A Few Words About the Devil, and Other Biographical Sketches and EssaysBradlaugh, Charles
Religion
A Few Words About the Devil, and Other Biographical Sketches and Essays
Bradlaugh, Charles
Free thought
their bodies, so had he. He must have much changed in the grave, for his
disciples did not know him when he stood on the shore (John xxi, 4).
According to the first gospel Jesus appeared to two women after his
resurrection, and afterward met eleven of his disciples by appointment
on a mountain in Galilee. We do not know when the appointment was made;
the only verse on which divines rely as being capable of bearing this
construction is Matt, xxxi, 32, and that voice is silent both as to
place and time--in fact, gives no promise of any meeting whatever.
According to the second gospel, he appeared first to one women, and
when she told the disciples they did not believe it. Yet we are bound
to unhesitatingly accept that which the disciples of Jesus rejected. We
have an advantage which perhaps the disciples lacked. We have several
different stories of the same event, and we can select that which
appears to us the most probable. The disciples might have been so
unfortunate as to have only one account. By the second gospel we learn
that instead of the eleven going to Galilee after Jesus, he came to
them as they sat at meat. In the third gospel, wo are told that he first
appeared to two of his disciples at Emmaus, and they did not know him
until they had been a long time in his company--in fact, according to
the text, it was evening before they recognized him, so we suppose the
light of faith supplied the want of the light of day. Unfortunately
directly they saw him they did not see him, for as soon as they knew him
he vanished out of their sight. He immediately afterward appeared to the
eleven at Jerusalem, and not at Galilee, as stated in the first Gospel.
Jesus asked for some meat, and the disciples gave him a portion of a
broiled fish and of a honeycomb, and he did eat. In these degenerate
days it is hard to believe in a ghost eating fried fish, yet we must try
to do it for our soul's sake, which otherwise may be burned for ever
in the fire that is never quenched. There is certainly nothing more
improbable in God the Son eating broiled fish after he was dead, than
there is in believing God the Father ate dressed calf, tender and good,
prepared for him by Abraham (_vide_ Genesis xviii). A truly pious and
devout mind will not look at the letter which killeth, but for the
spirit which maketh alive. Jesus was afterward taken up into heaven, a
cloud received him, and he was missed. God of course is everywhere,
and heaven is not more above than below, but it is necessary we should
believe that Jesus has ascended into heaven to sit on the right hand
of God, who is infinite and has no right hand. Our question at the
commencement was, "Who was Jesus Christ?" Was he a man?--surely not.
Born without a father, in the lifetime of Herod, according to Luke.
Residing in Egypt, according to Matthew, at a period in which, if Luke
be true, he never could have visited Egypt at all. His whole career
is, not simply a series of improbabilities, not simply a series of
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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