Year: 1870

J. F. W. WARE.


In the natural order of sequences it seems
inevitable that that which is lowest should be
developed first, and so get earliest mastery
not only in the race but in the individual and
continue master till its master in turn come
So accurately as l can trace itnext to the very
lowest animal instincts which centre upon an
petite-very much mixed with those some


times-comes combativeness, the element of
opposition, contention, the strife for mastery,
and in the pushing out of this inevitably
cruelty The weakest must give way, and he
who is down can have no hope. l cannot
think that the abundant proofs of mans bru-
tality to man, furnish any help to the theory
of fall, but only to the law of gradations
through which Divine will ordans that man
shall pass in lifting himself above the affnities
with the brute and asserting his affiliation
with the Divine. The catalogue is a long and
dark one and in it every conceivable ingenu-
ity of cruelty, but It cannot shake my conf
dence in the great capacity and destiny of a
nature whose birth is among the lowest things
of animal existence, whose attainments lie in
the region of the highest spiritual truths and
life. The inspiration of God is upon the being
| theology has so long DETAINED. 1t is by His
law and by His will that first comes that which
is animal, and what first comes inevitably
rules, till higher power has grown up and
got strong enough toTbe superior. The failure
| in q generation, or 8 tribe, or an individual to
attain these is a failure of development, not
flaw in the nature, or an inability to recover
from its ruin.


The Old Testament is largely record of cru
elites as is in fact, the early history of all peo
ple There are savageres in what are called
| g wars of the Lord" which violate every
commandment of the decalogue, and set at
nought every principle Of humanity, that are
| not surpassed by the atrocities of any barba-
rism. No more serious injury has been done
the Christian religion, nothing has so operated
| as drawback upon it, as the attempt to make
every incident and fact of the Old Testament
divinely commissioned or sanctioned thing.
| Theories of inspiration, exploded by all schol-
ars still hold their place with too many preach
ers, and those people who take all they know
from such preachers, and Christianity, is COM
| PEELED to be the apologist for, or to carry the
| reproach of acts such no human law would
| sanction, and no right idea can defend We
are compelled in this era of enlightenment to
accept the fearful cruelties of the of
| Joshua and David as not merely sanctions but
as direct requirements of the Divine will, and
| not, as they unquestionably were, the carrying
| out of vindictiveness and policy common to
| all nations, over which tradition and after
wards written history have thrown the sane
| tity of Divine command, and which would
| have been exactly carried out toward them by
the nations they conquered had these nations
| been the conquerors. Political necessity die
| tated deeds at which our yet crude idea of
Justice revolts, to which Divine justice could
| never stoop. For ages the character of God
has rested under imputations such as could
only be brought against a human character to
| its utter condemnation An Omnipotent Herod
| or Nero have men regarded Him, delighting in
slaughters and ingenious in torture. The
| Christian church has been made to carry and
| to defend this idea of Him whom Jesus presents
| to us always and only as a Divine Father,
with whom the attribute of tenderness stands
prominent, whose delineation of God is Unde-
| niably the true delineation, because that of
| the only one who could say that he came from
| the Father. There isn't thing that he says
about God that could lead to the remotest
| shadow of an inference that he was one to de-
light in blood, carnage and rapine, and that
He would sanction, much less order, outrages
| such as have made the names of human war
! riors infamous. The character of God ought
| to be relieved of this odium. The church owes
| it to itself, Christian teachers owe it to their
| master to come out with the facts which mod
ern scholarship, acting against the thrall of
antiquated theology has establ;shed-that all
| these Old Testament books are of most uncer-
| tain date, origin and authorship, and that the
| earlier parts are the most confused and intri-
cate tumble and repetition of legend and ira
| dition, that they have been added to from
| time to time, nobody knows when or by whom,
and that they are simply the rude, undigested
| annals of people emerging from the lowest
| degradations of barbarism, growing by various
| experiences into the Conference and solidity of
| q permanent people. Very much of minute
detail about this general statement cannot now,
perhaps never can be satisfactorily settled,
| but modern research is sure of enough to re-
| lieve the character of God of the suspicion of
| ever having inaugurated the horrors which no
| man can read and realize without shudder,
and which no ingenuity of explanation or de-
| fence can show to be otherwise than derogatory
| 30 n;xyio oh of
| slavery began to be agitated, the great argu-
| ment of its defenders in the church and in the
Senate and with the people was the divinity
of its institution. The Old Testament was
their ally. 1t was the word of God, and the
word of God cannot be touched. The position
seemed impregnable. 1t could not be carried
by siege or by assault. But it could be aanked.
The great strategist of our own time not more
ingenious or more successful. Could any thing
so directly conflicting with the innate ideas of
Justice, of right or wrong, of Christ's revealing
| of the Father, be legitimate word of God?
Though the Old Testament did not sanction
such atrocities as were honorable in the sight
of American slave-owners, yet such as it did
sanction were the decree of the rulers, not the
order of God. However it might have been
with other slaverys, American slavery never
had the shadow of the sanction of God. The
presence and arrogance of great moral ques-
ton like that, the discussions and eXcitements
which grew out of it, had very much to do
with loosening the thrall of the Old Testament
over men, who would not hesitate at the di-
lemma offered, and were ready to let old theo-
ries of inspiration go rather than lose idea of
the infinite mercy and justice of God. These
old records may say as they will of God as
| ayenging and vindictive. That, God never
was The ignorance of that day supposed SO
the superstition of that day asserted SO the
tradition declared it,and the later writer wrote
it so: the priest taugh and the people believed,
| but never in all the ages of his rule, under all
the provocatons of all peoples, can it be true
that he whom Jesus spoke Of as watching
sparrow's fall, as welcoming back prodigal,
| whom even David spoke of as "long-suffering
full of compassion and of great mercy" re-
auired the savage cruelties, or instituted the
wars of determination which make so large
part of the staple of the earlier portions Of the
Old Testament history. Every Christian sem
timent revolts at the idea. A Jew may well
have believed it ala Christian never. This
may have been the Jews idea of God it was
not Christians What we are to believe comes
out of the Gospels, not out of the Pentateuch
| or Chronicles.


| l have run away seemingly from my topic,
and yet not so at ALL for if we are to enslave
ourselves blndly to the mere word of scripture,
then may the cruel man turn, as the slave


holder did, and say 81 have Divine law and
commandment on my side" The plea is gravely
plausible. But cruelty is not of God. Cruelty





man carries out his will with those inferior to
him. 1t has a wide range, various method,
an extended sphere, crushing power. Might
est of engines has it been in the subjugation OF
peoples, in the restraining of knowledge, in the
retardng of progress, in the enslavement of
opinion There is nothing good which it has
not set itself against, nothing divine that 1t
has not tried to keep from man. Its works
stand out in bloody relief on every historic
page, and the breath of ages is tainted with
the holocaust it has slain. Intruding every
where, arrayed against everything, the last
resort of civilization as the first of barbarsm,
lending itself as servant to superstition and
! tyranny, TO vengeance and lust, none have been
too high for its assault, none too low to tempt
it's vengeance. Great nations as barbarous
tribes, Christian as heather faiths have been
supported, defended and builded by it, No
mortal tongue could sum the nfamy and the
agony. The annals of the most enlightened as
the most barbarc nations reek with infamous
details, from the amphitheatre, red with the
gore of innocent, even educated and refined
men-"butchered to make Roman holidays" !"
from the human sacrifices which glare at one
from Mexican history from the savagery Of
the Indian of the forest or the islands from
the recesses of the Inquisition, the dungeons of
the Bastie, the cold horrors of Siberia tho fast
nesses of Scotland and Crete; from the sack of
cities; from the scaffold and the cart-tail of
Boston from the save-pen of Baltimore and


Torrey's prison cell; from the undreamed


horrors of insane asylums and poor houses );
from the Internal scenes of the middle passage,
| or of Andersonville; from the brutalities of