Meanwhile the king had died, and a new Pharaoh had ascended the throne.

Moses returns to Egypt to carry out the great designs which he had formed. He announces to the elders of his people, to the heads of the houses, and the sheiks of the tribes that the G.o.d of Abraham had appeared to him in Sinai and had revealed his true name. It was Jehovah.

He had been sent by Jehovah to Egypt to bring away his people, to lead them to Canaan.

In company with his brother, Aaron, Moses asked Pharaoh to liberate the children of Israel, but after several vain attempts to dazzle Pharaoh with his skill as a magician, he was met with an obstinate refusal.

Moses before Pharaoh descends to the level of a vulgar sorcerer, armed with a magic wand, whose performances only draw our smiles. This charlatanry having been unsuccessful, the wizard connives with his accomplice Jehovah to have inflicted upon the Egyptians the ten plagues.

Then the loving and kind Father, having killed innumerable Egyptians, as the story relates, so terrorizes the minds of his other children in Egypt, that Pharaoh is finally convinced that he must allow the Chosen People to leave his domain. The Israelites quitted Egypt carrying away with them the gold and silver of their oppressors. They then entered the desert.

The magic art of Moses enabled them to pa.s.s dry-footed through the Red Sea, whereas the Pharaoh who was pursuing them was engulfed with his whole army. Again the Chosen People are liberated by means of the death of mult.i.tudes of Egyptians. Truly, Jehovah at that time must have loved them well, or did some other Deity form the Egyptians? It matters not that the crossing of the Red Sea and the drowning of Pharaoh are romantic incidents, not only unknown to the Egyptian texts, but even to the earliest of Hebrew prophets. It matters not, for the story is the important thing, even though it is an inspired story, inspired by the Jehovah who tortured and killed the Egyptians to show how well he loved _his_ people.

This Wild West story, with its mult.i.tudes of slaughters, proceeds to the wilderness of Sinai; and there again, the Prophet Moses goes into a secret seance and finally announces that G.o.d had delivered laws to him, which had been issued from the clouds.

What a great showman was this Prophet! Barnum must have been a devoted admirer of Moses, for Moses was the first to create the two-ring circus; for these laws given by Jehovah are described in two places, and the circus varies in both places. Exodus XX and Exodus x.x.xIV are the two texts which differ considerably.

To further convince the Children of Israel, Moses tells them the story of how he had cajoled Jehovah into allowing him to see what no man had hitherto seen, the form of Jehovah, for it appears that Jehovah was so pleased with this murderer, charlatan, and wizard that he allowed him to glimpse His hind quarters. At least, Jehovah had a sense of humor!

What a bag of tricks this Prophet had at his command! The Prophet waves his arms and tugs at his gown, and lo and behold! The Lord has spoken!

The following is a specimen of the revelations which the Lord is supposed to have dictated to Moses. (Leviticus XIV, 25.)

"The priest shall take some of the blood of the trespa.s.s offering and put it upon the tip of the _right_ ear of him who is to be cleansed and upon the thumb of his _right_ hand, and upon the great toe of his _right_ foot, and the priest shall pour of the oil into the palm of his own _left_ hand and shall sprinkle with his _right_ finger some of the oil that is in his _left_ hand seven times before the Lord."

Surely, it must have been a G.o.d with a superior mentality who dictated this, for it surpa.s.ses our feeble comprehension. And we can well imagine Jehovah's wrath when the priest confuses his _right_ and _left_.

Twirling his arms again, Moses gives forth this oracle (Numbers XV, 37-41): "And the Lord spake unto Moses, saying, 'Speak unto the Children of Israel, and bid them that they make them a fringe upon the corner of their garments throughout their generations, and that they put upon the fringe of each corner a cord of blue, etc., etc."

Jehovah chooses Blue as the divine color. Royal Purple. Divine Blue.

Then there is the familiar myth of the Prophet's tapping of the rock to bring forth water in the desert; the story of the manna; the tale of the doves.

Thus can the fabled life of Moses be divided into two stages, the early period of illusions, hallucinations, and delusions, and the later stage of wizardry, charlatanry, and demagoguery. Neither must we think that we moderns are the first to peer through this sham, for what the Israelites thought of these laws appears from the bitter criticism of Moses and Aaron, which the Haggadah put into the mouth of the rebel Korah.

"When we were given the ten commandments, each of us learnt them directly from Mount Sinai; there were only the ten commandments and we heard no orders about 'offering cake' or 'gifts to priests' or 'ta.s.sels.' It was only in order to usurp the dominion for himself and to impart honor to his brother Aaron, that Moses added all this."

Moses, Jesus, and Mohammed--these prophets whose adherents number hundreds of millions, about whom there has been built up those vast systems of theology,--what is there of the divine in their characters?

What supernatural in their deeds? What wisdom poured forth from their lips which did not come from other philosophers? What immense structures have been founded on these shifting sands, on this mora.s.s of ignorance and childish fable? How long can these structures endure, aided by the bolstering up of the theologists, and how long must it be before the light of reason will pierce these foundations of blindness and force them to topple over? How much longer before humanity can begin to build on a sound foundation?

Moses, Jesus, and Mohammed; revolutionists three. Moses at the head of a weak, squabbling, and disgruntled group of Hebrew desert marauders.

Jesus sanctioning the insurrection against Rome. Mohammed at the head of his Arabian marauders.

If the freethinkers firmly believe that in them dwell the hope for a better humanity, for an exhilarated progress, for universal freedom and liberty for all mankind, and emanc.i.p.ation from fear and superst.i.tion, then they, too, must destroy. They must first undo the wrong before they can proceed to build on a right foundation.

They must build on the corner stone that all religion is human in its origin, erroneous in its theories, and ridiculous in its threats and rewards. Religion is the greatest impediment to the progress of human happiness.

CHAPTER IV

SOUNDNESS OF A FOUNDATION FOR A BELIEF IN A DEITY

_It is better to bury a delusion and forget it than to insult its memory by retaining the name when the thing has perished_.

F. H. BRADLEY.

_A thousand miraculous happenings have been honoured by the testimony of the ancients, which in later times under a more exacting and sceptical scrutiny can no longer be believed. Inherent in man's nature is his disposition to be gulled.... Emotion is encouraged to supplant cool reason, fanaticism to supplant tolerance. Not by such means can our race be saved_.

LLEWELYN POWYS.

Our interplanetary visitor is firmly convinced that all religion, no matter what its antiquity or its modernity may be, is an invention of our groping earthly minds. It occurs to him that it would be interesting and proper to lay aside all theology, all creed, all the superficial trappings placed by man about his conceptions of a deity, and consider only the basic G.o.d-idea. The literature on the subject revealed to him that even on this broad and basic principle not all religionists were agreed. He found a threefold cla.s.sification:

(1) Those who held to the belief in an anthropomorphic personal G.o.d who was benevolent, omniscient, and omnipotent.

(2) Those who saw in the const.i.tution of our universe an impersonal Supreme Power, who had created the universe, but who had not given us any revelation, and thus has no need for worship by prayer and sacrifice.

(3) Those who very recently conceived of the deity as a "cosmic force,"

an "ultimate," or as a mathematical or physical law. Such are the hypotheses of Jeans and Eddington. The Martian set about, therefore, with the principle that, "G.o.d is a hypothesis, and as such, stands in need of proof."

(1) The belief in a personal G.o.d:

The Martian, as our guest, had by this time had ample opportunity to survey our civilization, and to acquaint himself with the things with which G.o.d in His goodness had endowed His earthly children. A proponent of a personal G.o.d informs him that his deity is an infinite personal being of consciousness, intelligence, will, good, unity, and Beauty; the Supreme, the infinite personality, who was loving, benevolent, omnipotent, and omniscient. Like the American from Missouri, the visitor hastened to see for himself the marvelous workings of such an exalted being, for surely such a being, with such attributes as he was credited with, would certainly be in an excellent position to bestow great gifts upon his earthly children.

The Martian is informed that the vast majority of our inhabitants, no matter what their geographical distribution may be, are suffering from a "financial depression" brought on by the last World War. War and cruelty are synonymous in the mind of our seeker for G.o.d; and immediately, there arises a conflict between the conception of an omnipotent, all-wise and loving G.o.d and one who would permit war and cruelty. Fearing that he has not comprehended the meaning of an omnipotent being, he turns to the lexicon for verification, only to learn that it means an all-powerful being. How, then, could an omnipotent being permit wholesale and private murder? Is He not rather a demon than a G.o.d? On the other hand, if this being is not omnipotent, then He is a useless G.o.d, and there is no need for all the fears which religion breeds, no need for creed and worship. Every war, particularly this last one, is an indictment of G.o.d.

"G.o.d's in His Heaven, all's right with the world," is seemly only to minds drugged with an irrational creed.

"If there is a G.o.d, he is quite careless of human well-being or human suffering. The deaths of a hundred thousand men mean no more to him than the deaths of a hundred thousand ants. A couple of million men locked in a death struggle on the battlefield is only a replica of the struggle that has been going on in the animal world throughout time. If there be a G.o.d, he made, he designed all this. He fashioned the hooks for the slaughter, the teeth for the tearing, the talons for destruction, and man with his multiplied weapons of destruction has but imitated his example. A world without G.o.d, and in which humanity is gradually learning the way to better things, is an inspiration to renewed effort after the right. A world such as this, with G.o.d, is enough to drive insane all with intelligence enough to appreciate the situation."

(_Chapman Cohen: "War, Civilization and the Churches."_)

When the Martian investigated the annals of the World War he found, despite the opportunities Providence had had of showing its benevolence, the affair of the sinking of the _Lusitania_, the torpedoing of hospital ships, vessels that were not engaged in fighting but in bringing home wounded men who had fought in "G.o.d's Cause." He found descriptions of the slaughter of men and women and children in air raids, and he naturally concludes that the "providence of G.o.d" is an insult to the earthly intelligence.

Greatly disturbed, he picks up one of our newspapers and the stories of hate and racial antagonism rear their ugly heads. These, together with jealousy and fear, seem to him to be the outstanding features of our att.i.tudes. A benevolent, loving, omnipotent father, guiding our destinies, yet allowing such monstrosities to exist! The conundrum grows deeper as he proceeds.

It is a bright day, and the Martian is aware of a head-ache brought on by the effort to understand the ways of earthlings, and therefore decides to drive through the city streets. Yet this drive affords him no relaxation, for on every side two diametrically opposed sights meet his keen eyes--luxury and poverty. Poverty and starvation, yet the Lord's Prayer: "Our Father which art in Heaven, give us this day our daily bread!" No Martian father would allow his children to starve; if he did, the law would fine him and imprison him. Since these earthlings are neglected by their Heavenly Father, and are powerless to indict him, the least they could do would be to stop paying tribute to him. If the G.o.d of these earthlings bothers not about them, why should they trouble about G.o.d? The Son of G.o.d who could once create a miraculous batch of fish to satisfy a few fishermen, can do nothing to help these starving millions! Aloud he muses, "Is there no place on Earth which is free from this contradiction?"

His automobile happens to stop in front of an immense edifice marked "Hospital," and his curiosity is sufficiently aroused to cause him to alight and enter. The physician in charge courteously asks his distinguished visitor to inspect this refuge for those suffering with pain. He remembers that a religionist had told him that disease is a visitation of the Lord for our sins, in the same breath with which he had added that the Lord was loving and compa.s.sionate. If that were so, then this was the ideal place to witness the infinite goodness and compa.s.sion of the Creator of all earthlings. But, the first scene to meet his gaze was that of a woman in childbirth. The torture, the excruciating pain, and the mental anguish of the human female before his eyes, defied his Martian power of expression. This process of birth, it was explained to him, was not a pathological one, nor a disease, but a physiological function. To this, the Martian could not refrain from replying, "From your own words, Doctor, it is readily understood that your women experience a torture more acute, more nerve-wracking, and of longer duration than your Jesus experienced during his crucifixion. And your world commiserates and sheds oceans of tears when they contemplate the anguish of Jesus on the cross; but no mention is made of the agony which is the fate of every woman who brings another human being into this 'best of worlds.'"

"But, my dear Martian," exclaims the physician, "the Heavenly Father has ordained that in anguish shall woman bring forth her young." The other deliberated on the compa.s.sion of the Benevolent Father in silence, and continued on his rounds through the hospital.

Nearby was the crib containing a baby of a few days, suffering with a congenital heart disease. The infant's lips were blue, so was the body blue, and the gasping for breath and heaving of the small chest were pitiful to behold.

"This infant," nonchalantly remarked the physician, "was born with a greatly defective heart. It will live for a few days, it will thirst for air, it will have intense air-hunger, the lungs will fill with fluid and then it will drown in its own secretions."

The Martian recalled the time he had plunged under the water and remained there too long; vividly, he remembered the thirst for air, the seeming bursting of the lungs, the compression and vise-like grip of the muscles of the throat and chest, and he could not help exclaiming, "Benevolent, Compa.s.sionate Being!"

The physician continued, "This child," pointing to a beautiful, robust boy of ten years, "was in perfect health, until he fell in the street and received a minor cut which the parents treated with home remedies, but which in a few days was diagnosed as Teta.n.u.s." And the doctor went on to explain that the compa.s.sion of the Lord is great when this occurs, for the child gets convulsions, the jaws become locked, and beads of cold sweat stand out on the child's forehead in his anguish; the convulsions increase in severity and in duration so that finally they are continuous and the child lies with the heels and back of the head only touching the bed, the rest of the body is arched. The convulsions then become so severe that the body is so bent backwards at times that the head and trunk touch the heels. The misery of such a child is sufficient to cause a physician to lose his reason. Again the Martian murmurs, "Verily, the compa.s.sion of the Lord is beyond understanding."

The child in the next bed had just become paralyzed by an attack of poliomyelitis (infantile paralysis). The Martian observes how the Lord in His compa.s.sion saved a certain number of these children upon whom he vents His anger for their sins, by inflicting upon them this hideous disease. He saves their lives, but to serve as an everlasting reminder, as a covenant between them and their Lord, He paralyzes their limbs. The spectacle of these children attempting to move, making intense effort to move paralyzed limbs, was the most revolting and heart-breaking sight that he had ever witnessed. This time, too, the Martian remarked, "Verily, the Lord in His infinite wisdom and goodness strange tasks does perform."

The physician then informed him of the many men and women who have died of cancer. A large number of these individuals had reached a period in life where they could just afford to relax from their struggles for mere sustenance; men and women who had reached a calm lake after journeying through troubled and tortuous waters; who had fought the "good fight,"

and had won the just reward of resting after their labors. But no, the Lord must trouble them for their sins.