Charles Bradlaugh

“ What a difference between this statute of Moses and that of Samuel! Mark well the words: the king shall be one of your brethren, a man entirely as one of you; and he shall be submissive to the will of the nation. How happens it that Samuel was not intimate with, or did not mention, a single word of an ordinance of the legislator so precise and radical? ”

“ Were they more cruel than the Israelites, or did they commit more abominable and cruel crimes than those of Lot, of Onan, of Jacob, of Judah, of Reuben, of Simeon, and Levi, of the people of Benjamin, or of the many other Israelitish men and women whose names we fortunately cannot pollute our pages with, but the record of whose horrible and detestable enormities are still to be found in the legislative enactments which the Deity found it necessary to make for the guidance of his chosen people? And why did the Deity give way to the 'universal belief' of an ignorant and vicious people? ”

“ The Midianites and Amalekites are 'as the sand by the sea shore for multitude.' 300 men surrounded their camp unobserved by the sentinels, who ought to have been more than ordinarily wakeful, having only just been relieved. These three hundred men, who have each a lamp concealed in a pitcher, suddenly break all their pitchers with a great crash, blow their trumpets, and shout out loudly. The Midianites and Amalekites, who must have been timid and nervous people, are much frightened, and begin to kill one another, and to run away as fast as possible. ”

“ That a merciful and loving God should harden any man's heart is unreasonable in the extreme; and that he should do it for the purpose of affording an excuse for slaughter, is a blasphemous proposition, which every Theist ought to deny. Can men wonder that Atheists grow in number, when the character of the Deity is delineated in such a contradictory and absurd manner? A just God grossly unjust, a merciful God cruel in the extreme, an immutable God constantly changing; in fact, a God consistent only in the attribute of incomprehensibility! ”

“ A good priest ought to be a physician to the soul. If Hippocrates had ordered his patients to take hellebore under pain of being hanged, he would have been more insane and barbarous than Phalaris, and would have had little practice. When a priest says—Worship God, be just, indulgent, and compassionate, he is then a good physician: when he says—Believe me, or you shall be burnt, he is an assassin. ”

“ Why should a man believe that in relation to Moses to which he would refuse credence in the present day? and if God was really on the side of the Israelites, why did he allow his aid to depend upon whether Moses could hold up his hand?
Verses 14 and 16. Why was Amalek to be so punished? God the Creator must have created both Amalekites and Israelites, yet he favours the latter and declares war against the former from generation to generation. What a strange idea to convey in relation to an Omnipotent Deity—strife between the Infinite God and his weak and puny creature. ”

“ Strong objections have been urged against the doctrine of devils, demons, and familiar spirits. It is said by Theists that it is contrary to all natural conceptions of the benevolence and mercy of the Deity; that he should have created, and should sustain in existence, beings of the highest intellectual order to be the subjects of eternal misery, not only to themselves, but to all humanity. It is further urged that the doctrine detracts from the power of God by holding forth an almost omnipotent chief of a legion of powerful and mischievous devils, all bent on the destruction of mankind. ”

“ As an Atheist, I cannot quite appreciate the analogical character of the argument, when I find Bishop Watson comparing the Deity with a mother, a nurse, and a schoolmaster. I cannot understand the maternal care for the children of Abraham, who were oppressed in Egypt, starved, plagued, and slaughtered in the desert of Sin, and who never enjoyed a tract of country so large as Great Britain in the whole course of their history. The bishop speaks of the Jews as nursed into a great nation. ”

“ What the waters were above the firmament or atmosphere, I cannot discover; certainly clouds are not above the firmament or atmosphere, but floating in it; and of any other aqueous aggregations above the firmament we know nothing.
'In the third day's creation we have dry land appearing, and grass and herb yielding seed, and fruit trees yielding fruit brought forth.
'We have, as yet, had no sun to shine on the earth created, to give colour to the leaves or to the flowers; to ripen the seeds of herbs yielding seed, or the fruit of trees yielding fruit. ”

“ Finally Samuel arrived: "What have you done?" says he to Saul. The king explains his reasons. Samuel answers, "You have acted foolishly; you have not observed the orders which God gave you; he had established your kingdom for ever: now your kingdom shall not stand; God has chosen a man after his own heart (this phrase must be borne in mind when criticising David's life) ; he has made him chief over his people;" and Samuel went away. ”

“ We learn from such works as the 'Sermons in Stones,' that the warmest advocates of scriptural history find so glaring a discordance as to immediately compel them to relinquish the literal version; with the strongest faith they cannot believe in light before the sun—they cannot reverse the order of the different strata as revealed by the science of geology, and they therefore tell you that you must call in your fancy (or rather their fancy) to the aid of your revelation, and, by subtracting from, or liberally adding to, the words of the text, they will melt the strongest contradiction. ”

“ Is it necessary to argue in the middle of the nineteenth century that the whole account of these miracles are unreasonable as well as impossible? unreasonable, because even the most pious Theist, if he claimed for God the power to turn a rod into a serpent, would hardly concede the same power to the sorcerers and magicians of Egypt. The throwing down the rod by Aaron, its change into a serpent, and the swallowing the other rods, form a display without purpose or utility, because God has already predestined that they should produce no effect whatever upon Pharaoh. ”

“ He said to it—If thou art the soul of the late Madame de St. Memin, strike four knocks; and the four knocks were struck. If thou art damned, strike six knocks; and the six knocks were struck. If thou art still tormented in hell, because thy body is buried in holy-ground, knock six more times; and the other six knocks were heard still more distinctly. If we disinter thy body, and cease praying to God for thee, wilt thou be the less damned? Strike five knocks to certify it to us; and the soul certified it by five knocks. ”

“ In the Douay, Abraham is told to go 'into the land of vision,' in our version, 'into the land of Moriah.' The Bible is so much made up of dreams and visions, that we cannot wonder the preachers should chiefly discourse upon castles in the air and crowns {pg38} in heaven, not to be looked at in the present life, but to be enjoyed without stint in the next. It is one drawback that we are all to die first, because men may well doubt whether their decaying and decayed remains will rise again with capacity to enjoy the good things. ”

“ If the Bible is to be examined before replying to the question, and if we are to govern our mode of answering by the words we find there, it ceases to be a matter for wonder that there are slave States in Christian countries. ”

“ When threatening the people with terrible punishments if they disobeyed the laws, when using terms which would degrade the Deity into a cruel and horrible monster, when speaking of events which, if they had occurred, would have made life a burthen, when using the most vindictive and diabolical curses, Moses never hinted at a hell fire in which men were burned 'for ever and ever,' by the fire which is never quenched, and, at the same time, further tormented by the worm that never dieth. ”

“ In concluding the comments on the Book of Exodus, I ask what is the result of our investigation? We have found the Book to be thoroughly worthless as a relation of actual occurrences, even when tested under the most favourable auspices; it repeatedly and in important particulars contradicts itself. It cannot be a revelation from God, because it pictures an all-wise God choosing a man with an impediment in his speech, to be a preacher, and relates that when the man {pg65} hesitated on account of his infirmity, God became angry at a difficulty of his own creation, and which Moses could not help. ”

“ If it be taken as a relation of fact, we find Sarah, the chosen of God, ill-treating a woman of her household, causing her to fly into the desert when in a state of health requiring great care; and we further find that God prophecies for the yet unborn child, 'That his hand will be against every man, and every man's hand against him.' If all things are in the order and disposition of God, he did not order and dispose them very well for poor Ishmael. But perhaps the God of the Jews, like the slaveowner, had not the same consideration for those born in bondage as for their masters. ”

“ Nay, when we consider the conditions of birth and growth to which it is subject, the wear and tear essential to life, the new generations intended to succeed and supplant the old—so soon as the question is proposed as one of physiology, the reply is inevitable that death is no accident, introduced by the perverse will of our first parents, nor any way connected with man's sinfulness, but is purely a result of the conditions of animal life. ”

“ It cannot be a revelation from an immutable God, because it alleges that God is influenced in his conduct by particular kinds of sacrifice: it cannot be a revelation from an all-wise and just God, because it contains trifling and absurd commands enforced by severe penalties; it cannot be a revelation from an all-powerful and infinitely good Creator, because it treats of devils and bad spirits, either having independent or permitted power to commit evil. As a code of laws, it is utterly inapplicable to the present state of society ”

“ God was very unfortunate in his choice; his chosen people are the first to forget him, or to doubt and deny his power. The miracles performed by Moses and Aaron in Egypt—events any one of which should have been sufficient to have struck terror into the Israelites for the remainder of their lives—the interview between God and the seventy-four, only a few days before, were all forgotten. ”

“ Professor Newman says, in relation to this subject, 'A fresh strain fell on the Scriptural infallibility, in contemplating the origin of death. Geologists assured us that death went on in the animal creation many ages before the existence of man. The rocks formed of the shells of animals testify that death is a phenomenon thousands and thousands of years old; to refer the death of animals to the sin of Adam and Eve is evidently impossible. Yet, if not, the analogies of the human to the brute form make it scarcely credible that man's body can ever have been intended for immortality. ”

“ In this chapter Moses exerts himself to the utmost to depict the blessings attendant upon obedience to the laws; he uses the most expressive words he can command to define the rewards which God will give his chosen people, but he never dreams of a crown in heaven, or of an eternal life of happiness after death. If man possessed an immortal soul in the days of Moses, it is certain that Moses was ignorant of its existence. ”

“ Verse 18. 'Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live.' In the Douay, 'Wizards thou shalt not suffer to live.' Can we wonder that our criminal courts occasionally reveal a scene of life in which we see one man parting with his hard-earned pence to propitiate another man, whom he believes to possess some supernatural power? ”

“ In the third chapter, God tells Moses to use subterfuge to Pharaoh, by pretending that the Jewish nation only wanted to go three days' journey to sacrifice in the wilderness, and at the same time God says that he is 'sure the King of Egypt will not let you go.' If God is the ruler and ordainer of all things, he must have ruled and ordained that his chosen people should be ill-treated by Pharaoh, whom God must have created for that very purpose. Can anything be more inconsistent and less calculated to enable us to admire the character of a just and merciful Deity? ”

“ Even in a dream, the idea of a ladder reaching from earth to heaven to enable God and his angels to go up and down is rather ludicrous. The Douay says that Jacob 'saw the ladder in his sleep.' A dream, in Genesis, is intended to have a stronger significance than we should attach to it; we are told that God often appeared to various persons in dreams. The writer of Genesis evidently conceived a ladder necessary to enable God to get up to heaven, in the same style in which you or I might ascend to the roof of a house. ”

“ The organ blower may work in the organ loft of his parish church till the perspiration streams from his brow—no serious voice checks his labour, but should he dare take his accordion into the green fields, and there, with lighter labour, beguile away his Sunday morning or afternoon, immediately the reverend pastor, the pious churchwarden, the devout and stately beadle, the meek and humble pew opener, with a thunder-like chorus-voice shout after him, 'Sabbath-breaker, thy doom is hell.' This sentence is printed in small capitals on a little tract—this tract does great good. ”

“ It is for theologians to explain, by allegory and mystical sense, how all the nations of the earth were to be blessed in a seed from which they did not descend, since this much-to-be-venerated mystical sense cannot be made the object of a work purely critical. A short time after these promises, Abraham's family was afflicted by famine, and went into Egypt for corn. It is singular that the Hebrews never went into Egypt but when pressed by hunger; for Jacob afterwards sent his children on the same errand. ”

“ Chapter vi., v. 5. 'Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might.' Is it possible that the Jews could love a Deity, whom they had only seen amongst smoke and fire, as a pillar of cloud by day, and as a pillar of fire by night; who had led them from the flesh-pots of Egypt into the sterile sandy desert of sin? If love is a necessary consequence of punishment, the Israelites would, of course, love very strongly ”

“ The priests reply, "make five golden emerods and five mice of gold, according to the number of your principalities, to appease the God of the Hebrews. Why have you hardened your hearts like the King of Egypt? You have been smitten like him; send away also the ark of the God of the Hebrews." Here the spirit and system of the priests are evident; they nourish the public credulity in favour of their particular power, at the expense even of the interests of their own nation. Is there not reason to believe that the trick played by Dagon came from their hands?' (Vide Volney.) ”

“ But no man in his senses will believe that God blew a trumpet, or caused a trumpet to be blown, to announce his coming, and that he descended upon Sinai surrounded by fire and smoke. In all fabulous relations we find such things, but it is absurd to suppose that this refers to an Almighty and Infinite Deity. We are told in verse 20, 'The Lord came down upon Mount Sinai on the top of the mount, and the Lord called Moses up to the top of the mount, and Moses went up.' Can you require stronger evidence of the mythological character of your book? ”

“ Is it not remarkable that the all-wise Creator should have not foreseen the time when the language of his revelation should have sunken below the level of the human capacity? But it is worse than folly to put forward hypotheses as to God's condescension in using such language. ”

“ It is evident that the writer of this book believed in a plurality of Gods, and had not any very elevated ideas in relation to those Gods, for, in the very same verse, he makes God express fear lest Adam should take or the tree of life, and eat and live for ever. Does it mean that man's soul was not then immortal? it cannot mean that man's body could become immortal. If man's soul was not then capable of living for ever, when did its nature become changed? ”