The Two Tests: The Supernatural Claims of Christianity Tried By Two Of Its Own Rules Part 2

1.. The deity begetting a mortal child by a mortal woman, was this a Jewish or a Gentile idea? That it was not a Jewish idea will be shown when the alleged fulfilment of Isaiah vii. 14,--"Behold a virgin shall conceive" &c., is considered. That it was a common Gentile idea is most manifest. A glowing account of Jupiter's commerce with the fair ones of the earth is to be found in his amorous address to his sister-wife Juno (_Iliad_, Book xiv. 280-353). The other G.o.ds and G.o.ddesses in like manner bestowed their favours on mortals, and begat mortal children.

Plato was said to be the child of a virgin by Apollo. Apollo appeared to her betrothed in a dream, and told him his bride was with child, on which he delayed his marriage. What is this but the tale of Mary and Joseph in another form? Which is the original? Plutarch also mentions that a similar notion was held by the Egyptians, but of male G.o.ds only.

"The Egyptians, indeed, make a distinction in this case, which they think not an absurd one, that it is not impossible for a woman to be impregnated by the approach of some divine spirit, but that a man can have no corporeal intercourse with a G.o.ddess." This is an exactly similar notion to Luke's "overshadowing" of Mary. "Out of Egypt have I called my son," is perfectly true in a sense. Confucius also, in one of the sacred books of the Chinese, refers to the great Holy One, who would appear in the latter days, born of a virgin, whose name shall be the Prince of Peace.

Similar, too, are the legends of the fabled founders of some, to whom so many of the civil and religious inst.i.tutions of the city were ascribed.

Romulus and Remus were sons of the war-G.o.d Mars. Their mother Rhea took refuge in a cave: the meeting of the G.o.d and the mortal was attended by prodigies: the heaven was darkened, the sun eclipsed: her celestial lover announced to Rhea that she should bear twin-sons, to be renowned in arms, and then ascended in a cloud from the earth. Servius Tullius, also, had a like origin. His mother, a slave in the household of Tarquin, beheld a divine appearance on the hearth, and afterwards was "found with child" by the G.o.d. The child, when born, was named Servius, from his mother's condition. During its sleep she saw its head surrounded by flames, which were extinguished when she awakened it. The founder, likewise, of the Sabine town of Cures was a son of Mars. His mother, a virgin of n.o.ble family, seized with divine favour, while dancing in the temple, entered the shrine, and became pregnant by the G.o.d. Her son, she is told, would be of superhuman beauty, matchless in deeds of arms. So that a Roman on his conversion had merely to transfer to Jesus a like belief to those in which he had been nurtured with reference to the births of the fabled founders and ancient kings of his own city, up to whom the political and religious practices which he had been taught to regard as sacred were traced. To him there would have been nothing incredible in the story of Mary's conception. The claim of the church _of Rome_ to be the true church of Christ may thus, in a certain sense, be cordially acquiesced in.

2. The Son of G.o.d, by a mortal woman, brought up as the child of that woman and her husband,--Is that a proceeding proper to the deity of the Old Testament? The writings and the spirit of Moses and the prophets emphatically answer, No.

But it exactly corresponds with the Grecian legends of the "father of G.o.ds and men." The suffering hero Hercules, son of Jupiter and Alcmena, brought up by her and her husband Amphitryon, is a memorable pagan tale of a kindred character.

3. The birth of an ill.u.s.trious personage made manifest by a star,--Is that consistent with the attributes of the Jewish Jehovah? The stars in the Old Testament are ever referred to as witnesses to the might of the Eternal, and those who sought to divine earthly events by their courses, conjunctions, or appearances, were treated with derision. "Let now the astrologers, the stargazers, the monthly prognosticators stand up and save thee from these things that shall come upon thee." This is addressed by Isaiah, xlvii. 13, to the daughter of the Chaldeans, Babylon. Matthew's stargazing wise men would thus have been "spued out of the mouth" of the Jewish Jehovah.

CHAPTER II. THE SUPERNATURAL TESTIMONIES DURING THE LIFETIME OF JESUS

(a.) The descent of the Holy Spirit, like a dove, and the voice from heaven, at his baptism. (b.) The transfiguration, and the voice then heard; also the voice from heaven, mentioned in John xii 28-31. (c.) The testimony of the devils. (d.) The forty days' fast, the temptation by Satan, and the subsequent ministration of angels. (e) The earthquake and rending of the veil of the temple at the crucifixion.

(a.) _The occurrences at the baptism_ (Matt. iii.; Mark i. 1-11; Luke iii. 21, 22; John i. 29-34).

FIRST TEST.--"_In the mouth of two or three witnesses shall every word be established_."

In the fourth gospel the account given is expressly stated to be the record of John the Baptist. It does not appear from whom the particulars in the other three gospels were derived.

With the exception of the angel-visit to Zacharias, at his birth, and the dove and voice at the baptism of Jesus, there is nothing supernatural in connection with John. He is represented as a plain-spoken, downright enthusiast, held in esteem by king and people, and as appropriating to himself the prophecy of Isaiah--"A voice of one crying in the wilderness, preparing the way of the Lord, making straight in the desert a highway for our G.o.d." He lived a rude life in the desert, practised fasting and purifying, and baptized his followers. By his outspokenness he incurred the enmity of Herodias, the wife of Herod, who obtained his head as a reward for the pleasure given to her husband by her daughter's dancing. In comparing then his record, as found in John, with the statements of Matthew, Mark, and Luke, one most marked divergence appears. The latter a.s.sert that, on Jesus coming to be baptized, the Baptist objected, saying, "I have need to be baptized of thee, comest thou to me:" thus implying a knowledge on John's part that Jesus was the Christ. Whereas the former pointedly states, on John's own authority that _he did not know_ Jesus as the Messiah until the supernatural appearance of the dove occurred. "_I knew him not_, but he that sent me to baptize with water, the same said unto me," &c.. If the account in the fourth gospel then is true, Matthew's account on this point must be false, and the angel-appearance to Zacharias, and John's gladsome leap in his mother's womb on Mary's salutation of Elizabeth, are discredited. Cousin Elizabeth addressed Mary as "the mother of my Lord;" and had this been so, would not John have been brought up in the belief that Jesus was "the Lord," whose advent he was to prepare? Again, the "record" of John the Baptist in the fourth gospel does not confirm or corroborate the "voice from heaven, This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased," at the baptism, mentioned in the other gospels. John would surely have heard these wondrous words, and could not well have forgotten them.

SECOND TEST.---_The claim of the New Testament to represent the Jewish Jehovah_.

1. A point to be specially noticed is John's declaration, that he who sent him to baptize with water had charged him that the Messiah would be made manifest by the spirit of G.o.d descending from heaven like a dove, and alighting and remaining on him. John affirms that he bare record that Jesus was the Son of G.o.d, because in his case this condition was fulfilled. Now, who sent John to baptize with water? Is there anything in the Old Testament scriptures to give baptism with water place as an ordinance of the being therein upheld as divine, and whom both John the Baptist and Jesus claimed to represent? Not one word! Who, then, sent John to baptize with water? Did he receive his directions from angels in dreams or otherwise? Some of the l.u.s.trations in connection with the heathen temples were, however, very similar to the ordinance of baptism since practised among Christians.

2. The spirit of the Eternal in a bodily shape like a dove! is that an Old Testament prediction, an Old Testament belief? Let the following pa.s.sages reply:--Isaiah xl. 25, "To whom then will ye liken me, or shall I be equal? saith the Holy One. Lift up your eyes on high, and behold who hath created these things, that bringeth out their host by number,"

&c. Deut. iv. 15-17,--"Take ye therefore good heed unto yourselves; for ye saw no manner of similitude on the day that the Lord spake unto you in h.o.r.eb out of the midst of the fire: lest ye corrupt yourselves, and make you a graven image, the similitude of any figure, the likeness of male or female, the likeness of any beast that is on the earth, the likeness of any winged fowl that flieth in the air," &c. Here then, at the very outset, are John the Baptist and Jesus represented as connected with a marvellous event, utterly abhorrent to the Old Testament deity, whose will and purpose they claimed to be fulfilling!

But though the conception of the deity appearing in the shape of any bird or beast was wholly foreign to the Old Testament writers, it was one quite familiar to the heathen world. In the _Iliad_, for instance, the G.o.d Sleep, like the shrill bird of night, alighting, perched on the loftiest fir on Mount Ida, to aid the amorous design of Juno on mightiest Jove; Apollo and Pallas were seated on a lofty beech, like two vultures, to watch the duel between Ajax and Hector. The Egyptian deities had each their appropriate symbol-beast, bird, or reptile. A dove, as an emblem of meekness and peace, was no doubt deemed by the gospel compilers the most fitting of what they wished to convey as the mission of Jesus; but the conception being heathen, and not Jewish, it discredits the claim of Christianity, that the New Testament is a continuation and fulfilment of the Old.

(h) The transfiguration, &c. (Matt. xvii. 1-13; Mark ix, 243; Luke ix.

28-36). Jesus took Peter and James and John along with him into a high mountain apart to pray. While praying he was transfigured before them; his face shone as the sun; his raiment glistened; Moses and Elias appeared in glory talking with him, and spoke of the decease which he should accomplish at Jerusalem; Peter and the others were heavy with sleep, but when awake they saw his glory and the two that were with him; Peter, in bewilderment, suggested that three tabernacles be made, one for Jesus, one for Moses, and one for Elias; a bright cloud overshadowed them, and a voice out of the cloud said, "This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased." On this the disciples fell on their faces in fear, and when they revived they saw no one except Jesus himself. He charged them to conceal what they had seen until after his resurrection.

_John_ makes no mention of the transfiguration; but in chapter xii 28-30, when Jesus is at Jerusalem "exhorting the people, and praying, Father, glorify thy name; then came there a voice from heaven, saying, I have both glorified it, and will glorify it again. The people, there-tore, that stood by and heard it said that it thundered, others said, An angel spake to him. Jesus answered and said, This voice came not because of me, but for your sakes."

Peter, 2nd epistle i. 17,--"For he received from G.o.d the Father honour and glory, when there came such a voice to him from the excellent glory, This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased. And this voice, which came from heaven, we heard when we were with him in the holy mount."

The idea is an old one that because light of intense brilliancy dazzles the human eye it is therefore the dwelling-place and the raiment of the inhabitants of heaven, pictured thus as a refulgent abode with refulgent beings. "Who coverest thyself with light as with a garment" (Psalm civ.

2); "At length do thou come, we pray, with a cloud thy s.h.i.+ning shoulders veiled, O Augur Apollo!" (Horace i. 2, 31,) are instances. Glory and dazzling light meant the same thing. Now, light is known to be one of the forms in which force manifests itself, convertible into the other force-forms, and the other force-forms, convertible into it. Still, the account of the transfiguration, if the evidence on which it rests were at all trustworthy, would be a very important credential to the supernatural pretensions of Jesus, under the claim that such special manifestations of a Power beyond and supreme over Nature were made so as best to suit the comprehension of those for whom they were intended, and as showing that Jesus could so command the force-forms of Nature as to irradiate his person at will. What, then, is the evidence? The persons who witnessed the occurrence were Peter, James, and John, and while it lasted they were in a state of bewilderment, and part of the time asleep. Jesus commanded them to conceal what they had seen until after his resurrection. Matthew, therefore, could not have heard of it at the time it happened, and he does not state from whom he received the particulars he narrates. Perhaps from the forward Peter, who, in his epistle quoted above, confirms the account. For, strange to say, John, the other eye-witness, has not one word in support of the supernatural appearance on the mount of transfiguration. Of three eyewitnesses there is only the testimony of one, Peter; and although John, one of the others, has written an account of the life of Jesus, he pa.s.ses by this striking event in silence. So the evidence fails. Can it, then, have been a dream of Peter, when with Jesus, James, and John in some lonely mountain in Galilee?

But though John does not mention the marvellous transfiguration, and the voice from heaven then heard, he does narrate a somewhat similar occurrence, in broad day, at Jerusalem. But Matthew, who would have been present, does not confirm John's statement. What, then, is to be said?

What faith can righteously rest on such testimony?

(c.) _The testimonies of the devils_ (Matt. viii. 29; x.x.xi. 32; Mark i.

24; i. 34; iii 11, 12; v. 7; Luke iv. 34; iv. 41; viii. 28).

(1.) Devils, who came out of many, cried out that Jesus was Christ, the Son of G.o.d; but he rebuked them and suffered them not to speak, because they knew him. (2.) Some expressed fear of his power thus, "Let us alone, what have we to do with thee, Jesus of Nazareth? Art thou come to destroy us? to torment us before the time? I know thee who thou art, the Holy One of G.o.d." (3.) The following remarkable event is recorded: A man with an unclean spirit, untamable, who had burst asunder his chains and fetters, and was always, night and day, in the mountains and among the tombs, crying and cutting himself with stones, saw Jesus afar off, ran and wors.h.i.+pped him, exclaiming, "What have I to do with thee, Jesus, the Son of the most high G.o.d? I adjure thee by G.o.d that thou torment me not." Jesus asked him, "What is thy name?" and he replied, "My name is Legion, for we are many." Jesus cast out the legion, and, at their own request, gave c them permission to enter a herd of two thousand swine feeding close by, with the result that they all ran violently down a steep place into the sea, and were choked. What became of the devils is not mentioned.

Paul (1 Cor. x. 20) states, "The things which the Gentiles sacrifice, they sacrifice to devils, and not to G.o.d," devils here being synonymous with the idols or G.o.ds of the Gentiles. In the following four pa.s.sages in which devils are mentioned in the Old Testament (Lev. xvii. 7; Deut.

x.x.xii. 17; 2 Chron. xi. 15; Psalm cvi. 37), the word is used in exactly the same sense as by Paul. "Devils," then, as indwelling unclean spirits, madly swaying their victims, or producing lunacy, blindness, dumbness, or other infirmities, are beings or influences quite unknown to the Old Testament writers. Moreover, in the Old Testament the heathen G.o.ds, though called devils, are derided as powerless. (See Elijah's mockery of Baal, and such pa.s.sages as Psalm cx.x.xv. 15, 18.) In the fourth Gospel, too, there is scarcely any confirmation of the unclean spirits. The Jews, indeed, tell Jesus that he hath a devil, and is mad, showing a belief on their part of possession in some form; but John does not corroborate one single instance of the devil-manifestations and exorcisms so prominently set forth in the other Gospels. If, then, in Jesus' time there was a notion current among the Jews that madness and natural diseases and defects were manifestations of the so-called evil principle, or were evil spirits or influences, whence was this most erroneous doctrine derived? Certainly not from their own Old Testament writings. So far, therefore, the Old Testament discredits the accounts in Matthew, Mark, and Luke of the devils and their influences. It does not recognise beings or powers acting in the way described. And John's silence const.i.tutes a fatal defect in the evidence in support of these manifestations.

In the Old Testament (in such pa.s.sages as Lev. xix. 31; xx. 27; Deut.

xviii. 9, 12; Isa. viii. 19) reference is made to wizards, witches, and familiar spirits. Although the more ignorant and idol-affecting Israelites, and the G.o.dforsaken Saul were attracted by such pretences, it does not appear that Moses or the prophets believed that they were real powers. Isaiah viii. 19 implies the contrary. Moses calls them the "abominations of those nations" whom the Lord was to drive out of Palestine from before the children of Israel. The gift they a.s.sumed was blasphemy against Jehovah, usurpation of the prerogative of him who "alone doeth wondrous things;" and this being so, they were to be cut off from among his people. But the possession of a familiar spirit with a gift of divination, or the power of witchcraft, or the evil spirit which put dissension between Abimelech and the Shechemites, or the evil spirit from the Lord manifested in Saul's jealousy of David, and occasionally succ.u.mbing to the charm of David's harp, or the lying spirit put by the Lord in the mouths of the prophets of Ahab, differ greatly from such evil spirits,--_personal, separate from their victims, entering in, and coming out of them_, as the "legion" mentioned above, or the demon-torn youth (Luke ix. 37, 42), or the devil that was dumb (Luke xi. 14).*

* The a.s.syrians and Babylonians, however, among whom the captive Jews were afterwards placed, believed that the world teemed with malignant spirits, who were the authors of the various diseases to which mankind are subject. The Jews of the Talmud were imbued with the same idea.

In the Apocryphal book of Tobit, also, the evil spirit Asmodeus, who killed the seven husbands of Raguel's daughter as they approached her, and who was at last driven forth by the smoke of the "ashes of the perfumes and of the heart and liver of a fish," so that he "fled into the utmost parts of Egypt, and the angel bound him," differs from the New Testament evil spirits in that he is represented rather as "attendant" on the maiden, than as "indwelling," but has this similarity to them that he is mentioned as a distinct person, exercising a malignant influence.

In a stela found at Thebes it is recorded that Barneses XII., while on his way through Mesopotamia to collect tribute, was so enraptured with the charms of a chieftain's daughter that he married her. Her father afterwards came to Thebes, to beg of the king the services of a physician to effect the cure of a younger daughter possessed by an evil spirit. The physician sent, like Jesus' disciples (Luke ix. 40), could not cast him out, and eleven years later the father went again to Thebes to sue the G.o.ds of Egypt for more effectual aid. The king then gave him the use of the ark of the G.o.d Chons, which on arriving in Mesopotamia, after a journey of eighteen months, immediately drove forth the evil spirit from out his victim. On this the Mesopotamian chieftain was unwilling to part with the ark; but after retaining it three years and nine months, being warned in a dream in which he saw the deity fly back to Egypt in the shape of a golden hawk, he returned the ark to Egypt, in the thirty-third year of Rameses.

The Zoroastrian conception of the prince of the "devils," Ahriman, and his attendant powers, reminds forcibly of the taunt of the Jews to Jesus, "He casteth out devils through Beelzebub, the chief of the devils." But how unlike this conception is to that of the impotent G.o.d of Ekron Beelzebub, referred to in 2 Kings i.

These instances abundantly suffice to show that the belief held by the Jews in the time of Jesus, as to possession by evil or unclean spirits, or demons, or devils, was a belief gathered from the nations among whom they were scattered after the first captivity, and that it would have been held by Moses as an "abomination of those nations." What, then, becomes of the testimony of the devils to the claim of Jesus? Moses and the prophets would have held it in derision.

(d.) _The temptation in the wilderness_ (Matt. iv. 1-11; Mark i. 12, 13; Luke iv. 1, 13).

Jesus, after his baptism, was led by the spirit into the wilderness to be tempted of the devil. (1.) He fasted forty days and nights, and was then hungered, when the tempter came to him requiring that, if he were the son of G.o.d, he would turn the stones into bread. Jesus replied by a verse from Deuteronomy,--"Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of G.o.d." (2, Luke makes this 3.) Then the devil took him to Jerusalem, and setting him on a pinnacle of the temple, said "If thou be the Son of G.o.d, cast thyself down, for it is written, he shall give his angels charge concerning thee and, in their hands they shall bear thee up, lest at any time thou dash thy foot against a stone." Jesus again replied by a verse from Deuteronomy, "Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy G.o.d." (3, Luke makes this 2.) The devil then took him up to the summit of a very high mountain, showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their glory, and said, "All these things will I give thee if thou wilt fall down and wors.h.i.+p me," Jesus the third time, after a "Get thee hence Satan," replied by a verse from Deuteronomy, "Thou shalt wors.h.i.+p the Lord thy G.o.d, and him only shalt thou serve." On this the devil left him, and angels came and ministered to him.

The two persons here concerned were Jesus and Satan. The testimony of the latter ill.u.s.trious personage is out of the question, partly because he is not famed as a truthteller, partly because any intercourse between him and the writers of the New Testament is not to be thought of. If, then, Jesus gave the particulars to Matthew, why did the best-loved disciple John not know of them? The details of the earlier life of Jesus, prior to the Baptist's imprisonment, are more ample in his Gospel than in the others; but so far from there being any mention of the temptation, it would require much ingenuity to find a place for it in the series of events he relates.

The most admirable lesson, however, which the tale conveys, or which may be gathered from it, that neither for daily bread nor for vain-glory, nor for the sake of power and riches is truth in aught to be compromised or swerved from, may help to sustain those who go along with the present inquiry to persevere with it to the uttermost, whatever the consequences or whatever the conclusions it may lead to, think as they may of the forty days' fast, the wilderness and the wild beasts, Satan and the angels.

It will be proper here to contrast the conception of "Satan" in the New Testament with that in the Old.

The Satan of the temptation was a being capable of transporting Jesus from the wilderness to the pinnacle of the temple in Jerusalem, and again to a mountain summit, where, in a moment of time, he showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their glory, the disposal of whose dominion he arrogated to himself. Again--Matt. xii. 22, 30--Jesus refers to Satan as the king of a demon kingdom opposed to the kingdom of G.o.d; Mark iv. 15, as preventing the words of life from taking root in men's hearts; Luke x. 18, as one he himself had seen fall from heaven like lightning; Luke xiii. 16, as one who had bound a woman with infirmity eighteen years; Luke xxii. 31, as desirous to sift Simon Peter as wheat; Matt. xiii. 39, as the enemy who sowed the tares among the wheat; Matt xxv. 41, as the being for whom and for whose angels everlasting fire has been prepared; John viii. 44, as the parent of the unbelieving Jews, a murderer, and the father of lies. In Luke xxii. 3, John xiii. 27, Satan is referred to as entering into Judas Iscariot to tempt him to betray Jesus.

In the apostolic writings he is mentioned--Acts v. 3--as filling the heart of Ananias to lie to the Holy Ghost; Acts xxvi. 18, as a power over men's minds opposed to the power of G.o.d; 1 Tim. i. 20, and 1 Cor.

v. 5, as one to whom backsliders were to be delivered over; 2 Cor. ii.

11, Eph. vi. 11, 1 Tim. iii. 7, as a wily adversary; 2 Cor. xi. 14, as transformed into an angel of light; 1 Thess. ii. 18, as thwarting Paul's intentions; 2 Thess. ii 9, as one whose working is "with all power, and signs, and lying wonders;" 1 Tim. v. 15, as one to whom backsliders turn aside; 2 Tim. ii. 26, as an ensnarer of men; Heb. ii. 14, as "him that hath the power of death;" 1 Peter v. 8, as "your adversary the devil,"

who, "as a roaring lion, goeth about seeking whom he may devour;" 1 John iii 8, as "him who sinneth from the beginning;" Rev. ii. 9, 10, 13-24, iii. 9, as possessing a seat, a synagogue, and casting the true professors into prison; Rev. xii. 9, as "the great dragon who was cast out (from heaven), that old serpent called the devil and Satan, who deceiveth the whole world: he was cast out into the earth, and his angels were cast out with him;" Rev. xii. 10, as "the constant accuser of the brethren;" Rev. xx. 2, as being bound a thousand years.

Of this mighty and malignant being, is there any trace in the Old Testament? Is the existence of such a person, such a power, continuously and successfully working against G.o.d, consonant with Old Testament belief? Isaiah (xlv. 5-7) boldly and decisively replies in the negative: "I am the Lord, and there is none else, there is no G.o.d beside me.... I form the light and create darkness, I make peace and create evil; I the Lord do all these things." Who or what, then, is the Satan of the Old Testament?

The translation of the Authorised Version, as it renders the same Hebrew word "Satan" in one place and "adversary" in others, tends to mislead.

But the following portions of Psalm cix. will show how the word was employed:--

Verse 6--"Set thou a wicked man over him, and let Satan (an adversary) stand at his right hand." Verse 20--"Let this be the reward of my adversaries (my Satans)." Verse 29--"Let mine adversaries (my Satans) be clothed with shame."

The Old Testament Satan, therefore, is _not a particular person at all, but a character which would apply to any one acting in opposition to another_. Let this view be tested by the following instances:--

Numbers xxii. 22--"And G.o.d's anger was kindled because he (Balaam) went, and the angel of the Lord stood in the way for an adversary (a Satan) against him." _Here the Satan is the angel of the Lord_. 2 Sam. xxiv.

1--"And again the anger of the Lord was kindled against Israel, and he provoked David to number Israel." 1 Chron. xxi. 1--"And Satan (an adversary) stood up against Israel, and provoked David to number Israel."