The New Gospel

If the statistics are right, the Jews constitute but one per cent of the human race.  It suggests a nebulous dim puff of star-dust lost in the blaze of the Milky Way.  Properly the Jew ought hardly to be heard of; but he is heard of, and always been heard of.  He is as prominent on the planet as any other people, and his commercial importance is extravagantly out of proportion to the smallness of his bulk.  His contributions to the world’s list of great names in literature, science, art, music, finance, medicine and abstruse learning are also away out of proportion to the weakness of his numbers.  He has made a marvelous fight on this world, in all the ages; and has done it with his hands tied behind him ... The Egyptian, the Babylonian, the Persian rose, filled the planet with sound and splendor, then faded to dream-stuff and passed away; the Greek and the Roman followed, and made a vast noise, and they are gone; other peoples have sprung up and held their torch high for a time, but it burned out, and they sit in twilight now, or have vanished.  The Jew saw them all, beat them all, and is now what he always was, exhibiting no decadence, no infirmities of age, no weakening of his parts, no slowing of his energies, no dulling of his alert and aggressive mind.  All things are mortal but the Jews; all other forces pass, but he remains.  What is the secret of his immortality?

I do not fear death, in view of the fact that I had been dead for billions and billions of years before I was born, and had not suffered the slightest inconvenience from it. 

Our Bible reveals to us the character of our God with minute and remorseless exactness.  The portrait is substantially that of a man—if one can imagine a man charged and overcharged with evil impulses far beyond the human limit; a personage whom no one, perhaps, would desire to associate with, now that Nero and Caligula are dead.  In the Old Testament His acts expose His vindictive, unjust, ungenerous, pitiless and vengeful nature constantly.  He is always punishing—punishing trifling misdeeds with thousand fold severity; punishing innocent children for the misdeeds of their parents; punishing unoffending populations for the misdeeds of their rulers … It is perhaps the most damnatory biography that exists in print anywhere.

It ain’t those parts of the Bible that I can’t understand that bother me, it is the parts that I do understand.

The pitchy smoke, shot through with red flashes of flame, rolled up in a thick volume and hid her [Joan of Arc] from sight; and from the heart of this darkness her voice rose strong and eloquent in prayer, and when by moments the wind shredded somewhat of the smoke aside, there were veiled glimpses of an upturned face and moving lips.  At last a merciful swift tide of flame burst upward, and none saw the face any more nor that form, and the voice was still.  Yes, she was gone from us: Joan of Arc!  What little words they are, to tell of a rich world made empty and poor!