Essays Upon Some Controverted QuestionsHuxley, Thomas Henry
Religion
Essays Upon Some Controverted Questions
Huxley, Thomas Henry
Science
texts which seem to show that Jesus contemplated the evangelisation of the
heathen:
... Did not the Apostles hear our Lord? and what was _their_ impression
from what they heard? Is it not certain that the Apostles did not
gather this truth from His teaching? (Tract 85, p. 63).
He said, "Preach the Gospel to every creature." These words _need_ have
only meant "Bring all men to Christianity through Judaism." Make them
Jews, that they may enjoy Christ's privileges, which are lodged in
Judaism; teach them those rites and ceremonies, circumcision and the
like, which {483} hitherto have been dead ordinances, and now are
living: and so the Apostles seem to have understood them (_ibid._ p.
65).
So far as Nazarenism differentiated itself from contemporary orthodox
Judaism, it seems to have tended towards a revival of the ethical and
religious spirit of the prophetic age, accompanied by the belief in Jesus
as the Messiah, and by various accretions which had grown round Judaism
subsequently to the exile. To these belong the doctrines of the
Resurrection, of the Last Judgment, of Heaven and Hell; of the hierarchy of
good angels; of Satan and the hierarchy of evil spirits. And there is very
strong ground for believing that all these doctrines, at least in the
shapes in which they were held by the post-exilic Jews, were derived from
Persian and Babylonian[138] sources, and are essentially of heathen origin.
How far Jesus positively sanctioned all these indrainings of circumjacent
Paganism into Judaism; how far any one has a right to declare, that the
refusal to accept one or other of these doctrines, as ascertained verities,
comes to the same thing as contradicting Jesus, it appears to me not easy
to say. But it is hardly less difficult to conceive that he could have
distinctly negatived any of them; and, more especially, that demonology
which has been accepted by {484} the Christian Churches in every age and
under all their mutual antagonisms. But, I repeat my conviction that,
whether Jesus sanctioned the demonology of his time and nation or not, it
is doomed. The future of Christianity, as a dogmatic system and apart from
the old Israelitish ethics which it has appropriated and developed, lies in
the answer which mankind will eventually give to the question whether they
are prepared to believe such stories as the Gadarene and the
pneumatological hypotheses which go with it, or not. My belief is they will
decline to do anything of the sort, whenever and wherever their minds have
been disciplined by science. And that discipline must, and will, at once
follow and lead the footsteps of advancing civilisation.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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