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put to death for the fathers. But every man shall be put to death for his own sin." A commandment, by the way, which is distinctly contradicted in the Decalogue (Exod. xx. 5, xxxiv. 7; Deut. v. 9; and also Numbers xiv. 18). There are many other instances of these shockingly barbarous conceptions of the Supreme Being, which we are taught to adopt as the most sacred of all creeds. The story of Ahab and Micaiah is particularly offensive. (1 Kings xxii.) Ahab wanting to attack Ramoth-Gilead, consults the prophets, 400 in number. And they answer, “Go up, for the Lord shall deliver it into the hand of the king." But Jehoshaphat, Ahab's commander-in-chief, has misgivings, and advises further consultations. So the prophet Micaiah is consulted; and he too at first repeats the language of the other prophets: but on being urged to speak the truth (which he has not done before), he confesses that Jehovah induced the prophets to lie, in order that Ahab might fall into a trap. Hear the words of the prophet: "And the Lord said, Who shall persuade Ahab that he may go up and fall at Ramoth Gilead? &c. And there came forth a spirit and stood before the Lord;

and said, I will persuade him. And the Lord said unto him, Wherewith? And he said, I will go forth and I will be a lying spirit in the mouth of all his prophets. And he said, Thou shalt persuade him and prevail also. Go forth and do so. Now, therefore, behold the Lord hath put a lying spirit in the mouth of all these the prophets. And the Lord hath spoken evil concerning thee."

In the same way, we are told repeatedly that Jehovah hardened the heart" of Pharaoh for vainglory's sake, that "I might show them my signs before him." If that be a figure of speech, no such license can be claimed for the other.

No instances can be more strikingly gross than the miraculous punishments for sacrilege to the ark. (1 Sam. vi. 19.) Fifty thousand and three score and ten men of

Bethshemesh were smitten with death, "because they had looked into the ark of the Lord." It would seem impossible for the most credulous persons to believe such a story; since nothing short of a miracle could make 50,070 men persist in gratifying curiosity at the certain cost of life. The other case is that of Uzza (1 Chron. xiii.), driver of the cart in which the ark was placed: "And when they came unto the threshing-floor of Chidon, Uzza put forth his hand to hold the ark: for the oxen stumbled; and the anger of the Lord was kindled against Uzza; and he smote him because he put his hand to the ark: and there he died before God." To believe in such a tale would be the height of blasphemy: while it is transparent that the narrative merely embodies a superstitious veneration for all that pertains to the externals of religion;-a veneration which has prevailed in all ages, and which is so conspicuously illustrated in our own.

Some of these narratives are so grotesque, one might fancy that they were extracted for our amusement from a book of fairy tales. Such is the account of Elisha's going up to Beth-el (2 Kings ii. 23). "When there came forth little children out of the city, and mocked him and said unto him, Go up, thou bald head! Go up, thou bald head! and he turned back and looked on them, and cursed them in the name of the Lord. And there came forth two shebears out of the wood; and tare forty and two children of them." Conceive the Supreme Being miraculously destroying forty-two little ones for childish pranks like these. Besides such distortions of the divine character, many examples are set before us of Jewish intolerance and persecution, also supposed to be sanctified by approval of the Deity. Thus (2 Kings x.), Jehu, one of the most detestable of the Israelitish kings, treacherously massacres all the worshippers of Baal; "so that there was not a man left." "And the Lord said unto Jehu, Because thou hast done well in executing that which is right in mine eyes,

and have done unto the house of Ahab according to all that was in mine heart [Jehu had had Ahab's seventy sons put to death, besides all that remained of the house of Ahab in Jezreel, and all his great men and his priests, until he left him none remaining '], thy children of the fourth generation shall sit on the throne of Israel."

Josiah's persecution when he makes a clean sweep of the wizards and workers with familiar spirits, and when he pollutes the graves of the unfortunate Samarians, and destroys all their houses, and “slew all the priests of the higher places that were upon the altars, and burned men's bones upon them," is especially praised. "Like unto him," we are told, "was there no king before him." And what can be more atrocious than Elijah's slaughter of the eight hundred and fifty priests at the brook of Kishon? Or what more repugnant to our notions of right and wrong, than the Hebrew laws respecting slaves and servants? What must the heathen think when our missionaries tell them how God ordained that, "if a man smite his servant or his maid with a rod, and he die under his hand, he shall be surely punished. Notwithstanding, if he continue a day or two, he shall not be punished, for he is his money" (Exod. xxi. 20, 21)? "I shall never forget," says Bishop Colenso, "the revulsion of feeling with which a very intelligent Christian native, with whose help I was translating these words into the Zulu tongue, first heard them as words said to be uttered by the same great and gracious Being whom I was teaching him to trust in and adore."

In short, the Old Testament is replete with horrors of this kind, perpetrated, often in the name, but more often by the direct instigation, of the Jewish Deity.

It would be the folly of narrow-mindedness to revile the Israelites for being Israelite. I am not pointing at the heathenism and barbarity of the ancient Hebrews as a special reproach to them. I have no thought of measur

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ing their mental condition by a nineteenth-century standard. It is our unfortunate veneration of their history and all its ugly consequences that, I am reprobating now. Here is the history of a semi-barbarous people, a history of unjust aggression, of superstition and idolatry, of immorality in its most repulsive forms, of bloodthirsty intolerance, persecution, and brutality, unsurpassed by the most hideous annals of the Inquisition; and we consecrate it. We are taught from infancy that the said history is the "Word of God." On our bended knees, as little children, we receive the awful instruction from those whom we reverence above all gods. We believe then with the perfect faith which accepts any teaching from the lips of love: and by and by, when simplicity and innocence are gone, the sacred lesson is dearer than life; and we are ready to tear one another's hearts out for the sake of a nursery tale.

Although we are applying the test of morality to the claims for Divine authorship-as a test of revelation, that is we are not otherwise concerned here with the defence of the Bible as an aid to religious belief. There may be much in the Old Testament that is admirable for this purpose; but so there is in the sacred books of the Brahman and of the Buddhist. Nothing short of miraculous intervention can be admitted as the proof we are in search of. Our present inquiry has only to do with revelation in this restricted sense.

There are writers, justly deserving of the eminence their good work has earned for them, who strive to maintain the sacred character of the Bible on the score of its righteous teaching. Advocacy of this kind is not always free from ambiguity. It invites us to believe more than it has courage to express. Yet it escapes the sneer of scepticism by committing itself to really nothing. If, for the sake of my argument, I may refer to Mr. Matthew Arnold and Professor Max Müller as representative

pleaders of this class, I do so with great respect for the high aims which always animate these cultivated writers. It is incumbent on me, however, to show that the abhorrence I have intended to stir up in your mind, and the inference by implication which I would have you draw from it, are not to be warded off by the charge of a "hard and positive" spirit, or by the plea that some parts of the Bible announce the highest and noblest truths.

The purpose of Mr. Arnold's "Literature and Dogma," for instance, is to denounce such a spirit, and to warn us not to "kill our souls with literalism." His thesis may be summed up in a pair of sentences: When we are asked what is

the object of religion? let us reply, Conduct. And when we are asked further, what is conduct? let us answer, Three-fourths of life." And, "there is, then, a real power which makes for righteousness; and it is the greatest of realities for us." The last proposition is the very one for which we are seeking evidence. Mr. Arnold's earnest attempt to convince us that the Bible is a sure teacher of the first, bears excellent fruit after its kind. But he also, without hesitating, asserts as much for the other. Is he warranted in doing so?

men.

It would be absurd to suggest that Mr. Arnold is wanting in straightforwardness. He is the most outspoken of He flatly enough declares "the popular theology which rests the Bible's authority on miracle" to be an obstacle to the receiving and the studying of the Scriptures. He believes the miracles related in the Gospels "to have been generated under the same kind of conditions as other miracles, and to follow the same laws." I He deprecates the usual antithesis between natural and revealed, "For that in us which is really natural is in truth revealed," a sentence which cuts away the preternatural standpoint at a blow; and which places his own finished poetry on a par, in this respect, with every inspired passage 1 Loc. cit., p. 140.

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