The Eliminator; or, Skeleton Keys to Sacerdotal Secrets

In accordance with the notion that Christ was a phantom, the writer of the Commentaries which are attributed to Clement of Alexandria, apparently quoting from the Gospel of Nicodemus, tells us that an apostle attempted to touch the body of Christ, but in so doing found no hardness of flesh and met with no resistance from it, although he thrust his hand into the inner part of it. A similar idea is conveyed by Luke where he says that Christ vanished out of the sight of his disciples, but yet shortly after stood in the midst of them—a notion consistent only with that of an apparition (Luke 24: 31, 36). Similar remarks may be made on the words of Christ to Thomas and Mary; to the latter he says, “Touch me not, for I have not yet ascended to my Father that is, I am not to be felt;” and to the former he says, “Reach hither thy hand, and thrust it into my side” (John 20:17, 27). Both these expressions, contradictory as they are with regard to Jesus, still show that the writer knew something of the notion entertained that Christ was a phantom. Luke (24: 37, 39) also has words proving the same point, where he says that the disciples, when they saw Christ after his resurrection, thought they had seen a spirit and that he told them to handle him. Marcion of Pontus, who flourished about A. D. 127, believed Christ not to have been born of a virgin and to have grown up gradually, but that he took the form of a man and appeared as a man without being born, and at once showed himself in Galilee in full maturity. Manes also, according to the testimony of Socrates and others, “denied that Christ was ever really born or had real human flesh, but asserted that he was a mere phantom.” (See Lardner’s Credibility, vol. ii. p. 141.) For men who entertained this notion of “the person of Christ,” his sufferings, death, and resurrection were of course a delusion—were only in appearance. Thus, according to Father Apelles, who wrote about A. D. 160, Christ was not born, nor was his body like ours, but consisted of aërial and ethereal particles. Very probably, Apelles did not think it unlikely that a body composed of such subtile matter as this should rise from the grave and be capable of passing not only through the smallest aperture, but even through solid matter. Barnabas, the companion of Paul, in his Gospel had another way of disposing of the question of the resurrection—namely, by denying that Christ was crucified at all, but was taken up into the third heaven by four angels; that it was Judas Iscariot who was crucified in his stead; and that Christ will not die till the very end of the world (Toland’s Nazarenus, Letter i. chap. v. p. 17.) The Basilidians, about the commencement of the second century, disposed in a similar manner of the miracle of the resurrection by asserting that it was not Christ, but Simon of Cyrene, who was crucified instead of Jesus.

Such are some of the various opinions of the origin of the story of Christ’s resurrection. They are placed before the reader that he may have a choice of theories. After matured reflection, however, he will, most probably, come to the conclusion that this tale originated in the same manner as “The Gospel of the Birth of Mary,” “The Gospels of the Infancy of Christ,” “The Gospel of Nicodemus,” the epistolary correspondence of Christ and Abgarus, of the Virgin Mary and Ignatius, together with hundreds of other similar productions of the ages when facts were not so much appreciated as fables in the form of books. If he arrive at this conclusion, he will see no reason to believe that such a personage as the Christ of the Gospels was ever crucified, much less raised from the dead.

ANCIENT ENIGMAS.

It is amusing to observe how, in ancient times, the dark, enigmatical, and allegorical style was practised, particularly in the East, by all public teachers, both Jews and Gentiles. By this means they explained away the fabulous tales current regarding their gods, and discoursed on every branch of knowledge known to them. They deemed religion a mystery not to be publicly explained, and always delivered its dogmas clothed in dark allegories (Oie. de Nat. Deor. lib. ii. iii.; Spencer de Legibus Heb., p. 182; Clerici Hist. Eccles., p. 23). The Egyptians and Chaldeans were noted for their dark sayings (Simon Hist crû. des Comment, p. 4). Gale (Opuscula Mythologica) gives an account of several ancient books expressly written as instructions to interpret allegories. The Greek poets, Homer not excepted, are by their scholiasts regarded as treating of their gods in a mystical style. The Stoic philosophers dressed the whole heathen theology in allegorical language (Cic. de Nat. Deor., lib. ii.). The Pythagorean philosophy was taught in enigmatical expressions, the meaning of which was studiously concealed from the vulgar mind, and revealed even to the initiated only gradually as their years of maturity were thought to qualify them for its reception. Plato and his followers in the groves of Academia practised the same mode of teaching religion, especially theogony. The writings attributed to Paul the apostle, as has been shown, are replete with mystical and enigmatical expressions. This he confesses, saying that he spoke “the wisdom of God in a mystery,” “comparing spiritual things with spiritual” (1 Cor. 2: 7, 13). Accordingly, he regards the history of Isaac and Ishmael as an allegory (Gal. 4: 22-25), which he condescends to explain. The primitive Fathers of Christianity pursued the same mode of communicating instruction and of defending their religion against the pagans. Justin Martyr, Clement of Alexandria, Irenæus, Tertullian, Origen, all of them, were very expert in this occult system, in imitation of the heathen philosophers, by whom most of them had been educated. Eusebius (Hist. Eccles.y lib. vi. c. 19), citing what he is pleased to call the assertions of Porphyry, writes that Origen, having been educated in Greek literature, intermingled it with the fictions of Christianity, that he dealt in the works of Plato, Numenius, Cranius, Apollophanes, Longinus Moderatus, Nico-machus, Chæremon, and Cornutus, and that he derived from these pagan authors the allegorical mode of interpretation usual in the mysteries of the Greeks, and applied it to the Jewish Scriptures. Thus, Origen’s mode of teaching was identical with that of the pagans—a mode commended even by the learned Dodwell (Letters of Advice, etc., p. 208), who says that the pagan mystical arts of concealment are of use toward understanding the Scriptures. The Jewish rabbis also delivered their doctrines in the same obscure and mystical manner, as their Talmud, Cabala, Gemara, and other books, besides what we call the Hebrew Scriptures, amply show. The religious teachers of all the nations of antiquity thus delighting in dark sayings, it is therefore by no means wonderful that the writers of the Gospels, whoever they were, attribute similar enigmas to Jesus. This accounts, in a measure, for the obscurity of the Gospels, while, however, it traces their origin to a pagan source.

GODS OF VIRGIN BIRTH.

It is in perfect harmony with what has long ago been demonstrated by some of the most critical writers, not only in English, but also in other languages—namely, that the New Testament has been collected by Eclectic monks—particularly Egyptian monks of Jewish extraction connected with the Alexandrian college—from various legendary tales and other documents then afloat, which they modified to answer their own purposes, and which since their time have been considerably altered to suit the requirements of different religious communities.

The Christian apologists of the second and third centuries evinced no lack of knowledge on this point. Justin Martyr, as already cited, in addressing a Roman emperor, says that the Christians, by declaring Jesus to be the Son of God, born of a virgin, said no more than the Romans said of those whom they styled the 24 sons of Jupiter, such as Mercury, Bacchus, Hercules, Pollux, and Castor; and as to Jesus, he repeats, having been born of a virgin, the pagans had their Perseus, son of Jove and the virgin Danaë, to balance this feature. Creusa, daughter of Erectheus, was visited by the god Apollo, and in consequence became the mother of the god Janus. A Chinese virgin by means of the rays of the sun—regarded as a deity—became the mother of the god Fo, who acted as a mediator between his followers and another superior god. The Hindoo virgin Rohini in like miraculous manner gave birth to a god, one of the Brahman trinity. Another Hindoo virgin, Devaci, as already observed, having had an intercourse with the deity Yasudeva, became the mother of an incarnate god whose name was Chrishna; whose birth was announced by the appearance of a new star; whose life, when an infant, was sought in vain by the reigning tyrant of the country; whose principal exploits were killing a terrible serpent, holding a mountain on the tip of his finger, washing the feet of the Brahmans, saving multitudes by his miraculous power, raising many from the dead, dying to save the world from sin and darkness, rising from the dead, and then ascending to his heavenly seat in Vaicontha (Sir Wm. Jones’s Asiatic Researches, vol. i. pp. 259-273). Somonocodom, who, according to the sacred books of the Talapoins of Siam, was destined to save the world, was another personage who had a virgin mother. The followers of Plato about two hundred years after his death, but more than a century before the Christian era, reported that he had been born of a virgin.

The most ancient Alexandrian chronicles, which furnish ample proofs of the universal prevalence of our gospel religion in Egypt for ages before the Christian era, testify as follows: “To this day Egypt has consecrated the pregnancy of a virgin and the nativity of her son, whom they annually present in a cradle to the adoration of the people; and when King Ptolemy, three hundred and fifty years before our Christian era, demanded of the priests the significancy of this religious ceremony, they told him it was a mystery.” (See Christian Mythology Unveiled, p. 94.)

Indeed, the fabulous lore of ancient times is teeming with the amours of gods with virgins and the results thereof. Some writers have intimated that such births were the consequences of the artful intrigues of the pagan priests with holy virgins; but Dupuis, Albert, Alphonso, Boulanger, and others have clearly shown “that these and similar tales, which are revolting to common sense if taken literally, were originally, in Oriental learning, astronomical and other allegories, conveying the most sublime truths then known touching the revolutions of the heavenly bodies and other physical and moral facts, while their meaning in after ages was gradually perverted to answer other ends.”

THE EPISTLES SILENT CONCERNING THE WORDS AND WORKS OF JESUS.

It is a most remarkable fact that in none of the Epistles is there any mention made of the various wonderful things narrated in the Gospels as having been said and done by Christ. Indeed, there is scarcely an allusion made in them to those astounding details with which every page of the Gospels is replete. No mention is made in them of what the Gospels state that Christ declared regarding the day of judgment—nothing about Christ’s preternatural birth, his baptism, his temptation by Satan, his denunciations of the different existing sects, his precepts, his parables, his intimate acquaintance with publicans, with Magdalene, with Mary and other women. Not one of his miracles is detailed, and nothing is said of the marvellous circumstances which attended his crucifixion and death, such as the sun darkening, the earth quaking, the temple rending, rocks cleaving asunder, graves opening, the dead rising and walking the streets of Jerusalem. These are matters which, one would imagine, should occupy a very prominent position in all the Epistles—should be relied upon by the writers respectively as facts with which to attest and establish the truth of their doctrines, and which would, of themselves, suffice to convince and convert the most incredulous and obdurate mind. In the Epistles ascribed to Peter, James, and John, who are said to have been eye- and ear-witnesses of what Christ did and said, one would expect, certainly, to find frequent details of the marvellous things said of Jesus in the Gospels. But Peter does not so much as allude to the keys of heaven and hell which the Gospels say were given him to keep, nor even to the fact that Jesus, walking on the sea, enabled him also to do so and saved him from drowning. Neither does he tell those to whom he writes that Jesus conferred his blessing upon him when he pronounced him “the Christ, the Son of the living God;” nor that Jesus, after he had suspiciously asked him three times whether he loved him, and had as often received affirmative answers, charged him to feed his flock. Of course we cannot expect him to have recorded in his Epistles that Jesus graced him with the epithet “Satan,” or that he denied the same Jesus thrice. If it was the son of Zebedee who wrote “the General Epistle of James” (about the authorship of which Christians have not as yet agreed), it would not seem too great a tribute to his divine Master for him to refer to some of his mighty words and deeds which he must have witnessed. Or if the author is the brother of Jesus (which is not very likely, since all his relatives except his mother shunned him), he could deplore the fact that he and his brothers—Joses, Simon, and Judas—did not believe in the pretensions of their divine brother, Jesus. But the very name of Jesus is mentioned, and that casually, only thrice in the whole Epistle. John, “the beloved disciple,” could in one of his Epistles, or at least in that which it is agreed he wrote—to the confirmation of the genuineness of Matthew, Mark, and Luke's Gospels—have adverted to that curious incident of his mother asking Jesus to allow him and his brother James to sit on each side of him in his kingdom; or could, with a mixture of joy and sorrow, ruminate on the pleasure he had felt in accompanying Peter to prepare the last Passover which they had eaten with their divine Master, and bemoan the fatal disaster which shortly after overtook his Lord. But he writes not one word about these remarkable events, or about anything that occurred personally between him and Jesus. Indeed, the writers of the Epistles totally ignore the contents of the Gospels. How, then, is this fact to be accounted for? Did the writers of the Epistles—whoever they were—know anything at all about the contents of the present Gospels? Are we not entitled to infer that either the churches, etc. to which these Epistles were addressed were much older than the date of the Gospels, and even than the time at which the Christ of the Gospels was born, or that, if the present Gospels then existed, the authors of the Epistles knew nothing of them?

CONCLUSION.

We have seen that, so limited was the knowledge of Jesus of futurity, he falsely prophesied the end of the world, the time of his own resurrection, the perpetual praise of a woman who poured upon him a box of ointment, and the signs which believers in Christianity would manifest. We have also seen that a vast number of his precepts and doctrines were obscure, contradictory, bigoted, absurd, and untrue, and that much of his conduct was open to criticism. We have further seen that he was deficient in knowledge of natural philosophy; that he borrowed the best part of his doctrine from heathen mythology; that his life, his teaching, and his practices were identical with those of heathen monks who had preceded him; that, like many other human beings, he feared death; that neither his own neighbors, nor kinsmen, nor even his disciples, believed that he was, either in nature or power, superior to other mortals; and that he himself avowed that the purpose for which he had been ushered into the world was to send strife, division, fire, and sword on earth, and to make “brother deliver up brother to death, and the father the child, and incite children to rise up against their parents and cause them to be put to death” (Matt. 10: 21).

Such has been the result of our inquiry. But let it not be supposed that there was nothing to admire in the alleged character and teachings of the ideal Jesus. There are many exceedingly tender things mingled with the arrogant and severe. His character, made up from many models, could not be otherwise than inconsistent and contradictory. It is a perfect mosaic, but such has been the reverence for Jesus, in view of the extraordinary claims made for him, that men have closed their eyes to his imperfections and faults, while they have greatly magnified his virtues. We have known many persons in our day who as far excelled Jesus in every noble and manly quality as the civilization and morality of the nineteenth century are superior to those of the first. It has been well said that Jesus, whether a person or an impersonation, will continue to be the leader just so long as he leads; but he no longer leads. It is found (assuming his personality) that he taught nothing but what had been taught with equal distinctness before him, and that he taught much not suited to this commercial age and to the wants of this nineteenth century. While many persons profess to be disciples of Jesus, yet nobody even pretends to conform their lives to his alleged teachings. Properly speaking, there is not now a real Christian upon the face of the earth, as no one attempts to practise the extreme precepts Christ is said to have laid down in the so-called Sermon on the Mount. What is called Christianity is proved and admitted to be an evolution from various religions which were before it. The good in every religion is the same, and men will go on weeding out the impure and imperfect, the fittest only surviving. Christianity claims to be an infallible divine revelation, and that it is complete in itself, and of course admits of no progress. This is the difficulty between the old orthodoxy and the new orthodoxy of the creeds. The Church carries no flag of truce. It says, You must believe! True men answer, We cannot believe the impossible and the absurd. There can be no doubt as to who will survive in this struggle for existence. The “spirit of truth” is coming, and it will “teach in all things.”

CHAPTER XV. BLOOD-SALVATION

“And almost all things are by the law purged with blood; and without the shedding of blood there is no remission.”—Heb. 9: 22. “The blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from all sin.”—! John 1: 5.

IT would be tedious to quote even one-tenth of the passages from the New Testament in which salvation is ascribed to the blood of Jesus. Indeed, from Genesis to Revelation sacrificial blood seems to be the one prominent theme. The salvation of Christ is emphatically the salvation by blood, and this idea runs through the whole system of what is called evangelical theology. Jeremy Taylor wrote about “lapping with the tongue the blood from the Saviour’s open wounds,” suggesting the well-known habit of the bloodthirsty dog. But Mr. Taylor was outdone by the late Rev. Bishop Jesse T. Peck, when he frantically exclaimed, in the presence of thousands of people at a religious mass-meeting, “We have not enough blood in our religion. I want to wade in the blood of Calvary up to my armpits, and wallow in it,” suggesting the well-known habits of the filthy sow. But the Rev. T. D. Talmage, D. D., capped the climax when, in his usual rhapsodical style, he exclaimed in a recent sermon: “It seems to me as if all Heaven were trying to bid in your soul. The first bid it makes is the tears of Christ at the tomb of Lazarus; but that is not a high-enough price. The next bid Heaven makes is the sweat of Gethsemane; but it is too cheap a price. The next bid Heaven makes seems to be the whipped back of Pilate’s Hall; but it is not a high-enough price. Can it be possible that Heaven cannot buy you in? Heaven tries once more. It says: ‘I bid this time for that man’s soul the torture of Christ’s martyrdom, the blood on his temple, the blood on his cheek, the blood on his chin, the blood on his hand, the blood on his side, the blood on his knee, the blood on his foot—the blood in drops, the blood in rills, the blood in pools coagulated beneath the cross; the blood that wet the tips of the soldier’s spear, the blood that plashed warm in the faces of his enemies.’ Glory to God! that bid wins it! The highest price that was ever paid for anything was paid for your soul. Nothing could buy it but blood! The estranged property is bought back. Take it. You have sold yourselves for naught; and ye shall be redeemed without money.’ O atoning blood, cleansing blood, life-giving blood, sanctifying blood, glorifying blood of Jesus! Why not burst into tears at the thought that for thee he shed it—for thee the hard-hearted, for thee the lost?”

Henry III. of England was presented with a small portion of the blood of Jesus, said to have been shed upon the cross, and to have been preserved in a phial, duly attested by the Patriarch of Jerusalem and other distinguished functionaries as genuine. It was carried in triumph through the streets of London with rapturous shoutings by a large procession, from St. Paul’s to Westminster Abbey, and the historian testifies that it made all England radiant with glory. Indeed, there has been enough of the so-called genuine blood that was shed on Calvary given to the faithful to float the largest ship in the navy of Great Britain. A sufficient quantity of the real cross upon which Jesus is said to have been crucified has been preserved to erect the largest temple the world ever contained. There is no end to the superstition on this subject, all going to show how deep-seated is the credulity which exists in the popular belief in regard to this matter.

There are many illustrations which might be given of “blood-evocation” among ancient pagans who regarded blood as the great arcanum of nature.

But what was the origin of the idea that blood is purifying, cleansing, purging? There is nothing in the thing itself that suggests this idea. Take a basinful of newly-drawn blood and set it upon the table before you. It soon coagulates, and emits an offensive odor, so that you are forced to hurry it from your presence. It is the very opposite of cleansing. If you get a drop upon your finger, you immediately wash it off. Indeed, some persons cannot stand the sight of blood, and shrink from its touch as from a deadly poison. There must be some reason for the idea that in some way blood is suggestive of cleansing or purifying. Now, we go to nature in search of knowledge. There is only one phenomenon in which the shedding of blood is a natural process, and that is when the young girl arrives at the stage of pubescence, and in this case, and in this case only, does it suggest the idea of purification. Before the period approaches nothing can be more suggestive of the untidy than the unpubescent girl. She is generally awkward, slouchy, and unattractive. But let the sanguineous evidence of approaching womanhood appear, and how changed! Her complexion becomes then most beautiful and bewitching. Her eyes sparkle with a fire which cannot be described. Her once ungraceful form becomes lithe, and her whole person changes in such a manner as to indicate that some great thing has happened. She has been purified or cleansed. She is a new creature. Old things have passed away. Each succeeding month she has a similar experience until the full bloom of womanhood has passed away.

Indeed, we find among the primitive customs of ancient Africans a special observance of the commencement of the catamenial period. Before the arrival of the time of periodicity the young girl is of very little account, and is not numbered as a member of the tribe. It is not considered indecent for her to run around in a state of nudity until she is fourteen years of age or until the evidence of pubescence appears. Stanley says of certain African girls: “They wait with impatience the day when they can be married and have a cloth to fold around their bodies.” There was in use among certain ancient people, now worn by Catholic priests, an apron known as the peplum, which was worn after puberty.

The tribal mark and totemic name were conferred in the baptism of blood. A covenant was entered into which was written with menstruous blood, because blood was the announcer of the female period of pubescence. From time immemorial the Kaffirs have preserved the custom of celebrating the first appearance of the menstrual flow. All the young girls in the neighborhood meet together and make merry on the happy occasion. We are told by Irenæus how the feminine Logos was represented in the mysteries of Marcus, and the wine was supposed to be miraculously turned into blood, and Charis, who was superior to all things, was thought to infuse her own blood into the cup. The cup was handed to the women, who also consecrated it with an effusion of blood proceeding from themselves.

It would seem that the blood of Charis preceded the blood of Christ, and it is doubtful whether there would have been any cleansing by the blood of Christ if there had been no purification by the blood of Charis. Thus Nature's rubrics are written in red. The Eucharist is derived by Clement of Alexandria from the mixture of the water and the Word, and he identifies the Word with the blood of the grape. We give these delicate hints for what they are worth.

We have a deep conviction that the conception of the idea of purification by blood had at first some connection with the natural issue of blood at the commencement of periodicity in the female. In the Eleusinian Mysteries, celebrated by pagans centuries before the paschal supper of the Jews or the Lord’s Supper of Christians, the element of blood was very conspicuously set forth, and Higgins has shown in his Anaealypsis that the sacrifice of bread and wine in religious ceremonies was common among many ancient peoples, the wine representing the blood.

In 1885 a very remarkable book appeared, entitled The Blood Covenant, by Rev. H. Clay Trumbull, D. D., and we have obtained the consent of this author (whom we have the honor to recognize as an old and very dear personal friend) “to use anything we please, in any way we please, without giving any credit.” For this permission we are truly thankful, though we only avail ourself of a few of the facts bearing upon the point concerning which we write.

Our author says: “One of these primitive rites, which is deserving of more attention than it has yet received, as throwing light on many important phases of Bible-teaching, is the rite of blood-covenanting—a form of mutual covenanting by which two persons enter into the closest, the most enduring, and the most sacred of compacts as friends and brothers, or as more than brothers, through the intercommingling of their blood by means of its mutual tasting or of its transfusion. This rite is still observed in the unchanging East; and there are historic traces of it from time immemorial in every quarter of the globe, yet it has been strangely overlooked by biblical critics and biblical commentators generally in these later centuries.

“Although now comparatively rare, in view of its responsibilities and of its indissolubleness, this covenant is sometimes entered into by confidential partners in business or by fellow-travelers; again, by robbers on the road, who would themselves rest fearlessly on its obligations, and who could be rested on within its limits, however untrustworthy they or their fellows might be to any other compact. Yet, again, it is the chosen compact of loving friends—of those who are drawn to it only by mutual love and trust.

“There are, indeed, various evidences that the the of blood-covenanting is reckoned in the East even a closer tie than that of natural descent—that a ‘friend’ by this tie is nearer and is dearer, ‘sticketh closer’ than a ‘brother’ by birth. We in the West are accustomed to say that ‘ blood is thicker than water,’ but the Arabs have the idea that blood is thicker than a mother’s milk. With them, any two children nourished at the same breast are called ‘milk-brothers’ or ‘sucking brothers;’ and the tie between such is very strong.

“Lucian, the bright Greek thinker, writing in the middle of the second century of our era, is explicit as to the nature and method of this covenant as then practised in the East: ‘And this is the manner of it: Thereupon, cutting our fingers, all simultaneously, we let the blood drop into a vessel, and, having dipped the points of our swords into it, both of us holding them together, we drink it. There is nothing which can loose us from one another after that.’

“Yet, a little while earlier than Lucian, Tacitus gives record of this rite of blood-brotherhood as practised in the East. He makes an explanation: ‘It is the custom of Oriental kings, as often as they come together to make covenant, to join right hands, to tie the thumbs together, and to tighten them with a knot. Then, when the blood is thus pressed to the finger-tips, they draw blood by a light stroke and lick it in turn. This they regard as a divine covenant, made sacred, as it were, by mutual blood or blended lives.’

“Sallust, the historian of Catiline’s conspiracy against Rome, says: ‘There were those who said at that time that Catiline at this conference, when he inducted them into the oath of partnership in crime, carried round in goblets human blood mixed with wine, and that, after all had tasted of it with an imprecatory oath, as is men's wont in solemn rites, he opened to them his plans.’ Florus, a later Latin historian, describing this conspiracy, says: ‘There was added the pledge of the league—human blood—which they drank as it was borne round to them in goblets.’ And yet later Tertullian suggests that it was their own blood, mingled with wine, of which the fellow-conspirators drank together. ‘Concerning the eating of blood and other such tragic dishes,’ he says, ‘you read that blood drawn from the arms and tasted by one another was the method of making covenant among certain nations.’