Andrew Carnegie held very decided views about the Old Testament, and once or twice, under provocation, expressed himself very bluntly. In fact, the point of view that Mr. Carnegie took toward the Bible has become very common in our day among the most eminent scholars in the churches. He did feel very strongly on the matter of teaching children certain portions of the Old Testament, which, to his mind, contradicted not only the finest human instincts but the whole spirit of Christ’s teaching.
We were once walking together when he suddenly referred to a sensational heading in that day’s paper about some preacher’s utterances concerning the incident of Jonah: “What in the world has the question as to whether that book is fact or story got to do with the Christian religion?” he exclaimed. “It is this sort of thing that makes sensible people disgusted with the Churches. The first Christians followed Christ and that was all that was ever asked of them. Now we demand that they believe a lot of incidents said to have happened hundreds of years before Christ was born and which have absolutely no relation to him whatever, except that they happened to get bound up in a collection of books with the story of his life. It’s just exactly as if I were told that I could not be a believer in Abraham Lincoln unless I believed some miraculous stories about the early settlers of America because the stories happened to be on the same library shelf. The Bible is a wonderful literature of a people who had a genius for religion, but I sometimes think it has been a misfortune that the life of Christ got bound up with the Old Testament. They don’t always harmonize.”
What disturbed Mr. Carnegie most of all was hinted at in that last sentence. He thought it was a great mistake to teach certain of the narratives of the Old Testament to children for the sake of the ethical lessons. The ethics of parts of the historical books not only did not harmonize with the teachings of the New Testament but they were contrary to them. He used to grow quite indignant on this point and I think the fact that the Sunday Schools were teaching these portions of the Bible somewhat colored his views of the entire Old Testament and perhaps made him unappreciative of its really spiritual revelations. Once he exclaimed to me, as we were discussing this whole question of the worth of the Old Testament (we were walking in Central Park):
“I picked up the Bible just the other day and was reading the
story of the times of Samuel. One king after another comes along
and they are all engaged from year to year in killing — it is
really slaughter. All sorts of ghastly incidents are related,
and some passages are simply revolting to a mind accustomed to
feel toward humanity as Christ felt, and the thing is that God is
pictured as directing and helping it all. It is God who leads in
the slaughter and He even inspires His children to the most
unmerciful acts. Now, if you want to teach these things to
students in the universities as you familiarize them with the
legends and myths and wars of ancient Rome and Greece, all right,
but do not teach them to boys and girls as heroic deeds, to be
admired and copied, and, for heaven’s sake, do not tell them that
the God pictured in some parts of these stories is the God Jesus
Christ shows us in the Sermon on the Mount.”
I think I have recorded rather accurately what Mr. Carnegie said, for I was greatly interested in getting his point of view, and he said these things very emphatically. Professor Samuel T. Dutton, who used often to drop into the house at Ninety-first Street Sunday afternoons, for a chat with him, told me that he once said practically these same words to him. When I told Mr. Carnegie that he would find the view which he was expressing even more forcibly put than he was putting it, in the pulpits of many churches, he said:
“I know that; but still they go on teaching it just the same, and
I have heard passages from the Old Testament read in church which
made me blush, so contrary were they to the spirit of
Christianity. I think General Armstrong and David Livingstone
are much better Christians than Joshua or Gideon, and I would
teach their lives in the Sunday Schools. And there ought to be
an edition of the Old Testament prepared for use in church and
home, which would leave out those parts that are not Christian.”
As a matter of fact, Mr. Carnegie had a great admiration for those portions of the Bible which deal with pure religion, and was continually quoting it, and had carved upon the walls of his library, over the fireplace, one of its great words: “Let there be light!”