|
Home
Store
The Internet Library. Alternative encyclopedia, dictionary, and
wikipedia distillation.
RIVAL CLAIMS OF THE SAVIORS.
IT is claimed by the disciples of Jesus Christ, that he was of supernatural
and divine origin; that he had a human being for a mother, and a God for his
father; that, although he was woman-conceived, he was Deity-begotten, and
molded in the human form, but comprehending in essence a full measure of the
infinite Godhead; thus making him half human and half divine in his
sublunary origin. It is claimed that he was full and perfect God, and
perfect man; and while he was God, he was also the son of God, and as such
was sent down by his father to save a fallen and guilty world; and that thus
his mission pertained to the whole human race; and his inspired seers are
made to declare that ultimately every nation, tongue, kindred, and people
under heaven will acknowledge allegiance to his government, and concede his
right to reign and rule the world; that "every knee must bow, and every
tongue confess that Jesus is Lord, to the glory of God the Father."
p. 28
But we do not find that this prophecy has ever been or is likely to be
fulfilled. We do not observe that this claim to the infinite deityship of
Jesus Christ has been or is likely to be universally conceded. On the
contrary, it is found. that by a portion, and a large portion of the people
of even those nations now called Christian, this claim has been steadily and
unswervingly controverted, through the whole line of history, stretching
through the nearly two thousand years which have elapsed since his advent to
earth.
Even some of those who are represented to have been personally acquainted
with him—aye! some of his own brethren in the flesh, children in the same
household, children of the same mother—had the temerity to question the
tenableness of his claim to a divine emanation. And when we extend our
researches to other countries, we find this claim, so far from being
conceded, is denied and contested by whole nations upon other grounds. It is
met and confronted by rival claims.
Upon this ground hundreds of millions of the established believers in divine
revelation—hundreds of millions of believers in the divine character and
origin of religion—reject the pretentious set up for Jesus Christ. They
admit both a God and a Savior, but do hot accept Jesus of Nazareth as being
either. They admit a Messiah, but not the Messiah; these nations contend
that the title is misplaced which makes "the man Christ Jesus" the Savior of
the world. They claim to have been honored with the birth of the true Savior
among them and defend this claim upon the ground of priority of date. They
aver that the advent of their Messiahs were long prior to that of the
Christians’, and that this circumstance adjudicates for them a superiority
of claim as to having had the true Messiah born upon their soil.
It is argued that, as the story of the incarnation of the Christians’ Savior
is of more recent date than that of these
p. 29
oriental and ancient religions (as is conceded by Christians themselves),
the origin of the former is thus indicated and foreshadowed as being an
outgrowth from, if not a plagiarism upon the latter—a borrowed copy, of
which the pagan stories furnish the original. Here, then, we observe a
rivalship of claims, as to which of the remarkable personages who have
figured in the world as Saviors, Messiahs, and Sons of God, in different
ages and different countries, can be considered the true Savior and "sent of
God;" or whether all should be, or the claims of all rejected.
For researches into oriental history reveal the remarkable fact that stories
of incarnate Gods answering to and resembling the miraculous character of
Jesus Christ have been prevalent in most if not all the principal religions
heathen nations of antiquity; and the accounts and narrations of some of
these deific incarnations bear such a striking resemblance to that of the
Christian Savior—not only in their general features, but in some cases in
the most minute details, from the legend of the immaculate conception to
that of the crucifixion, and subsequent ascension into heaven—that one might
almost be mistaken for the other.
More than twenty claims of this kind—claims of beings invested with divine
honor (deified)—have come forward and presented themselves at the bar of the
world with their credentials, to contest the verdict of Christendom, in
having proclaimed Jesus Christ, "the only son, and sent of God:" twenty
Messiahs, Saviors, and Sons of God, according to history or tradition, have,
in past times, descended from heaven, and taken upon themselves the form of
men, clothing themselves with human flesh, and furnishing incontestable
evidence of a divine origin, by various miracles, marvelous works, and
superlative virtues; and finally these twenty Jesus Christs (accepting their
character
p. 30
for the name) laid the foundation for the salvation of the world, and
ascended back to heaven.
1. Chrishna of Hindostan.
2. Budha Sakia of India.
3. Salivahana of Bermuda.
4. Zulis, or Zhule, also Osiris and Orus, of Egypt.
5. Odin of the Scandinavians.
6. Crite of Chaldea.
7. Zoroaster and Mithra of Persia.
8. Baal and Taut, "the only Begotten of God," of Phenicia.
9. Indra of Thibet.
10. Bali of Afghanistan.
11. Jao of Nepaul.
12. Wittoba of the Bilingonese.
13. Thammuz of Syria.
14. Atys of Phrygia.
15. Xaniolxis of Thrace.
16. Zoar of the Bonzes.
17. Adad of Assyria.
18. Deva Tat, and Sammonocadam of Siam.
19. Alcides of Thebes.
20. Mikado of the Sintoos.
21. Beddru of Japan.
22. Hesus or Eros, and Bremrillah, of the Druids.
23. Thor, son of Odin, of the Gauls.
24. Cadmus of Greece.
25. Hil and Feta of the Mandaites.
26. Gentaut and Quexalcote of Mexico.
27. Universal Monarch of the Sibyls.
28. Ischy of the Island of Formosa.
29. Divine Teacher of Plato.
30. Holy One of Xaca.
31. Fohi and Tien of China.
32. Adonis, son of the virgin Io of Greece.
33. Ixion and Quirinus of Rome.
34. Prometheus of Caucasus.
35. Mohamud, or Mahomet, of Arabia.
These have all received divine honors, have nearly all been worshiped as
Gods, or sons of God; were mostly incarnated as Christs, Saviors, Messiahs,
or Mediators; not a few of them were reputedly born of virgins; some of them
filling a character almost identical with that ascribed by the Christian's
bible to Jesus Christ; many of them, like
p. 31
him, are reported to have been crucified; and all of them, taken together,
furnish a prototype and parallel for nearly every important incident and
wonder-inciting miracle, doctrine and precept recorded in the New Testament,
of the Christian's Savior. Surely, with so many Saviors the world cannot, or
should not, be lost.
We have now presented before us a two-fold ground for doubting and disputing
the claims put forth by the Christian world in behalf of "Our Lord and
Savior Jesus Christ." In the first place, allowing the question to be
answered in the affirmative as to whether he was really a Savior, or
supernatural being, or more than a mere man, a negative answer to which
seems to have been sprung (as previously intimated) at the very hour of his
birth, and that by his kindred, his own nearest relatives; as it is
declared, "his own brethren did not believe on him"—a skepticism which has
been growing deeper and broader from that day to this.
And now, upon the heel of this question, we find another formidable query to
be met and answered, viz.: Was he (Christ) the only Savior, seeing that a
multitude of similar claims are now upon our council-board to be disposed
of?
We shall, however, leave the theologians of the various religious schools to
adjust and settle this difficulty among themselves. We shall leave them to
settle the question as best they can as to whether Jesus Christ was the only
son and sent of God—"the only begotten of the Father," as John declares him
to be (John i. 14)—in view of the fact that long prior to his time various
personages, in different nations, were invested with the title "Son of God,"
and have left behind them similar proofs and credentials of the justness of
their claims to such a title, if being essentially alike—as we shall prove
and demonstrate them to be—can make their claims similar.
We shall present an array of facts and historical proofs,
p. 32
drawn from numerous histories and the Holy Scriptures and bibles
appertaining to these various Saviors, and which include a history of their
lives and doctrines, that will go to show that in nearly all their leading
features, and mostly even in their details, they are strikingly similar.
A comparison, or parallel view, extended through their sacred histories, so
as to include an exhibition presented in parallels of the teachings of their
respective bibles, would make it clearly manifest that, with respect to
nearly every important thought, deed, word, action, doctrine, principle,
receipt, tenet, ritual, ordinance or ceremony, and even the various
important characters or personages, who figure in their religious dramas as
Saviors, prophets, apostles, angels, devils, demons, exalted or fallen
genii—in a word, nearly every miraculous or marvelous story, moral precept,
or tenet of religious faith, noticed in either the Old or New Testament
Scriptures of Christendom—from the Jewish cosmogony, or story of creation in
Genesis, to the last legendary tale in St. John's "Arabian Nights" (alias
the Apocalypse)—there is to be found an antitype for, or outline of,
somewhere in the sacred records or bibles of the oriental heathen nations,
making equal if not higher pretention to a divine emanation and divine
inspiration, and admitted by all historians, even the most orthodox, to be
of much more ancient date; for while Christians only claim, for the earthly
advent of their Savior and the birth of their religion, a period less than
nineteen hundred years in the past, on the contrary, most of the deific or
divine incarnations of the heathen and their respective religions are, by
the concurrent and united verdict of all history, assigned a date several
hundred or several thousand years earlier, thus leaving the inference patent
that so far as there has been any borrowing or transfer of materials from
one system to another, Christianity has been the borrower.
p. 33
[paragraph continues] And as nearly the whole outline and constituent parts
of the Christian system are found scattered through these older systems, the
query is at once sprung as to whether Christianity did not derive its
materials from these sources—that is from heathenism, instead of from high
heaven—as it claims.
|