The Lion.

No. 18. VOL. 3.] LONDON, Friday, May 1, 1829.

[PRICE 6d.

CITY OF LONDON AUXILIARY BIBLE SOCIETY MEETING.

WHAT can be more miserable, as a public exhibition, than a Bible Society or other religious meeting? How spiritless, how dull, how cold and stupifying are such proceedings? If they do not find the weak mind disordered, they must leave it so. More criminal degrees of robbery or pocket-picking do not exist, than those which are in practice with the managers and actors in such societies and assemblies. It is altogether a performance, a trick. There is neither sentiment nor honesty in it. Though at present surrounded by every thing but truth, talent, and honesty; these are wanting to make such societies respectable. Once to have seen a Bible Society or other religious meeting is to have seen them all. The same roguery, almost the same rogues, and the same tricky performances attend them all There is neither talent, nor conflict with talent. There is not even a show of honesty; for each speaker speaks as if the Devil of Infidelity were at his elbow, touching him and saying-thou knowest that thou art lying! thou knowest, that men are at hand who can prove thy lies! and thou hast used thy art and power to keep them without or speechless within the circle of thy audience! Thou darest not to meet the bold, honest, and talented men of the day in discussion!

These religious anniversary-meetings are so completely a matter of arranged performance, every speaker and every speaker's subject being allotted and announced, that no opportunity offers to an opponent to rise and make an objection. As an individual, I hate mere loquacity, and cannot speak without a proper stimulant and a proper opportunity. I am every where ready to make opposition to

Printed and Published by R. CARLILE, 62, Fleet Street. No. 18.-Vol. 3. 2 N

the Bible and to the Christian religion; but I feel that the dignity of Infidelity requires a dignified carriage and arrangement, and that it should not pour itself into the common sewers of religious society, where it can gain nothing pleasant, and leave nothing useful by the contact. It is something, if not enough, that we look on with open and challenge-giving front. It is enough that our looks say you know that we know that you are in error; will you hear us? We shall look them down; if we do not speak down such societies.

Another difficulty which we find to the introduction of opposition at a Bible Society meeting is, that it meets to extend the circulation of the Bible, an extension, which we ardently desire, and to which we cannot raise an objection. All we can object is, that false pretensions and unmerited eulogiums, instead of proper criticisms, are sent forth with it. To the practical principle of the Bible Society, we have no objections. We delight in it. We know that the Christian religion was not founded on Bible reading. We know that it has not flourished with Bible reading. We know that Bible reading has made all the Infidels that now exist in Christendom. And hence, we infer, that the Bible is, in reality, an Infidel-producing book. We agree with the Bishop, who predicted, that the Bible Society would destroy all veneration for the Bible. At this City of London Auxiliary Society meeting, there was nothing of the City's substance and respectability present, excepting the officiousness which attended the Lord Mayor as chairman, and its being held in the Egyptian Hall. All the rest was made up of the religious tricksters and a few deluded women, who show themselves here as they show themselves at any other exhibition. The subscription was meagre, and the wretchedness of the speeches, the want of honesty and talent, really talked out the company, as one would like to bow out disagreeable visitors, or to leave unpleasant company. The company really left some of the last speakers speaking to empty benches. I did not subscribe money, but I subscribed something in kind. I subscribed, or put into the plate, some extracts from and references to the Bible, at which modesty, and honesty, and even sagacity must blush. So strong is my conviction, that the Bible is an Infidel-producing book, that, if it stood now, as it stood in the fourteenth century, unknown amidst its worshippers, I should certainly bring it forth and print it. As that is now sufficiently done, I must be content with publishing extracts from, and an index to it. I shall be very religious and very generous, in scattering my halfpenny extracts and index, at the general parent society's meeting on the 6th of May, at the Freemasons' Tavern, in Great Queen-street. And I purpose to make myself a subscriber and to challenge a hearing at that meeting, in answer to any improper representations that may arise, if they do arise, as to the character of the Bible in its history and moral inculcations.

The Rev. Robert Taylor is anxious to show the attendants on Bible Society meetings, how much he profits by attending them. He will, if they will come to hear him, show them, that he is in himself capable of holding a Bible Society meeting, capable of speaking all that each speaker has spoken, and so far capable of imitating the style, voice, and character of each speaker, that an audience should not, if the speakers were concealed, distinguish the one from the other. We think of holding Bible society meetings, as a religious entertainment, throughout the country, and as a set-off to the talent, animation, and utility of Infidel orations and discussions. In his imitations, he hits the Rev. Dr. Steinkopff to the life Neither Mathews nor Yates could excel him, where the spirit moves, and the subject is religion. We were at too great a distance to hear distinctly all that was said on the platform; but I could see that the Lord Mayor did not feel his observations, and from a word or two that I caught, I observed to Mr. Taylor-" The Lord Mayor is playing the hypocrite; he is, you may see by the look of him, saying that which he does not believe nor mean." On reading a report of what he said, in the Morning Herald, I find that it corresponded with my observation. His language was paltry, false, and selfcontradictory. The Morning Herald reports him to have said:"The object of the Bible Society was to instil into the mind religious principles and correct vice; but, unfortunately, notwithstanding their exertions, they lived in times when crime was on the increase."

Here is an admission, that the Bible fails to do that which the Society intended it should do. Here is the naked admission, that crime increases as the Bible spreads. No other reason is shown for the increase of crime, and I require no other, than the bad education which this Bible causes, for the increase of crime. Every family in this island may be said to have its Bible; and yet what is the progress of moral character? Bad decidedly bad! Is not this a proof that the Bible is inefficient as a moral instructor, and is not conducive to the moral welfare of the people, when we find the Lord Mayor contradicting himself by saying, they were better without it, but still more require it? If the number circulated have not corrected vice; how can the Lord Mayor show, that a greater number may do it? He says the state of crime would have been worse, if there had been no Bibles; but where or what is his proof of such an assumption? And what does he find to be the other cause or causes of crime? He challenges denial of his assumption. I deny it. I proclaim that the Bible education is a bad education, that it is lying and dishonest, and that they who teach and circulate the Bible, set an example of falshood, hypocrisy, deceit, cheat, and theft, in addition to the horrid examples pictured or set forth as lessons in that book. The very God of the Bible is the black picture of

a villain, a skulking, tricking, cheating, peevish, cruel, revengeful, and remorseless God, who often finds cause for repentance! but never repents until he has done all the planned mischief. No, no, my Lord, it is not the duty of every one who wishes well to his country, to promote such institutions as this Bible Society, and you looked like a fool, or as a mixture of the fool and the rogue, when you so spoke. As a citizen of London, I am interested in every thing its chief magistrate does in public. I was ashamed of the Lord Mayor presiding at a Bible Society meeting. It was unworthy of his office. In my eyes, it made him contemptible, as we find his words to be contemptible, as they stand reported to the world.

Let me ask his Lordship, what is the Bible. Has the Lord Mayor read the Bible? For particulars, I refer him to a halfpenny printed paper of extracts and references, which I will send to him; but which I cannot here print, nor expose to common sale; I will also sketch the character of each book, and see what the total will make.

Genesis is a book of alleged antiquity and assumes a beginning of the earth and its contents, which geology, always the best book of facts and dates, contradicts and totally disproves. There is not a word of plain and literal truth in what is there said about the deluge. The earth itself gives the lie to it. The remainder is a history of families, which, if true, would be of no more value to the world, than the daily reports of the proceedings of the Lord Mayor's justice-room. The alleged appearance of God as an animal is a gross fiction, too gross even for a saint of the present day to receive. And as allegory, it can only be made a personification of the writer's notion of reasonable power. There is no other plausible key to the Deity of the Bible, than to make it a personification of human passions.

Exodus presents us with an account, which is evidently an invention of the origin of a fictitious nation, and has no better support in history, than the fabulous origin of any other people. We have no traces in authenticated history, that the Jews have been a nation. We cannot even find them a country in which they could have existed as a nation. As a nation, they are unconnected with the history of mankind, in any other than a tributary state with the Grecians and the Romans. Their name has been acquired by their dispersion, by their sectarianism among mankind, and not as a congregated or a powerful people, presenting an example to the world worthy of being followed.

Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy present us with a code of laws made for and by a very barbarous and superstitious people, and though we cannot now account for the precise growth or formation of that code of laws, we can account for the character of the people to which it was suited. Were it efficient, it should now be adopted; but barbarous and superstitious as is the

present state of English society, it is not bad enough to receive that which is called the Mosaic dispensation, whether it came from God or devil.

The book of Joshua gives locality to the Jews as a nation, but it is a locality which clashes with all other history, connected with the same spot of the earth. The histories of Scythia, Persia, Syria, Phenicia, Egypt, Greece, Carthage, and Rome, leave that of the Jews a blank. There was clearly no room for them in that part of the world which they have chosen for their ancient dwelling-place. They were not recognized by nations which have been of undoubted existence, and which have been universally recognized. Since the alleged nation of the Jews concerned not the great nations mentioned, their alleged contemporaries, why should we be concerned about them and their fictions?

The book of Judges is a specimen of the danger of too much invention. It represents the Jews as without laws or form of government, and presents them as a people totally unlike the people which we might have expected from such a government, and such a code of laws as Moses had formed, and such conquests as Joshua had wrought for them. Nor in the subsequent Bible account of the Jews, do we find such a people as the law of Moses would have produced, had they existed. The incongruity of the narratives of the connected books is of itself a proof that they are not founded upon facts and real occurrences, but are inventions.

The book of Ruth is an episode, and might, as a farce, be called "the way to get married," or "the way for a lady to get a husband," which, by the bye, as succeeded in by Ruth, would be taken advantage of, and not prove quite so successful in the present days of fashionable gallantry and female oppression.

The books of Samuel still present the Jews, I use the term in preference to Israelites, as connecting them with what we now see of them, as without government and laws. One argument against this locality of the Jews as a nation before the Babylonish captivity is, that we read of the Philistines, as a neighbouring nation not recognized in history beyond the Jew books, and though now extinct, that extinction is not historically accounted for, either in the Jew books, or elsewhere. After the reign of Solomon, we read no more of the Philistines; nor do we read of their being extinguished by David or Solomon. They are the prominent features of the books of Judges and Samuel; but after the death of Saul, where they are victorious, and might have been expected to overrun Judea, they vanish like disembodied spirits. This point is a proof of ill-contrived fable and historical defect.

The introduction of prophets, wizards, and seers, into the history of the Jews is entirely at variance with the Mosaic law, and could not have succeeded the promulgation and adoption of that