COMIC BIBLE SKETCHES Reprinted From "The Freethinker" By G. W. Foote Part I. London: Progressive Publishing Company 28 Stonecutter Street, E. C. 1885. INTRODUCTION. English literature has its Comic Histories, its Comic Grammars, itsComic Geographies, and its Comic Law-Books, and Carlyle once prophesiedthat it would some day boast its Comic Bible. Tough as the fine oldSage of Chelsea was, he predicted this monstrosity with something of thehorror a barbarian might feel at the thought of some irreverent fellowdeliberately laughing at the tribal fetish. But what shocked ourlatter-day prophet so greatly in mere anticipation has partially come topass. "La Bible Amusante" has had an extensive sale in France, and theinfectious irreverence has extended itself to England. Notwithstandingthat Mr. G. R. Sims, when he saw the first numbers of that abominablepublication, piously turned up the whites of his eyes, and declared hisopinion that no English Freethinker, however extreme, would think ofreproducing or imitating them, there were found persons so utterlyabandoned as not to scruple at this unparalleled profanity. Severalof the French drawings were copied with more or less fidelity in the_Freethinker_, a scandalous print, as the Christians love to describeit, which has been prosecuted twice for Blasphemy, and whose editor, proprietor and publisher, have been punished respectively with twelve, nine and three months' imprisonment like common felons, all for theglory and honor of God, for the satisfaction of his dear Son, and forthe vindication of the Holy Spirit. In many cases the French originalscould not be reproduced in England, owing to their Gallic flavor. AParisian artist, disporting himself among those highly moral historiesin the Bible which our youths and maidens discover with unerringinstinct, was not a spectacle which one could dare to exhibit beforethe pious and chaste British public; any more than an English poet couldfollow the lead of Evariste Parny in his "Guerre des Dieux" and "LesAmours de la Bible. " But many others were free from this objection, anda selection of them served as a basis for the Freethinker artist to workon. A few were copied pretty closely; some were elaborated and adaptedto our national taste; while others furnished a central suggestion, which was treated in an independent manner. By-and-bye, as the insulardiffidence wore off, and the minds of the Freethinker staff playedfreely on the subject, a new departure was taken; novel ideas wereworked out, and Holy Writ was ransacked for fresh comicalities. Dullardsprophesied a speedy exhaustion of Bible topics, but they did not knowhow inexhaustible it is in absurdities. Properly read, it is the mostcomical book in the world; and one might say of it, as Enobarbus saysof Cleopatra, that Age cannot wither it, nor custom stale; it's infinitevariety. The following Comic Bible Sketches, which will be succeeded in duecourse by others, comprise all those worth preserving that appearedin the Freethinker before its editor, proprietor and publisher wereimprisoned, including the drawings they were prosecuted for by thatpious guinea: pig, Sir Henry Tyler, who had his dirty fingers severelyrapped by Lord Coleridge, after spending several hundred pounds ofsomebody's money in an unsuccessful Blasphemy prosecution, in order topatch up his threadbare reputation, and perhaps also with a faint hopeof cheating the Almighty into reserving him a front-seat ticket for thedress-circle in heaven. The French Comic Bible prints under each illustration a few crisp linesof satiric narrative. This plan has its advantages; it allows, forinstance, the writer's pen to curvet as well as the artist's pencil. Butit is after all less effective than the plan we have adopted. We merelygive each picture a comprehensive and striking title, and print beneathit the Bible text which is illustrated. By this means the satire isgreatly heightened. Not even the sentences of a Voltaire could soilluminate and emphasise the grotesqueness of each topic as thisjuxtaposition of the solemnly absurd Scripture with the gaily absurdillustration. The same spirit has animated us in designing the pictures. Our objecthas been to take the Bible text always as our basis, to includeno feature which is contradicted by it, and to introduce as manycomicalities and anachronisms as possible consistently with this rule. We are therefore able to defy criticism. Bibliolators may vituperate us, persecute us, or imprison us, but they cannot refute us.. We can safelychallenge them to prove that a single incident happened otherwise thanwe have depicted it. We can candidly say to them--"The thing must havehappened in some way, as to which the Divine Word is silent; this is ourview, --What is yours?" And we humbly submit that our speculations areas valid as our neighbors'. Nothing but the insanest bigotry in favor oftheir own conjectures could lead them to quarrel with us for expoundingours. If they can shame us with explicit disproofs from Holy Writ, letthem do so; but what right have they to set up their carnal imaginingsand uninspired theories as the ultimate criteria of truth? Those who object to any employment of satire on "sacred" subjects shouldnot go beyond the Preface of this book. It is not for them, nor are theyfor it; and they are warned in the hall of what they must expect in thevarious chambers. But if they neglect the warning they should take theresponsibility. It will be simply indecent if they turn round afterwardsand assail us with unmerited abuse. For the sake of those who proceed in a spirit of impartial candor andhonest inquiry, we beg to offer a little further explanation. We honestly admit that our purpose is to discredit the Bible asthe infallible word of God. Believing as we do, with Voltaire, thatdespotism can never be abolished without destroying the dogmas on whichit rests, and that the Bible is the grand source and sanction of themall, we are profoundly anxious to expose its pretentions. The educatedclasses already see through them, and the upper classes credit themjust as little, although they dare not openly profess a scepticism whichwould imperil their privileges. But the multitude are still left to themanipulation of priests, credulous victims of the Black Army everywherearrayed against freedom and progress. It is to liberate these fromthraldom that we labor, sacrifice and suffer. Without being indifferentto what the world calls success, we acknowledge the sovereignty ofloftier aims. Compared with the advancement of Freethought everythingelse is to us of trivial moment. It may interest, and perhaps surprise, some to learn that for the famous Christmas Number of the Freethinkerwhich was successfully prosecuted, the editor received absolutelynothing for his work except twelve months' imprisonment, while thethen registered proprietor, who suffered nine months of the same fate, actually shared with him a pecuniary loss of five pounds. We are reallyin deadly earnest, like all the greater soldiers of freedom who precededus; and we employ our smaller resources of satire, as such giants asLucian, Rabelais, Erasmus, Voltaire and Heine used theirs, for endsthat reach far forward into the mighty future, and affect the welfare ofunimagined generations of mankind. Now the masses do not read learned disquisitions; they have no leisureto make themselves adequately acquainted with the history of the Bibledocuments; nor can they study comparative religion, trace out theanalogies between Christianity and older faiths, and realise how allthe elaborate developments of doctrine and ritual in modern creeds havesprung from a few simple beliefs and practices of savage superstition. But they are conversant with one or two cardinal ideas of science, andthey know the principles which underlie our daily life. What is calledcommon sense (the logic of common experience) is their philosophy, andwhoever seeks to move them must appeal to them through that. Strange asit may appear, it is that very common sense which the clergy dread farmore than all the disclosures of learning and all the revelations ofscience; the reason being, that learning and science are the privilegeof a few, while common sense is the possession of all, and affects thevery foundations of spiritual and political tyranny. Ridicule is a most potent form of common-sense logic. What is the_reductio ad absurdum_ but an appeal to admitted truths againstplausible falsehoods? Reducing a thing to an absurdity is simply showingits inconsistency with what is common to both sides in a dispute; and itfrequently means the exposure of a gross contradiction to the principlesof sanity. Laughter, too, as Hobbes pointed out, has always an elementof pride or contempt; being invariably accompanied by a feeling ofsuperiority to its object. Whoever laughs at an absurdity is above it. He looks down on it from a loftier altitude than argument can reach. The man who laughs is safe. He can never more be in danger, unless hesuffers fatty degeneration of the heart or fattier degeneration of thehead. Priestcraft nourishes hope in the scientific laboratory, and feelsonly faint misgivings in academic halls; but it pales and withers at thesmile of scepticism, and hears in a low laugh the note of the trump ofdoom. Ridicule can never injure truth. What it hurts must be false. Laugh atthe multiplication-table as much as you please, and twice two will stillmake four. Pictorial ridicule has the immense advantage of visualising absurdities. Lazy minds, or those accustomed to regard a subject with the reverenceof prejudice, read without realising. But the picture supplies thedeficiency of their imagination, translates words into things, andenables them to see what had else been only a vague sound. Christians read the Bible without realising its wonders, allowingthemselves to be cheated with words. Mr. Herbert Spencer has remarkedthat the image of the Almighty hand launching worlds into space is veryfine until you try to form a mental picture of it, when it is found tobe utterly irrealisable. In the same way, the Creation Story is passableuntil you image the Lord making a clay man and blowing up his nose;or the story of Samson until you picture him slaying file after file ofwell-armed soldiers with the jaw-bone of a costermonger's pony. Let it be observed that these Comic Bible Sketches ridicule nothing butmiracles. Mr. Mathew Arnold has said that the Bible miracles are onlyfairy tales (very poor ones, by the way) and their reign is doomed. Weonly seek to hasten their deposition. Whatever the Bible contains oftruth, goodness and beauty, we prize as well as its blindest devotees. But this valuable deposit of antiquity would be more useful if clearedof the rubbish of superstition. It is not the good, but the evil partsof the Bible, that are supported by its supernaturalism. Why shouldcivilised Englishmen go walking about in Hebrew Old-Clothes? Let us heedCarlyle's stern monition:--"The Jew old-clothes having now grown fairlypestilential, a poisonous incumbrance in the path of of men, burn themup with revolutionary fire. " A word in conclusion. The editor of the "Manchester Examiner, " writingover the well-Known signature of "Verax, " recently published a longarticle, censuring the policy of aggressive Freethought, and declaringthat to laugh at the absurdities of the Bible was to insult the humanrace. We might as well, he said, laugh at our poor ancestors, theancient Britons, for all their mistakes and follies. Well, when theancient Jews are not only dead, but buried like the ancient Britons;when their mistakes and follies are no longer palmed off on unsuspectingchildren, and imposed on grown-up men and women, as divine immortaltruths; we will cease ridiculing them, and devote our attention toworthier objects. What, would "Verax" say if an ancient Briton, dressedin a full suit of war-paint, were to walk through the Manchesterstreets, boasting himself the pink of fashion, and insulting peaceablecitizens who refused to patronise his tailor? Would he not write a racyarticle on the absurd phenomenon, and ask why the police tolerated sucha nuisance? In like manner we publish our Comic Bible Sketches, andsummon the police of thought to remove those ancient Jews who stillinfest our mental thoroughfares. April, 1885. G. W. FOOTE