The question arises: Has every one who reads the Old Testament the right to express his thought as to the character of Jehovah? You will admit that as he reads his mind will receive some impression, and that when he finishes the "inspired volume" he will have some opinion as to the character of Jehovah. Has he the right to express that opinion? Is the Bible a revelation from God to man? Is it a revelation to the man who reads it, or to the man who does not read it? If to the man who reads it, has he the right to give to others the revelation that God has given to him? If he comes to the conclusion at which you have arrived,--that Jehovah is God,--has he the right to express that opinion?
If he concludes, as I have done, that Jehovah is a myth, must he refrain from giving his honest thought? Christians do not hesitate to give their opinion of heretics, philosophers, and infidels. They are not restrained by the "laws of social morality and decency." They have persecuted to the extent of their power, and their Jehovah pronounced upon unbelievers every curse capable of being expressed in the Hebrew dialect. At this moment, thousands of missionaries are attacking the gods of the heathen world, and heaping contempt on the religion of others.
But as you have seen proper to defend Jehovah, let us for a moment examine this deity of the ancient Jews.
There are several tests of character. It may be that all the virtues can be expressed in the word "kindness," and that nearly all the vices are gathered together in the word "cruelty."
Laughter is a test of character. When we know what a man laughs at, we know what he really is. Does he laugh at misfortune, at poverty, at honesty in rags, at industry without food, at the agonies of his fellow-men? Does he laugh when he sees the convict clothed in the garments of shame--at the criminal on the scaffold? Does he rub his hands with glee over the embers of an enemy's home? Think of a man capable ol laughing while looking at Marguerite in the prison cell with her dead babe by her side. What must be the real character of a God who laughs at the calamities of his children, mocks at their fears, their desolation, their distress and anguish? Would an infinitely loving God hold his ignorant children in derision? Would he pity, or mock? Save, or destroy? Educate, or exterminate? Would he lead them with gentle hands toward the light, or lie in wait for them like a wild beast? Think of the echoes of Jehovah's laughter in the rayless caverns of the eternal prison. Can a good man mock at the children of deformity? Will he deride the misshapen? Your Jehovah deformed some of his own children, and then held them up to scorn and hatred. These divine mistakes--these blunders of the infinite--were not allowed to enter the temple erected in honor of him who had dishonored them. Does a kind father mock his deformed child? What would you think of a mother who would deride and taunt her misshapen babe?
There is another test. How does a man use power? Is he gentle or cruel?
Does he defend the weak, succor the oppressed, or trample on the fallen?
If you will read again the twenty-eighth chapter of Deuteronomy, you will find how Jehovah, the compassionate, whose name is enshrined in so many hearts, threatened to use his power.
"The Lord shall smite thee with a consumption, and with a fever, and with an inflammation, and with an extreme burning, and with the sword, and with blasting and mildew. And thy heaven that is over thy head shall be brass, and the earth that is under thee shall be iron. The Lord shall make the rain of thy land powder and dust.".... "And thy carcass shall be meat unto all fowls of the air and unto the beasts of the earth."....
"The Lord shall smite thee with madness and blindness. And thou shalt eat of the fruit of thine own body, the flesh of thy sons and thy daughters. The tender and delicate woman among you,... her eye shall be evil... toward her young one and toward her children which she shall bear; for she shall eat them."
Should it be found that these curses were in fact uttered by the God of hell, and that the translators had made a mistake in attributing them to Jehovah, could you say that the sentiments expressed are inconsistent with the supposed character of the Infinite Fiend?
A nation is judged by its laws--by the punishment it inflicts. The nation that punishes ordinary offences with death is regarded as barbarous, and the nation that tortures before it kills is denounced as savage.
What can you say of the government of Jehovah, in which death was the penalty for hundreds of offences?--death for the expression of an honest thought--death for touching with a good intention a sacred ark--death for making hair oil--for eating shew bread--for imitating incense and perfumery?
In the history of the world a more cruel code cannot be found. Crimes seem to have been invented to gratify a fiendish desire to shed the blood of men.
There is another test: How does a man treat the animals in his power--his faithful horse--his patient ox--his loving dog?
How did Jehovah treat the animals in Egypt? Would a loving God, with fierce hail from heaven, bruise and kill the innocent cattle for the crimes of their owners? Would he torment, torture and destroy them for the sins of men?
Jehovah was a God of blood. His altar was adorned with the horns of a beast. He established a religion in which every temple was a slaughter-house, and every priest a butcher--a religion that demanded the death of the first-born, and delighted in the destruction of life.
There is still another test: The civilized man gives to others the rights that he claims for himself. He believes in the liberty of thought and expression, and abhors persecution for conscience sake.
Did Jehovah believe in the innocence of thought and the liberty of expression? Kindness is found with true greatness. Tyranny lodges only in the breast of the small, the narrow, the shriveled and the selfish.
Did Jehovah teach and practice generosity? Was he a believer in religious liberty? If he was and is, in fact, God, he must have known, even four thousand years ago, that worship must be free, and that he who is forced upon his knees cannot, by any possibility, have the spirit of prayer.
Let me call your attention to a few passages in the thirteenth chapter of Deuteronomy:
"If thy brother, the son of thy mother, or thy son, or thy daughter, or the wife of thy bosom, or thy friend, which is as thine own soul, entice thee secretly, saying, Let us go and serve other gods,... thou shalt not consent unto him, nor hearken unto him; neither shall thine eye pity him, neither shalt thou spare, neither shalt thou conceal him; but thou shalt surely kill him; thine hand shall be first upon him to put him to death, and afterwards the hand of all the people. And thou shalt stone him with stones, that he die."
Is it possible for you to find in the literature of this world more awful passages than these? Did ever savagery, with strange and uncouth marks, with awkward forms of beast and bird, pollute the dripping walls of caves with such commands? Are these the words of infinite mercy? When they were uttered, did "righteousness and peace kiss each other"? How can any loving man or woman "encircle the name of Jehovah"--author of these words--"with profoundest reverence and love"? Do I rebel because my "constitution is warped, impaired and dislocated"? Is it because of "total depravity" that I denounce the brutality of Jehovah? If my heart were only good--if I loved my neighbor as myself--would I then see infinite mercy in these hideous words? Do I lack "reverential calm"?
These frightful passages, like coiled adders, were in the hearts of Jehovah's chosen people when they crucified "the Sinless Man."
Jehovah did not tell the husband to reason with his wife. She was to be answered only with death. She was to be bruised and mangled to a bleeding, shapeless mass of quivering flesh, for having breathed an honest thought.
If there is anything of importance in this world, it is the family, the home, the marriage of true souls, the equality of husband and wife--the true republicanism of the heart--the real democracy of the fireside.
Let us read the sixteenth verse of the third chapter of Genesis:
"Unto the woman he said, I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception; in sorrow thou shalt bring forth children; and thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee."
Never will I worship any being who added to the sorrows and agonies of maternity. Never will I bow to any God who introduced slavery into every home--who made the wife a slave and the husband a tyrant.
The Old Testament shows that Jehovah, like his creators, held women in contempt. They were regarded as property: "Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's wife,--nor his ox."
Why should a pure woman worship a God who upheld polygamy? Let us finish this subject: The institution of slavery involves all crimes. Jehovah was a believer in slavery. This is enough. Why should any civilized man worship him? Why should his name "be encircled with love and tenderness in any human heart"?
He believed that man could become the property of man--that it was right for his chosen people to deal in human flesh--to buy and sell mothers and babes. He taught that the captives were the property of the captors and directed his chosen people to kill, to enslave, or to pollute.
In the presence of these commandments, what becomes of the fine saying, "Love thy neighbor as thyself"? What shall we say of a God who established slavery, and then had the effrontery to say, "Thou shalt not steal"?
It may be insisted that Jehovah is the Father of all--and that he has "made of one blood all the nations of the earth." How then can we account for the wars of extermination? Does not the commandment "Love thy neighbor as thyself," apply to nations precisely the same as to individuals? Nations, like individuals, become great by the practice of virtue. How did Jehovah command his people to treat their neighbors?
He commanded his generals to destroy all, men, women and babes: "Thou shalt save nothing alive that breatheth."
"I will make mine arrows drunk with blood, and my sword shall devour flesh."
"That thy foot may be dipped in the blood of thine enemies, and the tongue of thy dogs in the same."
"... I will also send the teeth of beasts upon them, with the poison of serpents of the dust...."
"The sword without and terror within shall destroy both the young man and the virgin, the suckling also, with the man of gray hairs."
Is it possible that these words fell from the lips of the Most Merciful?
You may reply that the inhabitants of Canaan were unfit to live--that they were ignorant and cruel. Why did not Jehovah, the "Father of all,"
give them the Ten Commandments? Why did he leave them without a bible, without prophets and priests? Why did he shower all the blessings of revelation on one poor and wretched tribe, and leave the great world in ignorance and crime--and why did he order his favorite children to murder those whom he had neglected?
By the question I asked of Dr. Field, the intention was to show that Jephthah, when he sacrificed his daughter to Jehovah, was as much the slave of superstition as is the Hindoo mother when she throws her babe into the yellow waves of the Ganges.
It seems that this savage Jephthah was in direct communication with Jehovah at Mizpeh, and that he made a vow unto the Lord and said:
"If thou shalt without fail deliver the children of Ammon into mine hands, then it shall be that whatsoever cometh forth of the doors of my house to meet me, when I return in peace from the children of Ammon, shall surely be the Lord's, and I will offer it up as a burnt offering."
In the first place, it is perfectly clear that the sacrifice intended was a human sacrifice, from the words: "that whatsoever cometh forth of the doors of my house to meet me." Some human being--wife, daughter, friend, was expected to come. According to the account, his daughter--his only daughter--his only child--came first.
If Jephthah was in communication with God, why did God allow this man to make this vow; and why did he allow the daughter that he loved to be first, and why did he keep silent and allow the vow to be kept, while flames devoured the daughter's flesh?
St. Paul is not authority. He praises Samuel, the man who hewed Agag in pieces; David, who compelled hundreds to pass under the saws and harrows of death, and many others who shed the blood of the innocent and helpless. Paul is an unsafe guide. He who commends the brutalities of the past, sows the seeds of future crimes.
If "believers are not obliged to approve of the conduct of Jephthah"
are they free to condemn the conduct of Jehovah? If you will read the account you will see that the "spirit of the Lord was upon Jephthah"
when he made the cruel vow. If Paul did not commend Jephthah for keeping this vow, what was the act that excited his admiration? Was it because Jephthah slew on the banks of the Jordan "forty and two thousand" of the sons of Ephraim?
In regard to Abraham, the argument is precisely the same, except that Jehovah is said to have interfered, and allowed an animal to be slain instead.
One of the answers given by you is that "it may be allowed that the narrative is not within our comprehension"; and for that reason you say that "it behooves us to tread cautiously in approaching it." Why cautiously?