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Readings for the Young
No. V.
Were no efforts made for our
conversion, or no attacks made upon that faith which
we deem more sacred than life, we should neither
have cause nor inclination to examine the creeds of
others. But as the party attacked, it is both our
duty and right to point out the weakness of our
adversaries, and the strength and holiness of the
cause we defend.
In every written constitution
some mode is prescribed by which it may be altered
or amended, and should any attempts be made to make
these alterations in other modes than the prescribed
rules, the alteration thus made would be invalid and
without binding force.
Thus, in these States, the
people being the body in which the political
authority dwells, delegate certain specific powers
to their representatives, who, if overleaping the
barriers thus constituted, have their acts overruled
by the judgment of a tribunal created
<<458>>for
that purpose, as being in discordance with the
written will of the people at large.
Unlike the human constitutions,
which generally contain provisos, to enable them to
receive those alterations that the progressive
wants of society may demand, the Jewish
constitution, given by the Almighty himself, adapts
itself to all ages and times, and contains an
express clause that it shall neither have aught
added thereto, nor diminished therefrom; and that it
shall be the test by which all after-acts must be
measured, and all prophecy defined. For instance,
(were such a thing possible,) if any one could show
in the historical or prophetic writings, a clause
bidding us to keep the sixth and not the seventh
day; to eat of the unclean instead of the clean; to
believe in a triad instead of a unity: we should, on
comparing these doctrines with the dogmas of our
constitution, pronounce them an interpolation or the
assumptions or predictions of a false prophet; for
God is immutable as well as eternal.
Did those who endeavour to lead
Israel astray from the God of Abraham understand
this law rightly, they would cease their futile
endeavours; for they would then learn that, no
matter how they twisted the writings of the
prophets, this part a spiritual, that a literal, and
the other any or no meaning at all, to suit their
argument or purpose, it could make no difference to
the believing Israelite, whose duties are defined by
the law, and the law alone; and which the
prophecies, (though they might inspire him with a
blissful hope in the future) could neither modify
nor change, their meanings appearing to him clear
and intelligible, strengthening in the hour of
tribulation his firm trust in the revelation at
Sinai.
But say they, who lay claim to
the bright inheritance promised to us alone, “that
although this law did emanate from the Supreme, it
is nevertheless a law of blood, and though you see
it not, it bore in its own bosom the seeds of its
destruction; and that it needed one of a milder
tendency to humanize and spiritualize Mankind.”
Justice to ourselves demands that we should sift
this charge and examine the grounds upon which it
stands.
The first charge is, “that the
Israelites were the first persecutors for opinion’s
sake, and that even when fresh from the Deity’s
instruction, they went to possess themselves of the
promised land, <<459>>and extirpated the people who
dwelt there with fire and sword.” At whose command
was this done? Was it not by that of the same God
who sent the deluge to purify the earth from sin,
who rained destruction upon Sodom and Gomorra, to
blot out their wickedness; and when their cup of
iniquity was full, made use of the warriors of
Israel as the instruments of chastisement to the
inhabitants of Canaan? And in after-years, had any
one appeared claiming that reverence due to God
alone, His law, the law of God, (Deut. chap. xiii.,)
meted out death as his portion.
The Jewish government, though
sometimes under the dominion of kings, was at all
times a Theocracy; and if all governments have the
right to inflict capital punishment on pretenders to
their thrones: how much greater was the right of our
ancestors, if such a person as Christ ever existed,
and they believed not in his mission, to punish his
unjust claims; since blasphemy of the highest grade
was attached to his crime. That they did not believe
in his mission, we have the New Testament to prove;
in the exclamation from the cross: “Lord, forgive
them, they know not what they do,” (Luke xxiii.,
2-4.) In all criminal codes, “those that know not
what they do,” are considered guiltless of crime. As
we only know Christianity by the influence it
possesses over its votaries, what a commentary upon
the mildness and charity it inculcates, has been the
cruelty practised upon our helpless race, which like
a lamb led to the slaughter, could offer no
resistance.
That the evidence upon which
the claims of Christ were founded were too weak to
gain credence, is proven by the Christian writers
themselves. Marsh, in his Ecclesiastical History,
page 125, says, “Immense multitudes constantly
pressed upon him wherever he went, either to hear
his doctrines or to witness his miracles; but
very few became sincerely attached to his person;
very few were even convinced that he was the
Messiah, and entered his spiritual kingdom.
Those who were assembled at Jerusalem after his
ascension, are said to have been about one hundred
and twenty; and at the great meeting at Galilee,
where all that were attached to his cause that could
conveniently assemble were gathered together, there
were about five hundred.” Recollect in that day as
in this, that the efforts at conversion were not
made on the learned or well-informed, but on the
ignorant and credulous; and <<460>>yet all these
miracles they are said to have seen* failed to
convince them of the mission of one who claimed to
be greater than Moses, though doubts about the
divine origin of the inspired words of even any of
the lesser prophets had never been felt by the
Jewish nation. By a strange coincidence, the
prophecy of Jesus, “that not one stone of the temple
should be left upon another,” (upon which the
Christians lay so much stress,) has been falsified,
by a late discovery of some part of the vaults of
the temple existing in good preservation, (Vide Occ.
vol. vi., for February.)
Sanctified by time,
Christianity exists upon the willing belief of its
votaries, with, to our view, no stronger base than
that possessed by later creeds. The clouds of blood
raised during past ages by the altar fires lighted
by the bigotry of Christian and Mahometan, are now
passing away, and we may express our opinion without
the fear of dungeon or stake.
The Greeks and Romans ever
disliked the worship of the Jew. They were perfectly
willing to erect an altar to the “unknown god,” and
would worship at his shrine; but expected the Hebrew
to be equally liberal (?) in principle, and bow to
their deities. And when the Jewish kingdom was
subverted, and the people were scattered throughout
the Roman territories, their captors learned of them
many of the beautiful precepts of the Bible. The
unity of God they could not grasp in its
spirituality, as they already deified his
attributes; but with incarnations they were quite at
home. Many of their gods and goddesses had had a
mortal for a parent. Minerva had sprung from the
head of Jove. A child of a mortal mother and an
immortal father, (however repugnant it may seem to
the august holiness with which our minds invest the
Supreme,) was an idea entertained by them, centuries
before the advent of Christianity.
They already knew of one
religion whose votaries believed in a trinity, (a
creator, a destroyer, a preserver,) and possessed
not <<461>>yet sufficient enlightenment to
comprehend the beauty of that doctrine which taught
that God would blot out the sin of the
transgressor if he truly repented, without other
sacrifice to his justice. To them it seemed that
God’s justice took form and substance, and became as
it were the destroyer of his own creation, whilst
the preserver, or God’s mercy stepped in, to ward
off and receive the threatened blow. To make this
system resemble the Christian dogmas, it needs only
one of Plato’s mysticisms, to join these three
personifications into one godhead, and we have it
complete.
The moral and civil code by
which mankind are governed, still owns the Bible as
its source, as by a careful comparison of the New
Testament with this ancient record, its precepts of
love and charity will be found to be quoted
therefrom, with just sufficient alteration to adapt
them to another text. At what time this was done, it
would be difficult to answer; for there is no
satisfactory proof to show that one word contained
in the present New Testament ever existed in the
original one. None pretend that its different books
were written at the time that the things they record
occurred; for so many contradictory books existed,
that at the council convened by the Emperor at Nice,
in the year 325, and at which three hundred and
eighteen bishops were present, after much argument
and confusion, they decided by vote, which was the
true and which was the false gospel. We should
scarcely like our divine law to base its truth upon
such evidence.
When Christianity first
attempted to rear her superstructure, she disguised
herself in the mantle of Judaism, endeavouring thus
to gain proselytes to her cause. Her doctrines
nowhere commanded Jews to disobey their ceremonial
law. She observed the covenant of Abraham. She did
not violate the Sabbath day, and had she continued
in this course, Judaism might have received a severe
wound. But the time had not yet dawned when the fear
of the Lord should rest upon all nations, and all
should acknowledge his unity. And the Sabbath, which
should be a sign between the Lord and the children
of Israel for ever, was still to exist for them
alone; the believers in Christ having resolved to
keep the Sabbath on the first day instead of the
seventh.
Some of my young readers may
ask, “If ours is the only true religion, why we do
not seek to share its blessings with others?” It is
because the law of Moses is binding on us Israelites
alone; <<462>>to us it is the bread of eternal life.
Nowhere does the Bible teach the awful creed
that the nations of the earth shall be cut off, root
and branch, unless they all believe in one doctrine.
God is neither Pagan, nor Mahometan, nor Christian,
nor Jew, but the God of Israel and the Father of
mankind. To us He has given a loftier position, and
assigned to us higher duties, and has made us a
kingdom of priests and a holy nation—the witnesses
of His truth and the repositories of his law. As we
promised at Sinai, that we would observe his
covenant and obey His commands, we cannot divest
ourselves of this responsibility. But though His
love to our forefathers caused this selection, He
nowhere tells us that the rest of His children were
doomed to torment; but His whole law proclaims that
the gates of heaven will fly open to him who loves
the Lord with all his heart, with all his soul, and
with all his might, and who loves his neighbour as
himself; since only through love and duty can our
spiritual natures become sufficiently elevated and
purified to render them meet ministrants before the
throne of the great “I am.” |
