In giving the above brief sketch of the known universe my object was to suggest that the Creator of a universe of such scope and grandeur must be a Being of vast power and the loftiest dignity.

Now, the Christians claim that their God created this universe—not the universe He is described, in His own inspired word, as creating, but the universe revealed by science; the universe of twenty millions of suns.

And the Christians claim that this God is a God of love, a God omnipotent, omnipresent, and eternal. And the Christians claim that this great God, the Creator of our wonderful universe, is the God revealed to us in the Bible.

Let us, then, go to the Bible, and find out for ourselves whether the God therein revealed is any more like the ideal Christian God than the universe therein revealed is like the universe since discovered by man without the aid of divine inspiration.

As for the biblical God, Jahweh, or Jehovah, I shall try to show from the Bible itself that He was not all-wise, nor all-powerful, nor omnipresent; that He was not merciful nor just; but that, on the contrary, He was fickle, jealous, dishonourable, immoral, vindictive, barbarous, and cruel.

Neither was He, in any sense of the words, great nor good. But, in fact, He was a tribal god, an idol, made by man; and, as the idol of a savage and ignorant tribe, was Himself a savage and ignorant monster.

First then, as to my claim that Jahweh, or Jehovah, was a tribal god. I shall begin by quoting from Shall We Understand the Bible? by the Rev. T. Rhondda Williams:

Later, Mr. Williams writes:

In the chapter on "Different Conceptions of Providence in the Bible," Mr. Williams says:

In these two chapters Mr. Williams shows that the early conception of God was a very low one, and that it underwent considerable change. In fact, he says, with great candour and courage, that the early Bible conception of God is one which we cannot now accept.

With this I entirely agree. We cannot accept as the God of Creation this savage idol of an obscure tribe, and we have renounced Him, and are ashamed of Him, not because of any later divine revelation, but because mankind have become too enlightened, too humane, and too honourable to tolerate Jehovah.

And yet the Christian religion adopted Jehovah, and called upon its followers to worship and believe Him, on pain of torture, or death, or excommunication in this world, and of hell-fire in the world to come. It is astounding.

But lest the evidence offered by Mr. Williams should not be considered sufficient, I shall quote from another very useful book, The Evolution of the Idea of God, by the late Grant Allen. In this book Mr. Allen clearly traces the origins of the various ideas of God, and we hear of Jehovah again, as a kind of tribal stone idol, carried about in a box or ark. I will quote as fully as space permits:

It was, indeed, as the Rev. C. E. Beeby says, in his book Creed and Life, a sad mistake of St. Augustine to tack this tribal fetish in his box on to the Christian religion as the All-Father, and Creator of the Universe. For Jehovah was a savage war-god, and, as such, was impotent to save the tribe who worshipped him.

But let us look further into the accounts of this original God of the Christians, and see how he comported himself, and let us put our examples under separate heads; thus:

Jehovah's Anger

Jahweh's bad temper is constantly displayed in the Bible. Jahweh made a man, whom he supposed to be perfect. When the man turned bad on his hands, Jahweh was angry, and cursed him and his seed for thousands of years. This vindictive act is accepted by the Apostle Paul as a natural thing for a God of Love to do.

Jahweh who had already cursed all the seed of Adam, was so angry about man's sin, in the time of Noah, that he decided to drown all the people on the earth except Noah's family, and not only that, but to drown nearly all the innocent animals as well.

When the children of Israel, who had eaten nothing but manna for forty years, asked Jahweh for a change of diet, Jahweh lost his temper again, and sent amongst them "fiery serpents," so that "much people of Israel died." But still the desire for other food remained, and the Jews wept for meat. Then the Lord ordered Moses to speak to the people as follows:

Then Jahweh sent immense numbers of quails, and the people ate them, and the anger of their angry god came upon them in the act, and smote them with "a very great plague."

One more instance out of many. In the First Book of Samuel we are told that on the return of Jahweh in his ark from the custody of the Philistines some men of Bethshemesh looked into the ark. This made Jahweh so angry that he smote the people, and slew more than fifty thousand of them.

The Injustice of Jehovah

I have already instanced Jahweh's injustice in cursing the seed of Adam for Adam's sin, and in destroying the whole animal creation, except a selected few, because he was angry with mankind. In the Book of Samuel we are told that Jahweh sent three years' famine upon the whole nation because of the sins of Saul, and that his wrath was only appeased by the hanging in cold blood of seven of Saul's sons for the evil committed by their father.

In the Book of Joshua is the story of how Achan, having stolen some gold, was ordered to be burnt; and how Joshua and the Israelites took "Achan, and his sons, and his daughters, and his oxen, and his asses, and his sheep, and his tent, and all that he had," and stoned them to death, and "burnt them with fire."

In the First Book of Chronicles the devil persuades David to take a census of Israel. And again Jahweh acted in blind wrath and injustice, for he sent a pestilence, which slew seventy thousand of the people for David's fault. But David he allowed to live. In Samuel we learn how Jahweh, because of an attack upon the Israelites four hundred years before the time of speaking, ordered Saul to destroy the Amalekites, "man and woman, infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and ass." And Saul did as he was directed; but because he spared King Agag, the Lord deprived him of the crown and made David king in his stead.

The Immorality Of Jehovah

In the Second Book of Chronicles Jehovah gets Ahab, King of Israel, killed by putting lies into the mouths of the prophets:

In Deuteronomy are the following orders as to conduct in war:

The children of Israel, having been sent out by Jahweh to punish the Midianites, "slew all the males." But Moses was wrath, because they had spared the women, and he ordered them to kill all the married women, and to take the single women "for themselves." The Lord allowed this brutal act—which included the murder of all the male children—to be consummated. There were sixteen thousand females spared, of which we are told that "the Lord's tribute was thirty and two."

The Cruelty Of Jehovah

I could find in the Bible more instances of Jahweh's cruelty and barbarity and lack of mercy than I can find room for.

In Deuteronomy, the Lord hardens the heart of Sihon, King of Hesbon, to resist the Jews, and then "utterly destroyed the men, women, and little ones of every city."

In Leviticus, Jahweh threatens that if the Israelites will not reform he will "walk contrary to them in fury, and they shall eat the flesh of their own sons and daughters."

In Deuteronomy is an account of how Bashan was utterly destroyed, men, women, and children being slain.

In the same book occur the following passages:

That is from chapter vii. In chapter xx. there are further instructions of a like horrible kind:

And here, in a long quotation, is an example of the mercy of Jahweh, and his faculty for cursing:

I think I have quoted enough to show that what I say of the Jewish God Jehovah is based on fact. But I could, if needful, heap proof on proof, for the books of the Old Testament reek with blood, and are horrible with atrocities.

Now, consider, is the God of whom we have been reading a God of love? Is He the Father of Christ? Is He not rather the savage idol of a savage tribe?

Man and his gods: what a tragi-comedy it is. Man has never seen one of his gods, never heard the voice of one of his gods, does not know the shape, expression, or bearing of one of his gods. Yet man has cursed man, hated man, hunted man, tortured man, and murdered man, for the sake of shadows and fantasies of his own terror, or vanity, or desire. We tiny, vain feeblenesses, we fussy ephemera; we sting each other, hate each other, hiss at each other, for the sake of the monster gods of our own delirium. As we are whirled upon our spinning, glowing planet through the unfathomable spaces, where myriads of suns, like golden bees, gleam through the awful mystery of "the vast void night," what are the phantom gods to us? They are no more than the waterspouts on the ocean, or the fleeting shadows on the hills. But the man, and the woman, and the child, and the dog with its wistful eyes; these know us, touch us, appeal to us, love us, serve us, grieve us.

Shall we kill these, or revile them, or desert them, for the sake of the lurid ghost in the cloud, or the fetish in his box?

Do you think the bloodthirsty vindictive Jahweh, who prized nothing but his own aggrandisement, and slew or cursed all who offended him, is the Creator, the same who made the jewels of the Pleiades, and the resplendent mystery of the Milky Way?

Is this unspeakable monster, Jahweh, the Father of Christ? Is he the God who inspired Buddha, and Shakespeare, and Herschel, and Beethoven, and Darwin, and Plato, and Bach? No; not he. But in warfare and massacre, in rapine and in rape, in black revenge and deadly malice, in slavery, and polygamy, and the debasement of women; and in the pomps, vanities, and greeds of royalty, of clericalism, and of usury and barter—we may easily discern the influence of his ferocious and abominable personality. It is time to have done with this nightmare fetish of a murderous tribe of savages. We have no use for him. We have no criminal so ruthless nor so blood-guilty as he. He is not fit to touch our cities, imperfect as we are. The thought of him defiles and nauseates. We should think him too horrible and pitiless for a devil, this red-handed, black-hearted Jehovah of the Jews.

And yet: in the inspired Book, in the Holy Bible, this awful creature is still enshrined as "God the Father Almighty." It is marvellous. It is beyond the comprehension of any man not blinded by superstition, not warped by prejudice and old-time convention. This the God of Heaven? This the Father of Christ? This the Creator of the Milky Way? No. He will not do. He is not big enough. He is not good enough. He is not clean enough. He is a spiritual nightmare: a bad dream born in savage minds of terror and ignorance and a tigerish lust for blood.

But if He is not the Most High, if He is not the Heavenly Father, if He is not the King of kings, the Bible is not an inspired book, and its claims to divine revelation will not stand. THE HEROES OF THE BIBLE

Carlyle said we might judge a people by their heroes. The heroes of the Bible, like the God of the Bible, are immoral savages. That is because the Bible is a compilation from the literature of savage and immoral tribes.

Had the Bible been the word of God we should have found in it a lofty and a pure ideal of God. We should not have found in it open approval—divine approval—of such unspeakable savages as Moses, David, Solomon, Jacob, and Lot.

Let us consider the lives of a few of the Bible heroes. We will begin with Moses.

We used to be taught in school that Moses was the meekest man the world has known: and we used to marvel.

It is written in the second chapter of Exodus thus:

The meekest of men slays an Egyptian deliberately and in cold blood. It may be pleaded that the Egyptian was doing wrong; but the remarks of the Hebrew suggest that even the countrymen of Moses looked upon his act of violence with disfavour.

But the meekness of Moses is further illustrated in the laws attributed to him, in which the death penalty is almost as common as it was in England in the Middle Ages.

Also, in the thirty-first chapter of Numbers we have the following story. The Lord commands Moses to "avenge the children of Israel of the Midianites," after which Moses is to die. Moses sends out an army:

Moses is a patriarch of the Jews, and the meekest man. But suppose any pagan or Mohammedan general were to behave to a Christian city as Moses behaved to the people of Midian, what should we say of him? But God was pleased with him.

Further, in the sixteenth chapter of Numbers you will find how Moses the Meek treated Korah, Dathan, and Abiram for rebelling against himself and Aaron; how the earth opened and swallowed these men and their families and friends, at a hint from Moses; and how the Lord slew with fire from heaven two hundred and fifty men who were offering incense, and how afterwards there came a pestilence by which some fourteen thousand persons died.

Moses was a politician; his brother was a priest. I shall express no opinion of the pair; but I quote from the Book of Exodus, as follows:

Aaron, when asked by Moses why he has done this thing, tells a lie:

So much for this meek father of the Jews.

And now let us consider David and his son Solomon, the greatest of the Bible kings, and the ancestors of Jesus Christ.

Judging King David by the Bible record, I should conclude that he was a cruel, treacherous, and licentious savage. He lived for some time as a bandit, robbing the subjects of the King of Gath, who had given him shelter. When asked about this by the king, David lied. As to the nature of his conduct at this time, no room is left for doubt by the story of Nabal. David demanded blackmail of Nabal, and, on its being refused, set out with four hundred armed men to rob Nabal, and kill every male on his estate. This he was prevented from doing by Nabal's wife, who came out to meet David with fine presents and fine words. Ten days later Nabal died, and David married his widow. See twenty-fifth chapter First Book of Samuel.

David had seven wives, and many children. One of his favourite wives was Bathsheba, the widow of Uriah.

While Uriah was at "the front," fighting for David, that king seduced his wife, Bathsheba. To avoid discovery, David recalled Uriah from the war, and bade him go home to his wife. Uriah said it would dishonour him to seek ease and pleasure at home while other soldiers were enduring hardship at the front. The king then made the soldier drunk, but even so could not prevail.

Therefore David sent word to the general to place Uriah in the front of the battle, where the fight was hardest. And Uriah was killed, and David married Bathsheba, who became the mother of Solomon.

So much for David's honour. Now for a sample of his humanity. I quote from the twelfth chapter of the Second Book of Samuel:

But nothing in David's life became him so little as his leaving of it. I quote from the second chapter of the First Book of Kings. David, on his deathbed, is speaking to Solomon, his son:

These seem to have been the last words spoken by King David. Joab was his best general, and had many times saved David's throne.

Solomon began by stealing the throne from his brother, the true heir. Then he murders the brother he has robbed, and disgraces and exiles a priest, who had been long a faithful friend to David, his father. Later he murders Joab at the altar, and brings down the hoar head of Shimei to the grave with blood.

After which he gets him much wisdom, builds a temple, and marries many wives.

Much glamour has been cast upon the names of Solomon and David by their alleged writings. But it is now acknowledged that David wrote few, if any, of the Psalms, and that Solomon wrote neither Ecclesiastes nor the Song of Songs, though some of the Proverbs may be his.

It seems strange to me that such men as Moses, David, and Solomon should be glorified by Christian men and women who execrate Henry VIII. and Richard III. as monsters.

My pet aversion amongst the Bible heroes is Jacob; but Abraham and Lot were pitiful creatures.

Jacob cheated his brother out of the parental blessing, and lied about God, and lied to his father to accomplish his end. He robbed his brother of his birthright by trading on his necessity. He fled from his brother's wrath, and went to his uncle Laban. Here he cheated his uncle out of his cattle and his wealth, and at last came away with his two cousins as his wives, one of whom had stolen her own father's gods.

Abraham was the father of Ishmael by the servant-maid Hagar. At his wife's demand he allowed Hagar and Ishmael to be driven into the desert to die. And here is another pretty story of Abraham. He and his family are driven forth by a famine:

But Abraham was so little ashamed of himself that he did the same thing again, many years afterwards, and Abimelech King of Gerar, behaved to him as nobly as did King Pharaoh on the former occasion.

The story of Lot is too disgusting to repeat. But what are we to think of his offering his daughters to the mob, and of his subsequent conduct?

And what of Noah, who got drunk, and then cursed the whole of his sons' descendants for ever, because Ham had seen him in his shame?

Joseph seems to me to have been anything but an admirable character, and I do not see how his baseness in depriving the Egyptians of their liberties and their land by a corner in wheat can be condoned. Jacob robbed his brother of his birthright by trading on his hunger; Joseph robbed a whole people in the same way.

Samson was a dissolute ruffian and murderer, who in these days would be hanged as a brigand.

Reuben committed incest. Simeon and Levi were guilty of treachery and massacre. Judah was guilty of immorality and hypocrisy.

Joshua was a Jewish general of the usual type. When he captured a city he murdered every man, woman, and child within its walls. Here is one example from the tenth chapter of the Book of Joshua:

Elijah the prophet was of the same uncompromising kind. After he had mocked the god Baal, and had triumphed over him by miracle, he said to the Israelites:

Now, there were 450 of the priests of Baal, all of whom Elijah the prophet had killed in cold blood.

And here is a story about Elisha, another great prophet of the Jews. I quote from the second chapter of the Second Book of Kings.

After this, Elisha assists King Jehoram and two other kings to waste and slaughter the Moabites, who had refused to pay tribute. You may read the horrible story for yourselves in the third chapter of the Second Book of Kings. There was the usual massacre, but this time the trees were cut down and the wells choked up.

Later, Elisha cures a man of leprosy, and refuses a reward. But his servant runs after the man, and gets two talents of silver and some garments under false pretences. When Elisha hears of this crime, he strikes the servant with leprosy, and all his seed for ever.

Now, it is not necessary for me to harp upon the conduct of these men of God: what I want to point out is that these cruel and ignorant savages have been saddled upon the Christian religion as heroes and as models.

Even to-day the man who called David, or Moses, or Elisha by his proper name in an average Christian household would be regarded as a wicked blasphemer.

And yet, what would a Christian congregation say of an "Infidel" who committed half the crimes and outrages of any one of those Bible heroes?

Do you know what the Christians call Tom Paine? To this day the respectable Christian Church or chapel goer shudders at the name of the "infidel," Tom Paine. But in point of honour, of virtue, of humanity, and general good character, not one of the Bible heroes I have mentioned was worthy to clean Tom Paine's shoes.

Now, it states in the Bible that God loved Jacob, and hated Esau. Esau was a man, and against him the Bible does not chronicle one bad act. But God hated Esau.

And it states in the Bible that Elijah went up in a chariot of fire to heaven.

And in the New Testament Christ or His apostles speak of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob as being in heaven. Paul speaks of David as a "man after God's own heart"; Elijah and Moses come down from heaven, and appear talking with Christ; and, in Hebrews, Paul praises Samuel, Jephtha, Samson, and David.

My point is not that these heroes were bad men, but that, in a book alleged to be the word of God, they are treated as heroes.

I have been accused of showing irreverence towards these barbarous kings and priests. Irreverence! It is like charging a historian with disrespect to the memory of Nero.

I have been accused of having an animus against Moses, and David, and all the rest. I have no animus against any man, nor do I presume to censure my fellow creatures. I only wish to show that these favourites of God were not admirable characters, and that therefore the Bible cannot be a divine revelation. As for animus: I do not believe any of these men ever existed. I regard them as myths. Should one be angry with a myth? I should as soon think of being angry with Bluebeard, or the Giant that Jack slew.

But I should be astonished to hear that Bluebeard had been promoted to the position of a holy patriarch, and a model of all the virtues for the emulation of innocent children in a modern Sunday school. And I think it is time the Church considered itself, and told the truth about Jehovah, and Moses, and Joshua, and Samson.

If you fail to agree with me I can only accept your decision with respectful astonishment.