CHAPTER XXIII.
I often called on my friend Mr. Jasper. One morning he had just laid down his daily paper as I entered. “Did you see this?” he asked, “that the Pope and the Romish Church propose to dedicate England to the blessed Mother of God, and to St. Peter, to consecrate the whole country to the Holy Mother of God, and to the blessed Prince of the Apostles.” These are the exact words. Where does God come in? He, the Creator and Preserver of the universe, and, as we believe, of England, is left out, ignored altogether. How can one read such blasphemy as this without being shocked and angry? Such a proposal is not only an insult to all the Protestants and non-Christians of the British Empire, but is an outrageous imposition on the common sense of mankind! It is a sin against God. What must be the cheek and impudence of any men to dare propose such a thing as giving England over to the protection of a woman and a man who died nearly two thousand years ago, and taking it out of the hands of Almighty God?
The world is shocked at the idolatry of the heathen, but what is there in their systems worse than this deifying a woman and a man, and placing them above God? It is awful, profane, wicked and insulting! “Most holy!” No stronger words could be used of God himself, and these applied to a woman! As if the eternal, infinite God without a beginning, should have a mother, and she a woman, an ordinary finite being! I had rather be a heathen, an infidel, or even an atheist, than to be guilty of such sacrilege and driveling nonsense.
But who is this they set up as the most holy mother of God? A woman, a Jewess, the wife of Joseph. She was not known except as the mother of Jesus, no claim that she was more than an ordinary woman, but blessed in being the mother of an excellent son. Taking the New Testament, which gives the only account we have of her, it scarcely mentions her, and then without giving her any prominence. No allusion is made either to the time orplace of her birth, or of her death. Even her son Jesus scarcely treats her with common respect. When he wandered away from his parents, and gave them great trouble and anxiety in finding him, he did not show her any special regard when they found him. At the marriage in Cana, when she spoke to him, he addressed her in the style of orientals, not even calling her mother, but “Woman! what have I to do with thee?” He apparently neglected her, and never mentions her, his own mother, and at his death he had little to say to her. The apostles seldom refer to her, and then only as the wife of Joseph, the mother of Jesus. I defy any one to show a word or line in the Bible to indicate she had any special regard shown to her by either her own son Jesus, or by his apostles. It was not until several centuries later that she began to be reverenced, then prayed to, and finally to be deified and worshiped in the place of God. Her virginity was of no importance to the evangelists, as they never refer to it, and the theory was not taught during the first three centuries. In the fourth century she was first styled the mother of God. Augustine repeatedly asserts that she was born in original sin. Anselm declares that the virgin herself when He (Jesus) was assumed was conceived in iniquity, and in sin did her mother conceive her, and with original sin was she born, because she, too, sinned in Adam, in whom all sinned. Others expressed the same views.
The explicit doctrine of the immaculate conception was first taught about 1140, at which time a festival was established in favor of it. Bernard of Clairvaux opposed this. “On the same principle,” said he, “you would be obliged to hold that the conception of her ancestors in ascending line was also a holy one, since otherwise she could not have descended from them worthily, and there would be festivals without number.” The Franciscans favored the feast of the conception without the immaculation, which the Dominicans under Aquinas opposed, and a severe and bitter controversy ensued between these rival sects. In 1854 Pope Pius IX promulgated the bullineffabilii deus, by which the doctrine of the immaculate conception became an article of the Romish faith, to disbelieve which is heresy.All history shows that this doctrine is but a modern invention. There is not a particle of proof that God had anything to do with it. It is assumed that God could be born of a woman, then that he must be without a human father, his mother a virgin, and to improve the situation that she must be immaculate, born without sin. The frame-work once set up, the fabric has been completed by additions from century to century, until this obscure Jewish mother of the man Jesus has become in the Roman church the most holy mother of God. The very idea is sensuous, born of the flesh and not of the spirit, repulsive to a refined mind, and degrading to the character of God.
The whole structure reminds one of an English medieval house that has been added to and patched upon, and so changed that the first occupant, should he come to the earth, would not recognize his own birthplace. Without a doubt, if Mary and Jesus should rise from the dead, they would be astonished at their modern portraits; and Jesus, honest man that he was, would lash these libellers out of the house of God for making it a place of lies, deceit and merchandise. Among the heathen or pagan nations such an apotheosis was not uncommon or strange, but that an intelligent people, claiming to have exalted views of almighty God, should invent such wicked, degrading nonsense, is astonishing. It was customary among the earlier Romans to deify their rulers, and place their prominent men among the gods, but it was reserved for the modern Romans to bring God down and make him a man among men.
As to Jesus, he was the son of Joseph, as much as any man is the son of his father. Leo, the patriarch, published in A. D. 726, an edict prohibiting the worship of images, declaring that Jesus was but a mere man, born of his mother in the common way. It is evident that Jesus was an observant, studious youth, given to devout meditation, and on this account greatly esteemed by the ignorant people around him, and stimulated by this admiration, he became somewhat of a fanatic, but a good one, absorbed in grand and noble thoughts, and fell in with the Jewish notion of the redemption of their race from the enemy, buthe took a still higher view, the deliverance of his people from their slavery to rites and ceremonies, from their hypocrisy and wickedness, to a life of purity and uprightness. A noble effort of a noble man, worthy of the world’s profoundest respect and admiration. Not a word was said while he was alive, or until centuries after his death, of his being God, or equal with God, or anything but a great teacher, a noble man, worthy to be styled the son of God, as all good men were and are the sons of God.
John Stuart Mill says of him—and his opinion is worth as much as the Pope’s—“A man charged with a special, express and unique commission from God to lead mankind to truth and virtue.”
If Jesus was God he must have been conscious of it, and would have shown or disclosed the fact in his life, but nowhere did he do this. He was aware that a prophet is not without honor save in his own country, thus likening himself to a prophet. When in the course of time he was deified, and as they could not do away with God, they made Jesus a part of God, or one of three Gods in one, a medley the most absurd ever attempted by the human mind, and tried to explain it in the Athanasian creed, the most nonsensical puzzle of the world. If the greatest of modern lawyers or scholars should now go into any court on the globe and try to make a statement of a fact in such a jugglery of words and nonsense, he would at once be sent out of court or be committed to a lunatic asylum.
I cannot understand how religious people, believing in one God and accepting the Ten Commandments, can accept this doctrine. I cannot comprehend how, obeying the first and second commandments, any one can take the likeness of a man born of woman and put him before God, and worship him as God. How can they, believing in one God, the Eternal one, the Creator of all things, take this, as they say, part man and part God, created only a few centuries ago, deify him and worship him as the Creator, and place the eternal destiny of all the souls in the world in his hands! It is awful, the extent of human credulity! It is a monstrous assumption and a fearful sin, contrary to common sense and abhorrent to the moral and enlightened sense ofmankind. How is it possible for Christian people to tolerate such a degradation of God! Yet Christian people wonder that men of intelligence and judgment do not accept without a murmur this heathenish jargon as truth, or bow down along with them in their idolatry.
The Romish Church very likely will soon drop God altogether, and put in His place the Jewish woman. One of its most prominent priests, in a sermon not long ago, said, “He prepared her virginal and celestial purity, for a mother defiled could not become the mother of the Most High. The Holy Virgin, even in her childhood, was more pleasing than all the cherubim and seraphim, and from infancy to the maturing maidenhood and womanhood, she grew more and more pure. By her sanctity she reigned over the heart of God. When the hour came the whole court of heaven was hushed, and the trinity listened for the answer of Mary, for without her consent the world could not have been redeemed.” What could possibly be more impudent and blasphemous than the statement that the Almighty maker of the Universe could not save mankind, whom he created, unless he got the consent of a woman!
I put it as a question of good taste, leaving out religion altogether, would not the feelings of a refined man be shocked at the suggestion that the Infinite God had a human mother?
It is assumed that Mary conceived by the Holy Ghost. Such stories are common in the world. Buddha is said to have been born of a virgin. It was a common occurrence when people wanted to set up a new god or hero to assert that they were born of a virgin by the help of a god. It was claimed for all of them that there were wondrous signs, portents and occurrences about them, and that these beings to be exalted were not, like ordinary men, born of a human father.
The virgin mother of Egypt, Isis, was represented holding her infant son Horus in her arms. She is also shown as the Queen of Heaven, holding in her hand a cross. On one of the tombs of the Pharaohs, Champolion found a picture, the most ancient of a woman ever found, bedecked with stars, with the form of a child issuing from her bosom.The Hindu virgin is shown as nursing Krishna, a golden aureole around the head of each.
In the caves of Ellora is a figure of Indruna seated on a lounge, with her infant son god pointing toward heaven, with the same gestures as of the Italian Madonna and her child.
Horus, Ishter, Venus, Juno, and a host of Pagan goddesses, have been called Queen of Heaven, Queen of the Universe, Mother of God, Spouse of God, the Celestial Virgin.
The Buddhists believe that Maha Maya, the mother of Gotama, was an immaculate virgin, and conceived him through a divine influence.
Perictione, a virgin, immaculately conceived Plato through the influence of the god Apollo.
The ancient Mexicans, though they believed in one Almighty Invisible God, had minor deities, the chief among them being the god, born of a virgin, conceived by a ball of light colored feathers floating in the air.
Says a writer, “Hundreds of Christs and virgins are being continually born into the world in Russia, and find thousands of worshipers and disciples.”
So great is the resemblance of these virgins and goddesses to the alleged character and adoration of Mary, that the Romish Church should be indicted for its false claims to a patent to which it has no right or title. Bishop Newton, of the English Church, asks, “Is not the worship of saints and angels now in all respects the same that the worship of demons was in former times? The name only different, the thing is identically the same ... the very same temples, the very same images, which were once consecrated to Jupiter, and the other demons, are now consecrated to the Virgin Mary and other saints ... the whole of Paganism is consecrated and applied to Popery.”
The testimony of Abbe Huc, a Romish priest, of what he saw in Tibet, is not to be doubted. “One cannot fail being struck with their great resemblance with the Catholicism. The Bishop’s crosier, the mitre, the dalmatic, the round hat that the great lamas wear in travel ... the mass, the double chair, the psalmody, the exorcisms, thecenser with five chains to it, opening and shutting at will, the blessings of the lamas, who extend their right hands over the heads of the faithful ones, the rosary, the celibacy of the clergy, the penances and retreats, the cultus of the saints, the fasting, the processions, the litanies, and holy water, similarities of the Buddhists with ourselves. Besides, they have the tonsure, relics, and the confessional.” The Catholics, to account for these things, attribute them to the devil.
“Bad as he is, the devil may be abused,Be falsely charged and causelessly accused,When men, unwilling to be blamed alone,Shift off their crimes on him, which are their own.”
“Bad as he is, the devil may be abused,Be falsely charged and causelessly accused,When men, unwilling to be blamed alone,Shift off their crimes on him, which are their own.”
“Bad as he is, the devil may be abused,Be falsely charged and causelessly accused,When men, unwilling to be blamed alone,Shift off their crimes on him, which are their own.”
“Bad as he is, the devil may be abused,
Be falsely charged and causelessly accused,
When men, unwilling to be blamed alone,
Shift off their crimes on him, which are their own.”
Instead of the thousands of imaginary gods and semi-gods of the ancients, the Christian Church has its calendars of saints. In place of the oracles of mythology, the church has its priests, who presume to know all the purposes of the Almighty and to speak for Him. The old system in new clothes.
The Romish notion of purgatory and the use of the rosary is evidently derived from Tibet. Every Tibetan prays with his string of beads. The fear of a Buddhist is the six-fold existence after death. The long purgatory is his dread. Believing that he can pray off much of it in this life he keeps his whirligig praying machine going continually. In that country they have little grinding mills that are turned by the mountain streams and common to all the community. When a man goes with his grist to mill, he takes along a roll of paper prayers, yards in length. Having put his grain into the hopper, he winds the prayer around the mill shaft and turns on the water. He then smokes his pipe while his grain is being ground and his prayers repeated by water-power. Is not this much easier and as beneficial, as much of the church religious praying?
In Ladak there are long lines of walls on which prayers are inscribed. Walking back and forth along the walls each works off so much of the dreaded hereafter.
Do I believe that Jesus was conceived of the Holy Ghost? Not at all, any more than any other child. He was the son of Joseph and Mary, just as I am the son of myfather and mother. My reason, my common sense, my sense of honor, and my deep reverence for Almighty God will not allow me to think otherwise. I cannot think of the Infinite God being born of a woman. Such a thought is most degrading, it degrades the character and being of God, and it degrades men to have such a thought about Him. If Jesus could be conceived in that way, why not others? This has actually been claimed again and again.
I read not long ago of a man and a number of women in a harem, not far from Chicago, in America. The women had children whom they claimed were all conceived by the Holy Ghost, and why not, if Mary could have a child in that way? The account says that some Christian people assembled in a church, made angry speeches, passed resolutions to bring the man and women into court, and some proposed to mob them and burn down the premises. The only charge against them was the claim of the supernatural conception of the women, as in every other respect they were irreproachable. These Christian people, whose very fundamental dogma of their faith is the unnatural conception of Jesus, attacking this first principle of their belief, is like thieves berating a thief for stealing.
Who was this Peter, under whose protection it is assumed to place England? An ordinary man, unstable in character, impulsive, blowing hot and cold at a breath, declaring he would never leave Jesus, and then swearing that he never knew him, as much a betrayer at heart as Judas, but not as manly, for Judas showed his consciousness of the wrong he had done by killing himself, while Peter, shrewd as a modern Jesuit, shuffled out of his brazen falsehood around to the winning side. In mental ability he was inferior to any of his fellows, a bigot in his belief and in his character, far less to be admired than any of the others. Supposing him to have been transcendent in virtue, wisdom and goodness above all other men who have ever lived, and to have been absolutely perfect, yet he was only a man. Then why should he be made a saint, or be invested with divine power and made protector of anything, in the place of God? In respect to mankind, the veneration of Peter and attributing to him power or authorityabove all other men is absurd, but when considered in respect to God, it is outrageous blasphemy and idolatry. It is placing a creature, and a very insignificant one in the place of the Creator.