BIBLE IN SCHOOLS.

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume XXXXVII, Issue 11744, 22 September 1902, Page 2

BIBLE IN SCHOOLS.

To the Editor,

SiiI,'—'"Oaiega'".1 ,'—'"Oaiega'". prefers ta fight . witk Tisor closed. Well, I hardly -wonder at it, and I am Trilling to meet my unknown opponent. My education in comparative Mythology has been comparatively neglected, and I shall therefore not attempt to follow, him into that region. For the sake of argument (but only for the sake of argument, I will suppose that the Gospels are, in their history, and in their unreliability, what "Omega" says, they are, your space is too precious to quote. Still. I cannot allow a misrepresentation of the Gospel narrative to pass unnoticed. "Omega" says that Jesus is reported to have been laid in the sepulchre late on the one night, and at an early hour the next morning He is reported to 'be raised." This is wrong. The lifeless body (pierced to the heart by a Roman spear), is reported to have been laid in the sepulchre late on the afternoon of Friday, just before the beginning of the Jewish Sabbath, which commenced at mraset, and on the next day but one He is reported to have been seen alive. That is, he remained in the tomb .on parts of Friday, Saturday and Sunday. With that slight ■digression we shall for the present lay the Gospels on one side. "Omega" says that he had always thought the narrative, of the resurrection largely a matter of faith. Your correspondent never made a greater mistake: of course we judge the story as we do the rest of the Scripture narratives, from a historical standpoint, and I repeat that the events of ancient history, though in many instances perfectly weM vouched for, and perfectly credible, are not half so well authenticated as the Besurrectdoni of Jesus of Nazareth. But some one will say, if you set aside the Gospel narrative, what have you left? Quito enough. I am not going to ask "Omega" whether or not he admits the following points. I don't care whether he does or not.' They are admitted for him by the "Tubincren "School" of Bible critics, and he will probably not claim 'to bet in advance, of that. It is admitted : 1- That Jesus existed, and that He had. a>body cf disciples who believed in Him as tb« tx■expected Messiah, Also that he vas crupified Tinder Roman- authority. 2. That Paul's Epistles to the Romans, Corinthians (First and Second), and Galations, were certainly written o>v Paul himself, and that they must have been written not later than A,D. 61, that is, 28 years after the death and alleged resurrection of Jesus. 3.' That within 70 years of the death of Jesus Christian Churches were to be found in all the great centres of population throughout the Roman worM. These admissions we shall probably find sufficient for our purposes. First, then, Jesus was looked upon by his followers as the promised Messiah. That expected personage was not expected to end his life on a cross; far from it. He therefore completely disappointed his followers in their expectations of an earthly kingdom, by his being, as we should say hanged. As soon as the breath wag out of his body they ceased to hope. Our opponents have to account for the resuscitation of the Messianic hope and the establishment of a Kingdom of Faith in an Absent Cuist, with ever increasing force, from that day to this. The hallucinations of Mary Magdalene, and of Peter. James, John, and "over 500 brethren at one time" (see I. Cor., xv.), will not account for it. People have often been credulous epoueh to. believe in ghosts and apparitions. But where is the man or woman who will come forward, or who would have come forward in any age or country, and said, "I saw a man whose name was so-and-so, murdered, and three days afterwardsi I saw him alive, and spoke to him. And if such a man or woman came forward, where is the community of sane people who would believe it, and act upon it to the extent of founding a society with the alleged resurrection as the first plank in their platform. Unless, indeed, that resurrection were a fact, and unless the members of the Society had themselves seen the Risen One and spoken to Him. Yet such a Society was formed, our opponents say, on the visionary foundation of the hallucinations of the first disciples, and -ret. so mightily did the "myth" of the resurrection prevail that within 70 years of the execution of the Founder — the event which ought to have crushed the little society out of existence—its ramifications were to be found in every city in the Roman Emrare! Sir, lam a believer in miracle®—the credulity of scepticism is miraculous. But let us turn and look r,t Paul. There stands a giant among reissionaries,. He hated the very name of Jesus once, and he was a bitter opponent and persecutor of those who were seeking to promulgate the resurrection "myth." Undoubtedly he knew what the disciples were claiming—that their Founder had risen, and he was as scornful of the idea, as any 20th century secularist on the face of the globe. But suddenly there is a violent change in his life and way of thinking. Suddenly he is found "preaching the faith which once he destroyed" (his own words). And mark you, he was as much above the inteliectuaS grade of Mary Magdalene and the rest of the disciples as a university professor is above a tradesman. He had never spoken to one of them, and cannot possibly have shared in their hallucinations, though he was afterwards acquainted with Peter, James, and John, with whom he compared notes, and with whom he was in perfect agreement-, so far as the Resurrection was concerned. He writes to Rome, to Galatia, to Corinth (two letters), and none of his letters are later than 28 yeara after Christ's death; all his letters, moreover, assume that the Resurrection of Jesus is the chief corner stone of the foundation! on which Christianity rests.. and is believed and accepted by aid to "irhom he writes. But this presupposes a much earlier belief in the Resurrection, for in his letters he reminds, his churches t>f what he or others had preached to them on the occasion of an earlier personal visit. Paul's missionary activity dates from twenty years before the date of these letters, which brings us> back to 7 or 8 years after tthe accepted date of the Resurrection. Th!is is very different from Laing's account of the compilation of the Gospels—"worked up subsequent!" at unknown dates by unknown authors, aided possibly by oral traditions." Eight years, Sir! That was the length of time that elapsed before that Might Champion of the Faith, whose Writings' are such a stronghold of Truth, was preachinjr the Re.rection in Antioch. Cuprus, and Asia jlinor, and with what effect? With the iffect that has ever since followed the preaching of tha "myth" of the Resurr&c-*:-ii of Jesus. Bad men put away their badness, nnd. live mire and clean lives. Idolatry gradually, but surely throws its god of wood and stone, and its practices of {•.Domination to the owls rmd the bats. Nations and peoples sunk in barbarity, cannibalism, and despair, rise to life and vigour and civilisation, and at. the breath of the resurrection, hope, mankind (thc:t of them who wffi be touched cease to haw? their heads in hopelessness over the destiny of the race. The golden age is in the future, not in the past. "And I saw," says the Seer of Patinds, "new heavens and a new earth, for the first, heavens and the first earth wero passed away." "And

there shall be no more curse, for the Throne of God and of the Lamb shall be in it, and His servants shall serve Him." Sir, I would rather" be a Christian with, this Grand Hops in my heart for the renovation of the race from it» Bin and sorrow and woe, even if my hopes were all to be blasted' by disappointment, than I would feel as "Omega" and his school do, that the Unknowable Almighty (is that his Tubuigen name) had created a world with a population of rational creatures, with mental and moral faculties like ours, only to extinguish their little sphemera life in the darkness of death and despair. Da our friends not see that they are ©n the side of the forces that make for disintegration? Their weight ia in the scale which makes for the ruin of the species? Come, "Omega, man, over to the side of hope. If the dead rise to glory and to enlarged knowledge and love, why should you not share in it? If after all it turns out to be as you say. a "myth," you have at least the satisfaction that you have been on the side of the ipoor, the downtrodden and the unhappy, on the side of that which has strengthened many a feeble knee and raised many a drooping life. I could wish to have had a reply from "Omega," if it were possible, but the fiat of an editor is final, I am afraid. In any case, perhaps in this letter I have given "Omega" something to carry home to his own house of reflection, to hammer at. I would advise him to begin by reading Paul's Epistles in the revised version or better still, in the 20th Century New Testament, and not through the coloured spectacles of Laing and Co.—l am, etc., ] JAMES AITKEN. j

To the Editor.

Sir.—Since many of your correspondents who believe in the inspiration of the Bible pay little attention to the criticism of scientists, who might be accused of being biassed, perhaps they will pay heed to and think over the criticism of Church leaders. Dean Farrar in an essay on "The Literature of Religious Criticism," says, (1) "It is no longer disputable that the last sixteen verses of St. Mark are a late and dubious appendix to that Gospel*; (2) That the narrative of the woman taken in adultery in John VIII., I—ll,1 —11, was no part of tihe original Gospel; (3) That the text about the three heavenly witnesses (1 John, V, 7—B) is s-Mirious • (4) That the verse about the angel troubling the water of the Pool of

Bethesda (JohnV., 4) should have no lace in the genuine text (5) That the enumch's confession is an interpolation into the text of Acts Vni, 37; (6) That the word "fasting" has been introduced by ascentio scribes into Matt. XVII, 21; Mark IX, 29; 1 Cor., VII, 5; Acts X, 30; (7) That it may be regarded as certain that the Epistle to the Hebrews was ilo. 1 written by. St. Paul; (8) That it may :

regarded as certain that if St. Paul! had ckj hand at all in the Second Epistle which goes by his name, yet other hands have been a* work upon it; (9) That as to the Book of Daniel, even the most conservative theologians are beginning to see that the old positions! are entirely untenable. (10) That the Pentatench and the Book of Joshua are composed of composite (that is, patchwork documents. (11) That Deutronomy was not known, as a- whole, till the death of Josiah; (12) That Isaiah and Zechariah were each composed by at least two, writers, one of whem in each case wrote at a considerably later period than tha other; (15) Thai the story of the Tower of Bable is Jewish babble; (14) That talking snakes and whales swallowing men are allegories. The eight eminent authors of "The Bible and the Child" declare (1) That the Pentatench, as we have it, was not written by Moses>, or has been asserted by the Jewish and Christian Churches, but is a series of compilations, made at various times by Jewish priests for their own purposes, and only fathered upon Mosea in order to give them an air of antiquity and authority, although the very earliest of these compilations were penned at least 600 years after the alleged tune of Moses; (2) That the alleged historical books of^the Old Testament, do not give the true history of the Jews, but are merely religious treatise, which misrepresent past events for the purpose of upholding certain tenets of the writers ; (3) That the prophetical books were written after the events alleged to have been prophesied; and the poetical books are compositions of late date, ignorantly or fraudulently ascribed to David and Solomon; (4) That the Gospels are the work of unknown writers of at least the second a.nostolic generation, and their authors did not scruple to introduce their own ideas as to the sayings of Jesus Christ, so that we have no certainty as to what were the teachings of Christ' or what the ideas of the Evangelist; (5) That the authorship of most of the Eiisties is uncertain, and the Book of Revelations reflate to certain erroneous expectations concerning the Emperor Nero." The Bishop of Worcester, in 1893, remarked, "It was no use resisting the Higher Criticism. God had not been pleased to erive usr what he called a perfect Bible." These are strong remarks to come from a Bishon. and let us see that the Church must move with the times. In August, 1897, at Freiberg, in Switzerland, a council of eminent R.C. dfrfines, professors and scientists from all parts of the world, numbering several hundreds, unhesitatingly declared, noinine contradicente. that the cardinal chapter in Genesis is mere poetry, primitive ritual and allegory. Still stronger criticism is to be found in "Creed and Life." by Rev. C. E. Beeby. Vicar of Tardley Wood. He says: (1) "That Jesus is God is a. proposition which involves a logical absurdity; (2) That the language of the so-called At lianasian creed is utter nonsense; (3) To say that our Lord was born of a virgin was also nonsense; (4) Belief in his miraculouF birth was but Parallel to the legends of miraculous virgins in the mythologies of Asia; (5) That the doctrine of Atonement has no rationale, and the whole system of Latin Christianity falls down like a house of cards; (7) That the evidence of the Resurrection of our Lord is valueless." To show the hopeless confusion in translating t\)2 Old Testament, I will quote what Pro'e* -or Mo.-es Stuart, says: "In the Hebrew MSS. that have been examined some 800,----000 various reading actually occur as to tho Hebrew consonants. How many as to the vow el -points and accents no mar know*." As regard* the New Testament, we find that as many as 150.000

various- readings have been discovered. Now, is it fair, right and honest, with all this contradictory evidence before us, that wo should teach our school children that the Bible is Gou's inspired Book, concealing irom them the ftict that ifc is onliv man's production and full of mistakes. By havintor religious; instruction in schools the children's! minds are diverted! from the pursuit of Truth, and impregnated with superstition, whereby their reasoning powers are paralysed. All friends of humanity and progress should do all in their ">ower to promote unsectarian education in every State, in whose schools there should hano* conies of Prof. Huxley's famous rule.

Give unqualified assent to no propositisistent, those the truth of which is so clear that they cannot he doubted." For ■we must remember that the State requires a self-supporting and tax-paying population. But the State cannot ensure this except by imparting productive knowledge to her children and people. This

knowledge doep not oonsist of religion, because religion is entirely futile in indiuvstry. Darwin and his theory have been laughed at by various correspondents, who seem to forget what the Bishiqp of Hereford said at a churdh congress: "It was a tone (of speeches) that betokened something more than tolerance, and it indicated a general acceptance of a. theory associated with the name of a man of whom Dr. Perceval declared that as time went on it would be (more felt that 'Darwin was ordained as one of the doorkeeper© of the vast Temple of the Universe, who opened out new vistas to the Throne of God.'" The wonderful calculation by "Discerner of Facts" to prove that man has been on tibia earth only 6000 years is proved to be false by the splendid work done in Egypt. There records have been unearthed giving 9000 years of human history, and recently a mummy 8000 B.C. was taken from a neolitihia grave. Moreover, Professor Baekel, in his "Last Link," .gives the age of this earth to be 1000 million years, and that man has been on this earth for 270,000 years; so "D.0.F." will see that by some unknown methamiatical means man's increase has been very slow. With reference to Mr. Aitken?s challenge re the Resurrection of Jesus, only a few words need be said. Canon Wilberforce, in 'his "Sermons," saysi: "It is, I think, profitable to emphatdse that >the Bible speaks nowhere of the Resurrection of the body, or the Resurrection of the flesh. The actual Resurrection of Christ was not from Joseph of Arimatbaea's sepulchre, but from the body which He left-hanging on the cross." As regard's the Ascension, he points out the impossibility of understanding the Ascension as a continuous ascension of a body through space. Robertson, in ibis "Christianity andi Mythology," shows that tihe account of Jesus's Resurrection has been developed from the ancient annual mourning rituals of Persephone, Attis, Adonis, Osiris, and Mithra, all of whom were sun godsj, and reported to rise from the dead. Moreover, the conflicting evidence given in the Gospels of the trial, crucifixion, resurrection, and ascension shows plainly that the writers did not witness the alleged; occurrences. Now, if the majority win the day and introduce religious instruction into schools, then tli© oinly favourable result tlhat I can see will be the fact that as time goes on the people will discover that they can do without the •■ services of the clergy, for the children will have a thorough religious instruction, by their masters before tiey leave school, and wu not need further instruction. The State will convert tihe large churches' into schools, and the people, saving much money annually by not having to su|pjport the clergy, willl worship God in their own homes on Sundays.—l am, etc., KAI ATUA.