
 that there was no freedom. If innate sin and inevitable perdi- 
 tion be the consequence — who was to blame ? He only created 
 man with the full knowledge that he must go to hell unless re- 
 deemed by a plan pre-concocted between Him and His coadjutor, 
 that the mimic death of the one was to supplement the failure 
 of the other redoes the grossest heathen mythology contain such 
 a compound of trash and nonsense as this ? 
 
16 
 
 Note 11. 
 
 On what principle can the truth of this mythology be founded ? 
 Faith in God, Reason, and Morality all reject it as outrageously 
 nonsensical and non-understandable. Its only evidence is Bible 
 assertion ; everything else that speaks to man's intellect, ex- 
 perience, to his sense of justice and truth, is against it, and 
 demonstrates the fallacy of the imaginary doctrine ; for even sup- 
 posing the gospel descriptions of the crucifixion to be true, 
 (though indeed there are some discrepancies hard to be recon- 
 ciled), they completely fail as a sufficient basis for the theory; 
 they do not prove the essential fact. Death, which even if proved 
 would not necessitate or even authorize the absurd mythology 
 and the mythical consequences. 
 
 The Gospels only testify as to the crucifixion of the man 
 Jesus, but whether it was in mere derision or for the purpose of 
 death, whether he was nailed or bound to the cross,* they leave un- 
 certain. Death was merely the deduction of excited minds at a 
 distance, which made them incompetent witnesses to a fact which 
 they do not even pretend to have examined ; there was no post- 
 mortem examination, no decomposition, nor was death an obvious 
 result as from decapitation ; it was a natural conjecture of affec- 
 tion acted on by fear. The thieves were not dead, Pilate mar- 
 velled if he were already dead ; there was a friendly centurion, and 
 the time was quite insufficient ordinarily to cause death. Joseph 
 and Nicodemus do not come forward as believers in his death ; no 
 other person is asserted to have seen him, to know whether his 
 recovery was gradual or sudden, or when it took place, or how 
 the spices were applied, until he was met walking — clothed as a 
 
 * In our authorised version, John's gospel alone (xix. 33, 34, xx. 27) men- 
 tions the piercing of the side, the print of the nails, and the not breaking ihe 
 legs, and gi-pes as a reason the appropriation of prophecy (36, 37). The water 
 and the blood has also the apjearance of being a mere doctrinal fact to agree 
 •with the fraudulent insertion (1 John v. 7), and to authorise the visionary 
 inconceivable assertion (8), and if trup, convicts the other gospels of culpable 
 silence or defective inspiration for by them there was not a drop of blood shed 
 on the cross— not enough to sprinkle a sparrow — if there was nailing would 
 they not have mentioned it ad mUericordiam ? They would have dilated upon it 
 though they had no pity to throw away on the thieves. " They took him 
 down from the cross — or when they had taken," does not imply nnnailing ; 
 the thieves' legsweie broken, because probably they were nailed, and Jesus only 
 bound — hanging on a tree do>-s not imply nailed to a cross — Abound is men- 
 tioned by old authorities ; besides it was not the habit of the Jews to revile 
 when inflicting capital punishment ; the thieves were not reviled but Jesus 
 was. 
 
17 
 
 gardener. Is this a proof or disproof of death ? In any other 
 case no one would have a doubt. The balanoe of probabilities 
 (indeed I might say of possibilities), is that he did not die on the 
 cross. Ideal death necessitated the ideal miracle of Eesurrection 
 which was essential to raise the man Jesus into the God-Christ, 
 and give a fanciful foundation to Paul's covenanting theory. 
 
 Is suspended animation for a few hours — which is quite con- 
 formable with the gospels — sufficient to change a man into very 
 G-od ? To make his sufferings equivalent to the eternal misery 
 of all mankind ? To verify a covenant between two gods, and 
 to sustain all the anomalies and insults both to reason and to 
 faith in the unity, power, wisdom and goodness of God ? 
 
 Note 12. 
 
 John iii. 18. " He that believeth on him is not condemned, but 
 he that believeth not is condemned already.'' 36. " He that be- 
 lieveth on the son hath everlasting life, and he that believeth not 
 the son shall not see life, but the wrath of God abideth on him." 
 
 Mark xvi. 16. " He that believeth and is baptised shall be 
 saved, but he that believeth not shall be damned." 
 
 Bom. X. 9. " If thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord 
 Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God has raised him 
 from the dead, thou shalt be saved." 
 
 Note 13. 
 
 Paul, at Antioch, was the originator of this new gospel, and 
 the New Testament was compiled by his proselytes. Thus a 
 Church was formed, which developed the doctrine of the 
 Athanasian creed ; but there is no evidence that the majority of 
 the Apostles ever adopted Paul's theory. They and their preach- 
 ing are completely ignored in the New Testament ; most likely 
 they still retained their monotheistic ideas, and maybe for a short 
 time expected the return of Jesus from Galilee as Messiah with 
 power to establish the Jewish nation, but the new-formed 
 Christian Church was exclusively of the Pauline section. 
 
 Note 14. 
 
 The Old Testament is a spurious compilation, and its sacred- 
 ness is founded on falsehood. The Pentateuch was not written 
 by Moses ; the pagan story of Balaam and Balak, does not even 
 pretend to have an Israelitish witness or author. The Psalms are 
 
 B 
 
18 
 
 not all David's or of his epoch. Half of Isaiah is written hy 
 au unknown person, and after the Captivity. Daniel is a de- 
 votional romance, and not a history ; and by a natural but 
 pernicious growth, religious romances, allegories and hymns 
 ultimately obtained sacred (though very erroneous) authority. 
 The other books are mostly of unknown authorship and dates. 
 Is it not absurd to try to build up a system of anomalous truth 
 with such materials, or to endue their statements with inspiration 
 merely to support Christianity, which is avowedly a fanciful 
 conformation both of theory and fact ? Even if coinciidence was 
 thus produced, it would be a mental fraud to call one a proof or 
 corroboration of the other. 
 
 Note 15. 
 
 This assumption is the life of Christianity; with Christians it 
 over-rules the whole providence of God, and perverts all the 
 utterances of the Old Testament. It nullifies all other evidence; 
 tinges all their reasoning ; fabricates events into fulfilments, 
 and appropriates, as divinely foretelling of Jesus, sayings which 
 have no real application to Mm, and then claims that allegorical 
 application legitimises the appropriation by imparting to it a 
 fanciful significance, that coincidence with a conformed imaginary 
 system gives reality and truth to both. If you set your watch 
 to agree with another, could you argue that the agreement 
 proved correct time ? What respect can be paid to a belief 
 composed of such mental frauds and imaginary facts, whose 
 very existence is based on unevidenced abnormalities and auda- 
 cious assumptions ? 
 
 Note 16. 
 
 To get rid of this God-insulting dilemma in which we are 
 placed by religious assumption, would it not be more efficacious, 
 rational, normal and religious, to give up the supposition that 
 God demeaned Himself by riddles and quibbles, than to try to 
 contort facts and meanings into fulfilments, to vindicate God by 
 violating honesty and reason, which Christians are compelled to 
 do in order to avoid the other morally impossible and religiouslv 
 disgusting alternative, the possibility of which is the creation of 
 their false assumption ? 
 
 Note 17. 
 This may be verified by almost every so called prophecy — but 
 
19 
 
 let us illustrate it by the first, and by the Christians' most relia- 
 ble type : — 
 
 Gen. iii. 15 — "It shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise 
 his heel." 
 
 This old saw is asserted to be the veritable words of God 
 — ^but by whom, on what authority, or how transmitted, nobody 
 can tell ; no person or probability bears witness to the fact, nor 
 can we say when the belief originated. However, Christians 
 assume it to be so, just as Pagans assume their stories ; the 
 consequence is, it must have transcendent significance, and there- 
 fore Christians again assume that God hereby predicted and 
 promised the birth of Jesus, though neither time, place, circum- 
 stances, or even nation are hinted at. Had it been mentioned in 
 any of the Gospels, that Jesus in any of his walks trod on the 
 head of a serpent, how Christendom would resound with "fulfil- 
 ment," " coincidence," application proving both the divinity of 
 the saying and the divinity of Jesus. But as there is not the 
 I'emotest application to Jesus, Christians again assume the vir- 
 ginity of his mother — a pagan idea — thus to conform and give 
 semblance of proof ; although during her lifetime and his, there 
 does not appear to be the slightest rumour of any such belief, 
 and if there was truth in the story, it would have been both an 
 irreligious and impolitic deception not to have published it. 
 
 Yet on such frail surmises — not deserving the name of reason 
 or evidence — rests the whole Christian structure, while it com- 
 pletely ignores the natural origin of the saying, viz., the religious 
 expression of desire, hope, and faith, that ultimately civilization 
 and mankind would triumph over their brutal enemies. 
 
 Now let us take the typo of the Pascal Lamb (Ex. xii.), which 
 from the days of Paul has been relied on as the title deed of 
 Christianity. Its perfect application has been the subject of 
 millions of sermons, it is in fact the creed of Christendom, 
 yet it is a gross perversion produced by mental fraud and 
 false piety. Let us analyse it. First then (verse 14) it is ex- 
 pressly stated to be " a memorial ordinance for ever." Christians 
 turn it into a typical ordinance accomplished, and ending 1,850 
 years ago. 2nd : What significance is there to Jesus in taking 
 a lamb or kid on the tenth day and keeping it till the fourteenth 
 day ? 3rd : How can a lamb or kid under one year old represent 
 an adult man of thirty-three years ? ith : Does ordinary 
 killing with a knife in the evening typify crucifixion in the day 
 time ? 5 th : What does roasting and eating typify ? 6th : 
 
 B 2 
 
20 
 
 Does a separate lamb for each liouse typify only one lamb for 
 every liouse or nation ? 7th : Why is the main feature, three 
 clays' death and resurrection, untypified and omitted ? ! ! 
 
 There is nothing in fact which points to Jesus, or which can be 
 contorted into an application, excepting that his crucifixion took 
 place at one of the 1,500 commemorations. The deaths and all the 
 circumstances of the two lambs are quite dissimilar. But 
 Christianity cannot submit to plain truth, it must appropriate, 
 and therefore uses this talismanic argument. The blood on the 
 posts was the saving myth, consequently the mystical blood of 
 Jesus sprinkled on our souls (whatever that means) is their 
 salvation ; and thus the whole thing is proved !! The facts !! 
 the theory.!! the logical reasoning !! and correct application are 
 all proved by a fanciful conformation !!! Was there ever greater 
 sophistry palmed on humanity to support audacious and gro- 
 tesque conjecture ? ! But even this tremendous power of over- 
 ruling reason and evidence is not sufficient, for the conformity is 
 not perfect. It was not the sprinkled doorposts that were 
 saved, how can then it mean the sprinkled souls. Also no two 
 families owed their saving to the blood of the same lamb, whereas 
 the imaginary fulfilment requires every soul to be washed in the 
 blood of the one lamb; besides as the Saviour's blood is only a 
 conformed myth, and not a proved fact, the similitude proves 
 nothing — neither the truth of itself nor the ideas out of which 
 it springs — even though there was a reciprocal coincidence 
 between them. So after all the contortion of facts, the prostitu- 
 tion of intellect, and the audacity of imputing to God to compel 
 faith, its application to Jesus is an egregious failure. If the 
 religious soul wishes to extract instruction from the ordinance, 
 why not take a more obvious meaning ? To commemorate free- 
 dom from slavery and to be an annual protest for ever against 
 slavery. 
 
 The same system of misapplication is carried on in the 
 New Testament, for instance, the illustrations of " the king- 
 dom of heaven " (which evidently means righteousness and 
 truth), are appropriated by the Church to Christianity alone. 
 For that purpose the Church assumes — 1st : That the preacher, 
 Jesus, was Christ, God incarnate. 2nd : That by the king- 
 dom of heaven he meant doctrinal Christianity ; and 3rd : 
 That the written were the actual spoken words, free from mis- 
 conception, error, interpolation, or tinge of subsequent doctrine ; 
 those three assumptions mutually prove each other, because 
 
21 
 
 in fact they are conformed for that purpose, and when they are 
 granted disbelief is impossible ; the various divinely symbolised 
 doctrines become proved facts ; every other consideration 
 dwindles to nothing. 
 
 The wonder is how Christians can restrain fanaticism from 
 nullifying the ordinary occupations of life, and making the 
 spread of Christian belief the sole object and end of their ex- 
 istence. Inquisition, tortures, missionary labours, bribes, threats, 
 frauds, falsehood, and force, that " by any means they may gain 
 some," is both more rational and religious than inoperative sub- 
 mission, or insincere belief. But all this sincerity is quite 
 consistent with the admission being a tissue of egregious as- 
 sumptions, and the consequent zeal, both resulting from and 
 promoting a false religion. 
 
 Note 18. 
 
 Of the beliefs and inspirations of nine of the Apostles — for 
 Christians impute equal inspiration to them as to the others — 
 we know nothing from themselves. If they wrote, then there 
 were many Gospels and various beliefs which are lost ; if they 
 did not it was a wa§te of inspiration ; in either case an abortive 
 miracle. At most we have only hearsay rumour of vague 
 generalities about them. They are mentioned a few times in 
 globo in the Gospels and Acts, and then dismissed into oblivion, 
 or condensed into Peter and John. The solitary exclamation 
 attributed by John (xx. 28) to Thomas, " My Lord and my 
 God," is to me an evident afterbirth, the product of subsequent 
 dogma. It is almost impossible that a devout Jew, which Thomas 
 was, could have used such an expression; it relies only on this asser- 
 tion ; the whole circumstance is ignored by all the others. This, 
 together with the irreconcilable contradictions and the utterincon- 
 gruity of the incident — a substantial human body gliding through a 
 shut door, and yet retaining its solidity, its holes and its marks, is to 
 me a blasphemy against the God of nature, truth and humanity ; a 
 real murder of sense and intellect, a prostitution of our religious 
 faculties ; it bears upon itself the stamp of audaciously and 
 craftily devised pious fiction (as it asserts, verse 31) for the 
 purpose of inducing belief in the superhumanity of Jesus, which 
 it accoinplished when it was admitted (a.d. 362) as a gospel 
 truth. I think that there is no evidence that the nine, or any 
 of them, or Joseph, Nicodemus, or any other person who was 
 engaged in applying the reviving fpices or procuring the human 
 
22 
 
 clothing, believed in the death and consequent resurrection, 
 and certainly not in the atoning and vicarious principle which 
 was the foundation of and chief reason for Paul's belief in the 
 fact; and we know from his writings that there were doctrines 
 antagonistic to his own in the primitive Church. That the nine 
 Apostles may have expected His return with power from Galilee, 
 where He was alternately hiding and showing Himself, is quite 
 consistent with the tenor of the Gospel stories, though not 
 authenticated, and that it ultimately became a belief as to His 
 immediate return from wherever He was, to establish the Jewish 
 kingdom, is probably giving to James's only expression on the 
 subject ("the coming of the Lord draweth nigh") its real mean- 
 ing, without necessitating his belief in resurrection from death, 
 or cleansing with blood, or ascension into heaven, to none of 
 which does he even allude, and if he believed in them silence 
 would have been criminal. 
 
 Note 19. 
 
 During the first century, when Christian fanaticism was at a 
 white heat, there were fabricated many unauthentic and fictitious 
 lives of Jesus, dogmatical rumours were recorded as facts, and 
 facts were forged by superstition to illustrate and establish 
 Jesus-faith. They all claimed authorship from either an apostle 
 or companion of Jesus, and were acknowledged and quoted by 
 the early fathers as equally authentic. After being subjected 
 for 300 years to the processes of compiling, copying, selecting 
 fragments from one another, altering, amplifying, correcting, 
 etc., to please the tastes, gratify the beliefs, and strengthen the 
 faith of the devotees — for they alone would prize and go to the 
 expense of manuscript copies — they were pronounced apocry- 
 phal (A.D. 362), excepting four which were made canonical 
 and thereby elevated to godship, for previously none of them 
 were considered inspired ; the reason of naming four was " be- 
 cause there are four winds in heaven, and four corners to the 
 earth," and the reason of their selection was not because they 
 were genuine, but because they corroborated each other, and 
 were in accordance with the then dominant doctrine ; thus the 
 whole providence of God and religion of man is built on the 
 verbal accuracy of documents, whose defects as to original 
 genuineness and authenticity, and the agglomerated falsehoods 
 and fables of 300 years, mattered nothing, as they were all 
 ratified by the decision of a Laodicean council imparting to 
 
23 
 
 them inspiration. This is essential for Christian belief. 
 Christianity could not be in being without it ; but it fails in 
 identifying the gospels as we at present have them with those 
 acknowledged A.D. 360. For instance, did Mark's then gospel 
 contain the last twelve verses which are not to be found in the 
 oldest manuscripts ? There are many other instances which show 
 tampering with the text since that time ; what must have been 
 the alterations before ? It is noteworthy that the tendency has 
 always been to add to, to give a full and complete edition to the 
 owner, extra value to the purchaser, and to supply extra food 
 and strength to Jesus-worship. 
 
 Note 20. 
 
 The first three gospels make the ministry of Jesus one year, 
 at least so the Church decided (A.D. 200) on the authority of 
 Isaiah Ixi. 2, and Luke iv. 19. The fourth gospel extends it to 
 three or four years — surely this is discrepancy enough to falsify 
 the one or the others or to invalidate the Church's decision. The 
 fourth gospel is evidently a romance, of which Jesus is the hero, 
 and the words of the author are put into his mouth ; in the same 
 way the prestige of the apostle is obtained by ascribing to John 
 the authorship, which is no proof whatever that it emanated from 
 him, as it was the habit of the age and not considered fraudu- 
 lent to do so ; at least the gain to religion overcame and sanc- 
 tioned the deception. The unwitnessed conversation with the 
 woman of Samaria, and the discourse in xiv., xv., xvi., xvii., 
 xviii. illustrate my assertion that it is a romance. 
 
 Note 21. 
 
 The only way of protecting the gospels from the possibility of 
 error is by the assumption of inspiration ; but this is merely an 
 ideal protection, affecting only the assuming mind and not the 
 matter narrated, which still remains true or false according to its 
 coincidence with fact which is not altered — or created — by the as- 
 sumption. If we absolutely and religiously assume truth (which 
 is the church's teaching) we dispense with and absolutely defy 
 evidence, no argument or reason can overcome the assumption 
 or delusion, for whatever discrepancy appears between it and 
 other truths, the other truths must yield to the pre-assumption, 
 for assumption overleaps all the difficulties and doubts of deduc- 
 tion — this is the strength of dogma. But can we as either re- 
 
24 
 
 ligious or rational beings assume to be truth what we perceive is 
 wrong in principle, nonsensical in argument, and supported by 
 false facts and fraudulent intentions ? For instance, when I see 
 the truth of Christianity based on three mystic fourteen genera- 
 tions (Mat. i. 17j — when I find on analysing it that no power in 
 arithmetic can make out three fourteens, and when further I find 
 that to accomplish this puerile approximation three generations 
 are purposely omitted, what can I think of the arguments, 
 facts, or honesty of the record, let alone the inspiration ? Im- 
 puting inspiration to such a document is an insult to God. 
 
 Note 22. 
 
 It should always be recollected that the gospels were written 
 long subsequent to Paul's epistles, and all the writers were of 
 his section. The Gospels are therefore ex parte versions ; their 
 facts and sayings are tinctured by the doctrine they were writ- 
 ten to support, they are mere records of the dominant belief of 
 the second century. 
 
 Note 23. 
 
 To produce imaginary fulfilment of pseudo-prophecy was 
 avowedly Paul's motive and chief reason for giving credence to 
 the resurrection rumour, which he disbelieved for two years, 
 when he had every opportunity of ascertaining the fact ; and to 
 create an historical justification for that belief was the object of 
 the compilers of the gospels. It was doctrine and not evidence 
 of fact that produced this change ; he did not investigate facts 
 but appropriated prophecy, and went to Arabia for three years to 
 study Philo's theories and concoct his gospel. He seizes on the 
 idea of resurrection with avidity ; a miracle was required and was 
 consequently believed, death was proved by Jesus being seen after 
 his crucifixion I by the fanciful application of prophecy ! and by 
 being essential for resurrection ! and to confirm this he states that 
 Jesus was buried, which is contrary to the gospel account, which 
 was that he was brought into a spacious sepulchre or chamber. 
 His arguments and assumptions may be summed up thus : A 
 sacrificial death was necessary ; therefore Jesus died as a sacri- 
 fice. That resurrection of the body required illustration, there- 
 fore Jesus's resurrection is a proved fact ; otherwise the dead 
 rise not, we are yet in our sins, and believers in Jesus are of all 
 people the most miserable, their faith is vain, their vicarial hopes 
 are vain ; therefore assume the fact rather than discard a fal- 
 
25 
 
 lacious belief, although this latter alternative would be more 
 rational, more honest, and equally efficacious in throwing off 
 vain hope and extra misery. But Paul's advice has been acted 
 on. Therefore Death and Resurrection are proved facts ! ! 
 hopes are realised ! ! and all Christian doctrines become com- 
 mands from God ! ! 
 
 Note 24. 
 
 All those assumptive beliefs despise reason, because they are 
 not founded on reason, and bear no allegiance to reason. Yet 
 Christianity presumes to call itself a rational religion ! Is this 
 honesty? Christians are compelled by the nature of things to admit 
 that apprehension must precede belief, but as an evident absurdity 
 cannot be apprehended, they make a mock appeal to reason, and 
 try to deceive her with a sophism. They say, we derive eternal 
 truths from inspired evidence, and thereby TproYe absolute facts ; 
 on this mental shuffle all their rationality is based, for imputed 
 inspiration only produces hypothetical truths which involve 
 imaginary facts. None of them are brought into the region of 
 absolute reality by the logical process, it is an insane delusion to 
 fancy that they are. That the moon will in fact become blood, 
 because we impute inspiration to the dictum, is certainly not 
 rational. That Jesus sits on the right hand of God, dictating to 
 him, is as repugnantly absurd and sustained only by a similar 
 imputation. No logic can transmute imagination into objective 
 fact, or idea into entity. Yet this is the metamorphical juggle 
 that puzzles confiding humanity and establishes the Christian 
 faith. 
 
 Note 25. 
 
 This assertion will astound Christians, for they attribute 
 every blessing of civilization to Christianity. Its moral code is 
 in principle perfect, a great advance on paganism, but it did not 
 originate with Jesus ; it had been acknowledged and advocated 
 previously by other religions ; it does not constitute Christianity. 
 Christianity is the belief that the crucifixion of Jesus imparts 
 heaven to every one who believes the mythical story, and hell 
 to all that reject it, monopolising God's mercies and condemning 
 all others to His eternal wrath ; and this belief has been the 
 cause of more iniquity than all the natural wickedness of man- 
 kind put together ; cruelty almost always exists with false reli- 
 gions ; it is the perversion, over-stimulating of the religious 
 faculty and not (as clergymen preach) the want of it, that 
 
26 
 
 has when misdirected produced the greatest evils that have 
 disgraced humanity, and is not cruelty almost inseparable from 
 the above faith ? The inquisition tortures vrere only following 
 God's example; a mild hell, a merciful punishment, the persecu- 
 tion of the Jews, the crusades, the debasement of science, mental 
 and moral dishonesty, a silly superstitious frame of mind are 
 its results ; nevertheless Christian organisation and morality — not 
 its belief — have produced inestimable blessings to mankind. 
 
 Note 26. 
 
 Any system that endeavours to force man's silly devices upon 
 God, or to coerce our belief in them as God's ordinances against 
 our perception of truth, or that imputes to God nonsensical say- 
 ings, irrational conclusions, capricious cruelty, or imaginary 
 promises, is dishonouring to God, for accepting falsehood is as dis- 
 honouring as rejecting truth ; allegiance to a usurper is disloyalty; 
 in both cases the God-degrading property, and the evil effects on 
 our own minds, are the same ; Christians seem to imagine there 
 can never be an excess of belief — "Believe all things" is thejr 
 motto. 
 
 Note 27. 
 
 Christians consider that this belief elevates man by produc- 
 ing an absorption of godship into man. Let them ponder. Does 
 attributing godship to one man elevate the race as much as 
 believing that God permeates humanity by the intellectual and 
 moral faculties which He has given us? The one is an arrogant 
 imputation, the other a fact, and necessitates the duty of using 
 these faculties honestly and correctly in His service, that is, in 
 ascertaining truth and governing conduct ; any system which 
 ignores them, or subjugates them to tyrannical religious assump- 
 tion, is a degradation to man. 
 
 Any system which creates fictitious sins — imposes false duties 
 — imputes guilt to the God-ordained and inevitable, contorts 
 truth to established religious ideas, and makes our very nature 
 and existence an offence to our Creator, is a degradation to man 
 and a libel against God, which abnormal belief cannot remedy. 
 
 Note 28. 
 
 Christian reader, you may find in the foregoing many assertions 
 which lacerate your most cherished beliefs, affections, and associa- 
 tions; but I hope you will not find any expression against true piety 
 
27 
 
 or religion, for I consider these as essential to humanity as reason 
 is ; a deficiency in either of them would be a lamentable imper- 
 fection. It is against their perversion alone that I argue, and I 
 do consider that the Christian scheme is sustained by a per- 
 version of them all. Faith and reliance on G-od — the unity of 
 the universe — does not imply faith in the Bible as His revelation. 
 The endeavour to ascertain and act according to His laws and 
 the exigencies of our nature for the production of good and 
 happiness, does not imply the necessity for a vicarious saviour, 
 or the divinity and atonement of Jesus; nor does the desire to 
 please God — the religious faculty which is dominant within us 
 — imply a vile and sinful nature ; but they do involve the study 
 and contemplation of all phenomena and events as the mani- 
 festation of His will, and as a guide to our conduct; this con- 
 stitutes our duty towards God. And the endeavour to act 
 accordingly, controlling the selfish instinct by restraining unjust 
 gratifications while we expand their requirements equally to 
 others, thus making justice, mercy, industry, and benevolence our 
 actuating principles ; this constitutes our duty towards man, and 
 our conduct to inferior animals, and our social position as the 
 results. Those two duties comprise the whole duty of man ; 
 they are the consummation and union of man's intellectual and 
 moral faculties, faith and practice combined, while dogmatical 
 religion is anti-rational and degrading, it imposes extra duties 
 and thereby multiplies sins; it produces phantom fears to sustain 
 imaginary salvation, and tries to factify poetic fancies (such as 
 the incarnation of the deity by the union of the holy spirit with 
 pure virginity), thus fabricating a family of myths, conjectures 
 and fallacies which usurp the name and authority of religion. 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
 Assumptive Eeligion. 
 
 Religious assumption is the strongest conviction of which 
 the human mind is capable. It can by imputation trans- 
 mute a stick into a god, an idea into an entity, a falsehood 
 into a truth, and a belief into a fact ; but those changes 
 are mere delusions, no actual change takes place. The 
 fabrications of assumption do not alter the ordinances of 
 God, nor create truth where there is not a coincidence 
 with fact ; assuming fact to create truth is evidently a 
 mental fraud. 
 
 Conviction the result of reason is modest and diffident, 
 but conviction the result of religious assumption is in- 
 tolerant and dogmatic ; for the mind ruled by religious 
 assumption, being conscious of its own sincerity, that is 
 of the truth and overwhelming power of its belief, na- 
 turally confuses and confounds this with the truth of the 
 thing believed. It being true that you dreamed does not 
 make the thing you dreamed true; yet this is a sophism 
 largely indulged in by religious assumptions. 
 
 If a man sincerely assumes an idol to be his God, or 
 that by means of charmed paint or mystic rites he can 
 impart godship to a stick, the sincerity of his belief will 
 be in proportion to the audacity and irrationality of the 
 assumption ; for if there is any thing of modesty, doubt 
 or deduction, so far will the absolute belief be weakened, 
 for conviction and doubt cannot coexist. To absolute and 
 sincere belief a doubt is incongruity; to doubt the godship 
 of the idol, or the potency of the charm would be to the 
 prepossessed mind a wicked absurdity, a suggestion of 
 the devil conflicting with his supreme religious truth. 
 Eeason rejects simultaneous belief and denial; this gives 
 
29 
 
 intensity to assumed beliefs, while the religious idea im- 
 parts both energy and protection. 
 
 To Christians it is evident that the idolater's assump- 
 tion, though sincere, is false ; that it has no effect on the 
 stick, that it only produces ideal facts in the assuming 
 mind, the stick remaining precisely as it was before : that 
 the ideal facts are contrary to God's ordained laws, and 
 conflict with obvious truths, producing absurdities ; still 
 their potency on him is tremendous .and irresistible. But, 
 Christian, do you ever apply this reasoning to your own 
 case ? Do you ever feel that the intensity and sincerity 
 of your belief is no proof whatever of the truth of the 
 thing believed ? That the whole scheme in which you so 
 ardently believe is merely an imaginary fact caused by 
 religious assumption, and may have no existence at all in 
 the real ordinance of God, though it has tremendous and 
 irresistible power upon j'ourself ? It may be false ! If 
 your belief, like the idolater's, is irrational assumption, it 
 will not yield to, or acknowledge reason ; imaginary facts 
 in your mind become indestructible realities, and like all 
 other delusions you may believe them with insane intensity, 
 unalloyed by a ray of reason or a doubt of reality. But 
 is this religion? Is this worshipping with the intellect, 
 or giving up our faculties to the service of God and 
 truth ? 
 
 Now, though the above is actually the case with most 
 Christians, very few are willing to admit that their reli- 
 gion is in essence the same as that of the idolaters — 
 assumptive religion. They know that religion speaks to 
 us as rational beings, and they persuade themselves that 
 they believe on rational evidence ; if so, they admit that 
 their belief should be amenable to reason, that it should be 
 tentative, and not dogmatic ; that facts require evidence ; 
 that deductions should be correct; that incongruous as- 
 sumptions should not be admitted; and that the produc- 
 tion of absurdity proves falsehood in the premises. If 
 the religious idea is used to control reason, or to dictate to 
 the sense of truth, then are they on a par with the pagan, 
 and cannot object to the most rabid nonsense as a religious 
 belief. 
 
 b 
 
30 
 
 The imputation of godship degrades, and engenders dis- 
 honesty of mind ; whether the object of religious belief be 
 animal or image, visible or ideal, book or oracle, omen or 
 type, the effect is the same. The announcement must be 
 true, because it is God that speaks. This is a superstition in 
 common with Jews, Pagans and Christians. If truth can 
 be contorted from the announcement — and every ingenuity 
 is used to that effect — it proves to the votary the divinity 
 of the announcer and confirms his belief. If it cannot, it 
 is on account of misinterpretation of an ambiguous utter- 
 ance, of deficient knowledge, or some omission or commis- 
 sion which bi'oke the charm or angered God ; but in no 
 case is it allowed to disprove the assumption. Is not this 
 the history of Christianity as well as of Idolatry ? The 
 dogmatists defy reason, while the scholastics, from before 
 Luther's time, when dogma first began to be questioned 
 and sought for some rational support, down to the present, 
 as exemplified by Messrs. Maurice and Kingsley, take 
 refuge in subtleties, in contorted meanings, in dishonest 
 deductions, in any ingenuity rather than admit the falli- 
 bility of dogma or untruth in the Scripture. And now 
 with regard to the individual mind, do not you yourself 
 resort to the same subterfuges for the same purpose — sup- 
 porting Bible supremacy and suppressing honest doubt ? 
 You should and must know that just conclusions are not 
 compatible with this frame of mind, that God will not be 
 mocked, and will not reveal truth to dishonest reason. 
 Therefore if we reason at all, let us reason righteously and 
 correctly ; if we desire truth, let us ensue it. 
 
 I have heard many sermons and read many books 
 plausibly, religiously, and logically upholding the Christian 
 scheme, but they invariably assume the truth of Chris- 
 tianity from which they deduce the truth of Christianity 
 and call this proof ! or at least corroboration ; they appro- 
 priate all the resulting moralities, and use them as existing 
 religious duties to beget their own parent assumption ; is 
 not this fraudulent reasoning in a vicious circle ? For in- 
 stance, instead of saying — the Christian scheme is man's 
 theory of God's plan of salvation ; they say — the Christian 
 scheme is God's plan of salvation ; it is consequently war- 
 
31 
 
 ring against God to oppose it, it is sin to disbelieve it, etc., 
 Then the resulting submission and belief is used to 
 prove the actuality of God's plan ; for of course they har- 
 monise, one being derived from the other, but that does not 
 remove it from theory into reality or fact. " How can we 
 refuse such great salvation ! arraign God's wisdom ! reject 
 His astounding love ! nullify His miracle ! " Certainly not ; 
 if we admit the story, those sentiments flow as a matter of 
 course, but they do not in the slightest degree factify the 
 admission, rather the reverse, for they have no exist- 
 ence, and consequently no effect outside of it ; they blow 
 up the admission into intense fervour, but they do not 
 overcome any of the incongruities, or make the story a 
 whit more probable. Most religions assume the right of 
 awarding heaven and hell on their own conditions ; when 
 this is admitted, the conditions become supremely impera- 
 tive, overcome every obstruction, and dwarf every other 
 motive ; but they do not rationalise or verify the admission 
 which still retains its assumptive character, and they all 
 vanish on the assumption being disputed. The terms which 
 Christianity imposes are to admit that the blood of Jesus 
 (mystically applied by faith) cleanses from all sin ; that the 
 believer's sins are washed out by the blood of an imaginary 
 lamb or kid, which is synonymous with Jesus ; that this 
 myth changes eternal misery and God's enmity to us into 
 eternal happiness and His favour. The intense desire of 
 appropriating this reward gives faith in the promise and 
 gladly admits the assumed truth, thus unifying the whole 
 into a symmetrical scheme ; but not proving or imparting 
 to it a particle of fact, it stills remains a mirage of imagi- 
 nation, stimulated by spiritual delirium tremens (as in Acts 
 vii. 55, 56). Sober religion cannot envy those delirious 
 joys, which it pronounces contrary to all God's obvious 
 dealings and laws, a fictitious system, inimical to man's 
 moral perceptions, his sense of truth, his reason, and dero- 
 gatory to his exalted ideas of God. It is satisfied with the 
 joys of faith in the wisdom, power, and goodness of God, 
 and our identity therewith ; the consciousness that we are 
 His offspring ; that our very existence is in obedience to 
 His will and accomplishing His designs, with the delights of 
 
32 
 
 meditating on His laws, and endeavouring to perform what 
 He requires of us, which we know is for our own benefit 
 and enjoyment, together with the certainty that His loving- 
 kindness did not create us for misery, and the resulting 
 happiness of gratitude and thanksgiving expressed in prayer 
 and praise. Those true religious joys the Theist shares 
 with the Christian, he only rejects the hyperbolical, and 
 corrects assumption by reason and science, and by an 
 elevated idea of that incomprehensible Power and Perfec- 
 tion which we unify in God. 
 
 On the Prevalence of Christianity; its Causes 
 AND Effects. 
 
 As title is often decided by the fact of possession, and 
 right by might, so the prevalence of Christianity is a 
 decisive popular argument as to its title to truth. /'What 
 everyone believes must be true " is a good and safe prima 
 facie reason, but a little consideration will show that it is 
 often capable of refutation or explanation, for the same 
 argument would have proved the truth of Pagan stories 
 for many ages ; would now over a large portion of the 
 globe prove Mahometanism, besides many universally ac- 
 cepted " truths," such as alchemy, astrology, witchcraft, etc., 
 which are now exploded as falsehoods. Prevalence is z. de 
 facto and not a dsjure argument ; therefore when the original 
 title is disputed it is not admissible ; besides even in fact it 
 did not then exist. 
 
 The pure morality inculcated by Christianity is not 
 Christianity itself, nor is it an essential or unique pro- 
 perty of the faith, but merely a non-intrinsical accident. 
 Other religions previous to Jesus have inculcated the same, 
 therefore the divinity of Jesus can not be deduced from 
 them, neither do they become duties (as Christians affirm), 
 because they were enunciated by him, but on account of 
 their intrinsical value. This removes them from the nar- 
 row pale of Christianity and takes from Christianity the 
 monopoly of those virtues ; nevertheless it is to them, and 
 the immensely enhanced value given by them to our present 
 life, that the prevalence and permanence of Christianity 
 
3.3 
 
 may be attributed. No doubt the belief in the divinity of 
 Jesus and his second coming fanatically promoted the 
 growth of his morality, which ultimately agglomerated the 
 piety and charity of the civilised world around the domi- 
 nant Church ; but this no more proves the divinity of 
 Jesus than the grandeur of Imperial Rome proves the 
 divinity of Romulus ; they were both the results of the 
 principles of growth, successful organisation and the laws 
 of nature and humanity, and not of the divinity of their 
 founders ; fraud or force, dishonest monopoly, avaricious or 
 fanatical enthusiasm disregarding truth and justice, were in 
 both cases causes of dominion, though that dominion may 
 have proved beneficial. One superstition was necessary to 
 counteract the other. Christian virtues unsustained by 
 Christian superstition could not have overcome prevalent 
 and endowed heathenism : but now we may dispense with 
 the husk of superstition without injuring the fruit. 
 
 If the essential facts and doctrines of Christianity were 
 for 1500 years accepted by the intellect of mankind — as is 
 premised — I admit it would be very strong evidence as to 
 their reality and truth, almost enough to bar the re-opening 
 of the question ; but I deny that this was the case. The in- 
 tellect of mankind never accepted them during the whole 
 of that period (1500 years); faith and intellect were con- 
 sidered antagonistic ; dogma did not appeal to intellect but 
 to faith in itself. It demanded that intellect should be 
 smothered, that reason and science should not interfere 
 with religion; not merely protecting under the name of 
 religion the myths, subtleties and prehistoric assumptions, 
 but also historical statements and alleged facts ; they should 
 not be doubted or the evidence which supported them 
 criticised. By its tremendous bribes, threats, and powerful 
 organization it got the ascendancy, and thus numbers of 
 intellectual, pious and timid men submitted to dogma as 
 dealing with matters which were beyond the faculties, of 
 reason and sense. They therefore discarded criticism of 
 dogmatical statements as impious, and as a religious duty 
 strained their intellects to the utmost to acquiesce, and if 
 possible to reconcile, and thus they became sincere, pious, 
 but not intellectual, believers. What they believed in as 
 
 C 
 
34 
 
 truth was not evidenced to them, and is not confirmed to us 
 by their acceptance. The church-unanimity produced by ex- 
 pelling all who presume to differ, or doubt a creed reiterated 
 hebdomadally by all the churches for centuries, adds not a 
 scintilla of proof as to the original truth, which remains 
 exactly as it was, and we can analyse it as well as they. 
 Accepting prevalent beliefs as established truths would 
 doom mankind to perpetual ignorance and superstition, or 
 the conviction that repetition of belief makes an objective 
 fact of what was originally but a rumour or conjecture, 
 though an essential church doctrine, is a violation of our 
 mental nature. 
 
 Can anyone maintain that baptising armies by wholesale, 
 sprinkling them with brooms from buckets, turned them 
 into intelligent receivers of the faith ; or that choosing 
 baptism in preference to death, or even accepting it as a 
 passport to heaven, turned ignorant pagans into credible 
 witnesses of the truth — a cloud of witnesses ; or because few 
 persons except the Jews, for a mere negation, were willing 
 to incur persecution, it amounted to intellectual acceptance ; 
 or that prevalence caused by penal laws vouches for truth ; 
 or even because many, from conscientious conviction 
 selected Christianity, in globo, in preference to Paganism 
 or Atheism — -the only choice left them, because the Church 
 was for ages the only refuge for pious, peace-loving men ? 
 All this with the tremendous endowments and organisation 
 is surely enough, without having resort to divine inter- 
 position or intrinsic truth, to account for the prevalence of 
 Jesuism. But is prevalence obtained by these means to be 
 taken as proof of the correctness of its facts and doctrines ? 
 The Catholicity caused by the union of Jewish and Pagan 
 beliefs with Hellenic Christianity, the product of a burst 
 of fanaticism on ignorant credulity is prevalent enough ; 
 but surely this intolerant universality is no evidence of 
 truth to an enlightened age. The veriest tyro now has 
 more religious as well as scientific knowledge than was 
 possessed by the clergy of the church during the dark ages, 
 as well as more liberty in using it, and more advantages in 
 applying it. Are we called upon to give up these advantages 
 and to adopt the beliefs of ignorance as religion merely on 
 
35 
 
 account of their prevalence ? Is the question of truth 
 to be decided by the implicit acquiescence of our un- 
 criticising forefathers, extorted from them by threats of hell 
 and excommunication ? We can investigate better than 
 they, and it is our duty to do so. 
 
 When we cease to investigate God's dealings, His pro- 
 vidence. His laws, and our coxmection with and duties 
 regarding them, then we cease to be religious ; but when 
 we investigate with pre-determination, purposely misusing 
 our faculties and suborning our decisions, then we cease to 
 be righteous ; when we adopt the grotesque fancies and 
 assumed facts or incongruities of prevalent beliefs in pre- 
 ference to those evidenced by our senses, reason, accumu- 
 lated experiences, and moral faculties, then we sever truth 
 from religion, apprehension from belief, we remove our- 
 selves from God's kingdom of Facts, into a fanciful 
 Elysium of our own. Is not this virtually Atheism, or 
 ignoring the God of the Universe as manifested to us by 
 our faculties ? 
 
 On the Different Phases of Christianity. 
 
 It is interesting to trace the history of Christian belief, and 
 see the various phases it assumed. It seems to me to have 
 two main origins, the one Jewish and the other Greek. 
 
 The Essenes, of whom John the Baptist is a type, were 
 a Jewish sect who based their religion on repentance, a 
 pure life, ascetic discipline, the rite of baptism, and looking 
 forward to a Messiah to redeem Israel. 
 
 There was at the same time a similar religious move- 
 ment in the Gentile world. A Christian church was 
 established in many places, and had many and ardent 
 supporters ; anointing was their rite, holy oil their super- 
 stition ; they agreed with the Essenes in many things 
 (even as to the mystic influence of their several rites), the 
 rejection of absurd mythology ; the belief in One supreme, 
 and in purity of life. The Essene maxims were, however, 
 Jewish; the Christian were noble Grecian sentiments, as 
 afterwards enunciated by Paul, who does not seem to have 
 derived them mediately or immediately from Jesus ; both 
 
 c 2 
 
36 
 
 sects seem devoted not to priestcraft but rather to preaching 
 and individual purity. 
 
 It is impossible to say what were Jesus's opinions of 
 Messiahship, for all his sayings come to us through the 
 medium of intense advocacy, which would of course seek 
 for and fabricate his authority. He commenced as an 
 Essene, and very likely considered himself as raised up by 
 God to regenerate Israel, and demanded and received 
 personal reverence from his followers, but beyond this we 
 cannot say. However, one thing is certain, that whatever 
 Messianic ideas were attached to him, not having been 
 accomplished before his absconding into Galilee after his 
 crucifixion, his disciples looked with hope for his immediate 
 1 eturn to fulfil them ; but when the belief in his death and 
 miraculous resurrection and ascension took possession of 
 their minds, he and his mission thence assumed a religious 
 puperhumanity instead of a political heroic, and the fervour 
 of this belief was intensified by the ideal miracle. Now as 
 everything has a tendency to grow, the belief in this 
 miracle made other miracles possible, and thus produced 
 rumours of miraculous birth, temptation, etc., of which 
 there is not a particle of evidence during his life-time ; 
 those rumours became beliefs, and were ultimately fabri- 
 cated into facts by being recorded in the Gospels, which 
 became sacred and inspired for recording them ; thus, after 
 the lapse of a century or so, was produced the Jesus 
 of the Gospels, who ultimately became the Christ of 
 Christendom. 
 
 Some years after the crucifixion, when the faith was in 
 a plastic state, a new moulding power arose and imparted 
 to it shape and substance, which it has retained ever 
 since. That power was Paul. He saw that purposeless 
 miracles are futile ; it was necessary to supply a suitable 
 object and end to give them significance; and although 
 this was already done in some degree, by the expectation of 
 the second coming, yet it was but vague and unfounded ; 
 it required to be connected with Jewish scriptures to give 
 it any hold on the Jewish mind. He was a rigid Jew, 
 skilled in cabalistic lore, and of undoubting Jewish faith. 
 He believed that all the promises and prophecies of the Old 
 
37 
 
 Testament must be fulfilled ; that God was coerced by the 
 words of those whom he assumed to be His prophets to bring 
 about the facts. Yet he saw that the Jewish religion was 
 a failure; that the prophecies were unfulfilled; that actual 
 fulfilment was impossible, but that by allegorical imagination 
 imputed fulfilment might be achieved. Permeated by this 
 idea, acted upon by the sincere faith displayed by Stephen 
 and others, his doubts and remorse concerning their per- 
 secution were brought to a climax by the sunstroke near 
 Damascus ; all of which caused him to retire for three 
 years to Alexandria (the head quarters of the Hellenists 
 and Christians), where he elaborated his reconciling theory 
 by admitting as a fact, without further evidence, what he 
 had heretofore sincerely and persistently denied — the 
 death and resurrection of Jesus. He thus obtained the re- 
 quired Christ ; and by uniting Jesus and Christ, he united 
 the disciples and the Christians into dne church. His uni- 
 form preaching was that " Jesus is the Christ ; " by per- 
 suading that his death was an atonement for the sins of 
 the whole world, he gave to it an astounding religious 
 importance; by preaching that his voluntary death pro- 
 cured the salvation of mankind, he produced a transcen- 
 dent Messiah ; that his blood washed away our sins was a 
 fulfilment of Jewish type, therefore a fact; that he was 
 a propitiatory sacrifice, etc., etc. ; and deriving those mon- 
 strous imaginations from Jewish rites and Jewish scripture, 
 and therefore fancifully transmuting them into facts, he 
 not only pacified the Jews (himself included), but gave an 
 enhanced significance to their cherished beliefs, by im- 
 parting apparent life and truth to what was really effete 
 and false. His success is a matter of history ; his theory 
 became dominant, and has ruled the mind of Christendom 
 ever since. 
 
 The next phase which Christianity assumed was that 
 of intense fanaticism engendered by these doctrines (this 
 was the birth-time, or at least the growing infancy of our 
 present Gospels). Ignoring every knowledge excepting 
 Christ crucified, and trying to follow that example, placing 
 all the duties, pleasures, and exigencies of humanity, and 
 everything relating to this world in antagonism with 
 
38 
 
 eternal salvation, the contempt, or rather hatred of every- 
 thing pertaining to this life was regarded as a proof of 
 sanctity. Our bodies were vile ; the whole dispensation 
 was accursed ; every occupation except prayer and penance 
 was a sin ; every mortification of the body, mind, or nature 
 was meritorious. Starvation, celibacy, solitude, penance, 
 filth, ignorance, and especially martyrdom, were the quali- 
 fications for saints and passports to heaven. Thus was the 
 calendar filled with saints, and the deserts with hermits and 
 Stylites. This constituted Christianity for centuries, was 
 the main characteristic for upwards of one thousand years 
 and still leaves its marks on every sect, and on every 
 individual who follows Paul's doctrines. Simultaneously 
 with the above there was another growth going on. 
 The organisation of the Church, the proselytising zeal and 
 unity of the Christians made them very powerful, their 
 preachers became very influential, and their bishops ab- 
 solute rulers as to doctrine and discipline ; ultimately they 
 became the dispensers of salvation and the awarders of 
 hell-fire: they were a power not to be despised. The 
 State, therefore, acknowledged the Church as an imperial 
 institution, and enforced their decrees by secular power 
 interfered in their factions, patronising sometimes the 
 one and sometimes the other party, till the wealth and 
 power of the Church becoming prodigious and universal, 
 it at length controlled the State and usurped its functions. 
 During all this time Christianity meant allegiance to the 
 Church : but as there were two contending Churches (the 
 Greek and Roman), and several contending doctrines, some- 
 times one getting the ascendancy and sometimes the other, 
 and each anathematising the other, the spirit of love, the 
 very life of the religion of Jesus seems to have quite dis- 
 appeared. Malice, hatred, cruelty, ascetism, despotism were 
 the motive energies of Christianity ; while even the fun- 
 damental doctrines and facts — not only the disputed sub- 
 tleties — were impressed more as corollaries of the supreme 
 admission — the infallibility or godship of the Church — than 
 on account of their moral truth. Submission of belief and 
 practice followed, as a matter of course ; every dogma is 
 established, every Church decree is indisputable, whether 
 
39 
 
 excommunication, deposition, dispensation, indulgences, or 
 the vice-godship of the Pope. The efficacy of saints and 
 relics, the worship of the Virgin Mary, of Jesus, and 
 oven of God were accepted more as doctrines of the 
 Church, as derivatives from its infallible immunity from 
 error, than as possessed of intrinsic truth or of moral 
 necessity ; for disputing the authority of the Church was 
 heresy, denying her dogmas was blasphemy, disobedience 
 to her dictates was rebellion against God — all sins more 
 direful than a life of crime. A life of the most abandoned 
 profligacy, malicious cruelty, or selfish dishonesty and vio- 
 lence could be atoned for by submission to the Church, by 
 filling her coffers, performing her politic penances, or exe- 
 cuting her exterminating decrees ; but the heresy and 
 blasphemy of disputing, denying, or disobeying justly 
 earned the fiercest devisable punishment in this world and 
 hell-fire in the next. This was Catholic or Church Chris- 
 tianity, and it was truly universal, for there was none 
 other from the days of Constantino (a.d. 325) to the days 
 of Luther (a.d. 1525), one thousand two hundred years; 
 and even now allegiance to the Church and obedience to 
 her dictates — ignoring understanding and evidence of truth 
 — is the actuating religion of the great majority of Chris- 
 tians. 
 
 The solid mass of superstitions thus engendered and 
 endowed could not be thawed by exposure to reason until 
 it drifted into a more congenial atmosphere. The Re- 
 formers were only half emancipated, they still retained 
 their slavish habits, and were as bigoted and dogmatic as 
 the Catholics they attacked. The Reformation was merely 
 a limit to the application of dogma, not a denial of its 
 right or an assertion of the rights of reason ; it only tried 
 to lop off excrescences and to bring back the faith to that 
 of the Apostolic times. It never entered into the reformers' 
 minds to doubt the divinity of the canonical Scriptures 
 although they upset the authority of the Church, which 
 alone made the writings canonical, and imparted to them 
 truth or genuineness, independent of every other considera- 
 tion. Yet they dogmatically insisted on the facts and 
 doctrines of the thus impugned bible being axiomatically 
 
40 
 
 received, but allowed individual interpretation ; thus 
 making the appeal to reason a mere pretence, while they 
 authorised numerous meanings, thus splitting Christianity 
 into a variety of sects mutually throwing each other into 
 hell-fire ; for each sect fancying themselves the few elect 
 consigned all others as rubbish to the flames. This must 
 ever be the case as long eis Paul's theories and gospel stories 
 are made the foundation of religion — stories doctrinally 
 conceived, assumptively evidenced, miraculously contor- 
 ted, arising out of Jesus worship, and designed solely to 
 promote that worship ; and theories containing many 
 sublimities at that time current with the Greek philoso- 
 phers and Hebrew preachers, but perverted by Paul's alle- 
 gorical fancies ; so that the religious benefit is more than 
 neutralised by the fanatical superstitions which of necessity 
 must arise from the doctrine that nullifies everything else, 
 and builds up the whole of God's providence on the ab- 
 normal, fanciful, exclusive, and miraculous. Hyperboli- 
 cally prizing themselves as God's elect, and despising 
 others as God's rejected, must lead to insolent spiritual 
 domination and pitiless persecution, cruelty that extends 
 their faith or exterminates their opponents becomes mercy: 
 The inquisition, fire, sword and torture become religious 
 duties, and are but weak and mild imitations of their 
 God's maliciously penal government. This is at present 
 the common phase of Christianity. The Church of Rome 
 and the Protestant sects confine salvation to their own pale 
 or essential beliefs. But thank God ! the instinctive re- 
 ligion of mankind and civilization more than counteract 
 their pernicious doctrines, and, I think, are destined ulti- 
 mately to vanquish Pauline Christianity. 
 
 H. .S. 
 
Cornell University Ubrary 
 
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