The Bible of Bibles; Or, Twenty-Seven "Divine" Revelations. Kersey Graves
And it is principally by the invention of this expedient, and the establishment of this conviction in the public mind, that the clergy have succeeded in keeping the ridiculous errors of their creeds concealed from age to age. And to continue this policy longer is only to yield to their interests, and prolong those evils still longer which have been perpetuated for centuries by the adoption of this expedient. No other argument or apology is necessary than this as a justification of the limited extent to which the language of ridicule has been employed in this work. It is an egregious error, which is the offspring of an erroneous education and habit, to suppose that ridicule is more out of place on religious subjects than on other subjects. O. S. Fowler has fully established this as a scientific fact on phrenological grounds. We should be quite sorry to wound the feelings of any sensitive mind by any language made use of in this work, and hope this explanation, will prevent such results.
THE PRINCIPAL DESIGN OF THIS WORK.
As a critical examination of the Christian Bible discloses the fact that it contains several thousand moral and scientific errors, and as experience proves the tendency of such errors is to corrupt the moral feelings and check the intellectual growth of all who read and believe "the Hoty Book," we have, since arriving at this conviction, considered it to be our duty not only to expose these errors, but also to discourage the habitual reading of the Bible with any other view than to learn its real character. And more especially do we earnestly advise parents not to place the Bible in the hands of their children till they arrive at an age when a more mature judgment can enable them to discriminate between its truths and its errors. And we likewise entreat all moralists and philanthropists, and all lovers of truth and virtue, as they desire the moral growth and moral reformation of the world, to exert their influence to stop the shipment of the Christian Bible to foreign lands to be circulated among the uncultured and credulous heathen. Here is disclosed one of our principal reasons for writing this work. We wish to make it a voice of remonstrance against placing any of those morally defective books called Bibles in the hands of the ignorant and impressible heathen, or the children of Christian countries, until their minds become sufficiently fortified by age and experience to resist or withstand the demoralizing influence of their bad precepts and bad examples as exposed in this work.
DON'T READ PERNICIOUS BOOKS.
The Quaker Church (of which the author was once a member) have a clause in their discipline forbidding their members to read pernicious books, which are defined by one of the founders of the Church (William Penn) to be "such books and publications as contain language which appears to sanction crime or wrong practices, or teach bad morals." And hundreds of cases cited in this work prove that the Christian Bible may be ranked with works of this character. If the advice of the Hindoo editor had been complied with many years ago,—to "revise all Bibles, and leave out their bad precepts and examples," and change their obscene language,—the Christian Bible might now be a very useful and instructive book. But we are willing to leave it to the conscience of every honest reader, who places truth and morality above Bibles and creeds, to decide, after reading this work, whether the Bible, with all its ennobling precepts, does not contain too strong an admixture of bad morality to make it a safe or suitable book to be relied on as a guide in morals and religion. According to Archbishop Tillotson, Bibles shape the morals and religion of the people in all religious countries,—they are derived from the examples and precepts of these "Holy Books." If this be true, we most solemnly and seriously put the question to every Bible reader, What must be the effect upon the morals and religion of Christian countries of such moral examples as Abraham, Moses, Noah, Isaac, Jacob, David, Solomon, and nearly all the prophets, with their long string of crimes, as shown in this work? Let us not be guilty of the folly of suffering our inherited, stereotyped predilections, and exalted veneration for "the Holy Book," to rule our moral sense, and control our judgment in this matter, but muster the moral courage to look at the thing in its true light. Let us be independent moralists and philanthropists, rather than slaves to Bibles and creeds. "Every book," says a writer, "has a spirit which it breathes into the minds of its readers;" and, if it contains bad morals or bad language, the habitual reading of it will gradually reconcile the mind to those immoral lessons, and finally cause them to be looked upon as God-given truths. Such is the omnipotent force of habit. And we appeal to all Bible readers to testify if this has not been their experience. All Christian professors, when they first commenced reading the Bible, doubtless found many things in it which shocked their moral sense, did violence to their reasoning faculties, and mortified their love of decorum. But a perseverance in reading it, through the force of habit and education, has finally reconciled their minds to those immoral lessons, and blinded the judgment, so that they are not now conscious of their real character and deleterious influence upon the mind.
TWO THOUSAND BIBLE ERRORS.
One of the strongest and most solemn lessons of human experience, and proofs of the blinding effect of a false religious education, may be found in the fact that the two thousand Bible errors brought to notice in this work have been overlooked from age to age by the great mass of Bible readers. So absolutely and deplorably blinded have they been in some cases, as to lead them to conclude, like Dr. Cheever of New York, that "the Bible does not contain the shadow of a shade of error from Genesis to Revelation." Such a perversion and stultification of the reasoning faculties was never excelled in any age or country. St. Augustine furnishes another striking illustration of the total wreck of mind and moral principle which an obstinate determination to accept the Bible with all its errors is capable of effecting. Having found a great many absurdities in the Bible which he could not reconcile with reason and sense, and hence discovering he must either give up his Bible or his reason, he chose the latter alternative, and declared in his "Book of Sermons" (p. 33), "I believe things in the Bible because they are absurd. I believe them because they are impossible" (as glaring an absurdity as ever issued from human lips). Such a desperate expedient to save his Bible and creed from going overboard shows that they had demoralized his mind, and made a complete wreck of his reason. This is the writer who declared he found and preached to a nation of people who had but one eye, and that situated in their foreheads, and another nation who had no heads, but eyes in their breasts. It seems a pity that this single-eyed nation became extinct; for Christ declared, "If thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light." Such an embodiment of light might have done much to enlighten the world. And this St. Augustine is the writer whom Eusebius pronounces "the great moral light of the Christian Church." And St. Irenaeus furnishes another deplorable example of the prostration or perversion of the moral faculties by accepting the Bible as a standard for morals when he justified the crime of incest by pointing to the example of "righteous Lot" and his daughters. The celebrated Albert Barnes was made a victim of great mental suffering for many years by his laborious but ineffectual attempts to reconcile the Bible with the dictates of reason. Hear what he says about the matter. We will present the case in his own language: "These difficulties (of reconciling the teachings of the Bible to reason) are probably felt by every mind that ever reflects on the subject; and they are unexplained, unmitigated, and unremoved. I confess, for one, that I feel them, and feel them more sensibly and powerfully the more I look at them, and the longer I live. I do not understand them, and I make no advance toward understanding them. I do not know that I have a ray of light upon this subject which I had not when the subject first flashed across my soul. I have read what wise and good men have written upon the subject; I have looked at their theories and explanations; I have endeavored to weigh their arguments,—for my whole soul pants for light and relief on these questions: but I get neither; and, in the anguish and distress of my soul, I confess I get no light whatever. I see not one ray to disclose to me the reason why sin came into the world, why the earth is strewn with the dying and the dead, and why man must suffer to all eternity. I have never seen a particle of light thrown