Article selections by Rev. T. G. Headley. | Notes by H.P.B.
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Jephthah is mockingly told that he is the fiend who must sacrifice his child, as Abraham is said to have offered Isaac. And Jephthah is told that he has no one to blame but himself, for having made the vow. But who heard the vow? or who accepted the vow? Who could he, or they be, who would require the fulfilling of it?1
1. 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 . . . for it is most holy unto the Lord.” (See Leviticus xxvii., 28, 29, 30.)
“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 neighbours, they have contrived to blind posterity in regard to truth. They sacrificed human life as late as 169 B.C. (Vide “Joseph. contra Apion,” 11, 8—what Antiochus Epiphanius found in the Temple), 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, and the ox of Dionysius was sacrificed at the Bacchic Mysteries (“Anthon,” p. 365), Jephthah is represented sacrificing his own daughter to the ‘Lord’ for a burnt-offering.” Isis Unveiled, vol ii., pp. 524, 525. [H.P.B.]
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And how could men be other than the doers of evil, and the priests of evil, who would counsel Jephthah to commit this evil deed, and be ready to commit it themselves if he hesitated? How? Whether Jephthah received any miraculous assistance or not, in the war, yet he was in no wise bound to surrender his personality and to become an abject slave to the supposed power that helped him. For Jephthah’s personal services were needed as an instrument to deliver and save the Israelites, or his services would not have been asked for. It was also possible that he might have given certain services, which even a miraculous power was unable to give—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.)2
2. 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).—Ed. [H.P.B.]
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It is true that, in order to save her father from the cruel pain of assassinating his devoted child, the noble girl may have voluntarily leapt into the sulphurous flames on the burning altar; just as the noble Roman soldier Curtius on his horse leapt down into the dark and awful volcanic gulf as a sacrifice to save his countrymen. But the more heroic and divine these persons were, the more demoniacal and diabolical must be the religion of those persons who required them thus to suffer.3
3. And yet it is this “demoniacal and diabolical religion” that passed part and parcel into Protestantism.—Ed. [H.P.B.]
It is true that the priests of such a religion may have believed in it themselves, and may have been ready to sacrifice their own sons and daughters in like manner; but that in no wise lessens the crime, but on the contrary it intensifies it a hundred fold. How were the people to be saved from a religion, of which the priests themselves needed to be saved, whilst the priests had the sole education of the people from infancy upwards, as well as the Chief power in the State to make and unmake its laws, even to making and unmaking its kings?
Whilst the priests and rulers of the church taught such a cruel religion,4 would not the people and priests need a Mediator to deliver and save them from practising it?
4. 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.”—Ed. [H.P.B.]
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But when the Church is willing to allow (what it has refused to the present day) liberty in the pulpit for explaining the mystery and translating the truth of a “Crucified Christ,” then it will be seen that the truth is not only a light to the Gentiles, but also the glory of Israel; and the truth shall make us free.5 (John viii., 32.)
5. 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—Ed. [H.P.B.]