Sixteen Crucified Saviours ~ 5(Christianity Before Christ, by Kersey Graves. 1875)
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Library Index
We have in our possession historical quotations to prove the truth of each one of the above parallels. We have all the historical facts on which they were constructed found in and drawn from the sacred books of the Hindu religion and the works of Christian writers descriptive of their religion. But they would swell the present volume to unwieldy dimensions, and far beyond its proper and prescribed limits, to present them here; they are therefore reserved for the second volume, and may be published in pamphlet form also. In proof of the correctness of the foregoing comparative analogies, we will now summon the testimony of various authors setting forth the historical character of the Hindu God Krishna, and the essential nature of his religion, so far as it approximates in its doctrines and moral teachings to the Christian religion. We will first hear from Colonel Wiseman, for ten years a Christian missionary in India. ‘There is one Indian (Hindu) legend of considerable importance’ says this writer. ... ‘This is the story of Krishna, the Indian Apollo. In native legends he is represented as an Avatar, or incarnation of the Divinity. At his birth, choirs of Devitas (angels) sung hymns of praise, while shepherds surrounded his cradle. It was necessary to conceal his birth from the tyrant ruler, Cansa, to whom it had been foretold that the infant Saviour should destroy him. The child escaped with his parents beyond the coast of Lamouna. For a time he lived in obscurity, and then commenced a public life distinguished for prowess and beneficence. He washed the feet of the Brahmins, and preached the most excellent doctrines; but at length the power of his enemies prevailed. Before dying, he foretold the miseries which would take place in the Caliyuga, or wicked age (Dark Age) of the world.’ ‘Krishna (says another writer) taught his followers that they alone were the true believers of the saving faith; throwing down the barriers of caste, and elevating the dogmas of their faith above the sacerdotal class, he admitted every one who felt an inward desire to the ministry to the preaching of their religion. A system thus associating itself with the habits, feelings, and personal advantages of its disciples could not fail to make rapid progress.’ (Upham’s History. Doctrines of Buddhism.) ‘Buddhism inculcates benevolence, tenderness, forgiveness of injuries, and love of enemies; and forbids sensuality, love of pleasure, and attachment to worldly objects.’ (Judson). ‘At the moment of his (Krishna’s) conception a God left heaven to enter the womb of his mother (a virgin). Immediately after his birth he was recognised as a divine personage, and it was predicted that he would surpass all previous divine incarnations in holiness. Every one adored him, saluting him as ‘the God of Gods.’ When twenty years of age he went into a desert, and lived there in the austerest retirement, poverty, simplicity, and virtue, spending his whole time in religious contemplation. He was tempted; in various ways, but his self-denial resisted all the seductive approaches of sin. He declared, ‘Religion is my essence.’ He experienced a lively opposition from the priests attached to the ancient creeds (as Christ subsequently did). But he triumphed over all his enemies after holding a discussion with them (as Christ did with the doctors in the Temple). He revised the existing code of morals and the social law. He reduced the main principles of morality to four, viz.: mercy, aversion to cruelty, unbounded sympathy for all animated beings and the strictest adherence to the moral law. He also gave a decalogue of commandments:
This code of morals was firmly established in the hearts of his followers.’ (Abridged from Hardy’s Manual of Buddhism.) ‘It was prophesied in olden times that a person would arise and redeem Hindustan from ‘the yoke of bondage.’ ‘At midnight, when the birth of Krishna was taking place, the clouds emitted low music, and poured down a rain of flowers. The celestial child was greeted with hymns by attending spirits. The room was illuminated by his light, and the countenances of his father and mother emitted rays of
glory, and they bowed in worship.’ ‘The people believed he was a God.’ They eagerly caught the words which fell from his lips, which taught
his divine mission, and they called him the ‘Holy One,’ and finally the ‘Living God,’ He performed miraculous cures. At his birth a
marvellous light illumined the earth. His followers baptised, and performed miraculous cures. And he, when a child, attracted attention by his
miracles. While attending the herds with his foster-father a great serpent poisoned the river, which caused the death of cows and shepherd-boys
when they drank of it, whom Krishna restored to life by a look of divine power. His life was devoted to mercy and charity. He left paradise from
pure compassion, to die for suffering sinners. He sought to lead men to better paths and lives of virtue and rectitude. He suffered to atone for
the sins of the world; and the sinner, through faith in him, can be saved. Christ and Krishna both taught the equality of man. Prayers addressed
to Krishna were after this fashion: ‘O thou Supreme One! thy essence is inscrutable. Thou art all in all. The understanding of man cannot reach
thy Almighty Power. I, who know nothing, fly to thee for protection. Show mercy unto me, and enable me to see and know thee.’ Krishna replies,
‘Have faith in me. No one who worships me can perish. Address thyself to me as the only asylum. I will deliver thee from sin. I am animated with
equal benevolence toward all beings. I know neither hatred nor partiality. Those who adore me devoutly are in me and I in them’’ – ‘Christ
within you the hope of glory.’ (Abridged from Mr. Tuttle.) ‘If we consider that Buddhism proclaimed the equality of all men and women in the sight of God, that it denounced the impious pretensions of the most mischievous priesthood the world ever saw, and that it inculcated a pure system of practical morality, we must admit that the innovation was as advantageous as it was extensively spread and adopted.’ (Hue’s Journey through China, chap. v.) ‘To Krishna the Hindus were indebted for a code of pure and practical morality, which inculcated charity and chastity, performance of good works, abstinence from evil, and general kindness to all living things.’ (Cunningham.) ‘Buddhism never confounds right or wrong, and never excuses any sin’ (Catharine Beecher.) ‘He (Krishna) honoured humanity by his virtues.’ (St. Hilaire.) ‘It is probable that every incident in his (Chrisna’s) life is founded in fact, which, if separated from surrounding fable, would afford a history that would scarce have any equal in the importance of the lessons it would teach.’ (Hardy’s Manual of Buddhism.) ‘He (Krishna) undertakes and counsels a constant struggle against the body. In his eyes the body is the enemy of man’s soul (as Paul thought when he spoke of ‘our vile bodies.’) He aims to subdue the body and the burning passions which consume it. He requires humility, disregard of wordily wealth, patience and resignation in adversity, love to enemies, religious tolerance, horror at falsehood, avoidance of frivolous conversation, consideration and esteem for women, sanctity of the marriage relation, non-resistance to evil, confession of sins, and conversion.’ (St. Hilaire.) ‘Buddhism has been called the Christianity of the East.’ (Abel Remuset.) ‘The doctrine and practical piety of their bible (the Baghavat Gita) bear a strong resemblance to those of the Holy Scriptures. It has scarcely a precept or principle that is not found in the (Christian) bible. And were the people to live up to its principles of peace and love, oppression and injury would be known no more within their borders ... it has no mythology of obscene and ferocious deities, no sanguinary or impure observances, no self-inflicting tortures, no tyrannising priesthood, no confounding of right and wrong by making certain iniquities laudable in worship. In its moral code, its description of the purity and peace of the first ages, and the shortening of man’s life by sin, it seems to follow genuine traditions. In almost every respect it seems to be the best religion ever invented by man.’ (Rev. H. Malcom’s Travels in Asia.) ‘If the morality of Buddhism be examined, its exhortations to guard the will, to curb the thoughts, to exercise kindness towards others, to abstain from wrong to all, it propounds a very high standard of practice.’ (Upham’s Doctrines and History of Buddhism.) ‘It seeks the highest triumphants of humanity in the exercise of devotion, self-contemplation, and self-denial.’ (Theogony of the Hindus, by Bjornsjerma.) ‘And the doctrines of Buddhism are not alone in the beauty of their sentiments and the excellence of much of their morality. ‘It is not permitted to you to return evil for evil’ is one of the sentiments of Socrates.’ (Rev. H.S. Hardy’s Eastern Monarchism.) ‘Buddhism insists on the necessity of taking the intellectual faculties for guides in philosophical’ researches.’ (Tiberghien.) ‘It sought to wean mankind from the pleasures and vanities of life by pointing to the transitoriness of all human enjoyment.’ (Smith’s Mongolia.) ‘The principal characteristics of Buddhism are the doctrines of mildness and the universal brotherhood of man.’ (Ibid.) ‘Life is a state of probation and misery, according to Buddhism.’ (Upham, chap. vi.) ‘The Brahmins found fault with him (Krishna) for receiving as disciples the outcasts of Hindu society (as the Jews did Christ for fellow-shipping publicans and sinners). But he (Krishna) replied, ‘My law is a law of mercy to all.’’ (Huc’s Voyages through China.) ‘Buddhism attracted and furnished consolation for the poor and unfortunate.’ (Ibid.) ‘Buddhism is a rationalistic and reform system as compared with Brahminism. Landresse expresses his high admiration of the heroism with which the Buddhist missionaries before Christ crossed streams and seas which had arrested armies, and traversed deserts and mountains upon which no caravans dared to venture, and braved dangers and surmounted obstacles which had defied the omnipotence of the emperors.’ (A note on Landresse’s Foe Koui Ki.) ‘If we addressed a Mogul or Tibetan this question, Who is Krishna? the reply was, instantly, ‘The Saviour of men.’’ (Hue’s Journey through China.) ‘Krishna, the incarnate Deity of the Sanskrit romance continues to this hour the darling God of the women of India ... Krishna was the person of Vishnu (God) himself in the human form.’ (Asiat. Researches, 260). ‘Respectable natives told me that some of the missionaries had told them that they were even now almost Christians’ (owing to the two religions being so nearly alike). (Ibid). ‘All that converting the Hindus to Christianity does for them is to change the object of their worship from Krishna to Christ.’ (Robert Cheyne.) ‘Brahminism or Buddhism in some of its forms is said to Constitute the religion of considerably more than half the human race. It teaches the existence of one supreme eternal, and uncreated God, called Brahma, who created the world through Krishna, the second member of the Trinity.’ Paul says, God created the world through Jesus Christ, the second member of the Christian Trinity. (Eph. ill. 9.) How striking the resemblance! ‘The doctrine of the incarnation, the descent of the Deity upon earth, and his manifestation in a human form for the redemption of mankind, seems to have existed in the shape of prophecy or fact in all ages of the world. Hinduism teaches nine of these incarnations. Furthermore, it teaches the doctrine of the Trinity, the fall and redemption of man, and a state of future rewards and punishments in a future life. ... This religion in chief of Asia is traceable to remote ages. The doctrine of the Trinity is represented in the Elephantine cavern, and taught in the Mahabarat, which goes back for its origin nearly two thousand years before Christ.’ (New York Sunday Despatch, 1855.) ‘In the year 3600, Krishna descended to the earth for the purpose of defeating the evil machinations of Chivan (the devil), as Christ ‘came to destroy the devil and his works.’ (See John iii. 8.) After a fierce combat with the devil, or serpent, he defeated him by bruising his head – he receiving, during the contest, a wound in the heel. (‘It [the serpent] shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel.’ – Gen. iii. 15.) He died at last between two thieves. He lead a pure and holy life, and was a meek, tender, and benevolent being, and enjoined charity, hospitality, and mercy, and forbade lying, prevarication, hypocrisy, and overreaching in dealing, and pilfering, and theft, and violence toward any being.’ (Lecture before the Free Press Association in 1827.) ‘The birthplace of the Hindu hero (Krishna) is called Mathura, which is easily changed, and by correct translation becomes Maturea, the place where Christ is said to have stopped, between Nazareth and Egypt. To show his humility he washed the feet of the Brahmins (as Christ is said to have washed the feet of the Jews – see John xiii. 14). One day a woman came to him and anointed his hair with oil, in return for which he healed her maladies. One of his first miracles was that of healing a leper, like Christ (See Mark i. 4). Finally, he was crucified, then descended to Hades. (It is said of Christ, ‘his soul was not left in hell.’ – Acts ii. 31.) He (Krishna) rose from the dead and ascended to Voicontha (heaven). (Higgins Anacalypsis, vol. ii. p. 239). Now, we ask, is it any wonder, in view of the foregoing historical exposition, that Eusebius should exclaim, ‘The religion of Jesus Christ is neither new nor strange?’ (Eccl. Hist. eh. iv.) Truly did St. Augustine say, ‘This, in our day, is the Christian religion, not as having been unknown in former times, but as having recently received that name.’ Here, then, we pause to ask our good Christian: Where is your original Christianity? or what constitutes the revealed religion of Jesus Christ? or where is the evidence that any new religion was revealed by him or preached by him, seeing we have all his religion, as shown by the foregoing historical citations, included in an old heathen system more than a thousand years old when Jesus Christ was born? We find it all here in this old oriental system of Buddhism – every essential part, Particle and principle of it. We find Christianity all here – its Alpha and Omega, its beginning and end. We find it here in all its details – its root, essence, and entity – all its ‘revealed doctrines,’ religions ideas, beautiful truths, senseless dogmas and oriental phantoms. Not, a doctrine, principle, or precept of the Christian system, but that is here proclaimed to the world ages before ‘the angels announced the birth of a divine babe in Bethlehem.’ Will you, then, persist in claiming that ‘truth, life, and immortality came by Jesus Christ,’ and that ‘Christ came to preach a new gospel to the world, and to set forth a new religion never before heard amongst men’ (to use the language of Archbishop Tillotson), when the historical facts cited in this work demonstrate a hundred times over that such a position is palpably erroneous? Will you still persist, with all those undeniable facts staring you in the face (proving and reproving, with overwhelming demonstration, that the statement is untrue), in declaring that ‘the religion of Jesus Christ is the only true and soul-saving religion, and all other systems are mere straw, stubble, tradition, and superstition’ (as asserted by a popular Christian writer), when no mathematician ever demonstrated a scientific problem more clearly than we have proved in these pages that all the principle systems of the past, by no means excepting Christianity, are essentially alike in every important particular – all of their cardinal doctrines being the same, differing only in unimportant details? Seeing, then, that all systems of religion have been found to be essentially alike in spirit and in practice, the all-important question arises here, What is the true cause assignable for this striking resemblance? How is it to be accounted for? Perhaps some of our good Christian readers, unacquainted with history, may cherish the thought that all the oriental systems brought to notice are but imitations of Christianity; that they were reconstructed out of materials obtained from that source; that Christianity is the parent, and they the off-spring. But, alas for their long-cherished idol, those who entertain such forlorn hopes are ‘sowing to the wind, and are doomed to disappointment.’ With the exception of Mohammedanism alone, Christianity is the youngest system in the whole catalogue. The historical facts to prove this statement are voluminous. But as it needs no proof to those who have read religious history, but little space will be occupied with citations for this purpose. With respect to the antiquity of the principal oriental system, we need only to quote the testimony of Sir William Jones, a devout Christian writer, who spent years in India, and whose testimony will be accepted by any person acquainted with his history. He makes the emphatic declaration, ‘That the name of Krishna, and the general outline of his history, were long anterior to the birth of our Saviour, and probably to the time of Homer (900 BC) we know very certainly.’ (Asiat. Res. vol. ix. 254.) No guess-work about it. ‘We know very certainly.’ And being a scholar, a traveller, and a sojourner among the Hindus and well versed in their history, no person ever had a better opportunity to know than he. We will hear this renowned author further. ‘In the Sanskrit dictionary, compiled more than two thousand years ago, we have the whole history of the incarnate deity (Krishna), born of a virgin, and miraculously escaping in his infancy from the reigning tyrant of his country (Cansa). He passed a life of the most extraordinary and incomprehensible devotion. His birth was concealed from the tyrant Cansa, to whom it had been predicted that one born at that time, and in that family, would destroy him;’ that is, destroy his power. (Asiat. Res. vol. ix. 273.) This writer also states that the first Christian missionaries who entered India were astonished to find there a religion so near like their own, and could only account for it by supposing that the devil, foreseeing the advent of Christ, originated a system of religion in advance of his, and ‘just like it.’ Stated in other words, he got out the second edition of the gospel plan of salvation before the first edition was published or had an existence. Rather a smart trick this, thus to outwit God Almighty. With respect to the vast antiquity of the Hindu oriental religion, which indicates it as being not only the source from which the materials of the Christian religion were drawn, but as being the parent of all the leading systems, with their three thousand subordinate branches which existed at a much earlier period than Christianity, we need only point to the deep chiselled sculptures and imperishable monuments stamped on their time-honoured temples, tombs, altars, vases, columns, pagodas, ruined towers, etc., which, with contemporary inscriptions, warrant us in antedating the religion of the Himalayas far beyond the authentic records of any other religion that has floated down to us on the stream of time. The numerous images of their crucified Gods, Krishna and Saki, emblazoned on their old rock temples in various parts of the country, some of which are constructed of clay porphyry, now the very hardest species of rock, with their attendant inscriptions in a language so very ancient as to be lost to the memory of man, vie with the Sanskrit in age, the oldest deciphered language in the world. All these and a hundred corroboratory historical facts fix on India as being the birthplace of the
mother of all religions now existing, or that ever had an existence, while the great workshop in which they were subsequently remodelled was in
Alexandria in Egypt, whose theological schools furnished the model for nearly every system now found noticed on the page of history –
Christianity of course included. So much for the unrivalled antiquity of the Hindu religion. Now, the more important query arises, What
relationship does ancient heathen or Hindu Buddhism bear to Christianity? What is the evidence that the latter is an outgrowth of the former? As
an answer to this question, please note the following facts of history.
After Alexander Campbell had made some modifications in his previous religious faith, and started a new church, his
followers were popularly called Campbellites. Elias Hicks engrafted some reform ideas into the Quaker faith, and instituted a new society of that
order. Hence, and henceforth, his disciples were known as Hicksites. In like manner Jesus Christ having made some innovations in his inherited
Jewish faith (which was of the Essene stamp) by engrafting ‘more of the Buddhist doctrine into it, his followers were henceforth called
Christians. How complete the analogy! Here let it be borne in mind, as powerfully confirmatory of this conclusion, that the first Christians were
(as history affirms) ‘merely reformatory Jews.’ The twelve chosen were all Jews, probably of the Essene order. According to the Rev. Mr.
Prideaux (Jewish History), the Jews of this order were first called Israelites, in common with the other tribes; then Chassidim; and thirdly
Essenes. And finally, after the Essenian Jesus Christ, with some new radical ideas, proclaimed ‘Ye have heard it hath been said by them of old
time’ thus and so, ‘but I say unto you’ differently. The title was again changed, and they adopted or received the name of Christians –
the Essenes going out of history at the very date Christians first appear in history. Put this and that together, and the chain is welded. Thus we
can as easily trace the origin of Christianity as we can trace the origin of a root running beneath the soil in the direction of a certain tree.
History, then, proclaims that to the honest, pious, deeply-devout, self-denying, yet ignorant, slothful, and filthy Budhistic Essenes must be
awarded the honour or dishonour of giving birth to that system of religion now known as Christianity.
The following additional facts relative to the history, character, life, and teachings of Zeus Krishna, or Jeseus Christna (as styled by one writer) are drawn mostly from the Vedas, Baghavat, Gita (Bible in India).
It may be objected that there are precepts and stories to be found in the religion of this Hindu God (Krishna), which reflect but little credit or honour upon that religion. This is true. And similar reflections would materially damage the religion of Christianity also. The story of Christ beating and maltreating the money-changers in the temple, his cursing an innocent, unoffending, and unconscious fig tree, and his indulgence in profane swearing at his enemies – ‘O ye fools and blind, ye generation of vipers, how can you escape the damnation of hell!’ – does not reflect any credit upon his religion, viewed as a system. Defects, then, may be found in both systems. In viewing the analogies of the two religions, it should be noted that the Hindus claim, with a forcible show of facts and logic, that the religion of Christianity grew out of theirs. It has not been long since a learned Hindu maintained this position in a public debate with a missionary. If all these facts effect nothing in the way of inducing the Christian clergy to confess the falsity of their position in claiming their religion to be a direct emanation from God, it will be a sad commentary upon either their intelligence or their honesty. These historical facts, with those set forth in the preceding chapters, prove that the religion called Christianity, instead of being, as Christians claim, ‘the product of the Divine Mind,’ is the product of ‘heathen’ minds; that is, a spontaneous outgrowth of the moral and religious elements of the human mind. And therefore, for God to have revealed it over again to the founders of Christianity would have been superfluous, and a proof of his ignorance of history. (It is deemed proper to state here, with respect to the comparison between Christ and Krishna, that
some of the doctrines selected as constituting a part of the religion of the Hindu Saviour, are not found in the reported teachings of that
deified moralist. But as they appear to breathe forth the same spirit, it is presumed he would have endorsed them, had they come under his notice.
As Christians assume the liberty to arrange the doctrines of Paul and Peter under the head of Christianity because claimed to be in consonance
with the religion of Christ, though not all taught by him, we have, in like manner, assumed that some doctrines taught by other systems and
religious teachers of India accord with those taught by Krishna, and hence has arranged them with his. The purpose is not to set forth the
doctrines of any sect, any system, or any religious teacher, but to show that all the doctrines of Christianity are traceable to ancient India.
But whether taught by this sect or that sect, it is foreign to our purpose to inquire; and hence, for convenience, we have arranged them all into
one system, and designated them Krishnaanity (borrowing a new term). There can be no more impropriety in arranging the doctrines of the various
conflicting sects of India into one system (including even Brahminism and Buddhism), than to arrange, as Christians do, the doctrines taught by
the antagonistic system of Catholicism and Protestantism, and their six hundred conflicting sects, under the head of Christianity. Hence,
Christians, of course, will not fault the arrangement. The classification above alluded to comprises, in part, the religion of many of the Hindu
sects, but does not set forth all their doctrines, only those analogous to Christianity. Krishna was a Vishnuite, and not a Brahmin, as some
writers assume. He and Christ were both reformers, and departed from the ancient faith. Vishnuism appears to have finally centered in Buddhism.)
and Demi-Gods of Antiquity The age in which Christ flourished, as before remarked, was pre-eminently an age of miracle. The practice of thaumaturgy, and the legends invested with the display of the miracle-working power, both preceding and subsequent to that era, rose to a great height. ‘All nations of that time,’ says a writer, ‘were mightily bent on working miracles.’ And the disciples who acted the part of biographers for the various crucified Gods and sin-atoning Saviours, throughout the East, seemed to vie with each other in setting off the lives and histories of their favourite objects of worship respectively, with marvellous exploits and the pageantry of the most astounding prodigies. And the miracles in each case were pretty much of the same character, thus indicating a common course for their origin, – all probably having been cast in the same mould – in the theological schools of the once famous, world-renowned city of Alexandria, the capital of Egypt. Having, in the preceding chapters, presented the miraculous achievements of the Hindu Gods, Krishna and Saki, we will here bring to notice those of other Gods.
With respect to his character, it is said that ‘for humility, and practical goodness, and the wisdom of his moral precepts, he stood without a rival.’ He discarded bloody sacrifices, discouraged wars, forbade the use of wine and other intoxicating drinks, enjoined the forgiveness of enemies and their kind treatment, and also respect to parents. He was a special friend to the poor, and taught that they were the favourites of God. ‘Blessed are ye poor.’ He practiced and recommended the silent worship of God. He retired from the world, and often fasted, and was a great enemy to riches (like Jesus Christ). He considered poverty a virtue, and, despised the pomp of the world. He recommended (like Christ) the abandonment of parents, relations, and friends, houses and lands, etc, for religion’s sake. His disciples, like those of Christ, had a common treasury and a general community of goods, to which all had free access, so that there was no poverty or suffering amongst them while the supply lasted. All shared alike. In fact, with respect to the spirit of his precepts, his moral lessons, and nearly his whole practical life, he bore a striking resemblance to Jesus Christ, and presented the same kind of evidence, and equally convincing evidence, of being a God. And as he was born into the world five hundred and fifty-four years before Christ, the latter probably obtained the materials of his moral system from that Grecian teacher, or in the same school of the Essenian Buddhists, in which both Pythagoras and Christ appear to have taken lessons.
We cite these lists of miraculous events as if real facts, not because we believe they were such, but as possessing the
same degree of credibility as those related of Jesus Christ.
It will observed that the foregoing list of analogies, drawn from the history of Apollonius, as furnished us by his disciple Damos and his biographer Philostratus, are found also, in almost every particular, in the history of Jesus Christ. And the list might have been extended. It is declared, ‘A beauty shone in his countenance, and the words he uttered were divine,’ which reminds us of Christ’s transfiguration. And his ‘staying a plague at Ephesus’ revives the case of Christ stilling the tempest on the waters. Now, the question very naturally arises here, How came the histories of Apollonius and Christ to be so strikingly alike? Was one plagiarised from the other? As for the miraculous history of Apollonius being reconstructed from that of Jesus Christ, as some Christians have assumed, there is not the slightest foundation for such a conclusion, as the following facts will show:
It will called to mind that this Simon Magus is mentioned and condemned in the Acts of the Apostles, for offering to pay Peter for a bestowment of the gift of the Holy Ghost. And yet every philosopher in this age must concede that Magus’ assumption in the case is more sensible and philosophical than that of Peter’s. For the latter calls it ‘a gift from God,’ whereas every person now acquainted with the nature, principles, and science of animal magnetism, knows that such manifestation as that which Peter ascribes to God and the Holy Ghost, is a simple natural phenomenon; and that, consequently, it can be no more a violation of the rules of propriety to pay for the labor of making such developments than it is to pay a teacher for developing the mind of a child. It was certainly a greater act of courtesy to offer to pay for it than to demand it as a gratuitous favour. Hence we infer he excelled Peter in his demeanour as a gentleman, especially as he bore Peter’s severe reprimand with patience, and apparently with a better spirit than that which dictated it. And we may remark here, also, that notwithstanding this Samaritan Jew is so unsparingly denounced by the godly Peter, and by the early Christian fathers also, yet we have the historical proof that he was an honest, pious, and ardently devout man. His whole life was absorbed in the cause of religion, and his whole soul devoted to his religious duties and the worship of his God. Hence we think Peter’s rebuke was uncalled for. Let it be noted that the fact here is that there are three circumstances amply sufficient to account for bibles and religious books being profusely supplied with the reports of groundless miracles.
This moral teacher, religious chieftain, and philosopher, though not subjected to the ignominious death of the cross, deserves a passing notice for the excellency of his morals and the acquisition of a world-wide fame. In the following particulars his history bears a strong analogy to that of Jesus Christ.
In the following respects his teachings were superior to those of Christ:
He constructed several hundred beautiful and instructive moral maxims, which we have not space for here, and which amply
prove that ‘the holiest truths were inculcated by pagan philosophers.’
Miracles, Prophesies and Precepts When Christians are asked for the proof of the divinity of Jesus Christ, they point to his miracles and precepts, and the Messianic prophecies, said to have been fulfilled by his coming. And the same kind of evidence is adduced to prove the divine claims of their bible and its religion, including the Old Testament, which contains the prophecies. Their divine origin and supernatural character are claimed to be proved by the miracles, prophecies, and precepts found recorded in the Holy Book. All, then, stand or fall together – the divinity of Christ, and the divinity of the bible and its religion, all, rest on this threefold argument. All, it is claimed, are attested and proved by a threefold display of divine power, manifested:
These three propositions cover the whole ground. They constitute the three grand pillars of the Christian faith, which, if shown to be untenable, must prostrate the whole superstructure to the ground. We will examine each separately, commencing with miracles.
We will not occupy space in discussing the various meanings assigned to the word miracle by different writers, but take the popular definition
as given above, and proceed to inquire how much evidence can be deduced from the miracles represented as having been performed by Jesus Christ,
toward proving his divinity and the truth of his religion. In the first place, it should be borne in mind that Christianity is not the only
religion which appeals to miracles as a proof of its divine authorship. More than three hundred systems and sects are reported in history, most of
which have, from time immemorial, gloried in being able to wield this knock-down argument as they claim it to be, in support of the truth and
divine authenticity of their various systems of faith. We have briefly noticed some of the miraculous achievements reported in their sacred books,
and ascribed to their Gods and sin-atoning Saviours, and compare them with similar ones related of Jesus Christ.
As the whole pathway of religious history is thickly bestudded with miracles wrought in all ages and countries, and every page of the oriental bibles and religious books is literally loaded down with the relation of these marvellous prodigies said to have been wrought by their Gods, Demigods, and crucified Saviours, it places a writer in a quandary to know where to begin to make a selection. We will express no opinion here as to whether these astounding feats were ever witnessed or not; but will merely state that they come to us as well authenticated as those reported in the Christian bible. There is as much evidence that Zoroaster, at the request of King Gustaph, caused a tree to spring up in a man’s yard forthwith, of such magnificent proportions that no rope could be found large enough to reach around it, as that Jesus Christ caused a fig tree to wither away by merely cursing it. And we have the same kind of evidence that the Hindu Messiah, Krishna, of India, restored two boys to life who had been killed by the bites of serpents, as that Jesus Christ resurrected Lazarus and the widow’s son of Nain; and as much proof that Bacchus turned water into wine, as that Jesus performed this act six hundred years later. And a hundred other similar comparisons might be drawn. The evidence of the truth of these performances in both cases, pagan and Christian, is simply the report of the writer. If there are any exceptions to be made in either case of better evidence, it will be found in favour of pagan religion; for its adherents are able in many cases to point to imperishable monuments of stone erected in commemoration of their miracles. And Mr. Goodrich tells us this is the highest species of evidence that can be offered to prove the truth of any ancient event. But as Christians, on the other hand, can find no such evidence to prove the performance of any miracles reported in their bible, it will be seen at once that the pagan miracles are the best authenticated. The famous historian Pausanias states upon current authority that Esculapius raised several persons from the dead, and names Hippolytus among the number, and then points to a stone monument erected as a proof of the occurrence – thus furnishing, according to Christian logic, the most conclusive proof of one of the most astounding miracles ever wrought. And yet no philosopher or man of science in this age can credit the literal truth of the story. We might refer to many other cases of pagan miracles attested by monumental evidence if our space would permit – such as the names of many persons engraved upon the walls of the Temple of Serapes, miraculously carved by the God Esculapius. Strabo tells us the ancient temples are full of tablets describing miraculous cures performed by virgin-born Gods of those times, and names a case of two blind men being restored to sight by the son of God Alcides in the presence of a large multitude of people, ‘who acknowledged the miraculous power of the God with loud acclaim.’ Without continuing the citation of cases, suffice it to say, the sin-atoning Gods of the orientals are reported as performing the same train of miracles assigned to Jesus Christ, such as performing astonishing cures, casting out devils, raising the dead, etc. Now, sadly warped indeed by education must be that mind which cannot see that if the account of such prodigies, reported in the history of Jesus Christ, can do anything towards proving him to have been a God, then the world must have been full of Gods long before his time. It is impossible to dodge or evade such a conclusion. Christians are in the habit of assuming that all the miraculous reports in the bible are unquestionably true, while those reported in pagan bibles are mere fables and fiction. But if they will reverse this proposition, it can be easier supported, because we have shown their miracles are better attested and authenticated. Their own bible admits that the heathen not only could and did perform miracles, but miraculous prodigies of the most astonishing character, equal to anything reported in their own religious history – such as transmuting water into blood, sticks into serpents, and stones into frogs. In a word, it is admitted they performed all the miraculous feats of Moses with the single exception of turning dust into lice. But certainly making lice was not a more difficult achievement than that of making frogs, and this is admitted they did do successfully. Hence it will be seen that the Egyptian pagans made as great a display of divine or miraculous power as ‘God’s Holy People,’ according to the admission of the bible itself. And there is no intimation that the mode of performing the miracles was not the same in cases, but a strong probability exists that it was, a conclusion confirmed by the bible report of the case which leads us to infer that they performed the miracles in the same way Moses did. For it is said, ‘The Egyptians did so with their enchantments’ – that is, with the ‘enchanting rod’ used on such occasions by the Egyptians, Assyrians, Babylonians, and other nations, including also the Jews. Now, as Moses always used the ‘enchanting rod’ in performing miracles, called by him ‘the rod of God, the rod of divination,’ etc. (see Ex. iv.), there is thus furnished the most satisfactory proof that he performed his miracles on this occasion, as well as all other occasions, by the same stratagem as the Egyptians and other nations did. And even if the mode adopted by the Egyptians had been different, it is still admitted they performed the miracles. In the name of reason and common sense, then, we ask if such facts as here presented with the case just referred to do not forever prostrate and annihilate all arguments based on miracles toward proving the divine character or divine origin of the religion of the bible, or towards proving Jesus Christ, or any other being reported to have performed miracles, as possessing divine attributes?
Some of the most astonishing and best authenticated miracles ever performed by any religious sect we find reported in the history of the Roman Catholic church, looked upon and styled by the Protestants ‘the mother of Harlots and Abomination.’ And yet there is much stronger proof that the Catholic religion has the divine sanction, if miracles can furnish such proof. The editor of ‘The Official Memoirs’ declares that during the Italian war in 1797, several pictures of the virgin Mary, situated in different parts of the country, were seen to open and shut their eyes for the space of six or seven months, and that no less than sixty thousand people actually saw this miracle performed, including many bishops, deacons, cardinals, and other officers of the church, whose names are given. And Forsyth’s Italy (p. 344), written by a highly accredited author, tells us that a withered elm tree was suddenly restored to full life and vigour by coming in contact with the body of St. Zenobis, and that this miracle took place in the most public part of the town, in the presence of many thousands of people; that ‘it is recorded by contemporary historians, and inscribed upon a marble column now standing where the tree stood.’ Now, the question may be asked here, Would the people have allowed such an impudent trick to insult
them as the erection of a monument for an event that never took place? If not, how is the matter to be explained? These are only specimens of a
hundred more Catholic miracles of an astonishing character at our command. Several queries may be entertained in the solution of these stories.
1st, Were some phenomena really witnessed on which these stories were constructed, but which got magnified from a molehill to a mountain before
they found their way into history? or, 2d, Were they manufactured as a pious fraud, which was rather a fashionable business with the early
disciples of the Christian faith, according to Mr. Mosheim? Whatever answer may be given to these questions will explain the miracles of the
Christian bible, excepting those which can be accounted for on natural principles.
Among all the workers of miracles reported in the bible the devil seems to have been pre-eminent, and hence must come in for the better end of the argument toward proving him to have been a God. No miracle could excel the act of his ‘transforming himself into an angel of light,’ as stated in 2 Cor. xi. 14. It is not transcended by any other case, not even by Christ’s transfiguration. And according to Paul he was endowed ‘with all power, and signs, and lying wonders.’ (Thess. ii. 9.) If, then, he possessed ‘all power,’ Christ, and no other God, could have possessed a miraculous power superior to his, for ‘all’ comprehends the whole, beyond which nothing can reach. Where, then, is the evidence to come from to prove that Christ was a God, because he was a miracle-worker, or his religion divine, because attested by miracles – seeing the devil performed some of the most difficult miracles ever wrought? Should we not then change his title from that of a demon to a God, and place his religion amongst the divinely endowed systems? St. John represents the ‘Evil One’ as having power to make ‘fire come down from heaven in the sight of men,’ and ‘to deceive those that dwell on the earth by means of those miracles which he hath power to do.’ (Rev. xiii. 13.) Here the question arises, What can a miracle prove, what end can it serve, or what good can possibly arise from the display of the miracle-working power, when it is liable ‘to deceive those that dwell upon the earth?’ Certainly, therefore, it proves nothing, and accomplishes nothing. And may not the apostles themselves have been deceived in ascribing some of the miracles they record to Jesus instead of the devil? Certainly we are drifted upon the quicksands of uncertainty by such a display of the miracle-working power, and are obnoxious to most fatal deception, which proves the total inutility and futility of such prodigies.
How could Christ’s miracles, assuming they were wrought, do anything toward proving his divinity, when he did not claim to be their author, but merely the agent or instrument in the hands of the Father, like the apostles, who are reported to have performed the same miracles? ‘The Father he doeth the work,’ is his own declaration. And the Apostles seem to have accepted his word, and his view of the matter. For proof listen to Peter: ‘Ye men of Israel, hear these words: Jesus of Nazareth, a man approved of God among you by miracles, and wonders, and signs, which God did by him in the midst of you, as ye yourselves do know.’ (Acts ii. 22.) Let it be noted, then, the Christ’s miracles were not performed by him as a God, but as ‘a man approved of God;’ be was the mere medium or instrument in the case – a fact which banishes at once all grounds for controversy relative to his miracles serving the purpose of attesting his divinity, especially when it is conceded that men, magicians, and devils could achieve the same feats.
As the miracles of Christ seem to have had little effect toward convincing the people of his claims to the Godhead, it is evident they could
have been but little superior to those performed by others, and therefore not designed, at least not calculated, to convince them that he was a
God. The frequent instances in which he upbraids the people for their unbelief, and calls them fools, ‘slow of heart,’ etc., is a proof of
this statement.
A circumstance involving pretty strong proof that Christ’s miraculous achievements were not considered as evidence of his divinity, is the fact that they were frequently performed in private, sometimes in the night, and often under the injunction of secrecy. ‘See thou tell no man,’ was the injunction, after the feat was performed, perhaps, in a private room. How can such facts be reconciled with the assumption that his miracles were designed to convince the people of his claims to the Divine Entity, as Christians frequently assert, when the people were not allowed to witness them, nor his disciples even to report them? Who can believe that he was a Divine Being, or Messiah, when he charged his disciples to ‘tell no man’ that he was such a Being? Such incongruities verge to a contradiction. It is a logical contradiction to say that private miracles were designed to dissolve public skepticism. And yet many, if not most, of his reputed miraculous achievements were of this character. When he cured a blind man, he not only ‘led him out of the town’ (Mark viii. 23), but forbid him, when his sight was restored, returning to the city, for fear he would publish it. When he resurrected Lazarus, he did not call the whole country around to witness it, but performed the act before a private party. The reanimation of Jairus’s daughter was in the same concealed manner, in a private room, where nobody was admitted but his three confidential disciples (Peter, James, and John) and the parents, none of whom make any report of the case. How, therefore, the reporter (Mark) found it out, when he was not present, and none of the party were allowed to tell it to anybody, or why he should betray his trust by publishing it, if he was informed of it, is a ‘mystery of Godliness’ not easily divined. When Christ cleansed the leper, he sent him to the priest, enjoining him to ‘say nothing to any man.’
The dumb, when restored to speech, was not allowed to exhibit any practical proof of the fact by using his tongue. His miraculous perambulation on
the surface of the sea (walking on the water) was not only alone, but in the dark. His transfiguration, likewise, according to Dr. Barnes, took
place in the night, his three favourite companions being the only witnesses, and they ‘heavy with sleep.’ And finally, the crowning miracle of
all, the resurrection, is not only represented as taking place in the night, but without one substantial or terrestrial witness to report it.
Verily such facts as these are not calculated to augment the faith or work the conviction of a septic that these miracles were ever performed,
seeing so few are reported as witnessing them, and even their testimony is not given. We have not the testimony of one person who claims to have
been present and seen these wonders performed. Such facts are calculated to cast distrust upon the whole matter, especially when taken in
connection with the fact that nine tenths of his life form a perfect blank in history. Is it possible, we ask, to reconcile such a fact with the
belief of his divinity? Is it possible a God could lead a private life, or live twenty-seven years on earth, and do nothing worthy of note – a
God known to nobody and noticed by nobody? Most transcendingly absurd is such a thought. Had Christ possessed the character that is claimed for
him, not an hour of his life could have passed unaccompanied by some remarkable incident that would have been heralded abroad, and its record
indelibly engraved upon the page of history; but instead of this, his acts were too commonplace to be noticed.
The fact that no history, sacred or profane – that not one of the three hundred histories of that age – makes the slightest allusion to Christ, or any of the miraculous incidents engrafted into his life, certainly proves, with a cogency that no logic can overthrow, no sophistry can contradict, and no honest skepticism can resist, that there never was such a miraculously endowed being as his many orthodox disciples claim him to have been. The fact that Christ finds no place in the history of the era in which he lived – that not one event of his life is recorded by anybody but his own interested and prejudiced biographers – settles the conclusion, beyond cavil or criticism, that the godlike achievements ascribed to him are naught but fable or fiction. It not only proves he was not miraculously endowed, but proves he was not even naturally endowed to such an extraordinary degree as to make him an object of general attention. It would be a historical anomaly without a precedent, that Christ should have performed any of the extraordinary acts attributed to him in the Gospels, and no Roman or Grecian historian, and neither Philo nor Josephus, both writing in that age, and both living almost on the spot where they are said to have been witnessed, and both recording minutely all the religious events of that age and country, make the slightest mention of one of them, nor their reputed authors. Such a historical fact banishes the last shadow of faith in their reality. It is true a few lines are found in one of Josephus’s large works alluding to Christ. But it is so manifestly a forgery, that we believe all modern critics of any note, even of the orthodox school, reject it as a base interpolation. Even Dr. Lardner, one of the ablest defenders of the Christian faith that ever wielded a pen in its support, and who has written ten large volumes to bolster it up, assigns nine cogent reasons (which we would insert here if we had space) for the conclusion that Josephus could not have penned those few lines found in his ‘Jewish Antiquities’ referring to Christ. No Jew could possibly use such language. It would be a glaring absurdity to suppose a leading Jew could call Jesus ‘The Christ,’ when the whole Jewish nation have ever contested the claim with the sternest logic, and fought it to the bitter end. ‘It ought, therefore’ (says Dr. Lardner, for the nine reasons which he assigns), ‘to be forever discarded from any place among the evidences of Christianity.’ (Life of Lardner by Dr. Kippis, p. 23.) As the passage is not found in any edition of Josephus prior to the era of Eusebius, the suspicion has fastened upon that Christian writer as being its author, who argued that falsehood might be used as a medicine for the benefit of the churches. (See his Eccles. Hist.) Origan, who lived before Eusebius, admitted Josephus makes no allusion to Christ. Of course the passage was not, then, in Josephus. One or two other similar passages have been found, in other authors of that era, which it is not necessary to notice here, as they are rejected by Christian writers. It must be conceded, therefore, that the numerous histories covering the epoch of the birth of Christ chronicle none of the astounding feats incorporated in his Gospel biographies as signalising his earthly career, and make no mention of the reputed hero of these achievements, either by name or character. The conclusion is thus irresistibly forced upon us, not only that he was not a miracle-worker, but that he must have led rather an obscure life, entirely incompatible with his being a God or a Messiah, who came ‘to draw all men unto him.’ And it should also be noted here that none of Christ’s famous biographers, Matthew, Mark, Luke, or John, are honoured with a notice in history till one hundred and ninety years after the birth of Christ. And then the notice was by a Christian writer (Ireneus). ‘We look in vain,’ says a writer, ‘for any contemporary notice of the Gospels, or Christ the
subject of the Gospels, outside of the New Testament. So little was this ‘king of the Jews’ known, that the Romans were compelled to pay one
of his apostles to turn traitor and act as guide before they could find him. It is impossible to observe this negative testimony of all history
against Christ and his miracles, and not be struck with amazement, and seized with the conviction that he was not a God, and not a very
extraordinary man.’ Who can believe that a God, from off the throne of heaven, could make his appearance on earth, and while performing the most
astounding miracles ever recorded in any history, or that ever excited the credulity of any people, and be finally publicly crucified in the
vicinity of a great city, and yet all the histories written in those times, both sacred and profane, pass over with entire silence the slightest
notice of any of these extraordinary events. Impossible – most self-evidently impossible!! And when we find that this omission was so absolute
that no record was made of the day or year of his birth by any person in the era in which he lived, and that they were finally forgotten, and
hence that there are, as a writer informs us, no less then one hundred and thirty-three different opinions about the matter, the question assumes
a still more serious aspect. From the logical potency of these facts we are driven to the conclusion that Christ received but little attention
outside of the circle of his own credulous and interested followers, and consequently stands on a level with Krishna of India, Mithra of Persia,
Osiris of Egypt, and other demigods of antiquity, all whose miraculous legends were engrafted in their histories long after their death.
There is a remarkably easy and satisfactory way of accounting for all the marvellous feats and incredible stories found in the Gospel narratives of Jesus Christ, without assuming their reality or any intentional fraud or falsehood by the writers. When we learn that none of his evangelical biographies were penned (as Dr. Lardner affirms) till long after his death, we are no longer puzzled for a moment to understand exactly how many statements wholly incredible and morally impossible crept into his history, without challenging or calling in question the veracity or honesty of the writer. Perhaps the most powerful cord of moral conviction which holds the Christian professor to a belief in the divinity of Jesus Christ, is the difficulty of bringing himself to believe that the numerous miracles ascribed to him in the Gospels are merely the work of fiction, fabricated without a basis of truth, when they were evidently penned by men of the deepest piety and the strictest moral integrity. We ourselves were once environed with this difficulty. But it stands in our way no longer. We are disenthralled. We have solved the problem. We have found the true explanation. The key and clew to the whole secret is found in the simple fact, admitted by Christian writers and evidenced by the bible itself, that no history of Christ’s practical life was written out by a person claiming to have been an eyewitness of the events reported, nor until every incident and act of the noble-minded Nazarene had had ample time to become enormously magnified and distorted by rumour, fable, and fiction; so that it was impossible to discriminate or separate the real from the unreal, the true from the false, in his partly-forgotten life. It could not be done. A true history could not then be, nor have been written under such circumstances. It is manifestly impossible. The time for writing each Gospel is fixed by Dr. Lardner as follows, viz.: Matthew 62 AD, Mark 64 AD, Luke 63 or 64 AD, and John 68 AD; thus allowing ample time for every noteworthy incident of his life to grow from mole-hills to mountains, and to swell into fiction, fable, and prodigy, a tendency to which was then very rife and very prevalent in all religious countries. Having made a note of this fact, let it be treasured in memory, as another equally important fact, that the biography of no man of note who figured in that era, or who lived prior to the dawn of letters (if penned many years after his death, as was frequently the case), is free from a large percentage of extravagant detail, and simple incidents magnified into miracles. This was the uncurbed tendency of the age which ultimated into universal custom. The simplest incident in every man’s life, who exhibited mind enough to attract attention, by rolling
from year to year, and passing from mouth to mouth, invariably got to be finally swelled into such undue and enormous proportions, that it could
only be accounted for by assuming the actor to have been a God. In this way many men of different countries, who had made a mark in the world,
received divine honours and divine attributes, including such characters as Christina of India, Mithra of Persia, Quirinus of Rome, Eras of the
Druids, Quexalcote of Mexico, Jesus Christ of Judea, and many others who might be mentioned. This circumstance deified them. The evidence of
history to prove this declaration is abundant and irresistible.
To the two important facts above cited, viz., that Jesus Christ’s evangelical histories were all written long after his death, and that unwritten histories of great men always become swollen and distorted with the lapse of time, notice the equally significant fact that there is in all cases a vast difference in the biographies of famous men, penned during their actual lives, or immediately subsequent to their death, while every act and incident of their career was fresh and vigorous in the minds and memories of the contemporaneous people, and before the ball of exaggerated rumour was set rolling, compared with those written at a later date, after molehills of fact had become mountains of fiction. The former are natural and reasonable, the latter unnatural and extravagant, and often fabulous. We will cite a few cases in proof. Compare the biographical sketches of Alexander the Great written near the epoch of his practical life, and those composed since the dawn of the Christian era, and he will find that the posthumous notices of him alone contain the story of the sun becoming obscured, and the earth enveloped in darkness, at the time of his mortal exit. It will be found, also, that Virgil’s account of ‘the sheeted dead,’ rising from their, graves at the time of Caesar’s death, and which was written long after that famous hero left the stage of action, is omitted in all the contemporary notices of that monarch, having crept in subsequently. In like manner, the various miracles recorded of Pythagoras by his biographer Jamblicus – such as his walking on the air, stilling the tempest, raising the dead, etc – are not related of him by any contemporaneous writers who lived in the era of his practical life. And compare, also, Damos’ life of Apollonius with that of his later biography by Philostratus, as an illustration of the same historical fact. Mohammed and his biographers might be included in the same category. It is a remarkable circumstance that neither Mohammed himself nor any of his immediate followers claim for him more than the humble title of prophet, or ‘God’s holy prophet,’ while his later admirers and devout disciples have elevated him to the throne of heaven, and given him a seat among the Gods. And this historical analysis might be extended much farther if necessary. But cases enough have been
cited to prove the principle and establish the proposition. And what is the lesson taught by these facts? A deeply-instructive and all-important
one. From the foregoing historical illustrations we are impelled to the important conclusion, that the tissue of extravagant and incredible
stories of demigod performances which run as a vein of fiction through the Gospel narrations of Jesus Christ, all grow out of long-continued
rumour, in an age when the imagination was untamed and unbounded, and credulity uncurbed by a practical knowledge of the principles of science,
and consequently the pen of the historian had lawless scope. All difficulty then vanishes, and the question is put forever at rest by assuming
that if the Gospel histories of Jesus had been written by men who claimed to record only what they saw and heard themselves, we should have a more
credible and instructive history of the great Judean reformer, freed from those Munchausen prodigies and that wild romance which mar the beauty
and credibility of those now in popular use. This conclusion is not only natural, but irresistible, to a mind untrammelled by education and
unbefogged by priest-craft. All that is wanting to convince us that miracles constitute no part of the real history of Christ, is a contemporary
instead of a posthumous biography – a history written in the age which knew him, and by an unprejudiced writer who witnessed all his movements.
And we are perfectly willing to risk our reputation in this life, and our salvation in the next, by stating our conviction that this will be the
unanimous verdict of posterity before fifty generations pass away.
There are other circumstances than those noticed in the preceding chapter, which can aid us very materially in solving the problem of Christ’s
divinity; or, in other words, can aid us in tracing his miracles to their origin, and thus confirm the truth of the preceding proposition. Moses
and the prophets were considered by the evangelists antetypes or archetypes of the coming Saviour. Hence some of the more important incidents of
their lives were hunted up and worked over again, to make them fit the life of Christ as the Messiah, reconstructed and applied to him as the
second Moses, and a new prophet; for Moses is represented as saying, ‘A prophet shall the Lord your God raise up like unto me.’ Hence Moses
comes in with the prophets as an antetype of Christ. The transfiguration of Christ is therefore constituted after the model of the transfiguration
of Moses on Mount Sinai. And Christ is represented as raising the dead, not only because Elijah and Elisha had performed such miracles, but did it
under circumstances which prove, as they suppose, he possessed superior power. For while they could only reanimate the body immediately after the
breath had left it, Christ could raise a man after he had been dead four days (the case of Lazarus). Hence the New Prophet was superior to the
old, and more like a God – the thing they desired to prove. Both Elijah and Christ are represented as raising a widow’s son – Elijah being
considered the special prototype of Christ, who, many believed, had reappeared under the changed name of Elias. (See John v. 17.) And then we
observe that while Elisha exhausted his skill in making three gallons of oil, Christ could make thirty gallons of wine – another proof of the
superiority of the New Prophet. Then, again, the miracle of feeding one hundred men with twenty loaves is far excelled by the latter, who feeds
five thousand men with five loaves. And both prophets, Elisha and Christ, encountered unfordable streams in their travels; the expedient of the
former is to make a passage, but Christ performed the greater miracle of walking on the surface. And while Moses had to send the leper without the
camp before he could heal him, Christ could heal him instantly with a single touch. The same slaughter of the infants is commanded by Herod, in
order to destroy Christ, that Pharaoh had ordered to effect the destruction of Moses. And thus many of the miracles of Jesus can be accounted for
as reconstructions of former miracles. It was simply a competition or rivalry between the New Messianic prophet and the old prophets. The New
Prophet excels and comes off victorious in every case, and is thus considered to be a God. The object of the competition is to show that while the
prophets, assisted by God, could perform marvellous deeds, Christ, being God himself, could perform greater. This was to be the proof of his being
a God, that he could out vie the servants of God in every miraculous thing ascribed to them. This was one way adopted to prove his divinity.
Several of Christ’s miracles seem to have grown out of the Messianic prophecies; that is, were manufactured in order to fulfil the
prophecies. There was, as we learn by the Gospels, an impression deep and wide-spread among the disciples of Christ, that the Old Testament was
full of texts foretelling the advent of their Messiah, and foreshadowing his practical life. Under this conviction, a number of passages are
quoted in the Gospels from the prophets as referring to Christ, but which, however, the context shows could not possibly have been written with
any such thought or intention. Matthew has five miracles appertaining to Christ, built on prophecies, in his first two chapters. And they are
represented as taking place ‘in order that the prophecy might be fulfilled;’ that is, Matthew, writing sixty-four years after Christ’s
advent, assumes those miracles had taken place because the prophecy required their performance, and hence recorded it as a fact without knowing it
to be such. A great deal of that kind of license was assumed in that and subsequent ages, as the facts of history are ample to prove. It was done
under the religious conviction that the cause of God and the church required it to be done, and that therefore it was justifiable.
It is by no means necessary to assume that the recorders of the New Testament miracles knew they had been performed, or that they would hesitate to record them as facts because they did not know them to be such. We are under no moral obligation to suppose they knew anything about it. People in that age were not so nice or so morally exact, as to require proof of a thing before they stated it, or never to state it unless they had the proof for its being true. We would be very far from accusing the apostolic writers of malicious falsehood, or criminal misrepresentation. But we find that the disciples of all religions, in that age of the world, considered it not only allowable, but a religious duty, in the absence of knowledge, to supply omissions by guess-work or conjecture, that is, to use assumption in the place of proof, and to state that a thing was so when there was no proof of it whatever, and even when the proof was against it. All religious history is full of the exhibition of this kind of elasticity of conscience. Even a species of pious lying was considered justifiable in many cases. Paul furnishes evidence of this when he says, ‘If the truth of God hath more abounded through my lie unto his glory, why am I judged a sinner?’ (Rom. iii. 16.) ‘No sin to lie for the glory of God,’ seems to be the teaching of this text. Although Paul does not clearly disclose for what purpose this policy was employed, yet it can easily be inferred. A part of the important business of the New Testament writers was to build a reputation for Christ and his inspired band of disciples for working miracles. A fame for achieving ‘signs and wonders’ was the great set off of the age. There seems to have been an almost boundless competition amongst the disciples of the various religious orders, including Jews, Pagans, and Christians, as to who could, or whose God could outstrip all competitors in achieving astonishing prodigies that should set the laws of nature at defiance. And no devout disciple, who had good inventive powers, would allow any rival to outdo him. Nothing could authenticate the claim of the adopted Messiah to the throne or heaven, or a participation in the Divine Essence, like a miraculous display of divine power. Hence the history of all the Gods and demigods of the illiterate ages, including that, of Christ, is loaded down with miraculous feats. There is the clearest proof that Christ’s disciples were in this general rivalry – this universal miracle-working melee. Two things very necessary to be accomplished, in the estimation of the apostles, were, first, to show
that Christ outdid the heathen Gods, and even the prophets, in the display of the wonder-exciting miraculous power, and thus proved his divinity;
and second, that the prophecies had been fulfilled in his coming and his practical life. And there is reason to believe all the New Testament
miracles are founded on and grew out of prophecy. For, although we do not find prophecies in the Old Testament for every miracle related of
Christ, yet it is probable, if we had the Book of God, ‘the Book of Jehu,’ ‘the Like of Hezekiah,’ and other lost books mentioned in the
Old Testament, we should find the supposed prophecy for every miracle of the New Testament. We should there find the key to every miracle. The
true explanation of the matter seems to be, that the apostolic writers, looking through the Old Testament, and finding texts therein which they
believed to be prophetic of the display of the miraculous power of Jesus, and passages which they religiously believed foreshadowed his coming and
mission, or some important event in his history, they were impressed with the deepest conviction that God would not suffer any prophecy to go
unfulfilled. But when they sat down to write the history of their Messiah, long after his death, they found they had not the evidence before them
that the prophecies had been fulfilled. A third of a century had rolled away since his history had been practically before the people. The subject
of their narrative had long since gone to ‘the house of many mansions,’ and left not a note, or scratch of a pen, of any act of his life
behind him. And the current of time had washed away, or partially obliterated, nearly every event of his earthly career. The witnesses had nearly
all left the stage of action, and their voices were forever hushed in the silent tomb. What was to be done in such an emergency? It was all-important to show that the prophecies had been fulfilled to the letter in his practical life. This quandary, however, did not beset them long. The difficulty was easily surmounted. Every religions country, including Judea, was full of miraculous legends and astonishing prodigies appertaining to the terrestrial movements of their Gods and demigods, some of which had floated down on the stream of tradition from time immemorial. And all had become blended, confounded, and mixed up together, until it was impossible to know whence they originated, where they belonged, or to what God they appertained. These miraculous stories were so numerous, and so varied in character, that there was no little difficulty in finding which seemed to be the fulfillment of any Messianic prophecy that had been or might be found in the Old Testament; and thus of the hundreds of miraculous stories afloat, one was picked out and assumed to be the fulfillment of the prophecy. With the countless number of such stories before them, which had been for half a century current in the community, they set themselves to work to select and reject, prune and remodel, honestly believing that this miracle was intended to fulfil this prophecy, and that miracle that prophecy, etc. And accordingly we now find it so stated in the New Testament. As, for example, a story had long been going the rounds that the parents of a young God had to flee with him out of the country, to save his life from being destroyed by its jealous ruler. This they supposed must of course refer to Jesus, because they had found a supposed prophecy of such an event in the Jewish bible, when a more thorough acquaintance with history would have taught them that the story did not refer to the ruler of Judea (Herod), but to Cansa, an ancient, jealous, despotic king, who ruled India at a much earlier period. And the story of the darkness at the crucifixion they incorporated as a part of the history of Jesus, because they had seen a text in Joel which they supposed presaged such an event, while, if they had been well versed in oriental history, they would have known that it had long been recorded as the last chapter in the earthly drama of the Hindu God Krishna. And so of the other miracles now found related as a part of the history of Jesus. A historical investigation of the matter would have shown the Gospel writers that they were a part of the written history of other and more ancient Gods, and had never formed a part of the practical life of Jesus, or been realised in his experience. This is a more charitable and honourable explanation of the matter than that found in the assumption of some other writers, that every miracle was constructed for the occasion – that it is a sheer fabrication; and yet there are some plausible grounds for this solution of the case. These critical writers tell us there was a religious persuasion deeply stamped upon the minds of all religions countries, that God often justified a departure from the truth – the conscientious or veracious faculty being in that age but feebly developed. And the bible itself is full of evidence to establish the allegation. The prophets often disclose it, and the apostles were their strict imitators. Ezekiel represents God as saying, ‘If a prophet is deceived, I the Lord deceived that prophet.’ (Ezek. xiv. 9.) And Jeremiah asks God, ‘Wilt thou be to me as a liar?’ (Jer. xv. 8.) While the writer of Kings represents God as putting a lying spirit into the mouth of his own prophets. (i Kings xxii. 23.) And most certainly if God himself might thus habitually depart from the truth, it was an ample warrant for his apostles, as well as the prophets, to adopt the same expedient. The case of Paul lying for the glory of God, which we have cited from Romans iii. 4, proves they were morally capable of doing this. Mosheim tells us that among the early Christians, ‘it was an almost universally adopted maxim, that it was an act of virtue to deceive and lie, when by so doing they could promote the interest of the church.’ (Mosh. vol. ix. 198.) And Mr. Higgins informs us that ‘great numbers, of every age and of every religion, have been guilty of systematic frauds and falsehoods to support their religions, to an extent of which we can have no conception. They not only practiced it, but they reduced it to system. They avowed it, and they justified it by declaring it to be meritorious to lie in a good cause.’ (Ana. vol. ix. 143.) He who can hesitate to credit these statements only betrays his ignorance of the moral weakness of human nature, and the imperfect growth in that era of the veracious faculty, which consequently had but a feeble voice in the councils of the mind. Even the most pious and devout professors of religion did not consider a rigid conformity to truth necessary, or morally obligatory, in their labours to promote the glory of God and the salvation of souls. And when direct falsehood was not resorted to, the writer still allowed himself to colour, magnify, and invent largely; that is, to draw copiously upon the resources of his imagination, in the way of supplying omissions and defects, and filling out missing links in the chain of history. And hence it is that all ancient sacred history is so profusely inlaid with stories and statements manifestly fabricated for the occasion, without any historical support, and therefore wholly incredible. Let the Christian not, however, misapprehend us by supposing we wish to drive him to the extreme alternative of accepting this as the true explanation, or as indicating the real origin of the incredible stories and senseless miraculous feats interwoven into the Gospel life of Jesus. We only offer it as a plausible, but not as the probable explanation. The above citations from the Scriptures and other history prove most clearly that sacred writers were morally capable of fabricating or manufacturing history to supply assumed omissions. And this explanation is twofold more reasonable than to accept the miracles as real occurrences, for such a belief would be at war with common sense, and prostrate our reason beneath our feet. But there is no necessity of adopting lying hypotheses, while the borrowing theory is amply adequate to account for every Gospel miracle. There is not a miraculous story or incredible legend incorporated in the New Testament as a part of the history of Jesus, that was not afloat in some shape or form, on the wings of tradition, in nearly every religious country, ages before his birth. The model for each and every miracle was already constructed, was already in the market, and already a part of the history or tradition of other and older Gods. And all that was wanted to make it appear as a part of the history of the Christian’s deified Jesus, was to fill in names and dates. Yes, history with a hundred tongues proclaims it as the real explanation of the incredible and the impossible in the history of Jesus Christ. And the evidence is so voluminous and so overwhelming to disprove the common Christian dogma which makes the son of Joseph and Mary a miracle-working God (a portion of which we have presented under the several propositions of this chapter), that it really demolishes, the last timber in the Christian fabric, and leaves it a heap of ruins. And we are certain that if we could divest the Christian’s mind, for a few moments, of an inherited and fostered prejudice, he would see that our explanation is much more rational, more probable, more beautiful than the popular belief, which degrades the illustrious Judean reformer to a level with the heathen thaumaturgist, and gives him the same undignified reputation as a miracle-worker. But we are sometimes told we are under as much moral obligation to believe in the miracles reported of Jesus, as to believe in any other portion of his history; that we must accept his Gospel history as a whole, or reject it in toto. But this is manifestly a false assumption, and one easily exploded. No person who is acquainted with Grecian history doubts that Alexander the Great was born in Macedonia, and founded a city in Egypt bearing his own name. Yet not one of those readers will credit for a moment what one of his biographers relates of him, that he stopped the sun in its course, or that he had no human father. We all accept Pythagoras as a real entity, while we reject the story of his walking on the air. Are we morally bound to accept Ramulus and Ramus, founders of Rome, as mere fabulous beings, because their biographers relate the incredible story of their being suckled by a wolf? Many other illustrations might be given in proof of the falsity of the assumption that, because a portion of a man’s biography is found to be incredible, the whole must be rejected as false, as unworthy of credence. This would be to annihilate history. For no biography of any person, and no history of any nation, can be accepted as plenarily pure, unmixed truth. There is always more or less chaff with the grain, and it is our privilege and our duty to separate them. And by so doing we not only confer a favour on the cause of truth, but add to the lustre and honour of the name of the deceased reformer; and especially is this true of the renowned Judean philanthropist and reformer. Much more lovely and beautiful would his evangelical history stand before the world if stripped of the wild, the weird, and the miraculous. Much more interesting is he when viewed and venerated as a man than when worshipped as a God, guilty of the frequent violation of his own laws, by the display of the miracle-working power. And much more beautiful and much more rational is the doctrine which accepts every event that ever occurred as the legitimate and harmonious operation of the great machinery of nature, than as the smart trick, the lawless caprice or wild feat, of an arbitrary, wonder-exciting God, performed not to make the people better, more moral or more righteous (for miracles cannot do this), but merely to make them gape and stare, and shout, What a smart God we have got! And then the belief in miracles involves all utter repudiation of all law, all order, and all system, and introduces in their stead chaos, anarchy, and universal confusion. It is simply ‘the doctrine of chance,’ which all orthodox Christendom professes to deprecate and execrate as the quintessence of atheism. But they make a mistake; ‘chance’ is more legitimately the fruit of miracle than of atheism; an assertion which we will here briefly prove. If the sun may be arrested in his course through the heavens, ‘the moon turned into blood,’ and ‘the stars fall from the heaven’ – sticks turned into serpents, water into blood, and dust into lice – all of which orthodox Christians profess to believe were witnessed in the days of Moses and Christ, then everything is thrown upon the wheel of chance; everything is involved in uncertainty. If the course of nature could be arrested, or the natural qualities of objects changed by the prayer of a prophet, patriarch, or apostle, then the food set before us to eat may suddenly, in compliance with the prayers of some absent saint, become a deadly poison; the clothes we wear may be instantly transformed into virulent adders, which may inflict the fatal sting before we suspect it; some favourite servant of God (a Moses or an Elijah) might be this moment praying to God to stop the dews from falling, or the rain from descending for the next three months, or three years, as the latter is reported as doing (see James v, 17), so that we could not plant with any certainty that the seed would grow, or that we should be rewarded by a crop. Such would be the incertitude, such the ‘chance’ against us in everything in which we might engage, if it were true that God ever intercepts the action of his laws by working a miracle, that we should eventually become discouraged by this chaos of ‘chance,’ the wheels of industry would stop, and the car of civilisation go backward. If it were true, as taught by orthodox Christians, that ‘God in his providence,’ or ‘God in the dispensation of his providence,’ often ‘visits people with sickness,’ then it would be useless to study the laws of health with a view of complying with them. For we could not know in any case whether our sickness had been brought upon us by an ‘overruling providence,’ or by our own imprudence. Our incentives to study and comply with these laws, if there could be any, would consequently be very weak indeed, for we might comply with every physiological requisition, and yet there would be several ‘chances,’ against us that tomorrow we may be stretched upon a ‘sick bed and rolling pillow by the visitation of God.’ Thus the doctrine of miracles is shown to be pre-eminently the doctrine of ‘chance.’ The doctrine of miraculous agency makes God an imperfect being, by implying that his laws were defective in their original construction, that by mistake he left some emergency unprovided for, and now has to supply the omission by an afterclap exercise of power. Or if his laws were originally perfect, then the working of a miracle would disturb them, and make them imperfect; if originally imperfect, then God himself must have been imperfect, and hence no God at all. Think of a wonder-working God violating, suspending, or intercepting his own laws. Such a God would be a puerile, short-sighted being, that only ignorant and uncultivated minds could admire and adore. The age of miracles, however, is gone. The belief in divine prodigies has receded before the advancing genius of civilisation. It has died away in the exact ratio of the progress of science and general intelligence. And a thorough acquaintance with nature’s laws will banish the last vestige of such a belief. Hence it is that the most illiterate and ignorant nations and tribes have always been able to recount the longest list of miraculous prodigies achieved by a disorderly God, who seems to have taken pleasure in violating his own laws, or suspending them, for the most trivial purposes. Yes, the time is approaching when the belief in a ‘miraculous interposition’ or ‘special
providences’ must pass away under the lights of science and civilisation, and be numbered amongst the things which have been and can be no more,
and men will cherish more noble and elevated ideas of the great Ruler of the universe, who is infinite in order, infinite in wisdom, and, infinite
in all his attributes and virtues, ever unchangeably the same.
Truthful prophecy, attested to be such by its fulfillment, is assumed to be one of the basic pillars and one of the main proofs of the truth of the Christian religion. But the following consideration will show that this assumption has no logical force, or real, tangible foundation.
It is declared, in view of the many wise precepts which issued from the mouth of Jesus Christ, that ‘he spake as never man spake.’ (John vii. 46.) If this were true, then Gods must have been very numerous prior to the Christian era. For there is not one of the moral maxims or perceptive commands which he gave utterance to that cannot be found literally or substantially in the older bibles of other nations, or the writings of the Greek philosophers, and the religious dissertations of heathen moralists, who gave out moral and religious lessons for the instruction of the world long prior to the birth of Christ. Even the Golden Rule, which Christian writers, ignorant of oriental history, have erroneously ascribed to Jesus Christ, and lauded him as being the author of, is found variously expressed in the writings of several heathen or oriental nations. We find it in the Chinese bible at least five hundred years older than ours, almost word for word as Jesus uttered it. We will here present it as expressed by different writers.
Here is the Golden Rule proclaimed by seven heathen moralists and a Jew long before it was republished by the founder of Christianity; thus proving it to be of heathen origin, and proving that it does not transcend the natural capacity of the human brain to originate, and hence needs no God to reveal it. Indeed, it is one of the most natural sentiments of the human mind. ‘Would I like to be treated thus?’ is the first thought which naturally arises in the mind of a person when maltreating a neighbour; thus showing that the Golden Rule is a spontaneous utterance of the moral feelings of the human mind. Love and kind Treatment of Enemies Love to enemies is considered to be another praiseworthy precept, which Christ has erroneously the credit of being the author of. We have heard the declaration made in the Christian pulpit, that Jesus Christ was the first moral teacher who inculcated love to enemies; a moat transcendent error, as the following historical citations will show. Most of the religious books and religious teachers of the ancient oriental heathen breathe forth a spirit of love and kindness toward enemies. The following is from the old Persian bible, the Sadder:
The Christian bible would be searched in vain to find a moral sentiment or precept superior to this. Certainly it is the loftiest sentiment of kindness toward enemies that ever issued from human lips, or was ever penned by mortal man. And yet it is found in an old heathen bible. Think of ‘kissing the hand upraised to slay.’ Never was love, and kindness, and forbearance toward enemies more sublimely expressed than in the old Persian ballad.
Thus it will be observed that love and kindness toward all mankind, both friends and enemies, is not confined to the teachings of Christ or to the Christian religion, as many have erroneously supposed, but is unquestionably a natural sentiment of the moral instinct or moral impulses of the human mind, and hence is no proof that their teacher is either a God or divinely inspired. And we have in our possession nearly eight hundred more precepts (see vol. ii.) from the pens or mouths
of the ancient heathen, enjoining just and kind treatment of women, and setting forth nearly all the duties of life, and teaching the immortality
of the soul, etc. And these precepts breathe the same lofty moral sentiment and moral feeling as those quoted above. How ignorant and how
conceited must be the Christian professor who supposes all goodness is confined to Christianity, or that it even possesses any great superiority
over other religious systems! And how completely the three foregoing parts of this chapter, ‘Miracles.’ ‘Prophecies,’ and ‘Precepts,’
prostrate the divine claims of Christianity, and leave not an inch of ground for them to rest upon! Freedom from the Human Condition – Happy and HarmlessDesign ©The Actual Freedom Trust: 1997-
. All Rights Reserved.
Disclaimer |
