THE ATONEMENT.

Thames Star, Volume XII, Issue 3841, 21 April 1881, Page 2

THE ATONEMENT.

(To the Editor of the Evening Star.) Siß,~Augustin; Origen, and many of the early champions of Christianity believed not in the fabulous, legendary, and symbolical statements of the Bible narratives. Maimonides, one of the most learned and celebrated Jewish Eabins, together with many others, is most explicit in stating the non-reality of the things set forth in the account oi the creation.. *We ought not," he says, "to understand it according to the letter, nor have the same ideas of it with common men ; we ought to conceal its sense and not raise the allegorical veil which envelopes the truth it contains." The book of Genesis, taken according to the letter, gives the most absurd and extravagant ideas of the Divinity. "Whoever shall find out the sense of it ought to restrain himself from' ' divulging it." It is, in fact, an allegory containing a concealed secret, which they say ought not to be disclosed, but which I will hereafter reveal. The miraculous creation in six days of this and many other worlds, many ofthem thousands of times larger than this moving in exact harmony in boundless immensity, this world, however, without revolutionary motion, light without the sun, water without heat, evening .and - morning without light, iv fact, a stationary earth, illumination after four days although commanded to be so on the first, all this in opposition to the demonstrations of astronomy which shows the sun' • to be ninety-six millions of miles from the earth, furnishing other planets with light, heat and life, so that limiting it to the service of the earth, is mere ignorance of its nature and purpose. A world .made without that which sustains all animal and vegetable life—without atmosphere. A. moon to fulfil a purpose which it does not effect, and above all a tired, omuipotent, infinite, almighty creator ! Science further proves that the sun emitted light millions of years ago. Although it travels at the rate of a hundred and : , : ninety-two thousand miles in a second, yet it would require many times six • ; thousand years tor the light to travel that renders some distant stars visible/ The Book of the generation of Adam Bays that God made male and female, and called their names Adam, and that Adam begat a son called Seth, no mention being -, made, as previously, of Eve, Gain; or Abel. From such as these and numerous contradictory passages, is drawn the doctrine of original sin and the atonement. A sin is an evil which has its origin in the agent, and not in the 1 compulsion of circumstances. Was it a sin to disregard two contradictory commands? It is not shown that Adam knew from ' what tree the fruit came. It was pleasant and good to eat, and capable of imparting wisdom. There could be no Bin in eating it, and the Creator's, purpose would have been frustrated had it not been so, ai serpent having been specially endowed with power of speech to perfect the transaction. It could not be the purpose of the Diety to keep them in that ignora i (fe which eating the fruit removed; neithVr could the whole human race be involved in their conduct. The pretended connection .between the so-called fall of man and the sacrifices of the Lord Jesus Christ is a mere invention of'priests to serve fraudu- - lent and sinister purposes. It is a monstrous blasphemy against the Almighty to say that He required the murder of His own Son, who was Himself, and also His own Father Immortal, before His anger could be assuaged against the whole human race for a sin that they never t committed. How can reason conceive that man can be implicated in a transaction he had no power to prevent, or believe that the Merciful Jesus came to die,for this transaction, and never informed His friends or followers of it. Neither Jesus > or the Evangelists ever alluded to Adam, or Eve, or the forbidden fruit, which his death is now said to atone for eating. If, in the great Council of the Deity, it was' foreknown and predestinated that man should fall, and that the coming, incarnation, and sacrifice of Christ should- alone constitute a sufficient atonement, why was it postponed for so many thousand years, and partly intercepted and frustrated by so much general destruction of life/and nearly its total extinction, by a universal flood ? To make the pure and innocent suffer for the polluted and guilty is grossly immoral, and could not satisfy justice, because instead of extenuating crime, it would increase it. Moreover, Christ could not die as God, and to die as man would not be sufficient sacrifice, although that death was voluntary; besides which, Adam and Eve suffered for their offence, and atonement after punishment is surely a superfluity; notwithstanding which the curse still remains—man still eats in sorrow the fruits of the earth, women still bring forth children in pain, and death • • reigns supreme throughout the universe." - ihe miraculous creation of man and the boundless universe in six days is a mefe legend. It never happened. The temptation and the so-called fall is a Persian myth or symbol, originally brought by the Jews from Persia, and can be fouad in their cosmogony. In reality, Adam did not sin, even believing the story authentic. Eating the fruit was at most-a weakness, • and it was brought about by circumstances pre-arranged by the Deity in spite of the will or power of man. Christ most convincingly proves the unreality of the : blasphemous doctrine of original sin when he says, " I come not to call the righteous but the sinners to repentance." How could this distinction consist with a dogma that .makes all men sinners ; but priests and parsons are beneficially interested in perpetuating such superstition, for there would be no necessity for their office / without it. If there was no fall, there is no redemption; for there is no fallen one to be redeemed.—l am, &c,