Christianity: Its Evidences, Its Origin, Its Morality, Its HistoryBesant, Annie
Religion
Christianity: Its Evidences, Its Origin, Its Morality, Its History
Besant, Annie
Christianity -- Controversial literature
Judgment of the Dead...385
Logos, ideas of...364
Lord's Supper...379
Mediator...362
Mithras...362
Monasticism...385
Nature and Sun-worship the origin of creeds...355
Osirianism and Christianity...391
Philo, date of...367, 387
Plato's teaching...364
Priesthood...381
Saints, old gods...391
Symbols of male energy...356
" female energy...361
" both in present ceremonies...381
Therapeuts...386
Trinity...359
Union of male and female foundation of religion...355
Unity of God...377
Virgin and child...360
Zoroaster's teaching...362, 376
SECTION III.--ITS MORALITY FALLIBLE.
How much may fairly be included under the title "Christian Morality"?
Some of the more enlightened Christians would confine the term to the
morality of the New Testament, and would exclude the Hebrew code as
being the outcome of a barbarous age. But the Freethinker may fairly
contend that any moral rules taught by the Bible are part of Christian
morality. By the statute 9 and 10 William III, cap. 32, the "Holy
Scriptures of the Old and New Testament" are declared to be "of divine
authority," and there is no exclusion indicated of the Mosaic code; this
statute is binding on all British subjects educated as Christians, and
enacts penalties against those who infringe it. By Article VI. of the
Church of England, Holy Scripture is defined as "those canonical books
of the Old and New Testament, of whose authority was never any doubt in
the Church," and a list is subjoined. In Article VII. we are instructed
that the "Commandments which are called moral" are to be obeyed, but
that the "civil precepts" of the Mosaic code ought not "of necessity to
be received in any commonwealth;" from which we may conclude that the
Church does not feel bound to enforce, as "of necessity," polygamy,
prostitution, murder of heretics, and slavery. She does not venture to
designate such precepts as immoral, but she does not feel bound in
conscience to enforce them, for which small concession we must feel
grateful. Passing from the law of the land to the Bible itself, we find
that the Mosaic code must certainly be recognised as divine. Jesus
himself proclaims: "Think not that I am come to destroy the law and the
prophets, I am not come to destroy but to fulfil," and this is
emphasised by the declaration: "Whosoever, therefore, shall break _one
of these least_ commandments, and shall teach men so, he shall be called
least in the kingdom of heaven." The Broad Church party will be very
little, if this be true. Turning to the Old Testament, we find that some
of the most immoral precepts are spoken by God himself, immediately
after the "Ten Commandments;" surely that which "The Lord said" out of
"the thick darkness where God was," from the top of Sinai "on a smoke,
with the thunderings and lightnings, and the noise of the trumpet," can
scarcely be reverently designated as "the outcome of a barbarous age"?
Yet it is under these circumstances that God taught that a Hebrew
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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