kill every one of them, which he did:
And Elijah said unto them, Take the prophets of Baal; let not one of them escape.... And Elijah brought them down to the brook Kishon, and slew them there. *
* There were 450 of them.
This is the same Elijah who prayed for a drought, and for the space of three years not a drop of rain fell upon the land. If there is an educated man who can admire such a prayer, or the Being who answered it, or who can believe that for three years, men, women, children, plants and animals went thirsty—he is really beyond hope.
Mr. Bryan did not accept our invitation, because, I believe, he felt that he would not have the courage to repeat this story of Elijah before any other kind of an audience than one composed strictly of such Christian or Jewish believers who dare not think straight.
What, for instance, would Bryan have answered if he were asked why Elijah did not leave to the deity the killing of the four hundred and fifty priests of an alien faith? If God could send down fire from heaven to burn up the bullock, he could just as easily send down fire to destroy the whole priesthood of Baal—as he sent down fire to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah. But Elijah executed his critics himself; he did not believe, evidently, that his God could get rid of them without his help. In this he was more infidel than the priests he killed. Murder was Elijah's intent from the first. In the history of religious persecution was there ever a priest who believed enough in God to leave to him the burning, or the quartering of heretics alive? How much nobler was the example of the Roman emperor who refused to give his sanction to religious persecution on the ground that the gods could avenge their own wrongs.*
* Deorum injurias deis curae.
And does Bryan really believe that, once upon a time, the only way the Deity could hold his own was by giving pyrotechnic exhibitions, which ended in wholesale bloodshed? Is that the kind of a test Bryan desires? The fact that there are even more unbelievers to-day than in Elijah's time is a proof that the "fire and blood" test is a failure. It is Reason that questions the bible, Mr. Bryan! And if the bible can not conquer Reason, all the murders, the burnings and the hells of theology, here or hereafter, are worse than a waste. Can'st thou conquer Reason?
But again, Bryan declines a meeting with Rationalists, because he is not sure that the God who answered Elijah by fire will do the same for him. If he were, he would not have hesitated for a moment. He would have had an altar built on the platform and invoked the fire which would have come down as soon as Bryan gave the word—injuring no one except the unbelievers. But his faith was not strong enough for that. He is a good enough Christian to believe that, once upon a time, that very thing happened, but not a good enough Christian to believe that it will happen a second time. The church has only old miracles to boast of.
If I were in Mr. Bryan's place, I admit, I would have declined an invitation to defend the bible before an audience of inquirers, just as he has done. The mistake he made was his challenge "to the opposition," as he expresses it, and not his refusal to appear as counsel for the bible before a critical audience. He did the only consistent thing under the circumstances when he told the representative of the press that he will not consider our invitation. Had he been equally thoughtful in his Orchestra Hall address he would not have even admitted that there are some people who do not believe in the inspired bible—much less have challenged them.
A good Christian must never undertake to defend his bible against criticism; the moment he attempts this he takes the whole question out of God's hands. Who are you that you should undertake to defend the Word of God? And what makes you think that God's Word needs a defense? No better proof could be asked for to show that both Bryan and his hearers had lost the faith of Elijah, and were struggling in the slough of doubt, than his elaborate attempt to defend the bible and his mock challenge to its critics. The difference between Bryan defending an infallible book, and the critics of the same book, is not one of kind, but one of degree. Bryan would not have undertaken to defend the bible did he not think a defense was necessary, and to think that God's book needs to be defended is a criticism against the book. The Nebraska champion of the bible, then, has already entered the first stages of the doubt which, in all logical minds, culminates in a denial of its divine origin. No book which has to be defended can be divine.
The man who defends a divine book and the man who attacks it are both doubters.
Mr. Bryan might reply that, had he been a doubter, he would never have challenged "the opposition," as he did in his tercentenary address. As already stated, it is true that he made the challenge, and repeated it many times during the course of his speech. It is equally true that there is an air of confidence in Mr. Bryan's challenge, which must have greatly impressed his audience. "Let them produce," he demanded, "a better bible than ours, if they can."
Let them collect the best of their school to be found among the graduates of universities—as many as they please and from every land. Let the members of this selected group travel where they will, consult such libraries as they please, and employ every modern means of swift communication. Let them glean in the fields of geology, botany, astronomy, biology and zoology, and then roam at will wherever science has opened a way; let them take advantage of all the progress in art and in literature, in oratory and in history—let them use to the full every instrumentality that is employed in modern civilization; and when they have exhausted every source, let them embody the results of their best intelligence in a book and offer it to the world as a substitute for this bible of ours. Have they the confidence that the prophets of Baal had in their God? Will they try? If not, what excuse will they give? Has man fallen from his high estate, so that we can not rightfully expect as much of him now as nineteen centuries ago? Or does the bible come to us from a source that is higher than man—which?
Any one listening to this flourish of trumpets would be led to think that Mr. Bryan has already met and routed the enemy, and is now celebrating his victory, instead of having yet to hear from the other side. Encouraged by the silence of his audience, the speaker grows bolder:
But our case is even stronger. The opponents of the bible can not take refuge in the plea that man is retrograding. They loudly proclaim that man has grown and that he is growing still. They boast of a world-wide advance and their claim is founded upon fact.
And Mr. Bryan expresses surprise that, with all this progress, the world is unable "to produce a better book to-day than man, unaided, could have produced in any previous age."
Referring once more to "the opposition," he says:
The fact that they have tried, time and time again, only to fail each time more hopelessly, explains why they will not—why they can not—accept the challenge thrown down by the Christian world to produce a book worthy to take the bible's place.
Growing bolder and bolder, in the absence of "the enemy," and feeling confident that should "the enemy" be heard from, he could take refuge in a dignified silence, Mr. Bryan continues, like Don Quixote, to fight invisible foes:
They (the agnostics) have prayed to their God to answer with fire—prayed to inanimate matter, with an earnestness that is pathetic; they have employed in the worship of blind force a faith greater than religion requires, but their Almighty is asleep.
Had Mr. Bryan's "Almighty" been awake there would have been no need of defenders of the bible. If the agnostics without divine aid, or with only a "sleepy" God to help them, as Bryan avers, have done no more than to compel the believers to put up a defense for their Word of God, they have demonstrated what man, unaided by ghostly powers, can do. And it is mere chatter to speak of agnostics as praying "to their God to answer with fire," etc. Agnostics will pray for fire only when they lose faith in Reason.
And is it to be inferred from the
