As a rule, the wives of good and generous men are true and faithful.
They love their homes, they adore their children. In poverty and disaster they cling the closer. But when husbands are indolent and mean, when they are cruel and selfish, when they make a hell of home, why should we insist that their wives should love them still?
When the civilized man finds that his wife loves another he does not kill, he does not murder. He says to his wife, "You are free."
When the civilized woman finds that her husband loves another she does not kill, she does not murder. She says to her husband, "I am free."
This, in my judgment, is the better way. It is in accordance with a far higher philosophy of life, of the real rights of others. The civilized man is governed by his reason, his intelligence; the savage by his passions. The civilized, man seeks for the right, regardless of himself; the savage for revenge, regardless of the rights of others.
I do not believe that murder guards the sacredness of home, the purity of the fireside. I do not believe that crime wins victories for virtue.
I believe in liberty and I believe in law. That country is free where the people make and honestly uphold the law. I am opposed to a redress of grievances or the punishment of criminals by mobs and I am equally opposed to giving the "wronged" husbands and the "wronged" wives the right to kill the men and women they suspect. In other words, I believe in civilization.
A few years ago a merchant living in the West suspected that his wife and bookkeeper were in love. One morning he started for a distant city, pretending that he would be absent for a couple of weeks. He came back that night and found the lovers occupying the same room. He did not kill the man, but said to him: "Take her; she is yours. Treat her well and you will not be troubled. Abuse or desert her and I will be her avenger."
He did not kill his wife, but said: "We part forever. You are entitled to one-half of the property we have accumulated. You shall have it.
Farewell!"
The merchant was a civilized man--a philosopher.
PROFESSOR BRIGGS.
To the study of the Bible he has given the best years of his life. When he commenced this study he was probably a devout believer in the plenary inspiration of the Scripture--thought that the Bible was without an error; that all the so-called contradictions could be easily explained.
He had been educated by Presbyterians and had confidence in his teachers.
In spite of his early training, in spite of his prejudices, he was led, in some mysterious way, to rely a little on his own reason. This was a dangerous thing to do. The moment a man talks about reason he is on dangerous ground. He is liable to contradict the "Word of God." Then he loses spirituality and begins to think more of truth than creed. This is a step toward heresy--toward Infidelity.
Professor Briggs began to have doubts about some of the miracles.
These doubts, like rats, began to gnaw the foundations of his faith. He examined these wonderful stories in the light of what is known to have happened, and in the light of like miracles found in the other sacred books of the world. And he concluded that they were not quite true. He was not ready to say that they were actually false; that would be too brutally candid.
I once read of an English lord who had a very polite gamekeeper. The lord wishing to show his skill with the rifle fired at a target. He and the gamekeeper went to see where the bullet had struck. The gamekeeper was first at the target, and the lord cried out: "Did I miss it?"
"I would not," said the gamekeeper, "go so far as to say that your lordship missed it, but--but--you didn't hit it."
Professor Briggs saw clearly that the Bible was the product, the growth of many centuries; that legends and facts, mistakes, contradictions, miracles, myths and history, interpolations, prophecies and dreams, wisdom, foolishness, justice, cruelty, poetry and bathos were mixed, mingled and interwoven. In other words, that the gold of truth was surrounded by meaner metals and worthless stones.
He saw that it was necessary to construct what might be called a sacred smelter to divide the true from the false.
Undoubtedly he reached this conclusion in the interest of what he believed to be the truth. He had the mistaken but honest idea that a Christian should really think. Of course, we know that all heresy has been the result of thought. It has always been dangerous to grow.
Shrinking is safe.
Studying the Bible was the first mistake that Professor Briggs made, reasoning was the second, and publishing his conclusions was the third.
If he had read without studying, if he had believed without reasoning, he would have remained a good, orthodox Presbyterian. He probably read the works of Humboldt, Darwin and Haeckel, and found that the author of Genesis was not a geologist, not a scientist. He seems to have his doubts about the truth of the story of the deluge. Should he be blamed for this? Is there a sensible man in the wide world who really believes in the flood?
This flood business puts Jehovah in such an idiotic light.
Of course, he must have known, after the "fall" of Adam and Eve, that he would have to drown their descendants. Certainly it would have been more merciful to have killed Adam and Eve, made a new pair and kept the serpent out of the Garden of Eden. If Jehovah had been an intelligent God he never would have created the serpent. Then there would have been no fall, no flood, no atonement, no hell.
Think of a God who drowned a world! What a merciless monster! The cruelty of the flood is exceeded only by its stupidity.
Thousands of little theologians have tried to explain this miracle. This is the very top of absurdity. To explain a miracle is to destroy it.
Some have said that the flood was local. How could water that rose over the mountains remain local?
Why should we expect mercy from a God who drowned millions of men, women and babes? I would no more think of softening the heart of such a God by prayer than of protecting myself from a hungry tiger by repeating poetry.
Professor Briggs has sense enough to see that the story of the flood is but an ignorant legend. He is trying to rescue Jehovah from the frightful slander. After all, why should we believe the unreasonable?
Must we be foolish to be virtuous? The rain fell for forty days; this caused the flood. The water was at least thirty thousand feet in depth.
Seven hundred and fifty feet a day--more than thirty feet an hour, six inches a minute; the rain fell for forty days. Does any man with sense enough to eat and breathe believe this idiotic lie?
Professor Briggs knows that the Jews got the story of the flood from the Babylonians, and that it is no more inspired than the history of "Peter Wilkins and His Flying Wife." The destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah is another legend.
If those cities were destroyed sensible people believe the phenomenon was as natural as the destruction of Herculaneum and Pompeii. They do not believe that in either case it was the result of the wickedness of the people.
Neither does any thinking man believe that the wife of Lot was changed or turned into a pillar of salt as a punishment for having looked back at her burning home. How could flesh, bones and blood be changed to salt? This presupposes two miracles. First, the annihilation of the woman, and second, the creation of salt. A God cannot annihilate or create matter. Annihilation and creation are both impossible--unthinkable. A grain of sand can defy all the gods. What was Mrs. Lot turned to salt for? What good was achieved? What useful lesson taught? What man with a head fertile enough to raise one hair can believe a story like this?
Does a man who denies the truth of this childish absurdity weaken the foundation of virtue? Does he discourage truth-telling by denouncing lies? Should a man be true to himself? If reason is not the standard, what is? Can a man think one way and believe another? Of course he can talk one way and think another. If a man should be honest with himself he should be honest with others. A man who conceals his doubts lives a dishonest life. He defiles his own soul.
When a truth-loving man reads about the plagues of Egypt, should he reason as he reads? Should he take into consideration the fact that like stories have been told and believed by savages for thousands of years?
Should he ask himself whether Jehovah in his efforts to induce the Egyptian King to free the Hebrews acted like a sensible God? Should he ask himself whether a good God would kill the babes of the people on account of the sins of the king? Whether he would torture, mangle and kill innocent cattle to get even with a monarch?
Is it better to believe without thinking than to think without believing? If there be a God can we please him by believing that he acted like a fiend?
Probably Professor Briggs has a higher conception of God than the author of Exodus. The writer of that book was a barbarian--an honest barbarian, and he wrote what he supposed was the truth. I do not blame him for having written falsehoods. Neither do I blame Professor Briggs for having detected these falsehoods. In our day no man capable of reasoning believes the miracles wrought for the Hebrews in their flight through the wilderness. The opening of the sea, the cloud and pillar, the quails, the manna, the serpents and hornets are no more believed than the miracles of the Mormons when they crossed the plains.
The probability is that the Hebrews never were in Egypt. In the Hebrew language there are no Egyptian words, and in the Egyptian no Hebrew.
This proves that the Hebrews could not have mingled with the Egyptians for four hundred and thirty years. As a matter of fact, Moses is a myth.
The enslavement of the Hebrews, the flight, the journey through the wilderness existed only in the imagination of ignorance.
So Professor Briggs has his doubts about the sun and moon having been stopped for a day in order that Gen. Joshua might kill more heathen.
Theologians have gathered around this miracle like moths around a flame.
They have done their best to make it reasonable. They have talked about refraction and reflection, about the nature of the air having been changed so that the sun was visible all night. They have even gone so far as to say that Joshua and his soldiers killed so many that afterward, when thinking about it, they concluded that it must have taken them at least two days.
This miracle can be accounted for only in one way. Jehovah must have stopped the earth. The earth, turning over at about one thousand miles an hour--weighing trillions of tons--had to be stopped. Now we know that all arrested motion changes instantly to heat. It has been calculated that to stop the earth would cause as much heat as could be produced by burning three lumps of coal, each lump as large as this world.
Now, is it possible that a God in his right mind would waste all that force? The Bible also tells us that at the same time God cast hailstones from heaven on the poor heathen. If the writer had known something of astronomy he would have had more hailstones and said nothing about the sun and moon.
Is it wise for ministers to ask their congregations to believe this story? Is it wise for congregations to ask their ministers to believe this story? If Jehovah performed this miracle he must have been insane.
There should be some relation, some proportion, between means and ends.
No sane general would call into the field a million soldiers and a hundred batteries to kill one insect. And yet the disproportion of means to the end sought would be reasonable when compared with what Jehovah is claimed to have done.
If Jehovah existed let us admit that he had some sense.
If it should be demonstrated that the book of Joshua is all false, what harm could follow? There would remain the same reasons for living a useful and virtuous life; the same reasons against theft and murder.
Virtue would lose no prop and vice would gain no crutch. Take all the miracles from the Old Testament and the book would be improved. Throw away all its cruelties and absurdities and its influence would be far better.
Professor Briggs seems to have doubts about the inspiration of Ruth. Is there any harm in that? What difference does it make whether the story of Ruth is fact or fiction; history or poetry? Its value is just the same. Who cares whether Hamlet or Lear lived? Who cares whether Imogen and Perdita were real women or the creation of Shakespeare's imagination?
The book of Esther is absurd and cruel. It has no ethical value. There is not a line, a word in it calculated to make a human being better. The king issued a decree to kill the Jews. Esther succeeded in getting this decree set aside, and induced the king to issue another decree that the Jews should kill the other folks, and so the Jews killed some seventy-five thousand of the king's subjects. Is it really important to believe that the book of Esther is inspired? Is it possible that Jehovah is proud of having written this book? Does he guard his copyright with the fires of hell? Why should the facts be kept from the people? Every intelligent minister knows that Moses did not write the Pentateuch; that David did not write the Psalms, and that Solomon was not the author of the song or the book of Ecclesiastes. Why not say so?