WHAT IS TRUTH ?

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXXV, Issue 10908, 12 November 1898, Page 2 (Supplement)

WHAT IS TRUTH ?

[by COLOXUS.] The question that was put, seemingly as a passing thought, and perhaps flippanty, by Pilate, seems to be still the unsolved riddle of the world. It. is assumed to be the objective in every inquiry on which men enter as to the nature of things, but in a thousand cases it seems to be fixed by tile standard which the inquirer had set up in his own mind. Accordingly, what is truth to one man is a lie to another, and what with the conflict of opinions the upshot in a man's mind is that " 'ee don't know where 'ee are." This is truer in theology than in anything else, in which commonly every man that has an ..pinion at all, that is worth standing by. hold's it with a religious tenacity that make-: him convinced that everybody else that does not hold the same view as liiiii-.elf is dunned. It is an ijic ••ivoiiieiit sort of rule for controversy, but it is an admirable thing for securing ui.'!initene«s of conviction. It i- "dd. ton. than it should be in theology of all things. f->r the basis of theology as laid down in the Bible, is really after all, >■> veiled and mystical, and the glimpses of | divine tilings are had only under so many j different sid ■•li.'hts. that of all things in the world it invite- to the utmost latitude of inquiry. Vet, in that, beyond all other subjects of inquiry, tlx- mind is blocked by peremptory orders "f " You mustn't." from other people, who have been turning their own particular bull's-eye 011 the subject. They tell you that the truth of God must be one and unchangeable, which is true enough, as it i- of the truth of science: but they don't tell you that' the views that may he had of it may he neither one nor unchangeable. and that their own obliquity of vision may have presented the truth to them, distort''d and even grotesque. Not a bit of it, but assuming the accuracy of their own squint they tell you you are damned if you don't accept the truth, as distorted by the twist in their own eve. If ever the devil had a "finger in the pie," in the dreadful moral muddle that we see in the world, it was he that must have infused this spirit of dogmatism into theology, and it seems In have done more to paralyse religion. and the love for the ureal good God. than anything else in the history of the

world. Indeed, one can fancy the great enemy of mankind, wily, cunning, wicked creature, that lie must. b.'. chuckling us lie thought of gelling hold e; the theologies and expoimdersnf re religion, and making them the instrimie 1 !!- ami .iL'encii's lor i-iiMi,Hiring religion, and presenting lie crut beneficent Being as a monster of '.pihlukiess and cruelly till alums' the whole world In,: turned from Hill! v uh -In inking ami dislike. And one can well believe the quiet satisfaction v. it'll which tV devil took his seat unseen, 0 the Council Hoard, ai d inspired the Hi" 11 who framed those articles of belief and creeds, and I'mitessions of Faith, embodying his own d'-ibolica! representations of the Deity, and »i His relations with His creatures, and how he must have gloried as he watched the bi.'-ziog int/go',. and the scaffolds, and the gibrifK Willi which the holders of those various .-reeds enforced their views, and his views, of religion on the reasons and the consciences of one am,l her, as their s.ilution of the question, What is truth '!

bet us suppose that the same diabolical force had been employed to stop the search in science, or the book of nature, which has been applied to the j-eareh for truth in the book of Revelations, and that men with purblind vision had laid down the limits of knowledge in searching out the secrets of nature aiidnature's God, and said hitlierto ye shall come, but no further on pain of eternal damnation, and what a cul-de-sac we should have been landed in. What a knowledge we should have bad to-day of electricity, or astronomy, or drugs, the truth of which was hidden away in nature, but was as existent and as real MOO years ago as now. Ii is true the attempt was made to silence truth in science, from time to time, just the sami as in the word of God, and the devil's paralysing dogmatism was turned on flallio and Columbus, and Dr. Simpson for his anaesthetics.

But the masters of science were too master/ill, and the enemy of mankind apparently turned way to what he deemed a more hopeful field of operation, and laying his paralysing hand on theology, with wonderful adroitness, he has succeeded in making the very masters of theology his own agents in quelling the search for truth. "Search the Scriptures." was equally written from the first on the two great books of nature and of revelation by Him who gave them, "for they aro they which testify of me."

But no! said the masters of theology, if yon search the Scriptures at all it must be only to find the truth that we have found, and if you find anything but that, to you be Anathema and Maranalha.

There can lie no doubt that both these books from the one Hand, were intended to be gradual and continuous revelations of Himself, and of his laws, physical, psychological. and moral, and that they were to yield their treasures of wisdom alike only to the patient humble seeker after truth. But with an impudent presumption that could only have come of the instigation of a mischievous being of matchless audacity, men have taken 'on them to set limits to tile search for truth, and having extracted i moral, and mixed it up with their own infirmities, they have set it forth as the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but truth, and for anyone that adds to, or takes truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the and blinded natures have concocted, let him be accursed.

These humanly-concocted creeds, partaking naturally of the brutal and semi-savage temper of the limes in which they were formed, have, as might be expected, picked out all the frightsome and terrifying aspects of the Deity and of His relations, that were useful, of course, in governing savage races, and forcing them into obedience by tho fear of the whip of punishment. But the incomparably more numerous aspects <> and forbearance, and forgiveness, and tenderness in tli; Father of all, such as appeal with irresistible force to a civilised age like our own, are so overborn and obscured by those horrible views, that religion is made more rcpellant than attractive to nine-tenths of the people.

So, by the cramping and paralysing inftience of those savage man-formed confessions, and the penalties attached to the nonacceptance of them, the great truth of the Fatherhood of God is practically banished from the minds of all but a few, and people look to death as a moment in which, from a world in which we are receiving infinite kindnesses from God's hand to the very last, a soul will, in an instant, be snatched into a state in which it will be pounced on by an angry God, and irrevocably plunged in an everlasting torment of hell-fire. This is truth, according to the theologians, but it is a blasphemous lie according to the Scriptures, in which, from cover to cover, hell is not mentioned once in the sense in which it is described by the theologians. The very word " hell," it-self innocent and harmless at first, has acquired its horrible character from from the theologians. Coming from " Hebm," to cover, it merely meant " the dim underworld," an exact equivalent for the "Hades" or the "unseen," which it is in the oringinal Greek, and " Sheol," the " unseen world," in the Hebrew Bible. Regarded as " a place of endless torment by material fire into which all unpenitent souls pass for ever after death," it conveys meanings which are not to be found in any word of the Old or New Testament, for which it is presented as an equivalent. When it is said, "and thou Capernaum shalt be brought down to hell," it is merely as in the original " shalt be brought down to Hades," that is to the silence and desolation of the grave. And when it is said " The gates of -Hell shall not prevail against" the Church, it is the gates of Hades, or the invisible world, or the grave. And when mention is made of " the damnation of Hen, it is really in the original, "the judgment of Gehenna," or a disgraceful death, such as an unburied corpse, being thrown into the gully beside Jerusalem ■where all tie offal' was pitched and sometimes burnt. And the word "hell-fire" is, in the original, " the Gehenna of fire," an expression .wluch, on Jewish lips, would never mean an endless torment. In fact, the bogey of " hell," as we know it, is not found in either the Old or the New

Testament, and was simply conjured up by priestcraft to frighten unfortunate dupes, who were prepared to accept as " truth" the commandments of men. And it is just the same with a number of other horrible things that are palmed off as " truth" of revelation, and which are only the " truth" as concocted by men of fierce and savage proclivities, who had taken on themselves to single out isolated texts into formulas of horrible import to frighten the timid, in violation of the whole spirit of revealed truth. The day of these fetters on the human mind is rapidly passing away, and the time is coming when the honest and fearless study of the Bible, like lie honest study of His other book of Nature, will probably reveal unfathomed truths undreamt of before. j