THE DARK AGES, AND AFTER.

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known a word of either language. They are also said to have been translated from Greek into Latin, but Professor Johnson tells us that "they prove beyond a doubt to have been written in Latin, and very badly rendered into Greek." He then explains what the object of the monks was in lying about this, and says it was that they wished to give the lustre of the association with the greatest of the learned languages to the Church, and to support another falsehood -viz., that the early Church was planted in Greek cities." The fact is, the monks, though they hated the Jews, could not do without them and their writings, for the doctrinal theories which they were building up, even up to the sixteenth century, had for their basis the Hebrew manuscripts. To complete the Christian story, they must represent the Jews as persecutors of the Church. Though the Messiah was gibbeted by the Roman Government-assuming the legend to be true--his real persecutors and murderers must be shown to be Jews; a Jew must persecute the Church and then become its apostle, so Saul of the O. T. must be reanimated, and his name changed in a miraculous manner, on his conversion, to Paul.

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During the "Dark Ages," the spirit of which was breathed by the Latin Father Tertullian when he said, "Desire for knowledge other than of Jesus, learning other than of the Gospel, is no longer necessary," very little manuscriptforging was effected until the Renaissance or revival of letters," in the early part of the sixteenth century, when large sums of money were offered for any manuscript which would support the claims of the Church against the disturbers of the peace of the Church-the Reformers. It was about this time that the Annals of Tacitus were fabricated, and it is highly probable that some of the Epistles were also fabricated, and others manipulated for the benefit and glory of the Church.

We must bear in mind that the Church existed during the Dark Ages, not on written Gospels, but on her creeds, liturgy, and tradition; there was no object, therefore, in following any literary pursuits, and certainly no room for science and intellectual progress in the cosmogony of these Dark Ages. Tertullian expressed, not only his own sentiment, but the sentiment of the whole Church, and, in fact, of Christian Europe, with the consequence that when Leland

returned from his tour of the monasteries in England, which lasted from 1533 till 1539, he could not muster a cartload of books from all the combined monastic libraries. "What characterizes the sixteenth-century historical literature," says Professor Johnson, " is an enormous propensity to lying in all its forms of monstrous inventions and exaggerations on the one hand, of suppression and concealment on the other...... The writings of Gildas and Bede are in reality part of the great collaboration of the literary monks of St. Benedict, and they have been ante-dated in accordance with their fabulous system, and have been ascribed to imaginary persons.

We have here an interesting picture of that great organization which calls itself the mouthpiece of Divinity and a moral teacher to mankind-lying and forging during the building-up age of the huge organization which was to enslave man; working of the Inquisition during the Dark Ages of her supremacy; and lying and forging again when the activity of men's minds and the progress of science wakened her up from her lethargy into further active life. And men possessing intellect and reason still wrangle over writings because they are bound up in a book, with gilt edges and morocco binding, emanating from such venal and untrustworthy sources.

After reading the preceding pages, the theory of inspiration will be seen to be absurd, for it would be impossible for divine inspiration to inspire or inspirit a book or books one minute, and to leave them the next as uninspired; and who is to know what are inspired and what are not inspired? Books that were inspired in one century of the Church's existence are in another uninspired. But there is not a shred of evidence forthcoming that any single writer of either the O. T. or N. T. was divinely inspired to write anything; and our primitive forefathers were quite as justified in averring that they had been on visits to the spirit world, and had talked with their dead relatives, when they dreamed, or that the spirits of the dead took temporary possession of their bodies during an epileptic fit. People who are inspired say it of themselves. Ezra said he was inspired to write the Pentateuch from memory. Mahomet claimed also to be

*The Pauline Epistles.

BIBLE INJUSTICE AND CRUELTY.

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inspired. Christians accept the one, and reject the other. Why?

In order to emphasize the folly and credulity of the theory of inspiration as applied to either writers or contents of the Bible, we reproduce below some specimens of divine. inspiriting, of the existence of which in the Bible the majority of Christians are ignorant, for they are carefully excluded from Christian teaching; but they nevertheless form part of that which they consider to be inspired, and upon which they stake their faith. And if by chance any of these undesirable passages should be noticed and questioned, they are carefully and skilfully explained away. To attribute divine origin to the following would be not only to deify the supreme power of the universe, but to place this power before mankind as a monster of iniquity; and it must be obvious to any person of ordinary intelligence that such unnecessarily obscene details of human life as are to be found in the Pentateuch could only be conceived by an ignorant, superstitious, coarse, and obscene people such as the Hebrews of that day were.

We commence with acts of INJUSTICE either committed or authorized by Jehovah (Yahuh). The burning of witches (Ex. xxii. 18; Lev. xx. 27)—the word witch is changed to sorceress in the R. V. Thousands of innocent women have been put to death through the teaching concerning this purely imaginary crime. The custom of burning witches was not abolished till 1736 in England, and as late as 1895 a Catholic in Ireland burned his wife as a witch, as we have previously noticed, calling on the evil spirits to come out of her." The sale of Sarah by her husband Abram-called "God's friend "-through a gross piece of deception, to the king of Egypt; her adultery with the latter, and the subsequent injustice by Yahuh in punishing the innocent king and rewarding the guilty Abram (Gen. xii. 10). The injustice of Yahuh towards Miriam, and the escape of Aaron, who was equally guilty (Num. xii. 10). Moses ordered to take all the heads of the people, and hang them up before him against the sun, because the Israelites of Shittim had committed whoredom with the Moabite women. The treacherous arrangement made by "the Lord" to murder Eglon, king of Moab, and the disgusting description of his death (Judges iii.

15-22); and the treachery and assassination in Judges iv. 9, 17-23; v. 24-31. The murder of 24,000 Israelites by a plague because one of their number had married a Midianite woman—“and Aaron's grandson took a javelin and thrust them both through, the man of Moab and the woman, through her belly." Yet Moses had married a Midianite woman (Ex. ii. 16–20).

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CRUELTY. Human sacrifice (Ex. xiii. 15; Lev. xxvii. 28; Num. xxv. 4). Slavery (Ex. xxi. 2, 20; Lev. xxv. 44). The sale of daughters for slave concubines (wrongly rendered "maid servants," Ex. xxi. 7). The permission to thrash a slave just short of death, so that he or she may linger a day or two" (Ex. xxi. 21). Slave-capturing expeditions (Deut. xx. 10). Wholesale violation of virgins, the Lord taking a considerable share of these for his priests (Num. xxi. 17–35); and of beautiful women, after capture in war, with permission to cruelly forsake them afterwards (Deut. xxi. 10-14). The murder of wife, children, and friends for differing in religion (Deut. xiii. 6). This was also the teaching of Jesus in the N. T. (Matt. x. 34), which has only too well been acted up to, for Christianism has been remarkable for the dissension it has produced in families, in accordance with the above teaching, which is so wicked in conception that it condemns the whole system of both Hebrew and Christian religion, as the invention of man. The stabbing of an innocent woman to stop a plague (Num. xxv. 8). The smiting by the Lord of all the firstborn of the Egyptians, and of animals, in Ex. xii. 29 (the firstborn of about 24,000 families), though the whole of the animals had already been twice destroyed (for all the cattle of Egypt died in Ex. ix. 6, and those that were within the field were killed by hail in 19-21), is rather amusing.

Here we have noticed woman treated by the man after God's own heart" (Moses), and by the chosen men under his charge, as little better than cattle-always presented in an unfavourable aspect as the cause of all misfortunes, and as a passive being, born to bring forth children as sheep bring forth lambs, for the purpose of increasing their master's stockin-trade. The iniquities committed towards woman which we have just enumerated-and they are by no means all that are to be found in the books of the O. T.-form part of the "scriptures" which Jesus exhorted his disciples to " search,"

for they would "make them wise unto salvation." Yet, strange to say, the very same system of priestcraft which kept her in the thraldom of slavery and degradation in ancient Hebrew days is now, in its modern representation, almost entirely supported by her. Where would modern ecclesiasticism be were it not for the love and devotion of woman, and the influence exercised by her over the opposite sex-husbands, brothers, fathers, and sons? It is another view of the same picture that in these days presents to us a wife, beaten by her brutal husband, and refusing to give evidence against him, frequently loving him the more.

DEATH FOR TRIVIAL BREACHES OF THE JEWISH CEREMONIAL LAW, such as-consulting wizards (Lev. xx. 6); worshipping another god than Yahuh, or for a matter of belief (Ex. xxii. 20; Deut. xiii. 1–14; xvii. 2; xviii. 20); presumption (Num. xv. 30; Deut. xvii. 12); Sabbathbreaking (Ex. xxxii. 14; cut off" and "put to death" are here synonymous); kindling a fire or picking up sticks on the Sabbath (Ex. xxxv. 2; Num. xv. 32); not keeping the Passover Feast (Num. ix. 13); eating unleavened bread at the Passover (Ex. xii. 15, 19); eating fat or blood (Lev. iii. 16; vii. 22, 26); a child not circumcised (Gen. xvii. 14)—no fault of its own, but that of its parents, if any; imitating holy oil and scent, or using the latter for strangers (Ex. xxx. 22-33; eating a day too late (Lev. xix. 5, 8); sacrificing without the priests' aid (Lev. xvii. 8); killing cattle without first bringing an offering to the priests (Lev. xvii. 2); touching a holy thing (Num. iv. 15); approaching the holy candlestick (xviii. 3); entering the holy place (iv. 20) without giving notice to Yahuh by tinkling bells hung on the hem of the robe (xxviii. 34), or without wearing linen breeches (42)—the priestly hand in the above is very distinct, priestcraft must be carefully hedged round, discovery would have been fatal; not being purified (Lev. v. 2; xxii. 3; Num. xix. 13); eating animals that have died, or been killed by other animals (Lev. xiii. 13; Num. xix. 8); working on the Day of Atonement, or for not afflicting one's soul (xxiii. 29); for straying near the Tabernacle (Num. i. 51; xvii. 13; xviii. 22), or too near the clergy (iii. 10), or priests' houses (38); for blasphemy (Lev. xxiv. 10, 16); unchastity, or natural or accidental bodily imperfections (the fault, if any, would be really the Creator's, not the individual's, Deut. xxii. 20; xxiii. 1)