It is blasphemy to say that there are more gods than one (Statute of Will. III.), yet it is blasphemy to deny that “the Lord is greater than all gods” (Ex. xviii., 11). It is hard to understand how the Lord can be greater than gods which do not exist; nevertheless “he that believeth not shall be damned.”
Chapters xix. and xx. of Exodus can only be believed by those who have not risen above the most anthropomorphic conception of their god. God is everywhere, yet Moses went backwards and forwards between the people and god (xix., 3—9). God is everywhere, yet Moses “brought forth the people out of the camp to meet with God” (v., 17), and “the Lord descended upon” a particular mountain (v. 18), and “came down upon Mount Sinai, on the top of the mount” (v. 20). God is invisible, one “whom no man hath seen nor can see” (1 Tim. vi., 16), whom “no man hath seen at any time” (John L, 18); yet he was afraid lest the people should “break through unto the Lord to gaze” (Ex. xix., 21), and up the mount went “Moses, and Aaron, and Nadab, and Abihu, and seventy of the elders of Israel; and they saw the God of Israel” (Ex. xxiv., 9, 10). God dwells “in the light which no man can approach unto” (1 Tim. vi., 16), and “God is light and in him is no darkness at all” (1 John i., 5); yet “Moses drew near onto the thick darkness where God was” (Ex. xx., 21). It is blasphemy to deny that all these contradictions are true.
It is blasphemy to deny that god, on Mount Sinai, gave commands among which we find the following revolting and immoral ones: If the owner of a Hebrew slave give the slave a wife, and the slave goes out at the end of seven years, “the wife and her children shall be her master’s; he shall go out by himself” (Ex. xxi., 4). The wife is like any other female animal; she and her young belong to her master, and she may be used to increase his stock. If the husband and father clings to his family, god mercifully allows him to buy the right to live with them with the price of his freedom. A man may sell his daughter to be a concubine, and if her purchaser starve her, or let her go naked, or does not perform his marital duty, she may leave him (vv. 7—11). A man may beat his man or woman slave to death, provided that he or she lives “a day or two” after the flogging, for “he is his money” (vv. 20, 21), and the loss of his valuable chattel is punishment sufficient. If an ox gore a man, the ox is to be stoned (v. 28), a form of vivisection which Lord Coleridge can scarcely approve; but, as Paul says: “Doth god take care for oxen?” (1 Cor. ix., 9). If the ox gore a slave, the owner of the slave is to be paid for the value of his property (v. 32). If a thief be unable to restore the double or fourfold value, as the case may be, of that which he has stolen, “then he shall be sold for his theft” (xxii., 3). A witch is to be murdered (v. 20). An idolater is to be murdered (v. 20). “The first-born of thy sons shalt thou give unto me. Likewise shalt thou do with thine oxen and with thy sheep” (vv. 29, 30). Is it credible that by the law of England it should be blasphemy to deny that these horrible commands are “of divine authority”?