“The infancy of the canon was cradled in an uncritical age and rocked with traditional ease. Conscientious care was not directed from the first to the well authenticated testimony of eye-witnesses. Of the three fathers who contributed most to its early growth, IrenÆus was credulous and blundering; Tertullian passionate and one-sided; and Clement, of Alexandria, imbued with the treasures of Greek wisdom, was mainly occupied with ecclesiastical ethics.

“IrenÆus agrees that the gospels should be four in number, neither more nor less, because there are four universal winds and four quarters of the world. The Word or Architect of all things gave the gospel in a four-fold shape. According to this father the apostles were fully informed concerning all things, and had a perfect knowledge after their Lord’s ascension.

“He says, ‘Matthew wrote his gospels while Peter and Paul were preaching in Rome, and founding the church.’ Such assertions show both ignorance and exaggeration.

“Tertullian affirms that the tradition of the apostolic churches guarantees the four gospels, and refers his readers to the churches of Corinth, Philippi, Ephesus, etc., for the authentic epistles of Paul. What is this but the rhetoric of an enthusiast?

“Clement contradicts himself in making Peter authorize Mark’s gospel to be read in the churches, while in another place he says the apostles ‘neither forbade nor encouraged it.’

“The three fathers of whom we are speaking had neither the ability nor inclination to examine the genesis of documents surrounded with an apostolic halo. No analysis of their authenticity and genuineness was seriously attempted. In its absence, custom, accident, taste, practical needs, directed the tendency of tradition. All the rhetoric employed to throw the value of their testimony as far back as possible, even up to or very near to the apostle John, is of the vaguest sort. Appeals to the continuity of tradition and of church doctrine, to the exceptional veneration of these fathers for the gospels, to their opinions being formed earlier than the composition of the works in which they are expressed, possess no force.

“The ends which the fathers in question had in view, their polemic motives, their uncritical, inconsistent assertions, their want of sure data, detract from their testimony. Their decisions were much more the result of pious feeling, biased by the theological speculations of the times, than the conclusions of a sound judgment. The very arguments they use to establish certain conclusions show weakness of perception. What are the manifestations of spiritual feeling compared with the result of logical reasoning?” (Davidson on the Canon.)

Thus we have the testimony of one of the ablest and clearest minds that has ever written upon the canon which the fathers most depended upon to establish the authenticity of the small books forming it, were “ignorant,” “credulous,” “blundering,” “passionate,” “one-sided,” “uncritical,” “inconsistent,” “possessed undue enthusiasm with contradictions;” “not possessing ability or inclination to examine;” “attempting no analysis of genuineness;” “an unreasonable apostolic reverence.” “Custom, accident, taste, and the tendency of tradition taking the place of careful examination;” “a disposition to misrepresent;” “exceptional veneration of the fathers for the gospels older than the composition;” “want of data;” “their decisions the result of pious feeling based upon [incorrect] theological speculations;” “unsound judgment;” “weakness of perception;” “lack of logical reasoning.” These are the characteristics of the fathers depended upon to establish the authenticity of a gospel story which has no solid foundation to rest upon and which is clearly of an apocryphal character. (“Answers to Christian Questions” pp. 69–70, by D. M. Bennett.)

“One hundred and seventy years from the coming of Christ elapsed before the collection assumed a form that carried with it the idea of holy and inspired.” (Davidson on the Canon, p. 106.)

“It is clear that the earliest church fathers did not use the books of the New Testament as sacred documents clothed with divine authority, but followed for the most part, at least till the middle of the second century, apostolic tradition orally transmitted.” (Ibid, p. 107.)

“Their decisions (the fathers) were much more the result of pious feeling biased by the theological speculations of the times, than the conclusions of a sound judgment. The very arguments they use to establish certain conclusions show weakness of perception.” (Ibid p. 124.)

“The men who first canonized them (the gospels) had no certain knowledge of their authors.” (Ibid p. 127.)

“That Luke did not write the gospel of Luke.” (Ibid 2, p. 25.)

“The canon was not the work of the Christian Church so much as of the men who were striving to form the church.” (Ibid p. 129.)

“Professor Davidson says that the Gospel of Matthew, as we have it now could not have been written by Matthew. Intro. New Test. 1, p. 484. He says that the present Gospel of Mark was not written by Mark and that its author is unknown.” (Ibid 2, p. 83, 84.)

Of John’s Gospel he says:

“Its existence before 140 A. D. is incapable either of decision or probable showing. The Johannine authorship has receded before the tide of modern criticism, and though this tide is arbitrary at times, it is here irresistible.

“No certain traces of the existence of the fourth gospel can be found till after Justin Martyr, that is till after the middle of the second century.” (Ibid 2, p. 520.)

“Suppose Papias is referring to our present gospel of Mark, what testimony have we to the authenticity of Jesus’ words as contained in it? Just this: Eusebius says that Papias said that John the presbyter said that Mark said that Peter said that Jesus said thus and so.” (Keeler’s “Short History of the Bible,” p. 19.)

That the charge of ignorance justly attaches to many of the fathers of the church, and that of dishonesty as well, there is abundant evidence, but a small portion of this can be given here. Mosheim, in part 2 chapter 3 of his “Ecclesiastical History,” says:

“The interest of virtue and true religion suffered yet more grievously by the monstrous errors that were universally adopted in this century, and became a source of innumerable calamities and mischiefs of succeeding ages. The first of these maxims was that it was an act of virtue to deceive and lie when by that means the interest of the church might be promoted; and the second, equally horrible, though in another point of view, was “that errors in religion, when maintained and adhered to after proper admonition were punishable with civil penalties and corporal tortures.” The former of these erroneous maxims was now of long standing. It had been adopted for long ages past, and had produced an incredible number of ridiculous fables, fictitious prodigies, and pious frauds to the remarkable detriment to that glorious cause in which they were employed. And it must be frankly confessed that the greatest men and the most eminent saints of this century [the fourth] were more or less tainted with the infection of this corrupt principle, as will appear evident to such as look with an attentive eye to their writings and actions. We would willingly except from this charge Ambrose, and Hiliary Augustine, Gregory Nazianzen, and Jerome; but truth, which is more respectable than these venerable fathers, obliges us to involve them in the general accusation.”

At another time he says, as translated by Vidal:

“At the time when he [Hermas] wrote, it was an established maxim with many Christians to avail themselves of fraud and deception, if it was likely they would conduce toward the attainment of any considerable good.”

He again says:

“It was considered that they who made it their business to deceive, with a view of promoting the cause of truth, were deserving rather of commendation than censure.”

The French Protestant writer, Casaubon, talks in a similar way, thus:

“It mightily affects me to see how many there were in the earliest times of the church who considered it a capital exploit to lend to heavenly truth the help of their own inventions in order that the new doctrine might be received by the wise among the Gentiles. These officious lies, they said, were devised for a good end.”

Le Clerc, corroborating these opinions, says:

“Dissemblers of truth are nowhere to be met with in such abundance as among the writers of church history.”

M. Daille, another learned and impartial French writer, in his celebrated work, the “Use of the Fathers,” says:

“We find them saying things which they did not themselves believe. They are mutually witnesses against each other, that they are not to be believed absolutely on their bare word.”

In book 1, chapter 6, he states upon the authority of St. Jerome, that:

“Origin, Methodius, Eusebius, Apollonaris, have written largely against Celsus and Porphyry. Do but observe their manner of arguing, and what slippery problems they used. They alleged against the Gentiles, not what they believed, but what they thought necessary.”

Jerome himself adds:

“I forbear mentioning the Latin writers, as Tertullian, Cyprian, Minutius, Victorinus, Lactantius, Hiliary, lest I should rather seem to accuse others than defend myself.”

Daille adds of the fathers:

“They made no scruple to forge whole books.”

An able writer in the Eclectic Review of 1814, page 179, speaks of the fathers in this way:

“When we consider the number of gospels, acts, epistles, revelations, traditions, and constitutions which were put in circulation during the first three centuries, and which are unquestionably spurious, we find sufficient reason for examining with care and receiving with extreme caution productions attributed to eminent men in the primitive church. Some of the early Christians do not seem to have possessed in some points a nice sense of moral obligation. The writing of books under false names, and the circulating of fables, were not accounted violations of duty; or, if the impropriety of such conduct was felt, the end proposed—the promotion of the Christian cause—was thought to justify the means employed for the accomplishment. (From D. M. Bennett’s “Answers to Christian Questions,” p. 78–80.)

The following very pertinent argument is made use of by the Rev. S. Baring-Gould in his “Lost and Hostile Gospels”: “It is somewhat remarkable that no contemporary, or even early account of the life of our Lord exists, except from the pen of Christian writers. That we have none by Greek or Roman writers is not, perhaps, to be wondered at; but it is singular that neither Philo, Josephus, nor Justus of Tiberius, should ever have alluded to Christ or to primitive Christianity. Philo was born at Alexandria about twenty years before Christ. In the year A. D. 40 he was sent by the Alexandrian Jews on a mission to Caligula, to entreat the emperor not to put in force his order that his statue should be erected in the temple of Jerusalem and in all the synagogues of the Jews. Philo was a Pharisee. He traveled in Palestine, and speaks of the Essenes he saw there; but he says not a word about Jesus Christ or his followers. It is possible that he may have heard of the new sect, but he probably concluded it was but insignificant, and consisted merely of the disciples, poor and ignorant, of a Galilean rabbi, whose doctrines he, perhaps did not stay to inquire into, and supposed they did not differ fundamentally from the traditional teaching of the rabbis of his day.”

“At this time lived Jesus, a wise man [if indeed he ought to be called a man]; for he performed wonderful works [he was a teacher of men who received the truth with gladness]; and he drew to him many Jews and also many Greeks. [This was the Christ.] But when Pilate, at the instigation of our chiefs, had condemned him to crucifixion, they who at first loved him did not cease; [for he appeared to them on the third day again; for the divine prophets had foretold this, together with many other wonderful things concerning him], and even to this time the community of Christians called after him, continues to exist.”

That this passage is spurious has been almost universally acknowledged. One may be accused perhaps of killing dead birds, if one again examines and discredits the passage; but as the silence of Josephus on the subject which we are treating is a point on which it will be necessary to insist, we cannot omit as brief a discussion as possible of the celebrated passage.

The passage is first quoted by Eusebius (fl. A. D. 315) in two places (Hist. Eccl. lib. 1. c. 11; Demonst. Evang. lib. 3.), but it was unknown to Justin Martyr (fl. A. D. 140), Clement of Alexandria (fl. A. D. 192), Tertullian (fl. A. D. 193), and Origen (fl. A. D. 230). Such a testimony would certainly have been produced by Justin in his apology, or in his controversy with Trypho the Jew, had it existed in the copies of Josephus at his time. The silence of Origen is still more significant. Celsus in his book against Christianity introduces a Jew. Origen attacks the arguments of Celsus and his Jew. He could not have failed to quote the words of Josephus, whose writings he knew, had the passage existed in the genuine text. He indeed distinctly affirms that Josephus did not believe in Christ. (Contra. Celsus 1.)

Again the paragraph interrupts the chain of ideas in the original text. Before this passage comes an account of how Pilate, seeing there was a want of pure drinking water in Jerusalem, conducted a stream into the city from a spring two hundred stadia distant, and ordered that the cost should be defrayed out of the treasury of the Temple. This occasioned a riot. Pilate disguised Roman soldiers as Jews, with swords under their cloaks, and sent them among the rabble, with orders to arrest the ringleaders. This was done. The Jews finding themselves set upon by other Jews, fell into confusion; one Jew attacked another, and the whole company of rioters melted away. “And in this manner,” says Josephus, “was this insurrection suppressed.” Then follows the paragraph about Jesus, beginning, “At this time lived Jesus, a wise man, if indeed one ought to call him a man,” etc., and the passage is immediately followed by, “About this time another misfortune threw the Jews into disturbance; and in Rome an event happened in the temple of Isis which produced great scandal.” And then he tells an indelicate story of religious deception which need not be repeated here. The misfortune which befell the Jews was, as he afterward relates, that Tiberius drove them out of Rome. The reason of this was, he says, that a noble Roman lady who had become a proselyte, had sent gold and purple to the temple at Jerusalem. But this reason is not sufficient. It is clear from what precedes—a story of sacerdotal fraud—that there was some connection between the incidents in the mind of Josephus. Probably the Jews had been guilty of religious deceptions in Rome, and had made a business of performing cures and expelling demons, with talismans, and incantations, and for this had obtained rich payment.

From the connection that exists between the passage about the “other misfortune which befell the Jews,” and the former one about the riot suppressed by Pilate, it appears evident that the whole of the paragraph concerning our Lord is an interpolation. That Josephus could not have written the passage as it stands, is clear enough, for only a Christian would speak of Jesus in the terms employed. Josephus was a Pharisee and a Jewish priest; he shows in all his writings that he believes in Judaism.

It has been suggested that Josephus may have written about Christ as in the passage quoted, but that the portions within brackets are the interpolations of a Christian copyist. But when these portions within brackets are removed, the passage loses all its interest and is a dry statement utterly unlike the sort of notice Josephus would have been likely to insert. He gives color to his narratives; his incidents are always sketched with vigor; this account would be meagre besides those of the riot of the Jews and the rascality of the priests of Isis. Josephus asserts, moreover, that in his time there were four sects among the Jews—the Pharisees, the Sadducees, the Essenes, and the sect of Judas of Gamala. He gives tolerably copious particulars about these sects, and their teachings, but of the Christian sect he says not a word. Had he wished to write about it, he would have given full details, likely to interest his readers, and not have dismissed the subject in a couple of lines.

It was perhaps felt by the early Christians that the silence of Josephus, so famous a historian and a Jew, on the life, miracles, and death of the founder of Christianity was extremely inconvenient; the fact could not fail to be noticed by their adversaries. Some Christian transcriber may have argued, either Josephus knew nothing of the miracles performed by Christ—in which case he is a weighty testimony against them—or he must have heard of Jesus, but not having deemed his acts, as they were related to him, of sufficient importance to find a place in history. Arguing thus, the copyist took the opportunity of rectifying the omission, written from the stand point of a Pharisee, and therefore designated the Lord as merely a wise man. (D. M. Bennett in “Jesus Christ.”)

That this paragraph, concerning the Lord Jesus Christ, is not Josephus’s but an interpolation, is argued from these several following considerations:

1. It is not quoted or referred to by any Christian writer before Eusebius, who flourished at the beginning of the fourth century, and afterward.

2. This paragraph was wanting in the copies of Josephus which were seen by Photius, in the ninth century.

3. It interrupts the course of the narration.

4. It is unsuitable to the general character of Josephus, who is allowed not to have been a Christian.

5. If Josephus were the author of this paragraph, it would be reasonable to expect in him frequent mention of Christ’s miracles; whereas he is everywhere else silent about them.

6. The word Christ or Messiah appears not in any place in all the works of Josephus, excepting two; namely, the paragraph which we have been considering, which is now in the eighteenth book of his Antiquities; and another in the twentieth book of the name Antiquities where is mention made of James, the brother Jesus who is called ‘Christ.’ (Works of N. Lardner, vol. 7, pp. 14, 15.)

In referring to his work of writing a history of the church up to his own times, he says:

“We are attempting a kind of trackless and unbeaten path.”

Again he says of Philo JudÆus that he was a very “learned man.” Among many other things which contradict this estimate, is the fact that Philo takes more than one hundred pages in showing how that dreams are sent from God.

Again, Eusebius does not say that the last works of Hegesippus, Papias and Dionysius of Corinth, contain anything concerning the canonical gospels; therefore, they contained none.

We give the opinion of a few well-known writers upon this “father of church history”:

In Draper’s Intellectual Development of Europe, p. 197, Bunsen and Niebuhr are quoted—the one (Bunsen) as saying that he purposely “perverted chronology for the sake of making synchronisms,” and the other (Niebuhr) declaring “he is a very dishonest writer.”

“Eusebius had a peculiar faculty of diverging from the truth.” (“History of Christian Religion,” p. 7.)

“The gravest of the ecclesiastical historians, Eusebius, himself, indirectly confesses that he has related whatever might redound to the glory, and has suppressed all that could tend to the disgrace of religion.” (Gibbon’s “Rome,” vol. 1, p. 493.)

“In one of the most learned and elaborate works that antiquity has left us, the thirty-second chapter of the twelfth book of his evangelical preparation, bears for its title this scandalous proposition: ‘How it may be lawful and fitting to use falsehood as a medicine and for the benefit of those who want to be deceived.’” (Gibbon’s “Vindication,” p. 76.)

“But Eusebius, the father of church history, capped the climax by fabricating the celebrated passage about “Jesus, a wise man, if it be lawful to call him such.” (“Anti-Christ,” p. 28.)

“He (Eusebius) has frankly told us that his principle in writing history was to conceal the facts that were injurious to the reputation of the church.” (Lecky’s “European Morals,” vol. 1, p. 492.)

“Eusebius, who would never lie or falsify except to promote the glory of God.” (Taylor’s Diegesis, p. 345.)

Eusebius pronounces a panegyric upon Constantine. The following is the list of Constantine’s murders as given by Robert Taylor:

And the church still continues to regard these two persons as holy men of God, raised up for a wise purpose—the one an open, wholesale murderer, and the other a cowardly, cunning and corrupt priest. The vast injury they have done the human race can never be computed. They poisoned the fountains of civilization, and all Christendom has been drinking its poisoned waters ever since. If there are anywhere in history two men who have done their fellow men more positive harm and wrong, I do not know them. Their names should be held up to eternal scorn.

Baronius, a sincere advocate of the Christian faith, calls Eusebius: “the great falsifier of ecclesiastical history, a wily sychophant, a consummate hypocrite, a time serving persecutor, who had nothing in his known life or writings to support the belief that he himself believed in the Christian system.”

Eusebius is the source from whom all have drawn their material. Of him Dean Milman in a note to Gibbon’s Rome says: “It is deeply to be regretted that the history of this period rests so much on the loose, and, it must be admitted, by no means scrupulous authority of Eusebius.” (Page 85.)

“Not long after Christ’s ascension into heaven, several histories of his life and doctrines, full of pious frauds and fabulous wonders, were composed by persons whose intentions, perhaps, were not bad, but whose writings discovered the greatest superstition and ignorance.” (Mosheim’s “Ecclesiastical History.”)

“Christian churches had scarcely been gathered and organized when here and there men rose up who, not being contented with the simplicity and purity of that religion which the apostles taught, attempted innovations, and fashioned religion according to their own liking.” (Mosheim’s “Ecclesiastical History,” vol. 1, c. 5.)

“To avoid being imposed upon, we ought to treat tradition as we do a notorious and known liar, to whom we give no credit, unless what he says is confirmed to us by some person of undoubted veracity.” (Extract from Bower’s “Lives of the Popes.”)

“This opinion has always been in the world, that to settle a certain and assured estimation upon that which is good and true, it is necessary to remove out of the way whatever may be an hindrance to it. Neither ought we to wonder that even those of the honest, innocent, primitive times made use of these deceits, seeing for a good end they made no scruple to forge whole books.” (Daille on the Use of the Fathers, b. 1, c. 3.)

“What would be the characteristics of a revelation? 1st. A revelation would be free from inherent contradictions. Does the New Testament revelation stand this test? 2d. A revelation would not contradict natural laws, for nature is the only undisputed revelation to man. 3d. A revelation would be so authenticated that it would be more reasonable to admit than to deny its claims. The history of thousands of years proves that, so far, no revelation has been made that compels the mind’s assent, as thousands of thinking men reject the so-called revelation of the New Testament. The New Testament does not claim infallibility for itself; and proving that a book is infallible does not prove that it was inspired, else we might claim inspiration for the problems of Euclid.” (Anon.)

“When Moses told the children of Israel that he received the two tables of commandments from the hands of God, they were not obliged to believe him, because they had no other authority for it, than his telling them so; and I have no authority for it than some historian telling me so. The commandments carry no internal evidence of divinity with them; they contain some good moral precepts, such as any man qualified to be a lawgiver or a legislator, could produce himself without having recourse to supernatural intervention.” (Thomas Paine’s “Age of Reason.”)

“Revelation is a communication of something which the person, to whom that thing is revealed, did not know before. For if I have done a thing, or seen it done, it needs no revelation to tell me I have done it, or seen it, nor to enable me to tell it, or to write it.” (Thomas Paine’s “Age of Reason.”)

“If it was worth God’s while to make a revelation to man at all, it was certainly worth his while to see to it that it was correctly made. He would not have allowed the ideas and mistakes of pretended prophets and designing priests to become so mingled with the original text that it is impossible to tell where he ceased and where the priests and prophets began. Neither will it do to say that God adapted his revelation to the prejudices of mankind. Of course it was necessary for an infinite being to adapt his revelation to the intellectual capacity of man; but why should God confirm a barbarian in his prejudices? Why should he fortify a heathen in his crimes? If a revelation is of any importance whatever, it is to eradicate prejudices from the human mind. It should be a lever with which to raise the human race. Theologians have exhausted their ingenuity in finding excuses for God. It seems to me that they would be better employed in finding excuses for men. They tell us that the Jews were so cruel and ignorant that God was compelled to justify, or nearly to justify, many of their crimes, in order to have any influence with them whatever. They tell us that if he had declared slavery and polygamy to be criminal, the Jews would have refused to receive the ten commandments. They insist that, under the circumstances, God did the best he could; that his real intention was to lead them along slowly, step by step, so that, in a few hundred years they would be induced to admit that it was hardly fair to steal a babe from its mother’s breast. It has always seemed reasonable that an infinite God ought to have been able to make man grand enough to know, even without a special revelation, that it is not altogether right to steal the labor, or the wife, or the child of another. When the whole question is thoroughly examined, the world will find that Jehovah had the prejudices, the hatreds, and superstitions of his day.

“If there is anything of value, it is liberty. Liberty is the air of the soul, the sunshine of life. Without it the world is a prison and the universe an infinite dungeon.

“If Christ was in fact God, he knew all the future. Before him, like a panorama, moved the history yet to be. He knew exactly how his words would be interpreted. He knew what crimes, what horrors, what infamies, would be committed in his name. He knew that the fires of persecution would climb around the limbs of countless martyrs. He knew that brave men would languish in dungeons, in darkness, filled with pain; that the church would use the instruments of torture, and that his followers would appeal to whip and chain. He must have seen the horizon of the future red with the flames of the auto da fe. He knew all the creeds that would spring like poisoned fungi from every text. He saw the sects waging war against each other. He saw thousands of men, under the orders of priests, building dungeons for their fellow men. He saw them using instruments of pain. He heard the groans, saw the faces white with agony, the tears, the blood—heard the shrieks and sobs of all the moaning, martyred multitudes. He knew that commentaries would be written on his words with swords, to be read by the light of faggots. He knew that the Inquisition would be born of teachings attributed to him. He saw all the interpolations and falsehoods that hypocrisy would write and tell. He knew that above these fields of death, these dungeons, these burnings, for a thousand years would float the dripping banner of the cross. He knew that in his name his followers would trade in human flesh, that cradles would be robbed, and woman’s breasts unbabed for gold, and yet he died with voiceless lips. Why did he fail to speak? Why did he not tell his disciples, and through them the world, that man should not persecute, for opinion’s sake, his fellow man? Why did he not cry, You shall not persecute in my name; you shall not burn and torment those who differ from you in creed? Why did he not plainly say, I am the Son of God? Why did he not explain the doctrine of the trinity? Why did he not tell the manner of baptism that was pleasing to him? Why did he not say something positive, definite, and satisfactory about another world? Why did he not turn the tear-stained hope of heaven to the glad knowledge of another life? Why did he go dumbly to his death, leaving the world to misery and to doubt?

“You may ask, And what of all this? I reply, As with everything in nature, so with the Bible. It has a different story for each reader. Is, then, the Bible a different book to every human being who reads it? It is. Can God, through the Bible, make precisely the same revelation to two persons? He cannot. Why? Because the man who reads is not inspired. God should inspire readers as well as writers.

“You may reply: God knew that his book would be understood differently by each one, and intended that it should be understood as it is understood by each. If this is so, then my understanding of the Bible is the real revelation to me. If this is so, I have no right to take the understanding of another. I must take the revelation made to me through my understanding, and by that revelation I must stand. Suppose, then, that I read this Bible honestly, fairly, and when I get through am compelled to say, ‘The book is not true.’ If this is the honest result, then you are compelled to say, either that God has made no revelation to me, or that the revelation that it is not true is the revelation made to me, and by which I am bound. If the book and my brain are both the work of the same infinite God, whose fault is it that the book and the brain do not agree? Either God should have written a book to fit my brain, or should have made my brain to fit his book. The inspiration of the Bible depends upon the credulity of him who reads. There was a time when its geology, its astronomy, its natural history, were thought to be inspired: that time has passed. There was a time when its morality satisfied the men who ruled the world of thought: that time has passed.

“These are the passages that have liberated woman!

“According to the Old Testament, woman had to ask pardon, and had to be purified, for the crime of having borne sons and daughters. If in this world there is a figure of perfect purity, it is a mother holding in her thrilled and happy arms her child. The doctrine that the woman is the slave, or serf, of man—whether it comes from heaven or from hell, from God or a demon, from the golden streets of the New Jerusalem or from the very Sodom of perdition—is savagery, pure and simple.

“In no country in the world had women less liberty than in the Holy Land, and no monarch held in less esteem the rights of wives and mothers than Jehovah of the Jews. The position of woman was far better in Egypt than in Palestine. Before the pyramids were built, the sacred songs of Isis were sung by women, and women with pure hands had offered sacrifices to the gods. Before Moses was born, women had sat upon the Egyptian throne. Upon ancient tombs the husband and wife are represented as seated in the same chair. In Persia women were priests, and in some of the oldest civilizations ‘they were reverenced on earth, and worshiped afterward as goddesses in heaven.’ At the advent of Christianity, in all Pagan countries women officiated at the sacred altars. They guarded the eternal fire. They kept the sacred books. From their lips came the oracles of fate. Under the domination of the Christian church, woman became the merest slave for at least a thousand years. It was claimed that through woman the race had fallen, and that her loving kiss had poisoned all the springs of life. Christian priests asserted that but for her crime the world would have been an Eden still. The ancient fathers exhausted their eloquence in the denunciation of woman, and repeated again and again the slander of St. Paul. The condition of woman has improved just in proportion that man has lost confidence in the inspiration of the Bible.

“The old argument that if Christianity is a human fabrication its authors must have been either good men or bad men, takes it for granted that there are but two classes of persons—the good and the bad. There is, at least, one other class—the mistaken, and both of the other classes may belong to this. Thousands of most excellent people have been deceived, and the history of the world is filled with instances where men have honestly supposed that they had received communications from angels and gods.” (Ingersoll’s Reply to Black.)

“But an infinite being must know not only the real meaning of the words, but the exact meaning they will convey to every reader and hearer. He must know every meaning that they are capable of conveying to every mind. He must also know what explanations must be made to prevent misconception. If an infinite being cannot, in making a revelation to man, use such words that every person to whom a revelation is essential, will understand distinctly what that revelation is, then a revelation from God, through the instrumentality of language is impossible, or it is not essential that all should understand it correctly.

“After all, the real question is, not whether the Bible is inspired, but whether it is true. If it is true, it does not need to be inspired. If it is true, it makes no difference whether it was written by a man or a god. The multiplication table is just as useful, just as true as though God had arranged the figures himself. If the Bible is really true, the claim of inspiration need not be urged; and if it is not true, its inspiration can hardly be established. As a matter of fact, the truth does not need to be inspired. Nothing needs inspiration except a falsehood or a mistake.” (Ingersoll’s “Mistakes of Moses,” p. 59.)

“It may be argued that millions have not the capacity to understand a revelation, although expressed in plainest words. To this it seems a sufficient reply, to ask, why a being of infinite power should create men so devoid of intelligence, that he cannot by any means make known to them his will?” (Ingersoll’s “Mistakes of Moses,” p. 90.)

“Millions have declared this book to be infinitely holy, to prove that they were right have imprisoned, robbed and burned their fellow men. The inspiration of this book has been established by famine, sword, and fire, by dungeon, chain, and whip, by dagger and by rack, by force and fear and fraud, and generations have been frightened by threats of hell, and bribed with promises of heaven.

“Had we been born in Turkey, most of us would have been Mohammedans and believed in the inspiration of the Koran. We should have believed that Mohammed actually visited heaven and became acquainted with an angel by the name of Gabriel who was so broad between the eyes that it required three hundred days for a very smart mule to travel the distance. If some man had denied this story we should have denounced him as a dangerous person, one who was endeavoring to undermine the foundations of society, and to destroy all distinctions between virtue and vice. We should have said to him ‘What do you propose to give us in place of this angel? We cannot afford to give up an angel of that size for nothing.’ We would have insisted that the wisest and best men believed the Koran.” (Ingersoll’s “Mistakes of Moses,” p. 36.)

“The Pentateuch is affirmed to have been written by Moses under the influence of divine inspiration. Considered thus a record vouchsafed and dictated by the Almighty, it commands not only scientific but universal consent.

“But here in the first place it may be demanded, who or what is it that has put forth this great claim in its behalf?

“Not the work itself. It nowhere claims the authorship of one man, or makes the impious declaration that it is the writing of Almighty God.” (Draper’s “Conflict Between Religion and Science.”)

1. The Bible is full of errors:

“In 1847, the American Bible Society appointed a committee of its members to prepare a standard edition of King James’s version, free from typographical errors. They prepared such an edition, correcting, as they stated, twenty-four thousand errors; but alarmed at the attacks made upon it, it was withdrawn; and the American Bible Society continues to this day to circulate for the word of God a book having in it twenty-four thousand acknowledged errors.” (“Common Sense Thoughts on the Bible,” Wm. Denton.)

2. The Bible sanctions cruelties. The wars of extermination waged by the Jews upon surrounding nations afford ample proof.

3. The Bible indorses immorality. It indorses war, slavery, polygamy, intemperance, and superstition.

4. The writers of the gospels do not claim to be inspired.

5. We do not know when, where, or by whom, either the gospels or the books supposed to be written by Moses, were composed.

6. Paul says: “All scripture is given by inspiration of God; but there is (1.) no definite meaning attached to the word inspiration. (2.) He does not refer to the gospels for they had no existence when he wrote.

7. Inspiration is not a success. There are a thousand different sects quarreling about the meaning of the “inspired scriptures.”

8. Inspiration should be pure. The Bible abounds in obscenity.

9. The Bible undergoes revisions, improvements, etc. An infallible book cannot be improved.

10. The Bible has no plan or system, and hence has no definite object. Millions upon millions of Christians have differed regarding its teachings.

11. The Bible is a fetich. Millions of people have a slavish regard for the Holy Bible who have little or no respect for Humanity, Truth, or Justice.

“Now this God either did or he did not believe in and command murder and rapine in the days when he used to sit around evenings and chat with Abraham and Moses and the rest of them. His especial plans and desires were ‘revealed’ or they were not. The ideas of justice and right were higher in those days than they are now, or else we are wiser and better than God, or else the Bible is not his revealed will. You can take your choice. My choice is to keep my respect for divine justice and honor, and let the Bible bear the burden of its own mistakes.

“If religion is a revelation, then it is not a growth, and it would have been most perfect in design and plan when it was nearest its birth. Now accepting the Bible theory of Jehovah, we find that when the communications of God were immediate and personal there could have been no mistake as to his will. To deal with it as a growth or evolution toward better things is to abandon the whole tenet of a revealed law of God. But to deal with it as a revelation is to make God a being too repulsive and brutal to contemplate for one moment with respect.

“He either did or did not tell those men those things. Which will you accept?” (Helen Gardener’s “Men, Women, and Gods.”)

“Revelation when applied to religion, means something communicated immediately from God to man. No one will deny or dispute the power of the Almighty to make such a communication, if he pleases. But admitting, for the sake of a case, that something has been revealed to a certain person, and not revealed to any other person, it is revelation to that person only. When he tells it to a second person, a second to a third, a third to a fourth, and so on, it ceases to be a revelation to all those persons. It is a revelation to the first person only, and hearsay to every other, and, consequently, they are not obliged to believe it.

“It is a contradiction in terms and ideas, to call anything a revelation that comes to us at second-hand, either verbally or in writing. Revelation is necessarily limited to the first communication—after this, it is only an account of something which that person says was a revelation made to him; and though he may find himself obliged to believe it, it cannot be incumbent upon me to believe it in the same manner; for it was not a revelation made to me, and I have only his word for it that it was made to him.

“When I am told that the Koran was written in heaven, and brought to Mahomet by an angel, the account comes too near the same kind of hearsay evidence and second-hand authority as the former.1 I did not see the angel myself, and, therefore, I have a right not to believe it.

“When also I am told that a woman called the Virgin Mary, said, or gave out, that she was with child without any cohabitation with a man, and that her betrothed husband, Joseph, said that an angel told him so, I have a right to believe them or not; such a circumstance required a much stronger evidence than their bare word for it; but we have not even this—for neither Joseph nor Mary wrote any such matter themselves; it is only reported by others that they said so—it is hearsay upon hearsay, and I do not choose to rest my belief upon such evidence.

“It is, however, not difficult to account for the credit that was given to the story of Jesus Christ being the Son of God. He was born when the heathen mythology had still some fashion and repute in the world, and that mythology had prepared the people for the belief of such a story. Almost all the extraordinary men that lived under the heathen mythology were reputed to be the sons of some of their gods. It was not a new thing at that time, to believe a man to have been celestially begotten; the intercourse of gods with women was then a matter of familiar opinion. Their Jupiter, according to their accounts, had cohabited with hundreds; the story therefore had nothing in it either new, wonderful, or obscene; it was conformable to the opinions that then prevailed among the people called Gentiles, or Mythologists, and it was those people only that believed it. The Jews who had kept strictly to the belief of one God, and no more, and who had always rejected the heathen mythology, never credited the story.

“It is curious to observe how the theory of what is called the Christian church, sprung out of the tail of heathen mythology. A direct incorporation took place in the first instance, by making the reputed founder to be celestially begotten. The trinity of gods that then followed was no other than a reduction of the former plurality, which was about twenty or thirty thousand; the statue of Mary succeeded the statue of Diana of Ephesus, the deification of heroes changed into the canonization of saints; the mythologists had gods for everything; the Christian mythologists had saints for everything; the church became as crowded with the one, as the pantheon had been with the other; and Rome was the place of both. The Christian theory is little else than the idolatry of the ancient mythologists, accommodated to the purposes of power and revenue; and it yet remains to reason and philosophy to abolish the amphibious fraud.

“Nothing that is here said can apply even with the most distant disrespect, to the real character of Jesus Christ. He was a virtuous and an amiable man. The morality that he preached and practiced was of the most benevolent kind; and though similar systems of morality had been preached by Confucius, and by some of the Greek philosophers, many years before; by the Quakers since; and by many good men in all ages, it has not been exceeded by any.

“Jesus Christ wrote no account of himself, of his birth, parentage, or anything else; not a line of what is called the New Testament is of his own writing. The history of him is altogether the work of other people; and as to the account given of his resurrection and ascension, it was the necessary counterpart to the story of his birth. His historians, having brought him into the world in a supernatural manner, were obliged to take him out again in the same manner, or the first part of the story must have fallen to the ground.

“The first part, that of the miraculous conception, was not a thing that admitted of publicity; and therefore the tellers of this part of the story had this advantage, that though they might not be credited, they could not be detected.” (Thomas Paine’s “Age of Reason.”)