God and My Neighbour, by Robert Blatchford

     Mr. Herbert Spencer has traced so admirably, in his Principles
     of Sociology, the progress of development from the Ghost to
     the God that I do not propose in this chapter to attempt much
     more than a brief recapitulation of his main propositions, which,
     however, I shall supplement with fresh examples, and adapt at
     the same time to the conception of three successive stages in
     human ideas about the Life of the Dead, as set forth in the
     preceding argument.

     In the earlier stage of all—the stage where the actual bodies
     of the dead are preserved—gods, as such, are for the most part
     unknown: it is the corpses of friends and ancestors that are
     worshipped and reverenced. For example, Ellis says of the
     corpse of a Tahitian chief, that it was placed in a sitting
     posture under a protecting shed; "a small altar was erected
     before it, and offerings of fruit, food, and flowers were
     daily presented by the relatives or the priest appointed to
     attend the body." (This point about the priest is of essential
     importance.) The Central Americans, again, as Mr. Spencer notes,
     performed similar rites before bodies dried by artificial
     heat. The New Guinea people, as D'Albertis found, worship
     the dried mummies of their fathers and husbands. A little
     higher in the scale we get the developed mummy-worship of
     Egypt and Peru, which survives even after the evolution of
     greater gods, from powerful kings or chieftains. Wherever
     the actual bodies of the dead are preserved, there also worship
     and offerings are paid to them.

     Often, however, as already noted, it is not the whole body,
     but the head alone, that is specially kept and worshipped.
     Thus Mr. H. O. Forbes says of the people of Buru: "The dead
     are buried in the forest on some secluded spot, marked by a
     merang, or grave pole, over which at certain intervals the
     relatives place tobacco, cigarettes, and various offerings.
     When the body is decomposed the son or nearest relative
     disinters the head, wraps a new cloth about it, and places
     it in the Matakau at the back of his house, or in a little
     hut erected for it near the grave. It is the representative
     of his forefathers, whose behests he holds in the greatest
     respect."

     Two points are worthy of notice in this interesting account,
     as giving us an anticipatory hint of two further accessories
     whose evolution we must trace hereafter: first, the grave-stake,
     which is probably the origin of the wooden idol; and second,
     the little hut erected over the head by the side of the grave,
     which is undoubtedly one of the origins of the temple, or
     praying-house. Observe, also, the ceremonial wrapping of the
     skull in cloth and its oracular functions.

     Throughout the earlier and ruder phases of human evolution
     this primitive conception of ancestors or dead relatives as the
     chief known object of worship survives undiluted; and ancestor-
     worship remains to this day the principal religion of the Chinese
     and of several other peoples. Gods, as such, are practically
     unknown in China. Ancestor-worship, also, survives in many
     other races as one of the main cults, even after other elements
     of later religion have been superimposed upon it. In Greece
     and Rome it remained to the last an important part of domestic
     ritual. But in most cases a gradual differentiation is set up
     in time between various classes of ghosts or dead persons, some
     ghosts being considered of more importance and power than others;
     and out of these last it is that gods as a rule are finally
     developed. A god, in fact, is in the beginning, at least, an
     exceptionally powerful and friendly ghost—a ghost able to help,
     and from whose help great things may reasonably be expected.

     Again, the rise of chieftainship and kingship has much to do
     with the growth of a higher conception of godhead; a dead king
     of any great power or authority is sure to be thought of in time
     as a god of considerable importance. We shall trace out this
     idea more fully hereafter in the religion of Egypt; for the
     present it must suffice to say that the supposed power of the
     gods in each pantheon has regularly increased in proportion to
     the increased power of kings or emperors.

     When we pass from the first plane of corpse preservation and
     mummification to the second plane, where burial is habitual,
     it might seem, at a hasty glance, as though continued worship
     of the dead, and their elevation into gods, would no longer be
     possible. For we saw that burial is prompted by a deadly fear
     lest the corpse or ghost should return to plague the living.
     Nevertheless, natural affection for parents or friends, and the
     desire to insure their goodwill and aid, make these seemingly
     contrary ideas reconcilable. As a matter of fact, we find that
     even when men bury or burn their dead, they continue to worship
     them; while, as we shall show in the sequel, even the great
     stones which they roll on top of the grave to prevent the dead
     from rising again become, in time, altars on which sacrifices
     are offered to the spirit.

Much of the Bible is evidently legendary. Here we have a jumble of ancient myths, allegories, and mysteries drawn from many sources and remote ages, and adapted, altered, and edited so many times that in many instances their original or inner meaning has become obscure. And it is folly to accept the tangled legends and blurred or distorted symbols as the literal history of a literal tribe, and the literal account of the origin of man, and the genesis of religion.

The real roots of religion lie far deeper: deeper, perhaps, than sun-worship, ghost-worship, and fear of demons. In The Real Origin of Religion occurs the following:

     Quite recently theories have been advocated attempting to
     prove that the minds of early men were chiefly concerned with
     the increase of vegetation, and that their fancy played so much
     round the mysteries of plant growth that they made them their
     holiest arcana. Hence it appears that the savages were far more
     modest and refined than our civilised contemporaries, for almost
     all our works of imagination, both in literature and art, make
     human love their theme in all its aspects, whether healthy or
     pathological; whereas the savage, it seems, thought only of his
     crops. Nothing can be more astonishing than this discovery,
     if it be true, but there are many facts which might lead us to
     believe that the romance of love inspired early art and religion
     as well as modern thought.

     Religion is a gorgeous efflorescence of human love. The tender
     passion has left its footsteps on the sands of time in magnificent
     monuments and libraries of theology.

This may seem startling to many orthodox readers, but it is no new theory, and is doubtless quite true, for all gods have been made by man, and all theologies have been evolved by man, and the odour and the colour of his human passions cling to them always, even after they are discarded. Under all man's dreams of eternal gods and eternal heavens lies man's passion for the eternal feminine. But on these subjects "Moses" spoke in parables, and I shall not speak at all.

     It is a medley of early metaphysics and early fable—early,
     that is, relatively to known Hebrew history. It ties together
     two creation stories and two flood stories; it duplicates
     several sets of mythic personages—as Cain and Abel, Tubal-Cain
     and Jabal; it grafts the curse of Cham on the curse of Cain,
     making that finally the curse of Canaan; it tells the same
     offensive story twice of one patriarch and again of another;
     it gives an early "metaphysical" theory of the origin of death,
     life, and evil; it adapts the Egyptian story of the "Two Brothers,"
     or the myth of Adonis, as the history of Joseph; it makes use
     of various God-names, pretending that they always stood for
     the same deity; it repeats traditions concerning mythic
     founders of races—if all this be not "a medley of early fable,"
     what is it?

     Some of the books of Scripture are separated from others by the
     interspace of a thousand years. They represent the fragmentary
     survival of Hebrew literature. They stand on very different
     levels of value, and even of morality. Read for centuries in
     an otiose, perfunctory, slavish, and superstitious manner, they
     have often been so egregiously misunderstood that many entire
     systems of interpretation—which were believed in for generations,
     and which fill many folios, now consigned to a happy oblivion—
     are clearly proved to have been utterly baseless. Colossal
     usurpations of deadly import to the human race have been built,
     like inverted pyramids, on the narrow apex of a single
     misinterpreted text.

Compare those utterances of the freethinker and the divine, and then read the following words of Dean Farrar:

     The manner in which the Higher Criticism has slowly and surely
     made its victorious progress, in spite of the most determined
     and exacerbated opposition, is a strong argument in its favour.
     It is exactly analogous to the way in which the truths of
     astronomy and of geology have triumphed over universal
     opposition. They were once anathematised as "infidel"; they
     are now accepted as axiomatic. I cannot name a single student
     or professor of any eminence in Great Britain who does not
     accept, with more or less modification, the main conclusions
     of the German school of critics.

This being the case, I ask, as a mere layman, what right has the Bible to usurp the title of "the word of God"? What evidence can be sharked up to show that it is any more a holy or an inspired book than any book of Thomas Carlyle's, or John Ruskin's, or William Morris'? What evidence is forthcoming that the Bible is true?

THE UNIVERSE ACCORDING TO ANCIENT RELIGION AND MODERN SCIENCE

The theory of the early Christian Church was that the Earth was flat, like a plate, and the sky was a solid dome above it, like an inverted blue basin.

The Sun revolved round the Earth to give light by day, the Moon revolved round the Earth to give light by night. The stars were auxiliary lights, and had all been specially, and at the same time, created for the good of man.

God created the Sun, Moon, Stars, and Earth in six days. He created them by word, and He created them out of nothing.

The centre of the Universe was the Earth. The Sun was made to give light to the Earth by day, and the Moon to give light to Earth by night.

Any man who denied that theory in those days was in danger of being murdered as an Infidel.

To-day our ideas are very different. Hardly any educated man or woman in the world believes that the world is flat, or that the Sun revolves round the Earth, or that what we call the sky is a solid substance, like a domed ceiling.

Advanced thinkers, even amongst the Christians, believe that the world is round, that it is one of a series of planets revolving round the Sun, that the Sun is only one of many millions of other suns, that these suns were not created simultaneously, but at different periods, probably separated by millions or billions of years.

We have all, Christians and Infidels alike, been obliged to acknowledge that the Earth is not the centre of the whole Universe, but only a minor planet revolving around, and dependent upon, one of myriads of suns.

God, called by Christians "Our Heavenly Father," created all things. He created not only the world, but the whole universe. He is all-wise, He is all-powerful, He is all-loving, and He is revealed to us in the Scriptures.

Let us see. Let us try to imagine what kind of a God the creator of this Universe would be, and let us compare him with the God, or Gods, revealed to us in the Bible, and in the teachings of the Church.

We have seen the account of the Universe and its creation, as given in the revealed Scriptures. Let us now take a hasty view of the Universe and its creation as revealed to us by science.

Our Sun is only one sun amongst many millions. Our planet is only one of eight which revolve around him.

Our Sun, with his planets and comets, comprises what is known as the solar system.

There is no reason to suppose that his is the only Solar System: there may be many millions of solar systems. For aught we know, there may be millions of systems, each containing millions of solar systems.

The Sun is a globe of 866,200 miles diameter. His diameter is more than 108 times that of the Earth. His volume is 1,305,000 times the volume of the Earth. All the eight planets added together only make one-seven-hundredth part of his weight. His circumference is more than two and a-half millions of miles. He revolves upon his axis in 25 1/4 days, or at a speed of nearly 4,000 miles an hour.

This immense and magnificent globe diffuses heat and light to all the other planets.

Without the light and heat of the Sun no life would now be, or in the past have been, possible on this Earth, or any other planet of the solar system.

The eight planets of the solar system are divided into four inferior and four superior.

The inferior planets are Mercury, Venus, the Earth, and Mars. The superior are Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune.

The diameters of the smaller planets are as follow: Mercury, 3,008 miles; Mars, 5,000 miles; Venus, 7,480 miles; the Earth, 7,926 miles.

The diameters of the large planets are: Jupiter, 88,439 miles; Saturn, 75,036 miles; Neptune, 37,205 miles; Uranus, 30,875 miles.

The volume of Jupiter is 1,389 times, of Saturn 848 times, of Neptune 103 times, and of Uranus 59 times the volume of the Earth.

The mean distances from the Sun are: Mercury, 36 million miles; Venus, 67 million miles; the Earth, 93 million miles; Mars, 141 million miles; Jupiter, 483 million miles; Saturn, 886 million miles; Uranus, 1,782 million miles; Neptune, 2,792 million miles.

To give an idea of the meaning of these distances, I may say that a train travelling night and day at 60 miles an hour would take quite 176 years to come from the Sun to the Earth.

The same train, at the same speed, would be 5,280 years in travelling from the Sun to Neptune.

Reckoning that Neptune is the outermost planet of the solar system, that system would have a diameter of 5,584 millions of miles.

If we made a chart of the solar system on a scale of 1 inch to a million miles, we should need a sheet of paper 465 feet 4 inches wide. On this sheet the Sun would have a diameter of less than 1 inch, and the Earth would be about the size of a pin-prick.

If an express train, going at 60 miles an hour, had to travel round the Earth's orbit, it would be more than 1,000 years on the journey. If the Earth moved no faster, our winter would last more than 250 years. But in the solar system the speeds are as wonderful as the sizes. The Earth turns upon its axis at the rate of 1,000 miles an hour, and travels in its orbit round the Sun at the rate of more than 1,000 miles a minute, or 66,000 miles an hour.

So much for the size of the solar system. It consists of a Sun and eight planets, and the outer planet's orbit is one of 5,584 millions of miles in diameter, which it would take an express train, at 60 miles an hour, 10,560 years to cross.

But this distance is as nothing when we come to deal with the distances of the other stars from our Sun.

The distance from our Sun to the nearest fixed (?) star is more than 20 millions of millions of miles. Our express train, which crosses the diameter of the solar system in 10,560 years, would take, if it went 60 miles an hour day and night, about 40 million years to reach the nearest fixed star from the Sun.

And if we had to mark the nearest fixed star on our chart made on a scale of 1 inch to the million miles, we should find that whereas a sheet of 465 feet would take in the outermost planet of the solar system, a sheet to take in the nearest fixed star would have to be about 620 miles wide. On this sheet, as wide as from London to Inverness, the Sun would be represented by a dot three-quarters of an inch in diameter, and the Earth by a pin-prick.

But these immense distances only relate to the nearest stars. Now, the nearest stars are about four "light years" distant from us. That is to say, that light, travelling at a rate of about 182,000 miles in one second, takes four years to come from the nearest fixed star to the Earth.

But I have seen the distance from the Earth to the Great Nebula in Orion given as a thousand light years, or 250 times the distance of the fixed star above alluded to.

To reach that nebula at 60 miles an hour, an express train would have to travel for 35 millions of years multiplied by 250—that is to say, for 8,750 million years.

And yet there are millions of stars whose distances are even greater than the distance of the Great Nebula in Orion.

How many stars are there? No one can even guess. But L. Struve estimates the number of those visible to the great telescopes at 20 millions.

Twenty millions of suns. And as for the size of these suns, Sir Robert Ball says Sirius is ten times as large as our Sun; and a well-known astronomer, writing in the English Mechanic about a week ago, remarks that Alpha Orionis (Betelgeuze) has probably 700 times the light of our Sun.

Looking through my telescope, which is only 3-inch aperture, I have seen star clusters of wonderful beauty in the Pleiades and in Cancer. There is, in the latter constellation, a dim star which, when viewed through my glass, becomes a constellation larger, more brilliant, and more beautiful than Orion or the Great Bear. I have looked at these jewelled sun-clusters many a time, and wondered over them. But I have never once thought of believing that they were specially created to be lesser lights to the Earth.

And now let me quote from that grand book of Richard A. Proctor's, The Expanse of Heaven, a fine passage descriptive of some of the wonders of the "Milky Way":

     There are stars in all orders of brightness, from those which
     (seen with the telescope) resemble in lustre the leading glories
     of the firmament, down to tiny points of light only caught by
     momentary twinklings. Every variety of arrangement is seen.
     Here the stars are scattered as over the skies at night; there
     they cluster in groups, as though drawn together by some irresistible
     power; in one region they seem to form sprays of stars like
     diamonds sprinkled over fern leaves; elsewhere they lie in
     streams and rows, in coronets and loops and festoons, resembling
     the star festoon which, in the constellation Perseus, garlands
     the black robe of night. Nor are varieties of colour wanting
     to render the display more wonderful and more beautiful. Many
     of the stars which crowd upon the view are red, orange, and yellow
     Among them are groups of two and three and four (multiple stars
     as they are called), amongst which blue and green and lilac and
     purple stars appear, forming the most charming contrast to the
     ruddy and yellow orbs near which they are commonly seen.

Millions and millions—countless millions of suns. Innumerable galaxies and systems of suns, separated by black gulfs of space so wide that no man can realise the meaning of the figures which denote their stretch. Suns of fire and light, whirling through vast oceans of space like swarms of golden bees. And round them planets whirling at thousands of miles a minute.

And on Earth there are forms of life so minute that millions of them exist in a drop of water. There are microscopic creatures more beautiful and more highly finished than any gem, and more complex and effective than the costliest machine of human contrivance. In The Story of Creation Mr. Ed. Clodd tells us that one cubic inch of rotten stone contains 41 thousand million vegetable skeletons of diatoms.

     It was discovered some few years ago that a peculiar bacillus
     was present in all persons suffering from typhoid, and in all
     foods and drinks which spread the disease. Experiments were
     carried out, and it was assumed, not without good reason, that
     the bacillus was the primary cause of the malady, and it was
     accordingly labelled the typhoid bacillus.

     But the bacteriologists further discovered that the typhoid
     bacillus was present in water which was not infectious, and in
     persons who were not ill, or had never been ill, with typhoid.

     So now a theory is propounded that a healthy typhoid bacillus
     does not cause typhoid, but that it is only when the bacillus
     is itself sick of a fever, or, in other words, is itself the
     prey of some infinitely minuter organisms, which feed on it
     alone, that it works harm to mortal men.

The bacillus is so small that one requires a powerful microscope to see him, and his blood may be infested with bacilli as small to him as he is to us.

Talk about Aladdin's palace, Sinbad's valley of diamonds, Macbeth's witches, or the Irish fairies! How petty are their exploits, how tawdry are their splendours, how paltry are their riches, when we compare them to the romance of science.

When did a poet conceive an idea so vast and so astounding as the theory of evolution? What are a few paltry, lumps of crystallised carbon compared to a galaxy of a million million suns? Did any Eastern inventor of marvels ever suggest such a human feat as that accomplished by the men who have, during the last handful of centuries, spelt out the mystery of the universe? These scientists have worked miracles before which those of the ancient priests and magicians are mere tricks of hanky-panky.

Look at the romance of geology; at the romance of astronomy; at the romance of chemistry; at the romance of the telescope, and the microscope, and the prism. More wonderful than all, consider the story of how flying atoms in space became suns, how suns made planets, how planets changed from spheres of flame and raging fiery storm to worlds of land and water. How in the water specks of jelly became fishes, fishes reptiles, reptiles mammals, mammals monkeys; monkeys men; until, from the fanged and taloned cannibal, roosting in a forest, have developed art and music, religion and science; and the children of the jellyfish can weigh the suns, measure the stellar spaces, ride on the ocean or in the air, and speak to each other from continent to continent.

Talk about fairy tales! what is this? You may look through a telescope, and see the nebula that is to make a sun floating, like a luminous mist, three hundred million miles away. You may look again, and see another sun in process of formation. You may look again, and see others almost completed. You may look again and again, and see millions of suns and systems spread out across the heavens like rivers of living gems.

You will say that all this speaks of a Creator. I shall not contradict you. But what kind of Creator must He be who has created such a universe as this?

Do you think He is the kind of Creator to make blunders and commit crimes? Can you, after once thinking of the Milky Way, with its rivers of suns, and the drop of water teeming with spangled dragons, and the awful abysses of dark space, through which comets shoot at a speed a thousand times as fast as an express train—can you, after seeing Saturn's rings, and Jupiter's moons, and the clustered gems of Hercules, consent for a moment to the allegation that the creator of all this power and glory got angry with men, and threatened them with scabs and sores, and plagues of lice and frogs? Can you suppose that such a creator would, after thousands of years of effort, have failed even now to make His repeated revelations comprehensible? Do you believe that He would be driven across the unimaginable gulfs of space, but of the transcendent glory of His myriad resplendent suns, to die on a cross, in order to win back to Him the love of the puny creatures on one puny planet in the marvellous universe His power had made?

Do you believe that the God who imagined and created such a universe could be petty, base, cruel, revengeful, and capable of error? I do not believe it.

And now let us examine the character and conduct of this God as depicted for us in the Bible—the book which is alleged to have been directly revealed by God Himself.

JEHOVAH THE ADOPTED HEAVENLY FATHER OF CHRISTIANITY

In giving the above brief sketch of the known universe my object was to suggest that the Creator of a universe of such scope and grandeur must be a Being of vast power and the loftiest dignity.

Now, the Christians claim that their God created this universe—not the universe He is described, in His own inspired word, as creating, but the universe revealed by science; the universe of twenty millions of suns.

And the Christians claim that this God is a God of love, a God omnipotent, omnipresent, and eternal. And the Christians claim that this great God, the Creator of our wonderful universe, is the God revealed to us in the Bible.

Let us, then, go to the Bible, and find out for ourselves whether the God therein revealed is any more like the ideal Christian God than the universe therein revealed is like the universe since discovered by man without the aid of divine inspiration.

As for the biblical God, Jahweh, or Jehovah, I shall try to show from the Bible itself that He was not all-wise, nor all-powerful, nor omnipresent; that He was not merciful nor just; but that, on the contrary, He was fickle, jealous, dishonourable, immoral, vindictive, barbarous, and cruel.

Neither was He, in any sense of the words, great nor good. But, in fact, He was a tribal god, an idol, made by man; and, as the idol of a savage and ignorant tribe, was Himself a savage and ignorant monster.

First then, as to my claim that Jahweh, or Jehovah, was a tribal god. I shall begin by quoting from Shall We Understand the Bible? by the Rev. T. Rhondda Williams:

     The theology of the Jahwist is very childish and elementary,
     though it is not all on the same level. He thinks of God very
     much as in human form, holding intercourse with men almost
     as one of themselves. His document begins with Genesis ii. 4,
     and its first portion continues, without break, to the end of
     chapter iv. This portion contains the story of Eden. Here
     Jahweh moulds dust into human form, and breathes into it;
     plants a garden, and puts the man in it. Jahweh comes to the
     man in his sleep, and takes part of his body to make a woman,
     and so skilfully, apparently, that the man never wakes under
     the operation. Jahweh walks in the garden like a man in the
     cool of the day. He even makes coats for Adam and Eve.
     Further on the Jahwist has a flood story, in which Jahweh repents     that he had made man, and decides to drown him, saving only
     one family. When all is over, and Noah sacrifices on his new
     altar, Jahweh smells a sweet savour, just as a hungry man
     smells welcome food. When men build the Tower of Babel,
     Jahweh comes down to see it—he cannot see it from where he
     is. In Genesis xviii. the Jahwist tells a story of three men
     coming to Abraham's tent. Abraham gives them water to wash
     their feet, and bread to eat, and Sarah makes cakes for them,
     and "they did eat"; altogether, they seemed to have had a nice
     time. As the story goes on, he leaves you to infer that one
     of these was Jahweh himself. It is J. who describes the story
     of Jacob wrestling with some mysterious person, who, by inference,
     is Jahweh. He tells a very strange story in Exodus iv. 24, that
     when Moses was returning into Egypt, at Jahweh's own request,
     Jahweh met him at a lodging-place, and sought to kill him. In
     Exodus xiv. 15 it is said Jahweh took the wheels off the chariots
     of the Egyptians. If we wanted to believe that such statements
     were true at all, we should resort to the device of saying they
     were figurative. But J. meant them literally. The Jahwist
     would have no difficulty in thinking of God in this way. The
     story of the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah belongs to this
     same document, in which, you remember, Jahweh says: "I will go
     down now, and see whether they have done altogether according
     to the cry of it which is come unto me; and if not, I will know"
     (Gen. xviii. 21). That God was omniscient and omnipresent had
     never occurred to the Jahwist. Jahweh, like a man, had to go and
     see if he wanted to know. There is, however, some compensation
     in the fact that he can move about without difficulty—he can
     come down and go up. One might say, perhaps, that in J., though
     Jahweh cannot be everywhere, he can go to almost any place.
     All this is just like a child's thought. The child, at Christmas,
     can believe that, though Santa Claus cannot be everywhere, he
     can move about with wonderful facility, and, though he is a man,
     he is rather mysterious. The Jahwist's thought of God represents
     the childhood stage of the national life.

     All this shows that at one time Jahweh was one of many gods;
     other gods were real gods. The Israelites themselves believed,
     for example, that Chemosh was as truly the god of the Moabites
     as Jahweh was theirs, and they speak of Chemosh giving territory
     to his people to inherit, just as Jahweh had given them territory
     (Judges xi. 24).

     Just as a King of Israel would speak of Jahweh, the King of
     Moab speaks of Chemosh. His god sends him to battle. If he
     is defeated, the god is angry; if he succeeds, the god is
     favourable. And we have seen that there was a time when the
     Israelite believed Chemosh to be as real for Moab as Jahweh
     for himself. You find the same thing everywhere. The old
     Assyrian kings said exactly the same thing of the god Assur.

     Assur sent them to battle, gave defeat or victory, as he thought
     fit. The history, however, is very obscure up to the time of
     Samuel, and uncertain for some time after. Samuel organised
     a Jahweh party. David worshipped Jahweh only, though he
     regards it as possible to be driven out of Jahweh's inheritance
     into that of other gods (1 Sam. xxvi. 19). Solomon was not
     exclusively devoted to Jahweh, for he built places of worship
     for other deities as well.

In the chapter on "Different Conceptions of Providence in the Bible," Mr. Williams says:

     I have asked you to read Judges iii. 15-30, iv. 17-24, v. 24-31.
     The first is the story of Ehud getting at Eglon, Israel's enemy,
     by deceit, and killing him—an act followed by a great slaughter
     of Moabites. The second is the story of Jael pretending to play
     the friend to Sisera, and then murdering him. The third is the
     eulogy of Jael for doing so, as "blessed above women," in the
     so-called Song of Deborah. Here, you see, Providence is only
     concerned with the fortunes of Israel; any deceit and any
     cruelty is right which brings success to this people. Providence
     is not concerned with morality; nor is it concerned with individuals,
     except as the individual serves or opposes Israel.

In these two chapters Mr. Williams shows that the early conception of God was a very low one, and that it underwent considerable change. In fact, he says, with great candour and courage, that the early Bible conception of God is one which we cannot now accept.

With this I entirely agree. We cannot accept as the God of Creation this savage idol of an obscure tribe, and we have renounced Him, and are ashamed of Him, not because of any later divine revelation, but because mankind have become too enlightened, too humane, and too honourable to tolerate Jehovah.

And yet the Christian religion adopted Jehovah, and called upon its followers to worship and believe Him, on pain of torture, or death, or excommunication in this world, and of hell-fire in the world to come. It is astounding.

But lest the evidence offered by Mr. Williams should not be considered sufficient, I shall quote from another very useful book, The Evolution of the Idea of God, by the late Grant Allen. In this book Mr. Allen clearly traces the origins of the various ideas of God, and we hear of Jehovah again, as a kind of tribal stone idol, carried about in a box or ark. I will quote as fully as space permits:

     But Jahweh was an object of portable size, for, omitting for
     the present the descriptions in the Pentateuch—which seem
     likely to be of later date, and not too trustworthy, through
     their strenuous Jehovistic editing—he was carried from Shiloh
     in his ark to the front during the great battle with the
     Philistines at Ebenezer; and the Philistines were afraid, for
     they said, "A god is come into the camp." But when the Philistines
     captured the ark, the rival god, Dagon, fell down and broke in
     pieces—so Hebrew legend declared—before the face of Jahweh.
     After the Philistines restored the sacred object, it rested for
     a time at Kirjath-jearim till David, on the capture of Jerusalem
     from the Jebusites, went down to that place to bring up from
     thence the ark of the god; and as it went, on a new cart, they
     "played before Jahweh on all manner of instruments," and David
     himself "danced before Jahweh."... The children of Israel in
     early times carried about with them a tribal god, Jahweh, whose
     presence in their midst was intimately connected with a certain
     ark or chest containing a stone object or objects. This chest
     was readily portable, and could be carried to the front in case
     of warfare. They did not know the origin of the object in the
     ark with certainty; but they regarded it emphatically as "Jahweh
     their god, which led them out of the land of Egypt."...

     I do not see, therefore, how we can easily avoid the obvious
     inference that Jahweh the god of the Hebrews, who later became
     sublimated and etherealised into the God of Christianity, was,
     in his origin, nothing more nor less than the ancestral sacred
     stone of the people of Israel, however sculptured, and, perhaps,
     in the very last resort of all, the unhewn monumental pillar of
     some early Semitic sheikh or chieftain.

It was, indeed, as the Rev. C. E. Beeby says, in his book Creed and Life, a sad mistake of St. Augustine to tack this tribal fetish in his box on to the Christian religion as the All-Father, and Creator of the Universe. For Jehovah was a savage war-god, and, as such, was impotent to save the tribe who worshipped him.

But let us look further into the accounts of this original God of the Christians, and see how he comported himself, and let us put our examples under separate heads; thus:

Jahweh's bad temper is constantly displayed in the Bible. Jahweh made a man, whom he supposed to be perfect. When the man turned bad on his hands, Jahweh was angry, and cursed him and his seed for thousands of years. This vindictive act is accepted by the Apostle Paul as a natural thing for a God of Love to do.

Jahweh who had already cursed all the seed of Adam, was so angry about man's sin, in the time of Noah, that he decided to drown all the people on the earth except Noah's family, and not only that, but to drown nearly all the innocent animals as well.

When the children of Israel, who had eaten nothing but manna for forty years, asked Jahweh for a change of diet, Jahweh lost his temper again, and sent amongst them "fiery serpents," so that "much people of Israel died." But still the desire for other food remained, and the Jews wept for meat. Then the Lord ordered Moses to speak to the people as follows:

... The Lord will give you flesh, and ye shall eat. Ye shall
     not eat one day, nor two days, nor five days, neither ten days
     nor twenty days: but even a whole month, until it come out of
     your nostrils, and it be loathsome unto you; because that ye
     have despised the Lord, which is among you, and have wept
     before Him, saying, Why came we forth out of Egypt?

Then Jahweh sent immense numbers of quails, and the people ate them, and the anger of their angry god came upon them in the act, and smote them with "a very great plague."

One more instance out of many. In the First Book of Samuel we are told that on the return of Jahweh in his ark from the custody of the Philistines some men of Bethshemesh looked into the ark. This made Jahweh so angry that he smote the people, and slew more than fifty thousand of them.

I have already instanced Jahweh's injustice in cursing the seed of Adam for Adam's sin, and in destroying the whole animal creation, except a selected few, because he was angry with mankind. In the Book of Samuel we are told that Jahweh sent three years' famine upon the whole nation because of the sins of Saul, and that his wrath was only appeased by the hanging in cold blood of seven of Saul's sons for the evil committed by their father.

In the Book of Joshua is the story of how Achan, having stolen some gold, was ordered to be burnt; and how Joshua and the Israelites took "Achan, and his sons, and his daughters, and his oxen, and his asses, and his sheep, and his tent, and all that he had," and stoned them to death, and "burnt them with fire."

In the First Book of Chronicles the devil persuades David to take a census of Israel. And again Jahweh acted in blind wrath and injustice, for he sent a pestilence, which slew seventy thousand of the people for David's fault. But David he allowed to live. In Samuel we learn how Jahweh, because of an attack upon the Israelites four hundred years before the time of speaking, ordered Saul to destroy the Amalekites, "man and woman, infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and ass." And Saul did as he was directed; but because he spared King Agag, the Lord deprived him of the crown and made David king in his stead.

In the Second Book of Chronicles Jehovah gets Ahab, King of Israel, killed by putting lies into the mouths of the prophets:

     And the Lord said, Who shall entice Ahab, king of Israel, that
     he may go up and fall at Ramoth-gilead? And one spake, saying
     after this manner, and another saying after that manner.

     Then there came out a spirit, and stood before the Lord, and
     said, I will entice him. And the Lord said unto him, Wherewith?

     And he said, I will go out, and be a lying spirit in the mouth
     of all his prophets. And the Lord said, Thou shalt entice him,
     and thou shalt also prevail: go out, and do even so.

     When thou goest forth to war against thine enemies, and the
     Lord thy God hath delivered them into thine hands, and thou
     hast taken them captive.

     And seest among the captives a beautiful woman, and hast a
     desire unto her, that thou wouldest have her to thy wife;
     Then thou shalt bring her home to thine house; and she shall
     shave her head, and pare her nails;

     And she shall put the raiment of her captivity from off her,
     and shall remain in thine house, and bewail her father and her
     mother a full month: and after that thou shalt go in unto her,
     and be her husband, and she shall be thy wife.

     And it shall be, if thou have no delight in her, then thou shall
     let her go whither she will; but thou shalt not sell her at all
     for money, thou shalt not make merchandise of her, because thou
     hast humbled her.

The children of Israel, having been sent out by Jahweh to punish the Midianites, "slew all the males." But Moses was wrath, because they had spared the women, and he ordered them to kill all the married women, and to take the single women "for themselves." The Lord allowed this brutal act—which included the murder of all the male children—to be consummated. There were sixteen thousand females spared, of which we are told that "the Lord's tribute was thirty and two."

I could find in the Bible more instances of Jahweh's cruelty and barbarity and lack of mercy than I can find room for.

In Deuteronomy, the Lord hardens the heart of Sihon, King of Hesbon, to resist the Jews, and then "utterly destroyed the men, women, and little ones of every city."

In Leviticus, Jahweh threatens that if the Israelites will not reform he will "walk contrary to them in fury, and they shall eat the flesh of their own sons and daughters."

In Deuteronomy is an account of how Bashan was utterly destroyed, men, women, and children being slain.