VARIABILITY OF THE UNCHANGEABLE RECORD 323

often heard that the Christian religion should not be judged by the churches that represent it; that true Christianity consists in believing and practising what Jesus and his disciples taught, while churches as well as individuals are liable to go astray from that teaching. But what is the teaching of Jesus?

"Fortunately Origen has told us how the four Gospels were 'selected' and 'approved' as the only authorized and inspired statement of Christian doctrine. Still another valuable contribution to the discussion of the reliability of the New Testament records is the preface to the Revised Version of the New Testament. Blandly and frankly the revising committee speaks of the 'variations' in the different ancient copies of the New Testament that have been discovered, and of the 'best modes of distinguishing original readings from changes introduced in the course of transcription'; again, 'a sufficiently laborious task remained in deciding between the rival claims of various readings which might properly affect the translation'; and again, the revisers speak of the King James Version as having been in many places 'inconsistent with itself,' and of alterations which they had to make where the King James Version 'appeared either to be incorrect, or to have chosen the less probable of two possible renderings.'

"Yet the King James Version, incorrect' and 'inconsistent,' was practically the inspired, authoritative record until recently revised; and the new version will now be inspired and authoritative, for all who accept it in place of the old version, until a few more uninspired men get together at some future time and revise away a few more of these changes '-many of them essentially forgeries-perpetrated by pious scribes in the 'primitive' and 'pure' ages of Christianity.

66

Seriously, I have too good an opinion of Jesus to believe that he ever taught the great mass of crude, cruel, false, and repulsive doctrine attributed to him in the four Gospels. I imagine that if he could appear to-day and read those Gospels-or get somebody to read them to him-he would denounce their authors and defenders in language even fiercer than he is reported to have applied to the Scribes and Pharisees.

"But it is idle to talk about what Jesus taught. There is not one sentence, either within or without the

New Testament, to which we can point and declare with absolute certainty, or even reasonable probability: "This Jesus said.'

66

Besides, what must we think of a religion powerless to protect itself against the encroachments of man's theology, but liable to such mutilation and abuse of its records, such deterioration and corruption, in the very hands of its only promoters and preservers, as to become a mighty engine of persecution and tyranny and a cloak and defender of the most degrading vices and the most appalling crimes?

"The fact is, we may and should judge Christianity by everything connected with it or representing it: by the New Testament, which it offers us as the proof of its divine origin and the record of its authority; by its creeds, which it holds out for our belief; by its deeds, which are the fruits of its power and profession. If Christianity fail in any one of these departments of inquiry, it is discredited; if it fail to sustain its claim of infallible truth for the entire Bible, it must be rejected by every sincere, informed, reasonable man. Each of us must weigh the evidence and decide for himself. Indeed, if Christianity fail to support any one of its cardinal doctrines as to the nature of Jesus, the whole structure is overthrown. A doctor of divinity, a lecturer, the editor of a prominent Christian weekly paper-and these men sometimes tell the truth very plainly and bluntly-is reported to have declared in a great orthodox Christian convention, amid demonstrations of approval from his fellows, that 'Christianity was as false as the wildest superstition, unless the birth of Christ was the result of the divine operation upon a woman without the agency of man'-a declaration to which we can cordially subscribe."

"But you will hardly deny," said Henson, "that Christianity has produced a great number of noble men in all ages.

"Rather let us say," replied Paul, "that many noble men in all ages have been Christians. And so, also, you will hardly deny that in all ages there have been many noble men who were not Christians—at least in all ages when it was safe for men to confess that they were not Christians. To sustain your point, you must show not only that Christianity has produced good men but that heresy, opposition to Christianity, has not produced good men. Now let us see about it. The three most prominent and 'pernicious' heretics.

in the early history of the church were Arius, Pelagius, and Nestorius. Let me read you some good orthodox testimony as to the character of these three arch-heretics and enemies of the true faith. Speaking of Arius, the Rev. Dr. Philip Schaff says:

“The silence of his enemies conclusively proves that his general moral character was irreproachable (like that of Nestorius and Pelagius); and, if it had not been for his heresy, he would have been highly esteemed.'

“Now, taking your point of view, were these three persons good men because they were heretics, or heretics because they were good men? You see, if the test of 'deed not creed' proves anything, it proves a great deal too much: it proves the truth not only of Christianity, but of paganism and heresy.

"But the question with which we are now concerned is, not the goodness or badness of men, but the truth or falsity of certain religious dogmas. It may or may not be true that Augustine was kind, gentle, just to the people about him: but what has that to do with the question of infant damnation, or original sin, or any other dogma of his that binds the churches to-day? Suppose the Apostle Paul and Augustine to have been men of absolutely pure and sinless life: does that prove the theory of justification by faith? On the contrary, do we not know the fact to be that the just man has his justification, while for the unjust there is no justification? For the unjust man there is still the unspotted future, but with the everlasting truth staring him in the face that a right to-morrow can never right a wrong to-day.

"And what has the personal character of Augustine or any other man to do with the proposition that we are all sinners from birth, because two ancestors of ours ate of the fruit of a certain tree some six thousand years ago, when the Devil tempted them to become wise after God had commanded them to stay ignorant? Contrast that Christian dogma with the Buddhist doctrine that 'the secret of human misery' is 'ignorance;' and with the words of that 'noblest of the Pagan Emperors' of Rome, Marcus Aurelius Antoninus, 175 years after Christ, of whom the great historian Niebuhr said: 'It is more delightful to speak of Marcus Aurelius than of any other man in history; for if there is any sublime human virtue it is his.' Let me read you a short passage from the 'Meditations' of Aurelius:

66 6

Begin the morning by saying to thyself, I shall meet with the busybody, the ungrateful, arrogant, deceitful, envious, unsocial. All these things happen to them by reason of their ignorance of what is good and evil. But I who have seen the nature of the good that it is beautiful, and of the bad that it is ugly, and the nature of him that does wrong that is akin to me, . . . I can neither be injured by any of them-for no one can fix on me what is ugly-nor can I be angry with my kinsman, nor hate him. For we are made for coöperation, like feet, like hands, like eyelids, like the rows of the upper and lower teeth. To act against one another then is contrary to nature; and it is acting against one another to be vexed and turn away.'

"However, I strongly question whether the really wise men of any age have so generally and implicitly believed in Christianity as Christians are accustomed to assert. 'Wise men,' says Macaulay, 'have always been inclined to look with great suspicion on the angels and demons of the multitude." He might truthfully have added 'gods and devils'-which are merely big angels and demons—to his list of superhuman suspects. Christians are prone to judge all men by the Pauline maxim that 'The wisdom of this world is foolishness with God;' to which we might reply that the wisdom of the religionist is foolishness with the man of sense.

"The estimation in which Christianity was held by intelligent and learned Romans is not difficult to learn. The historian Tacitus, writing about the end of the first century of the Christian era, calls the Christian religion "pernicious superstition'; and Pliny, the accomplished scholar, author, and orator, writing as a Roman governor to the Emperor Trajan in opposition to the practice of persecuting Christians, about the year 110, speaks of their religion as an obstinate and extravagant superstition' and 'fanaticism.'

"Of Marcus Aurelius Farrar says:

6

“That he shared the profound dislike with which Christians were regarded is very probable. . . . Wise and good men before him had, in their haughty ignorance, spoken of Christianity with execration and contempt. The philosophers who surrounded his throne treated it with jealousy and aversion. . . . Christianity in that day was confounded with a multitude of debased and foreign superstitions.'

"Truly, it is a significant admission that the 'wise and good men' and 'philosophers' of those centuries closely following the alleged incarnation of deity, so generally

ROMAN CONTEMPT FOR CHRISTIANITY

327

classed Christianity with the debased and foreign superstitions' of that time; and we know that many, very many wise and good men and philosophers in all the centuries. from that time to this have continued to so class it.

"Finally, hear the comprehensive, masterly statement of Gibbon near the end of the celebrated fifteenth chapter of his 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire':

"The names of Seneca, of the elder and the younger Pliny, of Tacitus, of Plutarch, of Galen, of the slave Epictetus, and of the Emperor Marcus Antoninus, adorn the age in which they flourished, and exalt the dignity of human nature. They filled with glory their respective stations, either in active or contemplative life; their excellent understandings were improved by study; philosophy had purified their minds from the prejudices of the popular superstitions; and their days were spent in the pursuit of truth and the practice of virtue. Yet all these sages (it is no less an object of surprise than of concern) overlooked or rejected the perfection of the Christian system. Their language or their silence equally discover their contempt for the growing sect, which in their time had diffused itself over the Roman Empire. Those among them who condescended to mention the Christians, consider them only as obstinate and perverse enthusiasts, who exacted an implicit submission to their mysterious doctrines, without being able to produce a single argument that could engage the attention of men of sense and learning.""

At this point Thalia interrupted the discussion to send Paul into seclusion for an hour's rest, while she took it upon herself to entertain the visitors.

CHAPTER 48

RELIGION, THEOLOGY, SCIENCE

"It seems to me, Granger," said Henson, when the discussion was renewed in the afternoon, “that you continually confound religion and theology."

"Undoubtedly," replied Paul; "because I see no reason to separate them. The distinction that you would evidently draw is merely the distinction between crude, unorganized, often semi-barbarous superstition, and organized, systematic, refined superstition. The only distinction that has any substantial basis is that between knowledge and super