Second Mencken Chrestomathy (18 page)

In brief, Dr. Eisler concludes that Jesus was a member of a tribe of wandering craftsmen which still survives in the deserts of Palestine, and is now called the Sleb. Its members practise all the simple crafts that are in request among the nomads—carpentry, blacksmithing, and so on—and are noted for their gentle manners. They take no part whatever in the tribal feuds, accept only food and drink for their labor, and own no property. In times of trouble they are pacifists, preaching non-resistance and retiring to the desert when actual war breaks out. In the first years of the Christian era their influence was undoubtedly thrown against that spirit of revolt which was rising in Palestine, and was destined, in the year 70, to lead to a furious conflict with the Romans, fatal to the Jewish state. Jesus, like John the Baptist before Him, opposed this revolt, and proposed that His followers retire to the desert to escape it. But the little band was drawn, nevertheless, into the conspiracies of the Zealot faction, which was for an immediate attack on the Roman garrison, and Jesus, by virtue of His birth—He was, as a son of David, eligible to the Jewish throne—became willy-nilly a figure in the anti-Roman movement. In the end, cornered, He
apparently abandoned conciliation for the sword, and when an attempt was made to seize the Temple He was a party to it. Its failure cost Him His life. And, as Luke tells us, “a superscription was written over Him in letters of Greek, and Latin, and Hebrew, THIS IS THE KING OF THE JEWS.”

Dr. Eisler’s reconstruction of Josephus’s narrative throws a great deal of light upon some of the darkest places in the Synoptic Gospels. It explains the arming of the Disciples, otherwise so strangely at variance with the Sermon on the Mount. It makes understandable the great discrepancies between other parts of the early preaching, and the melodramatic events of the last few days. It gets rid of the Christian tradition, incredible on so many grounds, that the Romans had little if anything to do with the Crucifixion, but simply turned Jesus over to the Jews. It disposes of difficulties in a dozen other places, some of which have fevered theologians for many years. And incidentally, those parts of the Russian Josephus which deal with the person and personality of Jesus also give rational explanations of certain minor texts that have long been quite unintelligible, for example, the “Physician, heal thyself” of Luke iv, 23.

Altogether, Dr. Eisler has made an extraordinarily interesting book. If even so much as half of it be rejected, then enough remains to affect New Testament criticism very powerfully. The orthodox theologians, of course, will pass it over in silence, but more enlightened readers, whether clerical or lay, will find it well worth reading.

From D
AMN
! A B
OOK OF
C
ALUMNY
, 1918, p. 90

The idea of liberal truth crept into religion relatively late: it is the invention of lawyers, priests and cheese-mongers. The idea of mystery long preceded it, and at the heart of that idea of mystery was an idea of beauty—that is, an idea that this or that view of the celestial and infernal process presented a satisfying picture of form, rhythm and organization. Once this view was adopted as satisfying, its professional interpreters and their dupes sought to reinforce it
by declaring it true. The same flow of reasoning is familiar on lower planes. The average man does not get pleasure out of an idea because he thinks it is true; he thinks it is true because he gets pleasure out of it.

From the same, p. 98

Ritual is to religion what the music of an opera is to the libretto: ostensibly a means of interpretation, but actually a means of concealment. The Calvinists made the mistake of keeping the doctrine of infant damnation in plain words. As enlightenment grew in the world, intelligence and prudery revolted against it, and so it had to be abandoned. Had it been set to music it would have survived—uncomprehended, unsuspected and unchallenged.

From N
OTES ON
D
EMOCRACY
, 1926, pp. 66–68

Do I forget that democratic man, despite his general imbecility, has some shining virtues—specifically, that he is filled with humble piety, a touching fidelity to the faith? I forget nothing: I simply answer, what faith? Is it argued by any rational man that the debased Christianity cherished by the mob in all Christian countries today has any colorable likeness to the body of ideas preached by Christ? If so, then let us have a better teaching of the Bible in the public-schools. The plain fact is that this bogus Christianity has no more relation to the system of Christ than it has to the system of Aristotle. It is the invention of Paul and his attendant rabble-rousers—a body of men exactly comparable to the corps of evangelical pastors of today, which is to say, a body devoid of sense and lamentably indifferent to common honesty. The mob, having heard Christ, turned against Him, and applauded His crucifixion. His theological ideas were too logical and too plausible for it, and
His ethical ideas were enormously too austere. What it yearned for was the old comfortable balderdash under a new and gaudy name, and that is precisely what Paul offered it. He borrowed from all the wandering dervishes and soul-snatchers of Asia Minor, and flavored the stew with remnants of the Greek demonology. The result was a code of doctrines so discordant and so nonsensical that no two men since, examining it at length, have ever agreed upon its precise meaning. But Paul knew his mob: he had been a travelling labor leader. He knew that nonsense was its natural provender—that the unintelligible soothed it like sweet music. He was the
Stammvater
of all the Christian mob-masters of today, terrorizing and enchanting the mob with their insane damnations, passing the diligent plate, busy among the women.

Once the early church emerged from the Roman catacombs and began to yield to that reorganization of society which was forced upon the ancient world by the barbarian invasions, Paul was thrown overboard as Methodists throw Wesley overboard when they acquire the means and leisure for golf, and Peter was put in his place. Peter was a blackguard, but he was at least free from any taint of Little Bethel. The Roman Church, in the aristocratic feudal age, promoted him
post mortem
to the Papacy, and then raised him to the mystical dignity of Rock, a rank obviously quasi-celestial. But Paul remained the prophet of the sewers. He was to emerge centuries later in many incarnations—Luther, Calvin, Wesley, and so on. He remains today the archtheologian of the mob. His turgid and witless metaphysics make Christianity bearable to men who would be repelled by Christ’s simple and magnificent reduction of the duties of man to the duties of a gentleman.

From the
American Mercury
, Sept., 1930, pp. 33–34

There are some shrewd fellows among the Catholic clergy, and there are many more who are charming and amusing, but the
church as a church, like any other ecclesiastical organization, is highly unintelligent. It is forever making thumping errors, both in psychology and in politics, and despite its occasional brilliant successes among sentimental pseudo-intellectuals, as in England, and among the
Chandala,
as in America, it seems likely to go downhill hereafter. Consider its position in the world today. After 1,800 years of uninterrupted propaganda, during 1,500 of which it was virtually unopposed in Christendom, scarcely a dozen really first-rate men subscribe to its ideas, and not a single first-rate nation:

Its poverty in this respect is well demonstrated by its almost comical excess of enthusiasm whenever a stray member of the
intelligentsia
succumbs. Reading the Catholic papers—I allude, of course, to the more intelligent of them, not to the dismal diocesan rags—an uninformed person might easily gather the impression that Hilaire Belloc was the greatest historian who ever lived, and G. K. Chesterton the most profound metaphysician. This gurgling over second-raters, it seems to me, is injudicious. A more moderate rejoicing would be far more convincing. And a more moderate reviling would probably do more damage to the church’s chief current enemies—the birth controllers and the physical scientists. The war upon birth control, as it is commonly carried on by virgin bishops, is not only unfair, but also ridiculous, for it is based upon theological postulates that no educated man could conceivably accept. There is, I believe, a lot to be said against the birth controllers—for example, on the score of their false pretenses: they really know no more about preventing conception than any corner druggist. But their Catholic critics, so far as I know, have never said it. Instead, they ground their case upon a dogmatism that is offensive to every intellectual decency, and try to dispose of their opponents by denouncing them as mere voluptuaries. This last is sheer nonsense. The principal birth controllers are as serious as so many witch-burners, and the theory that they are voluptuaries is easily refuted by looking at one of them, preferably a female.

The war upon modern science is quite as silly. Its sole effect must be to make every enlightened Catholic blush. And in the long run, if he be of a reflective habit, it must make him wonder whether he really belongs in the Roman camp. Every Catholic of that sort, the world being what it is, has a hard enough time already
to hold his faith: it is opposed not only by a multitude of objective evidences but also by the inner spirit of his day and generation. Certainly it does not help him to be told that Belloc is a great historian and that Gibbon was an ass, that Kilmer was a good poet and Hardy a bad one, and that Windle was superior to Einstein. Nor does it help him to be taught solemnly that the hatching of rachitic and syphilitic children is an act of merit,
ad maiorem Dei gloriam.

From the
Smart Set,
Feb., 1909, pp. 154–55.
A review of O
RTHODOXY
, by G. K. Chesterton; New York, 1908

Gilbert Chesterton’s “Orthodoxy,” which pretends to describe the author’s gradual conversion to Christianity, is the best argument for Christianity I have ever heard—and I have gone through, I suppose, fully a hundred. But after you lay it down you suddenly realize that Chesterton has been trying to prove, not only that Christianity is reasonable, but also that supernaturalism is truth. His argument, indeed, crossing the bounds of merely sectarian apologetics, passes on to the fundamental problem of philosophy: what is true? The materialists answer that anything man can prove is true. Chesterton answers that anything man can believe with comfort is true. Going further, he maintains that anything which gives disquiet is,
ipso facto,
false. Here we have pragmatism gone to seed, and here we have, too, a loud “No” to all human progress. As a matter of fact, the world gets ahead by losing its illusions, and not by fostering them. Nothing, perhaps, is more painful than disillusion, but all the same, nothing is more necessary. Because there were men willing to suffer painful doubts hundreds of years ago, we civilized white men of today were born without our ancestors’ harassing belief in witches. Because a horde of impious critics
hang upon the flanks of our dearest beliefs today, our children, 500 years hence, will be free from our present firm faith in political panaceas, unlucky days, dreams, hunches, and the influence of mind over matter. Disillusion is like quinine. Its taste is abominable—but it cures. Not even Chesterton, with all his skill at writing, and with all his general cleverness—and he is the cleverest man, I believe, in the world today, though also one of the most ignorant—can turn that truth into anything else.

From the
Smart Set,
May, 1920, pp. 142–43.
A review of T
HE
P
ATHWAY OF
L
IFE
, by Leo Tolstoy; New York, 1920

Leo Tolstoy’s “The Pathway of Life” is precisely the sort of book that one might imagine the great Russian chautauquan keeping by his bedside, to be resorted to for solace whenever nightmares awakened him and the sorrows of the world gnawed his liver. That is to say, it is a huge compendium of ethical and theological mush, partly of Tolstoy himself and partly by other sages. The ideas running through it are those of the average Methodist evangelist of the Iowa backwoods. The one and only duty of man is to please God; all other duties are illusory and of the devil. So far, so good. But how is one to determine what is pleasing to God? Here the venerable bosh-monger is far from clear, but one may at least guess at his general answer. Whatever is unpleasant to man is pleasant to God. The test is the natural instinct of man. If there arises within one’s dark recesses a hot desire to do this or that, then it is the paramount duty of a Christian to avoid doing this or that. And if, on the contrary, one cherishes an abhorrence of the business, then one must tackle it forthwith, all the time shouting “Hallelujah!” A simple enough religion, surely—simple, satisfying and idiotic. No wonder Tolstoy is the hero of Russian
muzhiks
and American Socialists.

The old rat-trap had a bold spirit: he never tried to evade the necessary implications of his doctrine. For example, consider the
matter of sex. Tolstoy believed and taught that passion was unqualifiedly evil—that it was a sin against the Holy Ghost to cast a friendly eye upon a pretty girl, or even upon one’s lawful wife. His disciples, poll-parroting this imbecile idea, quickly got into difficulties. What it inevitably led to was the advocacy of race suicide upon a colossal scale. No passion, no
Stammhalter.
But Tolstoy himself never bucked at this dilemma. Instead he boldly seized both horns, took a long breath, and emerged with the doctrine that the human race should be, must be, and of a right ought to be exterminated. Here I had better leave him. His notions begin to seduce me.…

From the
Smart Set,
Aug., 1918, pp. 141–42.
A review of T
HE
N
EW
R
EVELATION
, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle; New York, 1918