James Oliver Curwood - "The Golden Snare"

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The Truth About Jesus Is He a Myth?

M >> Mangasar Magurditch Mangasarian >> The Truth About Jesus Is He a Myth?




But observe now how the Oriental proceeds to pull down his mind to the
level of his body, which he has likened to a worm. When I was still a
Presbyterian minister, I was invited to address a Sunday-school camp-
meeting at Asbury Park in New Jersey. There were other speakers
besides myself; one of them, known as a Sunday-school leader, had
brought with him a chart of the human heart, which, when he arose to
address the children, he spread on a blackboard before them: "This is
a picture of your heart before you have accepted Jesus. What do you
think of it?" he asked the school. "It is all black," was the answer;
and it was. He had drawn a totally black picture to represent the
heart of the child before conversion.

In all the literature of Pagandom, there is not the least intimation
of so fearful an idea as the total depravity of human nature. The
Pagans never thought, spoke, or heard of such a thing. It was
inconceivable to them; they would have recoiled from it as from a
species of barbarism. How radically different, then, must European
culture have been from the Asiatic. There is a gulf well-nigh
impassible between the thought of a free-born citizen and that of the
oppressed and enslaved Oriental.

But let us continue. Not satisfied with thinking of himself as a worm,
and of his intellectual and moral nature as totally degraded, the
Oriental strikes with the same paralyzing stroke, at _the world in
which he lives_, until it, too, withers and becomes an ugly and
heinous thing. He calls the world a "vale of tears," ruled by the
powers of darkness, and groaning under a primeval curse. "The world,
the flesh and the devil" become a trio of iniquity and sin. Some of
you in your earlier days must have sung that Methodist hymn which
represents the world as a snare and a delusion:

"The world is a fleeting show
For man's illusion given."

Given! Think of believing that the world has been purposely given us
to lead us astray. The thought staggers the mind. It suggests a
terrible conspiracy against man. For his ruin, sun, moon and stars co-
operate with the devil. Help! we cry, as we realize our inability to
cope with the tremendous powers hurling themselves against us like
billows of the raging sea, and taking our breath away. It suggests
that we are placed in a world which has been made purposely beautiful,
in order to tempt us into sin. Think of such a belief! It is that of a
slave. It is Asiatic; it is not European. Neither you nor I, in all
our readings, have ever come across any such attitude toward nature in
Pagan literature. The Greeks and the Romans loved nature and made
lovely gods out of. every running brook, caressing zephyr, dancing
wave, glistening dew, sailing cloud, beaming star, beautiful woman, or
brave man. The Oriental suspects nature and regards her smiles--the
shining of the sun, the perfume of the meadows, the swell of the sea,
the fluttering of the branches tipped with blossoms, the emerald
grass, the sapphire sky--looks upon all these as the seductive
advances of a prostitute in whose embrace lurks death!

But, once more; not satisfied with dragging the world down to the
plane of his totally depraved nature, and that again to the level of
the worm, the Asiatic projects his fatal thought into the next world
and, crossing the grave, that silent and painless home of a tired
race, he crowds the beyond with a thousand thousand pains and aches
and horrors and fires--with sulphur and brimstone and burning hells.
His frightened imagination invokes dark and infernal beings without
number, fanning with their dark wings the very air he breathes. This
is too revolting to think of. Poor slave! Inured to suffering,--to the
lash, to oppression's crushing heel,--he dare not dream of a painless
future, of a quiet, peaceful sleep at life's end, nor has he the
divine audacity to invent a new world wherein the misery and slavery
of his present existence will be impossible,--where all his tyrants
will be dead, where he shall taste of sweet freedom and become himself
a god. In his timidity and shrinking submission, with the spring of
his heart broken, his spirit crushed, all independence strangled in
his soul,--he puts in the biggest corner of his heaven even,--a
_hell_!

Nor does he pause there, but, stinging his slave imagination once
more, he declares that this future of torture and hell-fire is
_everlasting_. He cannot improve upon that. Deeper in degradation
he cannot descend. That is the darkest thought he can have, and,
strange to say, he hugs it to his bosom as a mother would her child.
The doctrine of hell is the thought of a slave and of a coward. No
free-horn man, no brave soul could ever have invented so abhorrent an
idea. Only under a regime of absolutism, only under an Oriental Sultan
whose caprice is law, whose vengeance is terrible, whose favors are
fickle, whose power is crushing, whose greed is insatiable, whose
torture instruments are without number, and whose dark dungeons always
resound with the rattling of chains and the groans of martyrs--only
under such a regime could man have invented an unending hell. But we
were mistaken when we said that hell was the darkest that the Asiatic
was capable of. He has grafted upon the European mind a belief which
is darker still.

Is there anything more precious in human life than children? The
sternest heart melts, the fiercest features relax, at the sight of an
innocent, sweet, laughing, frolicking babe in its mother's arms. Look
at its glorious eyes, so full of surprises, so deep, so appealing!
Look at the soft round hands, the little feet, the exquisite mouth,
opening like a bud! Hear its prattle, which is nothing but the mind
beginning to stir! Watch its gestures, the first language of the
child! See it with its tiny arms about its mother's neck. Mark its joy
when it is kissed. What else in our human world is more beautiful,
more divine? And yet, and yet, the slave creed of Asia has drawn into
its burning net of damnation even the cradle. John Burroughs describes
how in a Catholic cemetery near where he lives he was shown a
neglected, unkept corner, used for the burial of unbaptized children.
Consecrated ground is denied to them, and so their poor bodies are
huddled together in this profane plot, unblessed and unsaved. I do not
wish to live in a world where such absurdities are not only
countenanced, but where they are exalted even to the dignity of a
religion!

O holy children! O sweet children! huddled together in unconsecrated
ground, and thus exposed to the cruelty of indescribable demons! Can
you hear me? I am a man of compassion. I can forgive the murderer. I
can pardon and pity the meanest wretch and take him into my arms, but
I confess that even if I had a heart as big as the ocean, I could not,
I would not, forgive the creed that can be guilty of such inhumanity
against you,--dear, innocent ones, who were born to breathe but for a
moment the harsh air of this world! When such gloom overpowers me and
wrings from my lips such hard words, I find some little respite in
contemplating the old Pagan world in its best days. I hasten for
consolation to my Pagan friends, and in their sanity find healing for
my bruised heart.

In one of his letters, the Greek Plutarch says this about children,
which I want you to compare with what St. Augustine, the
representative of the Asiatic creed, says on the same subject. "It is
irreligious," writes Plutarch, "to lament for those pure souls (the
children) who have passed into a better life and a happier dwelling
place." [Footnote: Plutarch Ad Uxorem. Comp. Lecky's History of
European Morals. Vol. I.] Compare this Pagan tenderness for children
with the Asiatic doctrine of infant damnation but recently thrown out
of the Presbyterian creed. Yet, if St. Augustine is to be believed, it
is a heresy to reject the damnation of unbaptized infants: "Whosoever
shall tell," writes this Father of the church, "that infants shall be
quickened in Christ who died without partaking in his sacrament, does
both contradict the apostles' teaching and condemn the whole church."
[Footnote: St. Augustine Epist. 166.] It is infinitely more religious
to disagree with the apostles and the church, if that is their
teaching. The Pagan view of children is the holier view. The doctrine
of the damnation of children could only find lodgment in the brain of
a slave or a madman. It is Asiatic and altogether foreign to the
culture of Europe.

All that we have advanced thus far may be summed up in one phrase:
Asia invented the idea that man is a _fallen_ being. This idea, which
is the _dors espinal_,--the backbone--of Christianity, never for once
entered the mind of the European. We have already quoted from Job and
the Psalms; the following is from the book of Jeremiah: "The heart is
deceitful above all things and desperately wicked." This is one of the
texts upon which the doctrine of the fall of man is based. We repeat
that only under a religion of slavery, where one slave vies with
another to abase himself before his lords and masters, could such an
idea have been invented. There is not a man in all our sacred
scriptures who could stand before the deity erect and unabashed, or
who could speak in the accents of a Cicero who said, "We boast justly
of our own virtue, which we could not do if we derived it from the
deity and not from ourselves," or this from Epictetus, "It is
characteristic of a wise man that he looks for all his good and evil
from himself." Such independence was foreign to a race that believed
itself _fallen_.

In further confirmation of our position, it may be said that the
models which the Pagans set up for emulation were men like themselves,
only nobler. The models which the Orientals set up for imitation, on
the other hand, were supernatural beings, or men who were supposed to
possess supernatural powers. The great men for the Oriental are men
who can work miracles, who possess magical powers, who possess secrets
and can know how to influence the deity,--Moses, Joshua, David,
Joseph, Isaiah, Jesus, Paul,--all demi-divinities. The Pagans, on the
other hand, selected natural men, men like themselves, who had earned
the admiration of their fellows. Let me quote to you Plutarch's
eloquent sentence relative to this subject: "Whenever we begin an
enterprise or take possession of a charge, or experience a calamity,
we place before our eyes the examples of the greatest men of our own
or of bygone ages, and we ask ourselves how Plato, or Epaminondas, or
Lycurgus, or Agesilaus, would have acted. Looking into these
personages, as into a faithful mirror, we can remedy our defects in
word or deed."

The Westminster Catechism, which in its essentials is a resume of our
Asiatic religion, emphasizes the doctrine of the fall of man, of which
the Pagan world knew nothing, and refused to believe it until priests
succeeded in dominating the mind of Europe: "The catechism following
the Scripture teaches that...we are not only a disinherited family,
but we are personally depraved and demoralized." [Footnote:
Westminster Catechism, Comments.] Goodness! the Oriental imagination,
abused by slavery, cannot rid itself of the idea of being
disinherited, turned out into the cold, orphaned and smitten with
moral sores from head to foot. To the Pagan, such a description of man
would have been the acme of absurdity. Again: "It (the fall) affirms
that he (man) is all wrong, in all things and all the time."
[Footnote: Westminster Catechism, Comments.] If this was comforting
news to the Asiatic, the Pagan world would have rejected the idea as
unworthy of men in their senses. Once more: "All mankind by their fall
lost communion with God, are under his wrath and curse, and so made
liable to all miseries in this life and to the pains of hell forever."
[Footnote: Westminster Catechism, Comments.] And this is the Gospel we
have imported from Asia!

Is it not pathetic? Could slavery ever strike a deeper bottom than
that? Standing before his owner, the Asiatic, of his own choice, hands
himself over to be degraded, to be placed in chains and delivered up
to the torments of hell forever. I despair of man. I would cry my
heart out if I permitted myself to dwell upon the folly and stupidity
and slavery of which man voluntarily makes himself the victim. Think
of it! A man and a woman, nobody knows where or when, are supposed to
have tasted of the fruit of a tree; the Oriental mind, with its
crouching imagination, pounces upon this flimsy, fanciful tale with
the appetite of a carrion crow, and exalts it to the dignity of an
excuse for the eternal damnation of a whole world. I am dazed! I can
say no more!

Let us recapitulate. The Oriental distrust of the natural man, born of
self-depreciation, which is the fruit of prolonged slavery, develops
into a sort of mental canker spreading at a raging pace until the
whole universe, with its glorious sun and stars, becomes an object of
horror and loathing. Not satisfied with thinking of himself as a worm,
of his intellectual and moral nature as totally depraved, he
communicates his disease to the world in which he lives until it, too,
shrinks and wastes away. Then the disease, finding no more on this
side of the grave to feed upon, leaps over the grave and converts the
beyond, the virgin worlds, into an _inferno_ with which to satiate its
fear. Indeed frightful are the thoughts of a slave people!

Let me now, in conclusion, call your attention to another difference
between the Occidental and the Oriental mind. When the body is feeble
or ill-nourished, it is less liable to resist disease; likewise when the
mind is alarmed, cowed, or pinched with fear, it becomes more exposed
to superstition. Superstition is the disease of the mind. It will keep
away from robust minds, as physical disease from a body in health. Now,
the Asiatic mind, scared into silence and subjection,--starved to a
mere shadow of what it should be, falls an easy prey to all the maladies
that mind is heir to. The European mind, on the other hand, with room
and air to move and grow in, develops a vitality which offers resistance
to all attacks of mental disease. That explains why superstition thrives
with ignorance and slavery, and expires when science and liberty gain
the ascendency. Sanitary precautions prevent physical disease; knowledge
and liberty constitute the therapeutics of the mind. Why is the Oriental
so prone or partial to miracle and mystery? His mind is sick. To believe
is easier to him than to reason. He follows the line of the least
resistance: he has invented faith that he may not have to think. The
mental cells in his brain are so starved, so devitalized, that they have
to be whipped into movement. Only the bizarre, the monstrous, the
supernatural,--demons, ghosts, dream worlds, miracles and mysteries,--can
hold his attention. Not science, but metaphysics, barren speculation,--is
the product of the Oriental mind. The philosopher Bacon describes the
Asiatic when he speaks of men who "have hitherto dwelt but little, or
rather only slightly touched upon experience, whilst they have wasted
much time on theories and fictions of the imagination."

Again: I sometimes think that if it be true that monotheism, the idea
of one God, was first discovered in Asia, it must have been suggested
to them by the regime of Absolutism, under which they lived. Unlike
Asia, democratic Europe believed in a republic of gods. Polytheism is
more consonant with the republican idea, than monotheism. If we would
let the American President rule the land without the aid of the two
houses of congress or his cabinet ministers, his power would be
infinitely more than it is now, but his gain would be the people's
loss. His increased power would only represent so much more power
taken away from the people. One God means not only more slaves, but
more abject, more helpless ones. One God is a centralization which
reduces man's liberty to a minimum. With more gods, and gods at times
disagreeing among themselves, and all bidding for man's support, man
would count for more. The Greeks could not tolerate a Jehovah, or an
Allah, before whom the Oriental rabble bent the knee. "Allah knows,"
exclaims the Moslem; that is why the Mohammedans continue in
ignorance. "Allah is great," cries again the Turk. That is why he
himself is small. The more powerful the sovereign, the smaller the
subject.

Now this leads us to a final reflection upon the difference between
the mind brought up under restraint,--in slavery,--and the mind of the
free. "The Pagan," to quote Lecky, "believed that to become acceptable
to the deity, one must be virtuous;" the Asiatic doctrine, on the
contrary, taught that "the most heroic efforts of human virtue are
insufficient to avert a sentence of eternal condemnation, unless
united with an implicit belief" in the dogmas of religion. In other
words, the noblest of men cannot be saved by his own merits of
character alone, for even when we have done our best, we are but
"unprofitable slaves," quoting a Bible text. Only by the merits of
Christ, or by the grace of God, can any man be saved. Have you ever
paused to think of the purport of this piece of Orientalism? It wipes
out every imaginable claim or right of man. Even when he is just and
great and good, he has no rights, he is as vile as the vilest. Only
the favor of the king can save,--only the grace of God, who can save
the thief on the cross if he so pleases. Is he not absolute? If he
extends his scepter, you live; if he smiles you are spared; if he
patronizes you, you are fortunate. He says, live! you live. He says,
die! you die. This is the apotheosis of despotism exalted into a
revelation.

What, then, is our creed, but the thoughts of an eastern slave
population, cringing before the throne of a Sultan, and one by one
signing away their liberties? "The foundation of all real grandeur is
a spirit of proud and lofty independence," says Buckle; but that is
not the spirit of Asia, or of its religion. It is, and we ought to try
to keep it, the spirit of the Western world.

I cannot imagine how we in this country, born of sturdy parents, born
of the freedom-loving Pagans of Rome and Greece, born of men who shook
their hands in the face of heaven, and pulled the gods off their
thrones when they violated the rights of man,--I cannot understand how
we have thrown overboard the proud, lofty spirit of independence of
the Pagans,--our forefathers, and taken upon our necks the strangling
yoke of the slave-thought of Asia!




[Illustration: Christ, Half Woman, at Baptism in Jordan. Cathedral of
Chartres, France.]





PART III.




SOME MODERN OPINIONS ABOUT JESUS.

_Christianity "dwells with noxious exaggeration about the person of
Jesus."_--Emerson.



Christmas is the season in the year when pulpit and press dwell, with
what Emerson calls "noxious exaggeration," about the work and life, as
well as the person of Jesus. We have, lying before us, the Christmas
sermon of so progressive a teacher as the Rev. Jenkin Lloyd Jones.
[Footnote: Unitarian-Independent preacher of All Souls Church,
Chicago.] Here is his text: "And the Word became flesh and dwelt among
us, and we beheld his glory, glory as of the only begotten from the
Father."--John 1:14. How our educated neighbor can find food for sober
reflection in so mystical and metaphysical an effusion, is more than
we can tell. Who is the _Word_ that became flesh? And when did the
event take place? What does it mean to be the "only begotten from
the Father?" We know what it means in the orthodox sense, but what
does it mean from the Unitarian standpoint of Mr. Jones? But the text
faithfully reflects the discourse which follows. It is replete with
unlimited compliments to this _Word_ which became flesh and assumed
the name of Jesus. The following is a fair sample:

"I am compelled to think of Jesus of Nazareth as an epoch-making soul,
an era-forming spirit, a character in whom the light of an illustrious
race and a holy ancestry was focalized, a personality from which
radiated that subtle, creative power of the spirit which defies all
analysis, which baffles definition, which overflows all words."

Goodness! this is strong rhetoric, and we regret that the evidence
justifying so sweeping an appreciation has been withheld from us.
Although the doctor says that Jesus "defies all analysis, baffles
definition and overflows all words," he nevertheless proceeds to
devote fifteen pages to the impossible task. "I am compelled to think
of him as one who won the right of preeminence in the world's
history," continues Mr. Jones, as if he had not said enough.

That is a definite claim, and personally, we would be glad to see it
made good. But truth compels us to state that the claim is unjust.
Without entering into the question of the authenticity of the gospels,
a question which we have discussed at some length in our pamphlet on
the "Worship of Jesus," we beg to submit that there is nothing in the
gospels,--the only records which speak of him,--to entitle him to the
"right of preeminence in the world's history." No one knows better
than Mr. Jones that the sayings attributed to Jesus--the finest of
them--are to be found in the writings of Jewish and Pagan teachers
antedating the birth of Jesus by many centuries.

Was it, then, for his "works," if not for his "words," that Jesus "won
the right of preeminence in the world's history"? What did he do that
was not done by his predecessors? Was he the only one who worked
miracles? Had the dead never been raised before? Had the blind, and
the lame, and the deaf, remained altogether neglected before Jesus
took compassion upon them? Moreover, what credit is there in opening
the eyes of the blind or in raising the dead by miracle? Did it cost
Jesus any effort to perform miracles? Did it imply a sacrifice on his
part to utilize a small measure of his _infinite_ power for the
good of man? Who, if he could by miracle feed the hungry, clothe the
naked and give light and sound to the blind and deaf, would be selfish
enough not to do so? If Mr. Jones does not believe in miracles, then
Jesus contributed even less than many a doctor contributes today to
the welfare of the world. More poor and diseased people are visited
and medicined gratuitously by a modern physician in one month, than
Jesus cured miraculously in the two or three years of his career.
Jesus, if he was "the only begotten of God," as Mr. Jones' text
states, was not in any danger of contracting disease himself, which is
not the case with the doctors and nurses who extend their services to
people afflicted with contagious and abhorrent diseases. Moreover,
Jesus' power must have come to him divinely, while we have to study,
labor, and conquer with the sweat of our brow any power for good that
we may possess. If Jesus as a God opened the eyes of the blind, would
it not have been kinder if he had prevented blindness altogether? If
Jesus can open the eyes of the blind, then, why is there blindness in
the world? How many of the world's multitude of sufferers did Jesus
help? Which of us, if he had the divine power, would not have extended
it unto every suffering child of man? Of what benefit is it to open
the eyes of a few blind people, two thousand years ago, in one
country, when he could, by his unique divinity, have done so much
more? Mr. Jones falls into the orthodox habit of not applying to Jesus
the same canons of criticism by which _human_ beings are judged.

But perhaps the "preeminence of Jesus" lay in his willingness to give
his life for us. Noble is every soul who prefers truth and duty to
life. But was Jesus the only one, or even the first to offer himself
as a sacrifice upon the altar of humanity? If Jesus died for us, how
many thousands have died for him--and by infinitely more cruel deaths?
It is easier for an "only begotten" of God, himself a God--who knows
death can have no power over him--who sees a throne prepared for him
in heaven--who is sure of rising from the dead on the third day--to
face death, than for an ordinary mortal. Yet Jesus showed less
courage, if his reporters are reliable, than almost any martyr whose
name shines upon memory's golden page.

The European churches are full of pictures showing Jesus suffering
indescribable agonies as the critical hour draws nigh. We saw, in
Paris, a painting called "The Holy Face," _La Sainte Face_, which
was, truly, too horrible to look upon; big tears of blood trickling
down his cheeks, his head almost drooping over his chest, an
expression of excruciating pain upon his features, his eyes fairly
imploring for help,--he is really breaking down under the weight of
his cross. Compare this picture with the serenity of Socrates drinking
the hemlock in prison!

Nor would it do to say that this is only the Catholic way of
representing Jesus in his passion. The picture is in the gospels, it
may be seen in the Garden of Gethsemane and on the cross with all its
realism. Far be it from us to withhold from Jesus, if he really
suffered as the gospels report, one iota of the love and sympathy he
deserves, but why convert the whole world into a black canvas upon
which to throw the sole figure of Jesus? Which of us, poor, weak,
sinful though we are, would not be glad to give his life, if thereby
he could save a world? Do you think we would mourn and groan and weep
tears of blood, or collapse, just when we should be the bravest, if we
thought that by our death we would become the divine Savior of all
mankind? Would we stammer, "Let this cup pass from me, if it be
possible," or tear our hearts with a cry of despair: "My God, my God,
why hast thou forsaken me," if we knew that the eternal welfare of the
human race depended upon our death? If the Russian or Japanese soldier
can take his home and wife and children,--his hopes and loves, his
life,--his all,--and throw them into the mouth of the cannon, dying
with a shout upon his lips,--who would hesitate to do the same, when
not the salvation of one country alone, but of the whole world,
depended upon it? There are examples of heroism in the annals of man
which would bring the blush to the cheeks of Jesus, if his biographers
have not abused his memory.

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