THE BIBLE UNVEILED III

William Jennings Bryan was not the only politician or publicist, who contributed to the tercentenary celebration of the bible.

Writing in the Outlook, Theodore Roosevelt, to his own satisfaction, at least, meets the opponents of the inspiration of the bible, and briefly disposes of them.

“Occasionally critics,” he writes, “taking sections of the Old Testament, are able to point out that the teachings therein are not in accordance with our own convictions and views of morality.”

Is it only “occasional” critics who express disapproval of the Jewish-Christian scriptures? And suppose it true that only “occasional” critics call attention to the harm which the bible does by its immoral and impossible teachings: Does that fact relieve the defenders of the bible from the obligation to answer their criticisms? The important question is not, who makes the criticism; but, is the criticism just?

“The Old Testament,” continues Mr. Roosevelt, “did not carry Israel as far as the New Testament has carried us; but it advanced Israel far beyond the point any neighboring nation had then reached.”

This is practically a plea of guilty.

Why was not the Old Testament as good as the New is supposed to be? Was it not equally divine?

If the Old Testament was meant to prepare the Jews to accept the New Testament, they have not accepted it yet.

But is it true that “the Old Testament carried Israel far beyond the point any neighboring nation had then reached”?

It is now nearly two thousand years since the New Testament began to “carry us,” and where have we reached?

In how many things have we advanced beyond the Greeks and Romans, for instance?

Only yesterday the black man carried chains in our land, and throughout Christendom white slavery of a more degrading type than ever known before is still with us. Political corruption of a character which Mr. Roosevelt himself has pronounced the most deep-seated and chronic is eating away the vital parts of the American nation, while the hunger, the misery and the squalor in the slums of our great cities, side by side with the waste of wealth and the worship of show, prove daily the complete failure of Christianity as a regenerating force.

Whatever of hope there is today in the human heart for a better future on earth, and whatever signs there may be of a realization of justice and happiness for all men, here and now, we are indebted for them, not to the New Testament, but to modern thought, which is heresy from the point of view of the New, as well as the Old, Testament.

It is the passing of the bible that has opened the way for real and radical reforms. It is the failure of the inspired teachers to fulfill their promises that has at least induced man to step to the front and assume full control of the world’s destinies. Man no longer prays to the gods; he works.

When the bible was supreme in Europe, was the world better?

Would Mr. Roosevelt return to the Middle Ages? Will he go back to the times of Knox, Wesley, Calvin and the New England clergy, or to the times when, by authority of the bible which then ruled without a rival, in court and church, in the home and the school, men and women were bought and sold like animals, or burned alive as witches, or tortured to death in a thousand dungeons for daring to think.

When the bible was supreme in Europe there was neither science nor commerce.

When the bible was supreme, tyrant and dissolute kings ruled by the “grace of God,” and priest persecuted the thinker in every capital of the Christian world.

It is the emancipation of thought, and not the New Testament, that has conquered for us every blessing we enjoy.

Not until the Renaissance, that is to say, not until Europe deserted its Semitic or Asiatic teachers for those of Hellas and Rome, did modern nations begin to wax strong in mind and body.

The New Testament really carried us to the times of the Old Testament.

It was the Renaissance of Greek thought and art that changed the “thorns and thistles” of theology into the golden fruit of science.