"Bible and Beer" is the title that is sometimes sarcastically applied to the political alliance between churchmen and publicans; and in like manner the dietetic alliance between the "unco' guid" and the butchers may be not inaptly designated as Bible and Beef. When all else fails, the authority of Holy Writ is triumphantly cited by the bibliolatrous flesh-eater as the great court of appeal to which the food question must be carried; and here at least, it is pleaded, there can be no doubt as to the verdict. "It seems to me," wrote Dr. William Paley, more than a hundred years ago, "that it would be difficult to defend this right [to the flesh of animals] by any arguments which the light and order of Nature afford, and that we are beholden for it to the permission recorded in Scripture."^[47]

It is a far cry from the theologian of 1784 to the Meat Trades' Journal of to-day, but from an editorial article we learn that the organ of the butchering trade is animated by the same profound sense of piety. "The great Creator of all flesh," it says, "gave us the beasts of the field, not only for our food, but for other purposes equally as essential to us. The grass must be eaten by our flocks and herds, otherwise the fertility of the soil would vanish. It was a frightful punishment on the Egyptian [sic] King that he should be reduced to the level of the beasts of the field and eat grass."^[48]

Now, waiving the fact that grass is not precisely the diet that vegetarians adopt, and that it is, therefore, no reproach to vegetarianism if Nebuchadnezzar, not being a ruminant, found such a regimen distasteful, we must recognise that there is a widespread idea among religious people that the lower animals were "sent" us as food, and that the practice of flesh-eating has the seal of biblical sanction. In meeting this prejudice, there is a right line and a wrong line of reasoning, both of which have at different times been followed by vegetarian speakers.

The wrong line is to attempt to answer the texts quoted as favourable to flesh-eating by pitting against them other texts as favourable to vegetarianism—a course which not only degrades the Bible into a text-book for disputants,^[49] but also surrenders the most sacred claim of the reformed diet—viz., its appeal not to this or to that textual authority, which some thinkers accept and others deny, but to the universal principle of humanity and justice.

The right line is to show, first, that it is wholly impossible, in the face of modern knowledge and evolutional science, to maintain the old "anthropocentric" idea which regarded man as the sum and centre of the universe, a monarch for whose special benefit all else was created; and, secondly, that the ancient Hebrew scriptures, whatever be their exact significance for Christian readers (a matter with which we are not here concerned), cannot be regarded as affording any clue to the solution of modern problems which have arisen centuries later. It would be no whit more absurd to argue that negro-slavery is justifiable because it was not condemned in the Bible than to claim scriptural sanction for the cruelties of butchery because the Jews were flesh-eaters. And, indeed, such arguments have been advanced by religious people in support of slavery; we read, for example, the following in John Woolman's journal: "A friend in company began to talk in support of the slave-trade, and said the negroes were understood to be the offspring of Cain, their blackness being the mark which God set upon him after he murdered Abel; that it was the design of Providence they should be slaves, as a condition proper to the race of so wicked a man as Cain was."

But it is now time to introduce the textualist in person.

Textualist: Well, sir, I understand that you advocate vegetarianism. What sort of a religion is that?

Vegetarian: The real sort—the sort that has to be practised as well as preached.

Textualist: If it is the real sort, the proof is easy. Show me the passages in the Book.

Vegetarian: I beg to be excused. I do not bandy texts.

Textualist: What? You can produce no verses in support of your religion? I thought vegetarians relied on what they call the "Ten Best Texts," and here I stand ready to meet them with five-and-twenty better ones.

Vegetarian: I am sorry to disappoint you, but I am not one of the text-quoting vegetarians. I regard all such methods of reasoning as wholly irrelevant. There is not the least doubt that the Jews were a flesh-eating people; indeed, the very idea of vegetarianism (that is, a deliberate and permanent disuse of flesh-food for moral and hygienic reasons) was wholly unknown to them. What, then, can be the use of hunting up Bible-texts which do not refer, one way or the other, to the point at issue?

Textualist: But if it was unknown and unmentioned in the Bible, what hope for vegetarianism? It perishes like all else that is unscriptural.

Vegetarian: The same hope as for the abolition of slavery, or any other humane cause that has had birth in our modern era. We live and learn.

Textualist: But it is written, "Rise, Peter, kill and eat." What is your answer to that?

Vegetarian: It needs no answer, as you will see if you study the context.

Textualist: Then you have not a single text to set against the injunction with which I confront you?

Vegetarian: Not one—unless it be, "Answer not a fool according to his folly."

To repel texts with texts is a futility to which vegetarians as a body have fortunately not committed themselves, because vegetarianism appeals, without reference to religion, to the common sentiment of humaneness, and numbers amongst its adherents men of every nationality and creed. If biblical vegetarians have engaged in controversy with biblical flesh-eaters, that is their own concern; and we may rest assured that the battle will be a sham one, as the firing is with blank cartridge on both sides.

Apart, however, from such irrational argument, there is a sense in which an appeal may be fairly made to the Bible, as to any other great ethnical scripture or world-literature—that is, to the spirit, as distinguished from the letter, the context as distinguished from the text. That vegetarians, preaching and practising a doctrine of love and humaneness, should quote, "Behold I have given you every herb bearing seed ... to you it shall be for meat," as indicating the ideal primitive diet, and "They shall not hurt nor destroy in all my holy mountain," as prophetic of the ideal future, is just and appropriate, for such passages, though dealing with poetry rather than fact, are far more suggestive than any textual evidence; and when we come to ask what is the spirit of the New Testament towards such instincts as that from which vegetarianism springs—the desire to increase the happiness and lessen the suffering of all sentient life—it is plain that here, at least, the vegetarian is on unassailable ground.

But the answer to the biblical flesh-eater lies still nearer at hand. For the moment any attempt is made by him to ally the modern religious spirit with the maintenance of the slaughter-house, the incongruity of his position is revealed. Take "grace before meat," for instance, and note the flat impiety of offering thanks to God over the body of a fellow-being that has been cruelly slaughtered for the sake of our "pleasures of the table." As Leigh Hunt has remarked: "It is not creditable to a thinking people that the two things they most thank God for should be eating and fighting. We say grace when we are going to cut up lamb and chicken, and when we have stuffed ourselves with both to an extent that an orang-outang would be ashamed of; and we offer up our best praises to the Creator for having blown and sabred his 'images,' our fellow-creatures, to atoms, and drenched them in blood and dirt. This is odd. Strange that we should keep our most pious transports for the lowest of our appetites and the most melancholy of our necessities; that we should never be wrought up into paroxysms of holy gratitude, but for bubble-and-squeak or a good-sized massacre!"

But why, it may be asked, if the practice of flesh-eating is such as it is here described, do "religious" people acquiesce in it? Why indeed! except that, in these personal matters of every-day life, the religionism of to-day, like the stoicism of old, has a tendency to respect the letter, but disregard the spirit of its principles. The complaint which modern vegetarianism brings against the religious flesh-eaters is that which the humaner philosophy made, centuries ago, against the carnivorous stoics:

"Who is this censor who is so loud against the indulgence of the body and the luxuries of the kitchen? Why do they denounce pleasure as effeminate indulgence, and make so much fuss about it all? Surely it had been more logical if, while banishing from the table sweet-meats and perfumes, they had exhibited yet more indignation against the diet of blood! For as though all their philosophy merely regarded household accounts, they are simply interested in cutting down dinner expenses, so far as concerns the superfluous dainties of the table. They have no idea of deprecating what is murderous and cruel."^[50]

And so is it nowadays with the champions of Bible and Beef, for, like all formalists, they sacrifice the substance of religion to the shadow, and while for ever quoting the sacred names of justice and loving-kindness, not only oppose those principles when in conflict with their own appetites, but actually base their opposition on the authority of their "scripture." It would be impossible to do the Bible a deadlier wrong than this; for whether it be "inspired" or not, it is by universal consent a great literary monument, and those who profess to reverence it most should be the last to wish to utilise it as a handbook for reactionists—a store from which to draw irrelevant quotations for obstructing the progress of reform.