Title: Humanity's Gain from Unbelief - Reprinted from the "North American Review" of March, 1889
Author: Bradlaugh, Charles, 1833-1891
Language: English
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HUMANITY'S GAIN from UNBELIEF

By Charles Bradlaugh

[Reprinted from the "North American Review" of March, 1889.]

LONDON

FREETHOUGHT PUBLISHING COMPANY,

1889.



HUMANITY'S GAIN FROM UNBELIEF.

As an unbeliever, I ask leave to plead that humanity has been real
gainer from scepticism, and that the gradual and growing rejection of
Christianity--like the rejection of the faiths which preceded it--has in
fact added, and will add, to man's happiness and well being. I maintain
that in physics science is the outcome of scepticism, and that general
progress is impossible without scepticism on matters of religion. I
mean by religion every form of belief which accepts or asserts the
supernatural. I write as a Monist, and use the word "nature" as meaning
all phenomena, every phænomenon, all that is necessary for the happening
of any and every phænomenon. Every religion is constantly changing, and
at any given time is the measure of the civilisation attained by what
Guizot described as the _juste milieu_ of those who profess it. Each
religion is slowly but certainly modified in its dogma and practice by
the gradual development of the peoples amongst whom it is professed.
Each discovery destroys in whole or part some theretofore cherished
belief. No religion is suddenly rejected by any people; it is rather
gradually out-grown. None see a religion die; dead religions are like
dead languages and obsolete customs; the decay is long and--like the
glacier march--is only perceptible to the careful watcher by comparisons
extending over long periods. A superseded religion may often be traced
in the festivals, ceremonies, and dogmas of the religion which has
replaced it. Traces of obsolete religions may often be found in popular
customs, in old wives' stories, and in children's tales.

It is necessary, in order that my plea should be understood, that I
should explain what I mean by Christianity; and in the very attempt at
this explanation there will, I think, be found strong illustration of
the value of unbelief. Christianity in practice may be gathered from
its more ancient forms, represented by the Roman Catholic and the Greek
Churches, or from the various churches which have grown up in the last
few centuries. Each of these churches calls itself Christian. Some
of them deny the right of the others to use the word Christian. Some
Christian churches treat, or have treated, other Christian churches
as heretics or unbelievers. The Roman Catholics and the Protestants in
Great Britain and Ireland have in turn been terribly cruel one to
the other; and the ferocious laws of the seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries, enacted by the English Protestants against English and Irish
Papists, are a disgrace to civilisation. These penal laws, enduring
longest in Ireland, still bear fruit in much of the political mischief
and agrarian crime of to-day. It is only the tolerant indifference of
scepticism that, one after the other, has repealed most of the laws
directed by the Established Christian Church against Papists and
Dissenters, and also against Jews and heretics. Church of England
clergymen have in the past gone to great lengths in denouncing
nonconformity; and even in the present day an effective sample of
such denunciatory bigotry may be found in a sort of orthodox catechism
written by the Rev. F. A. Gace, of Great Barling, Essex, the popularity
of which is vouched by the fact that it has gone through ten editions.
This catechism for little children teaches that "Dissent is a great
sin", and that Dissenters "worship God according to their own evil
and corrupt imaginations, and not according to his revealed will, and
therefore their worship is idolatrous". Church of England Christians
and Dissenting Christians, when fraternising amongst themselves, often
publicly draw the line at Unitarians, and positively deny that these
have any sort of right to call themselves Christians.

In the first half of the seventeenth century Quakers were flogged and
imprisoned in England as blasphemers; and the early Christian settlers
in New England, escaping from the persecution of Old World Christians,
showed scant mercy to the followers of Fox and Penn.

It is customary, in controversy, for those advocating the claims of
Christianity, to include all good done by men in nominally Christian
countries as if such good were the result of Christianity, while they
contend that the evil which exists prevails in spite of Christianity.
I shall try to make out that the ameliorating march of the last few
centuries has been initiated by the heretics of each age, though I quite
concede that the men and women denounced and persecuted as infidels by
the pious of one century, are frequently claimed as saints by the pious
of a later generation.

What then is Christianity? As a system or scheme of doctrine,
Christianity may, I submit, not unfairly be gathered from the Old and
New Testaments. It is true that some Christians to-day desire to escape
from submission to portions, at any rate, of the Old Testament; but this
very tendency seems to me to be part of the result of the beneficial
heresy for which I am pleading. Man's humanity has revolted against Old
Testament barbarism; and therefore he has attempted to disassociate
the Old Testament from Christianity. Unless Old and New Testaments are
accepted as God's revelation to man, Christianity has no higher claim
than any other of the world's many religions, if no such claim can be
made out for it apart from the Bible. And though it is quite true that
some who deem themselves Christians put the Old Testament completely in
the background, this is, I allege, because they are out-growing their
Christianity. Without the doctrine of the atoning sacrifice of Jesus,
Christianity, as a religion, is naught; but unless the story of Adam's
fall is accepted, the redemption from the consequences of that fall
cannot be believed. Both in Great Britain and in the United States the
Old and New Testaments are forced on the people as part of Christianity;
for it is blasphemy at common law to deny the scriptures of the Old and
New Testaments to be of divine authority; and such denial is punishable
with fine and imprisonment, or even worse. The rejection of Christianity
intended throughout this paper, is therefore the rejection of the Old
and New Testaments as being of divine revelation. It is the rejection
alike of the authorised teachings of the Church of Rome and of the
Church of England, as these may be found in the Bible, the creeds, the
encyclicals, the prayer book, the canons and homilies of either or both
of these churches. It is the rejection of the Christianity of Luther, of
Calvin, and of Wesley.

A ground frequently taken by Christian theologians is that the
progress and civilisation of the world are due to Christianity; and
the discussion is complicated by the fact that many eminent servants of
humanity have been nominal Christians, of one or other of the sects. My
allegation will be that the special services rendered to human progress
by these exceptional men, have not been in consequence of their adhesion
to Christianity, but in spite of it; and that the specific points of
advantage to human kind have been in ratio of their direct opposition to
precise Biblical enactments.

A. S. Farrar says (1) that Christianity "asserts authority over
religious belief in virtue of being a supernatural communication
from God, and claims the right to control human thought in virtue of
possessing sacred books, which are at once the record and the instrument
of the communication, written by men endowed with supernatural
inspiration".

     1 Farrar's "Critical History of Freethought".

Unbelievers refuse to submit to the asserted authority, and deny this
claim of control over human thought: they allege that every effort at
freethinking must provoke sturdier thought.

Take one clear gain to humanity consequent on unbelief, i.e. in the
abolition of slavery in some countries, in the abolition of the slave
trade in most civilised countries, and in the tendency to its total
abolition. I am unaware of any religion in the world which in the past
forbade slavery. The professors of Christianity for ages supported it;
the Old Testament repeatedly sanctioned it by special laws; the New
Testament has no repealing declaration. Though we are at the close of
the nineteenth century of the Christian era, it is only during the
past three-quarters of a century that the battle for freedom has been
gradually won. It is scarcely a quarter of a century since the famous
emancipation amendment was carried to the United States Constitution.
And it is impossible for any well-informed Christian to deny that the
abolition movement in North America was most steadily and bitterly
opposed by the religious bodies in the various States. Henry Wilson, in
his "Rise and Fall of the Slave Power in America"; Samuel J. May, in his
"Recollections of the Anti-Slavery Conflict"; and J. Greenleaf Whittier,
in his poems, alike are witnesses that the Bible and pulpit, the Church
and its great influence, were used against abolition and in favor of the
slaveowner. I know that Christians in the present day often declare
that Christianity had a large share in bringing about the abolition
of slavery, and this because men professing Christianity were
abolitionists. I plead that these so-called Christian abolitionists were
men and women whose humanity, recognising freedom for all, was in this
in direct conflict with Christianity. It is not yet fifty years since
the European Christian powers jointly agreed to abolish the slave trade.
What of the effect of Christianity on these powers in the centuries
which had preceded? The heretic Condorcet pleaded powerfully for freedom
whilst Christian France was still slave-holding. For many centuries
Christian Spain and Christian Portugal held slaves. Porto Rico freedom
is not of long date; and Cuban emancipation is even yet newer. It was
a Christian King, Charles 5th, and a Christian friar, who founded in
Spanish America the slave trade between the Old World and the New. For
some 1800 years, almost, Christians kept slaves, bought slaves, sold
slaves, bred slaves, stole slaves. Pious Bristol and godly Liverpool
less than 100 years ago openly grew rich on the traffic. Daring the
ninth century week Christians sold slaves to the Saracens. In the
eleventh century prostitutes were publicly sold as slaves in Rome, and
the profit went to the Church.

It is said that William Wilberforce, the abolitionist, was a Christian.
But at any rate his Christianity was strongly diluted with unbelief.
As an abolitionist he did not believe Leviticus xxv, 44-6; he must
have rejected Exodus xxi, 2-6; he could not have accepted the many
permissions and injunctions by the Bible deity to his chosen people to
capture and hold slaves. In the House of Commons on 18th February, 1796,
Wilberforce reminded that Christian assembly that infidel and anarchic
France had given liberty to the Africans, whilst Christian and monarchic
England was "obstinately continuing a system of cruelty and injustice".

Wilberforce, whilst advocating the abolition of slavery, found the whole
influence of the English Court, and the great weight of the Episcopal
Bench, against him. George III, a most Christian king, regarded
abolition theories with abhorrence, and the Christian House of Lords
was utterly opposed to granting freedom to the slave. When Christian
missionaries some sixty-two years ago preached to Demerara negroes under
the rule of Christian England, they were treated by Christian judges,
holding commission from Christian England, as criminals for so
preaching. A Christian commissioned officer, member of the Established
Church of England, signed the auction notices for the sale of slaves as
late as the year 1824. In the evidence before a Christian court-martial,
a missionary is charged with having tended to make the negroes
dissatisfied with their condition as slaves, and with having promoted
discontent and dissatisfaction amongst the slaves against their
lawful masters. For this the Christian judges sentenced the Demerara
abolitionist missionary to be hanged by the neck till he was dead.
The judges belonged to the Established Church; the missionary was a
Methodist. In this the Church of England Christians in Demerara were
no worse than Christians of other sects: their Roman Catholic Christian
brethren in St. Domingo fiercely attacked the Jesuits as criminals
because they treated negroes as though they were men and women, in
encouraging "two slaves to separate their interest and safety from that
of the gang", whilst orthodox Christians let them couple promiscuously
and breed for the benefit of their owners like any other of their
plantation cattle. In 1823 the _Royal Gazette_ (Christian) of Demerara
said:

"We shall not suffer you to enlighten our slaves, who are by law our
property, till you can demonstrate that when they are made religious and
knowing they will continue to be our slaves."

When William Lloyd Garrison, the pure-minded and most earnest
abolitionist, delivered his first anti-slavery address in Boston,
Massachusetts, the only building he could obtain, in which to speak, was
the infidel hall owned by Abner Kneeland, the "infidel" editor of the
_Boston Investigatory_ who had been sent to gaol for blasphemy. Every
Christian sect had in turn refused Mr. Lloyd Garrison the use of the
buildings they severally controlled. Lloyd Garrison told me himself how
honored deacons of a Christian Church joined in an actual attempt to
hang him.

When abolition was advocated in the United States in 1790, the
representative from South Carolina was able to plead that the Southern
clergy "did not condemn either slavery or the slave trade"; and Mr.
Jackson, the representative from Georgia, pleaded that "from Genesis to
Revelation" the current was favorable to slavery. Elias Hicks, the brave
Abolitionist Quaker, was denounced as an Atheist, and less than twenty
years ago a Hicksite Quaker was expelled from one of the Southern
American Legislatures, because of the reputed irreligion of these
abolitionist "Friends".

When the Fugitive Slave Law was under discussion in North America, large
numbers of clergymen of nearly every denomination were found ready to
defend this infamous law. Samuel James May, the famous abolitionist, was
driven from the pulpit as irreligious, solely because of his attacks
on slaveholding. Northern clergymen tried to induce "silver tongued"
Wendell Philips to abandon his advocacy of abolition. Southern pulpits
rang with praises for the murderous attack on Charles Sumner. The
slayers of Elijah Lovejoy were highly reputed Christian men.

Guizot, notwithstanding that he tries to claim that the Church exerted
its influence to restrain slavery, says ("European Civilisation", vol.
i., p. 110):

"It has often been repeated that the abolition of slavery among modern
people is entirely due to Christians. That, I think, is saying too much.
Slavery existed for a long period in the heart of Christian society,
without its being particularly astonished or irritated. A multitude
of causes, and a great development in other ideas and principles of
civilisation, were necessary for the abolition of this iniquity of all
iniquities."

And my contention is that this "development in other ideas and
principles of civilisation" was long retarded by Governments in which
the Christian Church was dominant. The men who advocated liberty were
imprisoned, racked, and burned, so long as the Church was strong enough
to be merciless.

The Rev. Francis Minton, Hector of Middlewich, in his recent earnest
volume (1) on the struggles of labor, admits that "a few centuries
ago slavery was acknowledged throughout Christendom to have the divine
sanction....

     1 "Capital and Wages", p. 19.

Neither the exact cause, nor the precise time of the decline of the
belief in the righteousness of slavery can be defined. It was doubtless
due to a combination of causes, one probably being as indirect as the
recognition of the greater economy of free labor. With the decline of
the belief the abolition of slavery took place."

The institution of slavery was actually existent in Christian Scotland
in the 17th century, where the white coal workers and salt workers of
East Lothian were chattels, as were their negro brethren in the Southern
States thirty years since; they "went to those who succeeded to the
property of the works, and they could be sold, bartered, or pawned". (1)
"There is", says J. M. Robertson, "no trace that the Protestant clergy
of Scotland ever raised a voice against the slavery which grew up before
their eyes. And it was not until 1799, after republican and irreligious
France had set the example, that it was legally abolished."

     1 "Perversion of Scotland," p. 197. 2 "Capital and Wages ",
     pp. 15, 16.

Take further the gain to humanity consequent on the unbelief, or rather
disbelief, in witchcraft and wizardry. Apart from the brutality by
Christians towards those suspected of witchcraft, the hindrance to
scientific initiative or experiment was incalculably great so long as
belief in magic obtained. The inventions of the past two centuries, and
especially those of the 18th century, might have benefitted mankind much
earlier and much more largely, but for the foolish belief in witchcraft
and the shocking ferocity exhibited against those suspected of
necromancy. After quoting a large number of cases of trial and
punishment for witchcraft from official records in Scotland, J. M.
Robertson says: "The people seem to have passed from cruelty to cruelty
precisely as they became more and more fanatical, more and more devoted
to their Church, till after many generations the slow spread of human
science began to counteract the ravages of superstition, the clergy
resisting reason and humanity to the last".

The Rev. Mr. Minton concedes that it is "the advance of knowledge which
has rendered the idea of Satanic agency through the medium of witchcraft
grotesquely ridiculous". He admits that "for more than 1500 years the
belief in witchcraft was universal in Christendom", and that "the public
mind was saturated with the idea of Satanic agency in the economy of
nature". He adds: "If we ask why the world now rejects what was once so
unquestioningly believed, we can only reply that advancing knowledge has
gradually undermined the belief".

In a letter recently sent to the _Pall Mall Gazette_ against modern
Spiritualism, Professor Huxley declares,

"... that the older form of the same fundamental delusion--the belief in
possession and in witchcraft--gave rise in the fifteenth, sixteenth,
and seventeenth centuries to persecutions by Christians of innocent men,
women, and children, more extensive, more cruel, and more murderous than
any to which the Christians of the first three centuries were subjected
by the authorities of pagan Rome."

And Professor Huxley adds:

"No one deserves much blame for being deceived in these matters. We are
all intellectually handicapped in youth by the incessant repetition of
the stories about possession and witchcraft in both the Old and the New
Testaments. The majority of us are taught nothing which will help us to
observe accurately and to interpret observations with due caution."

The English Statute Book under Elizabeth and under James was disfigured
by enactments against witchcraft passed under pressure from the
Christian churches, which Acts have only been repealed in consequence of
the disbelief in the Christian precept, "thou shaft not suffer a witch
to live". The statute 1 James I, c. 12, condemned to death "all
persons invoking any evil spirits, or consulting, covenanting with,
entertaining, employing, feeding, or rewarding any evil spirit", or
generally practising any "infernal arts". This was not repealed until
the eighteenth century was far advanced. Edison's phonograph would 280
years ago have insured martyrdom for its inventor; the utilisation of
electric force to transmit messages around the world would have been
clearly the practice of an infernal art. At least we may plead that
unbelief has healed the bleeding feet of science, and made the road free
for her upward march.

Is it not also fair to urge the gain to humanity which has been apparent
in the wiser treatment of the insane, consequent on the unbelief in
the Christian doctrine that these unfortunates were examples either of
demoniacal possession or of special visitation of deity? For centuries
under Christianity mental disease was most ignorantly treated. Exorcism,
shackles, and the whip were the penalties rather than the curatives for
mental maladies. From the heretical departure of Pinel at the close
of the last century to the position of Maudsley to-day, every step
illustrates the march of unbelief. Take the gain to humanity in the
unbelief not yet complete, but now largely preponderant, in the dogma
that sickness, pestilence, and famine were manifestations of divine
anger, the results of which could neither be avoided nor prevented.
The Christian Churches have done little or nothing to dispel this
superstition. The official and authorised prayers of the principal
denominations, even to-day, reaffirm it. Modern study of the laws of
health, experiments in sanitary improvements, more careful applications
of medical knowledge, have proved more efficacious in preventing or
diminishing plagues and pestilence than have the intervention of the
priest or the practice of prayer. Those in England who hold the old
faith that prayer will suffice to cure disease are to-day termed
"peculiar people", and are occasionally indicted for manslaughter when
their sick children die, because the parents have trusted to God instead
of appealing to the resources of science.

It is certainly a clear gain to astronomical science that the Church
which tried to compel Galileo to unsay the truth has been overborne by
the growing unbelief of the age, even though our little children are
yet taught that Joshua made the sun and moon stand still, and that for
Hezekiah the sun-dial reversed its record. As Buckle, arguing for the
morality of scepticism, says (1):

     1 "History of Civilisation", vol. i, p. 345.

"As long as men refer the movements of the comets to the immediate
finger of God, and as long as they believe that an eclipse is one of the
modes by which the deity expresses his anger, they will never be guilty
of the blasphemous presumption of attempting to predict such
supernatural appearances. Before they could dare to investigate the
causes of these mysterious phænomena, it is necessary that they should
believe, or at all events that they should suspect, that the phænomena
themselves were capable of being explained by the human mind."

As in astronomy so in geology, the gain of knowledge to humanity has
been almost solely in measure of the rejection of the Christian theory.
A century since it was almost universally held that the world was
created 6,000 years ago, or at any rate, that by the sin of the first
man, Adam, death commenced about that period. Ethnology and Anthropology
have only been possible in so far as, adopting the regretful words of
Sir W. Jones, "intelligent and virtuous persons are inclined to doubt
the authenticity of the accounts delivered by Moses concerning the
primitive world".

Surely it is clear gain to humanity that unbelief has sprung up against
the divine right of kings, that men no longer believe that the monarch
is "God's anointed" or that "the powers that be are ordained of God". In
the struggles for political freedom the weight of the Church was mostly
thrown on the side of the tyrant. The homilies of the Church of England
declare that "even the wicked rulers have their power and authority from
God ", and that "such subjects as are disobedient or rebellious against
their princes disobey God and procure their own damnation". It can
scarcely be necessary to argue to the citizens of the United States of
America that the origin of their liberties was in the rejection of faith
in the divine right of George III.

Will any one, save the most bigoted, contend that it is not certain gain
to humanity to spread unbelief in the terrible doctrine that eternal
torment is the probable fate of the great majority of the human family?
Is it not gain to have diminished the faith that it was the duty of
the wretched and the miserable to be content with the lot in life which
providence had awarded them?

If it stood alone it would be almost sufficient to plead as
justification for heresy the approach towards equality and liberty for
the utterance of all opinions achieved because of growing unbelief.
At one period in Christendom each Government acted as though only one
religious faith could be true, and as though the holding, or at any
rate the making known, any other opinion was a criminal act deserving
punishment. Under the one word "infidel", even as late as Lord Coke,
were classed together all who were not Christians, even though they were
Mahommedans, Brahmins, or Jews. All who did not accept the Christian
faith were sweepingly denounced as infidels and therefore _hors de la
loi_. One hundred and forty-five years since, the Attorney-General,
pleading in our highest court, said (1): "What is the definition of an
infidel? Why, one who does not believe in the Christian religion. Then
a Jew is an infidel." And English history for several centuries prior
to the Commonwealth shows how habitually and most atrociously Christian
kings, Christian courts, and Christian churches, persecuted and harassed
these infidel Jews. There was a time in England when Jews were such
infidels that they were not even allowed to be sworn as witnesses. In
1740 a legacy left for establishing an assembly for the reading of
the Jewish scriptures was held to be void (2) because it was "for the
propagation of the Jewish law in contradiction to the Christian religion
". It is only in very modern times that municipal rights have been
accorded in England to Jews. It is barely thirty years since they have
been allowed to sit in Parliament. In 1851, the late Mr. Newdegate in
debate (3) objected "that they should have sitting in that House an
individual who regarded our Redeemer as an impostor". Lord Chief
Justice Raymond has shown (4) how it was that Christian intolerance was
gradually broken down. "A Jew may sue at this day, but heretofore he
could not; for then they were looked upon as enemies, but now commerce
has taught the world more humanity."

Lord Coke treated the infidel as one who in law had no right of any
kind, with whom no contract need be kept, to whom no debt was payable.
The plea of alien infidel as answer to a claim was actually pleaded in
court as late as 1737. (5) In a solemn judgment, Lord Coke says (6):
"All infidels are in law _perpetui inimici_; for between them, as with
the devils whose subjects they be, and the Christian, there is perpetual
hostility". Twenty years ago the law of England required the writer of
any periodical publication or pamphlet under sixpence in price to give
sureties for £800 against the publication of blasphemy. I was the last
person prosecuted in 1868 for non-compliance with that law, which was
repealed by Mr. Gladstone in 1869. Up till the 23rd December, 1888, an
infidel in Scotland was only allowed to enforce any legal claim in court
on condition that, if challenged, he denied his infidelity. If he lied
and said he was a Christian, he was accepted, despite his lying. If he
told the truth and said he was an unbeliever, then he was practically
an outlaw, incompetent to give evidence for himself or for any other.
Fortunately all this was changed by the Royal assent to the Oaths Act on
24th December. Has not humanity clearly gained a little in this struggle
through unbelief?

     1 Omychund v. Barker, 1 Atkyns 29.

     2  D'Costa. D'Pays, Amb. 228.

     3 Hansard cxvi. 381.

     4 Lord Raymond's reports 282, Wells v. Williams.

     5 Ramkissenseat v. Barker, 1 Atkyns 61.

     6 Coke's reports, Calvin's ease.

For more than a century and a-half the Roman Catholic had in practice
harsher measure dealt out to him by the English Protestant Christian,
than was even during that period the fate of the Jew or the unbeliever.
If the Roman Catholic would not take the oath of abnegation, which to
a sincere Romanist was impossible, he was in effect an outlaw, and the
"jury packing" so much complained of to-day in Ireland is one of the
habit survivals of the old bad time when Roman Catholics were thus by
law excluded from the jury box.

The _Scotsman_ of January 5th, 1889, notes that in 1860 the Rev. Dr.
Robert Lee, of Greyfriars, gave a course of Sunday evening lectures on
Biblical Criticism, in which he showed the absurdity and untenableness
of regarding every word in the Bible as inspired; and it adds:

"We well remember the awful indignation such opinions inspired, and it
is refreshing to contrast them with the calmness with which they are
now received. Not only from the pulpits of the city, but from the press
(misnamed religious) were his doctrines denounced. And one eminent
U.P. minister went the length of publicly praying for him, and for the
students under his care. It speaks volumes for the progress made
since then, when we think in all probability Dr. Charteris, Dr. Lee's
successor in the chair, differs in his teaching from the Confession of
Faith much more widely than Dr. Lee ever did, and yet he is considered
supremely orthodox, whereas the stigma of heresy was attached to the
other all his life."

And this change and gain to humanity is due to the gradual progress of
unbelief, alike inside and outside the Churches. Take from differing
Churches two recent illustrations: The late Principal Dr. Lindsay
Alexander, a strict Calvinist, in his important work on "Biblical
Theology", claims that "all the statements of Scripture are alike to be
deferred to as presenting to us the mind of God ".

Yet the Rev. Dr. of Divinity also says:

"We find in their writings [i.e., in the writings of the sacred authors]
statements which no ingenuity can reconcile with what modern research
has shown to be the scientific truths--i.e., we find in them statements
which modern science proves to be erroneous."

At the last Southwell Diocesan Church of England Conference at Derby,
the Bishop of the Diocese presiding, the Rev. J. G. Richardson said of
the Old Testament that

"it was no longer honest or even safe to deny that this noble
literature, rich in all the elements of moral or spiritual grandeur,
given--so the Church had always taught, and would always teach--under
the inspiration of Almighty God, was sometimes mistaken in its science,
was sometimes inaccurate in its history, and sometimes only relative and
accommodatory in its morality. It assumed theories of the physical
world which science had abandoned and could never resume; it contained
passages of narrative which devout and temperate men pronounced
discredited, both by external and internal evidence; it praised, or
justified, or approved, or condoned, or tolerated, conduct which the
teaching of Christ and the conscience of the Christian alike condemned."

Or, as I should urge, the gain to humanity by unbelief is that "the
teaching of Christ" has been modified, enlarged, widened, and humanised,
and that "the conscience of the Christian" is in quantity and quality
made fitter for human progress by the ever increasing additions of
knowledge of these later and more heretical days.





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