Where again, is it permitted in the bible to tolerate all religions and to favor none? If there is any one idea more prominent than any other in the bible, it is that the religion which it announces is alone true, and that all the others are pernicious, and to be suppressed by fire and the sword. And religious tolerance is one of the glories of the American Constitution. It is its tyranny that is attacked, it is the forbidding and misleading labels which the priesthood has placed upon it, which we wish to remove. It is the bible as a fetish, or as the best book, or as a weapon of persecution, that we wish to overthrow. But if the bible is not divine, we are asked again, how explain the fact that despite all the attacks of all the ages, it is still loved and cherished by so many? We might as well ask, "If the bible is divine, how is it that in spite of all the things done to bolster it up, there are still so many who do not believe in it?" If long life and popularity prove the bible true, they ought to prove the Chinese and the Hindu bibles true, too. Is a man right because he is old, or is he wrong because he is young? Is truth to be decided by counting beans, as Socrates would ask? If it is majorities or age that counts, then Christianity must have been false when it was new, and counted only a handful of followers. And then, there is the question, "What will you give us in place of the bible?" We can not take anything away from you which you can keep. And if you can not keep the bible, you have to let it go, whether or not you can find another to take its place. But are there not better stories in the world than those of the serpent in Eden; the fall of man; the deluge and the drowning of the human race; the ten plagues of Egypt; the talking ass; the whale that swallowed a man, and of the innumerable wars and massacres? Is it true that the foolish rites and ceremonies, and the unintelligible trinities, incarnations and resurrections in the bible can not be matched? Are we really worrying that, if we give up these tales and mysteries, we will not be able to find anything to replace them? If we desire fairy stories, there is the mythology of the Greeks; if we want miracles, there is science with its real wonders; if we want tales of human adventure and heroism, there is history, ancient and modern; if we want biography, better than the lives of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, is the story of the glorious discoverers and inventors whose genius transmuted human ignorance into knowledge and barbarism into civilization. And for the sufferings of the gods, read the story of the martyrdom of man! What Is the Best Thing That Can Be Said in Favor of the Bible? |LET us put in the mouth of the defenders of the bible the strongest, the most convincing and the most plausible arguments imaginable. Nothing is gained by denying to our adversary a fair chance. Who cares to measure swords with a shadow?