The Eliminator; or, Skeleton Keys to Sacerdotal Secrets

CHAPTER XIII. A REVERENT CRITIQUE ON JESUS

WE say “reverent” out of pure regard to the feelings of multitudes of devout persons who verily believe that Jesus was and is God, and so any criticism of him is simply blasphemous. This subject is not to be treated in a light or frivolous manner.

We say “reverent” also out of respect to a smaller number of so-called liberals who deny the divinity of Christ, but who nevertheless believe that Jesus was the one pre-eminently good and wise man, and that no man equal to him ever existed or ever will exist upon the face of this earth; that he was the special Son of God, the model man, worthy of worship as the man who possessed so much of the divine spirit as to entitle him to the place of honor and grateful remembrance among men for all time and in all countries.

We think it more honest and respectful to reverently inquire into the evidences of his divine character, and not to accept with blind credulity what other men say. We are endowed with reason, and it seems to us proper that we should exercise our rational faculties, and not ignore them altogether. Honest doubt must be more acceptable to him, if he is God, than unreasoning faith.

Now, we propose to look at him in the light of the New Testament, and especially of the Gospels, assuming them to be authentic. We shall here pass by his infancy and childhood (utterly ignoring the doubtful and controverted passages concerning his immaculate conception and miraculous birth), and take the first direct account we have of his life. This commences when he was about twelve years of age. We are told that he accompanied his mother and putative father to Jerusalem, whither they went to attend the feast of the Passover. Luke states that he strayed away from his parents, who were greatly concerned for his safety, but he was at length found in the temple among the doctors asking and answering wonderful questions, so as to astonish all who heard him with his wonderful knowledge. His mother gently reproved him for giving them so much anxiety, and he answered back, rather impatiently, “How is it that ye sought me? Wist ye not that I must be about my Father's business?" But he went home with his parents and was subject to them, and for at least eighteen years dwelt with them and his brothers James, Joses, Judas, and Simon. The names of his several sisters are not given. During these eighteen years he is supposed to have learned the trade of a carpenter and worked with his reputed father, who was a carpenter, spending the most vigorous portion of his life in manual labor, only devoting about three years to his mission as the Messiah. Now, Jesus is held up as an “example,” and we are “to follow his steps,” and it does not appear that there was anything in his example specially worthy of imitation for about thirty years. We must find it in the last years of his earthly career if we find it at all.

The first instance in which the evangelists bring Jesus forward as a moral teacher is in the Sermon on the Mount. This discourse is supposed by Christians to be the masterpiece of wisdom and deep spiritual insight. While Matthew gives it as a complete discourse, Mark and Luke intersperse the substance of the sermon throughout their Gospels; which is strong presumptive proof that it was not delivered as a connected discourse. Like the book of Proverbs, it seems to be a collection of the moral sayings of former times, many of which can be pointed out, with slight verbal alterations, in the writings of pagan authors and of more modern Jews of the Hillel school. In fact, there is nothing in the sermon which had not been taught by many others a long time before, while there is much that is absurd and impracticable, not to say untrue and unjust. Even the deep spirituality involved in recognizing the spirit and intent of the law can be paralleled by several passages in Buddhistic scriptures. The so-called “Golden Rule” was announced by Confucius as an axiom nearly five centuries before the Christian era, both in its positive and its negative form, while the same maxim is laid down in most choice and beautiful language by Isocrates, Aristotle, Sextus, Pittacus, Thales, and many others from three to six centuries before Christ.

The same is true of the Lord’s Prayer, though it is often asserted that Jesus first taught the “Fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man.” This is not true. The “Lord’s Prayer” is found in the ancient Jewish rituals, and is entitled a “Prayer to the Father,” and the expression “Our Father who art in heaven” is common to many, if not all, nations and religions.

While there are several things in the Sermon on the Mount truly beautiful, there is nothing that is strictly original; there are many sayings which show a great lack of knowledge, and that are positively impracticable and immoral in their tendency. No Christian tries to keep these sayings. It would lead to vagabondism and would convert a nation into a crowd of tramps. It would be positively immoral to obey them. If Jesus did not intend that his teachings should be taken according to the common sense of the words used, why did he not say so? What is language for but to express one’s meaning? So far from teaching the non-resistance of evil, in other places he runs into the extreme of teaching revenge. (See Luke 10:10-12; Matt. 10:14, 15; Mark 6:11.) He also sanctions the most gross injustice. He commends the unjust steward (Luke 16:5-8), saying that he had “done wisely” in cheating his employer by compounding with his creditors, and advises his hearers to make “friends” of the “mammon of unrighteousness.”

Moreover, whoever is familiar with the teachings ascribed to Jesus must know that his first condition of discipleship is the total surrender of all worldly possessions and the non-accumulation of earthly treasures thereafter (Matt. 16: 24; Luke 14: 26, 27; Matt. 19, etc.). Can words be more emphatic than the utterances of Jesus reported in Matt. 6:19-34?—“Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal.”… “For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.”… “Ye cannot serve God and mammon.”… “Therefore I say unto you, Take no thought for your life, what ye shall eat or what ye shall drink, nor yet for your body, what ye shall put on.” This absolute unconcern about food and raiment is emphasized by repeating the injunction twice: “Therefore take no thought, saying, What shall we eat? or, What shall we drink? or, Wherewithal shall we be clothed?”… “Take therefore no thought for the morrow, for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself.”

The attempts of theologians to modify these precepts are most preposterous. They tell us that Jesus meant to discourage anxious thought about worldly possessions and wants—that he intended to condemn undue anxiety and worriment of mind; and they even assert that the original word implies and justifies this rendering. To this it may be replied, We cannot be certain as to what particular words Jesus used, as we have no manuscripts of the Gospels dating back to within four hundred years of his time, and the alleged copies that we have are not authenticated; so that an argument, even if justified by learned criticism, based upon the implied meaning of particular words is useless, unless we are sure, as we cannot be, that Jesus used those very words, and that he intended that his disciples and other unlearned and uncritical hearers should accept the implied rather than the obvious meaning.

But, taking the words in the Greek manuscripts of the Gospels now most approved by scholars, we deny that there is anything in them to justify the interpolation of the word “anxious” between the words “no” and “thought.” There is the highest classical authority for the assertion that the verb employed here simply means to “care,” “to be careful,” “to heed,” and is so translated in other portions of the New Testament, as, for examples, in 1 Cor. 7: 32, 33, 34; Phil. 4:6; 1 Pet. 5:7; and in many other passages. When Paul exhorted the Philippians to be “careful for nothing,” because the Lord was about to appear in judgment, he obviously meant that it was not worth while to make any provision for future bodily wants.

It is a universally-admitted principle of critical interpretation that the meaning of words in any given text must be determined from the context, the connection in which the word occurs. It so happens that Jesus has illustrated his doctrine in this connection so as to make it impossible to doubt as to the meaning of the words employed: “Behold the fowls of the air, for they sow not, neither do they reap, nor gather into barns; yet your heavenly Father feedeth them. Are not ye much better than they?”… “And why take ye thought for raiment? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin, and I say unto you that Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.”

The use of the illative word, “wherefore, if God so clothe the grass,” and the word “therefore take no thought,” show beyond doubt that Jesus intended to teach, and did teach, that his disciples were to be as indifferent to matters of food and clothing as are the birds of the air and the flowers of the field. Not only did he use words that sanction the utmost improvidence in regard to future bodily wants, but he gave the sense in which his words were to be received by referring them to the well-known unconcern of the birds and lilies.

But it may be further shown what Jesus meant to teach by reference to his own life and the lives of his first followers. There is little or no evidence in the Gospels or elsewhere that Jesus or his first disciples ever possessed any earthly goods whatever, or that they ever engaged in any of the useful or wealth-producing avocations of the country in which they lived. Matthew speaks of Jesus as the son of a carpenter, and Mark calls him “the carpenter, the son of Mary.” The fervid imaginations of modern writers have depicted Jesus as an apprentice to his father and laboring at the carpenter’s trade, but there is no evidence that he ever pushed a plane or drove a nail. There is no reason to believe that he ever erected a house for others, and it is certain that he never built a house for himself, for he has told us that “the foxes have holes and the birds of the air have nests, but the Son of man has not where to lay his head.” There is not in any of the Gospels one single word accredited to Jesus in favor of industrial pursuits, not one syllable to justify the accumulation of property, or any forethought whatever for sickness, for helpless infancy, or tottering age.

When Jesus sent out his disciples he expressly forbade them to make any provision for food or raiment. He said, “Provide neither gold or silver nor brass in your purses, nor scrip for your journey, neither two coats, neither shoes, nor yet staves, for the workman is worthy of his meat.” They were to throw themselves upon the charities of the world, accept such things as were given them, and to manifest the utmost indifference to worldly comforts. There is no evidence that any of the followers of Jesus who listened to his personal instructions ever engaged in any worldly avocation, except to catch a mess of fish when driven by hunger to do so. They lived from “hand to mouth,” and if they had lived in our day they would, every one of them, have been denominated “tramps,” and would have been amenable to our modern laws of vagrancy. ’Tis true, there seems to have been some sort of care about future possible wants, but only on the communistic principle. They had a treasurer in the person of Judas Iscariot, but no individual possessions were allowed. We are told (Acts 4: 26) regarding early Christians, “Neither was there any among them that lacked; for as many as were possessors of lands or houses sold them and brought the prices of the things that were sold, and laid them down at the apostles' feet, and distribution was made unto every man according as he had need.” In Acts 2:44, 45 the facts are also fully set forth: “And all that believed were together and had all things common, and sold their possessions and goods, and parted them to all men as every man had need.” Whatever was allowed as a community, it is certain that no individual was allowed to accumulate or retain property on his own personal account.

In perfect consistency with the view here presented Jesus taught that the possession of riches was almost sure to debar one from heaven—that while it might be possible for a rich man to be saved, because all things are possible with God, nevertheless it is “easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter into heaven.” Riches were always denounced by Jesus, and poverty eulogized as if it were a virtue in itself, commending one to the favor of God and greatly increasing his prospects for the heavenly inheritance. If the triple testimony of the synoptical Gospels amounts to anything, it shows beyond a doubt that Jesus would accept no man as a disciple who continued in the possession of worldly property, or who accumulated earthly riches, or who allowed himself to think of the future necessaries of life, even food and clothing. At the same time, the most promiscuous and profuse almsgiving was enjoined: “Sell all that thou hast and give unto the poor,” was the literal injunction. “Give to him that asketh thee, and from him that would borrow of thee turn not thou away.”

Besides this, he required absolute non-resistance: “But I say unto you that ye resist not evil, but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek turn to him the other also “And whosoever shall compel thee to go a mile, go with him twain “And if any man will sue thee at the law and take away thy coat, let him have thy cloak also.” This is even more than non-resistance; it is a reward for unprincipled men to impose upon you. It would be impossible to state the principle of absolute non-resistance in stronger language. But modern commentators tell us that Jesus did not intend to be so understood—that he merely intended to condemn the spirit of strife and retaliation. Why, then, did he not say so? Which shall we accept—what Jesus plainly and repeatedly said, or what commentators say he meant?

What are we to say about the doctrine of bodily mutilation taught in the Sermon on the Mount (Matt. 5: 29, 30)? Theologians of to-day tell us that these words are to be taken in a metaphorical sense—that to secure salvation we must sacrifice every passion that would lead us into sin, though it might be as dear as a right hand, foot, or eye. The reason assigned by Jesus for enforcing this precept cannot be reconciled with the assumption that it was intended to be figurative: “For it is profitable for thee that one of thy members should perish, and not that thy whole body should be cast into hell.” If by members of the body Jesus meant principles or passions that might tempt and entrap one into evil, we must charge upon the precept the absurdity that it would be better to enter into heaven with one evil principle or passion than to be cast into hell with many evil principles and passions! The literal interpretation is favored by the fact that in ancient times bodily mutilation was recognized in religious matters. In Matt. 19:12, Jesus is reported to have said, “And there be eunuchs, which have made themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven’s sake. He that is able to receive it, let him receive it.” If this is not a sanction of bodily mutilation, what can it mean? That it was understood literally by many early Christians cannot be denied. The ascetics of the second century practised the most extreme literal mortification of the flesh, and even in the middle of the third century Origen, one of the most learned of the Christian Fathers, destroyed his own manhood by bodily mutilation as an act of piety. Much curious matter upon this subject may be found in Mosheim’s Ecclesiastical History, page 310, and also Gibbon’s Decline and Fall, chap. xv. and notes.

The fairest and most reasonable way to ascertain what Jesus taught is to study his own life, and then to follow his example. It will be somewhat startling to many when we announce the proposition that the religion of the Christian Gospels is monastic and ascetic in the extreme, and that Jesus himself was an ascetic, and that he required his disciples to become such. One thing is certain: No man can study the character of Jesus and his teachings, his own life and the career of his immediate disciples, without admitting the monkish character of their religion. It was emphatically the religion of sorrow, the religion not only of anti-naturalism, but of unnaturalism. It virtually said: “Whatever is natural is wrong; whatever you desire is wrong. To do what is painful is right, while to do what you want to do is certain ruin. Life must be one incessant wail of suffering if it is to be followed with eternal blessedness. The body is the enemy of the soul, and the world the enemy of God. Worldly prosperity is a curse in disguise, while poverty and want and persecution and suffering of all kinds are indications of the divine favor.” (See Secret of the East, by Dr. Felix L. Oswald.)

At the very commencement of his public career Jesus formed an alliance with that hardiest of anchorites known as John the Baptist, and in all the Gospels the close relationship between the missions of John and Jesus is constantly recognized. It is a tradition of the early Church that Jesus was never known to smile, and there is an implication in the Gospels that his face was prematurely old. He recommended a life of religious mendicancy and voluntary poverty as absolutely necessary for admission to his kingdom.

But there was scarce anything in the teachings of Jesus that had not been insisted upon for hundreds of years before by the monks of India, Egypt, and other countries. It is impossible to go into details, but no man of reading will deny this allegation. Like the ancient monks, Jesus practised long fastings and abstained from flesh meats, though he ate fish and vegetables. He neither possessed nor sought to acquire any worldly property. While going about the streets and the seashore teaching by day, he generally resorted, like ancient monks, to the mountains and wilderness at night, and his principal religious devotions were performed in the darkness of midnight. He abstained from marriage, and had but little regard for the domestic relations. Asceticism was the distinguishing characteristic of the early Church, and the doctrine of the community of goods was practically received by the Church for two hundred years, and is so received by many to-day.

So far from practically condemning the literal teachings of Jesus as we find them in the Gospels, we take the ground that they were just what might have been expected from one holding the doctrine that the world was about to be destroyed and a new kingdom established upon the regenerated earth, of which he was to be the king and his disciples the princes. If there was anything definite in the teachings of Jesus, it was the speedy coming of the end of the world. Carefully study the twenty-fourth chapter of Matthew, the thirteenth of Mark, and the twenty-first of Luke if you have any doubts upon this subject.

The attempt of theologians to make it appear that Jesus only referred to the destruction of Jerusalem is most absurd. It virtually charges Jesus with the inconsistency of giving information upon one subject when his disciples desired information upon another. They asked him for signs that should precede the destruction of the world, and he distinctly affirmed, “This generation shall not pass away till all these things are fulfilled;” “There be some standing here that shall not taste death till they see the Son of man coming in his kingdom” (Matt. 16:28). The doctrine of the almost immediate end of all mundane things as they then existed is the only key to unlock what seems so absurd in the teachings of Jesus. If he believed what he taught as to the speedy end of the world, it was perfectly consistent for him to condemn the holding or accumulating of property, and to commend the most indiscriminate almsgiving, the most absolute non-resistance, with bodily mortification and mutilation, and a life of unworldliness and practical mendicancy and poverty. Jesus and his disciples taught and acted just as men would teach and act if they believed that the end of the world was at hand. His disciples so understood him.

In the year 960 A. d. there was in the Christian Church a revival of this doctrine, and the speedy end of the world and the second coming of Jesus were proclaimed with great earnestness. The clergy as a class adopted it, and encouraged people to give away their possessions. A universal panic prevailed; all business was suspended; men abandoned their families, and multitudes undertook a pilgrimage to Palestine to meet their returning Lord.

It is hardly necessary to mention the craze of “Millerism” in 1843 in this country, when many, in perfect consistency with their belief, gave up their possessions and prepared their “ascension robes,” and waited anxiously for the end. If the clergy of all denominations should now unite in proclaiming just what Jesus predicted concerning the end of the world, just in proportion as people sincerely believed the message they would at once literally accept the teachings of the Sermon on the Mount, and act accordingly.

This leads us to the inevitable conclusion that much of what Jesus taught can only be understood and justified by his particular view and representation of the almost immediate end of all earthly things; and this understanding of the subject is much more creditable to Jesus as a teacher than the assumption that he failed to make himself understood, and that he did not mean what he said, though both he and his disciples practically in their lives exemplified the unworldliness and asceticism that he preached.

We submit as a key to the enigmas of the Sermon on the Mount and other hard sayings attributed to Jesus that he and his disciples believed and taught that this world was about to be made new, that the then present order was about to terminate, and that therefore earthly possessions and pursuits were of no consequence, and even the domestic relations were of little account.

That the teachings and examples of Jesus (in many respects) cannot be accepted by the people of the nineteenth century without a complete overthrow of existing institutions and forms of civilization is a self-evident fact. We must abandon all industrial pursuits, change all our views of the rights of property, adopt the communistic principle and policy, and lead lowly lives of self-denial and bodily mortification and discomfort.

We repeat that the teachings and example of Jesus were natural and rational from his conviction of the approaching end of all things.

It would be easy to point out many other things in the Sermon on the Mount equally defective and offensive to reason and common sense, but we forbear. We have dwelt upon this celebrated sermon at such length because it is held up as a model of moral teaching. We pronounce it a very inferior compilation of things good and bad, not at all corresponding with proper ideas of practical morality, and not adapted to the present necessities of civilization.

What is said of the Sermon on the Mount may be said of many portions of the alleged teachings of Jesus. We mention only a few instances. The parable of the Unjust Steward justifies a worldly cunning and a decidedly dishonest act (Luke 16:5-8). Jesus commends him, saying that “he had done wisely” in cheating his principal, and advises his disciples to “make to them friends of the mammon of unrighteousness.” A more grossly dishonest act could not have been committed by a person acting in a fiduciary capacity. To follow his example would overthrow all business integrity and lead to universal knavery.

In the parable of the Unjust Judge he gives a very low and anthropomorphic view of God and the efficacy of prayer. It is this: A certain woman went to a judge for a certain favor, and he would not grant her request. She persisted, and finally he said, “Though I fear not God nor regard man, yet because this widow troubleth me I will avenge her, lest by her continual coming she weary me.” Then the lesson taught: “And shall not God avenge his own elect which cry unto him day and night, though he bear long with them?” This certainly teaches that if one teases and worries God long enough, he will answer the prayer without regard to the rightfulness of the petition. Dr. Adam Clark says in his Commentary that the expression “she weary me” is a metaphor taken from boxers, “who bruise each other about the face, blacken the eyes!” We forbear to remark on this blasphemous doctrine.

We pass on without specifying the manifestly unjust principles laid down in the parables of the Laborers in the Vineyard, the Ten Talents, the Great Feast, and other parables, the manner in which he treated the woman of Canaan, the mystification and evasions he used, leaving her in doubt with regard to his real meaning, and the many instances in which he gave irrelevant answers and unfair and illogical conclusions. His teachings were notable for their obscurity and ambiguity; he tells us he did not desire to be understood; and no wonder that his most trusted disciples wrangled about his true meaning and came to opposite conclusions. His own family did not believe in him, and some persons thought him insane. Indeed, his mysterious and enigmatical style is so marked that it suggests whether, after all, what is said to have been spoken by Jesus was not the utterances and traditions of initiates in the second Christian century?

The claim of autocratic official authority to forgive and punish, to deny before God those who should deny him before men, to denounce whole cities for want of faith in him, to come in God’s name to judge all mankind, to proclaim everlasting punishment and declare that some should never be forgiven, mars the beauty of Jesus’ character. A real deficiency in his teaching was the absence of any explicit declaration of human brotherhood. It is a remarkable feet that no clear statement of this idea is recorded of Jesus. But the lack was supplied in a certain form by Paul, whose broader ethnic experience and more liberal culture made him recognize the demand more fully, and who was therefore bound to have it satisfied in his religious ideal. This was easy, since he had never seen Jesus, and could construct his personality as his own reverence and sense of human need might prompt.

The clearest statement of human brotherhood in the New Testament is that ascribed to Paul: “God hath made of one blood all the nations of the earth.” Yet even in Paul's mind it seems to have been conditioned on faith in his Master. All were “members of one another, whether Jew or Gentile, bond or free;” but it was only in so far as they were, or were fit to be, “in the body of Christ.” Cicero and Seneca rest human brotherhood on broader and deeper foundations. “All are members of one great body,” says Seneca also; but in what sense? “By the constitution of nature, which makes us kindred, and more miserable in doing than in receiving an injury; and by whose sway our hands are prepared for mutual help.” Paul says, “In Christ is neither bond nor free.” But Seneca says more broad-ly, “Virtue invites all, free-born, slaves, kings, exiles. It asks no questions about rank or wealth. It is content with the bare man.” Again, exhorting Nero, he says: “Do not ask how much of manumission is endurable, but how much the nature of justice and good will allows you which bids you spare even captives and persons bought with a price. Let slaves find refuge before the statute; if all things are permitted you (by custom and power) against a slave, there is that which the common law of life forbids to be done to a man; for the slave is of the same nature as yourself.” So Cicero says: “No other things are so alike as we are to each other;” “There is no one of any nation who cannot reach virtue by following the light of nature;” “The foundation of law is that nature has made us for the love of mankind.”

Other testimonies to like effect might easily be adduced from “heathen” writers of that age. And the later Stoics do but echo the thought of their predecessors from the days of Zeno and Cleanthes when they reiterate in the broadest terms the belief that men are created for the very purpose of mutual good. And Philo says: “We all are brothers by the highest kind of kindredship, as children of reason;” “Slavery is impious, as destroying the ordinances of nature, which generated all equally and brought them up as if brethren, not in name only, but in reality and truth.” But with the apostles of Christianity, as probably with Jesus himself, brotherhood was inseparable from belief in “the Christ.”

But let us not overlook the facts that the Gospels attribute to Jesus certain beliefs which our present knowledge positively contradicts, and even sentiments and claims which the highest morality cannot approve. For example, take his belief in diabolic possession; his claim of power to forgive sins and to judge mankind with his disciples on twelve thrones; his denunciation of cities that should not receive his messengers; his official retaliation (Matt. 10: 33); the unpardonable sin; his giving Peter the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and to his apostles the same powers; the second coming of the Son of man, with destruction of the world and the coming judgment day within that generation; condemning to endless punishment those who have not succored believers; no salvation to those found unrepentant at his coming; the sinning brother who will not hear the Church to be treated as a heathen; his sweeping denunciation of Pharisees and Scribes; a personal devil and an everlasting hell; power over deadly serpents and the taking of poisons without injury; the working of miracles by faith, even to the removing of mountains and tearing up trees, raising the dead, etc. etc. etc.