The Bible of Bibles; Or, Twenty-Seven "Divine" Revelations. Kersey Graves

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      The Christian Bible, as now accepted by Protestants (for it must be borne in mind that it has been altered and amended on various occasions, thus altering the canonical Word of God), is composed of thirty-nine books in the Old-Testament department, and twenty-seven in the New; the whole constituting a multifarious collection of old oracles, obsolete dogmas, Oriental legends, ancient myths, religious reveries, beautiful precepts, poetry, heart-touching pathos, wild fancies, preceptive admonitions, martial exploits, domestic regulations, broken, disjointed narratives, ritual rules, and spiritual ideas; including also cosmogony, history, theocracy, theology, annals, romance, prophecy, rhapsody, psalmody, mythology, allegory, dreams, tradition, legislation, ethics, politics, and religion, all jumbled together without arrangement, division, classification, or order; committed to writing in various ages and nations and countries, and by various writers, extending over a period of several thousand years, including nearly every form of composition known to human ingenuity,—gay, grave, tragical, logical, philosophical, religious, and romantic,—emanating from Gods, angels, men, and devils; recorded, some of it in mountains, some of it in caves, some of it on the banks of rivers, some of it in forests, some of it in deserts, and some of it under the shadow of the Pyramids. It commenced on Mount Horeb, and ended in the isle of Patmos.

      From such circumstances we are not surprised to learn that its chronology is unreliable, chimerical, and incorrect; its history contradictory and incredible; its philosophy fallacious; its logic unsound; its cosmogony foolish and absurd; its astronomy fragmentary and childish; its religion pagan-derived; its morals defective, sometimes selfish, often extravagant, and in some cases pernicious. Its government, both temporal and spiritual, is, to some extent, both barbarous and tyrannical; while its theocracy is mere brute force. It presents us with narratives without authorities, facts and figures without dates, and records without names. We find no order in its arrangement, no system in its subjects or the manner of presenting them, and no connection in its paragraphs, and often no agreement in its statements, and no sense in its logic. It seems to teach nearly every thing upon nearly every question of morals which it touches. It apparently both sanctions and condemns nearly every species of crime to which it refers, and pours fulsome laudations upon the heads of some of the most bloody-minded and licentious men,—such as David, Solomon, &c.,—and holds them up as examples of true practical morality. It is often dark, ambiguous, and mysterious, as well as contradictory, not only in its lessons of morality, but in its account of the simplest occurrences, thus rendering it comparatively worthless as a moral guide; inasmuch as it is much easier to find out what is right and what is not without going to the Bible, than it is to find out what the Bible teaches upon the subject, or what it intends to teach in any given case. With respect to war, slavery, polygamy, and the use of intoxicating liquors, for example, it is much easier to determine whether they are right or wrong by the moral fitness of things than whether they are scriptural or anti-scriptural; while it is silent upon many crimes which now infest society. If we are compelled to determine the character of some actions without going to the Bible, why not that of all other moral actions and duties? Edmund Burke says of the Bible, "It is necessary to sort out what is intended as example, and what only as narrative; what is to be understood literally, and what figuratively, where one precept is to be controlled and modified by another; what is temporary, and what of perpetual obligation; what is appropriate to one state or set of men, and what is the general duty of men in all ages." Now, who can not see that all this must require a quality of mind capable of determining or learning moral principles and moral duties without recurrence to the Bible? And it must require a vast amount of time to accomplish this task, all of which is lost, inasmuch as it is consuming time in making the Bible conform to what you have already learned of right outside its pages,—time that might be much better employed. Such are the moral aspects of the Bible. But it also has its beauties, which we need not occupy much space in depicting, as we have fifty thousand clergymen in this country who attend faithfully to that matter. Suffice it to say, that portions of it are characterized by a high-toned spirituality, other portions by a deep, heart-stirring pathos. And then we have manifested in other parts the most devout piety, while the books of the prophets often breathe forth a spirit of the most elevating poetry. And there is scarcely a book, or even a chapter, in the whole Bible, that does not evince a spirit of religious devotion, and an effort for the right, though often misdirected. Taken as a whole, the Bible may be regarded as an exposition of the condition of science, morals, religion, government, and domestic polity of the era in which it was written, and suited to the temporal and spiritual wants of the people of that age, for whom it was written, but not for this age. When regarded in this light, and as simply a human production of the best minds of the age and times in which it was written, many portions of it can be read with interest and instruction. But when read, as it has been for centuries, as a perfect, divine composition, designed for all time and as a finality in faith and practice and moral progress, it becomes a stumbling-block in the path of progress, an embargo upon free thought, a fetter upon the soul, a fog of bewilderment to the mind, and a drag-chain to the moral and intellectual reformation of the world.