Is The Bible Worth Reading And Other Essays Part 8

The names of most men live on account of the falsehoods told about them.

We should scorn the person who would be mean enough to allow his fellow-being to be punished for his deeds. Yet we have a religion in our midst that is founded on this kind of meanness.

WHERE ARE THEY

Where are the sons of G.o.ds that loved the daughters of men?

Where are the nymphs, the G.o.ddesses of the winds and waters?

Where are the gnomes that lived inside the earth?

Where are the goblins that used to play tricks on mortals?

Where are the fairies that could blight or bless the human heart?

Where are the ghosts that haunted this globe?

Where are the witches that flew in and out of the homes of men?

Where is the devil that once roamed over the earth?

Where are they? Gone with the ignorance that believed in them.

No man was ever yet canonized for minding his own business.

No man was ever yet sorry to find that he had married a good cook.

SOME QUESTIONS FOR CHRISTIANS TO ANSWER

How do ministers know what pleases G.o.d?

What is "inspiration of G.o.d?"

When G.o.d "inspired men of old," what did he do to them?

What has G.o.d revealed to man that has ever helped him get a living?

If we do not need to wors.h.i.+p G.o.d six days in the week why do we need to wors.h.i.+p him on the seventh?

If there were no ministers and no priests, how long would there be any churches?

If G.o.d will answer prayer, what is the necessity of working?

If G.o.d weeps when the poor suffer, what does he make it so cold for?

If rich men cannot enter the kingdom of G.o.d, what business have rich men to be in Christian churches?

If G.o.d is our "father," does he take very good care of his children?

If G.o.d sends what blesses us, who sends what curses us?

If Christianity makes the world better, why is there so much vice and crime?

If "salvation is free," why is anybody lost?

THE IMAGE OF G.o.d

We wonder if anyone knows what is meant by the expression, "the image of G.o.d." It is said in the Bible that G.o.d "created man in his own image."

If man makes anything in his image we know how this thing looks, but when G.o.d creates something in _his_ image we are at a loss to comprehend what is meant unless G.o.d has the likeness of man. In ancient times there is no doubt but what the a.s.sertion that G.o.d "created man in his own image" was accepted literally, that the people looked upon G.o.d as a big man. Later they came to look upon man as a little G.o.d.

But we are dealing with the brain of the twentieth century, with the common sense of a scientific age, when it is no longer believed that G.o.d "created" man at all. To-day the "image of G.o.d" is a puzzle. If G.o.d "created man in his own image," in whose image did he create the elephant, the lion, the bear, the ox, the goat, the snake, the beetle, the bee, the fly, the gnat? These could not all have been created in the divine image, unless the divine image is a mult.i.tudinous likeness.

Is it not about time that a few literary murders were committed, that some one went through our literature and killed off a lot of nonsensical expressions that, if they ever meant anything, are meaningless today? If there was more honesty in the pulpit a great many Bible expressions would go out of fas.h.i.+on. One of the first that needs to die or be killed is this foolish expression, "the image of G.o.d." It may be religious, but it lacks sense. It means nothing in this age. G.o.d is a term that eludes definition.

It is a survival of an age of ignorance.

A man may be a fool and not know it, but he cannot be a fool without others knowing it.

There is a pious regard for certain men and women who have in past ages been, as it were, the world's salvation. We would honor these men wherever piety offers her praise, but we would not, like piety, forbid man the right to excel them. We all know how much easier it is to be saved by another than to save ourselves, but it cannot be denied that there is a certain respect, a feeling of admiration, a thrill of reverence for the man who says: I am a free moral being and scorn to allow another to suffer for my sins.