Bible Romances By G.W. Foote

BIBLE ROMANCES

The Bible is full of so many great stories, from struggle to triumph and impossible to miraculous. The most memorable for me are the love stories. There are many different kinds of love stories in the Bible, including parents with their children, friendships and loving your enemies etc.

BIBLE ROMANCES By G. W. Foote

Contents

THE CREATION STORY. NOAH’S FLOOD. EVE AND THE APPLE. THE BIBLE DEVIL. THE TEN PLAGUES; JONAH AND THE WHALE. THE WANDERING JEWS. THE TOWER OF BABEL. BALAAM’S ASS. GOD’S THIEVES IN CANAAN. CAIN AND ABEL. LOT’S WIFE.

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THE CREATION STORY.

BIBLE ROMANCES.—1.

By G. W. FOOTE.

The Book of Genesis is generally thought, as Professor Huxley says, to

contain the beginning and the end of sound science. The mythology of the

Jews is held to be a divine revelation of the early history of man, and

of the cosmic changes preparatory to his creation. The masses of the

people in every Christian country are taught in their childhood that God

created the universe, including this earth with all its flora and fauna,

in five days; that he created man, “the bright consummate flower” of

his work, on the sixth day, and rested on the seventh. Yet every student

knows this conception to be utterly false; every man of science rejects

it as absurd; and even the clergy themselves mostly disbelieve it Why,

then, do they not disabuse the popular mind, and preach what they deem

true instead of what they know to be false? The answer is very simple.

Because they feel that the doctrine of the Fall is bound up with the

Genesaic account of Creation, and that if the latter be discredited the

former will not long be retained.

The doctrine of the Fall being the

foundation of the scheme of Atonement, the clergy will never admit the

Creation Story to be mythical until they are forced to do so by external

pressure. At any rate they cannot be expected to proclaim its falsity,

since by so doing they would destroy the main prop of their power. What

the recognized teachers of religion will not do, however, should not

be left undone, especially when it is so needful and important. Men of

science, by teaching positive and indisputable truths, are gradually

but surely revolutionising the world of thought, and dethroning the

priesthoods of mystery and superstition. Yet their influence on the

masses is indirect, and they do not often trouble themselves to show the

contradiction between their discoveries and what is preached from the

pulpit. Perhaps they are right. But it is also right that others should

appeal to the people in the name not only of science, but also of

scholarship and common sense, and show them the incredible absurdity of

much that the clergy are handsomely paid to preach as the veritable and

infallible Word of God.

The Creation Story, with which the Book of Genesis opens, is incoherent,

discrepant, and intrinsically absurd, as we shall attempt to show. It is

also discordant with the plainest truths of Science. Let us examine it,

after casting aside all prejudice and predilection.

If the universe, including this earth and its principal inhabitant, man,

was created in six days, it follows that less than six thousand years

ago chaos reigned throughout nature. This, however, is clearly untrue.

Our earth has revolved round its central sun for numberless millions of

years. Geology proves also that million years have elapsed since

organic existence first appeared on the earth’s surface, and this world

became the theatre of life and death. Darwin speaks of the known history

of the world as “of a length quite incomprehensible by us,” yet even

that he affirms “will hereafter be recognized as a mere fragment of

time” com-pared with the vast periods which Biology will demand. The

instructed members of the Church have long recognized these-statements

as substantially true, and they have tried to reconcile them with

Scripture by assuming that the word which in the History of Creation is

rendered day really means a period, that is an elastic space of time

which may be expanded or contracted to suit all requirements. But there

are two fatal objections to this assumption. In the first place, the

same word is rendered day in the fourth commandment, and if it

means period in Genesis it means period in Exodus. In that case we are

commanded to work six periods and rest on the seventh, and each period

must cover a geological epoch. How pleasant for those who happen to be

born in the seventh period, how unpleasant for those born in one of the

six! The lives of the one class all work, those of the other all play!

In the second place, the account of each day’s creation concludes with

the refrain “and the evening and the morning were the first (or

other) day.” Now evening and morning are terms which mark the luminous

gradations between night and day, and these phenomena, like night

and day, depend on the earth’s revolving on its axis and presenting

different portions of its surface to the sun. Evening and morning

clearly imply a space of twenty-four hours, and the writer of Genesis,

whoever he was, would probably be surprised at any other interpretation

of his words. It is sometimes argued, as for instance by Dr. M’Caul,

that these primeval days were of vast and unknown duration, the evening

and the morning not being dependent on their present causes. But this

supposition could only apply to the first three days, for the sun, moon,

and stars were created on the fourth day, expressly “to rule over the

day and over the night, and to divide the light from the darkness.” The

fifth and sixth days, at least, must be understood as of normal length,

and thus the chronological difficulties remain. All animal life was

brought into existence on the last two days, and therefore the Bible

still allows an antiquity of less than six thousand years for the

world’s fauna. Geology and Biology allow millions of years. Here then

Science and the Bible are in flagrant and irreconcilable contradiction.

The fact that the writer of Genesis represents light as existing three

days before the creation of the sun, the source of light, has frequently

been noticed. One learned commentator supposed that God had infused a

certain “luminosity” through the air, which was not exactly the same

as the light of the sun. But light is not a thing; it is a phenomenon

caused by definite laws of astronomy and optics. Such explanations are

but fanciful refuges of superstition. “God said let there be light and

there was light,” is not the language of science and history, but the

language of poetry. As such it is sublime. We find a similar expression

in the Vedas of the Hindoos: “He thought, I will create worlds, and they

were there!” Both become ridiculous when presented to us as a scientific

statement The physical astronomer knows how worlds are formed, as well

as how their movements are determined; he knows also the causes of

light; and he knows that none of these processes resembles the accounts

given in the Creation Stories of the Hebrews and the Hindoos.

Science knows nothing of six creative epochs, any more than of six

creative days; and it is quite certain that the order of Creation given

in Genesis differs widely from the revelations of Geology. For instance

(and one instance in such a case is as good as a thousand), fish and

fowl are said to have been created on the same day. Let us, for the sake

of argument, assume that day means period. The conclusion still is that

fish and fowl were created together. Starting from this conclusion, what

should we expect to find in our geological researches? Why, the fossil

remains of fish and of fowl in the same epochs. But we find nothing of

the kind. Marine animals antedate the carboniferous period, during which

all our coal deposits were laid, but no remains of fowl are found until

a later period. Now the carboniferious period alone, according to Sir

William Thompson, covers many millions of years; so that instead of fish

and fowl being contemporaneous, we find them geologically separated by

inconceivable spaces of time. Here again the Bible and Science fatally

disagree.

Even if we admit that the fifth day of creation was a period, the

chronology of the Bible is still fatally at variance with fact

With respect to the antiquity of the human race, it is precise and

unmistakable. It gives us the age of Adam at his death, and the ages of

the other antediluvian patriarchs. From the Flood the genealogies are

carefully recorded, until we enter the historic period, after which

there is not much room for dispute. From the creation of Adam to

the birth of Christ, the Bible allows about four thousand years. The

antiquity of the human race, therefore, according to Scripture, is less

than six thousand years. Science, however, proves that this is but a

fragment of the vast period during which man has inhabited the earth.

There was a civilization in Egypt thousands of years before the alleged

creation of Adam. The Cushite civilization was even more ancient

Archaeology shows us traces of man’s presence, in a ruder state, long

before that. The researches of Mr. Pengelly in Kent’s Cavern prove that

cave-men lived there more than two-hundred thousand years ago; while

geological investigations in the Valley of the Somme have established

the fact that primitive men existed there in the tertiary period.

Professor Draper writes:—”So far as investigations have gone, they

indisputably-refer the existence of man to a date remote from us by

many hundreds of thousands of years. It must be borne in mind that

these investigations are quite recent, and confined to a very limited

geographical space. No researches have yet been made in those regions

which might reasonably be regarded as the primitive habitat of man.

We are thus carried back immeasurably beyond the six thousand years of

Patristic chronology. It is difficult to assign a shorter date for the

last glaciation of Europe than a quarter of a million of years, and human existence antedates that. The chronology of the Bible is thus

altogether obsolete.”

The idea of a seven-days’ creation was not confined to the Jews: it

was shared by the Persians and Etruscans. The division of the year into

months and weeks is a general, although not a universal practice. The

ancient Egyptians observed a ten-days’ week, but the seven-days’ week

was well known to them. The naming of the days of the week after the

seven Planets was noted by Dion Cassius as originally an Egyptian

custom, which spread from Egypt into the Roman Empire. The Brahmins of

India also distinguish the days of the week by the planetary names. This

division of time was purely astronomical. The Jews kept the Feast of

the New Moon, and other of their ceremonies were determined by lunar and

solar phenomena. We may be sure that the myth of a seven-days’ creation

followed and did not precede the regular observance of that period.

There is one feature of the Hebrew story of creation which shows how

anthropomorphic they were. The Persians represent Ormuzd as keeping high

festival with his angels on the seventh day, after creating all things

in six. But the Hebrews represent Jehovah as resting on the seventh

day, as though the arduous labors of creation had completely exhausted

his energies. Fancy Omnipotence requiring rest to recruit its

strength! The Bible, and especially in its earlier parts, is grossly

anthropomorphic. It exhibits God as conversing with men, sharing their

repasts, and helping them to slaughter their foes. It represents him as

visible to human eyes, and in one instance as giving Moses a back view

of his person. Yet these childish fancies are still thrust upon as

divine truths, which if we disbelieve we shall be eternally damned!

Let us now examine the Creation Story internally. In the first place

we find two distinct records, the one occupying the whole of the first

chapter of Genesis and the first three verses of the second, at which

point the other commences. These two records belong to different periods

of Jewish history. The older one is the Elohistic, so called because the

creator is designated by the plural term Elohim, which in our version

is translated God. The more modern one is the Jehovistic, in which

Elohim is combined with the singular term Jehovah, translated in

our-version the Lord God. The Elohistic and Jehovistic accounts both

relate the creation of man, but instead of agreeing they widely differ.

The former makes God create man in his own image; the latter does not

even allude to this important circumstance. The former represents man as

created male and female at the outset; the latter represents the male

as created first, and the female for a special reason afterwards. In

the former God enjoins the primal pair to “be fruitful and multiply and

replenish the earth;” in the latter there is no such injunction, but on

the contrary, the bringing forth of children in sorrow is imposed upon

the woman as a punishment for her sin, and she does not appear to have

borne any offspring until after the expulsion from the Garden of Eden.

Lastly, the Elohistic record makes no mention of this Paradise, in

which, according to the Jehovistic record, the drama of the Fall was

enacted, but represents man as immediately commissioned to subdue

and populate the world. Such discrepancies are enough to stagger the

blindest credulity.

We now proceed to examine the Jehovistic account of Creation in detail.

We read that the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, the

Hebrew word for which is adamah. The word Adam means “be red,” and adamah may be referred to the red soil of Palestine. Kalisch also

observes that man may have been originally called Adam on account of the

red color of his skin. The Chinese represent man as kneaded of yellow earth, and the red Indians of red clay. The belief that man was

formed of earth was not confined to the Jews, but has been almost

universal, and undoubtedly arose from the fact that our bodies after

death return to the earth and resolve into the elements. The Lord God

placed this forlorn first man in the Garden of Eden with the command to

till it, and permission to eat of the fruit of all its trees except “the

tree of knowledge of good and evil.” How Adam trespassed and fell, and

brought a curse upon himself and all his innocent posterity, we shall

consider in another pamphlet. The story of the Fall is infinitely

curious and diverting, and must be treated separately.

Adam’s first exploit, after he had taken a good look round him, was very

marvellous. All the cattle and beasts of the field and fowl of the air

were brought before him to be named, and “whatsover Adam called every

living creature, that was the name thereof.” This first Zoological

Dictionary is unfortunately lost, or we should be able to call every

animal by its right name, which would doubtless gratify them as well as

ourselves. The fishes and insects were not included in this primitive

nomenclature, so the loss of the Dictionary does not concern them.

The Lord made the animals pass before Adam seemingly with the

expectation that he would choose a partner from amongst them. Nothing,

however, struck his fancy. If he had fallen in love with a female

gorilla or ourang-outang, what a difference it would have made in the

world’s history!

After this wonderful exploit “the Lord caused a deep sleep to fall upon

Adam,” who surely must have been tired enough to fall into a good sound

natural sleep, without a heavenly narcotic. While in this state one of

his ribs was extracted for a purpose we shall presently refer to, and

which he discovered when he awoke. This curious surgical operation

involves a dilemma. If Adam was upright after it, he must have been

lopsided before; if he was upright before it, he must have been lopsided

after. In either case the poor man was very scurvily treated.

It has been maintained that God provided Adam with another rib in place

of the one extracted. But this is a mere conjecture. Besides, if the

Lord had a spare rib in stock he might have made a woman of it, without

cutting poor Adam open and making a pre mortem examination of his

inside.

The divine operator’s purpose was a good one, whatever we may think of

his means. He had discovered, what Omniscience would have foreknown,

that it was not good for man to be alone, and had resolved to make him a

help-meet. Adam’s “spare rib” was the raw material of which his wife

was manufactured. The Greenlanders believed that the first woman was

fashioned out of the man’s thumb. The woman was brought to Adam, who

said—”This is now bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh.” Not a word

did he say about “soul of my soul.” Perhaps he suspected she had none,

and with some truth, if we go no further than our English version. When

the Lord God made man, he “breathed into his nostrils the breath of

life, and man became a living soul,” but apparently no such operation

was performed on Eve. Indeed, it is very difficult to prove from the

Bible that woman has a soul at all. Women should reflect on this. They

should also reflect on the invidious fact that they were not included

in the original scheme of things, but thrown in as a make-weight

afterwards. Let them ponder this a while, and the churches and chapels

in which this story is taught would soon be emptied. The majority of

those who occupy seats in such places wear bonnets, and most of those

who don’t, go there for the sake of those who do.

When Adam had thus accosted his bride he grew prophetical. “Therefore,”

said he, “shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave

unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh.” In his desire to give the

institution of marriage the highest sanction, the writer of this story

perpetrated a gross anachronism. Adam had no parents, nor any

experience of marriage. Unless, therefore, we credit him with superhuman

prescience, it is absurd to make him talk in this way.

Eve’s name, no less than Adam’s, betrays the mythological character of

the story. It means the “mother of all,” and was evidently applied to

her by the Jewish writers in order to signify her supposed relationship

to the human race.

While God was engaged in the work of creation, why did he not make two

human couples, instead of one? The arrangement he adopted involved the

propagation of the human species through incest Adam and Eve’s sons must

have had children by their sisters. If two couples had been created,

their families might have intermarried, and mankind would not then have

sprang from the incestuous intercourse of the very first generation.

Surely omnipotence might have obviated the necessity of a crime against

which civilised consciences revolt with unspeakable disgust.

Adam and Eve were placed by God in the Garden of Eden. “Eden,” says

Kalisch, “comprised that tract of land where the Euphrates and Tigris

separate; from that spot the ‘garden in Eden’ cannot be distant. Let it

suffice that we know its general position.” Its exact position can never

be ascertained. What a pity it is that Noah did not occupy some of his

leisure time, during the centuries he lived after his exit from the ark,

in writing a typography of the antediluvian world! The Greeks placed

Paradise in the Islands of the Blessed, beyond the Pillars of Hercules

in the western main. The Swede, Rudbeck, asserts that Paradise was in

Scandinavia; some Russian writers supposed it to have been in Siberia;

and the German writers, Hasse and Schulz, on the coast of Prussia.

Eastern traditions place it in Ceylon, and regard the mountain of Rahoun

as the spot where Adam was buried. Some old Christian writers hazarded

the theory that Paradise was beyond the earth altogether, on the other

side of the ocean which they conceived to encircle it, and that Noah

was conveyed to our planet by the deluge. Kalisch gives a long list of

ancient and modern authorities on the subject, who differ widely from

each other as to the actual position of Eden, their only point of

agreement being that it was somewhere.

The Creation Story of the Bible cannot be considered as anything but a

Hebrew myth. Scholars have abundantly shown the absurdity of supposing

that Moses wrote it. Doubtless, as a piece of traditional mythology, it

is very ancient, but it cannot be traced back in its present literary

form beyond the Babylonish captivity. Men of science without exception

disbelieve it, not only with regard to the world in general, but also

with regard to the human race. In his famous article on “The Method and

Results of Ethnology,” Professor Huxley made this declaration:—”There

are those who represent the most numerous, respectable, and would-be

orthodox of the public, and who may be called ‘Adamites,’ pure and

simple. They believe that Adam was made out of earth somewhere in Asia,

about six thousand years ago; that Eve was modelled from one of his

ribs; and that the progeny of these two having been reduced to the eight

persons who landed on the summit of Mount Ararat after an universal

deluge, all the nations of the earth have proceeded from these last,

have migrated to their present localities, and have become converted

into negroes, Australians, Mongolians, etc., within that time.

Five-sixths of the public are taught this Adamitic Monogenism as if

it were an established truth, and believe it. I do not; and I am not

acquainted with any man of science, or duly instructed person, who

does.” The clergy, then, who go on teaching this old Creation Story as

true, are either unduly instructed or dishonest, ignorant or fraudulent,

blind guides or base deceivers. It is not for us to determine to which

class any priest or preacher belongs: let the conscience of each, as

assuredly it will, decide that for himself. But ignorant or dishonest,

we affirm, is every one of them who still teaches the Creation Story as

a record of actual facts, or as anything but a Hebrew myth.

The origin of the human race is far different from that recorded in

Genesis. Man has undoubtedly been developed from a lower form of life.

The rude remains of primitive men show that they were vastly inferior to

the present civilised inhabitants of the world, and even inferior to

the lowest savages with whom we are now acquainted. Their physical and

mental condition was not far removed from that of the higher apes; and

the general opinion of biologists is that they were descended from

the Old World branch of the great Simian family. There is, indeed, no absolute proof of this, nor is it probable that there ever will be, as

the fossil links between primitive man and his Simian progenitor,

if they exist at all, are most likely buried in that sunken continent

over which roll the waters of the South Pacific Ocean. But as the line

of natural development can be carried back so far without break, there

is no reason why it should not be carried farther. The evolution theory

is now almost universally accepted by men of science, and few of them

suppose that man can be exempted from the general laws of biology. At

any rate, the Bible account of Creation is thoroughly exploded, and when

that is gone there is nothing to hinder our complete acceptance of the

only theory of man’s origin which is consistent with the facts of his

history, and explains the peculiarities of his physical structure.

NOAH’S FLOOD.

BIBLE ROMANCES—2.

By G. W. FOOTE.

The Bible story of the Deluge is at once the biggest and the most

ridiculous in the whole volume. Any person who reads it with the eyes of

common sense, and some slight knowledge of science, must admit that it

is altogether incredible and absurd, and that the book which contains it

cannot be the Word of God.

About 1,656 years after God created Adam, and placed him in the garden

of Eden, the world had become populous and extremely wicked; indeed,

every thought and imagination of man’s heart was evil continually. What

was the cause of all this wickedness we are not informed; but we are

told that the sons of God took unto them wives of the daughters of men

because they were fair, and we are led to suppose that these matches

produced giants and other incurably wicked offspring. No physiological

reason is assigned for this Strange result, nor perhaps was there any

present to the mind of the writer, who probably had witnessed unhappy

marriages in his own family, and was anxious to warn his readers,

however vaguely, against allowing their daughters to be inveigled into

matrimonial bonds with pious sniffling fellows, who professed themselves

peculiarly the children of their Father in heaven. However, the

narrative is clear as to the fact itself: men had all gone irrecoverably

astray, and God had repented that he ever made them. In such a case

an earthly human father would naturally have attempted to improve his

family; but the Almighty Father either was too indifferent to do so, or

was too well aware of the impossibility of reforming his own wretched

offspring; and therefore he determined to drown them all at one fell

swoop, just as cat-loving old ladies dispose of a too numerous and

embarrassing feline progeny. Bethinking him, however, God resolved to

save alive one family to perpetuate the race: he was willing to give his

creatures another chance, and then, if they persisted in going the wrong

way, it would still be easy to drown the lot of them again, and that

without any reservation. He had also resolved at first to destroy every

living thing from off the face of the earth; but he afterwards decided

to spare from destruction two of every species of unclean beasts, male

and female, and fourteen, male and female, of all clean beasts and of

all fowls of the air and of every creeping thing. Noah, his wife, his

three sons, Shem, Ham, and Japhet, and their wives (eight persons in

all), were the only human beings to be preserved from the terrible fate

of drowning.

Noah was commanded by God to build an ark for the reception-of the

precious living freight, the dimensions of which were to be, in English

measure, 550 feet long, 93 feet wide, and 55 feet deep. Into this

floating box they all got; the flood then came and covered the earth,

and all besides were drowned.

Now this is a very strange, a very startling story; it seems more like

a chapter from the “Arabian Nights” or the “Adventures of Baron

Munchausen” than from the sacred Scriptures of any Religion. Carnal

reason prompts us to ask many questions about it.

1. How did Noah contrive to bring these beasts, birds, and insects all

together in one spot? The task seems superhuman. Some species could be

found only in very remote places—the kangaroo only in Australia, the

sloth only in South America, the polar bear only in the Arctic regions.

How could Noah, in those days of difficult locomotion, have journeyed in

search of these across broad rivers, and over continents and oceans?

Did he bring them singly to his dwelling-place in Asia, or did he travel

hither and thither with his menagerie, and finish the collection before

returning home? There are, according to Hugh Miller, 1,658 known species

of mammalia, 6,266 of birds, 642 of reptiles, and 550,000 of insects;

how could one man, or a hundred men, have collected specimens of these

in those days, and in such & brief space of time? The beasts, clean and

unclean, male and female, might be got together by means of terrible

exertion; but surely to assemble the birds and reptiles and insects must

transcend human capacity. Some of the last class would of course not

require much seeking; they visit us whether we desire their company or

not; and the difficulty would not be how to get them into the ark, but

how on earth to keep them out. Others, however, would give infinite

trouble. Fancy Noah occupied in a wild-goose chase, or selecting

specimens from a wasps’ or hornets’ nest, or giving assiduous chase to a

vigilant and elusive bluebottle fly!

But suppose Noah to have succeeded in his arduous enterprise, the

question still remains, how did he keep his wonderful zoological

collection alive? Some of them could live only in certain latitudes; the

inhabitants of cold climates would melt away amidst the torrid heat of

Central Asia. Then, again, there are some insects that live only a few

hours, and some that live a few days at the utmost: what means were

adopted for preserving these? Some animals, too, do not pair, but run

in herds; many species of fish swim in shoals; sometimes males and

sometimes females predominate, as in the case of deer, where one male

heads and appropriates a whole herd of females, or in the case of bees,

where many males are devoted to the queen of the hive. These could

not have gone in pairs, or lived in pairs; their instincts pointed

to another method of grouping. How did Noah provide for their due

preservation? When these questions are answered others speedily arise;

in fact, there is no end to the difficulties of this marvellous story.

2. Whence and how did Noah procure the food for his huge menagerie?

That he was obliged to do so, that the animals were not miraculously

preserved without food, we are certain; for he was expressly commanded

by God to gather food for himself and for them. “Take thou unto thee,”

it was said to him, “of all food that is eaten, and thou shalt gather

it to thee; and it shall be for food for thee, and for them.” What

provision was made for the carnivorous animals, for lions, tigers,

vultures, kites, and hawks? Some of these would require not simply meat,

but fresh meat, which could not be provided for them unless superfluous

animals were taken into the ark to be killed, or Noah had learned the

art of potting flesh. Otters would require fish, chameleons flies,

woodpeckers grubs, night-hawks moths, and humming-birds the honey of

flowers. What vast quantities of water also would be consumed! In

fact, the task of collecting food to last all the inmates of the ark,

including the eight human beings, for more than a year, must have been

greater even than that of bringing them together in the first place from

every zone. The labors of Hercules were mere trifles compared with those

of Noah. Poor old patriarch! He amply earned his salvation. Had he

been possessed of one tithe of Jacob’s cunning and business sagacity, he

would have struck a better bargain with God, and have got into the ark

on somewhat easier terms. Few men would have undertaken so much to gain

so little.

3. How were all the animals, with their food, got into the ark? The

dimensions as given in the Bible would be insufficient to accommodate a

tithe of them; the ark could not have contained them all, if they were

packed together like herrings or sardines. Even if they were so packed,

space would still be required for their food; and for what a vast

quantity! An animal even with man’s moderate appetite would consume in

the course of twelve months solid matter to the extent of four or five

times its own weight, and some animals are of course far more voracious.

This difficulty as to stowing the animals and their food into the ark is

quite insuperable; it is not to be obviated by any employment of

miraculous intervention. Not even omnipotence can make a clock strike

less than one, and God himself must fail to make two things occupy the

same space at the same time.

4. How where the inmates of this floating menagerie, supposing them got

in, supplied with fresh air? According to the Bible narrative the ark

was furnished with but one window of a cubit square, and one door

which was shut by God himself, and it may be presumed, quite securely

fastened. Talk about the Black-hole of Calcutta, why it was nothing to

this! What a scramble there must have been for that solitary window

and a mouthful of fresh air! Lions, tigers, jackals, hyaenas,

boa-constrictors, kangaroos, eagles, owls, bees, wasps, bluebottles,

with Noah, Shem, Ham, and Japhet, and their wives, all in one fierce

melee. But the contention for the precious vital air must, however

violent, have soon subsided: fifteen minutes would have settled them

all. Yet curiously enough the choking animals-suffered no appreciable

injury; by some occult means they were all preserved from harm; which

furnishes another illustration of the mysterious ways of God. What

powerful perfumes, too, must have arisen from all those animals! So

powerful indeed that even the rancid flavor of foxes and skunks must

have been undistinguishable from the blended scents of all their fellow

passengers. Those who have visited Wombwell’s menagerie, or stood in

the monkey-house of the Zoological Gardens, doubtless retain a lively

recollection of olfactory disgust, even although in those places the

must scrupulous cleanliness is observed; but their experience of such

smells would have been totally eclipsed if they could but for a moment

have stood within Noah’s ark amidst all its heterogeneous denizens.

However the patriarch and his sons managed to cleanse this worse than

Augean stable passes all understanding. And then what trampings they

must have had up and down those flights of stairs communicating with the

three storeys of the ark, in order to cast all the filth out of that one

window. No wonder their children afterwards began to build a tower of

Babel to reach unto heaven; it was quite natural that they should desire

plenty of steps, to mount, so as to gratify fully the itch of climbing

they had inherited from their parents.

5. Where did all the water come from? According to the Bible story the

waters prevailed upon the earth a hundred and fifty days, and covered

all the high hills and mountains under the whole heaven. Now mount

Ararat itself, on which the Ark eventually rested, is seventeen thousand

feet high, and the utmost peaks of Himalaya are nearly twice as high

as that; and to cover the whole earth with water to such a tremendous

height would require an immense quantity of water; in fact, about eight

times as much as is contained in all the rivers, lakes, seas, and oceans

of our globe. Whence did all this water come? The Scripture explanation

is sadly insufficient; the fountains of the great deep were broken up,

and the windows of heaven were opened, and the rain was upon the earth

for forty days and forty nights. The writer evidently thought that there

were great fountains at the bottom of the sea, capable of supplying

water in unlimited quantities from some central reservoir; but science

knows nothing whatever about them; nay, science tells us that the

internal reservoir, if there be one, must contain not water, but liquid

fire. If this great reservoir poured its contents into the sea, the

result would be similar to that frightful catastrophe imagined by the

Yankee who wished to see Niagara Falls pour into Mount Vesuvius.

The supply from that quarter thus failing, we are forced back upon the

rain which descended from the windows of heaven, wherever they may be.

It rained forty days and forty nights. Forty days and forty nights!

Why forty million days and nights of rain would not have sufficed. The

writer was evidently in total ignorance of the laws of hydrology. The

rain which falls from the clouds originally comes from the waters of the

earth, being absorbed into the atmosphere by the process of evaporation.

The utmost quantity of water that can thus be held in suspense

throughout the entire atmosphere is very small; in fact, if

precipitated, it would only cover the ground to the depth of about

five inches. After the first precipitation of rain, the process of

evaporation would have to be repeated; that is, for every additional

descent of rain a proportionate quantity of water would have to be

extracted from the rivers, lakes, and seas below. Now, surely every sane

man must perceive that this pretty juggle could not add one single drop

to the previously existing amount of water, any more than a man could

make himself rich by taking money out of one pocket and putting it into

another. The fabled man who is reported to have occupied himself with

dipping up water from one side of a boat and emptying it over on the

other, hoping thereby to bale the ocean dry, must have been the real

author of this story of Noah and his wonderful ark.

Some Christian writers, such as Dr. Pye Smith, Dr. Barry, and Hugh

Miller, have contended that the author of the book of Genesis is

describing not a universal but a partial deluge; not a flood which

submerged the whole earth, out one that merely covered some particular

part of the great Central Asian plains. But surely, apart from any

consideration pertaining to the very emphatic language of the text,

rational men must perceive that the difficulty is not obviated by this

explanation, but rather increased. How could the waters ascend in one

place to the height of seventeen thousand feet (the height of Mount

Ararat) without overflowing the adjacent districts, and, indeed, the

whole earth, in conformity to the law of gravitation? Delitzch is bold

enough to assert that the flood of water was ejected with such force

from the fountains beneath that it assumed quite naturally a conical

shape. But then, even supposing that this explication were anything

but sheer silliness, which it is not, how would the learned commentator

account for the water retaining its conical shape for months after the

force of upheaval had expended itself? These explanations are entirely

fanciful and groundless. The language of the narrative is sufficiently

explicit “And all flesh died that moved upon the earth;” “all in

whose nostrils was the breath of life;” “and every living substance

was destroyed which was upon the face of the ground;” and “Noah only remained alive and they that were with him in the ark.” Such are the

precise unmistakeable words of Scripture, which no sophistry can explain

away. But even if the contention for a partial deluge could be made

good, the fundamental difficulties would still remain. As Colenso

observes, the flood, “whether it be regarded as a universal or a partial deluge, is equally incredible and impossible.”

Geology absolutely contradicts the possibility of any such catastrophe

as the deluge within the historic period. According to Sir Charles

Lyell, no devastating flood could have passed over the forest zone of

Ætna during the last twelve thousand years; and the volcanic cones of

Auvergne, which enclose in their ashes the remains of extinct animals,

and present an outline as perfect as that of Ætna, are deemed older

still. Kalisch forcibly presents this aspect of the question: “Geology

teaches the impossibility of a universal deluge since the last six

thousand years, but does not exclude a partial destruction of the

earth’s surface within that period. The Biblical text, on the other

hand, demands the supposition of a universal deluge, and absolutely

excludes a partial flood.”

6. What became of all the fish? In such a deluge the rivers and seas

must have mingled their waters, and this, in conjunction with the

terrific outpour from the windows of heaven, must have made the water

brackish, too salt for fresh-water fish, and too fresh for salt-water

fish; and consequently the aquatic animals must all have perished,

unless, indeed, they were miraculously preserved—a contingency which

anyone is free to conjecture, out no one is at liberty to assert, seeing

that the inspired writer never even hints such a possibility. Now there

is no evidence whatever that Noah took and fish with him into the ark;

under natural circumstances they must have perished outside; yet the

seas and rivers still teem with life. When did the new creation of fish

take place?

7. What became of all the vegetation? Every particle of it must

have rotted during such a long submergence. But even if mysteriously

preserved from natural decay, it must still have been compressed into a

mere pulp by the terrific weight of the super-incumbent water. Colenso

estimates that the pressure of a column of water 17,000 feet high would

be 474 tons upon each square foot of surface—a pressure which nothing

could have resisted. Yet, wonderful to relate, just prior to the resting

of the ark on Mount Ararat, the dove sent out therefrom returned with

an olive leaf in her mouth just pluckt off. A fitting climax to this

wonderful story.

Finally the story relates how the ark rested on the top of Mount Ararat,

whence its inmates descended to the plains below, which were then quite

dry. Mount Ararat towers aloft three thousand feet above the region of

eternal snow. How the poor animals, aye, even the polar bear, must have

shivered! And what a curious sight it must have been to witness their

descent from such a height Often have I speculated on the probable way

in which the elephant got down, and after much careful thought I have

concluded thus: either he had waxed so fat with being fed so long on

miraculous food that he rolled pleasantly down like a ball, with no

other injury than a few scratches; or he had become so very, very thin

with living simply on expectations, in default of more substantial

fare, that he gently floated down by virtue of levity, like a descending

feather.

And then what journeys some of the poor animals would have to make; the

kangaroo back to Australia, the sloth to South America, the polar bear

to the extreme north. How they lived on the road to their ultimate

destinations the Lord only knows. There was no food for them; the deluge

had destroyed all vegetation for the herbiverous animals, all flesh for

the carniverous. Not even a nibble was left for the sheep.

As for poor Noah, the first thing recorded of him after his watery

expedition is that he drank heavily of wine and got into a state of

beastly inebriation. And who can wonder that he did so? The poor old man

had floated about on oceans of water for more than a year, and probably

he was heartily sick of his watery prospect. The astonishing thing is

that he did not get water on the brain. It was quite natural that

he should swill deep potations of some stronger fluid on the first

available opportunity. Surely he had water enough during that twelve

months to last a lifetime; enough to justify his never touching the

wretched fluid again.

While Noah was dead drunk, his second son. Ham, saw “the nakedness

of his father,” and reported the fact to his two brethren, who took a

garment and, walking backwards so that they might not see, covered

the patriarch’s nudity. On recovering from his drunken stupor, Noah

discovered “what his younger son had done unto him,” and proceeded at

once to vigorous cursing. Ham was the offender, if there was any offence

at all, which is not very clear; but punishment in the Bible is

generally vicarious, and we read that the irate patriarch cursed Canaan,

the son of Ham, for his father’s misdemeanor. Flagitiously unjust as

it is, this proceeding thoroughly accords with Jehovah’s treatment

of Adam’s posterity after he and Eve had committed their first sin by

eating of the forbidden fruit.

Before Noah got drunk he had received from God the assurance that the

world should never more be destroyed by a flood. As a perpetual sign of

this covenant the rainbow was set in the heavens. But the rainbow

must have been a common sight for centuries before. This phenomenon of

refraction is the result of natural causes which operated before

the Flood, as well as after. The earth yielded its fruits for human

sustenance, and therefore rain must have fallen. If rain fell before the

Deluge, as we are bound to conclude, the rainbow must have been then as

now. The usual practice of commentators is to explain this portion

of the narrative by assuming that the rainbow was visible before

the covenant with Noah, but only after the covenant had a special

significance. But, as Colenso observes, the writer of the story

supposes the rainbow was then first set in the clouds, and is evidently

accounting for the origin of this beautiful phenomenon, which might

well appear supernatural to his uninstructed imagination.

Besides the manifold absurdities of this story there are other aspects

of it even more startling. What a picture it presents of fiendish

cruelty and atrocious vindictiveness! What an appalling exhibition

of divine malignity! God, the omnipotent and omniscient ruler of the

universe, is represented as harboring and executing the most diabolical

intentions. He ruthlessly exterminates all his children except a favored

few, and includes in his vengeance the lower animals also, although

they were innocent of offence against his laws. Every creature in whose

nostrils was the breath of life, with the exception of those persevered

in the ark, was drowned, and the earth was turned into a vast

slaughter-house. How imagination pictures the terrible scene as the

waters rise higher and higher, and the ravening waves speed after their

prey! Here some wretched being, baffled and hopeless, drops supinely

into the raging flood; there a stronger and stouter heart struggles to

the last. Here selfish ones battling for their own preservation; there

husbands and wives, parents and children, lovers and maidens, affording

mutual aid, or at last, in utter despair, locked in a final embrace and

meeting death together. And when the waters subside, what a sickening

scene presents itself! Those plains, once decked with verdure,

and lovely in the sun and breeze, are covered with the bones of a

slaughtered world. How can the Christian dare to justify such awful

cruelty? The God of the Pentateuch is not a beneficent universal father,

but an almighty fiend.

This story of Noah’s Flood is believed still because people never

examine what is taught them as the word of God. Every one who analyses

the story must pronounce it the most extraordinary amalgam of immorality

and absurdity ever palmed off on a credulous world.

EVE AND THE APPLE.

BIBLE ROMANCES.-3.

By G. W. FOOTE.

Christianity is based upon the story of the Fall. In Adam all sinned, as

in Christ all must be sayed. Saint Paul gives to this doctrine the

high sanction of his name, and we may disregard the puny whipsters of

theology, who, without any claim to inspiration, endeavor to explain the

Genesaic narrative as an allegory rather than a history. If Adam did not

really fall he could not have been cursed for falling, and his posterity

could not have become partakers either in a sin which was never

committed or in a malediction which was never pronounced. Nor can

Original Sin be a true dogma if our first parents did not transmit the

germs of iniquity to their children. If Adam did not fall there was no

need for Christ to save us; if he did not set God and man at variance

there was no need for an atonement; and so the Christian scheme of

salvation would be a fiasco from beginning to end. This will never do.

No Garden of Eden, no Gethsemane! No Fall, no Redemption! No Adam, no

Christ!

Mother Eve’s curiosity was the motive of the first transgression of

God’s commandments in the history of the world, and the whole human

race was brought under the risk of eternal perdition because of her

partiality to fruit. Millions of souls now writhe in hell because,

six thousand years ago, she took a bite of an apple. What a tender and

beautiful story! God made her to be Adam’s helpmeet. She helped him to

a slice of apple, and that soon helped them both outside Eden. The sour

stuff disagreed with him as it did with her. It has disagreed, with all

their posterity. In fact it was endowed with the marvellous power of

transmitting spiritual stomach-ache through any number of generations.

How do we know that it was an apple and not some other fruit? Why, on

the best authority extant after the Holy Scriptures themselves, namely,

our auxiliary Bible, “Paradise Lost;” in the tenth book whereof Satan

makes the following boast to his infernal peers after his exploit in

Eden:—

             "Him by fraud I have seduced

     From his Creator, and, the more to increase

     Your wonder, with an apple."

                    

Yet another authority is the profane author of “Don Juan,” who, in the

first stanza of the tenth canto, says of Newton:

     "And this is the sole mortal who could grapple,

     Since Adam, with a fall, or with an apple."

                    

Milton, being very pious, was probably in the counsel of God. How else

could he have given us an authentic version of the long colloquies that

were carried on in heaven? Byron, being very profane, was probably in

the counsel of Satan. And thus we have the most unimpeachable testimony

of two opposite sources to the fact that it was an apple, and not a

rarer fruit, which overcame the virtue of our first parents, and played

the devil with their big family of children.

This apple grew on the Tree of Knowledge, which God planted in the midst

of the Garden of Eden, sternly enjoining Adam and Eve not to eat of its

fruit under pain of death. Now the poor woman knew nothing of death and

could not understand what a dreadful punishment it was; and there was

the fruit dangling before her eyes every hour of the day. Is it any

wonder that she brooded incessantly on the one thing forbidden, that her

woman’s curiosity was irresistably piqued by it, and that at last her

longing grew so intense that she exclaimed, “Dear me! I can’t refrain

any longer. Let the consequences be what they will, I must have a bite.”

God made the woman; he knew her weakness; and he must have known that

the plan he devised to test her obedience was the most certain trap that

could be invented. Jehovah played with poor Eve just as a cat plays with

a mouse. She had free-will, say the theologians. Yes, and so has the

mouse a free run. But the cat knows she can catch it again, and finish

it off when she is tired of playing.

Not only did God allow Eve’s curiosity to urge her on to sin, he also

permitted the serpent, “more subtil than any beast of the field,” to

supplement its action. This wily creature is popularly supposed to have

been animated on the occasion by the Devil himself; although, as we

shall explain in another Romance entitled “The Bible Devil,” the book

of Genesis makes not even the remotest allusion to such a personage.

If, however, the tempter was the Devil, what chance had the poor woman

against his seductive wiles? And even if he was only a serpent, he was

very “subtil” as we are told, and able to talk like a book, and we know

that these creatures have fatal powers of fascination. Surely Mother Eve

was heavily handicapped. God might have given her fair play, and left

her to fight the battle without furnishing auxiliaries to the strong

side.

The serpent, we have said, could converse in human speech. His

conversation and his conduct will be dealt with in the Romance just

referred to. Suffice it here to say that he plainly told the woman that

God was a liar. “He,” said the tempter, “has said ye shall surely die if

ye touch the fruit of this tree. Don’t believe it. I tell you, ye shall

not surely die.” What could poor Eve think? In addition to her native

curiosity here was another incentive to disobedience. Which of these two

spoke the truth? There was only one way of deciding. She stretched forth

her hand, plucked an apple, and began to eat. And immediately, says

Milton,

     "Earth felt the wound, and nature from her seat,

     Sighing through all her works, gave signs of woe

     That all was lost."

                    

What a rumpus about a trifle! It reminds us of the story of a Jew who

had a sneaking inclination for a certain meat prohibited by his creed.

One day the temptation to partake was too strong; he slipped into a

place of refreshment and ordered some sausages. The weather happened to

be tempestuous, and just as he raised his knife and fork to attack the

savory morsel, a violent clap of thunder nearly frightened him out of

his senses. Gathering courage, he essayed a second time, but another

thunderclap warned him to desist. A third attempt was foiled in the same

way. Whereupon he threw down his knife and fork and made for the door,

exclaiming “What a dreadful fuss about a little bit of pork.”

Eve’s transgression, according to the learned Lightfoot, occurred “about high noone, the time of eating.” The same authority informs us that

she and Adam “did lie comfortlesse, till towards the cool of the day, or three o’clock afternoon.” However that may be, it is most certain that

the first woman speedily got the better of the first man. She told him

the apple was nice and he took a bite also. Perhaps he had resolved to

share her fortunes good or bad, and objected to be left alone with his

menagerie. Lightfoot describes the wife as “the weaker vessell,” but

a lady friend of ours says that the Devil stormed the citadel first,

knowing well that such a poor outpost as Adam could easily be carried

afterwards.

Having eaten of the fruit, and thus learned to distinguish between good

and evil, Adam and Eve quickly discovered that they were naked. So they

“sewed fig leaves together, and made themselves aprons.” We are not told

who gave them lessons in sewing. Perhaps they acquired the art through

intuition. But the necessary implements could not have been gained in

that way. Dr. Thomas Burnet, whose mind was greatly exercised by the

astounding wonders of the Bible, very pertinently asked “Whence had

they a needle, whence a thread, on the first day of their creation?”

He, however, could give no answer to the question, nor can we, except we

suppose that some of the female angels had attended a “garden party”

in Eden and carelessly left their needles and thread behind them. Any

reader who is dissatisfied with this explanation must inquire of the

nearest parson, who, as he belongs to a class supposed to know almost

everything, and believed to have access to the oracles of God, will

doubtless be able to reveal the whole gospel truth on the subject.

A little later, God himself, who is everywhere at once, came down from

everywhere to the Garden of Eden, for the purpose of taking a “walk in

the cool of the day.” He had perhaps just visited the infernal regions

to see that everything was ready for the reception of the miserable

creatures he meant to damn, or to assure himself that the Devil was

really not at home; and was anxious to cool himself before returning to

his celestial abode, as well as to purify himself from the sulphurous

taint which might else have sent a shudder through all the seraphic

hosts. Apparently he was holding a soliloquy, for Adam and Eve “heard

his voice.” Colenso, however, renders this portion of the Romance

differently from our authorised version—”And they heard the sound

of Jehovah-Elohim walking in the garden in the breeze of the day.”

Delitzsch thinks they heard the sound of his footsteps, for God used to

visit them in the form of a man! Could the force of folly farther go?

Any devout Theist, who candidly thought over this petty fiction, would

find its gross anthropomorphism inexpressibly shocking.

Knowing that God was everywhere, Adam and Eve nevertheless “hid

themselves from the presence of the Lord God amongst the trees of the

garden.” But they were soon dragged forth to the light. Adam, who

seems to have been a silly fellow, explained that he had hidden himself

because he was naked, as though the Lord had not seen him in that

state before. “Naked!” said the Lord, “Who told thee that thou wast

naked. Hast thou eaten of that tree, eh?” “O, Lord, yes,” replied Adam;

“just a little bit; but it wasn’t my fault, she made me do it, O Lord!

O Lord!” Whereupon God, who although he knows everything, even before it

happens, was singularly ill-informed on this occasion, turned fiercely

upon the woman, asking her what she had done. “Oh, if you please,”

whimpered poor Eve, “it was I who took the first bite; but the serpent

beguiled me, and the fault you see is not mine but his. Oh dear! oh

dear!” Then the Lord utterly lost his temper. He cursed the serpent,

cursed the woman, cursed the man, and even cursed the ground beneath

their feet Everything about at the time came in for a share of the

malison. In fact, it was what the Yankees would call a good, all-round,

level swear.

The curse of the serpent is a subject we must reserve for our pamphlet

on “The Bible Devil,” The curse of the woman was that she should bring

forth children in pain and sorrow, and that the man should rule over

her. With her present physiological condition, woman must always have

suffered during conception as she now does; and therefore Delitzsch

infers that her structure must have undergone a change, although he

cannot say in what respect He dwells also on the “subjection” of woman,

which “the religion of Revelation” has made by degrees more endurable;

probably forgetting that the Teutonic women of ancient times were

regarded with veneration, long before Christianity originated. Besides,

the subordination of the female is not peculiar to the human race, but

is the general law throughout the animal world.

Adam’s curse was less severe. He was doomed to till the ground, and to

earn his bread by the sweat of his face. Most of us would rather take

part in the great strenuous battle of life, than loll about under the

trees in the Garden of Eden, chewing the cud like contemplative cows.

What men have had to complain of in all ages is, not that they have to

earn their living by labour, but that when the sweat of their faces has

been plenteously poured forth the “bread” has too often not accrued to

them as the reward of their industry.

Orthodox Christianity avers that all the posterity of Adam and Eve

necessarily participate in their curse, and the doctrine of Original Sin

is taught from all its pulpits. Only by baptism can the stains of our

native guilt be effaced; and thus the unbaptized, even infants, perish

everlastingly, and hell, to use the words of a Protestant divine, holds

many a babe not a span long. A great Catholic divine says—”Hold thou

most firmly, nor do thou in any respect doubt, that infants, whether

in their mothers’ wombs they begin to live and then die, or when, after

their mothers have given birth to them, they pass from this life without

the sacrament of holy baptism, will be punished with the everlasting

punishment of eternal fire.” Horror of horrors! These men call sceptics

blasphemers, but they are the real blasphemers when they attribute to

their God such supreme injustice and cruelty. What should we think of

a legislator who proposed that the descendants of all thieves should be

imprisoned, and the descendants of all murderers hung? We should think

that he was bad or mad. Yet this is precisely analogous to the conduct

ascribed to God, who should be infinitely wiser than the wisest man and

infinitely better than the best.

The crime of our first parents was indeed pregnant with the direst

consequences. It not only induced the seeds of original sin, but it also

brought death into the world. Milton sings—

     "Of man's first disobedience,

     And the fruit Of that forbidden tree,

     Whose mortal taste

     Brought death into the world."

                    

And Saint Paul (Romans v., 12) writes “As by one man sin came into the

world, and death by sin.”

Now this theory implies that before the Fall the inhabited portion

of the world was the scene of perfect peace. Birds lived on seeds and

eschewed worms, and the fierce carniverous animals grazed like oxen. The

lion laid down with the lamb. “Waal,” said the Yankee, “I don’t doubt

that, but I rayther guess the lamb was inside.” The fact is that

most of the carnivorous animals could not live on a vegetable drat;

and therefore they must either have subsisted on flesh before the Fall,

which of course involves death, or their natures must have undergone

a radical change. The first supposition contradicts scripture, and the

second contradicts science.

Geology shows us that in the very earliest times living creatures died

from the same causes which kill them now. Many were overwhelmed by

floods and volcanoes, or engulphed by earthquakes; many died of old age

or disease, for their bones are found distorted or carious, and their

limbs twisted with pain; while the greater number were devoured,

according to the general law of the struggle for existence. Death ruled

universally before the human race made its appearance on the earth, and

has absolutely nothing to do with Eve and her apple.

Adam and Eve were warned by God that in the day they ate of the fruit of

the Tree of Knowledge they should surely die. The serpent declared this

to be rank nonsense, and the event proved his veracity. What age Eve

attained to the Holy Bible saith not, for it never considers women of

sufficient importance to have their longevities chronicled. But Adam

lived to the remarkably good old age of nine hundred and thirty years.

Like our Charles the Second he took “an unconscionable time a-dying.”

One of his descendants, the famous Methusaleh, lived thirty-nine years

longer; while the more famous Melchizedek is not even dead yet, if any

credence is to be placed in the words of holy Saint Paul.

But all these are mere lambs, infants, or chicken, in comparison with

the primeval patriarchs of India. Buckle tells us that, according to the

Hindoos, common men in ancient times lived to the age of 80,000 years,

some dying a little sooner and some a little later. Two of their kings,

Yudhishther and Alarka, reigned respectively 27,000 and 66,000 years.

Both these were cut off in their prime; for some of the early poets

lived to be about half a million; while one king, the most virtuous as

well as the most remarkable of all, was two million years old when he

began to reign, and after reigning 6,800,000 years, he resigned his

empire and lingered on for 100,000 years more. Adam is not in the hunt

with that tough old fellow. On the principle that it is as well to be

hung for a sheep as a lamb, faithful Christians should swallow him as

well as Adam. When the throat of their credulity is once distended

they may as well take in everything that comes. What followed the Curse

clearly shows that man was not originally created immortal. Adam and Eve

were expelled from the Garden of Eden expressly in order that they might

not become so. God “drove them forth” lest they should “take also of the

tree of life, and eat, and live for ever.” Many orthodox writers, who

have to maintain the doctrine of our natural immortality, preserve a

discreet silence on this text. Our great Milton, who has so largely

determined the Protestant theology of England, goes right in the face of

Scripture when he makes God say of man,

     "I at first with two fair gifts

     Created him endowed, with happiness

     And immortality."

                    

The fact is, the Book of Genesis never once alludes to any such thing,

nor does it represent man as endowed with any other soul than that

“breath of life” given to all animals. It is also certain that the ancient Jews were entirely ignorant of the doctrine of a life beyond

the grave. The highest promise that Moses is said to have made in the

Decalogue was that their “days should be long in the land.” The Jews

were a business people, and they wanted all promises fulfilled on this

side of death.

Nor is there any real Fall implied in this story. God himself says

that “the man,” having eaten of the forbidden fruit, “is become as one

of us.” That could scarcely be a fall which brought him nearer to God.

Bishop South, indeed, in a very eloquent passage of his sermon on “Man

Created in God’s Image,” celebrates the inconceivable perfection of

the first man, and concludes by saying that “An Aristotle was but the

rubbish of an Adam, and Athens but the rudiments of Paradise.” But a

candid perusal of Genesis obliges us to dissent from this view, Adam and

Eve were a very childish pair. Whatever intellect they possessed

they carefully concealed. Not a scintillation of it has reached us.

Shakespeare and Newton are an infinite improvement on Adam and Eve. One

of the Gnostic sects, who played such havoc with the early Christian

Church, utterly rejected the idea of a Fall. “The Ophites,” says Didron,

“considered the God of the Jews not only to be a most wicked but an

unintelligent being…. According to their account, Jalda-baoth,

the wicked demi-god adored by the Jews under the name of Jehovah, was

jealous of man, and wished to prevent the progress of knowledge; but the

serpent, the agent of superior wisdom, came to teach man what course he

ought to pursue, and by what means he might regain the knowledge of good

and evil. The Ophites consequently adored the serpent, and cursed the

true God Jehovah.”

Before expelling Adam and Eve from Eden, the Lord took pity on their

nakedness, and apparently seeing that their skill in needle-work did not

go beyond aprons, he “made coats of skins, and clothed them.” Jehovah

was thus the first tailor, and the prototype of that imperishable class

of workmen, of whom it was said that it takes nine of them to make a

man. He was also the first butcher and the first tanner, for he must

have slain the animals and dressed their skins.

Lest they should return he “placed at the east of the Garden of Eden Cherubims, and a flaming sword which turned every way, to keep the way

of the tree of life.” As this guard seems never to have been relieved,

profane wits have speculated whether the Flood drowned them, and

quenched the flaming sword with a great hiss. Ezekiel describes the

Cherubims with characteristic magnificence. These creatures with wings

and wheels were “full of eyes round about.” And “everyone had low faces:

the first face was the face of a cherub, and the second face was the

face of a man, and the third the face of a lion, and the fourth the face

of an eagle.” What monsters! No wonder they effectually frightened poor

Adam and Eve from attempting a re-entrance into the Garden.

Perhaps the reader would like to know what became of the Tree of

Knowledge. One legend of the Middle Ages relates that Eve along with

the forbidden fruit broke off a branch which she carried with her from

Paradise. Planted outside by her hand, it grew to a great tree, under

which Abel was killed; at a later time it was used in building the most

holy place of Solomon’s temple; and finally it yielded the beams out of

which the cross was made! Another legend says that, after the Fall,

God rooted out the Tree of Knowledge, and flung it over the wall of

Paradise. A thousand years after it was found by Abraham, none the worse

for its long absence from the soil. He planted it in his garden, and

while doing so he was informed by a voice from heaven that this was the

tree on whose wood the Redeemer should be crucified.

Space does not allow us to dwell at length on the Paradise Myths of

other ancient peoples, which singularly resembled that of the Jews.

Formerly it was alleged that these were all corruptions of the Genesaic

story. But it is now known that most of them date long anterior to the

very existence of the Jewish people. As Kalisch says, “they belonged to

the common traditionary lore of the Asiatic nations.” The Bible story of

Paradise is derived almost entirely from the Persian myth. It was after

contact with the reformed religion of Zoroaster, during their captivity,

that the remnant of the Jews who returned to Palestine collated their

ancient literature, and revised it in accordance with their new ideas.

The story of Eve and her Apple is, as every scholar knows, an oriental

myth slightly altered by the Jewish scribes to suit the national taste,

and has absolutely no claims on our credence. And if this be so, the

doctrine of the Fall collapses, and down comes the whole Christian

structure which is erected upon it.

THE BIBLE DEVIL.

BIBLE ROMANCES.—4.

By G. W. FOOTE.

The Christian Godhead is usually spoken and written of as a Trinity,

whereas it is in fact a Quaternion, consisting of God the Father, God

the Son, God the Holy Ghost, and God the Devil. The Roman Catholics add

yet another, Goddess the Virgin Mary. God the Devil, whom this Romance treats of so far as his history is contained in the Bible, is popularly

supposed to be inferior to the other persons of the Godhead. In reality,

however, he is vastly their superior both in wisdom and in power. For,

whereas they made the world, he has appropriated it almost entirely to

himself; and, whereas they who created all its inhabitants, have only

been able to lay down a very narrow-gauge railway to the Kingdom of

Heaven, he has contrived to lay down an exceedingly broad-gauge railway

to the Kingdom of Hell. Few passengers travel by their route, and

its terminus on this side is miserably small; but his route is almost

universally patronised, its terminus is magnificent, and there is an

extraordinary rush for tickets.

According to the Christian scheme, the Devil tempted Adam and Eve from

their allegiance to God in the form of a serpent. He played the devil

with Eve, she played the devil with Adam, and together they have played

the Devil with the whole human race ever since.

But let any unbiassed person read the Genesaic story of the Fall, and he

will certainly discover no reference to the Devil A serpent is spoken

of as “more subtle than any beast of the field;” it is throughout

represented simply as a serpent; and nowhere is there the faintest

indication of its possessing any supernatural endowments.

The Story of the Fall contains clear relics of that Tree and Serpent

worship which in ancient times prevailed so extensively over the East.

The serpent was formerly regarded as the symbol of a beneficent God. In

Hindustan, says Maurice, “the veneration of the serpent is evident

in every page of their mythologic history, in which every fabulous

personage of note is represented as grasping or as environed with a

serpent.” According to Lajard, the word which signifies “life” in the

greater part of the Semitic languages signifies also “a serpent” And

Jacob Bryant says that the word “Ab,” which in Hebrew means Father, has

also the same meaning as the Egyptian “Ob,” or “Aub,” and signifies “a

serpent,” thus etymologically uniting the two ideas. The Tree and

the Serpent were frequently associated, although they were sometimes

worshipped apart. The Aryan races of the Western world mostly worshipped

the Tree alone. The Scandinavians had their great ash “Yggdrasill,”

whose triple root reaches to the depths of the universe, while its

majestic stem overtops the heavens and its branches fill the world. The

Grecian oracles were delivered from the oak of Dodona, and the priests

set forth their decrees on its leaves. Nutpi or Neith, the goddess

of divine life, was by the Egyptians represented as seated among the

branches of the Tree of Life, in the paradise of Osiris. The “Hom,” the

sacred tree of the Persians, is spoken of in the Zendavesta as the “Word

of Life,” and, when consecrated, was partaken of as a sacrament. An oak

was the sacred tree of the ancient Druids of Britain. We inherit their

custom of gathering the sacred mistletoe at Yule-tide, while in our

Christmas Tree we have a remnant of the old Norse tree-worship. During

the Middle Ages the worship of trees was forbidden in France by the

ecclesiastical councils, and in England by the laws of Canute. A learned

antiquary remarks that “the English maypole decked with colored rags and

tinsel, and the merry morice-dancers (the gaily decorated May sweeps)

with the mysterious and now almost defunct personage, Jack-in-the-green,

are all but worn-out remnants of the adoration of gods in trees that

once were sacred in England.”

Now the serpent and the tree were originally both symbolic of the

generative powers of nature, and they were interchangeable. Sometimes

one was employed, sometimes the other, and sometimes both. But in

that great religious reformation which took place in the faiths of the

ancient world about 600 years before the time of Christ, the serpent

was degraded, and made to stand as a symbol of Ahriman, the god of evil,

who, in the Persic religion, waged incessant war against Ormuzd, the god

of beneficence. The Persian myth of the Fall is thus rendered from the

Zendavesta by Kalisch:—

“The first couple, the parents of the human race, Meshia and Meshiane,

lived originally in purity and innocence. Perpetual happiness was

promised them by Ormuzd, the creator of every good gift, if they

persevered in their virtue. But an evil demon (Dev) was sent to them

by Ahriman, the representative of everything noxious and sinful. He

appeared unexpectedly in the form of a serpent, and gave them the fruit

of a wonderful tree, Hom, which imparted immortality and had the power

of restoring the dead to life. Thus evil inclinations entered their

hearts; all their moral excellence was destroyed. Ahriman himself

appeared wider the form of the same reptile, and completed the work of

seduction. They acknowledged him instead of Ormuzd as the creator of

everything good; and the consequence was they forfeited for ever the

eternal happiness for which they were destined.”

Every reader will at once perceive how similar this is to the Hebrew

story of the Fall. The similarity is intelligible when we remember that

all the literature of the ancient Jews was put into its present form by

the learned scribes who returned with the remnant of the people from the

Babylonish captivity, and who were full of the ideas that obtained in

the Persian religion as reformed by the traditional Zoroaster.

As we have said, the Hebrew story of the Fall contains clear relics of

Tree and Serpent worship. There is also abundant proof that during the

long ages in which the Jews oscillated between polytheism and monotheism

this worship largely prevailed. Even up to the reign of Hezekiah, as we

find in the Second Book of Kings, the serpent was worshipped in groves,

to the great anger of the king, who cast out the idolatry from among his

people.

Having explained the subject thus, let us now assume with orthodox

Christians that the serpent in Eden was animated by the Devil, or was

indeed the Devil himself incarnate.

We have already observed that the Devil excels his three rivals in

wisdom and in power. While they were toiling so strenuously to create

the world and all that therein is, he quietly stood or sat by as a

spectator. “All right,” he might have murmured, “work away as hard as

you please. You’ve more strength than sense. My turn will soon come.

When the job is finished we shall see to whom all this belongs.” When

the work was completed and they had pronounced all things good, in

stepped the Devil, and in the twinkling of an eye rendered imperfect

all that they had so labored to create perfect;’turning everything

topsy-turvey, seducing the first pair of human beings, sowing the seeds

of original sin, and at one stroke securing the wholesale damnation

of our race. What were they about, to let him do all this with such

consummate ease? Surely they must have slept like logs, and thus left

the whole game in his hands. He made himself the “prince of this

world,” although they created it; and if those may laugh who win, he was

entitled to roar out his mirth to the shaking of the spheres.

Besides being the prince of this world and of the powers of darkness,

the Devil is described as the father of lies. This, however, is a gross

libel on his character. Throughout the contest with his rivals he played

with perfect fairness. And from Genesis to Revelation there can be

adduced no single instance in which he departs from the strict line of

truth. On one occasion when Jehovah desired a lying spirit to go forth

and prophesy falsely to his people, he found one ready to his hand in

heaven and had no need to trouble Satan for a messenger. The Lord God

had told Adam, “Of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, thow shalt

not eat of it; for in the day that thou eatest thereof thow shalt surely

die.” Nay, said the Devil, when he began business “ye shall not surely

die; for God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes

shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil.” Every

word of his speech was true. Instead of dying “in the day” that he ate

of the fruit Adam lived to the fine old age of nine hundred and thirty

years.

And after the “fall” the Lord God said, “Behold, the man is become as

one of us, to know good and evil.” The Devil’s truthfulness is thus

amply vindicated.

Satan’s visit to Eve was paid in the form of a serpent. She manifested

no astonishment at being accosted by such a creature. It may be that the

whole menagerie of Eden spoke in the human tongue, and that Balaam’s

ass was only what the biologists would call “a case of reversion” to

the primitive type. Josephus and most of the Fathers conceived of the

serpent as having had originally a human voice and legs; so that if he

could not have walked about with Eve arm in arm, he might at least have

accompanied her in a dance. Milton, however, discredits the legs, and

represents the serpent thus:

     "Not with indented wave,

     Prone on the ground, as since, but on his rear,

     Circular base of rising folds, that towered,

     Fold above fold, a surging maze, his head

     Crested aloft, and carbuncle his eyes;

     With burnish'd neck of verdant gold, erect

     Amidst his circling spires, that on the grass

     Floated redundant."

                    

Very splendid! But the doctors differ, and who shall decide? What

followed the eating of the forbidden fruit we have dealt with in “Eve

and the Apple.” We shall therefore at once come to the curse pronounced

upon the serpent “And the Lord God said unto the serpent, Because thou

hast done this, thou art cursed above all cattle, and above every beast

of the field; upon thy belly shalt thou go, and dust shalt thou eat all

the days of thy life: and I will put enmity between thee and the woman,

and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou

shalt bruise his heel.”

The final portion of this curse is flagrantly mythological Among the

Hindoos, Krishna also, as the incarnation of Vishnu, is represented

now as treading on the bruised head of a conquered serpent, and now

as entwined by it, and stung in the heel. In Egyptian pictures and

sculptures, likewise, the serpent is seen pierced through the head by

the spear of the goddess Isis. The “enmity” between mankind and the

serpent is, however, not universal Amongst the Zulus the snake is held

in great veneration, as their dead ancestors are supposed to reappear in

that form; and in ancient times, as we have already observed, serpents

were actually worshipped.

The middle portion of the curse has not yet been fulfilled. The serpent

lives on more nutritious food than dust. In the Zoological Gardens the

inmates of the serpent-house enjoy a more solid diet The fact is, we

have here an oriental superstition. Kalisch points out that “the great

scantiness of food? on which the serpent can subsist, gave rise to the

belief, entertained by many Eastern nations, that they eat dust.” This

belief is referred to in Micah vii, 17, Isaiah lxv., 25, and elsewhere

in the Bible. Among the Indians the serpent is believed to live on wind.

That the serpent “goes” upon its “belly” is, of course, a fact. Before

the curse it must have moved about in some other way. Milton’s poetical

solution of the difficulty we have already given. During the Middle Ages

those seraphic doctors of theology, who gravely argued how many angels

could dance on the point of a needle, speculated also on the serpent’s

method of locomotion before the “fall.” Some thought the animal had

legs, some that it undulated gracefully on its back, and others that it

hopped about on its tail. The ever bold Delitzsch decides that “its

mode of motion and its form were changed,” but closes the controversy

by adding, “of the original condition of the serpent it is, certainly,

impossible to frame to ourselves a conjecture.” All this is mere

moonshine. Geology, as Colenso remarks, shows us that the serpent was

the same kind of creature as it is now, in the ages long before man

existed on the earth.

Why the serpent was cursed at all is a question which no Christian can

answer. The poor animal was seized, mastered, occupied, and employed by

the Devil, and was therefore absolutely irresponsible for what occurred.

It had committed no offence, and consequently the curse upon it,

according to Christian doctrine, was a most brutal and wanton outrage.

Having done such a splendid stroke of business in Eden, the Devil

retired, quite satisfied that the direction he had given to the affairs

of this world was so strong and certain as to obviate the necessity of

his personal supervision. Fifteen centuries later the human race had

grown so corrupt that God (that is, the three persons in one) resolved

to drown them all; preserving, however, eight live specimens to repeople

the world. How the Devil must have laughed again! He knew that Noah

and his family possessed the seeds of original sin, which they would

assuredly transmit to their children, and thus prolong the corruption

through all time. Short-sighted as ever, Jehovah refrained from

completing the devastation, after which he might have started afresh. So

sure was the Devil’s grip on God’s creation that, a few centuries after

the Flood, there were not found ten righteous men in the whole city of

Sodom, and no doubt other cities were almost as bad.

According to the Bible, the Devil’s long spell of rest was broken in

the reign of King David, the man after God’s own heart, but a very great

scoundrel nevertheless. The Second Book of Samuel (xxiv., 1) tells us

that “Again the anger of the Lord was kindled against Israel, and he

moved David against them to say, Go, number Israel and Judah.” Now the

First Book of Chronicles (xxi, 1) in relating the same incident says,

“And Satan stood up against Israel, and provoked David to number Israel”

Who shall reconcile this discrepancy? Was it God, was it Satan, or was

it both? Imagine David with the celestial and infernal powers whispering

the same counsel into either ear! A Scotch minister once told us that

this difficulty was only apparent. The Devil, said he, exercises only

a delegated power, and acts only by the express or tacit permission of

God; so that it matters not which is said to have provoked David. Yes,

but what of the consequences? Because the king, despite all protests,

took a census of his people, the Lord sent a destroying angel, who slew

by pestilence seventy thousand of them. Where, in the whole history of

religion, shall we find a viler sample of divine injustice?

Besides, if the Devil acts in all cases only by God’s permission, the

latter is responsible for all the former’s wrongdoing. The principal,

and not the agent, must bear the guilt. And this suggests a curious

problem. Readers of “Robinson Crusoe” will remember that when Man Friday

was undergoing a course of theological instruction, he puzzled

his master by asking why God did not convert the Devil. To his

unsophisticated mind it was plain that the conversion of the Devil would

annihilate sin. Robinson Crusoe changed the subject to avoid looking

foolish, but Man Friday’s question remains in full force. Why does not

God convert the Devil? The great Thomas Aquinas is reported to have

prayed for the Devil’s conversion through a whole long night. Robert

Burns concludes his “Address to the Deil” with a wish that he “wad tak

a thought an’ men’.” And Sterne, in one of his wonderful strokes of

pathos, makes Corporal Trim say of the Devil, “He is damned already,

your honor;” whereupon, “I am sorry for it,” quoth Uncle Toby. Why, oh

why, we repeat, does not God convert the Devil, and thus put a stop for

ever to the damnation of mankind? Why do not the clergy pray without

cease for that one object? Because they dare not. The Devil is their

best friend. Abolish him, and disestablish hell, and their occupation

would be gone. They must stick to their dear Devil, as their most

precious possession, their stock-in-trade, their talisman of power,

without whom they were worse than nothing.

The Devil’s adventures in the Book of Job are very amusing. One day

there was a drawing-room or levée held in heaven. The sons of God

attended, and Satan came also among them. He seems to have so closely

resembled the rest of the company that only God detected the difference.

This is not surprising, for the world has seen some very godly sons of

God, so very much like the Devil, that if he met one of them in a dark

lane by night, he might almost suspect it to be his own ghost. God, who

knows everything, as usual asked a number of questions. Where had Satan

been, and what had he been doing? Satan replied, like a gentleman of

independent means, that he had been going to and fro in the earth, and

walking up and down in it. “Well,” said the Lord, “have you observed my

servant Job? What a good man! perfect and upright I’m proud of him.”

Oh yes, Satan had observed him. He keeps a sharp eye on all men. As old

Bishop Latimer said, whatever parson is out of his parish the Devil

is always in his. “Doth Job fear God for nought?” said Satan. “He is

wealthy, prosperous, happy, and respected; you fence him about from

evil; but just let trouble come upon him, and he will curse thee to thy

face.” This was a new view of the subject; the Lord had never seen it

in this light before. So he determined to make an experiment. With God’s

sanction Satan went forth to afflict Job. He despoiled his substance,

slaughtered his children, covered him with sore boils from head to foot,

and then set on his wife to “nag” him. But Job triumphed; he did not

curse God, and thus Satan was foiled. Subsequently Job became richer

than ever and more renowned, while a fresh family grew up around his

knees. “So,” say the Christians, “all’s well that ends well!” Not so,

however; for there remains uneffaced the murder of Job’s children, who

were hurriedly despatched out of the world in the very midst of their

festivity. When the celestial and infernal powers play at conundrums, it

is a great pity that they do not solve them up above or down below,

and leave the poor denizens of this world free from the havoc of their

contention.

In the New Testament, as in the Old, the Devil appears early on the

scene. After his baptism in Jordan, Jesus was “led up of the spirit in

the wilderness to be tempted of the Devil.” When he had fasted forty

days and nights he “was afterward hungered.” Doctor Tanner overlooked

this. The hunger of Jesus only began on the forty-first day. The Devil

requests Jesus to change the stones into bread, but he declines to do

so. Then he sets him “on a pinnacle of the temple” in Jerusalem, and

desires him to throw himself down. Jesus must have been exceedingly sharp set in that position. Meanwhile, where was the Devil posted?

He could scarcely have craned his neck up so as to hold a confabulation

with Jesus from the streets, and we must therefore suppose that he was

sharp set on another pinnacle. A pretty sight they must have been for

the Jews down below! That temptation failing, the Devil takes Jesus “up

into an exceeding high mountain, and showeth him all the kingdoms of

the world, and the glory of them.” This is remarkably like seeing

round a corner, for however high we go we cannot possibly see the whole

surface of a globe at once. “All these things,” says Satan, “will I give

thee if thou wilt fall down and worship me.” What a generous Devil! They

already belonged to Jesus, for doth not Scripture say the earth is the

Lord’s and the fulness thereof?—a text which should now read “the

earth is the landlords’ and the emptiness thereof.” This temptation also

fails, and the Devil retires in disgust.

What a pretty farce! Our burlesques and pantomimes are nothing to it.

Satan knew Jesus, and Jesus knew Satan. Jesus knew that Satan would

tempt him, and Satan knew that Jesus knew it. Jesus knew that Satan

could not succeed, and Satan knew so too. Yet they kept the farce up

night and day, for no one knows how long; and our great Milton in his

“Paradise Regained” represents this precious pair arguing all day long,

Satan retiring after sunset, and Jesus lying down hungry, cold and wet,

and rising in the morning with damp clothes to renew the discussion.

Soon after Jesus went into the country of the Gergesenes, where he met

two fierce men possessed with devils whom he determined to exorcise, The

devils (for the Devil had grown numerous by then), not liking to be

turned adrift on the world, without home or shelter, besought Jesus

to let them enter the bodies of an herd of swine feeding by. This he

graciously permitted. The devils left the men and entered the swine;

whereupon the poor pigs, experiencing a novel sensation, never having

had devils inside them before, “ran violently down a steep place into

the sea, and perished in the waters.” Whether the devils were drowned

with the pigs this veracious history saith not. But the pigs themselves

were not paid for. Jesus wrought the miracle at other people’s expense.

And the inhabitants of that part took precisely this view of the case.

For “the whole city came out to meet Jesus: and when they saw him, they

besought him that he would depart out of their coasts.” No doubt they

reflected that if he remained working miracles of that kind, at the end

of a week not a single pig would be left alive in the district. Entering

in Genesis, the Devil appropriately makes his exit in Revelation. The

twelfth chapter of that holy nightmare describes him as “a great red

dragon, having seven heads, and ten horns, and seven crowns upon his

heads; and his tail drew the third part of the stars of heaven, and did

cast them to the earth.” What a tail! The writer’s ideas of size were

very chaotic. Bringing a third part of the stars of heaven to this

earth, is much like trying to lodge a few thousand cannon-balls on the

surface of a bullet.

Finally the Devil is to be “bound for a thousand years” in hell. Let us

hope the chain will be strong; for if it should break, the pit has no

bottom, and the Devil would go right through, coming out on the other

side to renew his old tricks.

Such is the Romance of the Bible Devil. Was ever a more ludicrous story

palmed off on a credulous world? The very clergy are growing ashamed

of it. But there it is, inextricably interwoven with the rest of the

“sacred” narrative, so that no skill can remove it without destroying

the whole fabric. The Devil has been the Church’s best friend, but he

is doomed, and as their fraternal bond cannot be broken, he will drag it

down to irretrievable perdition.

THE TEN PLAGUES;

Or, HOW MOSES HARRIED EGYPT.

BIBLE ROMANCES.—5.

By G. W. FOOTE.

If a man who had never read the Bible before wished to amuse himself

during a spare hour among its pages, we should recommend him to try the

first fourteen chapters of Exodus. A more entertaining narrative was

never penned. Even the fascinating Arabian Nights affords nothing

better, provided we read it with the eyes of common sense, and without

that prejudice which so often blinds us to the absurdities of “God’s

Word.” At the end of the fourteenth chapter aforesaid, let the book be

closed, and then let the reader ask himself whether he ever met with a

more comical story. We have no doubt as to his answer; and we feel

assured that he will agree with the poet Cowper in thinking that God does “move in a mysterious way his wonders to perform.” Two hundred

and fifteen years after the arrival of Israel in Egypt, God’s chosen

people had fallen into slavery. Yet they were exceedingly prolific, so

that “the land was filled with them.” Afraid of their growing numbers,

Pharaoh “spake to the Hebrew midwives” and told them to kill all their

male children at birth and leave only the daughters alive. This

injunction the midwives very, properly disobeyed, excusing themselves on

the ground that “the Hebrew women were lively and were delivered ere the

midwives came in unto them.” Had they obeyed Pharaoh, the Jewish race

would have been extinguished, and Judaism and Christianity been never

heard of.

But the comical fact as to these midwives is that there were only two

of them, Shiphrah and Puah. What a busy pair they must have been! What

patterns of ubiquitous industry! When the Jews quitted Egypt soon after

they mustered six hundred thousand men, besides women and children. Now,

supposing all these were collected together in one city, its size would

equal that of London. How could two midwives possibly attend to all

the confinements among such a population? And how much more difficult

would their task be if the population were scattered over a wide area,

as was undoubtedly the case with the Jews! Words fail us to praise

the miraculous activity of these two ladies. Like the peace of God, it

passes all understanding.

One of the male children born under the iron rule of Pharaoh was Moses,

the son of Amram and Jochebed. The incidents of his eventful life will

be fully recorded in our series of “Bible Heroes.” Suffice it here to

say that he was adopted and brought up by Pharaoh’s daughter; that he

became skilled in all the learning of the Egyptians; that he privily

slew an Egyptian who-had maltreated a Hebrew, and was obliged therefore

to flee to the land of Midian, where he married Zipporah, a daughter of

Jethro the priest. At this time Moses was getting on to his eightieth

year. Now-a-days a man of that age sees only the grave before him, and

has pretty nearly closed his account with the world. But in those days

it was different. At the age of eighty Moses was just beginning his

career. He was indeed a very astonishing old boy.

One day Moses was keeping his father-in-law’s flock near Mount Horeb,

when lo! a strange vision greeted his eyes. The “angel of the Lord

appeared unto him in a flame of fire out of the midst of a bush,” which

burned without consuming. By “angel” we are to understand a vision or

appearance only, for the being within the bush was God Almighty himself;

and throughout the rest of the narrative the word “angel” is entirely

dropped, only Lord or God being used. Moses approached this wonderful

sight; but the Lord called out to him, “Draw not nigh hither: put off

thy shoes from off thy feet, for the place whereon thou standest is holy

ground.” Thereupon Moses hid his face “for he was afraid to look upon

God.” Could anything be more ludicrous! Fancy God, the infinite spirit

of the universe, secreting himself in a bush and setting it on fire,

just to make a little display for the benefit of Moses! Our wonder,

however, is presently lessened; for this God turns out to be only

Jehovah “the Lord God of the Hebrews,” a mere local deity, who cared

only for his own people, and was quite ready to slaughter any number of

the inhabitants of adjacent countries, besides being bitterly jealous

of their gods. The utmost claimed for him is that he is the biggest God

extant, and quite capable of thrashing all the other gods with one

hand tied behind his back. He had heard the cries of his people and had

determined to rescue them from bondage. He had also resolved to give

Pharaoh and the Egyptians a taste of his quality, so that they might be

forced to-admit his superiority to their gods. “I will let them know,”

said he to Moses, “who I am, and you shall be my agent. We’ll confound

their impudence before we’ve done with them. But don’t let us be in a

hurry, for the little drama I have devised requires a good deal of time.

You go to Egypt and ask Pharaoh to let my people go. But don’t suppose

he will consent. That wouldn’t suit my plans at all. I have decided to

set you two playing at the little game of ‘pull Moses, pull Pharaoh,’

and I shall harden his heart against your demands so that there may be

a fierce tussle. But don’t be afraid. I am on your side, and just at the

end of the game I’ll join in and pull Pharaoh clean over. And mind you

tell him all along that it is my power and not yours which works all

the wonders I mean you to perform, for you are only my instrument, and

I want all the glory myself. Play fair, Moses, play fair!” Moses was

not unwilling to engage in this enterprise, but like a prudent Jew he

required certain assurances of success. He therefore first raised an

objection as to his own insignificance—”Who am I, that I should go unto

Pharaoh?” To which God replied, “Certainly I will be with thee; and

this shall be a token unto thee, that I have sent thee: When thou hast

brought forth the people out of Egypt, ye shall serve God upon this

mountain.” Moses, however, required a much less remote token than this;

so he again objected that nobody would believe him. Thereupon the Lord

bade him cast his rod on the ground, and lo! it became a serpent Moses

very naturally fled before it, till the Lord told him not to run away

but to take it by the tail. He did so, and it became again a rod in his

hand. Then the Lord bade him put his hand in his bosom, and on taking it

out he found it was “leprous as snow.” Again he put it in his bosom, and

when he plucked it out it was once more sound and well. “There,” said

the Lord, “those signs will do in Egypt. When you evince them nobody

will doubt you.” Still hesitant, Moses objected that he was very slow of

speech. So he frankly desired the Lord to send someone else. No wonder

the Lord grew angry at this persistent reluctance; nevertheless he

restrained himself, and informed Moses that his brother Aaron, who was

a good speaker, should accompany him. The prudent prophet seems to have

been at length satisfied. At any rate he made no further objection,

but after a little further conversation with the Lord, who was very

talkative, he set forth on his journey to Egypt.

Singular to relate, the Lord met Moses at an inn on the road, and,

instead of wishing him good-speed, sought to kill him. What a strange

God, to be sure! Why did he want to kill his own messenger? And why, if

he wanted to kill him, did he not succeed in doing it? Truly the ways

of God are past finding out. The only reason discoverable for this queer

conduct is that Moses’ boy was uncircumcised. Zipporah, his wife, took a

sharp stone and performed the rite of circumcision herself, casting the

amputated morsel at the feet of the boy’s father, with the remark that

he was “a bloody husband.” The Lord’s anger was thereby appeased, and

the text naively says that he then let Moses go.

Prompted by the Lord, Aaron went out into the wilderness to meet Moses,

and they soon appeared together before “all the elders of the children

of Israel,” who readily believed in their mission when they heard

Aaron’s account of the Lord’s conversation with Moses, and saw the

wonderful signs. Afterwards the two brothers visited Pharaoh, but God

had hardened his heart; so he denied all knowledge of the Lord, and

refused to let Israel go. On the contrary, he commanded the taskmaskers

to be even more rigorous with them, and, instead of giving them straw to

make bricks, as theretofore, to make them gather straw for themselves.

And when they complained, Pharaoh replied that they were an idle lot,

and only wanted to go out and sacrifice to the Lord in order to avoid

work. Whereupon they remonstrated with Moses for his interference,

and he, in turn, remonstrated with God in very plain and disrespectful

language. “Nonsense!” said the Lord, “now you shall see what I will do

to Pharaoh.”

Again Pharaoh was visited by the two brothers, who this time commenced

to work the miracle. Aaron cast down his rod, and it became a serpent.

But the magicians of Egypt, who were present by invitation of the King,

were in nowise astonished. “Oh,” said they, “is that all you can do?”

Saying which, every man of them threw down his rod, and it also became

a serpent. That was indeed an age of miracles! The magicians of Egypt

wrought this wonder without any help from the Lord, and solely “with

their enchantments.” Here, then, was a pretty fix! So far, neither

side had any advantage. Presently, however, Aaron’s serpent—which thus

proved itself a truly Jewish one—created a diversion by swallowing all

the others up. We must suppose that it afterwards disgorged them, or

else that Aaron’s, rod was exceedingly stout when he got it back.

Pharaoh’s heart remained obdurate, notwithstanding this sign, and he

still refused to let the people go. And then the plagues commenced.

The first was a plague of blood. Aaron stretched forth his rod, and all the waters of Egypt, the streams, the rivers, the ponds, and the

pools became blood. Even the water in vessels of stone and wood was

ensanguined. The fish all died, and the river stank; and “there was

blood throughout all the land of Egypt.” This was a good start, but the

magicians of Egypt beat it hollow; for, after Aaron had turned all the

water of Egypt into blood, they turned the rest into blood. No wonder

that Pharaoh’s heart remained hardened! He quietly walked into his house

and let the subject drop.

Seven days later Moses went again to Pharaoh and said, “Thus saith

the Lord, let my people go.” And Pharaoh said, “I won’t.” “Won’t you?”

answered Moses, “we shall see.” Forthwith Aaron stretched forth his rod

over the streams, rivers, and ponds, and brought on the second plague

in the shape of frogs, which swarmed all over the land. They entered the

houses, penetrated to the bedrooms, mounted the beds, slipped into the

kneading-troughs, and even got into the ovens, although one would expect

frogs to give such hot places a very wide berth. What a squelching

of frogs there must have been! The Egyptians could not have stood

absolutely still, and the land was covered with them. Still unfoiled,

the magicians, “with their enchantments, followed suit, and brought

up frogs too.” Yet, as the land was already covered with frogs, it is

difficult to see how the new comers found room, unless they got on the

backs of the others, and went hopping about in couples. Pharaoh now

relented. He called for Moses, and said, “Intreat your Lord to take away

these nasty frogs, and I will let the people go.” “That will I,” said

Moses, “and you shall know that there is none like unto the Lord our

God.” The next day the frogs died out of the houses, villages, and

fields, and were gathered into heaps, so that again “the land stank.”

But when Pharaoh saw that there was respite, he hardened his heart

again, “as the Lord had said.”

The third act of this tragi-comedy was decisive in one sense, for in

it the magicians of Egypt were obliged to retire from the competition.

Aaron stretched forth his rod again and smote the dust of the earth, all

of which instantly became lice, in man and in beast. Before this dirty

miracle the magicians of Egypt shrank dismayed. They made a feeble and

altogether unsuccessful attempt to imitate Aaron’s performance, and then

drew back, declining to continue the contest. The lice settled them.

“This,” said they, “is the finger of God.” But Pharaoh still refused to

knuckle under. Even against the force of this supreme wonder his heart

was steeled.

So the fourth plague came. A grievous swarm of flies descended on Egypt,

so that “the land was corrupted by reason of them. But not a single

fly crossed over into the land of Goshe” where the Jews dwelt. Thereupon

Pharaoh called for Moses and Aaron, and told them he was willing to

let their people go and sacrifice to the Lord for three days, but not

outside Egypt. Moses reiterated his demand for a three days’ journey

into the wilderness. Whereto Pharaoh replied that they might go, but

“not too far.” Moses then undertook to banish the flies. And he was as

good as his word; for there was made such a clean sweep of them that

“not one remained.” This precious narrative always runs to extremes.

Egypt without a fly in it would be in a very abnormal condition. At

ordinary times the land is infested with flies; so much so, indeed, that

large numbers of the people suffer from diseased eyes, in consequence

of these insects incessantly fastening on the sores caused by the

irritating sand which fills the air. It was absurd for this Hebrew

story-teller to scotch the last fly; he should have left sufficient to

maintain the character of the country.

Again Pharaoh’s heart was hardened, and when the flies were banished

he refused to “let the people go.” So the fifth plague came. A “very

grievous murrain,” which spared the cattle of Israel, broke out on the

cattle of Egypt, and with such virulence that they all died. Pharaoh

found on inquiry that there was “not one of the cattle of the Israelites

dead,” yet for all that his heart was hardened, and he would not let the

people go.

So the sixth plague came. Aaron took “handfuls of ashes of the furnace,”

which Moses sprinkled towards heaven, and “it became a boil breaking

forth with blains upon man and upon beast.” Even the magicians were

afflicted. Now the readers will bear in mind that all the cattle of

Egypt were killed by the fifth, plague. What beasts, then, were these

tortured with boils? Were they dead carcasses, or were they live cattle

miraculously created in the interim? Surely this is a thing which “no

fellah can understand.” From the serpent of Eden to Jonah’s whale, the

animals of the Bible are a queer lot.

Pharaoh’s heart remaining still hardened, God commanded Moses to make

a special appeal to him, and to get up early in the morning for that

purpose. So Moses stood before Pharaoh and said, “Thus saith the Lord

God of the Hebrews, let my people go, that they may serve me. If you

refuse I shall plague you and your people worse than ever, and so teach

you that there is none like me in all the earth. Don’t puff yourself up

with conceit, for you were made what you are only in order that through

you my power might be manifested. You had better cave in at once.” But

Pharaoh would not harken. He tacitly declared that the Lord God of the

Hebrews might go to Jericho.

So the seventh plague came. A fierce hail, accompanied by fire that ran

along the ground, smote all that was in the field, both man and beast.

It smote also every herb of the field and brake every tree of the

field. Only those were saved who “feared the Lord” and stayed in doors

with their servants and cattle. Fortunately the wheat and the rice were

spared, as they were not grown up; or there would have been a famine in

Egypt compared with which the seven years of scarcity in Joseph’s time

had sunk into insignificance. Pharaoh now relented and repented. “I have

sinned this time,” he said, “the Lord is righteous, and I and my people

are wicked.” And Moses, seeing that the king had recognised Jehovah

as the true cock of the theological walk, procured a cessation of the

thunder and the hail. But lo! when Pharaoh perceived this, he hardened

his heart again, and “sinned yet more.” The obduracy of this potentate,

under the manipulation of God, is really becoming monotonous. So the

eighth plague came. After a day and a night of east wind, a prodigious

swarm of locusts went up over the land of Egypt, covering the face of

the whole earth, and darkening the ground. They “did eat every herb of

the land, and all the fruit of the trees which the hail had spared.” But

we were told that the hail smote every herb, and brake every tree.

What then was left for the locusts to eat? The writer of this narrative

had a very short memory, or else a stupendous power of belief.

Again Pharaoh confessed that he had sinned. The locusts were cleared

away, and so effectually that “not one remained.” But “the Lord hardened

Pharaoh’s heart” for the eighth time, and he refused to let the people

go. Whereupon Moses brought darkness over the land of Egypt, a thick

darkness that might be felt. This thick darkness lasted in Egypt for

three days, during which time the people “saw not one another, neither

rose any from his place.” We presume, therefore, that they all starved

for that time. Poor devils! What had they done to be treated thus? All

the children of Israel, however, had light in their dwellings. Why then

did they not avail themselves of such a fine opportunity to escape? It

was a splendid chance, yet they let it slip. Perhaps Moses did not give

the word, and they were like a flock of sheep without him. Perhaps

they wished to stay and see the rest of the fun. For more was coming,

although it was anything but fun to the poor Egyptians.

To them indeed it was an awful tragedy such as we lack words to

describe. Moses commanded the Jews to take a male lamb for each

household, to kill it, and to daub its blood over the two side-posts and

on the upper door-posts of their houses. The flesh they were to eat

in the night, roasted, with bitter herbs and unleavened bread, as the

inauguration of the Passover. The Lord meant to pass through the land in

the dark, and slay all the firstborn in Egypt; and lest he should make

some mistakes he required the Jews’ houses to be marked with blood so

that he might distinguish them. We should expect God to dispense with

such “aids to memory.” What followed must be told in the language of

Scripture: “At midnight the Lord smote all the firstborn in the land

of Egypt, from the firstborn of Pharaoh that sat on the throne unto the

firstborn of the captive that was in the dungeon; and all the firstborn

of cattle. And Pharaoh rose up in the night, he, and all his servants,

and all the Egyptians; and there was a great cry in Egypt; for there was

not a house where there was not one dead.” The reader’s imagination will

picture the horror of this scene. That “great cry in Egypt” arose from

a people who were the first victims of God’s hatred of all who stood

in the way of his chosen “set of leprous slaves.” And in this case the

tragedy was the more awful, and the more inexcusably atrocious, because

God deliberately planned it. He could easily have softened Pharaoh’s

heart, but he chose to harden it. He could have brought his people

out of Egypt in peace, but he preferred that they should start amidst

wailings of agony, and leave behind them a track of blood.

Yet in the tragedy there is a touch of comedy. Those beasts that were

first killed by the murrian and afterwards plagued by the boil, at last

lose their firstborn by the tenth plague. Besides, there is a touch of

the ludicrous in the statement that every house had one dead. All the

firstborn of such a large population could not have been present at that

time. Some might have left Egypt for purposes of trade, and others would

certainly have been cut off before by death. The story of the tenth

plague, like the other nine, requires to be taken with a very large

grain of salt.

Pharaoh and the Egyptians were now anxious to get rid of the Jews. So

God’s people departed in haste. They took good care, however, not to

go empty-handed. They “borrowed” of the Egyptians, without the remotest

intention of ever paying them back, jewels of silver, jewels of gold,

and raiment. In fact they “spoiled the Egyptians.” In recent times the

modern Egyptians have wiped off that old score by spoiling a few Jewish

moneylenders, and so returned tit for tat.

God led his people past instead of through the land of the Philistines,

lest they should be frightened by war, and wish to return to Egypt. He

does not seem to have known their character. Considering the delight

with which they subsequently warred against their enemies, and the joy

they took in wholesale massacre, we are inclined to think that they

would have just liked to get their hands into the business of fighting

by trying conclusions with the Philistines. Moses carried off the bones

of Joseph, which must have been rather stale by that time. And God went

before the huge host of six hundred thousand men on foot, besides women

and children, and a mixed multitude of followers; by day in a pillar of

cloud, to lead them the way, and by night in a pillar of fire, to give

them light, until at length they found themselves encamped before the

Red Sea.

In the meanwhile God had again hardened Pharaoh’s heart, for the

express purpose of killing some more Egyptians and getting more honor to

himself. The Israelites soon heard that Pharaoh was pursuing them with

an army, and they remembered his dreadful war chariots. They found

themselves literally between the devil and the deep sea. Whereupon they

murmured against Moses for bringing them out into the wilderness to die.

But he, disregarding them, stretched forth his miraculous rod over the

sea, and lo! the waters parted, forming a wall on either side of a safe

passage, through which the Jews travelled with dry feet. Pharaoh and

his host, however, attempting the same feat, were overwhelmed by

the down-rushing sea-ramparts, and all drowned. There remained, says Exodus, not so much as one of them.

We have heard a different account of this affair. A negro preacher once

explained that the Red Sea, just at that time, was “a little bit frozen

over,” and the Jews, carrying only what they had borrowed “frum the

Gyptians,” crossed the ice safely; but when Pharaoh came with his

thundering war-chariots, the ice broke, and “dey all was drown’d.” But a

nigger in the audience objected that the Red Sea is “in de quator,” and

is never frozen over. “War did you larn dat?” asked the preacher. “In de

jografy,” was the reply. “Ah,” was the ready retort, “dat’s war you made

de mistake; dis was a very long time ago, and dere was no jografy and no

quator den.” That nigger preacher’s explanation seems quite as good as

the one given by “Moses.”

We leave the Jews with their Lord God on the safe side of the Red Sea,

where Moses heads the men in singing a joyful song of praise, and Miriam

the prophetess heads the women with timbrel and with dance. Jehovah has

ended his plaguing of the Egyptians, after more than decimating them. He

has covered his name with terrible splendour, and proved “that there is

none like him” to a world which is very happy to be assured of the fact.

Two such monsters would make earth a hell. Reader! did you ever meet

with a more extraordinary story than this of the Ten Plagues? and can

you regard the book which contains it as God’s Word?

JONAH AND THE WHALE.

BIBLE ROMANCES.—6.

By G. W. FOOTE.

We have often wondered whether Shakespeare had the story of Jonah in

his mind when he wrote that brief dialogue between Hamlet and Polonius,

which immediately precedes the famous closet-scene in the Master’s

greatest play—

  Hamlet.—Do you see yonder cloud that's almost in shape of a camel?

  Polonius.—By the mass, and 'tis like a camel, indeed.

  Hamlet.—Methinks it is like a weasel.

  Polonius.—It is backed like a weasel.

  Hamlet.—Or like a whale?

  Polonius.—Very like a whale.

                      

Having, however, no means whereby to decide this question, we must

content ourselves with broaching it, and leave the reader to form his

own conclusion. Yet we cannot refrain from expressing our opinion that

the story of the strange adventures of the prophet Jonah is “very like a

whale.”

In another of Shakespeare’s plays, namely “The Tempest,” we find a

phrase which exactly applies to the romance of Jonah. When Trinculo

discovers Caliban lying on the ground, he proceeds to investigate the

monster. “What,” quoth he, “have we here? a man or a fish? dead or

alive? A fish: he smells like a fish; a very ancient and fish-like

smell.” Now that is a most admirable description of the Book of Jonah.

It has “a very ancient and fish-like smell.” In fact, it is about the

fishiest of all the fishy stories ever told.

Sailors’ “yarns” have become proverbial for their audacious and

delicious disregard of truth, and the Book of Jonah is “briny” from

beginning to end. It contains only forty-eight verses, but its brevity

is no defect. On the contrary, that is one of its greatest charms. The

mind takes in the whole story at once, and enjoys it undiluted; as

it were a goblet of the fine generous wine of romance. Varying the

expression, the Book of Jonah may be called the perfect cameo of Bible

fiction.

When the Book of Jonah was written no one precisely knows, nor is it

discoverable who wrote it. According to Matthew Arnold some unknown

man of genius gave to Christendom the fourth gospel, and with sublime

self-abnegation allowed his name to perish. A similar remark must be

made concerning the unknown author who gave to the world this racy story

of Jonah and the whale. We heartily wish his name had been preserved for

remembrance and praise.

Our marginal Bibles date the Book of Jonah b.c. cir. 862. Other

authorities give, the more recent date of b.c. 880 as that of the events

recorded in it. This chronology will suggest an important reflection

later on.

The wonderful story of Jonah and the whale begins in this wise:—”Now

the word of the Lord came unto Jonah, the son of Amittai, saying, Arise,

go to Nineveh, that great city, and cry against it; for their wickedness

is come up before me.”

Who Amittai was, and whether man or woman, is a problem still unsolved;

but it is reasonable to suppose the name was that of Jonah’s father, as

the ancient Jews paid no superfluous attentions to women, and generally

traced descent from the paternal stem alone. Amittai belonged to a place

called Gathhepher, “the village of the Cow’s tail,” or, as otherwise

interpreted, “the Heifer’s trough.” Jonah’s tomb is said to have been

long shown on a rocky hill near the town; but whether the old gentleman

was ever buried there no man can say. According to Mr. Bradlaugh, the

word Jonah means a dove, and is by some derived from an Arabic root,

signifying to be weak or gentle. Another interpretation, by Gesenius, is

a feeble, gentle bird. This refractory prophet was singularly ill-named.

If his cognomen was bestowed on him by his parents, they must have been

greatly deceived as to his character. The proverb says that it is a wise

son that knows his own father; and with the history of Jonah before us,

we may add that it is a wise father who rightly knows his own son.

The solicitude of “the Lord God of the Hebrews” for the welfare of the

Ninevites is to the sceptical mind an extraordinary phenomenon. It is

one of the very few cases in which he shows the slightest concern for

any other people than the Jews. His ordinary practice was to slaughter

them wholesale by pestilence or the sword; and it is therefore very

refreshing to meet with such an instance of his merciful care. For once

he remembers that the rest of Adam’s posterity are his children, and

possess a claim on his attention.

Jonah, however, did not share this benign sentiment; and disrelishing

the missionary enterprise assigned him, he “rose up to flee unto

Tarshish from the presence of the Lord.” Jehovah does not seem to have

been omnipresent then; that attribute attaches to him only since the

beginning of the Christian era, when he assumed universal sway. Long

before the time of Jonah, another man, the first ever born in this

world, namely Cain, also “went out from the presence of the Lord, and

dwelt in the land of Nod;” probably so called because the Lord was not

quite awake in that locality. No one knows were Nod was situated,

nor can the most learned archaeologists denote the actual position

of Tarshish. These two places would be well worth study. A careful

examination of them would to some extent reveal what went on in those

parts of the world to which God’s presence did not extend; and we should

be able to compare their geological and other records with those of

the rest of the world. No doubt some striking differences would be

perceptible.

Jonah determined to voyage by the Joppa and Tarshish line. So he went to

the former port and embarked in one of the Company’s ships, after paying

his fare like a man.

Having a perfectly untroubled conscience, and no apprehension of his

coming troubles, Jonah no doubt felt highly elated at having done

the Lord so neatly. Perhaps it was this elation of spirits which

safe-guarded him from sea-sickness. At any rate he went “down into the

sides of the ship,” and there slept the sleep of the just. So profound

was his slumber, that it was “quite unbroken” by the horrible tempest

that ensued. The Lord had his eye on Jonah, for the prophet had not yet

reached the safe refuge of Tarshish; and he “sent out a great wind into

the sea, and there was a mighty tempest in the sea, so that the ship was

likely to be broken.” The mariners “cast forth the wares that were in

the ship” to lighten her, and toiled hard to keep afloat; but their

efforts were apparently fruitless, and nothing lay before them but the

certain prospect of a watery grave. The reader will be able to imagine

the tumult of the scene; the dash of ravening waves, the fierce howling

of the wind, the creaking of masts and the straining of cordage, the

rolling and pitching of the good ship and the shifting of her cargo,

the captain’s hoarse shouts of command and the sailors’ loud replies,

alternated with frenzied appeals to their gods for help. Yet amidst all

the uproar Jonah still slept, as though the vessel were gaily skimming

the waters before a pleasant breeze.

Let us pause here to interpose a question. Did the “great wind sent

out into the sea” by the Lord confine its attentions to the immediate

vicinity of Jonah’s ship, or did it cause a general tempest and perhaps

send some other vessels to Davy Jones’s locker? As no restrictions are

mentioned, we presume that the tempest was general, and that the Lord’s

wind, like the Lord’s rain referred to by Jesus, fell alike upon the

just and the unjust. This circumstance very naturally heightens our

previous conception of his righteousness.

That the Lord, or some other supernatural power, caused the tempest, the

mariners of Jonah’s ship and their captain never once doubted. Living

as they did, and as we do not, under a miraculous dispensation, they

attributed every unusual, and especially every unpleasant, occurrence

to the agency of a god. The idea of predicting storms, with which the

civilised world is now familiar, they would doubtless have regarded as

blasphemous and absurd. It is, therefore, by no means wonderful that

every man on board (except Jonah, who was fast asleep) “called unto

his god.” Ignorant of what god was afflicting them, they appealed

impartially all round, in the hope of hitting the right one. But the

circle of their deities did not include the one which sent the wind; so

the tempest continued to prevail, despite their prayers.

In this extremity a happy thought occurred to the “ship-master.” It

struck him that the strange passenger down below might know something

about the tempest, and that his god might have caused it. Forthwith

there dawned within him a recollection of words which Jonah had uttered

on embarking. Had he not told them “that he fled from the presence of

the Lord?” “Dear me,” the captain probably said to himself, “what a fool

I was not to think of this before. That chap down below is the occasion

of all these troubles; I’ll go and hunt him up, confound him!” Thereupon

he doubtless slapped his thigh, as is the wont of sailors when they

solve a difficulty or hit on a brilliant idea; after which he descended

“into the sides of the ship,” whither Jonah had gone. There he found the

prophet slumbering as peacefully as a weanling child, with a smile

of satisfaction playing over his Hebrew features. We can imagine the

captain’s profound disgust in presence of this scene. He and his men had

been toiling and praying, and, alas! pitching the cargo overboard,

in order to save their skins; and all the while the occasion of their

trouble had been lying fast asleep! Preserving an outward decorum,

however, he accosted Jonah in very mild terms. “What meanest thou, O

sleeper?” said he, “Arise, call upon thy God, if so be that God will

think upon us, that we perish not.”

What exquisite simplicity! It reminds us of the childlike and bland

Sir Henry Drummond Wolff, when he opposed Mr. Brad-laugh’s entry to the

House of Commons. That honorable champion of Almighty God objected to

Mr. Bradlaugh on the ground that he acknowledged no God, and was thus

vastly different from the other members of the House, all of whom

“believed in some kind of deity or other.” You must have a god to be a

legislator, it seems, even if that god is, as the Americans say, only a

little tin Jesus. So the captain of this tempest-tost ship desired Jonah

to call upon his god. He made no inquiry into the character of the god,

any more than did Sir Henry Drummond Wolff on a later occasion. It was

enough to know that Jonah had “some kind of deity or other.” Any god

would do.

Now comes the most remarkable episode in this wonderful story. The

captain and the crew were aware that Jonah had “fled from the presence

of the Lord,” because he had told them; they had, therefore, every

reason to believe that Jonah’s god had caused the tempest. Yet,

curiously enough, instead of at once proceeding on this belief, they

said, everyone to his fellow, “Come, and let us cast lots, that we may

know for whose cause this evil is upon us.” This wholly superfluous

procedure may, perhaps, be attributed to their exceptional love of

justice. They wished to make assurance doubly sure before they “went

for” Jonah. And with sweet simplicity they had recourse to the casting

of lots, in which their wills would be inoperative, and the whole

responsibility of deciding be thrown on the gods, who alone possessed

the requisite information.

The lot of course fell upon Jonah. Any other result would have spoiled

the story. “Then,” continues our narrative, “said they unto him, Tell

us, we pray thee, for whose cause this evil is upon us? What is thine

occupation? and whence comest thou? what is thy country? and of what

people art thou? And he said unto them, I am an Hebrew, and I fear the

Lord, the God of heaven, which hath made the sea and the dry land. Then

were the men exceedingly afraid, and said unto him, Why hast thou done

this? For the men knew that he fled from the presence of the Lord,

because he had told them. Then said they unto him, What shall we do

unto thee, that the sea may be calm unto us? for the sea wrought and was

tempestuous. And he said unto them, Take me up, and cast me forth into

the sea; so shall the sea be calm unto you: for I know that for my sake

this great tempest is upon you.”

We are almost dumb with astonishment before this act of self-sacrifice

on the part of Jonah, for which his previous history left us quite

unprepared. Who would have thought him capable of such disinterested

conduct? His self-abnegation was assuredly heroic, and may even be

called sublime. No doubt the captain and crew of the ship were as much

astonished as we are, and their opinion of Jonah went up several hundred

per cent. They resolved to make a last supreme effort before turning him

into a fish-bait. But all their gallant endeavors were discovered to

be futile and a mere waste of time. So the men, more in sorrow than

in anger, finally took Jonah up and threw him overboard. They had done

their best for him, and now, finding that they could do no more except

at too great a risk, they sadly left him to do the rest for himself.

Immediately, we are told, “the sea ceased from her raging.” Jonah

was oil upon the troubled waters. What an invaluable recipe does this

furnish us against the dangers of the deep sea! The surest method of

allaying a storm is to throw a prophet overboard. Every ship should

carry a missionary in case of need. It would, indeed, be well if the law

made this compulsory. The cost of maintaining the missionary would

be more than covered by the saving effected in insurance. Here is a

splendid field for Christian self-sacrifice! Hundreds of gentlemen who

are now engaged in very doubtful labor among the heathen, might engage

in this new enterprise with the absolute certainty of a beneficent

result; for poor ungodly mariners would thus be spared a hasty dispatch

from this world without time to repent and obtain forgiveness, and be

allowed ample leisure to secure salvation.

When the men saw that “the sea ceased from her raging” on Jonah’s being

cast into her depths, “they feared the Lord exceedingly, and offered a

sacrifice unto the Lord, and made vows.” To the sceptical mind it

would seem that they had much more reason to “fear” the Lord during the

continuance of the tempest than after it had subsided. It also seems

strange that they should have the means wherewith to offer a sacrifice.

Perhaps they had a billy-goat on board, and made him do duty, in default

of anything better. Or failing even a billy-goat, as the Lord God of the

Hebrews could only be propitiated by the shedding of blood, they perhaps

caught and immolated a stray rat. The nature of their “vows” is not

recorded, but it is not unreasonable to assume that they swore never

again to take on board a passenger fleeing “from the presence of the

Lord.”

Meanwhile, what had become of poor Jonah? Most men would be effectually

settled if thrown overboard in a storm. But there are some people who

were not born to be drowned, and Jonah was one of them. He was destined

to another fate. The Lord, it appears, “had prepared a great fish

to swallow up Jonah,” and the feat was of course duly performed. Our

narrative does not describe the character of this “great fish,” but

light is cast on the subject by another passage of Scripture. In

the twelfth chapter of St. Matthew, and the fortieth verse, Jesus is

represented as saying, “For as Jonas was three days and three nights

in the whale’s belly; so shall the Son of man be three days and three

nights in the heart of the earth.” The great fish was then a whale.

Jesus said so, and there can be no higher authority. Sharks and such

ravenous fish have an unpleasant habit of “chawing” their victims pretty

considerably before swallowing them; so, on the whole, we prefer to

believe that it was a whale. Yet the Levant is a curious place for a

whale to be lurking in. The creature must have been miraculously led

there to go through its appointed performance. It must also have been

“prepared,” to use the language of the Bible, in a very remarkable way,

for the gullet of a whale is not large enough to allow of the passage

of an object exceeding the size of an ordinary herring. Swallowing

Jonah must have been a tough job after the utmost preparation. With a

frightfully distended throat, however, the whale did its best, and by

dint of hard striving at last got Jonah down.

Having properly taken Jonah in out of the wet, the poor whale doubtless

surmised that its troubles had ended. But alas they had only just begun!

Swallowing a prophet is one thing; digesting him is another. For three

days and three nights the whale struggled desperately to digest

Jonah, and for three days and nights Jonah obstinately refused to be digested. Never in the entire course of its life had it experienced such

a difficulty. During the whole of that period, too, Jonah carried on a

kind of prayer meeting, and the strange rumbling in its belly must have

greatly added to the poor animal’s discomfort At last it grew heartily

sick of Jonah, and vomited him up on dry land. We have no doubt that

it swam away into deep waters, a sadder but wiser whale; and that ever

afterwards, instead of bolting its food, it narrowly scrutinised every

morsel before swallowing it, to make sure it wasn’t another prophet.

According to its experience, prophets were decidedly the most

unprofitable articles of consumption.

We are of course aware that the narrative states that “the Lord spake

unto the fish, and it vomited Jonah upon the dry land.” But this we

conceive to be a mere pleasantry on the part of the unknown author. The

idea of the Lord whispering into a whale’s ear is ineffably ludicrous:

besides, the whale had a very natural inclination to rid itself of

Jonah, and needed no divine prompting.

Jonah’s prayer “unto the Lord his God out of the fish’s belly” is very

amusing. There is not a sentence in it which bears any reference to

the prophet’s circumstances. It is a kind of Psalm, after the manner of

those ascribed to David. Our belief is that the author found it floating

about, and thinking it would do for Jonah, inserted it in his narrative,

without even taking the trouble to furbish it into decent keeping with

the situation.

The word of the Lord came unto Jonah a second time, and presuming no

more to disobey, he went to Nineveh. It is to be supposed, however,

that he first well-lined his poor stomach, for both he and the whale had

fasted for three days and nights, and must have been sadly in want of

victuals.

Nineveh, according to our author, was a stupendous city of “three days’

journey.” This means its diameter and not its circumference, for we are

told that Jonah “entered into the city a day’s journey.” If we allow

twenty miles as a moderate days’ walk, Nineveh was sixty miles through

from wall to wall, or about twenty times as large as London; and if

densely populated like our metropolis, it must have contained more

than eighty million inhabitants. This is too great a stretch even for a

sailor’s yarn. Our author did not take pains to clear his narrative of

discrepancy. In his last verse he informs us that the city contained

“more than six score thousand persons that cannot discern between their

right hand and their left.” If this number is correct Nineveh was a

large place, but its dimensions were very much less than those stated in

the Book of Jonah.

Jonah obeyed the Lord this time and began to preach. “Yet forty days,”

cried he, “and Nineveh shall be overthrown.” How the prophet made

himself understood is an open question! Either the Lord taught him their

language, or he miraculously enabled them to understand Hebrew. Further,

they worshipped Baal, and Jonah preached to them in the name of his

foreign God. According to ancient, and to a large extent modern custom,

we should expect them in such a case to kill the presumptuous prophet,

or at least to shut him up as a madman. Yet they did nothing of the

kind. On the contrary, “the people of Nineveh believed God.” Even the

king was converted. He covered himself with sackcloth, and sat in ashes.

He also decreed that neither man nor beast in the city should eat

or drink anything; but, said he, “let man and beast be covered with

sackcloth, and cry mightily unto God: yea, let them turn every one from

his evil way.” What an enormous consumption of sackcloth there must have

been! The merchants who sold it did a surprising business, and no doubt

quotations went up immensely. We wonder, indeed, how they managed

to supply such a sudden and universal demand. And what a sight was

presented by the whole population of the city! Men, women, and children,

high and low, rich and poor, were all arrayed in the same dingy

garments. Even the horses, cows, pigs and sheep, were similarly attired.

What a queer figure they must have cut! And what an astonishing chorus

of prayer ascended to heaven! According to the text, the beasts had to

“cry mightily” as well as the men. Since the confusion of tongues at

Babel, neither history nor tradition records such a frightful hubbub.

Their supplications prevailed. God “saw their works, that they had

turned from their evil way; and God repented of the evil, that he had

said that he would do unto them; and he did it not.” Immutable God

changes his mind, infallible God repents!

God spared Nineveh, but only for a brief while, for it was destroyed a

few years later by Arbaces, the Mede. The merciful respite was thus not

of long continuance. Yet it “displeased Jonah exceedingly.” He had been

suspicious from the first, and he only fulfilled God’s mission under

constraint. And now his worst suspicions were confirmed. After he had

told the Ninevites that their city would be overthrown in forty days,

God had relented, and utterly ruined Jonah’s reputation as a prophet.

So he made himself a booth outside the city, and sat in its shadow, to

watch what would happen, with a deep feeling, which he plainly expressed

to the Almighty, that now his reputation was gone he might as well die.

The Lord considerately “prepared a gourd,” which grew up over Jonah’s

head to protect him from the heat; at which the sulky prophet was

“exceedingly glad,” although it would naturally be thought that the

booth would afford ample protection. He, however, soon found himself

sold; for the Lord prepared a worm to destroy the gourd, and when the

sun arose he sent “a vehement east wind” which beat upon poor Jonah’s

head, and made him so faint that he once more asked God to despatch him

out of his misery. Whereupon the Lord said coaxingly, “Doest thou well

to be angry?” And Jonah pettishly answered, “Yes, I do.” Then the Lord,

with a wonderful access of pathos, altogether foreign to his general

character, twitted Jonah with having pity for the gourd and none for the

inhabitants of “that great city.” With this the story concludes. We

are unable to say whether the poor prophet, so wretchedly sold, ever

recovered from his spleen, or whether it shortened his days and brought

him to an untimely grave.

The Book of Jonah is as true as Gospel, for Jesus endorsed it. The

Bible contains the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.

So without expressing any sceptical sentiments, we will end by repeating

Byron’s words, “Truth is strange—stranger than fiction.”

THE WANDERING JEWS.

BIBLE ROMANCES.-VII.

By G. W. FOOTE.

The Middle Ages had a legend of the Wandering Jew. This person was

supposed to have been doomed, for the crime of mocking Jesus at the

crucifixion, to wander over the earth until his second coming. No

one believes this now. The true Wandering Jews were those slaves whom

Jehovah rescued from Egyptian bondage, with a promise that he would lead

them to a land flowing with milk and honey, but whom he compelled to

roam the deserts instead for forty years, until all of them except two

had perished. Of all the multitude who escaped from Egypt, only Joshua

and Caleb entered the promised land. Even Moses had to die in sight of

it.

These poor Wandering Jews demand our pity. They were guilty of many

crimes against humanity, but they scarcely deserved such treatment as

they received. Their God was worse than they. He was quick-tempered,

unreasonable, cruel, revengeful, and dishonest. Few of his promises

to them were performed. They worshipped a bankrupt deity. The land of

promise was a Tantalus cup ever held to their lips, and ever mocking

them when they essayed to drink. God was their greatest enemy instead of

their best friend. Their tortuous path across the wilderness was marked

by a track of bleaching bones. All the evils which imagination can

conceive fell on their devoted heads. Bitten by serpents, visited by

plagues, cursed with famine and drought, swallowed by earthquake, slain

by war, and robbed by priests, they found Jehovah a harder despot than

Pharaoh. Death was to them a happy release, and only the grave a shelter

from the savagery of God.

Commentators explain that the Jews who left Egypt were unfit for the

promised land. If so, they were unfit to be the chosen people of God.

Why were they not allowed to remain in Egypt until they grew better, or

why was not some other nation selected to inherit Canaan?

At the end of our number on “The Ten Plagues” we left the Jews on the

safe side of the Red Sea. We must now ask a few questions which we had

no space for then.

How, in a period of two hundred and fifteen years, did the seventy males

of Jacob’s house multiply into a nation of over two millions? Experience

does not warrant belief in such a rapid increase. The Jewish chroniclers

were fond of drawing the long bow. In the book of Judges, for

instance, we are told that the Gileadites, under, Jephthah, slew 42,000

Ephriamites; and that the Benjamites slew 40,000 Israelites, after which

the Israelites killed 43,000 Benjamites, all of these being “men

of valor” that “drew the sword.” The book of Samuel says that the

Philistines had 30,000 war chariots, and that they slew 30,000 footmen

of Israel. The second book of Chronicles says that Pekah, king of

Israel, slew of Judah in one day 120,000 “sons of valor,” and carried

away 200,000 captives; that Abijah’s force consisted of 400,000, and

Jeroboam’s of 800,000, 500,000 of whom were killed! At the battle of

Waterloo the total number of men killed on our side was 4,172. The

statistics of slaughter in the Bible were clearly developed from the

inner consciousness of the Jewish scribes; and no doubt the same holds

good with respect to the statistics of the flight from Egypt.

This view is corroborated by a singular statement in the third chapter

of Numbers. We are there informed that when the census was taken “All

the first-born males, from a month old and upwards of those that were

numbered, were twenty and two thousand two hundred and three score and

thirteen.” Now as there were about 900,000 males altogether, it follows

that every Jewish mother must have had on an average forty-two sons,

to say nothing of daughters! Such extraordinary fecundity is unknown to

the rest of the world, except in the reign of romance. The Jews bragged

a great deal about Jehovah, and they appear to have obtained some

compensation by bragging a great deal about themselves.

How did the Jews manage to quit Egypt in one night? There were 600,000

men on foot, besides women and children, not to mention “the mixed

multitude that went up also with them.” The entire population must have

numbered more than two millions, and some commentators estimate it at

nearly three. They had to come in from all parts of Goshen to Rameses,

bringing with them the sick and infirm, the very old and the very young.

Among such a large population there could not have been less than two

hundred births a day. Many of the Jewish women, therefore, must have

been just confined. How could they and their new-born children have

started off in such a summary manner? Many more women must have been at

the point of confinement How could these have been hurried off at all?

Yet we are told that not a single person was left behind.

How were the flocks and herds driven out in such haste? There were about

two million sheep and two hundred thousand oxen. The sheep alone would

have required grazing-land as extensive as the whole county of Bedford,

besides what would have been needed for the oxen. Is it credible that

all these animals were collected together from such a wide area, and

driven out of Egypt in one night? Yet we are told that not a single hoof

was left behind!

How did the huge multitude of people march? If they travelled fifty men

abreast, as is supposed to have been the practice in the Hebrew armies,

the able-bodied warriors alone would have filled up the road for about seven miles, and the whole multitude would have formed a dense column twenty-two miles long. The front rank would have been two days’

journey in advance of the rear.

How did the sheep and cattle march? How was it possible for them to keep

pace with their human fellow-travellers? They would naturally not march

in a compact array, and the vast drove must therefore have spread widely

and lengthened out for miles.

What did the drove live upon during the journey from Barneses to

Succoth, and from Succoth to Etham, and from Etham to the Red Sea? Such

grass as there was, even if the sheep and cattle went before the men,

women, and children, could not have been of much avail; for what was not

eaten by the front ranks must have been trodden under foot at once, and

rendered useless to those that followed. After they “encamped by the Red

Sea,” on the third day, there was no vegetation at all. The journey

was over a desert, the surface of which was composed of hard gravel

intermixed with pebbles. After crossing the Red Sea, their road lay over

a desert region, covered with sand, gravel, and stone, for about nine

miles; after which they entered a boundless desert plain, called El

Ati white and painfully glaring to the eye; and beyond this the ground

was broken by sand-hills. How were the two million sheep and two hundred

thousand oxen provisioned during this journey?

What did the Jews themselves live on? The desert afforded them no

sustenance until God miraculously sent manna. They must, therefore, have

taken a month’s provisions for every man, woman, and child. How could

they possibly have provided themselves with so much food on so short

a notice? And how could they have carried it, seeing that they were

already burdened with kneading-troughs and other necessaries for

domestic use, besides the treasures they “borrowed” of the Egyptians.

How did they provide themselves with tents? Allowing ten persons for

each tent, they must have required two hundred thousand. Were these

carefully got ready in expectation? In the land of Goshen they lived in

houses with “lintels” and “side-posts.” And how were the tents carried?

The Jews themselves were already well loaded. Of course the oxen remain,

but, as Colenso observes, they were not trained to carry t goods on

their backs, and were sure to prove refractory under such a burden.

Whence did the Jews obtain their arms? According to Exodus (xiii, 18)

“the children of Israel went up harnessed out of the land of Egypt.”

The Hebrew word which is rendered “harnessed” appears to mean “armed” or

“in battle array” in all the other passages where it occurs, and is so

translated. Some commentators, scenting a difficulty in this rendering,

urge that the true meaning is “by five in a rank.” But if 600,000 men

marched out of Egypt “five in a rank,” they must have formed a column

sixty-eight miles long, and it would have taken several days to start

them all off, whereas they went out altogether “that self-same day.”

Besides, the Jews had arms in the desert, and how could they have

possessed them there unless they obtained them in Egypt? If they went

out of Egypt “armed,” why did they cry out “sore afraid” when Pharaoh

pursued them?

According to Herodotus, the Egyptian army, which formed a distinct

caste, never exceeded 160,000 men. Why were the Jews so appalled by less

than a third of their own number? Must we suppose, with Kalisch, that

their bondage in Egypt had crushed all valor and manhood out of their

breasts? Josephus gives a different explanation. He says that the

day after Pharaoh’s host was drowned in the Red Sea, “Moses gathered

together the weapons of the Egyptians, which were brought to the camp

of the Hebrews by the current of the sea and the force of the wind

assisting it. And he conjectured that this also happened by Divine

Providence, that so they might not be destitute of weapons.” But, as

Colenso observes, though body-armor might have been obtained in this

way, swords, spears and shields could not in any number. The Bible,

too, says nothing about such an occurrence. We must therefore assume

that 600,000 well-armed Jews were such utter cowards that they could not

strike a blow for their wives and children and their own liberty against

the smaller army of Pharaoh, but could only whimper and sigh after their

old bondage. Yet a month later they fought bravely with the Amalekites,

and ever afterwards they were as eager for battle as any Irishman at

Donnybrook: fair. How can this difference be accounted for? Could a

nation of hereditary cowards become stubborn warriors in the short space

of a month?

Let us now follow the Wandering Jews through the Desert, which they

should have crossed in a week or two, but which they travelled up and

down for forty years. People who want to make an expeditious journey had

better do without a divine guide.

Coming to Marah, they found only bitter water to drink, at which they

began to murmur. But the Lord showed Moses a certain tree, which when

cast into the water made it sweet. It must have been a wonderful tree to

sweeten water for two millions of people. Bitter water, also, quenches

thirst more readily than sweet, and it stimulates the appetite, which

would be highly desirable under a fierce relaxing sun.

A month after they left Egypt they came to the wilderness of Sin.

There they began to murmur again. Finding themselves without food, they

remembered “the flesh pots” of Egypt, and reproached Moses with having

brought them into the desert to die of hunger. Both Moses and the Lord

seem to have thought it unreasonable on their part to ask for something

to eat. Oliver Twist was stared at when he asked for more, but the Jews

surprised God by asking for something to begin with. Yet reflecting,

perhaps, that they were after all unable to live without food, the Lord

rained down manna from heaven. After the dew evaporated in the morning,

they found this heavenly diet lying on the ground. It was “like a

coriander seed, white; and the taste of it was like wafers made with

honey.” No doubt the angels subsist on it in paradise. Moses preserved

a pot of it for the instruction of future generations. The pot has,

however, not been discovered up to the present day. Some future

explorers may light upon it “in the fulness of time,” and so-help to

prove the historical character of the Pentateuch.

The manna, as might be expected, had some peculiarities. No matter how

much or how little he gathered, every man found on measuring that he had

exactly an omer of it. Although it fell regularly every week day, none

fell on Sunday. A double quantity had, therefore, to be gathered on

Saturday. It melted in the sun, but could nevertheless be baked and

seethed. Any of it left overnight stank in the morning and bred worms.

For forty years “the children of Israel did eat manna.” But more than

once their gorge rose against it. Manna for breakfast, manna for lunch,

manna for dinner, manna for tea, and manna for supper, was a little more

than they could stand, The monotony of their diet became intolerable.

Accordingly, we read in the twenty-first chapter of Numbers, that

they complained of it and asked for a slight change in the bill of fare.

“There is no bread,” said they, “neither is there any water; and our

soul loatheth this light food.” This small request so incensed the Lord

that he sent a lot of fiery serpents among them, which bit them so

that “much people of Israel died.” Like Oliver Twist, the Jews quickly

repented their presumption. They humbled themselves before Moses, and he

interceded with God for them. The prophet then made a brass serpent

and set it on a pole, and on looking at it all who had been bitten

recovered.

On another occasion, as we read in the eleventh of Numbers, they were

guilty of a similar offence. This time it was the more surprising, as

God had just burnt a lot of them up with raging fire for ‘complaining.’

They remembered “the fish, which we did eat in Egypt freely; the

cucumbers, and the melons, and the leeks, and the onions, and the

garlick.” “Now,” said they, “there is nothing at all, besides this

manna, before our eyes-Who shall give us flesh to eat?” The Egyptian

bill of fare was certainly enough to make their mouths water, and it

proves that if Pharaoh made them work hard he did not starve them, as

Jehovah very nearly succeeded in doing. They were so affected by their

recollection of the luscious victuals they enjoyed in Egypt, that they

actually cried with sorrow at their loss. Moses heard them weeping,

“every man in the door of his tent.” This put the Lord in a very bad

temper; and Moses, who seems to have been much less irascible than

Jehovah, “also was displeased.” God determined to give them a surfeit.

“Ye shall,” said he, “not eat flesh one day, nor two days, nor five

days, neither ten days nor twenty days; but even a whole month, until

it come out at your nostrils, and be loathsome unto you.” Thereupon

the Lord sent a wind which brought quails from the sea. They were so

plentiful that they fell in heaps two cubits high for about twenty miles

around the camp. That worthy commentator, the Rev. Alexander Cruden,

says that the miracle of this occurrence consisted, not in the great

number of quails, but in their being “brought so seasonably” to the

Jewish camp. The quantity did not trouble his credulous mind. “Some

authors,” says he, “affirm that in those eastern and southern countries,

quails are innumerable, so that in one part of Italy within the compass

of five miles, there were taken about an hundred thousand of them every

day for a month together; and that sometimes they fly so thick over the

sea, that being weary they fall into ships, sometimes in such numbers,

that they sink them with their weight.” The good man’s easy reliance

on ‘some authors.’ and his ready acceptance of such fables, show what

credulity is engendered by belief in the Bible.

The Jews gathered quails for two days and a night, and joyfully carried

them home. But “while the flesh was yet between their teeth,” the Lord

smote them with a very great plague, so that multitudes of them died.

Poor devils! They were always in hot water.

How the sheep and cattle were provisioned the Bible does not inform us.

There was scarcely a nibble of grass to be had in the desert, and as

they could not very well have lived on sand and pebbles, they must

have been supported miraculously. Perhaps the authors of the Pentateuch

forgot all about this.

Not only were the Jews, like their flocks and herds, miraculously

supported; they were also miraculously found in clothes. For forty years

their garments and shoes did not wear out. How was this miracle wrought?

When matter rubs against matter, particles are lost by abrasion. Did the

Lord stop this process, or did he collect all the particles that were

worn off during the day and replace them by night, on the soles of

shoes, on the elbows of coats, and on the knees of pantaloons? If

the clothes never wore out, it is fair to suppose that they remained

absolutely unchanged. Imagine a toddling urchin, two years old at the

exodus from Egypt, wearing the same rig when he grew up to manhood!

Justin, however, says that the clothes grew with their growth. Some

Jewish rabbis hold that angels acted as tailors in the wilderness, and

so the garments were all kept straight. But Augustine, Chrysostom, and

other Fathers abide by the literal interpretation that, through the

blessing of God, the clothes and shoes never wore out, so that those

who grew to manhood were able to hand them over, as good as new, to the

rising generation. According to this theory, everybody must have had

a poor fit, unless there was a transference of garments every twelve

months or so.

The history of the Wandering Jews is full of miracles and wonders. It

says that all the congregation of Israel, numbering over two millions,

assembled at the door of the Tabernacle. As the whole width of the

Tabernacle was eighteen feet, only nine men could have stood in front

of it; and therefore the warriors of Israel alone, to say nothing of the

rest of the population, if we allow eighteen inches between each rank of

nine men, would have formed a column nearly twenty miles long! We

find also that Moses, and Joshua after him, addressed not only the whole

congregation of Israel, including men, women, and children, but the

“mixed multitude” of strangers as well. Their voices were distinctly

heard by a crowded mass of people as large as the entire population of

London. They must have had stentorian lungs, or the people must have had

a wonderful sense of hearing.

When the Jews were encamped, according to Scott’s estimate, they lived

in a sort of “moveable city, twelve miles square,” nearly as large as

London. The people had to go outside this vast camp every day to bring

in a supply of water and fuel, after cutting the latter down where they

could find it! All their rubbish had to be carried out in like manner,

for Jehovah used sometimes to take a walk among them, and he was highly

displeased at seeing dirt. Every man, woman, and child, including the

old, the sick, and the infirm, had to go outside the camp to attend

to the necessities of nature! All the refuse of their multitudinous.

sacrifices had to be lugged out of the camp by the three priests,

Aaron, Eleazer, and Itharnar. Colenso reckons that the sacrifices alone,

allowing less than three minutes for each, would have occupied them

incessantly during the whole twenty-four hours of every day. The pigeons

brought to them daily as sin offer-ings must have numbered about 264,

and as these had to be consumed by the three priests, each of them had

to eat 88 pigeons a day, besides heaps of roast beef and other victuals!

Soon after the first fall of manna, the Jews murmured again because they

had no water. Whereupon Moses smote a rock with his magical rod, and

water gushed from it. The precious fluid came just in time to refresh

them for their fight with the Amalekites. These people were very

obstinate foes, and it required a miracle to defeat them. Moses ascended

a hill and held up his hand. While he did so the Israelites prevailed,

but when he let down his hand the Amalekites prevailed. To ensure

victory, Aaron and Hur stood on either side of him, and held up his

hands until the sun set. By this means Joshua discomfited the Amalekites

with great slaughter. Moses built an altar to celebrate the event,

and God swore that he would “have war with Amelek from generation to

generation.” As Jehovah’s vengeance was so lasting, it is no wonder that

his worshipers carried on their wars ever afterwards on the most hellish

principles.

In the thirty-first chapter of Numbers we read that 12,000 Israelites

warred against Midian. The brag of the chronicler is evident in this

number or in those which follow. This little army polished off all the

kings of Midian, burnt all their cities and castles, slew 48,000 men,

and carried off 100,000 captives, besides, 675,000 sheep, 72,000 oxen,

and 61,000 asses. What prodigious spoil there was in those days! Of the

captives Moses ordered 48,000 women and 20,000 boys to be massacred in

cold blood; while the remaining 32,000 “women that had not known man

by lying with him” were reserved for another fate. The Lord’s share of

these was thirty-two! They were of course handed over to the priests

as his representatives. Parsons, who rail against the immorality of

scepticism, say that this is all true.

These Midianites were a tough lot; for although they were all killed on this occasion, and their cities and castles burnt, we find them a

powerful nation again in the sixth of Judges, and able to prevail

against the Jews for seven years.

Another people badly punished by the Jews were the inhabitants of Bashan.

All their cities were destroyed to the number of sixty. Their king, Og,

was a gigantic fellow, and slept on an iron bed twelve feet long. The

cities of Heshbon were destroyed in the same way. All the men, women,

and children, were slaughtered. Not one was spared.

We shall hereafter follow the Jews under Joshua. For the present we must

content ourselves with a last reference to their wanderings under Moses.

While they were encamped round Mount Sinai, their leader received an

invitation to go up and visit God who had been staying there for six

days. They had much to talk about, and the interview lasted forty days

and forty nights. At the end of it Moses descended, carrying with him

the Ten Commandments, written by the finger of God on two tables of

stone. In his absence the Wandering Jews had given him up as lost, and

had induced Aaron to make them a god, in the shape of a golden calf, to

go before them. This image they were worshipping as Moses approached the

camp, and his anger waxed so not that he threw down the tables and broke

all the Ten Commandments at once. He then burnt the calf in fire and

ground it to powder, mixed it with water and made them drink it. He also

sent the Levites among them, who put three thousand men to the edge of

the sword. God wanted to destroy them altogether, but Moses held him

back. “Let me alone,” said the Lord. “No, no,” said Moses, “just think

what the Egyptians will say; they’ll laugh at you after all as a poor

sort of a god; and remember, too, that you are bound by an oath to

multiply your people and to let them inherit the land of promise.” So

the Lord cooled down, and wrote out the Decalogue again on two fresh

tables of stone. This Decalogue is supposed to be the foundation of

morality. But long before the time of Moses moral laws were known and

observed in Egypt, in India, and among all the peoples that ever lived.

Moral laws are the permanent conditions of social health, and the

fundamental ones must be observed wherever any form of society exists.

Their ground and guarantee are to be found in human nature, and do not

depend on a fabulous episode in the history of the Wandering Jews.

THE TOWER OF BABEL.

BIBLE ROMANCES.—VIII.

By G. W. FOOTE.

The Bible, it is frequently asserted, was never meant to teach us

science, but to instruct us in religion and morality; and therefore

we must not look to it for a faithful account of what happened in

the external world, but only for a record of the inner experiences of

mankind. Astronomy will inform us how the heavenly bodies came into

existence, and by what laws their motions are governed; Geology will

acquaint us with the way in which the earth’s crust was formed, and with

the length of time occupied by the various stages of the process; and

Biology will tell us all about the origin and development of living

things. God has given us reason, by exercising which we may gather

knowledge and establish sciences, so as to explain the past, illustrate

the present, and predict the future; and as reason is sufficient for all

this, there is no need of a divine revelation in such matters. But

as reason is insufficient to teach the will of God and the laws of

morality, a divine revelation of these is necessary, and the Bible

contains it.

This plausible contention cannot, however, be maintained. The Bible

is not silent with respect to astronomy, geology, or biology. It makes

frequent and precise statements concerning them, and in nearly every

instance it contradicts scientific truth as we have amply proved in

previous numbers of this series.

The eleventh chapter of Genesis gives an explanation of the diversity

of languages on the earth. It does this in the truest spirit of romance.

Philologists like Max Müller and Whitney must regard the story of the

Tower of Babel, and the confusion of tongues, as a capital joke. A great

many parsons may still believe it, but they are not expected to know

much.

One fact alone is enough to put the philology of Genesis out of court.

The native languages of America are all closely related to each other,

but they have no affinity with any language of the Old World. It is

therefore clear that they could not have been imported into the New

World by emigrants from the plains of Central Asia. The Genesaic theory

is thus proved to be not of universal application, and consequently

invalid.

Let us come to the Bible story. Some time after the Flood, and before

the birth of Abraham, “the whole earth was of one language and one

speech;” or, as Colenso translates the original, “of one lip, and of one

language.” This primitive tongue must have been Hebrew. God spoke it in

Eden when he conversed with our first parents, and probably it is spoken

in heaven to this day. For all we know it may be spoken in hell too. It

probably is, for the Devil and his angels lived in heaven before they

were turned into hell, and we may conclude that they took their native

language with them. It was spoken by Adam when he named his wife in

Paradise; by Eve, after the expulsion when she gave names to her sons,

Cain and Seth; by Lamech, shortly before the Flood, when he explained the

name of Noah; and indeed, as Colenso observes, “it is obvious that the

names of the whole series of Patriarchs from Adam to Noah, and from Noah

onwards, are in almost every instance pure Hebrew names.” Delitzsch,

however, thinks it comparatively more probable that the Syriac or

Nabataan tongue, preserved after the dispersion at Babylon, was the one

originally spoken. Yet he dismisses the possibility of demonstrating it.

He supposes that the names of Adam and the other patriarchs have been

altered, but not so as to lose any of their original meaning; in other

words, that they have been, by God’s grace, translated with perfect

accuracy from the primeval speech. But Colenso very justly remarks that

the original documents do not allude to a process of translation, and

that we have no right to assume it. He also adds that “if the authority

of Scripture is sufficient to prove the fact of a primeval language, it

must also prove that this language was Hebrew.”

Yet the Bible is wrong, for Hebrew could not have been the primitive

speech. It is only a Semitic dialect, a branch of the Semitic stem.

Sanscrit is another stem, equally ancient; and according to Max Müller

and Bunsen, both are modifications of an earlier and simpler language.

Neither has the least affinity with Chinese, which again, like them,

differs radically from the native dialects of America. As Hosea Biglow

sings,

     "John P. Robinson, he

     Says they didn't know everything down in Judee."

                      

And most certainly they did not know the true origin and development of

the various languages spoken by the nations of the earth.

The people who dwelt on the earth after the Deluge, and all spoke one

language, journeyed from the east, found a plain in, the land of Shinar,

and dwelt there. Shinar is another name for Babylon. After dwelling

there no one knows exactly how long, “they said one to another, Go

to, let us make brick, and burn them throughly. And they had brick for

stone, and slime had they for morter.” The writer of this story was very

fond of short cuts. It took men a long time to learn the art of making

bricks; and the idea of their suddenly saying to each other “let us make

brick,” and at once proceeding to do so, is a wild absurdity.

Having made a lot of bricks, they naturally wished to do something with

them. So “they said, Go to, let us build us a city and a tower, whose

top may reach unto heaven; and let us make us a name, lest we be

scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth.” How could making

a name, for the information of nobody but themselves, prevent their

dispersion? And how could they resolve to build a “city,” when they had

never seen one, and had no knowledge of what it was like? Cities are not

built in this manner. “Rome wasn’t built in a day” is a proverb which

applies to all other places as well. London, Paris, and Rome, are

the growth of centuries, and the same must have been true of ancient

capitals.

The reason assigned by Scripture for the work of these primitive

builders is plainly inadequate. A more probable reason is that they

mistrusted God’s promise never again to destroy the earth with a flood,

and therefore determined to build a high tower, so that, if another

deluge came, they might ascend above the waters, or, if need be step

clean into heaven itself. Their lack of faith is not surprising. We find

the same characteristic on the part of believers in our own day. They

believe in God’s promises only so far as it suits their interest and

convenience. Scripture says, “Whoso giveth unto the poor lendeth unto

the Lord.” Yet there are thousands of rich Christians who seem to

mistrust the security.

How high did these primitive builders think heaven was? According to

Colenso, they said, “Come, let us build for us a city, and a tower with

its head in heaven.” Did they really think they would ever succeed in

building so high? Perhaps they did, for their Natural Philosophy was

extremely limited. They doubtless imagined the blue vault of heaven as a

solid thing, in which were stuck the sun, moon, and stars, and no higher

than the sailing clouds.

Their simple ignorance is intelligible, but how can we explain the

ignorance of God? Their project alarmed him. He actually “came down to

see the city and the tower which the children of men builded.” Heaven

was too distant for him to see from with accuracy, and telescopes

were not then invented. A close inspection led him to believe that his

ambitious children would succeed in their enterprise. They thought they

might build into heaven, and he thought so too. What was to be done? If

they once got into heaven, it might be very difficult to turn them

out again. It took several days’ hard fighting to expel Satan and the

rebellious angels on a previous occasion, and these newcomers might be

still more obstinate. In this dangerous extremity, “the Lord said [unto

whom is unknown], Behold, the people is one, and they have all one

language; and this they begin to do: and now nothing will be restrained

from them which they have imagined to do. Go to, let us go down,

and there confound their language, that they may not understand one

another’s speech.”

Why did the Lord resolve to take all this trouble? Had he forgotten the

law of gravitation and the principles of architecture? Was he, who made

the heaven and the earth, ignorant of the distance between them? He

had only to let the people go on building, and they would eventually

confound themselves; for, after reaching a certain height, the tower

would tumble about their ears. Gravitation would defeat the cohesion

of morter Why did not God leave them alone? Why did he take so much

unnecessary trouble? The answer is that this “Lord” was only “Jehovah”

of the Jews, a tribal god, who naturally knew no more about the facts

and laws of science than his worshippers who made him.

The Lord carried out his resolution. He “confounded their language,” so

that no man could understand his neighbors. Probably this judgment was

executed in the night; and when they awoke in the morning, instead of

using the old familiar tongue, one man spoke Chinese, another Sanscrit,

another Coptic, another American, another Dutch, another Double Dutch,

and so on to the end of the chapter.

According to the Bible, this is the true philology. No language on

the earth is more than four thousand years old, and every one was

miraculously originated at Babel. Is there a single philologist living

who believes this? We do not know one.

The result of this confusion of tongues was that the people “left off

to build the city,” and were “scattered, abroad on the face of all the

earth.” But why did they disperse? Their common weakness should have

kept them together. Society is founded upon our wants. Our necessity,

and not our self-sufficience, causes association and mutual helpfulness.

Had these people kept company for a short time, they would have

understood each other again. A few common words would have come into

general use, and the building of the tower might have been resumed.

How was their language “confounded?” Did God destroy their verbal

memory? Did he paralyse a part of their brain, so that, although they

remembered the words, they could not speak them? Did he affect the

organs of articulation, so that the sounds of the primeval language

could not be reproduced? Will some theologian kindly explain this

mystery? Language is not a gift, but a growth. Different tribes and

nations have had different experiences, different wants, and different

surroundings, and the result is a difference in their languages, as

well as in their religious ideas, political organisations, and social

customs.

Before we leave this portion of the subject, we beg to introduce Milton

again. In the last Book of “Paradise Lost” he adds from his fertile

imagination to the Bible story, and supplies a few deficiencies about

which the mind is naturally curious. He makes the Archangel Michael tell

poor Adam and Eve, as part of his panoramic description of future times,

that a mighty hunter shall arise, claiming dominion over his fellows,

and gather under him a band of adherents. This is clearly Nimrod. Milton

separates him and his subjects from the rest of mankind, and represents

them as the people who settled on “the plain in the land of Shinar.”

According to our great poet, therefore, the confusion of tongues applied

only to them, and the other inhabitants of the earth retained the

primeval language in all its original purity. This detachment, says

Michael—

     Marching from Eden towards the west, shall find

     The plain, wherein a black bituminous gurge,

     Boils out from underground, the mouth of Hell:

     Of brick, and of that stuff they cast to build

     A city and a tower, whose top may reach to Heaven;

     And get themselves a name, lest, far dispersed

     In foreign lands, their memory be lost,

     Regardless whether good or evil fame.

     But God, who oft descends to visit men

     Unseen, and through their habitations walks

     To mark their doings, them beholding soon,

     Comes down to see their city, ere the tower

     Obstruct Heav'n-tow'rs, and in derision sets

     Upon their tongue a various spirit to rase

     Quite out their native language, and instead

     To sow a jangling noise of words unknown.

     Forthwith a hideous gabble rises loud

     Among the builders; each to other calls

     Not understood, till hoarse, and all in rage,

     As mock'd, they storm: great laughter was in Heaven,

     And looking down, to see the hubbub strange

     And hear the din; thus was the building left

     Ridiculous, and the work Confusion named.

                      

If the Tower of Babel was built over the mouth of Hell it would be wise

to explore its site and make proper excavations, so as to settle the

geography and physical character of the bottomless-pit. The Churches

are sadly in want of a little information about hell, and here is an

opportunity for them to acquire it, We hope the explorers will all be

selected for their extreme piety, so that they may be as fire-proof as

Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, and happily escape cremation.

Because the Lord “did there confound their language” the place was

“called Babel.” The Hebrew root, balal to confound, is not, however,

that from which the word “Babel” is derived, It is a compound of “Bel,”

and may mean the “House of Bel,” “Court of Bel,” or “Gate of Bel.”

Some, including Professor Rawlinson, suppose it be a compound of “El” or

“il,” in which case “Bab-El” means the “Gate of God.”

It is evident that the story of the Tower of Babal was borrowed by the

Jehovist author of this part of Genesis from the tradition of the famous

unfinished Temple of Belus, one of the wonders of antiquity. “Birs

Nimroud” is thus described by Kalisch:—

“The huge heap, in which bricks, stone, marble, and basalt, are

irregularly mixed, covers a surface of 49,000 feet; while the chief

mound is nearly 300 feet high, and from 200 to 400 feet in width,

commanding an extensive view over a country of utter desolation. The

Tower consisted of seven distinct stages or square platforms, built of

kiln-burnt bricks, each about twenty feet high, gradually diminishing

in diameter. The upper part of the brickwork has a vitrefied appearance;

for it is supposed that the Babylonians, in order to render their

edifices more durable, submitted them to the heat of the furnace;

and large fragments of such vitrefied and calcined materials are also

intermixed with the rubbish at the base. This circumstance may have

given rise to, or at least countenanced, the legend of the destruction

of the Tower by heavenly fire, still extensively adopted among the

Arabians. The terraces were devoted to the planets, and were differently

colored in accordance with the notions of Sabæan astrology—the lowest,

Saturn’s, black; the second, Jupiter’s, orange; the third, Mars, red; the fourth, the Sun’s, yellow; the fifth, Venus’s, white;

the sixth, Mercury’s, blue; the seventh, the Moon’s, green.

Merodach-adan-akhi is stated to have begun it B.C. 1100. It was finished

five centuries afterwards by Nebuchadnezzar, who left a part of its

history on two cylinders, which have lately been excavated on the spot,

and thus deciphered by Rawlinson. ‘The building, named the Planisphere,

which was the wonder of Babylon, I have made and finished. With bricks,

enriched with lapis lazuli, I have exalted its head. Behold now the

building, named “The Stages of the Seven Spheres,” which was the wonder

of Borsippa, had been built by a former king. He had completed forty-two

cubits of height: but he did not finish the head. From the lapse of time

it became ruined. They had not taken care of the exit of the waters; so

the rain and wet had penetrated into the brickwork. The casing of burnt

brick lay scattered in heaps. Then Merodach, my great lord, inclined

my heart to repair the building. I did not change its site, nor did I

destroy its foundation-platform. But, in a fortunate month, and upon an

auspicious day, I undertook the building of the raw-brick terrace and

the burnt-brick casing of the Temple. I strengthened its foundation, and

I placed a titular record on the part which I had rebuilt. I set my

hand to build it up, and to exalt its summit. As it had been in ancient

times, so I built up its structure. As it had been in former days, thus

I exalted its head.'”

Professor Rawlinson assigns B.C. 2300 as the date of the building of the

Temple. But as Colenso remarks, his reasoning is very loose. His date,

however, is antecedent to the supposed time of the building of

Babel, and according to his own chronology the latter may have been

a tradition of the former. Add to this that the ruins of Birs Nimroud are extant, while there is no vestige of the ruins of Babel. According

to Kalisch’s chronology, Birs Nimroud was built long after the

supposed time of Moses; and if he wrote the Pentateuch our position

cannot be maintained. But he did not write the Pentateuch or any portion

of it. The writer of the Jehovist portion of Genesis, which contains the

story of the Tower of Babel, certainly did not flourish before the

time of Solomon, about b.c. 1015—975. Here, then, is an interval of

a century. That is a short period for the growth of a legend. Yet, as

Colenso observes, “as the tower was apparently an observatory, and

the fact of its being dedicated to the seven ancient planets shows

that astronomical observations had made considerable progress among the

Chaldeans at the time when it was built, the traditions connected with

it may have embodied stories of a much earlier date, to which the new

building gave fresh currency.”

The Temple of Jupiter Belus with its tower was partially destroyed

by Xerxes b.c. 490; upon which, says Kalisch, “the fraudulent priests

appropriated to themselves the lands and enormous revenues attached to

it, and seem, from this reason, to have been averse to its restoration.”

A part of the edifice still existed more than five centuries later, and

was mentioned by Pliny. But the other part was, in the time of Alexander

the Great, a vast heap of ruins. He determined to rebuild it, but

desisted from the enterprise, when he found that ten thousand workmen

could not remove the rubbish in two months. Benjamin of Tudela described

it in the twelfth century, after which, for more than six hundred

years, it remained unnoticed and unknown. The ruins were rediscovered

by Niebuhr in 1756; subsequent explorers more accurately described

them; and they were thoroughly examined, and their monumental records

deciphered, about thirty years ago.

The myth attaching to it is not unique. As Kalisch observes, “most

of the ancient nations possessed myths concerning impious giants, who

attempted to storm heaven, either to share it with the immortal gods, or

to expel them from it.” And even the orthodox Delitzsch allows that

“the Mexicans have a legend of a tower-building, as well as of a Flood.

Xelhua, one of the seven giants rescued in the flood, built the great

pyramid of Cholula, in order to reach heaven, until the gods, angry at

his audacity, threw fire upon the building, and broke it down, whereupon

every separate family received a language of its own.” To lessen the

force of this, Delitzsch says that the Mexican legend has been much

colored by its narrators, chiefly Dominicans and Jesuits; but he is

obliged to admit that there is great significance in the fact that the

Mexican terrace-pyramid closely resembles the construction of the Temple

of Belus. No argument can vitiate the conclusion that as similar myths

to that of Genesis abounded in ancient times, it is highly illogical to

attach particular importance to any one of them. If one is historic, all

are historic. We are justified in holding that the Jewish story of the

Tower of Babel is only a modification of the older story of the Temple

of Belus.

We will conclude this Number by mentioning a few facts, not

speculations, which are exceedingly curious, and which present grave

difficulty to the orthodox believer.

According to the Bible, in Abraham’s time, not four centuries after the

Deluge, the descendants of Noah’s three sons had multiplied into the

four great kingdoms of Shinar (Babylon), Elam, Egypt, and Gerar,

besides a multitude of smaller nations. Does any instructed man believe

in the possibility of such multiplication? It is altogether incredible.

Some of these nations had reached a high degree of civilisation. Indeed,

the temples, tombs, pyramids, manners, customs, and arts of Egypt

betoken a full-grown nation. The sculptures of the Fourth Dynasty, the

earliest extant, and which must be assigned to the date of about 3500

b.c., are almost as perfect as those of her Augustan age, two thousand

years later. Professor Rawlinson seeks to obviate this difficulty by

appealing to the version of the Seventy instead of to the Hebrew text,

by which he obtains the remote antiquity of 8159 B.C., instead of 2848,

for the Deluge. But this chronology does not reach within four hundred

years of the civilisation denoted by the sculptures referred to! And

there must have been milleniums of silent progress in Egypt before that

period.

On the ancient monuments of Egypt the negro head, face, hair, form,

and color, are the same as we observe in our own day. Consequently, the

orthodox believer must hold that, in a few generations, the human family

branched out into strongly marked varieties. History discountenances

this assumption, and Biology plainly disproves it. Archdeacon Pratt

supposes that Shem, Ham, and Japheth “had in them elements differing as

widely as the Asiatic, the African, and the European, differ from each

other.” He forgets that they were brothers, sons of the same father

and presumably of the same mother! Such extraordinary evolution throws

Darwinism into the shade.

Noah lived fifty-eight years after the birth of Abraham. Shem lived a

hundred and ten years after the birth of Isaac, and fifty years after

the birth of Jacob. How was it that neither Abraham, Isaac, nor Jacob

knew either of them. They were the most interesting and important men

alive at the time. They had seen the world before the Flood. One of

them had seen people who knew Adam. They had lived through the confusion

of tongues at Babel, and were well acquainted with the whole history of

the world. Yet they are never once mentioned in Scripture during all

the centuries they survived their exit from the ark. Why is this?

Noah before his death was the most venerable man existing. He was five

hundred years older than any other man. He must have been an object

of universal regard. Yet we have no record of the second half of his

career; no account is given of his burial; no monument was erected to

his memory. Who will explain this astounding neglect? The Bible is a

strange book, and they are strange people who believe it.

BALAAM’S ASS.

BIBLE ROMANCES.—IX.

By G. W. FOOTE.

The ass has figured extensively in romance. His long ears and peculiar

bray are explained by a story which goes back to the Flood. On that

occasion, it is said, the male donkey was inadvertently left outside the

ark, but being a good swimmer, he nevertheless managed to preserve his

life. After many desperate efforts he at last succeeded in calling out

the patriarch’s name, as nearly as the vocal organs of a jackass would

allow. “No-ah, No-ah,” cried the forlorn beast. Noah’s attention was at

last aroused, and on looking out of window to see who was calling, he

perceived the poor jackass almost spent and faintly battling with the

waves. Quickly opening the window, he caught Neddy by the two ears

and hauled him in. This he did with such vigor that Neddy’s aural

appendages were considerably elongated; and ever since donkeys have had

long ears, and brayed “No-ah, No-ah” at the approach of wet weather. For

the sake of Christians who are not well acquainted with God’s Word, we

add that this story is not in the Bible.

Classical scholars and students of modern literature know how the ass

has been treated by poets and romancers. The stolid animal has generally

been made the subject of comedy. Drunken and impotent Silenus, in the

Pagan mythology, joins in the professions of Bacchus on a sober ass, and

the patient animal staggers beneath the heavy burden of a fat-paunched

tipsy god. Apulius and Lucian transform the hero of their common

story into an ass, and in that shape he encounters the most surprising

experiences. Voltaire makes an ass play a wonderful part in his

“Pucelle.” And in all these cases it is worth noticing how the profane

wits remember the ass’s relation to Priapian mysteries, from his fabled

interruption of the garden-god’s attempt on the nymph Lotis downwards,

and assign to him marvellous amatory adventures. Erasmus, in his “Praise

of Folly,” does not forget the ass, with whom he compares the majority

of men for stupidity, obstinacy, and lubricity; nor is the noble

animal forgotten by Rabelais, who cracks many a joke and points many a

witticism at his expense.

Our own genial humorist, Charles Lamb, confesses however to a deep

tenderness for Neddy, and dwells with delight on the protection which

his thick hide affords against the cruel usuage of man. He has, says

Lamb, “a tegument impervious to ordinary stripes. The malice of a child

or a weak hand can make feeble impressions on him. His back offers no

mark to a puny foeman. To a common whip or switch his hide presents an

absolute-insensibility. You might as well pretend to scourge a schoolboy

with a tough pair of leather breeches on.” Lamb also quotes the

following passage from a tract printed in 1595, entitled “The Noblenesse

of the Asse; a Work Rare, Learned, and Excellent”: “He refuseth no

burden; he goes whither he is sent, without any contradiction. He lifts

not his foote against any one; he bytes not; he is no fugitive, nor

malicious affected. He doth all-things in good sort, and to his liking

that hath cause to employ him. If strokes be given him, he cares not for

them.” True, the ass is not much given to kicking or biting, but he has

an awkward knack of quietly lying down when he is indisposed to work,

and of rolling over with equal quietude if a rider happens to be on his

back. But the old author is so enchanted with the “asse” that he does

not stay to notice this scurvy trick. He even goes on to express his

liking for the ass’s bray, calling Neddy “a rare musitian,” and saying

that “to heare the musicke of five or six voices changed to so many of

asses is amongst them to heare a song of world without end.”

Sterne, in his “Sentimental Journey,” has a chapter entitled “The

Dead Ass,” wherein the animal is lifted into the sphere of pathos. And

lastly, Coleridge has some very pious musings on an ass, wherein the

animal is lifted into the sphere of religion.

Now, dear reader, you begin to see the drift of this long exordium,

although my purpose was indeed twofold. First, I wished, after the

example of my betters in literature, to give you a slight glimpse of the

immense extent of my learning. Secondly, I wished to lead you through

the various stages of literary treatment of the ass, from the comic

to the pathetic, and finally to-the religious, in order that you might

approach in a proper frame of mind the consideration of Balaam’s ass,

who is the most remarkable of all the four-legged asses mentioned in the

Bible. There were others. Asses were being sought by Saul, the son

of Kish, when he found a kingdom of subjects instead. Jesus rode into

Jerusalem on an ass, and also apparently on a colt, having probably

one leg over each. With the jawbone of an ass Samson slew a thousand

Philistines; and if the rest of the animal accorded with that particular

bone, he must have been a tough ass indeed. But all these are of little

interest or importance beside the wonderful ass of the prophet

Balaam, whose history is contained, with that of his master, in the

twenty-second, twenty-third, and twenty-fourth chapters of the Book of

Numbers.

Soon after the Wandering Jews in the desert were plagued by “fiery

serpents” for asking Moses to give them a slight change in their

monotonous bill of fare, they warred against the Amorites and pretty

nearly exterminated them. Whereupon Balak the son of Zippor, king of

Moab, grew “sore afraid.” He called together the “elders of Midian” with

those of Moab, and said that in his opinion the Jews would lick them all

up as the ox licked up the grass of the field.

Against such a ferocious gang as the Jews, with a bloody God of Battles

to help them, human valor promised little success; so Balak resolved to

solicit supernatural aid. Accordingly he sent messengers unto Balaam the

son of Beor, a renowned and potent soothsayer, desiring him to come and

curse the people of Israel.

The King had implicit confidence in Balaam. “Whom thou blessest,” said

he, “is blessed, and whom thou cursest is cursed.” This great prophet

must have wrought prodigious wonders in his time to gain so magnificent

a reputation; and if the king’s panegyric on him was true, he must have

been a dangerous person to those who annoyed him and made him swear.

The “elders of Moab and the elders of Midian,” who were Balak’s

messengers, went to Pethor, where Balaam resided. As the reader might

expect, they did not go empty-handed, but took with them “the rewards

of divination.” What these were we are not told. No doubt they were very

handsome. The prophetical business requires large profits to compensate

for the absence of quick returns; and in any case it is not to be

supposed that a man who can do what no one else can, will begin work

without a heavy retaining fee. We conclude that Balaam, like nearly

every prophet mentioned in history, had a good eye for the main chance,

and did not trust very much in the bounty of the gods. He was never

hard up for bread and cheese while other people were hard up for divine

assistance, and as that was an ignorant and credulous age, we presume

that his larder was well-stocked. He must, indeed, have had a fine

time, for he was the biggest pot in his own line of business in all that

district.

Balaam knew his business well. It would never do for a prophet, a

soothsayer, a wizard, or a diviner, to give prompt answers to his

applicants, or even to make his answers plain when he does give them.

That would render the profession cheap and rob it of mystery. So Balaam,

therefore, said to the messengers, “Lodge here this night, and I will

bring you word again, as the Lord shall speak unto me.”

Now this reference to the Lord is very surprising. The Moabites

worshipped Baal, and no doubt they had the utmost contempt for Jehovah.

Yet Balaam, who was a prophet of their religion, tells them that he will

consult the god of Israel on the subject of their visit! This is one of

the self-contradictions with which the Bible abounds.

The next incident of the story is no less remarkable. God, the infinite

spirit of the universe, paid Balaam a visit; and although he knows

everything, past, present, and to come, he asked the prophet “What

men are these with thee?” Balaam gave a straightforward reply, for he

doubtless knew that prevarication and subterfuge were useless with

God. Said he, “Balak the son of Zippor, King of Moab, has sent unto me,

saying, Behold there is a people come out of Egypt, which covereth the

face of the earth: come now, curse me them; peradventure I shall be able

to overcome them and drive them out.” The precision of Balaam’s language

is admirable, and so is its accuracy. He neither desired to keep the

Lord in suspense, nor to leave him in ignorance of necessary details.

God’s answer was equally brief and perspicuous: “Thou shalt not go with

them; thou shalt not curse the people: for they are blessed.”

This interview between God and Balaam, like the following ones, occurred

in the night. The Lord seems to have been always afraid of daylight, or

else to have had a peculiar fondness for the dark. Perhaps he thought

that during the night there was less chance of the conversation being

interrupted, and it is well known that the Lord loves privacy and does

not like conversing with more than one at a time. He agrees with us that

“two’s company and three’s none.”

In the morning Balaam got out of bed and told Balak’s messengers to

return and say that the Lord would not let him come; and they at once

set out for the capital.

Balak, however, was not to be so easily put off. He seems to have

regarded the prophet’s talk about the Lord’s prohibition as “all my

eye.” “Perhaps,” said he to himself, “my messengers were small fry in

the sight of Balaam, and he is therefore displeased. My presents also

may have been too small I should have recollected that Balaam has a

very exalted opinion of himself, and is renowned for his avarice. What a

stupid I was, to-be sure. However, I’ll try again. This time I’ll send

a deputation of big guns, and promise him great wealth and high position

in the state. He can’t refuse such a tempting offer.” Straight-way he

“sent yet again princes, more and more honorable” than those who went

before, and commanded them to urge Balaam to let nothing hinder him from

coming.

Balaam slightly resented this treatment. He told the messengers-that if

Balak would give him his house full of silver and gold, he could not

go beyond the word of the Lord, to do more or less. Yet he apparently

deemed it politic to make another trial. He was, of course, quite aware

that God is unchangeable, but somehow he thought the Lord might alter

his mind. So he bade the messengers to tarry there that night while he

consulted God afresh.

Balaam’s expectation was realised. The Lord did change his mind. He

“came unto Balaam at night, and said unto him, If the men come to call

thee, rise up and go with them; but yet the word which I shall say

unto thee, that shalt thou do.” So the prophet rose up in the morning,

saddled and mounted his wonderful ass, and went off with the princes of

Moab.

Poor Balaam, however, did not reflect that as the Lord had changed his

mind once he might change it twice, and the omission very nearly cost

him his life. He was unfortunately ignorant of what happened to Moses on

a similar occasion. After the Lord had dispatched the Jewish prophet

to Egypt to rescue his people from bondage, he met him at an inn, where

perhaps they both put up for the night, and sought to kill him. The same

thing happened now. No sooner had Balaam set out on his journey than

“God’s anger was kindled against him because he went.” This Jehovah is

a queer God and dreadfully hard to please. If you don’t obey his orders

you run the risk of being damned, and if you do you stand a good chance

of being murdered. The only safe course is to get out of his way and

have nothing to do with him.

The “angel of the Lord” stood in Balaam’s path, with a drawn sword in

his hand, ready to kill the prophet whose only crime was having done

exactly what he was told. But neither Balaam nor his two servants saw

him. The ass, however, had better eyesight. Being only an ass, and not a

man, he had a greater aptitude for seeing angels. Not liking the look

of this formidable stranger, Neddy bolted from the pathway into a field.

Balaam, who saw no reason for such behavior except sheer perverseness,

began to whack his ass and tried to turn him * into the right road.

Neddy succumbed to this forcible argument and jogged on again. The angel

of the Lord had apparently, in the meantime, made himself invisible

even to a jackass. His intention was ultimately to kill Balaam, but he

delayed the fatal stroke in order to make the most of the comedy

which he foresaw. Going a little in front, he “stood in a path of the

vineyards, a wall being on this side, and a wall on that” Neddy caught

sight of the angel again, and being unable this time to bolt into

the field, he lurched against the wall, and gave Balaam’s foot a good

scrunching. Still the prophet suspected nothing out of the common, for

that was an ordinary trick of refractory asses. Poor Neddy, therefore,

got another thrashing. Then the angel of the Lord went on further, and

“stood in a narrow place, where there was no way to turn either to

the right hand or to the left.” Neddy estimated the certain penalty of

refusing to proceed and the probable penalty of going forward. After

comparing them he decided to stop where he was, and then quietly laid

down. Balaam’s anger was once more kindled by this stupid obstinacy, and

he whacked the ass again with his staff.

     * Balaam's ass was a "she," but the sex is immaterial, and

     as we commenced with the masculine gender we will continue

     with it.

                      

Then the Lord intervened, and brought about the most extraordinary

incident of this wonderful story. He “opened the mouth of the ass,” and

lo! instead of braying Neddy spoke. Without a note of preparation he

began to upbraid his master in good Moabitish. “What have I done,” said

he, “that thou hast smitten me these three times.”

Singular to relate, Balaam was not in the least astonished at hearing

an ass speak. He took it as quite an ordinary occurrence. One is almost

inclined to think that the prophet and his donkey had held many a

conversation before. In the Bible no one ever is astonished at anything,

however wonderful. When the serpent accosted Eve in the garden of Eden,

she was not at all surprised, but went on with the colloquy as though

talking serpents were common things. If a dumb animal were nowadays

to address a man with “How d’ye do?” he would certainly be very much

startled; but when the same thing occurred in the old Bible days, the

man at once replied “Very well, thank you, how are you?”

Balaam promptly answered the ass’s question. “Because,” said he, “thou

hast mocked me: I would there were a sword in mine hand, for now would I

kill thee.” Then the ass rejoined, “Am not I thine ass, upon which thou

hast ridden ever since I was thine unto this day? Was I ever wont to

do so unto thee?” This was a poser. Balaam scratched his head and

reflected, but at last he was obliged to say “Nay.”

Neddy had so far the best of the argument. But Balaam had the practical

argument of the stick left, and no doubt he was about to convince the

donkey with it. All arguments, practical or otherwise, would however

have left the dispute exactly where it stood. Neddy saw the angel, and

that was enough for him. Balaam did not see the angel, but only Neddy’s

obstinate stupidity. In short, they reasoned from different premises,

and could not therefore arrive at the same conclusion. They might have

argued till doomsday had not the Lord again intervened. He “opened

Balaam’s eyes,” so that he also “saw the angel of the Lord standing in

the way, and his sword drawn in his hand.” Then Balaam “bowed his head,

and fell flat on his face,” and there he and Neddy laid side by side,

two asses together.

Now, dear reader, you will observe that the ass, being indeed an ass,

saw the angel first, and that Balaam, who was a wise man, did not see

the angel until his wits were disordered by the wonder of a talking

donkey. Does this not bear out great Bacon’s remark that “in all

superstition, wise men follow fools”? And may we not say, that if asses

did not see angels first, wise men would never see them after?

The angel of the Lord said to Balaam, while he remained flat on his

face, “Wherefore hast thou smitten thine ass these three times? behold,

I went out to withstand thee, because thy way is perverse before me:

and the ass saw me, and turned from me these three times: unless she had

turned from me, surely now also I had slain thee, and saved her alive.”

The moral of this is that asses stand the best chance of salvation, and

that wise men run a frightful risk of damnation until they lose their

wits.

Balaam recognised the awful mess he was in, and being by this time as

limp as a wet rag, he made the most abject apology. “I have sinned,” he

said, “for I knew not that thou stoodest in the way against me.” This

strange reasoning shows still more clearly how the poor prophet had

taken leave of his senses. He had not sinned at all, for he was

strictly obeying God’s commands; nor was it his fault that the angel

remained so long invisible. When the Lord “opened his eyes,” and made

his vision like unto the vision of an ass, he saw the angel plainly

enough; and how could he possibly have done so before?

“I’ll go back,” added Balaam, thinking that if he sinned so greatly in

going forward, he had better return home. But the angel of the Lord,

who had intended to kill him for advancing, now told him to “go with the

men.” And Balaam went with them, keeping his weather eye open during the

rest of the journey.

Balak was heartily glad to see Balaam. The prophet had been a long time

coming, but better late than never. The next day they went “up into the

high places of Baal,” from which they could see the utmost part of

the people of Israel. “There they are,” said Balak, “confound them!

leprous slaves out of Egypt, bent on stealing other people’s lands, and

sticking to all they can lay hands on; bloodthirsty vagabonds, who fight

people with whom they have no quarrel, and kill men, women, and children

when they are victorious. Now, Balaam, do your duty. Curse them, and lay

it on thick.”

Seven altars were built, and seven oxen and seven rams sacrificed on

them. But all this good meat was wasted, for when Balaam “went to an

high place,” God met him, according to agreement, and told him what to

say. And lo! when the prophet returned to the king, he blessed the Jews

instead of cursing them.

“Hullo, Balaam, what’s this?” cried the king. “I asked you to curse

my enemies and you’ve gone and blessed them. What d’ye mean?” “True,”

answered Balaam, “but I told you that I could only speak what the Lord

put into my mouth.”

Balak appears to have been just as sceptical as Pharaoh about the God

of the Jews. He attributed his disappointment to a freak of the prophet,

and not being easily baffled he resolved to try again. So he took Balaam

up another high place, and built seven fresh altars, and sacrificed

on them seven more bullocks and rams; after which he repeated his

invitation. Again Balaam went farther to consult the Lord, whom he found

waiting for him, and received his instructions. And lo! when he returned

to Balak he again blessed the Jews instead of cursing them.

Balak resolved to try again. He took Balaam to another high place, built

seven more altars, and sacrificed seven more bullocks and seven more

rams. But again the prophet blessed Israel, and a third time the king

was sold. Then he gave it up, and Balaam and his ass went home.

What became of the ass is unknown. Perhaps he went into the prophetical

business himself, and eventually retired on a very handsome fortune.

Perhaps he went about as a preacher of the gospel as it was then

understood; in which case, judging from the rule of success in later

ages, we have no doubt that he attracted large audiences and delighted

all who were fortunate enough to sit under him. And when he died all the

two-legged asses in Moab probably wept and refused to be comforted.

Balaam’s end was tragic. The thirteenth chapter of Joshua informs us

that he was eventually slain by the very people he had thrice blessed.

After an account of one of the bloody wars of Jehovah’s bandits we read

that “Balaam also the son of Beor, the sooth-sayer, did the children

of Israel slay with the sword among them that were slain by them.” The

angel of the Lord spared him, but God’s butchers cut his throat at

last. On the whole he might as well have cursed the Jews up and down to

Balak’s satisfaction, and taken the handsome rewards which were offered

him on such easy terms.

Here endeth the story of Balaam’s Ass. I hope my reader still believes

it, for if not, he will be reprobate while he lives and damned when he

dies.

GOD’S THIEVES IN CANAAN.

BIBLE ROMANCES.—X.

By G. W. FOOTE.

Some years ago the righteous indignation of England was roused by

the daily record of atrocities perpetrated in Bulgaria by the Turkish

bashi-bazouks. Men were wantonly massacred, pregnant women ripped up,

and maidens outraged by brutal lust. Our greatest statesman uttered a

clarion-cry which pealed through the whole nation, and the friends of

the Turk in high places shrank abashed and dismayed before the stern

response of the people. Many clergymen attended public meetings, and

denounced not only the Turks, but also their Mohammedanism. They alleged

that the Koran sanctioned, even if it did not command, the horrors which

had been wrought in Eastern Europe, and they declared that there was

no hope for a country which derived its maxims of state from such an

accursed book. Those denunciations did honor to their hearts, but very

little to their heads. For every brutal injunction in the Koran, twenty

might be found in the Bible. Before the clergy cry out against the

Scriptures of Islam, they should purge their own of those horrid

features which are an insult to man and a blasphemy against God.

Mohammed gave savage counsels to his followers with respect to waging

war, but these sink into insignificance beside the counsels given to the

Jews by Moses in the name of God.

Bible Romances are generally comic, but this one is infinitely tragic.

The whole range of history affords no worse instances of cold-blooded

cruelty than those which God’s thieves, the Jews, perpetrated in Canaan,

when they took forcible possession of cities they had not built and

fields they had never ploughed. “How that red rain will make the harvest

grow!” exclaims Byron of the blood shed at Waterloo; and surely the

first harvests reaped by the Jews in Canaan must have been luxuriantly

rich, for the ground had been drenched with the blood of the slain.

Before Moses died, according to the Bible, he delivered an elaborate

code of laws to his people in the name of God. The portions referring to

war are contained in the twentieth chapter of Deuteronomy. Here they

stand in all their naked hideous-ness:—

“When thou comest nigh unto a city to fight against it, then proclaim

peace unto it. And it shall be, if it make thee answer of peace, and

open unto thee, then it shall be that all the people that is found

therein shall be tributaries unto thee, and they shall serve thee. And

if it will make no peace with thee, but will make war against thee, then

thou shalt besiege it. And when the Lord thy God hath delivered it into

thine hands, thou shalt smite every male thereof with the edge of the

sword: But the women, and the little ones, and the cattle, and all

that is in the city, even all the spoil thereof, shalt thou take unto

thyself; and thou shalt eat the spoil of thine enemies, which the Lord

thy God hath given thee. Thus shalt thou do unto all the cities which

are very far off from thee, which are not of the cities of these

nations. But of the cities of these people, which the Lord thy God

doth give thee for an inheritance, thou shalt save alive nothing that

breatheth. But thou shalt utterly destroy them.”

Such were the fiendish commands of Jehovah, the bloody maxims of

inspired war. Let us see how the Jews carried them out.

During the lifetime of Moses they made a good beginning; for in their

war against Midian they slew 48,000 men, 48,000 women, and 20,000 boys,

and took as spoil 32,000 virgins. But they did much better under Joshua.

After God had dispatched Moses and secretly buried him, so that nobody

should ever discover his sepulchre, Joshua was appointed leader in his

stead. He was “full of the spirit of wisdom, for Moses had laid his

hands upon him.” Then, as now, religious superiors transmitted holiness

to their inferiors through the skull. God accepted the nomination of

Moses and instructed Joshua in his duties. He told him to be above all

“strong and very courageous,” and to fight the enemy according to the

law of Moses. Joshua was not the man to neglect such advice.

Joshua was soon ordered to cross the river Jordan and begin the holy

war. But before doing so, he dispatched two spies to reconnoitre

Jericho, the first place to be attacked. They reached the city by night,

and of course required lodgings. Instinct led them to the house of

Rahab, the harlot. She proved a very good friend; for when messengers

came from the king in the morning to inquire about them, she said that

they had gone, and advised the messengers to go after them, which they

did. Meanwhile she hid the spies under some flax on the roof of her

house, and at night “let them down by a cord through the window, for she

dwelt on the town wall.” Before they left, however, she made a covenant

with them. Like many other ladies of easy virtue, or no virtue at

all, Rahab was piously inclined. She had conceived a great respect

for Jehovah, and was assured that his people would overcome all their

enemies. But she had also a great respect for her own skin; so she made

the two spies promise on behalf of the Jews that when they took Jericho

they would spare her and all her relatives; and they were to recognise

her house by the “line of scarlet thread in the window.” They got back

safe to Joshua and told him it was all right; the people were in a

dreadful funk, and all the land would soon be theirs.

Joshua got up early the next morning and told the Jews that the Lord was

going to do wonders. They wanted to get “on the other side of Jordan.”

and the Lord meant to ferry them across in his own style. Twelve men

were selected, one from each tribe, to follow the priests who bore the

ark in front, and all the Jewish host came after them. As it was harvest

time, the river had overflowed its banks. When the priests’ feet “were

dipped in the brim of the water,” the river parted in twain; on one side

the waters “stood and rose up upon an heap,” while on the other side

they “failed and were cut off.” As no miracle was worked further up the

river to stop the supplies, the “heap” must have been a pretty big one

before the play ended. A clear passage having been made, the Jews all

crossed on dry ground. They seem to have done this in less than a day,

but three millions of people could not march past one spot in less than

a week. Perhaps the Lord gave them a shove behind.

The twelve selected Jews, one from each tribe, took twelve big stones

out of the bed of the river, which were “pitched in Gilgal” as “a

memorial unto the children of Israel for ever.” For ever is a long time

and is not yet ended. Those stones should be there now. Why don’t the

clergy try to discover them? If brought to London and set up on the

Thames embankment they would throw Cleopatra’s needle into the shade.

When God had ferried the Jews across, and picked out the twelve

big stones as aids to memory, the “heap” of water tumbled down and

overflowed the banks of the river. Joshua and his people then encamped

near Jericho, in readiness for greater wonders to come.

Three days afterwards the manna ceased. Jehovah’s fighting cocks wanted

a more invigorating diet. This time they did not ask for a change, but

the Lord vouchsafed it spontaneously.

All the males, too, were circumcised by God’s orders. This Jewish rite

had been neglected during the forty years’ wandering in the wilderness,

but it was now resumed. From the text it seems that Joshua circumcised

all the males himself. As they numbered about a million and a half it

must have been a long job. Allowing a minute for each amputation, it

would in the natural course of things have taken him about three years

to do them all; but being divinely aided, he finished his task in a

single day. Samson’s jaw-bone was nothing to Joshua’s knife.

Soon after Joshua, being near Jericho, like Balaam’s ass saw an angel

with a drawn sword in his hand. When he had made obeisance, by falling

flat and taking off his shoes, he received from this heavenly messenger

precise instructions as to the capture of the doomed city. The Lord’s

way of storming fortresses is unique in military literature. Said he to

Joshua—”Ye shall compass the city, all ye men of war, and go round

about the city once. Thus shalt thou do six days. And seven priests

shall bear before the ark seven trumpets of rams’ horns: and the seventh

day ye shall compass the city seven times, and the priests shall blow

with the trumpet? And it shall come to pass that when they make a long

blast with the ram’s horn, and when ye hear the sound of the trumpet

all the people shall shout with a great shout; and the wall of the city

shall fall down flat, and the people shall ascend up every man straight

before him.”

Did ever another general receive such extraordinary instructions from

his commander-in-chief? God’s soldiers need no cannon, or battering

rams, or bombshells; all they require is a few rams’ horns and good

lungs for shouting.

God’s orders were obeyed. Six days in succession did the Jews march

round the walls of Jericho, no doubt to the great bewilderment of its

inhabitants, who probably wondered why they didn’t come on, and felt

that there was something uncanny in this roundabout siege. On the

seventh day they went round the city seven times. How tired they must

have been! Jericho, being a capital city, could not have been less than

several miles in circumference. The priests blew with the trumpets,

the people shouted with a great shout, and the walls of Jericho fell

flat—as flat as the simpletons who believe it.

A scene of horror ensued. The Jews “utterly destroyed all there was in

the city, both man and woman, young and old, and ox, and sheep, and ass,

with the edge of the sword.” Only Rahab and her relatives were spared.

The silver, and the gold, and the vessels of brass and of iron, were put

into the Lord’s treasury—that is, handed over to the priests; and then

the city was burnt with fire. God commanded this, and his chosen people

executed it Could Jericho have been treated worse if the Devil himself

had planned the fight, and the vilest fiends from hell had conducted it?

Rahab the harlot, being saved with all her relatives, who were perhaps

as bad as she, dwelt with the Jews ever afterwards. Whether she

continued in her old profession we are unable to say. But it is certain

that the Jews soon after grew very corrupt, and the Lord’s anger was

kindled against them. The first result of God’s displeasure was that the

Jews became demoralised as warriors. Three thousand of them, who went up

against Ai, were routed, and thirty-six of them were slain. This seems

a very small number, but, as we have already observed, the Jewish

chroniclers were much given to bragging. Their losses were always very

small, and the enemy’s very great.

After this rebuff the Jews funked; their hearts “melted and became as

water.” Joshua rent his clothes, fell upon his face before the ark, and

remained there until the evening. The elders of Israel did likewise,

and they all put dust on their heads. To conclude the performance Joshua

expostulated with God, asked him whether he had brought his people over

Jordan only to betray them to their enemies, and expressed a hearty wish

that they had never crossed the river at all.

The Lord told Joshua to get up, as it was no use lying there. Israel had

sinned, and God had determined not to help them until they had purged

themselves. Some one, in fact, had stolen a portion of the spoil of

Jericho, all of which belonged to the Lord, that is to the priests,

who evidently helped to concoct this pretty story. Joshua forthwith

proceeded to hunt the sinner out. His method was very singular. He

resolved to go through the twelve tribes until the culprit was found.

The tribe of Judah was examined first, and luckily in the very first

family “Achan was taken,” although we are not told how he was spotted.

Achan confessed that he had appropriated of the spoil a “goodly

Babylonish garment, and two hundred shekels of silver, and a wedge of

gold of fifty shekels weight,” which he had hidden under his tent. His

doom was swift and terrible; he was stoned to death, and his body burnt

with fire. We may think his punishment severe, but we cannot deny his

guilt. He, however, was not the only sufferer. Jehovah was not to be

satisfied with a small quantity of blood. Achans’s sons and daughters

were stoned with him, and their bodies were burnt like his. His very

oxen, asses, and sheep were served in the same manner. A great heap of

stones was raised over their cinders, and then “the Lord turned from

the fierceness of his anger.” Jehovah acted just like the savage old

chieftain of a savage tribe. As irascible tempers do not improve with

age, we presume that he is still as peppery as ever. Yet we are asked to

love, venerate, and worship this brutal being, as the ideal of all that

is merciful, just, and pure.

Immediately after Joshua sent thirty thousand men against Ai, which they

took with great ease. All its inhabitants, from the oldest man to the

youngest babe, were massacred. The city itself was burnt into a desolate

heap. The King of Ai was reserved to furnish the Jews with a little

extra sport, by way of dessert to the bloody feast. He was hanged on a

tree until eventide, when his carcass was taken down and “buried under

a heap of stones.” Joshua “then built an altar unto the Lord God of

Israel in mount Ebal,” who appears to have been mightily well pleased

with the whole business.

Joshua’s next exploit was indeed miraculous. He gathered all the Jews

together, men, women, children, and even the strangers, and read to them

all the laws of Moses, without omitting a single word. It must have been

a long job, and Joshua’s throat must have been rather dry at the end.

But the greatest wonder is how he made himself heard to three millions

of people at once. No other orator ever addressed so big an audience.

Either their ears were very sharp, or his voice was terribly loud. The

people in the front rank must have been nearly stunned with the sound.

Joshua could outroar Bottom the weaver by two or three miles.

The people of Gibeon, by means of messengers who palmed themselves off

on Joshua as strangers from a distant country, contrived to obtain a

league whereby their lives were spared. When their craft was detected

they were sentenced to become hewers of wood and drawers of water to the

Jews; in other words, their slaves.

Adoni-zedec, king of Jerusalem; Hoham, king of Hebron; Piram, king

of Jamuth; Japhia, king of Lachish; and Debir, king of Eglon; banded

themselves together to punish Gibeon for making peace with the Jews.

Joshua went with all his army to their relief. He fell upon the armies

of the five kings, discomfitted them with great slaughter, and chased

them along the way to Beth-horon. As they fled the Lord joined in the

hunt. He “cast down great stones from heaven upon them” and killed a

huge number, even “more than they whom the children of Israel slew with

the sword.”

When we read that Pan fought with the Greeks against the Persians at

Marathon, we must regard it as a fable; but when we read that Jehovah

fought with the Jews against the five kings at Gibeon, we must regard it

as historical truth, and if we doubt it we shall be eternally damned.

Not only did the Lord join in the war-hunt, but Joshua wrought the

greatest miracle on record by causing a stationary body to stand still.

He stopped the sun from “going down” and lengthened out the day for

about twelve hours, in order that the Jews might see to pursue and kill

the flying foe. “The sun stood still, and the moon stayed, until the

people had avenged themselves upon their enemies.” What Joshua really

stopped, if he stopped anything, was the earth, for its revolution,

and not the motion of the sun, causes the phenomena of day and night.

Science tells us that the arrest of the earth’s motion would generate a

frightful quantity of heat, enough to cause a general conflagration.

Yet nothing of the kind happened. How is it, too, that no other ancient

people has preserved any record of this marvellous occurrence? The

Egyptians, for instance, carefully noted eclipses and such events, but

they jotted down no memorandum of Joshua’s supreme miracle. Why is this?

How can Christians explain it?

When Jupiter personated Amphytrion, and visited his bride Alcmena, the

amorous god lengthened out the night in order to prolong his enjoyment.

Why may we not believe this? Is it not as credible, and quite as moral,

as the Bible story of Jehovah’s lengthening out the day to prolong a

massacre? Were the Greeks any bigger liars than the Jews?

It has been suggested that Joshua was so elated with the victory that

he drank more than was good for him, and got in such a state that in the

evening he saw two moons instead of one. Nobody liked to contradict him,

but the elders of Israel, to harmonise their leader’s vision, declared

that it comprised the sun and the moon, instead of two moons, which

were clearly absurd. The court poet improved on this explanation, and

composed the neat little poem which is partially preserved by the Jewish

chronicler, who asks “Is not this written in the book of Jasher?” The

waggish laureate Jasher is supposed by some profane speculators to have

got up the whole miracle himself.

The five kings fled with their armies and “hid themselves in a cave at

Makkedah.” Joshua ordered the mouth to be closed with big stones until

the pursuit was ended. At last they were brought out and treated with

great ignominy. Their necks were made footstools of by the captains of

Israel, and they were afterwards hung on trees until the evening, when

their carcasses were flung into the cave. After this highly civilised

treatment of their captives, the Jews took all the capital cities of

these five kings and slew all the inhabitants. Then they desolated the

hills and vales. Joshua “left none remaining, but utterly destroyed

all that breathed, as the Lord God of Israel commanded.” Hazor and many

other places were also treated in the same way, “there was not any left

to breathe.”

Jehovah was not, however, able to execute his intentions completely. The

children of Judah could not drive the Jebusites out of Jerusalem; nor

could the children of Manasseh entirely drive out the Canaanites from

their cities. After Joshua’s death, as we read in the book of Judges,

“the Lord was with Judah, and he drave out the inhabitants of the

mountain; but could not drive out the inhabitants of the valley, because

they had chariots of iron.” Iron chariots were too strong for the

Almighty! Yet he managed to take off the wheels of Pharaoh’s chariots

at the Red Sea. Why could he not do the same on this occasion? Were the

linch-pins too tight or the wheels too heavy?

Joshua died at the ripe old age of a hundred and ten. Whatever else he

may have been, he was certainly one of the gamest fighting cocks that

ever lived. Jehovah never found a better instrument for his bloody

purposes. They buried him at Timnath-serah. Joseph’s old bones, which

Moses brought out of Egypt, were buried at Shechem. Had they been kept

much longer some Hebrew “old-clo’ man” might have carried them off and

made an honest penny by them.

After Joshua’s death, the tribe of Judah fought against Adoni-bezek.

When they caught him they cut off his thumbs and his big toes. He

acknowledged the justice of his punishment, and admitted that God had

served him just as he had himself served seventy kings, whose great toes

he had cut off, and made them eat under his table. Kings must have been

very plentiful in those days.

During Joshua’s lifetime the Jews served God, and they kept pretty

straight during the lifetime of the elders who had known him. But

directly these died they went astray; “they forsook the Lord and

worshipped Baal and Ashtaroth.” God punished them by letting their

enemies oppress them. “Nevertheless,” says the story, “the Lord raised

up judges, which delivered them out of the hand of those that spoiled

them. And yet they would not hearken unto their judges, but they went

a whoring after other gods, and bowed themselves unto them; and they

turned quickly out of the way which their fathers walked in, obeying the

commandments of the Lord; but they did not so….. And it came to pass,

when the judge was dead, that they returned and corrupted themselves

more than their fathers, in following other Gods to serve them, and

to bow down unto them; they ceased not from their own doings, nor from

their stubborn way.”

God’s selection of the Jews as his favorite people does not seem to

reflect much credit on his sagacity. All who came out of Egypt, except

two persons, turned out so badly that they were pronounced unfit to

enter the promised land, and doomed to die in the wilderness. The new

generation who entered Canaan, after being circumcised to make them

holy; after seeing the miracles of Jordan and the valley of Ajalon;

after having gained a home by God’s assistance in a land flowing with

milk and honey; this very generation proved worse than their fathers.

The original inhabitants of Canaan, whom they dispossessed, could hardly

have surpassed them in sin against Jehovah; and therefore the ruthless

slaughter of their conquest was as unreasonable as it was inhuman. So

much for “God’s Thieves in Canaan.”

CAIN AND ABEL.

BIBLE ROMANCES.—11.

By G. W. FOOTE.

God completed the immense labors described in the first chapter of

Genesis by creating man “in his own image,” after which he serenely

contemplated “everything that he had made, and; behold, it was very

good.” Yet the first woman deceived her husband, the first man was

duped, and their first son was a murderer. God could not have looked

very far ahead when he pronounced everything “very good.” It is clear

that the original pair of human beings were very badly made. As the Lord

was obliged to take a rest on the seventh day, it is not unreasonable to

suppose that he was pretty tired on the sixth, and scamped the work.

All the sin and suffering in this world is the consequence of man having

been the fag-end of creation. If the Lord had rested on the sixth day

and created man on the seventh, how different things might have been!

The Devil would probably have done no business in this world, and the

population of hell would be no more now than it was six thousand years

ago.

After leaving the Garden of Eden, Adam and Eve, having no fear of

Malthus in their hearts, began to “multiply and replenish the earth.”

When their first child was born, Eve said, “I have gotten a man from

the Lord,” poor Adam’s share in the youngster’s advent being quietly

ignored. She christened him Cain, a name which comes from a Hebrew root

signifying to acquire. Cain was regarded as an acquisition, and his

mother was very proud of him. The time came when she wished he had never

been born.

Some time after, but how long is unknown, Eve gave birth to a second

son, called Abel. Josephus explains this name as meaning grief, but

Hebrew scholars at present explain it as meaning nothingness, vanity,

frailty. The etymology of Abel’s name shows conclusively that the story

is a myth. Why should Eve give her second boy so sinister a name? How

could she have so clearly anticipated his sad fate? Cain’s name has,

too, another significance besides that of “acquisition,” for, as

Kalisch points out, it also belongs to the Hebrew verb to strike, and

“signifies either the man of violence and the sire of murderers, or

the ancestor of the inventors of iron instruments and of weapons of

destruction.”

Cain and Abel had to get their own living. Being born after the Fall,

they were of course debarred from the felicities of Eden, and were

compelled to earn their bread by the sweat of their brows, in accordance

with God’s wide-reaching curse. Both, so to speak, were forced to deal

in provisions. Abel went in for meat, and Cain for vegetables. This was

an admirable division of labor, and they ought to have got on very well

together; one finding beef and mutton for dinner, and the other potatoes

and greens. They might even have paid each other handsome compliments

across the table. Abel might have said “My dear Cain, these vegetables

are first-rate,” and Cain might have replied, “My dear Abel, I never

tasted a better cut.”

Delitzsch, whose criticisms are huge jokes, frowns on this picture of

fraternal peace. He opines that Cain and Abel were vegetarians and never

enjoyed a beef-steak or a mutton-chop. Abel kept only small domestic

cattle, such as sheep and goats, whose woolly skin might be used to

cover “their sinful nakedness.” The utmost Delitzsch allows is that they

perhaps drank milk, which, although animal nutriment, is not obtained

through the destruction of animal life. But, as Colenso observes,

animals were slain for sacrifices, and they may have been killed also

for eating. Besides, even a vegetable diet involves infinite destruction

of minute animal life. On the whole we prefer to disregard Delitzsch

in this matter, and to stand by our pleasant picture of the two first

brothers at dinner.

Their admirable arrangement, however, brought mischief in the end. It

was right enough so far as they were concerned, but it worked badly

in relation to God. They liked a mixed diet, but the Lord was purely

carnivorous and liked all meat. He devoured Abel’s provisions with

great relish, but turned up his nose at Cain’s vegetables. The mealiest

potatoes, the tenderest green peas, had no charm for him; and even the

leeks, the garlic, the onions, and the cucumbers, which were afterwards

so beloved by his Jewish favorites, were quite unattractive. In the

language of Scripture, “Cain brought of the fruit of the ground an

offering unto the Lord. And Abel, he also brought of the firstlings of

his flock and of the fat thereof. And the Lord had respect unto Abel and

to his offering: But unto Cain and to his offering he had no respect”

Elsewhere in the Bible we read “God is no respecter of persons,”

but Scripture is full of contradictions, and such things present no

difficulty to the spirit of faith, which, like hope, “believeth all

things.”

Why was Cain’s offering slighted? The Bible does not tell us, but many

reasons have been advanced by commentators. The Talmud supposes that

Cain did not offer his best produce, but only the inferior kinds, thus

giving God what he did not require himself, and treating the holy rite

of sacrifice as a means of working off his refuse vegetables. Kalisch

waives this theory, and thinks it probable that Cain’s sin was primarily

not against God, but against man. “The supposition,” he says, “is

obvious that envy and jealousy had long filled the heart of Cain, when

he contrasted his laborious and toilsome life with the pleasant and easy

existence of his brother Abel. With incessant exertion, tormented by

anxiety, and helplessly dependent on the uncertainty of the skies,

he forced a scanty subsistence out of the womb of the repugnant soil;

whilst his brother enjoyed a life of security and abundance, in the

midst of rich valleys, beautiful hills, and charming rural scenes. And

while he envied Abel’s prosperity, he despised his idleness, which was

indebted for the necessaries of life to the liberality of nature, rather

than to personal exertions. This hatred and jealousy took root in Cain’s

heart. He beheld the happiness of his brother with the feelings-of an

enemy. The joy at the success of his own labors was embittered by the

aspect of his brother’s greater affluence. How could God look with

delight upon an offering which the offerer himself did not regard with

unalloyed satisfaction? How could he encourage by his applause a man

whose heart was poisoned by the mean and miserable passion of envy?”

But all this is gratuitous and far-fetched. Cain was not afflicted with

so laborious an occupation. Adam supported himself and Eve, and all Cain

had to do was to provide himself, and perhaps Abel, with vegetables. Nor

could Abel’s occupation have been light, for flocks and herds require

a good deal of attendance, and in those early days they needed vigilant

protection against the ravages of wild beasts. Abel’s task must have

been quite as heavy as Cain’s. Our opinion is that the Lord showed his

usual caprice, hating whom he would and loving whom he would. Jehovah

acted like the savage hero of Mr. Browning’s “Caliban on Setebos,” who

sprawls on the shore watching a line of crabs make for the sea, and

squashes the twentieth for mere variety and sport. If Jehovah is

requested to explain his loves and hates, he answers with Shylock, “it

is my whim.” It was his whim to love Jacob and hate Esau, and it was no

doubt his whim to accept Abel’s offering and reject Cain’s.

Mythologically the acceptance of Abel’s offering and the rejection of

Cain’s are easily intelligible. The principle of sacrifice was deeply

imbedded in Judaism. Without shedding of blood there could be no

remission of sin. Under the Levitical law the duties of the priesthood

chiefly consisted in burning the sin offerings of the people. It is,

therefore, not difficult to understand how the Jewish scribes who wrote

or revised the Pentateuch after the Babylonish captivity should give

this coloring to the narrative of Genesis; nor is it hard to conceive

that for centuries before that date the popular tradition had already,

under priestly direction, taken such a color, so as to give the oldest

and deepest sanction to the doctrine of animal sacrifice.

It must also be noticed that Abel, who found favor with God, was “a

keeper of sheep,” while Cain, whose offering was contemned, was “a

tiller of the ground.” This accords with the strongest traditional

instincts of the Jews. The Persian religion decidedly favors

agriculture, which it regards as a kind of divine service. Brahminism

and Buddhism countenance it still more decidedly, and even go to the

length of absolutely prohibiting the slaughter of animals. The Jews,

on the other hand, esteemed the pastoral life as the noblest, and

the Hebrew historian very naturally represented it as protected and

consecrated by the blessing of Jehovah, while agriculture was declared

to have been imposed on man as a punishment. The nomadic origin of the

Jews accounts for their antipathy to that pursuit, which survived

and manifested itself, long after they settled in Palestine, devoted

themselves to the cultivation of the soil, and enacted agrarian laws.

They always esteemed agriculturalists as inferior to shepherds; men of

superior attainments in their histories and legends rose from pastoral

life; and kings kept their flocks. David, the man after God’s own heart,

and the national hero of the Jews, was a shepherd, and the Lord came

to him while he was keeping his father’s sheep. Moses was keeping his

father-in-law’s sheep when God appeared to him in the burning bush at

Mount Horeb; Jacob kept his uncle Laban’s sheep when he fled from Esau;

and Abraham, the father of the faithful, was rich in flocks and herds.

To recur to our story. Abel probably enjoyed the conspicuous mark

of divine favors conferred on him. Cain, however, experienced very

different feelings. He “was very wroth, and his countenance fell.”

Whereupon the Lord somewhat facetiously asked him what was the matter.

“Why,” said he, “art thou wroth? and why is thy countenance fallen? If

thou doest well, shalt thou not be accepted? and if thou doest not well,

sin lieth at the door.” This was all very well, but as a matter of fact

Cain’s offering had already been rejected, and according to the Bible

he had done nothing to deserve such harsh treatment.

The Lord’s final words on this occasion read thus in our English Bible:

“And unto thee shall be his desire, and thou shalt rule over him.” These

words are construed as applying to Cain’s mastery over Abel, as the

elder brother; but they seem quite unmeaning in that connexion; for

Abel left no offspring, and the prophecy, if such it were, was never

fulfilled. Kalisch throws light on this obscure passage. The Lord,

he says, was referring not to Abel but to Cain’s secret sin, and the

passage should read “And to thee is its desire, but thou shalt rule

over it.”

Cain then “talked with Abel his brother.” Gesenius supposes that he

communicated to him the words of God, and treats this as the first step

towards a reconciliation. However that may be, we hear nothing more of

it, for the very next words relate the murder of the younger brother by

the elder. “And it came to pass, when they were in the field, that Cain

rose up against Abel his brother, and slew him.”

This abrupt narrative certainly requires explanation. Kalisch seems to

think that Cain went about his work, after the interview with God, in a

better frame of mind; but while he toiled hard “in the field” he became

incensed at the sight of Abel loafing under a fine umbrageous tree

and calmly watching his flock. Forgetting the divine admonitions,

and listening only to the voice of passion, he madly killed his only

brother, and made himself the first murderer. The Talmud gives several

legends about the hatred between the two brothers. One imputes the

difference to Cain’s avarice, another to his ambition, another to his

innate sinfulness, and another to his envy and jealousy on account

of Abel’s wife. The last of all seems the truest; namely, that they

differed “in their views regarding Providence, the moral government of

the world, and the efficacy of virtuous deeds for happiness.” This idea

informs Byron’s tragedy on the subject. In “Cain” the younger, brother’s

offering is burnt up with supernatural fire, while the elder’s altar

remains unkindled; whereupon Cain inveighs against God’s partiality, and

denounces the bloody sacrifice which finds greater favor than his own

peaceful tribute of fruit and flowers. He then advances to scatter the

relics of Abel’s offering from the altar, but is thwarted by his brother

who resists the sacrilege. Abel is felled in the struggle, and Cain, who

had no intention of killing him, finds himself an actual murderer before

his brother’s corpse.

We are bound to conclude that the first quarrel in the world, like

nine-tenths of those that have occurred since, was about religion. Cain

thought God should be worshiped in one way, Abel thought he should be

worshiped in another; and they settled the question, after the manner of

religious disputants in all ages, by the stronger knocking the weaker on

the head. In religion there is no certitude on this side of the grave;

if we are ever destined to know the truth on that subject, we must die

to find it out. We may therefore argue fruitlessly until the day of

judgment. The only effectual way of settling a religious problem is to

settle your opponents.

After the murder the Lord paid Cain another visit, and asked him where

Abel was. Cain replied that he was not his brother’s keeper and didn’t

know. He does not appear to have thought God a particularly well

informed person. Then the Lord said that Abel’s blood cried unto him

from the ground. “And now,” he continued, “art thou cursed from the

earth, which hath opened her mouth to receive thy brother’s blood from

thy hand; when thou tillest the ground, it shall not henceforth yield

unto thee her strength; a fugitive and a vagabond shalt thou be on the

earth. And Cain said unto the Lord, my punishment is greater than I

can bear. Behold, thou hast driven me out this day from the face of the

earth; and from thy face shall I be hid, and I shall be a fugitive and

a vagabond in the earth; and it shall come to pass that every one

that findeth me shall slay me. And the Lord said unto him, Therefore

whosoever slayeth Cain, vengeance shall be taken on him sevenfold. And

the Lord set a mark on Cain, lest any finding him should kill him. And

Cain went out from the presence of the Lord, and dwelt in the land of

Nod, on the east of Eden.”

Now let us examine this story. Why was Cain so solicitous about his

safety? Why did he fear that everybody would try to kill him? He had

slain his brother, and his father and mother were the only people in

the world besides himself and perhaps his sisters (? who knew). Kalisch

suggests that he apprehended the future vengeance of mankind when the

world grew more populous. But how, in that case, could a distinctive

mark be any protection? It would publish his identity to all beholders.

Besides, one would suppose that Cain, the first man ever born into the

world, would always be well known without carrying about a brand like a

special wine or a patent edible. And what was the mark? Kalisch thinks

it was only a villainous expression. Others think it was the Mongolian

type impressed upon the features of Cain, who became the founder of that

great division of the human race. A negro preacher started a different

theory. When the Lord called out in a loud voice “Cain, where is thy

brother Abel,” Cain, who was a black man, like Adam, turned pale with

fear, and never regained his original color. All his children were pale

too; and that, said the preacher, “accounts for de white trash you see

ebery war in dese days.”

How did Cain manage to go “out from the presence of the Lord,” who is

everywhere? Satan does the same thing in the Book of Job, and Jonah

tries to do it later on. Jehovah was clearly a local as well as a

visible God, and not the infinite spirit of the universe.

Where was the land of Nod situated? East of Eden, says the Bible. But

nobody knows where Eden was. As we pointed out in “The Creation Story,”

scores of different positions have been assigned to it. The only point

of agreement among the commentators is that it was somewhere. All that

can safely be affirmed, then, is that Nod was east of Somewhere. The

name itself is very appropriate. No doubt the Lord was not quite awake

in that locality, and hence we may explain how Cain managed to go “out

from his presence.”

In this strange land of Nod, Cain “knew his wife.” Who was she? Probably

his own sister, but the Bible does not tell us anything about her. Their

first son was called Enoch. Cain then “builded a city, and called

the name of the city, after the name of his son, Enoch.” But this is

directly opposed to the curse “a fugitive and a vagabond shalt thou be

in the earth.”

Delitzsch notices this, and, as usual, seeks to explain it away. Cain,

he says, “in this way set himself against the divine curse, in order

to feel it inwardly so much the more, as outwardly he seems to have

overcome it.” To which we reply—first, that there is no evidence

that Cain felt the curse “more inwardly” after he built the city; and,

secondly, the idea of a man successfully setting himself against an

omnipotent curse is a trifle too absurd for credence or criticism.

Now Adam and Eve, when Cain fled after the murder of Abel, were left

childless, or at least without a son. But it was necessary that they

should have another, in order that God’s chosen people, the Jews, might

be derived from a purer stock than Cain’s. Accordingly we read that

Adam, in his hundred and thirtieth year, “begat a son in his own

likeness, after his image, and called his name Seth.” Why was not Cain

begotten in the same way? Had he been so, the cradle of the world might

not have been defiled with the blood of fratricide. Seth being “the

image” of Adam, and Adam “the image” of God, Seth and the Almighty were

of course very much alike. He was pious, and from him were descended the

pious patriarchs, including Noah, from whom was descended Abraham the

founder of the Jewish race. God’s chosen people came of a good stock,

although they turned out such a bad lot.

From Seth to Noah there are ten Patriarchs before the Flood. This is

clearly mythological. The Hindus believed in ten great saints, the

offspring of Manu, and in ten different personifications of Vishnu.

The Egyptians had ten mighty heroes, the Chaldeans ten kings before

the Flood, the Assyrians ten kings from Ham to Ninyas, and as many

from Japhet to Aram; and Plato enumerates ten sons of Neptune, as the

rulers of his imaginary Island of Atlantis, submerged by the Deluge.

Cain’s descendants were of course drowned by the Flood, but they did a

great deal more for the world than the descendants of pious Seth, who

seems to have done little else than trust in God. The Cainites laid the

basis of civilisation. One of them Jabal, founded cattle-keeping; his

brother, Jubal, invented musical instruments; and their half-brother

Tubal-cain first practised smithery. Seth’s descendants had nothing

but piety. Even their morals were no better than those of the Cainites;

for at the Flood only eight of them were found worthy of preservations,

and they were a poor lot. Noah got beastly drunk after the waters

subsided, and one of his three sons brought a curse on all his

offspring. What then must we think of the rest?

Tuch excellently explains the mythological significance of the story

of Cain and Abel and Seth. “There lies,” he says, “in this myth the

perfectly correct reminiscence, that in the East ancient nations

lived, under whom in very early times culture and civilisation extended,

but at the same time the assertion, that these could not prejudice the

renown of the Western-Asiatics, since the prerogatives, which their

descent from the first-born would secure to them, were done away through

God’s Curse, which lighted on their ancestor, Cain. Thus the East is

cut off from the following history, and the thread fastened on, which

carries us on in Genesis, right across through the nations, to the only

chosen people of Israel.” The entire history of the world before the

Flood is dismissed in five chapters, and that from the Flood to Abraham

in two more. After that the mighty antique civilisations are never

noticed except so far as they affect the history of the Jews. The ages

of the Patriarchs also dwindle down from nine centuries in the beginning

to almost the normal longevity in the semi-historical period. Could

anything more conclusively prove the mythical character of the

narrative?

One of the Patriarchs descended from Seth, namely Enoch, which

singularly enough is also the name of Cain’s eldest son, never died. We

read that “he was not, for God took him.” It is about time that the

Lord took the whole lot out of his Word, and gave us a little ancient history instead. We want a revised Bible in the fullest sense of

the word. The old book needs to be completely rewritten. How thankful

we should all be if the Lord inspired another “Moses” to rectify the

errors and supplement the deficiencies of the first, and to give us

scientific truth instead of fanciful myths about the early history of

our race! But the Lord never inspires anybody to do a useful piece of

work, and our Darwins will therefore have to go on with their slow and

laborious task of making out a history of mankind from the multitudinous

and scattered traces that still survive the decay of time.

LOT’S WIFE.

BIBLE ROMANCES.—12.

By G. W. FOOTE.

Lot and his family were a queer lot. Their history is one of the

strangest in the whole Bible. They dwelt amongst a people whose

debauchery has become a by-word, and in a city which has given a name to

the vilest of unnatural crimes. Lot, his wife, and their two unmarried

daughters, were the only persons preserved from the terrible fate which

Jehovah, in one of his periodic fits of anger, inflicted upon the famous

Cities of the Plain. They witnessed a signal instance of his ancient

method of dealing with his disobedient children. In the New Testament,

God promises the wicked and the unbelievers everlasting fire after they

are dead; in the Old Testament, he drowns them or burns them up in this

world. Lot and his family saw the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah by

“brimstone and fire from the Lord out of heaven”; and they, four persons

in all, just half the number that survived the Flood a few centuries

before, were the only ones that escaped. God specially spared them. Yet

Lot’s wife was turned into a pillar of salt for looking back as she fled

from the doomed city, and the old man himself soon after got drunk and

committed incest with his daughters. From this crime sprang Moab and

Ammon, the founders of two nations who became for many centuries the

most implacable enemies of God’s chosen people.

Why did the Lord spare these four persons? Why did he not profit by the

lesson of the Flood? The eight persons rescued from drowning in that

great catastrophe were infected with original sin, and the consequence

was that the world peopled from their stock was a great deal worse than

the ante-diluvian world. It would clearly have been better to destroy

all and start absolutely afresh. The eight rescued persons were

apparently just as bad as those who were drowned. So with the four

persons spared at the destruction of Sodom. The people of that city

could hardly have been much worse than Lot and his children. The Lord

appears to have been as stupid in his mercy as he was brutal in his

wrath.

Lot was Abraham’s nephew, and evidently came of a bad stock. The uncle’s

evil career will be sketched in our series of “Bible Heroes.” For

the present we content ourselves with the remark that no good could

reasonably be expected from such a family. Lot’s father was Haran, a son

of Terah, and brother to Abraham.

He “died before his father Terah in the land of his nativity, in Ur of

the Chaldees.” A city was called by his name in the land of Canaan, and

Terah and the family dwelt there after they left Ur, until the patriarch

died and Abraham was called out from his kindred to found a new house.

The “father of the faithful” took his orphaned nephew with him. Lot

accompanied his uncle on the journey to Egypt, where Abraham passed his

wife off as his sister, and showed his natural bent by lying right and

left.

Soon afterwards we learn that Abraham and Lot had grown very rich, the

former “in cattle, in silver, and in gold,” and the latter in “flocks,

and herds, and tents.” Indeed “their substance was so great that they

could not dwell together, and there was strife between the herdmen of

Abram’s cattle and the herd-men of Lot’s cattle.” Whereupon Abraham said

“Don’t let us quarrel within the family, but let us part. You can go

where you like. If you go to the right I’ll go to the left, and if you

go to the left I’ll go to the right” It was necessary to separate Lot

from the fortunes of Abraham, in order that God’s dealings with the

latter might be uninterrupted and his family kept distinct; and so the

Hebrew chronicler very naturally separates them here, in a manner which

reflects great credit on Abraham, and exhibits him in a most amiable

light.

Cunning Lot took full advantage of the offer. He “lifted up his eyes,

and beheld all the plain of Jordan, that it was well watered everywhere,

even as the garden of the Lord.” So they parted, and Lot “pitched his

tent towards Sodom,” whose inhabitants, says our naive story, “were

wicked and sinners before the Lord exceedingly.” Commentators explain

that Lot’s approach to such a detestable sink of iniquity indicated the

native corruption of his heart, or at least a sad lack of horror at the

sins which made the place stink in the nostrils of God.

In the next chapter we find Lot living in Sodom, although we are not

told when he moved there. Amraphel king of Shinar, Arioch king of

Ellasar, Chedorlaorner king of Elam, and Tidal “king of nations,” made

war with Bera king of Sodom, Birsha king of Gomorrah, Shinab king of

Admah, Shemeber king of Zeboiim, and the “king of Bera, which is Zoar.”

A great battle was fought in the vale of Siddim, which is alleged to

be now covered by the Dead Sea. The four kings were victorious over

the five. The kings of Sodom and Gomorrah fled, and the victors spoiled

their cities, taking with them many captives, among whom was “Lot,

Abram’s brother’s son.” How Abraham went out with a handful of men,

defeated the triumphant forces of the allied kings, and rescued his

nephew, is a pretty little story which we reserve for our life of that

patriarch. All the other captives were rescued also, and Lot, returning

with his friends, continued to dwell in Sodom as before.

We hear no more of him for a considerable time. During the interval

Abraham has a child by Hagar. Ishmael, with the rest of the patriarch’s

household, is circumcised. And finally the Lord visits Abraham again to

tell him that, notwithstanding their advanced ages, he and Sarah shall

yet have a son. What happened during the interview properly belongs to

the life of Abraham, but we shall here consider so much of it as relates

to the fortunes of Lot.

The Lord complained that the sin of Sodom and Gomorrah was “very

grievous,” and said that the great cry of it had reached him in heaven.

Being much concerned about their “goings on,” he had resolved to drop

down and see for himself if they were realty as bad as he suspected.

“If not,” said he, “I will know.” In the Old Testament, God, who knows

everything, is always seeking information.

Abraham surmised that the Lord meant to play the devil with the

Sodomites, and he was anxious about Lot who dwelt with them. So he

began a parley. “Now, my Lord,” said Abraham, “you surely don’t mean to

destroy indiscriminately; you, the judge of all the earth, must act on

the square. Suppose there are fifty righteous men in Sodom, won’t you,

just for their sake, spare the place?” Knowing that there were nothing

like fifty righteous men in Sodom, the Lord promptly acceded to

Abraham’s-request; so promptly indeed that Abraham smelt a rat, and

determined to drive a closer bargain. So he asked the Lord to knock off

five. “Very well,” was the reply, “if I find forty-five righteous men

I’ll spare the city.” Abraham was still suspicious. He knew that Jehovah

loved a bit of destruction, and was not easily moved when he had once

made up his mind to indulge himself. So he returned to the charge. “I

beg pardon,” said he, “for troubling you so, but do you mind knocking

off another ten, and making thirty of it?” “Not at all,” answered the

Lord, “we’ll say thirty.” Abraham felt there-was something wrong. This

amiable readiness to oblige thoroughly perplexed him. If the Lord had

haggled over the thirty, he would have known that there was about that

number of righteous men in the place; but in the actual condition of

affairs, he felt that he had considerably overshot the mark. The-game

was very dangerous, but he decided to renew it. “My Lord,” he began,

“I’m a dreadful bore, but I’m not quite satisfied with our contract and

should like to re-open it. I don’t wish to be importunate, but will you

knock off another ten?” “With all my heart,” replied the Lord, “we’ll

say twenty.” Still dissatisfied, Abraham resolved on a final effort. “My

good Lord,” said he, “this is really the last time of asking. I promise

to bother you no more. Will you knock off another ten?” “All right,” was

the reply, “anything to oblige. Well say ten altogether. If there are so

many righteous men in Sodom I’ll spare it. Good afternoon, Abraham,

good afternoon.” And the Lord was off. Abraham ruefully watched the

retreating figure, perfectly assured that the Lord had got the best of

the bargain, and that he himself had been duped, worsted, and befooled.

God did not go to Sodom himself, but sent two angels to inspect it. They

reached its gate in the evening, and found Lot sitting there. In eastern

towns the places before the gate are the appointed localities for

meetings; and in ancient times they were used for still more extensive

purposes. There the judge pronounced his decisions, and even kings held

there occasionally their courts of justice; there buying and selling

went on; the people assembled there to see each other and hear the news;

and almost all public affairs were transacted there, from religious

worship to the smallest details of civil life. It is not surprising,

therefore, that Lot should be sitting in the gate when the two strangers

arrived at the city. Some commentators have even conjectured that he

went out to meet them; but others object that this is contradictory to

the narrative, which does not exhibit Lot as recognising the angels, and

that it implies “too ideal a notion of its virtue.” Some have supposed

that Lot had attained to the dignity of a judge, and that he was sitting

to act in that capacity on this occasion; but later circumstances refute

this supposition; for, in the quarrel which ensued, the people of Sodom

reproached him as “a stranger” who set himself up as a judge of their

conduct.

Lot advanced to the strangers, greeted them with a profound bow,

addressed them as “my lords,” and asked them to stay over night at his

house, where he would wash their feet, give them something to eat, and

find them a bed. They declined his frank hospitality, and said they

meant to pass the night in the streets. Kalisch observes, as though he

knew all about their motives, that “it was their intention to try

his character, and to give him an opportunity of showing whether his

generosity was merely a momentary emotion, or had become a settled

feature in his character.” He also dismisses the idea that they wished

to remain in the streets in order to study “the moral state of the

Sodomites,” as they required no such knowledge, for “they were not only

the angels of God, but God himself acted in them.” But Kalisch should

bear in mind that God told Abraham he was going on purpose to “see

whether they have done altogether according to the cry of it”; and that,

as the angels could not know more than God, it was after all necessary

that they should make inquiries. Lot, however, “pressed upon them

greatly,” and at last they entered his house. He then “made them a feast” which seems to have consisted of nothing but unleavened bread.

Perhaps the angels, who had dined heavily with Abraham on veal, butter,

and milk, were afraid of bad dreams, and only wanted a light supper

before going to roost.

They were not, however, destined to enjoy a good night’s sleep. Before

they “lay down,” the men of Sodom “compassed the house round, both old

and young, all the people from every quarter.” And they called unto

Lot, and said unto him, “Where are the men which came in unto thee this

night? Bring them out unto us, that we may know them.”

We are reluctant to criticise this dirty story, but duty compels us.

God’s Word is full of disgusting narratives, and if we scrupled to

examine them we should have to leave the book alone. We have no love

of filth, and if the Bible were not held up as a divine work we should

never condescend to notice its beastly tales of fornication, adultery,

sodomy, and incest.

Why did all the men of Sodom, both old and young, flock to Lot’s

house? Is it likely that every male in the city, past the age of

puberty, should burn with unnatural lust at one and the same time? Did

they suppose that all of them could abuse the two strangers? The story

is as silly as it is nasty.

For a parallel to Lot’s answer to the demand of his neighbors we must

go to the nineteenth chapter of Judges, where the men of Gibeah clamor

for the Levite as the men of Sodom clamor for the two angels, and where

his host offers them instead his own daughter as well as the Levite’s

concubine. A woman’s honor was a very trivial thing to God’s chosen

people. In itself it counted as next to nothing. The man’s right of

possession gave it all its importance and worth.

Lot went out and shut the door after him. Then he rebuked his neighbors

for desiring to do “so wickedly,” and immediately made them an offer

which he seems to have thought perfectly fair and square. “Behold, now,”

he said, “I have two daughters which have not known man; let me, I pray

you, bring them out unto you, and do ye to them as is good in your eyes:

only unto these men do nothing; for therefore came they under the shadow

of my roof.” The laws of hospitality are sacred, and Lot did well to

maintain them; but he had no right to sacrifice to them a still more

sacred law. Instead of strenuously opposing the committal of one crime,

he proposes another as heinous.

The Sodomites scorned his offer. They had a penchant for a different

pleasure. Ravishing virgins was not in their line. So they reviled Lot

for setting himself up as a judge amongst them, called him “fellow,”

threatened to deal worse with him than with the strangers, and actually

pressed so sore upon him that they “came near to break the door.”

Then the strangers manifested their power. They “put forth their hand,

and pulled Lot into the house to them, and shut too the door. And they

smote the men that were at the door of the house with blindness, both

small and great; so that they wearied themselves to find the door.”

However blind they were surely they might have found the door by feeling

for it. Kalisch makes this episode more reasonable by substituting

“blind confusion” for “blindness.”

The angels continued to act promptly. They informed Lot that they

intended to destroy the place because of its sin, and told him to

gather all his family together and leave at once. Lot spoke to his

“sons-in-law, which married his daughters,” but they appear to have

thought him daft. Early in the morning “the angels hastened Lot” who

still lingered. They laid hold of his hand, his wife’s, and his two

unmarried daughters’, led them outside the city, and said, “Escape now

for thy life; look not behind thee, neither stay thou in all the plain;

escape to the mountains lest thou be consumed.” Lot did not relish this

prospect of a hard climb. He therefore asked the angels to let him flee

unto the city of Zoar, because it was near and “a little one.” That

is what the servant girl said to her mistress when she produced an

illegitimate child, “please ‘m its only a very little one.” She thought

that a small illegitimate baby wasn’t as bad as a big illegitimate baby,

and Lot thought that a little wicked city wasn’t as bad as a big wicked

city.

Lot’s request was granted, and he was told to look sharp. He made good

speed, and reached Zoar when “the sun was risen.”

“Then the Lord rained upon Sodom and upon Gomorrah brimstone and fire

from the Lord out of heaven; and he overthrew those cities, and all the

plain, and all the inhabitants of the cities, and that which grew upon

the ground.” It is a mistake to suppose that brimstone and fire are

characteristic of hell, for the Lord evidently keeps a large stock of

those commodities in heaven. Nor must it be supposed that Lot was spared

because he was righteous. He was spared because the Lord “was merciful

unto him.” His virtues, Kalisch remarks, were not sufficient for his

salvation, which he owed to “the piety of Abraham.” Abraham may have

had “piety” enough to save a Lot, but he had scarcely “virtue” enough to

save a mouse.

Kalisch says that “about the situation of Zoar there remains little

doubt.” He identifies it with “the considerable ruins found in Wady

Kerek, on the eastern side of the Dead Sea.” But he has no such

assurance as to the situation of Sodom. He deprecates De Saulcy’s

assumption, that Sodom is traceable in the heap of stones found near the

Salt Mountain, Udsum; and adds—”We may hope rather than expect, that

authentic ruins of the four destroyed towns will ever be discovered.

Biblical historians and prophets already speak of them as localities

utterly and tracelessly swept away; and the remark of Josephus, that

‘shadows’ of them still existed in his time, is vague and doubtful.”

In the South of Palestine there is an extraordinary lake of mysterious

origin. It is about thirty-nine miles long, and from eight to twelve

miles broad. It is fed by the river Jordan, and drained by the

evaporation of a fierce and terrible sun. Its water is clear and

inodorous, but nauseous like a solution of alum; it causes painful

itching and even ulceration on the lips and if brought near a wound, or

any diseased part, produces a most excruciating sensation. It contains

muriatic and sulphuric acid, and one-fourth of its weight is salt. No

fishes live in it; and according to tradition, which however is not

true, birds that happen to fly over its surface die. Near it is said to

grow the Apple of Sodom, beautiful in appearance, but containing only

ashes. This lake is appropriately called the Dead Sea.

The natives say that at low water they glimpse fragments of buildings

and pillars rising out of the bottom of the lake. But this is only a

fancy. Yet beneath the waters of the Dead Sea are thought to lie the

Cities of the Plain. The northern part of the lake is very deep, the

southern part very shallow. The bottom consists of two separate plains,

one elevated, the other depressed. The latter is by some held to be the

original bottom of the lake, and the former to have been caused by the

destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. But this also is only a fancy. The

bitumen, which is found in such large quantities in and near the lake,

is a symptom and remnant of the volcanic nature of the region. Several

lines of earthquake are traced from it in a north-eastern direction;

and it is conjectured that the three lakes, Merom, Tiberias, and

Asphaltites, together with the river Jordan, are the remaining traces of

the huge gulf once filled by the Dead Sea before the land was lifted by

a geological catastrophe. Volcanic action has caused all the remarkable

phenomena of the district, which were of immemorial antiquity thousands

of years ago; and the story of the Cities of the Plain is only one of

the legends which ancient peoples associated with every striking aspect

of nature.

Let us recur to Lot. His sons, his married daughters, and their

husbands, perished in the deluge of brimstone and fire. He and his two

unmarried daughters fled to Zoar as fast as their legs could carry

them. But his wife was less fortunate. She ran behind Lot, and with the

natural curiosity of her sex she looked back on the doomed city. For

this violation of the angels’ orders she was turned into “a pillar of

salt.” Some commentators try to blink this unpleasant fact by artful

translations; such as “she fell into a salt-brook,” or “she was covered

with a salt crust,” or she was “like a pillar of salt.” Josephus

pretended to have seen this old woman of salt, but others have been less

lucky, although many travellers and pilgrims have searched for it as for

a sacred relic. But let us not despair. Lot’s wife may yet be discovered

and exhibited in the British Museum.

What became of Lot and his daughters? Fearing to dwell in Zoar, they

left it and “dwelt in a cave.” The damsels, who had heard their father

offer them to the promiscuous embrace of a lustful crowd, could not

be expected to be very scrupulous in their conduct. They were alone,

without husbands to make them mothers, and to be childless was a

calamity and a reproach; so they put their heads together and devised

a nasty scheme. Two nights successively they made their father blind

drunk, and got him to commit incest with them. This is very beastly and

very absurd. Lot was old; he was so drunk that he knew nothing of what

happened; yet he got two virgins with child! The porter in “Macbeth”

would have laughed at such a ridiculous story.

These improper females were by no means ashamed of their action; on the

contrary, they boast of their bastards; and the historian does not utter

a word in condemnation of their crime.

Lot was the father of his own grandchildren; his daughters were the

mothers of their own brothers; and his other children were destroyed by

heavenly brimstone and fire. Were they not, as we said at the outset, a

queer lot? But the queerest lot was Lot’s wife. Whatever may be said of

the rest of the family, no one can say that she was not worth her salt,

for the Lord thought she was worth enough to make a pillar. Let us hope

that the old lady will some day be (un)covered, and that her pillar of

salt may yet, to the confusion of sceptics, stand as a veritable pillar

in the house of God, and there defy the attacks of all the infidel

Samsons, world without end. Amen.

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