42...
FOOTNOTES TO “THE SOLDIER’S DAUGHTER”
[Rev. T. G. Headley writes an article in which he takes exception to various instances of the spilling of blood as related in the Old Testament, such as the assassination of Jephthah’s daughter, in Judges, xi; he strongly feels that the whole subject of Atonement should be reconsidered. H.P.B. appends a number of footnotes to various expressions of the writer].
[Jephthah is mockingly told that he is the fiend who must sacrifice his child . . . . that he has no one to blame but himself, for having made the vow. . . . . . Who could he, or they be, who would require the fulfilling of it?] Jehovah, of course, in his own national character of Baal, Moloch, Typhon, etc. The final and conclusive identification of the “Lord God” of Israel with Moloch, we find in the last chapter of Leviticus, concerning things devoted not to be redeemed . . . . . . “a man shall devote unto the Lord of all that he hath, both of man and beast. . . . . None devoted, which shall be devoted of men, shall be redeemed; but shall surely be put to death . . . . . it is holy unto the Lord.” (See Leviticus, xxvii, 28-30.)
43 “Notwithstanding the numerous proofs that the Israelites worshipped a variety of gods, and even offered human sacrifices until a far later period than their Pagan neighbors, they have contrived to blind posterity in regard to truth. They sacrificed human life as late as 169 B.C.,[1] and the Bible contains a number of such records. At a time when the Pagans had long abandoned the abominable practice, and had replaced the sacrificial man by the animal,[2] Jephthah is represented sacrificing his own daughter to the “Lord” for a burnt-offering.” Isis Unveiled, Vol. II, p. 524.
[. . . as we read in the Book of Judges that “Judah could not drive out the inhabitants of the valley, because they had chariots of iron.” (Judges, i, 19)] It is said in the “Holy Book,” that it was “the Lord [who] was with Judah,” who “could not drive out the inhabitants of the valley, because they had chariots of iron” (Judges, i, 19), and not “Judah” at all. This is but natural, according to popular belief and superstition that “the Devil is afraid of iron.” The strong connection and even identity between Jehovah and the Devil is ably insisted upon by the Rev. Haweis. See his Key (p. 22).
[But the more heroic and divine these persons were, the more demoniacal and diabolic must be the religion of those persons who required them thus to suffer] And yet it is this “demoniacal and diabolical religion” that passed part and parcel into Protestantism.
[. . . the priests and rulers of the church taught such a cruel religion] So “the people and priests” do now. And as the late Rev. Henry Ward Beecher once said in a sermon, “could Jesus come back and behave in the streets of Christian cities as he did in those of Jerusalem, he would be declared an impostor and then confined in prison.”
44 [. . . when the Church is willing to allow . . . . liberty in the pulpit for explaining the mystery and translating the truth of a “Crucified Christ,” then it will be seen that the truth . . . . shall make us free.]
Only, as such truth and freedom amounts to the Church committing suicide and burying herself with her own hands, she will never allow such a thing. She will die her natural death the day when there will not exist a man, woman or child to believe any longer in her dogmas. And this beneficent result might be achieved within her own hierarchy, were there many such sincere, brave and honest clergymen who, like the writer of this article, fear not to speak the truth—whatever may come.
Footnotes