The Churches and Modern Thought: An inquiry into the grounds of unbelief and an appeal for candourPhelips, Vivian
Religion
The Churches and Modern Thought: An inquiry into the grounds of unbelief and an appeal for candour
Phelips, Vivian
Rationalism
Christ's birth was ultimately placed at the winter solstice, the
birthday of the sun-god in the most popular cults; and, while that is
fixed as an anniversary, the date of the Crucifixion is made to vary
from year to year in order to conform to the astronomical principle
on which the Jews, following the sun-worshippers, had fixed their
Passover. This ignorance of the early Church concerning the dates
of the Jesus' birth, death, and "resurrection," is an exceedingly
suspicious circumstance. If the fundamental verities were an objective
fact to the early Christians, how could the dates have been so utterly
forgotten that dates belonging to idolatrous superstitions had to
be adopted? It is perplexing enough that God should have allowed the
memory of His Son's life on earth to be handed down for a considerable
time by tradition only; but that He should have permitted such lapses
of memory and the substitution of the dates of pagan festivals is
to me altogether inconceivable. It could not but raise suspicion
concerning His revelation in future thinking generations. We have a
certain knowledge of the dates of comparatively unimportant events
in the world's history, ages before the Christian era. If these
important dates could be forgotten, what else may not have been
forgotten; what else may not have been substituted in the place of
forgotten incidents? Again, did not the disciples and their converts
celebrate the anniversaries of these great events? And, if so, on
what dates? The question is of more importance than perhaps at first
sight it appears to be. The public will soon be asking the Church
for a satisfactory explanation, and she must be prepared to furnish
it. In the Daily Telegraph, during the Christmas of 1904, the public
were informed that "the most erudite archæologists and professors
of Church history confess that there is not a particle of evidence,
either Biblical or traditional, for the claim of December 25th to
be the birthday of Christ, and that everything goes to prove that
our existing festival of the Nativity was introduced to replace the
heathen festival of the 'sol invictus' in Southern Italy, and of the
Yule or Winter solstice festival among the ancient Teutons." Again, in
the Daily Graphic during the Easter of 1905, the public will have read
that "there is no particular sanctity in the 'Table to Find Easter,'
based as it is upon the calculations of a pagan astronomer who lived
four hundred years before Christ." In France the Christian names of the
four statutory holidays have been abolished by law. Christmas is called
the Festival of the Family, and so on. The time is coming, and is even
now at hand, when the English public will discover ugly facts about
Christianity without having to read books published by freethinking
firms--books which the parson advises us to leave severely alone.
P. 160, lines 3-4.--Why do we hear so little of this great
discovery from the pulpit?
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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