Divine, and Other Carnage

By J.F.C. Fuller

Published in the Agnostic Journal

London, England

15 April 1905

(pages 229-230)

"O all ye Beasts and Cattle, bless ye the Lord: praise him, and magnify him for ever." So says the Canticle, and so whines John Smith; but the cattle and beasts which are devoured by this psalm-singing image of God have little to thank John Smith for, and still less the Lord their creator, through whose goodness and divine irascibility their progenitors were once upon a time nearly all drowned; and at another time, in order to prove that he was "I AM THAT I AM," afflicted with loathsome plagues and diseases.

Samson, who was a chosen vessel of the Lord, and who judges Israel for twenty years, was an arch-destroyer of innocent men and women. One day, in order to justify his own negligence towards his wife, he tied burning fire-brands to the tails of three hundred foxes; and burnt his neighbour's corn, which so pleased the Lord that "he came mightily upon him," and the usual holocaust was the result. David—that man after God's own heart and ancestor to the pig-drowner—felt no qualms whatever, when, on one of his ruthless raids, he houghed the horses of a thousand chariots. But little else could be expected from followers of the bloody Jahveh, who at one moment, in a passion, would shout, "I will smite every horse with blindness," and at another smack his chops over roast oxen and sheep:—

"The sword of the Lord is filled with blood, it is made fat with fatness, and with the blood of lambs and goats, with the fat of the kidneys of rams; for the Lord bath a sacrifice in Bozrah, and a great slaughter in the land of Idumea."—Isaiah xxxix., 6.

Thus was it in those days when the Lord spoke face to face with man, but now that he does not even condescend to show his back parts, customs are changing. We no longer hough our opponent's horses, though we are cruel enough in all conscience; we no longer settle our family bickerings as Samson did his, for if we did, we should have to face the "Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals," and yet we are still brutal enough, as will shortly be shown, and this, too, after nigh two thousand years of Christianity. In more Christian days he had bull-baiting, bear-baiting, cock-fighting, and other forms of manly (!) sport; even nowadays, in one of the most Christian countries, and, consequently one of the most cruel, we have thumb-screws and bull-fights; but, generally speaking, less Christ, less cruelty, less redemption, less bloodshed.

Listen, O Lord, to the following, for it will bring back to thy nostrils the sweet savour of those halcyon days when thy friend Samson, son of Uriah's wife—hem!—slew before thee "two and twenty thousand oxen, and an hundred and twenty thousand sheep" (1 Kings viii. 63). "He that killeth an ox is as if he slew a man," ranted another of thy chosen ones (Isaiah lxvi. 3). Contradiction? Ohm dear, no? "And he said, Take now thy son, thine only son, Isaac . . . and offer him there for a burnt offering" (Genesis xxii. 2) "Then the Spirit of the Lord came upon Jephthah" (so Jephthah's daughter went into the mountains and bewailed her virginity, and after two months returned to her father) . . . "who did with her according to his vow" (Judges xi. 29, 38, 39). Holocausts of men were quite as frequent as those of oxen, were they not, O Holy One? Read that sacred work penned by the Ghost, peruse Leviticus xxvii. 29, in conjunction with Joshua vi. 17; Jeremiah vii. 30, 31; Ezekial xx. 25, 26; Micah vi. 7; also Exodus xiii. 12; I Kings xviii, 19; II Samuel xxi 8; and I Samuel xv. 1-8; in which latter case, O Lord, so fierce was thine anger with thy servant Saul, that, for sparing one human being alive, thou transferred his throne to that foreskin-cutting traitor, David. Ergo:—"He that killeth a man is as if he slew an ox." Verily, verily I have spoken, THOU ART WHAT THOU ART,—Jehovah the Bloody. For one moment, O Holy One of Israel, allow thy servant to withdraw thy attention from the counting of the hairs of our heads and the lifeless bodies of dead sparrows, and let him read to you a line or two out of the Lancet:—"It is estimated that between three million and four million cattle are taken to the Chicago stockyards annually. The number of hogs is set down at from seven million to eight million, and there are some three million to four million sheep . . . the greater population, from two-thirds to three-quarters of these animals, is killed on the spot."—Lancet, Jan. 7, 1905, p. 50.

Some ten million animals or more slaughtered on the spot. Why Solomon in all his glory never slew like this. Eight million hogs, O righteous One; why thy virgin born son only slew two thousand, "for his mercy endureth for ever!"

J. Smith feeds on J. Christ, apparently a most unsatisfying dish, for it has often to be supplemented with other ailments, such as Chicago pork. Before he could eat Christ, Christ had to be crucified, to satisfy the vengeance of his loving father; before he can masticate pig, pig has to be brutally done to death, to satisfy the greed of some avaricious and time-serving pork butcher. O Lord, thou didst redeem the world by the blood of thy only son, when a little more bread-and-butter was all the world needed; and so it would, no doubt, interest you to know how J. Smith, pork butcher, redeems his extravagance, gluttony, sensuality and greed, by the death of pigs. You chose crucifixion as a suitable expedient. J. Smith chooses as follows:—

"At the Chicago stockyards I was first taken to see the killing of pigs and found that outside the big factory buildings there are long, inclined, boarded passages, up which the animals are driven. Thus the pigs are brought up to the height of the second floor. As they enter the main building each pig is caught by one of the hind legs. With rope and loop-knot and hook it is slung up, the head downwards and the neck exposed, at a convenient height for the slaughterer to strike. With great rapidity the suspended pigs are pushed on to a sort of passage about four feet broad where their throats are slashed open as they pass along. These rows of hanging pigs struggle violently, throwing out torrents of blood. Both sides of this death passage to the height of five feet are thickly caked with the blood of thousands of healthy and unhealthy pigs. Within less than a minute the dying pig reaches a long tank full of scalding water and in this the palpitating body is thrown, though life is probably not yet quite extinct."—Lancet, Jan. 14, 1905, p. 120.

Does this please you, O Lord, or would you prefer the pigs to be consumed away while they stand upon their feet, their eyes consuming away in their holes, and their tongues in their mouths, as thy servant Zechariah has it?

"Pigs, only pigs," you say, not your department—belongs to the virgin-born. Well, listen to this:—

"Thus, for instance, I saw bullocks slaughtered in the following manner. The animals are brought up to a huge building which looks more like a lofty prison than a slaughter house. As they approach the outer wall men strike them on the head with a mallet. Then a sort of wooden partition gives way and lets the half-stunned animals fall into the basement of the building beyond. As they come tumbling in men seize their hind legs, affix ropes, and they are strung up to some machinery above that moves them along with their heads hanging downwards. Sometime, however, and before this can be done an animal jumps up and rushes about. It has then to be shot at the risk of the bullet striking an onlooker. When I inquired why a leather gear was not affixed to the bullock's head with a nail so placed in it that, however clumsy the stroke given, it would cause the nail to penetrate the brain and instantly kill the animal, I was told that such a process would take far too much time. Indeed, so great is the hurry that the unfortunate animals are frequently not given time to die. First, they are dropped into the building, though some of them may be insufficiently stunned. Then, when strung up, the machinery carries the living animal forwards and men have to run after it to cut its throat, while others follow with great pails to catch the blood; and all this without interrupting the dying animals journey to the part of the factory where the next process of manufacture begins. Sometimes the cattle are struck down and stunned more quickly than the men can pick them up and cut their throats, so they are left to live some time suspended in the air by their hind feet. The machinery carries forwards the animals that are hooked on to it regardless of their agony. On they go from stage to stage of manufacture and the men have to keep pace with them whether dead or alive. Quickly the throats are cut, no time can be lost to let the animals bleed, a man with a pail must walk by their side to catch the blood. Much of the hot blood is spilt over the man or over the floor; that does not matter so long as a small section of a minute is economised."—Lancet, Jan. 14, 1905, p. 121.

Oxen, only oxen; a mere trifle is it, after the slaying of young men and maidens, of old men, and they that stoop with age, after slaughtering infants and ripping open women who are with child? Yes, truly it is! Thou hast dashed the child to pieces before the eyes of its mother, and hast thrust the wife into the arms of her ravisher, thou has drenched the world with blood. "The sword without a terror within" has been the motto, and that of thine accursed church. Thy arrows are drunk with human blood, and thy sword surfeits with human flesh and bone. What is an ox to thee that it should suffer. Even for nineteen hundred years thou and thy pig-drowning son have been unto us as a lion, and as a bear bereft of her whelps. Thou has rent the caul of our hearts, and torn us as the wild beast of the fields in thy wrath. Deep have we drunk of the cup of thy fury; it is time to dash it to the ground, with the cup of redemption, symbols of an untutored age. Let him who will shout adulations to thy name, let him who will sing. "O all ye beasts and cattle bless ye the Lord: praise him, and magnify him for ever;" but thy days are numbered, and the roar of the lion, the bellowing of the bull are over; alone in the hours of the breaking dawn the ass brays, fit emblem of fools and folly.

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