The Bible of Bibles; Or, Twenty-Seven "Divine" Revelations. Kersey Graves
the higher enjoyment of spiritual bliss where it becomes en rapport with all that is lovely, inspiring, and beautiful in God's universe; where it can take cognizance of great moral problems and spiritual truths; and where it can look through the long vista of futurity, and behold the events of coming years rolling up toward the threshold of time. This is true inspiration, and the spirit of true prophecy. But it is the work of our own minds, and not of Deity, and is not confined to any age, nation, or religion. It depends upon the culture of the moral and intellectual faculties and the spiritual aspirations of the individual, and not upon his creed or religious belief.
As for a divine revelation, it can not be found in any book of human origin. It could not be incorporated into a book, nor could all the books in the world contain it. It is inscribed all over the face of nature. We read it upon the outstretched earth and upon the shining heavens; we read it upon
"Every bush and every bower,
Every leaf and every flower."
Here, then, we have a Bible with a revelation as broad as the universe. Its lids are the heavens above, and the earth beneath. Its golden-leaf pages are spread out at our feet; its lessons of wisdom, its truths of salvation, and its soul-inspiring beauties, are inscribed upon the soul, and written all over the face of nature. Read and study it, O man! and become "wise onto salvation."
CHAPTER XV.—TWO THOUSAND BIBLE ERRORS. OLD TESTAMENT DEPARTMENT.
A HUNDRED AND TWENTY-THREE ERRORS IN THE STORY OF CREATION.
As the Old Testament possesses no order, no arrangement, and no distinct system of either morals or religion, and no regular connection in its history, we have to treat it in the same unsystematic order in which we find it, and to expose many foolish errors and stories which seem almost beneath the dignity of any respectable writer to notice. But, as they constitute a large portion of the Old Testament, we have got to deal with them or nothing. And, although trifling in themselves, they have done much mischief. Hence we deem it of greater importance to expose their evil influence than to trace them to their heathen origin, as we originally designed doing.
1. The first text in the Bible is evidently an error. "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth" (Gen. 1). No geologist and philosopher at the present day believes in either a creation or a creator. The assumption involves two impossibilities. First, a creation could not take place without something to create from: "Ex nihilo nihil fit,"—"Out of nothing nothing can come." Second, to account for the origin of the earth, sun, moon, and stars, by assuming the existence of a creator, is throwing no light on the subject. We have made no progress towards solving the problem; for we are equally puzzled to account for the origin of the creator himself. It is as easy to assume that matter always existed as to assume that the creator always existed. Hence there would be no creation possible, and none needed. This is now regarded as a settled scientific problem.
2. It is a scientific error to assert that matter had a beginning, as the Bible assumes. Many scientific facts have been developed to establish the conclusion that all beings and objects on earth were eliminated from its elements, and all the planets we can recognize were an outgrowth from some other worlds. The proposition is not only susceptible of much proof (which I have not space here to present), but is very beautiful and satisfactory. It "composes our reason to peace." All we lack of comprehending it is the capacity to grasp eternity and infinity, which finite mortals cannot do.
3. If God "created the heavens" (Gen. i. 1), and heaven is his "dwelling-place" (see 1 Kings viii. 30), then where did he dwell before the heavens were made? Here is a very puzzling question, and involves an absurdity equal to that of the Tonga-Islanders, who teach that the first goose was hatched from an egg, and that the same goose laid the egg. An idea equally ludicrous is involved in the assumption that God created the heavens and the earth about six thousand years ago; so that, previous to that era, there was nothing on which he could stand, sit, or lie, but must have been suspended in mid-air from all eternity.
4. If nothing existed prior to six thousand years ago, then there was nothing for God to do, and nothing for him to do it with. Hence he must have spent an eternity in idleness, a solitary monarch without a kingdom.
5. As we are told God created the light (Gen. i. 3), the conclusion is forced upon us, that, prior to that period, he had spent an eternity in darkness. And it has been discovered that all beings originating in a state of darkness, or living in that condition, were formed without eyes, as is proved by blind fishes being found in dark caves. Hence the thought is suggested, that God, prior to the era of creation (six thousand years ago), was perfectly blind.
6. "God saw the light that it was good" (Gen. i. 4). Hence we must infer that God had just got his eyes open, and that he had never before discovered that light is good. Of course it was good to be delivered from eternal darkness.
7. "And God divided the light from the darkness" (Gen. i. 4). Hence, previous to that period, they must have been mixed together. Philosophy teaches that light and darkness never can be separated, any more than heat and cold, as one is only a different degree of the other.
8. "And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night" (Gen. i. 5). And to whom did he call them? as no living being was in existence until several days afterwards.
Hence there was no need of calling them any thing, and, as we are told Adam named every thing, he could as easily have found names for these as for other things.
9. The Bible teaches us that day and night were created three days before the sun. Every school-boy now knows that it is the revolution of the earth upon its axis that causes day and night; and, but for the existence of the sun, there could be no day and night. If Moses' God was so ignorant, he had better never have wakened out of his eternity of darkness.
10. The Bible teaches that the earth came into existence three days before the sun; but science teaches us that the earth is a child or offshoot of the sun. Hence it could be equally true to say a son was born three days before his father.
11. "And the earth was without form, and void" (Gen. i. 2); but philosophy teaches that nothing can exist without form, or when void. The declaration brings to mind the Scotchman's definition of "nothing,"—"a footless stocking without a leg." We have an idea of a thing which does not exist.
12. "And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters" (Gen. i. 2). Here we are taught that the original state of the earth was that of water. But geology teaches its original constituents was fire or fusion; that water did not exist, and could not exist, in it, or on it, for millions of ages. Professor Agassiz says our earth was once in a state of igneous fusion, without water, without rain, and even without an atmosphere ("Geological Sketches," i. 2). And even the pious, God-fearing Hugh Miller says that "the solid earth was at one time, from center to circumference, a mass of molten matter" ("Lectures on Geology," 256). Here we have geology against theology.
13. God spent a day making a firmament, by which he "divided the waters from the waters." If it had then stated that he spent a day in making moonshine, or one day in making breath for Adam, it would have been as sensible; for the firmament is as truly a part of the earth (being eliminated from it) as our breath is a part of our bodies.
14. "Divided the waters from the waters." Here is disclosed a belief which prevailed in various Oriental and heathen nations, that the earth exists between two large lakes, or sheets of water; and that the firmament is a solid floor, which holds the water up, and prevents it from falling, and inundating the earth; and, being supplied with doors and windows, when God wants it to rain he opens the windows (the Bible says "the windows of heaven were opened," see Gen. vii. 11). He pours it down by opening the windows, and stops it by shutting them up. "The windows of heaven were