The Creation of God - Jacob Hartmann (readict TXT) 📗
- Author: Jacob Hartmann
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Thus, the identical sins continued through the remaining centuries until Christ made his entry on this world’s stage. He came opportunely. It was at a time of great agitation. Judea was a Roman province. Pontius Pilate was governor. Corruption, fraud, and crimes of all descriptions were practiced and flourished. The Temple served as a place for barter and business. Sedition, parricide, greed, and seduction were the ruling crimes and passions. Fanatics, heretics, and blasphemers were abundant. There were any number of religious factions, quarreling and fighting among themselves, hating one another heartily, and doing one another as much mischief as in their power lay. The frequent contact with foreign invading nations brought new notions, new customs and usages. New ideas consequently developed—sins and salvation of souls. And humility and meekness were put forth against arrogance of wealth, domineering, and priestly oppression. Communistic and socialistic ideas are always a prolific field for the hungry, poor, and starving. “Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our debts,” etc. (Matt. vi, 11, 12). Christ’s camel and needle story confirms it. The result was he had a following, preached reformation, and accusation and persecution put an end to his life. It had taken root, and a new sect was formed.
Was his life sacrificed for the sins of humanity? Nonsense! This young man’s death has not relieved any one, much more all future generations, of their sins. What? Sacrifice a man to God in place of sheep and cattle? So long as men have senses and passions, so long as we have extremes of poverty and wealth, sin remains.
The prevention of sin has never been the function of the church. The trespasses of the natural laws were not properly understood, and the masses are not educated up to that standard even now. Each man and woman pays the penalty if he or she trespass against her or himself; and if they trespass or sin against another, our civil laws take care of that part.
Has humanity improved since the coming of Christ? Where do you find it? In the history of the Catholic church?
They have two kinds of sin, mortal and venial sin. Mortal sin entails spiritual death. Venial sin does not. Mountains of literature have been written upon that one subject. Hundreds of thousands of men have assumed the task of salvation for nearly two thousand years. What have they accomplished? What have the popes, bishops, and priests done? And what are they doing now? Of what use are they? They have been more of a curse to the world than a benefit. We are too busy to look back at popish history, the power, the ignorance, the superstition, the darkness, and the persecution that overshadowed the world during the popes’ tyrannical and bloodthirsty rule. Greed, the chief characteristic of the churchmen, readily finds means to raise money for their use and benefit. In 1517 they sold indulgences for past and future sins. Every crime was pardoned. Luther and reformation came. Did this change or eradicate the evil? No! God, Christ, Holy Ghost, Virgin Mary, etc., assumed only a milder role, only a slight transformation. The Catholic church has been the greatest curse of any church that ever existed. They started their anathemas (curses) at Nice 325 A.D., and have continued cursing, through the twentieth council at Trent, 1546 A.D., and still continue. Their power has to some extent been modified, but the spirit of intolerance only slumbers. They readily accommodate themselves to circumstances. If they cannot rule the nation, they will seize the schools and train the young, inculcating obedience to the church—that the youth shall be subservient to the priest and yield up their earnings to the pope’s treasure. These are supported by the masses, assisted by the state, to teach stuff like the following sample:
We fly to thy patronage, O holy mother of God! Despise not our petitions, but deliver us from all dangers, O ever glorious and blessed Virgin!
Lord have mercy on us.
Christ have mercy on us.
Lord have mercy on us.
Christ hear us.
Christ graciously hear us.
God the father of heaven have mercy on us.
God the son, redeemer of the world, have mercy on us.
Holy Trinity, one God, have mercy on us.
From the time of Luther up to the present, God, Christ, Holy Ghost, Virgin, etc., have been toned down considerably, until there is indeed very little left except a shade of God. Our creeds now that have dismissed Christ, Holy Ghost, and Virgin, yet retain a hazy something which they still call God. The most erratic of these denominations yell themselves hoarse with shouting Sin and Salvation!
The modern kindergarten of Protestant fashionable church organizations, the society churches, the scholarly preachers, entertain their congregations with a novel sort of oratory and classic music. These represent a God at ease, a gentlemanly and mild sort of a God, with a constant aristocratic smile round his lips, as irresistibly attractive as money can make him.
Strong drastic terms, as purgatory, hell, and brimstone, are seldom heard. That sort of doctrine is usually reserved and dished up in furnace-like fashion to the poor, half-starved, ignorant sinners.
What shall we do to be saved? is a question asked by every religious fanatic.
Saved from what? Ignorance? Superstition? Bigotry? Or stupidity? From idiocy or imbecility? Or, are we to be saved from poverty, hunger, starvation, misery and wretchedness, distress and degradation? Barbarism, savagery, or uncivilization does not enter into consideration of these unfortunate conditions. They exist right in the midst of us, in the highest centers of human civilization. Of what good is the talking of spiritual welfare, salvation, and heaven to a hungry stomach? Of what good is it to grow eloquent over celestial conditions when the poor wretch has sunk into the mire of sloth and apathy, when darkness, misery, and disappointment hang over him like a pall at a funeral? Is this the man that is sinning—when tempted to steal some trifle to satisfy hunger? Self-preservation is the first law throughout organic nature. This poverty-stricken individual occupies the lowest strata of civilized life. He must be civilized—for the law makes him so. The starving must not eat, unless charity extends a helping hand. In the state of want and helplessness, all the inherent failings loom up into prominence, and aid to weaken the little resisting force remaining to withstand the temptation of wrongfully supplying his wants. The higher indulgences, either gustatory or sexual, are not within reach of the hungry and depressed; and salvation contemplated in the pleasures derived from overindulgence or excesses certainly does not apply to them. The class of persons in a position to satisfy both digestive and sexual pleasures we find in quite another catalogue of sinners. For some of these there is no salvation, for others there is what may be termed a reparatory saving power, viz., confession and atonement, for which the spiritual part of the body is not held responsible, but only the flesh.
It is precisely the men who practice these flesh-begotten sins which the church from the time of St. Paul to the present period has been trying to save, with little or no success.
St. Paul is the man who contributed more towards laying the foundation for the entire Christian system than any other man in the Bible. Of course he claims to be an Israelite of the seed of Abraham and of the tribe of Benjamin. Jesus was of the same tribe—and probably the other apostles that figure in the New Testament belonged to the same tribe. That tribe is of mixed blood on the mother side. Whosoever desires to be fully informed upon that subject, let him read Judges, xix, xx, and xxi chapters—a story of licentiousness, barbarism, and butchery the like of which cannot be found in any history. A Levite with his concubine or wife came to Gibeah to lodge overnight. Some Benjamites used and abused the woman till she died. The Levite cut the woman up into twelve parts and sent one part to each tribe. Israel came together in battle with the Benjamites and slaughtered man, woman, and child. Six hundred men escaped to the wilderness, unto the rock of Rimmon. Israel had sworn not to give them their daughters to wife, so they helped them to get wives elsewhere, by means that are very interesting, very savage, and very godly. I simply mention this incident to show that the tribe of Benjamin was of mixed blood. It was not what would be called a natural divine selection, but a forced.
Paul
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