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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Mistakes of Moses, by Robert G. Ingersoll
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Mistakes of Moses
+
+Author: Robert G. Ingersoll
+
+Release Date: November 22, 2011 [EBook #38099]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MISTAKES OF MOSES ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by David Widger
+
+
+
+
+
+
+MISTAKES of MOSES
+
+By Robert G. Ingersoll.
+
+The Destroyer Of Weeds, Thistles And Thorns, Is A Benefactor Whether He
+Soweth Grain Or Not.
+
+1880.
+
+
+MRS. SUE M. FARRELL
+
+IN LAW MY SISTER;
+
+AND IN FACT MY FRIEND,
+
+THIS VOLUME,
+
+AS A TOKEN OF RESPECT AND LOVE,
+
+IS DEDICATED.
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE.
+
+For many years I have regarded the Pentateuch simply as a record of a
+barbarous people, in which are found a great number of the ceremonies
+of savagery, many absurd and unjust laws, and thousands of ideas
+inconsistent with known and demonstrated facts. To me it seemed almost
+a crime to teach that this record was written by inspired men; that
+slavery, polygamy, wars of conquest and extermination were right, and
+that there was a time when men could win the approbation of infinite
+Intelligence, Justice, and Mercy, by violating maidens and by butchering
+babes. To me it seemed more reasonable that savage men had made these
+laws; and I endeavored in a lecture, entitled "Some Mistakes of Moses,"
+to point out some of the errors, contradictions, and impossibilities
+contained in the Pentateuch. The lecture was never written and
+consequently never delivered twice the same. On several occasions it was
+reported and published without consent, and without revision. All these
+publications were grossly and glaringly incorrect. As published, they
+have been answered several hundred times, and many of the clergy are
+still engaged in the great work. To keep these reverend gentlemen from
+wasting their talents on the mistakes of reporters and printers, I
+concluded to publish the principal points in all my lectures on this
+subject. And here, it may be proper for me to say, that arguments cannot
+be answered by personal abuse; that there is no logic in slander, and
+that falsehood, in the long run, defeats itself. People who love their
+enemies should, at least, tell the truth about their friends. Should it
+turn out that I am the worst man in the whole world, the story of the
+flood will remain just as improbable as before, and the contradictions
+of the Pentateuch will still demand an explanation.
+
+There was a time when a falsehood, fulminated from the pulpit, smote
+like a sword; but, the supply having greatly exceeded the demand,
+clerical misrepresentation has at last become almost an innocent
+amusement. Remembering that only a few years ago men, women, and even
+children, were imprisoned, tortured and burned, for having expressed
+in an exceedingly mild and gentle way, the ideas entertained by me, I
+congratulate myself that calumny is now the pulpit's last resort. The
+old instruments of torture are kept only to gratify curiosity; the
+chains are rusting away, and the demolition of time has allowed even the
+dungeons of the Inquisition to be visited by light. The church, impotent
+and malicious, regrets, not the abuse, but the loss of her power, and
+seeks to hold by falsehood what she gained by cruelty and force, by
+fire and fear. Christianity cannot live in peace with any other form of
+faith. If that religion be true, there is but one savior, one inspired
+book, and but one little narrow grass-grown path that leads to heaven.
+Such a religion is necessarily uncompromising, unreasoning, aggressive
+and insolent. Christianity has held all other creeds and forms in
+infinite contempt, divided the world into enemies and friends, and
+verified the awful declaration of its founder--a declaration that
+wet with blood the sword he came to bring, and made the horizon of a
+thousand years lurid with the fagots' flames.
+
+Too great praise challenges attention, and often brings to light a
+thousand faults that otherwise the general eye would never see. Were we
+allowed to read the bible as we do all other books, we would admire its
+beauties, treasure its worthy thoughts, and account for all its absurd,
+grotesque and cruel things, by saying that its authors lived in rude,
+barbaric times. But we are told that it was written by inspired men;
+that it contains the will of God; that it is perfect, pure, and true in
+all its parts; the source and standard of all moral and religious truth;
+that it is the star and anchor of all human hope; the only guide for
+man, the only torch in Nature's night. These claims are so at variance
+with every known recorded fact, so palpably absurd, that every free,
+unbiased soul is forced to raise the standard of revolt.
+
+We read the pagan sacred books with profit and delight. With myth and
+fable we are ever charmed, and find a pleasure in the endless repetition
+of the beautiful, poetic, and absurd. We find, in all these records of
+the past, philosophies and dreams, and efforts stained with tears,
+of great and tender souls who tried to pierce the mystery of life and
+death, to answer the eternal questions of the Whence and Whither, and
+vainly sought to make, with bits of shattered glass, a mirror that
+would, in very truth, reflect the face and form of Nature's perfect
+self.
+
+These myths were born of hopes, and fears, and tears, and smiles, and
+they were touched and colored by all there is of joy and grief between
+the rosy dawn of birth, and death's sad night. They clothed even the
+stars with passion, and gave to gods the faults and frailties of the
+sons of men. In them, the winds and waves were music, and all the lakes,
+and streams, and springs,--the mountains, woods and perfumed dells were
+haunted by a thousand fairy forms. They thrilled the veins of Spring
+with tremulous desire; made tawny Summer's billowed breast the throne
+and home of love; filled Autumns arms with sun-kissed grapes, and
+gathered sheaves; and pictured Winter as a weak old king who felt,
+like Lear upon his withered face, Cordelia's tears. These myths, though
+false, are beautiful, and have for many ages and in countless ways,
+enriched the heart and kindled thought. But if the world were taught
+that all these things are true and all inspired of God, and that eternal
+punishment will be the lot of him who dares deny or doubt, the sweetest
+myth of all the Fable World would lose its beauty, and become a scorned
+and hateful thing to every brave and thoughtful man.
+
+Robert G. Ingersoll.
+
+Washington, D. C, _Oct. 7th, 1879_
+
+
+
+
+I. SOME MISTAKES OF MOSES
+
+HE WHO ENDEAVORS TO CONTROL THE MIND BY FORCE IS A TYRANT, AND HE WHO
+SUBMITS IS A SLAVE.
+
+I want to do what little I can to make my country truly free, to broaden
+the intellectual horizon of our people, to destroy the prejudices born
+of ignorance and fear, to do away with the blind worship of the ignoble
+past, with the idea that all the great and good are dead, that the
+living are totally depraved, that all pleasures are sins, that sighs
+and groans are alone pleasing to God, that thought is dangerous, that
+intellectual courage is a crime, that cowardice is a virtue, that a
+certain belief is necessary to secure salvation, that to carry a cross
+in this world will give us a palm in the next, and that we must allow
+some priest to be the pilot of our souls.
+
+Until every soul is freely permitted to investigate every book, and
+creed, and dogma for itself, the world cannot be free. Mankind will be
+enslaved until there is mental grandeur enough to allow each man to have
+his thought and say. This earth will be a paradise when men can, upon
+all these questions differ, and yet grasp each other's hands as friends.
+It is amazing to me that a difference of opinion upon subjects that we
+know nothing with certainty about, should make us hate, persecute, and
+despise each other. Why a difference of opinion upon predestination,
+or the trinity, should make people imprison and burn each other
+seems beyond the comprehension of man; and yet in all countries where
+Christians have existed, they have destroyed each other to the exact
+extent of their power. Why should a believer in God hate an atheist?
+Surely the atheist has not injured God, and surely he is human, capable
+of joy and pain, and entitled to all the rights of man. Would it not be
+far better to treat this atheist, at least, as well as he treats us?
+
+Christians tell me that they love their enemies, and yet all I ask
+is--not that they love their enemies, not that they love their friends
+even, but that they treat those who differ from them, with simple
+fairness.
+
+We do not wish to be forgiven, but we wish Christians to so act that we
+will not have to forgive them. If all will admit that all have an equal
+right to think, then the question is forever solved; but as long as
+organized and powerful churches, pretending to hold the keys of heaven
+and hell, denounce every person as an outcast and criminal who thinks
+for himself and denies their authority, the world will be filled with
+hatred and suffering. To hate man and worship God seems to be the sum of
+all the creeds.
+
+That which has happened in most countries, has happened in ours. When
+a religion is founded, the educated, the powerful--that is to say, the
+priests and nobles, tell the ignorant and superstitious--that is to
+say, the people, that the religion of their country was given to their
+fathers by God himself; that it is the only true religion; that all
+others were conceived in falsehood and brought forth in fraud, and that
+all who believe in the true religion will be happy forever, while all
+others will burn in hell. For the purpose of governing the people, that
+is to say, for the purpose of being supported by the people, the priests
+and nobles declare this religion to be sacred, and that whoever adds to,
+or takes from it, will be burned here by man, and hereafter by God. The
+result of this is, that the priests and nobles will not allow the people
+to change; and when, after a time, the priests, having intellectually
+advanced, wish to take a step in the direction of progress, the people
+will not allow them to change. At first, the rabble are enslaved by the
+priests, and afterwards the rabble become the masters.
+
+One of the first things I wish to do, is to free the orthodox clergy.
+I am a great friend of theirs, and in spite of all they may say against
+me, I am going to do them a great and lasting service. Upon their necks
+are visible the marks of the collar, and upon their backs those of the
+lash. They are not allowed to read and think for themselves. They are
+taught like parrots, and the best are those who repeat, with the fewest
+mistakes, the sentences they have been taught. They sit like owls upon
+some dead limb of the tree of knowledge, and hoot the same old hoots
+that have been hooted for eighteen hundred years. Their congregations
+are not grand enough, nor sufficiently civilized, to be willing that
+the poor preachers shall think for themselves. They are not employed for
+that purpose. Investigation is regarded as a dangerous experiment,
+and the ministers are warned that none of that kind of work will be
+tolerated. They are notified to stand by the old creed, and to avoid
+all original thought, as a mortal pestilence. Every minister is employed
+like an attorney--either for plaintiff or defendant,--and he is expected
+to be true to his client. If he changes his mind, he is regarded as
+a deserter, and denounced, hated, and slandered accordingly. Every
+orthodox clergyman agrees not to change. He contracts not to find new
+facts, and makes a bargain that he will deny them if he does. Such is
+the position of a protestant minister in this Nineteenth Century. His
+condition excites my pity; and to better it, I am going to do what
+little I can.
+
+Some of the clergy have the independence to break away, and the
+intellect to maintain themselves as free men, but the most are compelled
+to submit to the dictation of the orthodox, and the dead. They are
+not employed to give their thoughts, but simply to repeat the ideas of
+others. They are not expected to give even the doubts that may suggest
+themselves, but are required to walk in the narrow, verdureless path
+trodden by the ignorance of the past. The forests and fields on either
+side are nothing to them. They must not even look at the purple hills,
+nor pause to hear the babble of the brooks. They must remain in the
+dusty road where the guide-boards are. They must confine themselves
+to the "fall of man" the expulsion from the garden, the "scheme of
+salvation," the "second birth," the atonement, the happiness of the
+redeemed, and the misery of the lost. They must be careful not to
+express any new ideas upon these great questions. It is much safer for
+them to quote from the works of the dead. The more vividly they describe
+the sufferings of the unregenerate, of those who attended theatres and
+balls, and drank wine in summer gardens on the sabbath-day, and laughed
+at priests, the better ministers they are supposed to be. They must show
+that misery fits the good for heaven, while happiness prepares the bad
+for hell; that the wicked get all their good things in this life, and
+the good all their evil; that in this world God punishes the people he
+loves, and in the next, the ones he hates; that happiness makes us bad
+here, but not in heaven; that pain makes us good here, but not in hell.
+No matter how absurd these things may appear to the carnal mind, they
+must be preached and they must be believed. If they were reasonable,
+there would be no virtue in believing. Even the publicans and sinners
+believe reasonable things. To believe without evidence, or in spite of
+it, is accounted as righteousness to the sincere and humble christian.
+
+The ministers are in duty bound to denounce all intellectual pride, and
+show that we are never quite so dear to God as when we admit that we are
+poor, corrupt and idiotic worms; that we never should have been born;
+that we ought to be damned without the least delay; that we are so
+infamous that we like to enjoy ourselves; that we love our wives and
+children better than our God; that we are generous only because we are
+vile; that we are honest from the meanest motives, and that sometimes we
+have fallen so low that we have had doubts about the inspiration of the
+Jewish scriptures. In short, they are expected to denounce all pleasant
+paths and rustling trees, to curse the grass and flowers, and glorify
+the dust and weeds. They are expected to malign the wicked people in the
+green and happy fields, who sit and laugh beside the gurgling springs or
+climb the hills and wander as they will. They are expected to point out
+the dangers of freedom, the safety of implicit obedience, and to show
+the wickedness of philosophy, the goodness of faith, the immorality of
+science and the purity of ignorance.
+
+Now and then, a few pious people discover some young man of a religious
+turn of mind and a consumptive habit of body, not quite sickly enough
+to die, nor healthy enough to be wicked. The idea occurs to them that
+he would make a good orthodox minister. They take up a contribution, and
+send the young man to some theological school where he can be taught to
+repeat a creed and despise reason. Should it turn out that the young
+man had some mind of his own, and, after graduating, should change his
+opinions and preach a different doctrine from that taught in the school,
+every man who contributed a dollar towards his education would feel that
+he had been robbed, and would denounce him as a dishonest and ungrateful
+wretch.
+
+The pulpit should not be a pillory. Congregations should allow the
+minister a little liberty. They should, at least, permit him to tell the
+truth.
+
+They have, in Massachusetts, at a place called Andover, a kind of
+minister factory, where each professor takes an oath once in five
+years--that time being considered the life of an oath--that he has not,
+during the last five years, and will not, during the next five years,
+intellectually advance. There is probably no oath that they could easier
+keep. Probably, since the foundation stone of that institution was laid
+there has not been a single case of perjury. The old creed is still
+taught. They still insist that God is infinitely wise, powerful and
+good, and that all men are totally depraved. They insist that the best
+man God ever made, deserved to be damned the moment he was finished.
+Andover puts its brand upon every minister it turns out, the same as
+Sheffield and Birmingham brand their wares, and all who see the brand
+know exactly what the minister believes, the books he has read, the
+arguments he relies on, and just what he intellectually is. They know
+just what he can be depended on to preach, and that he will continue to
+shrink and shrivel, and grow solemnly stupid day by day until he reaches
+the Andover of the grave and becomes truly orthodox forever.
+
+I have not singled out the Andover factory because it is worse than the
+others. They are all about the same. The professors, for the most part,
+are ministers who failed in the pulpit and were retired to the seminary
+on account of their deficiency in reason and their excess of faith. As
+a rule, they know nothing of this world, and far less of the next; but
+they have the power of stating the most absurd propositions with faces
+solemn as stupidity touched by fear.
+
+Something should be done for the liberation of these men. They should
+be allowed to grow--to have sunlight and air. They should no longer
+be chained and tied to confessions of faith, to mouldy books and
+musty creeds. Thousands of ministers are anxious to give their honest
+thoughts. The hands of wives and babes now stop their mouths. They
+must have bread, and so the husbands and fathers are forced to preach
+a doctrine that they hold in scorn. For the sake of shelter, food and
+clothes, they are obliged to defend the childish miracles of the past,
+and denounce the sublime discoveries of to-day. They are compelled to
+attack all modern thought, to point out the dangers of science, the
+wickedness of investigation and the corrupting influence of logic. It is
+for them to show that virtue rests upon ignorance and faith, while vice
+impudently feeds and fattens upon fact and demonstration. It is a part
+of their business to malign and vilify the Voltaires, Humes, Paines,
+Humboldts, Tyndals, Haeckels, Darwins, Spencers, and Drapers, and to bow
+with uncovered heads before the murderers, adulterers, and persecutors
+of the world. They are, for the most part, engaged in poisoning the
+minds of the young, prejudicing children against science, teaching
+the astronomy and geology of the bible, and inducing all to desert the
+sublime standard of reason.
+
+These orthodox ministers do not add to the sum of knowledge. They
+produce nothing. They live upon alms. They hate laughter and joy. They
+officiate at weddings, sprinkle water upon babes, and utter meaningless
+words and barren promises above the dead. They laugh at the agony of
+unbelievers, mock at their tears, and of their sorrows make a jest.
+There are some noble exceptions. Now and then a pulpit holds a brave
+and honest man. Their congregations are willing that they should
+think--willing that their ministers should have a little freedom.
+
+As we become civilized, more and more liberty will be accorded to these
+men, until finally ministers will give their best and highest thoughts.
+The congregations will finally get tired of hearing about the patriarchs
+and saints, the miracles and wonders, and will insist upon knowing
+something about the men and women of our day, and the accomplishments
+and discoveries of our time. They will finally insist upon knowing how
+to escape the evils of this world instead of the next. They will ask
+light upon the enigmas of this life. They will wish to know what we
+shall do with our criminals instead of what God will do with his--how
+we shall do away with beggary and want--with crime and misery--with
+prostitution, disease and famine,--with tyranny in all its cruel
+forms--with prisons and scaffolds, and how we shall reward the honest
+workers, and fill the world with happy homes! These are the problems
+for the pulpits and congregations of an enlightened future. If Science
+cannot finally answer these questions, it is a vain and worthless thing.
+
+The clergy, however, will continue to answer them in the old way, until
+their congregations are good enough to set them free. They will still
+talk about believing in the Lord Jesus Christ, as though that were the
+only remedy for all human ills. They will still teach that retrogression
+is the only path that leads to light; that we must go back, that faith
+is the only sure guide, and that reason is a delusive glare, lighting
+only the road to eternal pain.
+
+Until the clergy are free they cannot be intellectually honest. We can
+never tell what they really believe until they know that they can safely
+speak. They console themselves now by a secret resolution to be as
+liberal as they dare, with the hope that they can finally educate
+their congregations to the point of allowing them to think a little for
+themselves. They hardly know what they ought to do. The best part of
+their lives has been wasted in studying subjects of no possible value.
+Most of them are married, have families, and know but one way of making
+their living. Some of them say that if they do not preach these foolish
+dogmas, others will, and that they may through fear, after all, restrain
+mankind. Besides, they hate publicly to admit that they are mistaken,
+that the whole thing is a delusion, that the "scheme of salvation" is
+absurd, and that the bible is no better than some other books, and worse
+than most.
+
+You can hardly expect a bishop to leave his palace, or the pope to
+vacate the Vatican. As long as people want popes, plenty of hypocrites
+will be found to take the place. And as long as labor fatigues, there
+will be found a good many men willing to preach once a week, if other
+folks will work and give them bread. In other words, while the demand
+lasts, the supply will never fail.
+
+If the people were a little more ignorant, astrology would flourish--if
+a little more enlightened, religion would perish!
+
+
+
+
+II. FREE SCHOOLS
+
+It is also my desire to free the schools. When a professor in a college
+finds a fact, he should make it known, even if it is inconsistent with
+something Moses said. Public opinion must not compel the professor to
+hide a fact, and, "like the base Indian, throw the pearl away." With the
+single exception of Cornell, there is not a college in the United
+States where truth has ever been a welcome guest. The moment one of the
+teachers denies the inspiration of the bible, he is discharged. If he
+discovers a fact inconsistent with that book, so much the worse for the
+fact, and especially for the discoverer of the fact. He must not corrupt
+the minds of his pupils with demonstrations. He must beware of
+every truth that cannot, in some way be made to harmonize with the
+superstitions of the Jews. Science has nothing in common with religion.
+Facts and miracles never did, and never will agree. They are not in the
+least related. They are deadly foes. What has religion to do with
+facts? Nothing. Can there be Methodist mathematics, Catholic astronomy,
+Presbyterian geology, Baptist biology, or Episcopal botany? Why, then,
+should a sectarian college exist? Only that which somebody knows should
+be taught in our schools. We should not collect taxes to pay people for
+guessing. The common school is the bread of life for the people, and it
+should not be touched by the withering hand of superstition.
+
+Our country will never be filled with great institutions of learning
+until there is an absolute divorce between Church and School. As long
+as the mutilated records of a barbarous people are placed by priest and
+professor above the reason of mankind, we shall reap but little benefit
+from church or school.
+
+Instead of dismissing professors for finding something out, let us
+rather discharge those who do not. Let each teacher understand that
+investigation is not dangerous for him; that his bread is safe, no
+matter how much truth he may discover, and that his salary will not be
+reduced, simply because he finds that the ancient Jews did not know the
+entire history of the world.
+
+Besides, it is not fair to make the Catholic support a Protestant
+school, nor is it just to collect taxes from infidels and atheists to
+support schools in which any system of religion is taught.
+
+The sciences are not sectarian. People do not persecute each other on
+account of disagreements in mathematics. Families are not divided about
+botany, and astronomy does not even tend to make a man hate his father
+and mother. It is what people do not know, that they persecute each
+other about. Science will bring, not a sword, but peace.
+
+Just as long as religion has control of the schools, science will be an
+outcast. Let us free our institutions of learning. Let us dedicate them
+to the science of eternal truth. Let us tell every teacher to ascertain
+all the facts he can--to give us light, to follow Nature, no matter
+where she leads; to be infinitely true to himself and us; to feel that
+he is without a chain, except the obligation to be honest; that he is
+bound by no books, by no creed, neither by the sayings of the dead nor
+of the living; that he is asked to look with his own eyes, to reason for
+himself without fear, to investigate in every possible direction, and to
+bring us the fruit of all his work.
+
+At present, a good many men engaged in scientific pursuits, and who
+have signally failed in gaining recognition among their fellows, are
+endeavoring to make reputations among the churches by delivering weak
+and vapid lectures upon the "harmony of Genesis and Geology." Like all
+hypocrites, these men overstate the case to such a degree, and so
+turn and pervert facts and words that they succeed only in gaining the
+applause of other hypocrites like themselves. Among the great scientists
+they are regarded as generals regard sutlers who trade with both armies.
+
+Surely the time must come when the wealth of the world will not be
+wasted in the propagation of ignorant creeds and miraculous mistakes.
+The time must come when churches and cathedrals will be dedicated to the
+use of man; when minister and priest will deem the discoveries of the
+living of more importance than the errors of the dead; when the truths
+of Nature will outrank the "sacred" falsehoods of the past, and when a
+single fact will outweigh all the miracles of Holy Writ.
+
+Who can over estimate the progress of the world if all the money
+wasted in superstition could be used to enlighten, elevate and civilize
+mankind?
+
+When every church becomes a school, every cathedral a university, every
+clergyman a teacher, and all their hearers brave and honest
+thinkers, then, and not until then, will the dream of poet, patriot,
+philanthropist and philosopher, become a real and blessed truth.
+
+
+
+
+III. THE POLITICIANS.
+
+I would like also to liberate the politician. At present, the successful
+office-seeker is a good deal like the centre of the earth; he weighs
+nothing himself, but draws everything else to him. There are so many
+societies, so many churches, so many isms, that it is almost impossible
+for an independent man to succeed in a political career. Candidates are
+forced to pretend that they are catholics with protest-ant proclivities,
+or christians with liberal tendencies, or temperance men who now and
+then take a glass of wine, or, that although not members of any church
+their wives are, and that they subscribe liberally to all. The result of
+all this is that we reward hypocrisy and elect men entirely destitute of
+real principle; and this will never change until the people become grand
+enough to allow each other to do their own thinking.
+
+Our government should be entirely and purely secular. The religious
+views of a candidate should be kept entirely out of sight. He should not
+be compelled to give his opinion as to the inspiration of the bible,
+the propriety of infant baptism, or the immaculate conception. All these
+things are private and personal. He should be allowed to settle such
+things for himself, and should he decide contrary to the law and will
+of God, let him settle the matter with God. The people ought to be wise
+enough to select as their officers men who know something of political
+affairs, who comprehend the present greatness, and clearly perceive the
+future grandeur of our country. If we were in a storm at sea, with deck
+wave-washed and masts strained and bent with storm, and it was necessary
+to reef the top sail, we certainly would not ask the brave sailor who
+volunteered to go aloft, what his opinion was on the five points of
+Calvinism. Our government has nothing to do with religion. It is neither
+christian nor pagan; it is secular. But as long as the people persist in
+voting for or against men on account of their religious views, just
+so long will hypocrisy hold place and power. Just so long will the
+candidates crawl in the dust--hide their opinions, flatter those with
+whom they differ, pretend to agree with those whom they despise; and
+just so long will honest men be trampled under foot. Churches are
+becoming political organizations. Nearly every Catholic is a democrat;
+nearly every Methodist in the North is a republican.
+
+It probably will not be long until the churches will divide as sharply
+upon political, as upon theological questions; and when that day comes,
+if there are not liberals enough to hold the balance of power, this
+government will be destroyed. The liberty of man is not safe in the
+hands of any church. Wherever the bible and sword are in partnership,
+man is a slave.
+
+All laws for the purpose of making man worship God, are born of the same
+spirit that kindled the fires of the _auto da fe_, and lovingly built
+the dungeons of the Inquisition. All laws defining and punishing
+blasphemy--making it a crime to give your honest ideas about the bible,
+or to laugh at the ignorance of the ancient Jews, or to enjoy yourself
+on the Sabbath, or to give your opinion of Jehovah, were passed by
+impudent bigots, and should be at once repealed by honest men. An
+infinite God ought to be able to protect himself, without going in
+partnership with state legislatures. Certainly he ought not so to act
+that laws become necessary to keep him from being laughed at. No one
+thinks of protecting Shakespeare from ridicule, by the threat of fine
+and imprisonment. It strikes me that God might write a book that would
+not necessarily excite the laughter of his children. In fact, I think
+it would be safe to say that a real God could produce a work that would
+excite the admiration of mankind. Surely politicians could be better
+employed than in passing laws to protect the literary reputation of the
+Jewish God.
+
+
+
+
+IV. MAN AND WOMAN
+
+Let us forget that we are Baptists, Methodists, Catholics,
+Presbyterians, or Free-thinkers, and remember only that we are men and
+women. After all, _man_ and _woman_ are the highest possible titles.
+All other names belittle us, and show that we have, to a certain extent,
+given up our individuality, and have consented to wear the collar of
+authority--that we are followers. Throwing away these names, let us
+examine these questions not as partisans, but as human beings with hopes
+and fears in common.
+
+We know that our opinions depend, to a great degree, upon our
+surroundings--upon race, country, and education. We are all the result
+of numberless conditions, and inherit vices and virtues, truths and
+prejudices. If we had been born in England, surrounded by wealth and
+clothed with power, most of us would have been Episcopalians, and
+believed in Church and State. We should have insisted that the people
+needed a religion, and that not having intellect enough to provide one
+for themselves, it was our duty to make one for them, and then compel
+them to support it. We should have believed it indecent to officiate in
+a pulpit without wearing a gown, and that prayers should be read from
+a book. Had we belonged to the lower classes, we might have been
+dissenters and protested against the mummeries of the High Church.
+Had we been born in Turkey, most of us would have been Mohammedans and
+believed in the inspiration of the Koran. We should have believed that
+Mohammed actually visited Heaven and became acquainted with an angel by
+the name of Gabriel, who was so broad between the eyes that it required
+three hundred days for a very smart camel to travel the distance. If
+some man had denied this story we should probably have denounced him as
+a dangerous person, one who was endeavoring to undermine the foundations
+of society, and to destroy all distinction between virtue and vice. We
+should have said to him, "What do you propose to give us in place
+of that angel? We cannot afford to give up an angel of that size for
+nothing." We would have insisted that the best and wisest men
+believed the Koran. We would have quoted from the works and letters of
+philosophers, generals and sultans, to show that the Koran was the best
+of books, and that Turkey was indebted to that book and to that alone
+for its greatness and prosperity. We would have asked that man whether
+he knew more than all the great minds of his country, whether he was so
+much wiser than his fathers? We would have pointed out to him the fact
+that thousands had been consoled in the hour of death by passages from
+the Koran; that they had died with glazed eyes brightened by visions of
+the heavenly harem, and gladly left this world of grief and tears.
+We would have regarded Christians as the vilest of men, and on all
+occasions would have repeated "There is but one God, and Mohammed is his
+prophet!"
+
+So, if we had been born in India, we should in all probability have
+believed in the religion of that country. We should have regarded the
+old records as true and sacred, and looked upon a wandering priest as
+better than the men from whom he begged, and by whose labor he lived.
+We should have believed in a god with three heads instead of three gods
+with one head, as we do now.
+
+Now and then some one says that the religion of his father and mother
+is good enough for him, and wonders why anybody should desire a better.
+Surely we are not bound to follow our parents in religion any more than
+in politics, science or art. China has been petrified by the worship
+of ancestors. If our parents had been satisfied with the religion of
+theirs, we would be still less advanced than we are. If we are, in any
+way, bound by the belief of our fathers, the doctrine will hold good
+back to the first people who had a religion; and if this doctrine is
+true, we ought now to be believers in that first religion. In other
+words, we would all be barbarians. You cannot show real respect to your
+parents by perpetuating their errors. Good fathers and mothers wish
+their children to advance, to overcome obstacles which baffled them, and
+to correct the errors of their education. If you wish to reflect credit
+upon your parents, accomplish more than they did, solve problems that
+they could not understand, and build better than they knew. To sacrifice
+your manhood upon the grave of your father is an honor to neither. Why
+should a son who has examined a subject, throw away his reason and adopt
+the views of his mother? Is not such a course dishonorable to both?
+
+We must remember that this "ancestor" argument is as old at least as
+the second generation of men, that it has served no purpose except to
+enslave mankind, and results mostly from the fact that acquiescence
+is easier than investigation. This argument pushed to its logical
+conclusion, would prevent the advance of all people whose parents were
+not free-thinkers.
+
+It is hard for many people to give up the religion in which they were
+born; to admit that their fathers were utterly mistaken, and that the
+sacred records of their country are but collections of myths and fables.
+
+But when we look for a moment at the world, we find that each nation has
+its "sacred records"--its religion, and its ideas of worship. Certainly
+all cannot be right; and as it would require a life time to investigate
+the claims of these various systems, it is hardly fair to damn a man
+forever, simply because he happens to believe the wrong one. All these
+religions were produced by barbarians. Civilized nations have contented
+themselves with changing the religions of their barbaric ancestors, but
+they have made none. Nearly all these religions are intensely selfish.
+Each one was made by some contemptible little nation that regarded
+itself as of almost infinite importance, and looked upon the other
+nations as beneath the notice of their god. In all these countries it
+was a crime to deny the sacred records, to laugh at the priests, to
+speak disrespectfully of the gods, to fail to divide your substance
+with the lazy hypocrites who managed your affairs in the next world upon
+condition that you would support them in this. In the olden time
+these theological people who quartered themselves upon the honest
+and industrious, were called soothsayers, seers, charmers, prophets,
+enchanters, sorcerers, wizards, astrologers, and impostors, but now,
+they are known as clergymen.
+
+We are no exception to the general rule, and consequently have our
+sacred books as well as the rest. Of course, it is claimed by many of
+our people that our books are the only true ones, the only ones that the
+real God ever wrote, or had anything whatever to do with. They insist
+that all other sacred books were written by hypocrites and impostors;
+that the Jews were the only people that God ever had any personal
+intercourse with, and that all other prophets and seers were inspired
+only by impudence and mendacity. True, it seems somewhat strange that
+God should have chosen a barbarous and unknown people who had little or
+nothing to do with the other nations of the earth, as his messengers to
+the rest of mankind.
+
+It is not easy to account for an infinite God making people so low in
+the scale of intellect as to require a revelation. Neither is it easy to
+perceive why, if a revelation was necessary for all, it was made only
+to a few. Of course, I know that it is extremely wicked to suggest these
+thoughts, and that ignorance is the only armor that can effectually
+protect you from the wrath of God. I am aware that investigators with
+all their genius, never find the road to heaven; that those who look
+where they are going are sure to miss it, and that only those who
+voluntarily put out their eyes and implicitly depend upon blindness can
+surely keep the narrow path.
+
+Whoever reads our sacred book is compelled to believe it or suffer
+forever the torments of the lost. We are told that we have the privilege
+of examining it for ourselves; but this privilege is only extended to
+us on the condition that we believe it whether it appears reasonable or
+not. We may disagree with others as much as we please upon the meaning
+of all passages in the bible, but we must not deny the truth of a single
+word. We must believe that the book is inspired. If we obey its every
+precept without believing in its inspiration we will be damned just as
+certainly as though we disobeyed its every word. We have no right to
+weigh it in the scales of reason--to test it by the laws of nature, or
+the facts of observation and experience. To do this, we are told, is to
+put ourselves above the word of God, and sit in judgment on the works of
+our creator.
+
+For my part, I cannot admit that belief is a voluntary thing. It seems
+to me that evidence, even in spite of ourselves, will have its weight,
+and that whatever our wish may be, we are compelled to stand with
+fairness by the scales, and give the exact result. It will not do to say
+that we reject the bible because we are wicked. Our wickedness must be
+ascertained not from our belief but from our acts.
+
+I am told by the clergy that I ought not to attack the bible; that I am
+leading thousands to perdition and rendering certain the damnation of my
+own soul. They have had the kindness to advise me that, if my object is
+to make converts, I am pursuing the wrong course. They tell me to use
+gentler expressions, and more cunning words. Do they really wish me
+to make more converts? If their advice is honest, they are traitors to
+their trust. If their advice is not honest, then they are unfair with
+me. Certainly they should wish me to pursue the course that will make
+the fewest converts, and yet they pretend to tell me how my influence
+could be increased. It may be, that upon this principle John Bright
+advises America to adopt free trade, so that our country can become a
+successful rival of Great Britain. Sometimes I think that even ministers
+are not entirely candid.
+
+Notwithstanding the advice of the clergy, I have concluded to pursue my
+own course, to tell my honest thoughts, and to have my freedom in this
+world whatever my fate may be in the next.
+
+The real oppressor, enslaver and corrupter of the people is the bible.
+That book is the chain that binds, the dungeon that holds the clergy.
+That book spreads the pall of superstition over the colleges and
+schools. That book puts out the eyes of science, and makes honest
+investigation a crime. That book unmans the politician and degrades the
+people. That book fills the world with bigotry, hypocrisy and fear.
+It plays the same part in our country that has been played by "sacred
+records" in all the nations of the world.
+
+A little while ago I saw one of the bibles of the Middle Ages. It was
+about two feet in length, and one and a half in width. It had immense
+oaken covers, with hasps, and clasps, and hinges large enough almost
+for the doors of a penitentiary. It was covered with pictures of winged
+angels and aureoled saints. In my imagination I saw this book carried
+to the cathedral altar in solemn pomp--heard the chant of robed and
+kneeling priests, felt the strange tremor of the organ's peal; saw the
+colored light streaming through windows stained and touched by blood
+and flame--the swinging censer with its perfumed incense rising to the
+mighty roof, dim with height and rich with legend carved in stone, while
+on the walls was hung, written in light, and shade, and all the colors
+that can tell of joy and tears, the pictured history of the martyred
+Christ. The people fell upon their knees. The book was opened, and the
+priest read the messages from God to man. To the multitude, the book
+itself was evidence enough that it was not the work of human hands. How
+could those little marks and lines and dots contain, like tombs, the
+thoughts of men, and how could they, touched by a ray of light from
+human eyes, give up their dead? How could these characters span the vast
+chasm dividing the present from the past, and make it possible for the
+living still to hear the voices of the dead?
+
+
+
+
+V. THE PENTATEUCH
+
+The first five books in our bible are known as the Pentateuch. For
+a long time it was supposed that Moses was the author, and among the
+ignorant the supposition still prevails. As a matter of fact, it seems
+to be well settled that Moses had nothing to do with these books, and
+that they were not written until he had been dust and ashes for hundreds
+of years. But, as all the churches still insist that he was the author,
+that he wrote even an account of his own death and burial, let us
+speak of him as though these books were in fact written by him. As the
+christians maintain that God was the real author, it makes but little
+difference whom he employed as his pen, or clerk.
+
+Nearly all authors of sacred books have given an account of the creation
+of the universe, the origin of matter, and the destiny of the human
+race. Nearly all have pointed out the obligation that man is under to
+his creator for having placed him upon the earth, and allowed him to
+live and suffer, and have taught that nothing short of the most abject
+worship could possibly compensate God for his trouble and labor suffered
+and done for the good of man. They have nearly all insisted that we
+should thank God for all that is good in life; but they have not all
+informed us as to whom we should hold responsible for the evils we
+endure.
+
+Moses differed from most of the makers of sacred books by his failure
+to say anything of a future life, by failing to promise heaven, and to
+threaten hell. Upon the subject of a future state, there is not one
+word in the Pentateuch. Probably at that early day God did not deem
+it important to make a revelation as to the eternal destiny of man.
+He seems to have thought that he could control the Jews, at least, by
+rewards and punishments in this world, and so he kept the frightful
+realities of eternal joy and torment a profound secret from the people
+of his choice. He thought it far more important to tell the Jews their
+origin than to enlighten them as to their destiny.
+
+We must remember that every tribe and nation has some way in which, the
+more striking phenomena of nature are accounted for. These accounts
+are handed down by tradition, changed by numberless narrators as
+intelligence increases, or to account for newly discovered facts, or for
+the purpose of satisfying the appetite for the marvelous.
+
+The way in which a tribe or nation accounts for day and night, the
+change of seasons, the fall of snow and rain, the flight of birds,
+the origin of the rainbow, the peculiarities of animals, the dreams
+of sleep, the visions of the insane, the existence of earthquakes,
+volcanoes, storms, lightning and the thousand things that attract the
+attention and excite the wonder, fear or admiration of mankind, may be
+called the philosophy of that tribe or nation. And as all phenomena are,
+by savage and barbaric man accounted for as the action of intelligent
+beings for the accomplishment of certain objects, and as these beings
+were supposed to have the power to assist or injure man, certain things
+were supposed necessary for man to do in order to gain the assistance,
+and avoid the anger of these gods. Out of this belief grew certain
+ceremonies, and these ceremonies united with the belief, formed
+religion; and consequently every religion has for its foundation a
+misconception of the cause of phenomena.
+
+All worship is necessarily based upon the belief that some being exists
+who can, if he will, change the natural order of events. The savage
+prays to a stone that he calls a god, while the christian prays to a god
+that he calls a spirit, and the prayers of both are equally useful. The
+savage and the christian put behind the Universe an intelligent cause,
+and this cause whether represented by one god or many, has been, in all
+ages, the object of all worship. To carry a fetich, to utter a prayer,
+to count beads, to abstain from food, to sacrifice a lamb, a child or an
+enemy, are simply different ways by which the accomplishment of the same
+object is sought, and are all the offspring of the same error.
+
+Many systems of religion must have existed many ages before the art of
+writing was discovered, and must have passed through many changes before
+the stories, miracles, histories, prophesies and mistakes became fixed
+and petrified in written words. After that, change was possible only by
+giving new meanings to old words, a process rendered necessary by the
+continual acquisition of facts somewhat inconsistent with a literal
+interpretation of the "sacred records." In this way an honest faith
+often prolongs its life by dishonest methods; and in this way the
+Christians of to-day are trying to harmonize the Mosaic account of
+creation with the theories and discoveries of modern science.
+
+Admitting that Moses was the author of the Pentateuch, or that he gave
+to the Jews a religion, the question arises as to where he obtained
+his information. We are told by the theologians that he received his
+knowledge from God, and that every word he wrote was and is the exact
+truth. It is admitted at the same time that he was an adopted son of
+Pharaoh's daughter, and enjoyed the rank and privilege of a prince.
+Under such circumstances, he must have been well acquainted with the
+literature, philosophy and religion of the Egyptians, and must have
+known what they believed and taught as to the creation of the world.
+
+Now, if the account of the origin of this earth as given by Moses is
+substantially like that given by the Egyptians, then we must conclude
+that he learned it from them. Should we imagine that he was divinely
+inspired because he gave to the Jews what the Egyptians had given him?
+
+The Egyptian priests taught _first_, that a god created the original
+matter, leaving it in a state of chaos; _second_, that a god moulded it
+into form; _third_, that the breath of a god moved upon the face of
+the deep; _fourth_, that a god created simply by saying "Let it be;"
+_fifth_, that a god created light before the sun existed.
+
+Nothing can be clearer than that Moses received from the Egyptians the
+principal parts of his narrative, making such changes and additions as
+were necessary to satisfy the peculiar superstitions of his own people.
+
+If some man at the present day should assert that he had received from
+God the theories of evolution, the survival of the fittest, and the
+law of heredity, and we should afterwards find that he was not only an
+Englishman, but had lived in the family of Charles Darwin, we certainly
+would account for his having these theories in a natural way, So, if
+Darwin himself should pretend that he was inspired, and had obtained
+his peculiar theories from God, we should probably reply that his
+grandfather suggested the the same ideas, and that Lamarck published
+substantially the same theories the same year that Mr. Darwin was born.
+
+Now, if we have sufficient courage, we will, by the same course of
+reasoning, account for the story of creation found in the bible. We
+will say that it contains the belief of Moses, and that he received his
+information from the Egyptians, and not from God. If we take the account
+as the absolute truth and use it for the purpose of determining the
+value of modern thought, scientific advancement becomes impossible. And
+even if the account of the Creation as given by Moses should turn out
+to be true, and should be so admitted by all the scientific world, the
+claim that he was inspired would still be without the least particle
+of proof. We would be forced to admit that he knew more than we had
+supposed. It certainly is no proof that a man is inspired simply because
+he is right.
+
+No one pretends that Shakespeare was inspired, and yet all the writers
+of the books of the Old Testament put together, could not have produced
+Hamlet.
+
+Why should we, looking upon some rough and awkward thing, or god in
+stone, say that it must have been produced by some inspired sculptor,
+and with the same breath pronounce the _Venus de Milo_ to be the work
+of man? Why should we, looking at some ancient daub of angel, saint or
+virgin, say its painter must have been assisted by a god?
+
+Let us account for all we see by the facts we know. If there are things
+for which we cannot account, let us wait for light. To account for
+anything by supernatural agencies is, in fact to say that we do not
+know. Theology is not what we know about God, but what we do not know
+about Nature. In order to increase our respect for the bible, it became
+necessary for the priests to exalt and extol that book, and at the same
+time to decry and belittle the reasoning powers of man. The whole
+power of the pulpit has been used for hundreds of years to destroy the
+confidence of man in himself--to induce him to distrust his own powers
+of thought, to believe that he was wholly unable to decide any question
+for himself, and that all human virtue consists in faith and obedience.
+The Church has said, "Believe, and obey! If you reason, you will become
+an unbeliever, and unbelievers will be lost. If you disobey, you will
+do so through vain pride and curiosity, and will, like Adam and Eve, be
+thrust from paradise forever!"
+
+For my part, I care nothing for what the Church says, except in so far
+as it accords with my reason; and the bible is nothing to me, only in so
+far as it agrees with what I think or know.
+
+All books should be examined in the same spirit, and truth should be
+welcomed and falsehood exposed, no matter in what volume they may be
+found.
+
+Let us in this spirit examine the Pentateuch; and if anything appears
+unreasonable, contradictory or absurd, let us have the honesty and
+courage to admit it. Certainly no good can result either from deceiving
+ourselves or others. Many millions have implicitly believed this book,
+and have just as implicitly believed that polygamy was sanctioned by
+God. Millions have regarded this book as the foundation of all
+human progress, and at the same time looked upon slavery as a divine
+institution. Millions have declared this book to have been infinitely
+holy, and to prove that they were right, have imprisoned, robbed
+and burned their fellow men. The inspiration of this book has been
+established by famine, sword and fire, by dungeon, chain and whip, by
+dagger and by rack, by force and fear and fraud, and generations have
+been frightened by threats of hell, and bribed with promises of heaven.
+
+Let us examine a portion of this book, not in the darkness of our fear,
+but in the light of reason.
+
+And first, let us examine the account given of the Creation of this
+world, commenced, according to the bible, on Monday morning about five
+thousand eight hundred and eighty-three years ago.
+
+
+
+
+VI. MONDAY
+
+Moses commences his story by telling us that in the beginning God
+created the heaven and the earth.
+
+If this means anything, it means that God produced, caused to exist,
+called into being, the heaven and the earth. It will not do to say that
+he formed the heaven and the earth of previously existing matter. Moses
+conveys, and intended to convey the idea that the matter of which the
+heaven and the earth are composed, was created.
+
+It is impossible for me to conceive of something being created from
+nothing. Nothing, regarded in the light of a raw material, is a decided
+failure. I cannot conceive of matter apart from force. Neither is it
+possible to think of force disconnected with matter. You cannot imagine
+matter going back to absolute nothing. Neither can you imagine nothing
+being changed into something. You may be eternally damned if you do not
+say that you can conceive these things, but you cannot conceive them.
+
+Such is the constitution of the human mind that it cannot even think of
+a commencement or an end of matter, or force.
+
+If God created the universe, there was a time when he commenced to
+create. Back of that commencement there must have been an eternity. In
+that eternity what was this God doing? He certainly did not think.
+There was nothing to think about. He did not remember. Nothing had ever
+happened. What did he do? Can you imagine anything more absurd than an
+infinite intelligence in infinite nothing wasting an eternity?
+
+I do not pretend to tell how all these things really are; but I do
+insist that a statement that cannot possibly be comprehended by any
+human being, and that appears utterly impossible, repugnant to every
+fact of experience, and contrary to everything that we really know, must
+be rejected by every honest man.
+
+We can conceive of eternity, because we cannot conceive of a cessation
+of time. We can conceive of infinite space because we cannot conceive
+of so much matter that our imagination will not stand upon the farthest
+star, and see infinite space beyond. In other words, we cannot conceive
+of a cessation of time; therefore eternity is a necessity of the mind.
+Eternity sustains the same relation to time that space does to matter.
+
+In the time of Moses, it was perfectly safe for him to write an account
+of the creation of the world. He had simply to put in form the crude
+notions of the people. At that time, no other Jew could have written
+a better account. Upon that subject he felt at liberty to give his
+imagination full play. There was no one who could authoritatively
+contradict anything he might say. It was substantially the same story
+that had been imprinted in curious characters upon the clay records
+of Babylon, the gigantic monuments of Egypt, and the gloomy temples of
+India. In those days there was an almost infinite difference between
+the educated and ignorant. The people were controlled almost entirely
+by signs and wonders. By the lever of fear, priests moved the world. The
+sacred records were made and kept, and altered by them. The people could
+not read, and looked upon one who could, as almost a god. In our day it
+is hard to conceive of the influence of an educated class in a barbarous
+age. It was only necessary to produce the "sacred record," and ignorance
+fell upon its face. The people were taught that the record was inspired,
+and therefore true. They were not taught that it was true, and therefore
+inspired.
+
+After all, the real question is not whether the bible is inspired, but
+whether it is true. If it is true, it does not need to be inspired. If
+it is true, it makes no difference whether it was written by a man or a
+god. The multiplication table is just as useful, just as true as though
+God had arranged the figures himself. If the bible is really true,
+the claim of inspiration need not be urged; and if it is not true, its
+inspiration can hardly be established. As a matter of fact, the truth
+does not need to be inspired. Nothing needs inspiration except a
+falsehood or a mistake. Where truth ends, where probability stops,
+inspiration begins. A fact never went into partnership with a miracle.
+Truth does not need the assistance of miracle. A fact will fit every
+other fact in the Universe, because it is the product of all other
+facts. A lie will fit nothing except another lie made for the express
+purpose of fitting it. After a while the man gets tired of lying, and
+then the last lie will not fit the next fact, and then there is an
+opportunity to use a miracle. Just at that point, it is necessary to
+have a little inspiration.
+
+It seems to me that reason is the highest attribute of man, and that if
+there can be any communication from God to man, it must be addressed
+to his reason. It does not seem possible that in order to understand a
+message from God it is absolutely essential to throw our reason away.
+How could God make known his will to any being destitute of reason? How
+can any man accept as a revelation from God that which is unreasonable
+to him? God cannot make a revelation to another man for me. He must make
+it to me, and until he convinces my reason that it is true, I cannot
+receive it.
+
+The statement that in the beginning God created the heaven and the
+earth, I cannot accept. It is contrary to my reason, and I cannot
+believe it. It appears reasonable to me that force has existed from
+eternity. Force cannot, as it appears to me, exist apart from matter.
+Force, in its nature, is forever active, and without matter it could
+not act; and so I think matter must have existed forever. To conceive
+of matter without force, or of force without matter, or of a time when
+neither existed, or of a being who existed for an eternity without
+either, and who out of nothing created both, is to me utterly
+impossible. I may be damned on this account, but I cannot help it. In my
+judgment, Moses was mistaken.
+
+It will not do to say that Moses merely intended to tell what God did,
+in making the heavens and the earth out of matter then in existence.
+He distinctly states that in the _beginning_ God created them. If this
+account is true, we must believe that God, existing in infinite space
+surrounded by eternal nothing, naught and void, created, produced,
+called into being, willed into existence this universe of countless
+stars.
+
+The next thing we are told by this inspired gentleman is, that God
+created light, and proceeded to divide it from the darkness.
+
+Certainly, the person who wrote this believed that darkness was a thing,
+an entity, a material that could get mixed and tangled up with light,
+and that these entities, light and darkness, had to be separated. In his
+imagination he probably saw God throwing pieces and chunks of darkness
+on one side, and rays and beams of light on the other. It is hard for a
+man who has been born but once to understand these things. For my part I
+cannot understand how light can be separated from darkness. I had always
+supposed that darkness was simply the absence of light, and that under
+no circumstances could it be necessary to take the darkness away from
+the light. It is certain, however, that Moses believed darkness to be
+a form of matter, because I find that in another place he speaks of a
+darkness that could be felt. They used to have on exhibition at Rome a
+bottle of the darkness that overspread Egypt.
+
+You cannot divide light from darkness any more than you can divide heat
+from cold. Cold is an absence of heat, and darkness is an absence of
+light. I suppose that we have no conception of absolute cold. We know
+only degrees of heat. Twenty degrees below zero is just twenty degrees
+warmer than forty degrees below zero. Neither cold nor darkness are
+entities, and these words express simply either the absolute or partial
+absence of heat or light. I cannot conceive how light can be divided
+from darkness, but I can conceive how a barbarian several thousand years
+ago, writing upon a subject about which he knew nothing, could make a
+mistake. The creator of light could not have written in this way. If
+such a being exists, he must have known the nature of that "mode of
+motion" that paints the earth on every eye, and clothes in garments
+seven-hued this universe of worlds.
+
+
+
+
+VII. TUESDAY
+
+We are next informed by Moses that "God said Let there be a firmament in
+the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters;"
+and that "God made the firmament, and divided the waters which were
+under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament."
+
+What did the writer mean by the word firmament? Theologians now tell
+us that he meant an "expanse." This will not do. How could an expanse
+divide the waters from the waters, so that the waters above the expanse
+would not fall into and mingle with the waters below the expanse? The
+truth is that Moses regarded the firmament as a solid affair. It was
+where God lived, and where water was kept. It was for this reason that
+they used to pray for rain. They supposed that some angel could with a
+lever raise a gate and let out the quantity of moisture desired. It was
+with the water from this firmament that the world was drowned when the
+windows of heaven were opened. It was in this firmament that the sons
+of God lived--the sons who "saw the daughters of men that they were
+fair and took them wives of all which they chose." The issue of such
+marriages were giants, and "the same became mighty men which were of
+old, men of renown."
+
+Nothing is clearer than that Moses regarded the firmament as a vast
+material division that separated the waters of the world, and upon
+whose floor God lived, surrounded by his sons. In no other way could he
+account for rain. Where did the water come from? He knew nothing about
+the laws of evaporation. He did not know that the sun wooed with amorous
+kisses the waves of the sea, and that they, clad in glorified mist
+rising to meet their lover, were, by disappointment, changed to tears
+and fell as rain.
+
+The idea that the firmament was the abode of the Deity must have been in
+the mind of Moses when he related the dream of Jacob. "And he dreamed,
+and behold, a ladder set upon the earth and the top of it reached to
+heaven; and behold the angels of God ascending and descending on it; and
+behold the Lord stood above it and said, I am the Lord God."
+
+So, when the people were building the tower of Babel "the Lord came down
+to see the city, and the tower which the children of men builded. And
+the Lord said, Behold the people is one, and they have all one language:
+and this they begin to do; and nothing will be restrained from them
+which they imagined to do. Go to, let us go down and confound their
+language that they may not understand one another's speech."
+
+The man who wrote that absurd account must have believed that God lived
+above the earth, in the firmament. The same idea was in the mind of the
+Psalmist when he said that God "bowed the heavens and came down."
+
+Of course, God could easily remove any person bodily to heaven, as it
+was but a little way above the earth. "Enoch walked with God, and he was
+not, for God took him." The accounts in the bible of the ascension of
+Elijah, Christ and St. Paul were born of the belief that the firmament
+was the dwelling-place of God. It probably never occurred to these
+writers that if the firmament was seven or eight miles away, Enoch and
+the rest would have been frozen perfectly stiff long before the journey
+could have been completed. Possibly Elijah might have made the voyage,
+as he was carried to heaven in a chariot of fire "by a whirlwind."
+
+The truth is, that Moses was mistaken, and upon that mistake the
+christians located their heaven and their hell. The telescope destroyed
+the firmament, did away with the heaven of the New Testament, rendered
+the ascension of our Lord and the assumption of his Mother infinitely
+absurd, crumbled to chaos the gates and palaces of the New Jerusalem,
+and in their places gave to man a wilderness of worlds.
+
+
+
+
+VIII. WEDNESDAY
+
+We are next informed by the historian of Creation, that after God had
+finished making the firmament and had succeeded in dividing the waters
+by means of an "expanse," he proceeded "to gather the waters on the
+earth together in seas, so that the dry land might appear."
+
+Certainly the writer of this did not have any conception of the real
+form of the earth. He could not have known anything of the attraction of
+gravitation. He must have regarded the earth as flat and supposed that
+it required considerable force and power to induce the water to leave
+the mountains and collect in the valleys. Just as soon as the water was
+forced to run down hill, the dry land appeared, and the grass began to
+grow, and the mantles of green were thrown over the shoulders of the
+hills, and the trees laughed into bud and blossom, and the branches were
+laden with fruit. And all this happened before a ray had left the quiver
+of the sun, before a glittering beam had thrilled the bosom of a flower,
+and before the Dawn with trembling hands had drawn aside the curtains of
+the East and welcomed to her arms the eager god of Day.
+
+It does not seem to me that grass and trees could grow and ripen into
+seed and fruit without the sun. According to the account, this all
+happened on the third day. Now, if, as the christians say, Moses did not
+mean by the word day a period of twenty-four hours, but an immense and
+almost measureless space of time, and as God did not, according to this
+view make any animals until the fifth day, that is, not for millions of
+years after he made the grass and trees, for what purpose did he cause
+the trees to bear fruit?
+
+Moses says that God said on the third day, "Let the earth bring forth
+grass, the herb yielding seed, and the fruit tree yielding fruit after
+his kind, whose seed is in itself upon the earth; and it was so. And the
+earth brought forth grass and herb yielding seed after his kind, and the
+tree yielding fruit whose seed was in itself after his kind; and God saw
+that it was good, and the evening and the morning were the third day."
+
+There was nothing to eat this fruit; not an insect with painted wings
+sought the honey of the flowers; not a single living, breathing thing
+upon the earth. Plenty of grass, a great variety of herbs, an abundance
+of fruit, but not a mouth in all the world. If Moses is right, this
+state of things lasted only two days; but if the modern theologians are
+correct, it continued for millions of ages.
+
+"It is now well known that the organic history of the earth can be
+properly divided into five epochs--the Primordial, Primary, Secondary,
+Tertiary, and Quaternary. Each of these epochs is characterized by
+animal and vegetable life peculiar to itself.. In the First will be
+found Algae and Skull-less Vertebrates, in the Second, Ferns and Fishes,
+in the Third, Pine Forests and Reptiles, in the Fourth, Foliaceous
+Forests and Mammals, and in the Fifth, Man."
+
+How much more reasonable this is than the idea that the Earth was
+covered with grass, and herbs, and trees loaded with fruit for millions
+of years before an animal existed.
+
+There is, in Nature, an even balance forever kept between the total
+amounts of animal and vegetable life. "In her wonderful economy she must
+form and bountifully nourish her vegetable progeny--twin-brother life to
+her, with that of animals. The perfect balance between plant existences
+and animal existences must always be maintained, while matter courses
+through the eternal circle, becoming each in turn. If an animal be
+resolved into its ultimate constituents in a period according to the
+surrounding circumstances, say, of four hours, of four months, of four
+years, or even of four thousand years,--for it is impossible to deny
+that there may be instances of all these periods during which the
+process has continued--those elements which assume the gaseous form
+mingle at once with the atmosphere and are taken up from it without
+delay by the ever-open mouths of vegetable life. By a thousand pores
+in every leaf the carbonic acid which renders the atmosphere unfit for
+animal life is absorbed, the carbon being separated, and assimilated to
+form the vegetable fibre, which, as wood, makes and furnishes our houses
+and ships, is burned for our warmth, or is stored up under pressure for
+coal. All this carbon has played its part, and many parts in its time,
+as animal existences from monad up to man. Our mahogany of to-day has
+been many negroes in its turn, and before the African existed, was
+integral portions of many a generation of extinct species."
+
+It seems reasonable to suppose that certain kinds of vegetation
+and certain kinds of animals should exist together, and that as the
+character of the vegetation changed, a corresponding change would take
+place in the animal world. It may be that I am led to these conclusions
+by "total depravity," or that I lack the necessary humility of spirit to
+satisfactorily harmonize Haeckel and Moses; or that I am carried away by
+pride, blinded by reason, given over to hardness of heart that I might
+be damned, but I never can believe that the earth was covered with
+leaves, and buds, and flowers, and fruits before the sun with glittering
+spear had driven back the hosts of Night.
+
+
+
+
+IX. THURSDAY
+
+After the world was covered with vegetation, it occurred to Moses that
+it was about time to make a sun and moon; and so we are told that on the
+fourth day God said, "Let there be light in the firmament of the heaven
+to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs and for
+seasons, and for days and years; and let them be for lights in the
+firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth; and it was so. And
+God made two great lights; the greater light to rule the day, and the
+lesser light to rule the night; he made the stars also."
+
+Can we believe that the inspired writer had any idea of the size of the
+sun? Draw a circle five inches in diameter, and by its side thrust a pin
+through the paper. The hole made by the pin will sustain about the same
+relation to the circle that the earth does to the sun. Did he know that
+the sun was eight hundred and sixty thousand miles in diameter; that it
+was enveloped in an ocean of fire thousands of miles in depth, hotter
+even than the christian's hell, over which sweep tempests of flame
+moving at the rate of one hundred miles a second, compared with which
+the wildest storm that ever wrecked the forests of this world was but a
+calm? Did he know that the sun every moment of time throws out as much
+heat as could be generated by the combustion of millions upon millions
+of tons of coal? Did he know that the volume of the Earth is less than
+one-millionth of that of the sun? Did he know of the one hundred and
+four planets belonging to our solar system, all children of the sun? Did
+he know of Jupiter eighty-five thousand miles in diameter, hundreds
+of times as large as our earth, turning on his axis at the rate of
+twenty-five thousand miles an hour accompanied by four moons, making the
+tour of his orbit in fifty years, a distance of three thousand million
+miles? Did he know anything about Saturn, his rings and his eight moons?
+Did he have the faintest idea that all these planets were once a part of
+the sun; that the vast luminary was once thousands of millions of miles
+in diameter; that Neptune, Uranus, Saturn, Jupiter and Mars were all
+born before our earth, and that by no possibility could this world have
+existed three days, nor three periods, nor three "good whiles" before
+its source, the sun?
+
+Moses supposed the sun to be about three or four feet in diameter and
+the moon about half that size. Compared with the earth they were but
+simple specks. This idea seems to have been shared by all the "inspired"
+men. We find in the book of Joshua that the sun stood still, and the
+moon stayed until the people had avenged themselves upon their enemies.
+"So the sun stood still in the midst of heaven, and hasted not to go
+down about a whole day."
+
+We are told that the sacred writer wrote in common speech as we do
+when we talk about the rising and setting of the sun, and that all he
+intended to say was that the earth ceased to turn on its axis "for about
+a whole day."
+
+My own opinion is that General Joshua knew no more about the motions of
+the earth than he did about mercy and justice. If he had known that the
+earth turned upon its axis at the rate of a thousand miles an hour, and
+swept in its course about the sun at the rate of sixty-eight thousand
+miles an hour, he would have doubled the hailstones, spoken of in the
+same chapter, that the Lord cast down from heaven, and allowed the sun
+and moon to rise and set in the usual way.
+
+It is impossible to conceive of a more absurd story than this about the
+stopping of the sun and moon, and yet nothing so excites the malice of
+the orthodox preacher as to call its truth in question. Some endeavor
+to account for the phenomenon by natural causes, while others attempt
+to show that God could, by the refraction of light have made the sun
+visible although actually shining on the opposite side of the earth. The
+last hypothesis has been seriously urged by ministers within the last
+few months. The Rev. Henry M. Morey of South Bend, Indiana, says "that
+the phenomenon was simply optical. The rotary motion of the earth was
+not disturbed, but the light of the sun was prolonged by the same laws
+of refraction and reflection by which the sun now appears to be above
+the horizon when it is really below. The medium through which the sun's
+rays passed may have been miraculously influenced so as to have caused
+the sun to linger above the horizon long after its usual time for
+disappearance."
+
+This is the latest and ripest product of christian scholarship upon
+this question no doubt, but still it is not entirely satisfactory to me.
+According to the sacred account the sun did not linger, merely, above
+the horizon, but stood still "in the midst of heaven for about a
+whole day," that is to say, for about twelve hours. If the air was
+miraculously changed, so that it would refract the rays of the sun while
+the earth turned over as usual for "about a whole day," then, at the
+end of that time the sun must have been visible in the east, that is,
+it must by that time have been the next morning. According to this, that
+most wonderful day must have been at least thirty-six hours in length.
+We have first, the twelve hours of natural light, then twelve hours of
+"refracted and reflected" light. By that time it would again be morning,
+and the sun would shine for twelve hours more in the natural way, making
+thirty-six hours in all.
+
+If the Rev. Morey would depend a little less on "refraction" and a
+little more on "reflection," he would conclude that the whole story is
+simply a barbaric myth and fable.
+
+It hardly seems reasonable that God, if there is one, would either stop
+the globe, change the constitution of the atmosphere or the nature of
+light simply to afford Joshua an opportunity to kill people on that
+day when he could just as easily have waited until the next morning.
+It certainly cannot be very gratifying to God for us to believe such
+childish things.
+
+It has been demonstrated that force is eternal; that it is forever
+active, and eludes destruction by change of form. Motion is a form of
+force, and all arrested motion changes instantly to heat. The earth
+turns upon its axis at about one thousand miles an hour. Let it be
+stopped and a force beyond our imagination is changed to heat. It has
+been calculated that to stop the world would produce as much heat as the
+burning of a solid piece of coal three times the size of the earth.
+And yet we are asked to believe that this was done in order that one
+barbarian might defeat another. Such stories never would have been
+written, had not the belief been general that the heavenly bodies were
+as nothing compared with the earth.
+
+The view of Moses was acquiesced in by the Jewish people and by the
+Christian world for thousands of years. It is supposed that Moses
+lived about fifteen hundred years before Christ, and although he was
+"inspired," and obtained his information directly from God, he did not
+know as much about our solar system as the Chinese did a thousand
+years before he was born. "The Emperor Chwenhio adopted as an epoch, a
+conjunction of the planets Mercury, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn, which has
+been shown by M. Bailly to have occurred no less than 2449 years before
+Christ." The ancient Chinese knew not only the motions of the planets,
+but they could calculate eclipses. "In the reign of the Emperor
+Chow-Kang, the chief astronomers, Ho and Hi were condemned to death for
+neglecting to announce a solar eclipse which took place 2169 B. C, a
+clear proof that the prediction of eclipses was a part of the duty of
+the imperial astronomers."
+
+Is it not strange that a Chinaman should find out by his own exertions
+more about the material universe than Moses could when assisted by its
+Creator?
+
+About eight hundred years after God gave Moses the principal facts about
+the creation of the "heaven and the earth" he performed another miracle
+far more wonderful than stopping the world. On this occasion he not
+only stopped the earth, but actually caused it to turn the other way.
+A Jewish king was sick, and God, in order to convince him that he would
+ultimately recover, offered to make the shadow on the dial go forward,
+or backward ten degrees. The king thought it was too easy a thing to
+make the shadow go forward, and asked that it be turned back. Thereupon,
+"Isaiah the prophet cried unto the Lord, and he brought the shadow
+ten degrees backward by which it had gone down in the dial of Ahaz." I
+hardly see how this miracle could be accounted for even by "refraction"
+and "reflection."
+
+It seems, from the account, that this stupendous miracle was performed
+after the king had been cured. The account of the shadow going backward
+is given in the eleventh verse of the twentieth chapter of Second Kings,
+while the cure is given in the seventh verse of the same chapter. "And
+Isaiah said, Take a lump of figs. And they took and laid it on the boil,
+and he recovered."
+
+Stopping the world and causing it to turn back ten degrees after that,
+seems to have been, as the boil was already cured by the figs, a useless
+display of power.
+
+The easiest way to account for all these wonders is to say that the
+"inspired" writers were mistaken. In this way a fearful burden is lifted
+from the credulity of man, and he is left free to believe the evidences
+of his own senses, and the demonstrations of science. In this way he can
+emancipate himself from the slavery of superstition, the control of the
+barbaric dead, and the despotism of the church.
+
+Only about a hundred years ago, Buffon, the naturalist, was compelled by
+the faculty of theology at Paris to publicly renounce fourteen "errors"
+in his work on Natural History because they were at variance with the
+Mosaic account of creation. The Pentateuch is still the scientific
+standard of the church, and ignorant priests, armed with that, pronounce
+sentence upon the vast accomplishments of modern thought.
+
+
+
+
+X. "HE MADE THE STARS ALSO."
+
+Moses came very near forgetting about the stars, and only gave five
+words to all the hosts of heaven. Can it be possible that he knew
+anything about the stars beyond the mere fact that he saw them shining
+above him?
+
+Did he know that the nearest star, the one we ought to be the best
+acquainted with, is twenty-one billion of miles away, and that it is
+a sun shining by its own light? Did he know of the next, that is
+thirty-seven billion miles distant? Is it possible that he was
+acquainted with Sirius, a sun two thousand six hundred and eighty-eight
+times larger than our own, surrounded by a system of heavenly bodies,
+several of which are already known, and distant from us eighty-two
+billion miles? Did he know that the Polar star that tells the mariner
+his course and guided slaves to liberty and joy, is distant from this
+little world two hundred and ninety-two billion miles, and that Capella
+wheels and shines one hundred and thirty-three billion miles beyond? Did
+he know that it would require about seventy-two years for light to
+reach us from this star? Did he know that light travels one hundred and
+eighty-five thousand miles a second? Did he know that some stars are
+so far away in the infinite abysses that five millions of years are
+required for their light to reach this globe?
+
+If this is true, and if as the bible tells us, the stars were made after
+the earth, then this world has been wheeling in its orbit for at least
+five million years.
+
+It may be replied that it was not the intention of God to teach geology
+and astronomy. Then why did he say anything upon these subjects? and if
+he did say anything, why did he not give the facts?
+
+According to the sacred records God created, on the first day, the
+heaven and the earth, "moved upon the face of the waters," and made
+the light. On the second day he made the firmament or the "expanse" and
+divided the waters. On the third day he gathered the waters into seas,
+let the dry land appear and caused the earth to bring forth grass, herbs
+and fruit trees, and on the fourth day he made the sun, moon and stars
+and set them in the firmament of heaven to give light upon the earth.
+This division of labor is very striking. The work of the other days is
+as nothing when compared with that of the fourth. Is it possible that
+it required the same time and labor to make the grass, herbs and fruit
+trees, that it did to fill with countless constellations the infinite
+expanse of space?
+
+
+
+
+XI. FRIDAY
+
+We are then told that on the next day "God said, Let the waters bring
+forth abundantly the moving creatures that hath life, and fowl that may
+fly above the earth in the open firmament of heaven. And God created
+great whales and every living creature which the waters brought forth
+abundantly, after their kind, and every winged fowl after his kind, and
+God saw that it was good. And God blessed them, saying, Be fruitful and
+multiply and fill the waters in the seas, and let fowl multiply in the
+earth."
+
+Is it true that while the dry land was covered with grass, and herbs,
+and trees bearing fruit, the ocean was absolutely devoid of life, and so
+remained for millions of years?
+
+If Moses meant twenty-four hours by the word day, then it would make but
+little difference on which of the six days animals were made; but if
+the word day was used to express millions of ages, during which life was
+slowly evolved from monad up to man, then the account becomes infinitely
+absurd, puerile and foolish. There is not a scientist of high standing
+who will say that in his judgment the earth was covered with fruit
+bearing trees before the moners, the ancestors it may be of the human
+race, felt in Laurentian seas the first faint throb of life. Nor is
+there one who will declare that there was a single spire of grass before
+the sun had poured upon the world his flood of gold.
+
+Why should men in the name of religion try to harmonize the
+contradictions that exist between Nature and a book? Why should
+philosophers be denounced for placing more reliance upon what they know
+than upon what they have been told? If there is a God, it is reasonably
+certain that he made the world, but it is by no means certain that
+he is-the author of the bible. Why then should we not place greater
+confidence in Nature than in a book? And even if this God made not only
+the world but the book besides, it does not follow that the book is
+the best part of Creation, and the only part that we will be eternally
+punished for denying. It seems to me that it is quite as important to
+know something of the solar system, something of the physical history
+of this globe, as it is to know the adventures of Jonah or the diet of
+Ezekiel. For my part, I would infinitely prefer to know all the results
+of scientific investigation, than to be inspired as Moses was.
+Supposing the bible to be true; why is it any worse or more wicked
+for free-thinkers to deny it, than for priests to deny the doctrine of
+Evolution, or the dynamic theory of heat? Why should we be damned for
+laughing at Samson and his foxes, while others, holding the Nebular
+Hypothesis in utter contempt, go straight to heaven? It seems to me
+that a belief in the great truths of science are fully as essential to
+salvation, as the creed of any church. We are taught that a man may
+be perfectly acceptable to God even if he denies the rotundity of
+the earth, the Copernican system, the three laws of Kepler, the
+indestructibility of matter and the attraction of gravitation. And we
+are also taught that a man may be right upon all these questions, and
+yet, for failing to believe in the "scheme of salvation," be eternally
+lost.
+
+
+
+
+XII. SATURDAY
+
+On this, the last day of creation, God said:--"Let the earth bring forth
+the living creature after his kind, cattle and creeping thing and beast
+of the earth after his kind; and it was so. And God made the beast of
+the earth after his kind, and cattle after their kind, and every thing
+that creepeth upon the earth after his kind; and God saw that it was
+good."
+
+Now, is it true that the seas were filled with fish, the sky with fowls,
+and the earth covered with grass, and herbs, and fruit bearing trees,
+millions of ages before there was a creeping thing in existence? Must
+we admit that plants and animals were the result of the fiat of some
+incomprehensible intelligence independent of the operation of what are
+known as natural causes? Why is a miracle any more necessary to account
+for yesterday than for to-day or for to-morrow?
+
+If there is an infinite Power, nothing can be more certain than that
+this Power works in accordance with what we call law, that is, by and
+through natural causes. If anything can be found without a pedigree of
+natural antecedents, it will then be time enough to talk about the fiat
+of creation. There must have been a time when plants and animals did not
+exist upon this globe. The question, and the only question is, whether
+they were naturally produced. If the account given by Moses is true,
+then the vegetable and animal existences are the result of certain
+special fiats of creation entirely independent of the operation of
+natural causes. This is so grossly improbable, so at variance with the
+experience and observation of mankind, that it cannot be adopted without
+abandoning forever the basis of scientific thought and action.
+
+It may be urged that we do not understand the sacred record correctly.
+To this it may be replied that for thousands of years the account of
+the creation has, by the Jewish and Christian world, been regarded as
+literally true. If it was inspired, of course God must have known just
+how it would be understood, and consequently must have intended that
+it should be understood just as he knew it would be. One man writing to
+another, may mean one thing, and yet be understood as meaning something
+else. Now, if the writer knew that he would be misunderstood, and also
+knew that he could use other words that would convey his real meaning,
+but did not, we would say that he used words on purpose to mislead, and
+was not an honest man.
+
+If a being of infinite wisdom wrote the bible, or caused it to be
+written, he must have known exactly how his words would be interpreted
+by all the world, and he must have intended to convey the very meaning
+that was conveyed. He must have known that by reading that book, man
+would form erroneous views as to the shape, antiquity, and size of this
+world; that he would be misled as to the time and order of creation;
+that he would have the most childish and contemptible views of the
+creator; that the "sacred word" would be used to support slavery and
+polygamy; that it would build dungeons for the good, and light fagots
+to consume the brave, and therefore he must have intended that these
+results should follow. He also must have known that thousands and
+millions of men and women never could believe his bible, and that the
+number of unbelievers would increase in the exact ratio of civilization,
+and therefore, he must have intended that result.
+
+Let us understand this. An honest finite being uses the best words, in
+his judgment, to convey his meaning. This is the best he can do, because
+he cannot certainly know the exact effect of his words on others. But an
+infinite being must know not only the real meaning of the words, but the
+exact meaning they will convey to every reader and hearer. He must know
+every meaning that they are capable of conveying to every mind. He must
+also know what explanations must be made to prevent misconception. If
+an infinite being cannot, in making a revelation to man, use such words
+that every person to whom a revelation is essential will understand
+distinctly what that revelation is, then a revelation from God through
+the instrumentality of language is impossible, or it is not essential
+that all should understand it correctly. It may be urged that millions
+have not the capacity to understand a revelation, although expressed in
+the plainest words. To this it seems a sufficient reply to ask, why a
+being of infinite power should create men so devoid of intelligence,
+that he cannot by any means make known to them his will? We are told
+that it is exceedingly plain, and that a wayfaring man, though a fool,
+need not err therein. This statement is refuted by the religious history
+of the christian world. Every sect is a certificate that God has not
+plainly revealed his will to man. To each reader the bible conveys a
+different meaning. About the meaning of this book, called a revelation,
+there have been ages of war, and centuries of sword and flame. If
+written by an infinite God, he must have known that these results must
+follow; and thus knowing, he must be responsible for all.
+
+Is it not infinitely more reasonable to say that this book is the work
+of man, that it is filled with mingled truth and error, with mistakes
+and facts, and reflects, too faithfully perhaps, the "very form and
+pressure of its time?"
+
+If there are mistakes in the bible, certainly they were made by man. If
+there is anything contrary to nature, it was written by man. If there is
+anything immoral, cruel, heartless or infamous, it certainly was never
+written by a being worthy of the adoration of mankind.
+
+
+
+
+XIII. LET US MAKE MAN
+
+We are next informed by the author of the Pentateuch that God said "Let
+us make man in our image, after our likeness," and that "God created man
+in his own image, in the image of God created he him--male and female
+created he them."
+
+If this account means anything, it means that man was created in the
+physical image and likeness of God. Moses while he speaks of man as
+having been made in the image of God, never speaks of God except as
+having the form of a man. He speaks of God as "walking in the garden
+in the cool of the day;" and that Adam and Eve "heard his voice." He is
+constantly telling what God said, and in a thousand passages he refers
+to him as not only having the human form, but as performing actions,
+such as man performs. The God of Moses was a God with hands, with feet,
+with the organs of speech.
+
+A God of passion, of hatred, of revenge, of affection, of repentance; a
+God who made mistakes:--in other words, an immense and powerful man.
+
+It will not do to say that Moses meant to convey the idea that God made
+man in his mental or moral image. Some have insisted that man was made
+in the moral image of God because he was made pure. Purity cannot be
+manufactured. A moral character cannot be made for man by a god.
+Every man must make his own moral character. Consequently, if God
+is infinitely pure, Adam and Eve were not made in his image in that
+respect. Others say that Adam and Eve were made in the mental image
+of God. If it is meant by that, that they were created with reasoning
+powers like, but not to the extent of those possessed by a god, then
+this may be admitted. But certainly this idea was not in the mind of
+Moses. He regarded the human form as being in the image of God, and for
+that reason always spoke of God as having that form. No one can read
+the Pentateuch without coming to the conclusion that the author supposed
+that man was created in the physical likeness of Deity. God said "Go to,
+let us go down." "God smelled a sweet savor;" "God repented him that he
+had made man;" "and God said;" and "walked;" and "talked;" and "rested."
+All these expressions are inconsistent with any other idea than that the
+person using them regarded God as having the form of man.
+
+As a matter of fact, it is impossible for a man to conceive of a
+personal God, other than as a being having the human form. No one can
+think of an infinite being having the form of a horse, or of a bird, or
+of any animal beneath man. It is one of the necessities of the mind to
+associate forms with intellectual capacities. The highest form of which
+we have any conception is man's, and consequently, his is the only form
+that we can find in imagination to give to a personal God, because all
+other forms are, in our minds, connected with lower intelligences.
+
+It is impossible to think of a personal God as a spirit without form.
+We can use these words, but they do not convey to the mind any real and
+tangible meaning. Every one who thinks of a personal God at all, thinks
+of him as having the human form. Take from God the idea of form; speak
+of him simply as an all pervading spirit--which means an all pervading
+something about which we know nothing--and Pantheism is the result.
+
+We are told that God made man; and the question naturally arises, how
+was this done? Was it by a process of "evolution," "development;" the
+"transmission of acquired habits;" the "survival of the fittest," or was
+the necessary amount of clay kneaded to the proper consistency, and then
+by the hands of God moulded into form? Modern science tells that man has
+been evolved, through countless epochs, from the lower forms; that he
+is the result of almost an infinite number of actions, reactions,
+experiences, states, forms, wants and adaptations. Did Moses intend
+to convey such a meaning, or did he believe that God took a sufficient
+amount of dust, made it the proper shape, and breathed into it the
+breath of life? Can any believer in the bible give any reasonable
+account of this process of creation? Is it possible to imagine what
+was really done? Is there any theologian who will contend that man
+was created directly from the earth? Will he say that man was made
+substantially as he now is, with all his muscles properly developed for
+walking and speaking, and performing every variety of human action?
+That all his bones were formed as they now are, and all the relations of
+nerve, ligament, brain and motion as they are to-day?
+
+Looking back over the history of animal life from the lowest to
+the highest forms, we find that there has been a slow and gradual
+development; a certain but constant relation between want and
+production; between use and form. The Moner is said to be the simplest
+form of animal life that has yet been found. It has been described as
+"an organism without organs." It is a kind of structureless structure;
+a little mass of transparent jelly that can flatten itself out, and can
+expand and contract around its food. It can feed without a mouth, digest
+without a stomach, walk without feet, and reproduce itself by simple
+division. By taking this Moner as the commencement of animal life, or
+rather as the first animal, it is easy to follow the development of the
+organic structure through all the forms of life to man himself. In this
+way finally every muscle, bone and joint, every organ, form and function
+may be accounted for. In this way, and in this way only, can the
+existence of rudimentary organs be explained. Blot from the human mind
+the ideas of evolution, heredity, adaptation, and "the survival of the
+fittest," with which it has been enriched by Lamarck, Goethe, Darwin,
+Haeckel and Spencer, and all the facts in the history of animal life
+become utterly disconnected and meaningless.
+
+Shall we throw away all that has been discovered with regard to organic
+life, and in its place take the statements of one who lived in the
+rude morning of a barbaric day? Will anybody now contend that man was a
+direct and independent creation, and sustains and bears no relation to
+the animals below him? Belief upon this subject must be governed at
+last by evidence. Man cannot believe as he pleases. He can control his
+speech, and can say that he believes or disbelieves; but after all, his
+will cannot depress or raise the scales with which his reason finds the
+worth and weight of facts. If this is not so, investigation, evidence,
+judgment and reason are but empty words.
+
+I ask again, how were Adam and Eve created? In one account they are
+created male and female, and apparently at the same time. In the next
+account, Adam is made first, and Eve a long time afterwards, and from a
+part of the man. Did God simply by his creative fiat cause a rib slowly
+to expand, grow and divide into nerve, ligament, cartilage and flesh?
+How was the woman created from a rib? How was man created simply from
+dust? For my part, I cannot believe this statement. I may suffer for
+this in the world to come; and may millions of years hence, sincerely
+wish that I had never investigated the subject, but had been content
+to take the ideas of the dead. I do not believe that any Deity works in
+that way. So far as my experience goes, there is an unbroken procession
+of cause and effect. Each thing is a necessary link in an infinite
+chain; and I cannot conceive of this chain being broken even for one
+instant. Back of the simplest moner there is a cause, and back of
+that another, and so on, it seems to me, forever. In my philosophy I
+postulate neither beginning nor ending.
+
+If the Mosaic account is true, we know how long man has been upon this
+earth. If that account can be relied on, the first man was made about
+five thousand eight hundred and eighty-three years ago. Sixteen hundred
+and fifty-six years after the making of the first man, the inhabitants
+of the world, with the exception of eight people, were destroyed by
+a flood. This flood occurred only about four thousand two hundred and
+twenty-seven years ago. If this account is correct, at that time, only
+one kind of men existed: Noah and his family were certainly of the same
+blood. It therefore follows that all the differences we see between the
+various races of men have been caused in about four thousand years. If
+the account of the deluge is true, then since that event all the ancient
+kingdoms of the earth were founded, and their inhabitants passed through
+all the stages of savage, nomadic, barbaric and semi-civilized life;
+through the epochs of Stone, Bronze and Iron; established commerce,
+cultivated the arts, built cities, filled them with palaces and temples,
+invented writing, produced a literature and slowly fell to shapeless
+ruin. We must believe that all this has happened within a period of four
+thousand years.
+
+From representations found upon Egyptian granite made more than three
+thousand years ago, we know that the negro was as black, his lips as
+full, and his hair as closely curled then as now. If we know anything,
+we know that there was at that time substantially the same difference
+between the Egyptian and the Negro as now. If we know anything, we know
+that magnificent statues were made in Egypt four thousand years before
+our era--that is to say, about six thousand years ago. There was at
+the World's Exposition, in the Egyptian department, a statue of king
+Cephren, known to have been chiseled more than six thousand years ago.
+In other words, if the Mosaic account must be believed, this statue was
+made before the world. We also know, if we know anything, that men lived
+in Europe with the hairy mammoth, the cave bear, the rhinoceros, and
+the hyena. Among the bones of these animals have been found the stone
+hatchets and flint arrows of our ancestors. In the caves where they
+lived have been discovered the remains of these animals that had been
+conquered, killed and devoured as food, hundreds of thousands of years
+ago.
+
+If these facts are true, Moses was mistaken. For my part, I have
+infinitely more confidence in the discoveries of to-day, than in the
+records of a barbarous people. It will not now do to say that man has
+existed upon this earth for only about six thousand years. One can
+hardly compute in his imagination the time necessary for man to emerge
+from the barbarous state, naked and helpless, surrounded by animals far
+more powerful than he, to progress and finally create the civilizations
+of India, Egypt and Athens. The distance from savagery to Shakespeare
+must be measured not by hundreds, but by millions of years.
+
+
+
+
+XIV. SUNDAY
+
+"And on the seventh day God ended his work which he had made, and he
+rested on the seventh day from all his work which he had made. And God
+blessed the seventh day and sanctified it; because that in it he had
+rested from all his work which God created and made."
+
+The great work had been accomplished, the world, the sun, and moon, and
+all the hosts of heaven were finished; the earth was clothed in
+green, the seas were filled with life, the cattle wandered by the
+brooks--insects with painted wings were in the happy air, Adam and Eve
+were making each other's acquaintance, and God was resting from his
+work. He was contemplating the accomplishments of a week.
+
+Because he rested on that day he sanctified it, and for that reason and
+for that alone, it was by the Jews considered a holy day. If he only
+rested on that day, there ought to be some account of what he did the
+following Monday. Did he rest on that day? What did he do after he
+got rested? Has he done anything in the way of creation since Saturday
+evening of the first week?
+
+It is, now claimed by the "scientific" christians that the "days" of
+creation were not ordinary days of twenty-four hours each, but immensely
+long periods of time. If they are right, then how long was the seventh
+day? Was that, too, a geologic period covering thousands of ages?
+That cannot be, because Adam and Eve were created the Saturday evening
+before, and according to the bible that was about five thousand eight
+hundred and eighty-three years ago. I cannot state the time exactly,
+because there have been as many as one hundred and forty different
+opinions given by learned biblical students as to the time between the
+creation of the world and the birth of Christ. We are quite certain,
+however, that, according to the bible, it is not more than six thousand
+years since the creation of Adam. From this it would appear that the
+seventh day was not a geologic epoch, but was in fact a period of less
+than six thousand years, and probably of only twenty-four hours.
+
+The theologians who "answer" these things may take their choice. If they
+take the ground that the "days" were periods of twenty-four hours, then
+geology will force them to throw away the whole account. If, on the
+other hand, they admit that the days were vast "periods," then the
+sacredness of the sabbath must be given up.
+
+There is found in the bible no intimation that there was the least
+difference in the days. They are all spoken of in the same way. It may
+be replied that our translation is incorrect. If this is so, then only
+those who understand Hebrew, have had a revelation from God, and all the
+rest have been deceived.
+
+How is it possible to sanctify a space of time? Is rest holier than
+labor? If there is any difference between days, ought not that to be
+considered best in which the most useful labor has been performed?
+
+Of all the superstitions of mankind, this insanity about the "sacred
+sabbath" is the most absurd. The idea of feeling it a duty to be solemn
+and sad one-seventh of the time! To think that we can please an infinite
+being by staying in some dark and sombre room, instead of walking in the
+perfumed fields! Why should God hate to see a man happy? Why should it
+excite his wrath to see a family in the woods, by some babbling stream,
+talking, laughing and loving? Nature works on that "sacred" day. The
+earth turns, the rivers run, the trees grow, buds burst into flower, and
+birds fill the air with song. Why should we look sad, and think about
+death, and hear about hell? Why should that day be filled with gloom
+instead of joy?
+
+A poor mechanic, working all the week in dust and noise, needs a day of
+rest and joy, a day to visit stream and wood--a day to live with wife
+and child; a day in which to laugh at care, and gather hope and strength
+for toils to come. And his weary wife needs a breath of sunny air, away
+from street and wall, amid the hills or by the margin of the sea, where
+she can sit and prattle with her babe, and fill with happy dreams the
+long, glad day.
+
+The "sabbath" was born of asceticism, hatred of human joy, fanaticism,
+ignorance, egotism of priests and the cowardice of the people. This
+day, for thousands of years, has been dedicated to superstition, to the
+dissemination of mistakes, and the establishment of falsehoods. Every
+Freethinker, as a matter of duty, should violate this day. He should
+assert his independence, and do all within his power to wrest the
+sabbath from the gloomy church and give it back to liberty and joy.
+Freethinkers should make the sabbath a day of mirth and music; a day to
+spend with wife and child--a day of games, and books, and dreams--a day
+to put fresh flowers above our sleeping dead--a day of memory and hope,
+of love and rest.
+
+Why should we in this age of the world be dominated by the dead? Why
+should barbarian Jews who went down to death and dust three thousand
+years ago, control the living world? Why should we care for the
+superstition of men who began the sabbath by paring their nails,
+"beginning at the fourth finger, then going to the second, then to the
+fifth, then to the third, and ending with the thumb?" How pleasing
+to God this must have been. The Jews were very careful of these nail
+parings. They who threw them upon the ground were wicked, because Satan
+used them to work evil upon the earth. They believed that upon the
+Sabbath, souls were allowed to leave purgatory and cool their
+burning souls in water. Fires were neither allowed to be kindled nor
+extinguished, and upon that day it was a sin to bind up wounds. "The
+lame might use a staff, but the blind could not." So strict was the
+sabbath kept, that at one time "if a Jew on a journey was overtaken
+by the 'sacred day' in a wood, or on the highway, no matter where, nor
+under what circumstances, he must sit down," and there remain until the
+day was gone. "If he fell down in the dirt, there he was compelled to
+stay until the day was done." For violating the sabbath, the punishment
+was death, for nothing short of the offender's blood could satisfy the
+wrath of God. There are, in the Old Testament, two reasons given for
+abstaining from labor on the sabbath:--the resting of God, and the
+redemption of the Jews from the bondage of Egypt.
+
+Since the establishment of the Christian religion, the day has been
+changed, and Christians do not regard the day as holy upon which God
+actually rested, and which he sanctified. The Christian Sabbath, or
+the "Lord's day" was legally established by the murderer Constantine,
+because upon that day Christ was supposed to have risen from the dead.
+
+It is not easy to see where Christians got the right to disregard the
+direct command of God, to labor on the day he sanctified, and keep as
+sacred, a day upon which he commanded men to labor. The sabbath of God
+is Saturday, and if any day is to be kept holy, that is the one, and not
+the Sunday of the Christian.
+
+Let us throw away these superstitions and take the higher, nobler
+ground, that every day should be rendered sacred by some loving act,
+by increasing the happinesss of man, giving birth to noble thoughts,
+putting in the path of toil some flower of joy, helping the unfortunate,
+lifting the fallen, dispelling gloom, destroying prejudice, defending
+the helpless and filling homes with light and love.
+
+
+
+
+XV. THE NECESSITY FOR A GOOD MEMORY
+
+It must not be forgotten that there are two accounts of the creation
+in Genesis. The first account stops with the third verse of the second
+chapter. The chapters have been improperly divided. In the original
+Hebrew the Pentateuch was neither divided into chapters nor verses.
+There was not even any system of punctuation. It was written wholly with
+consonants, without vowels, and without any marks, dots, or lines to
+indicate them.
+
+These accounts are materially different, and both cannot be true. Let us
+see wherein they differ.
+
+The second account of the creation begins with the fourth verse of the
+second chapter, and is as follows:
+
+"These are the generations of the heavens and of the earth when they
+were created, in the day that the Lord God made the earth and the
+heavens.
+
+"And every plant of the field before it was in the earth, and every herb
+of the field before it grew; for the Lord God had not caused it to rain
+upon the earth, and there was not a man to till the ground.
+
+"But there went up a mist from the earth and watered the whole face of
+the ground.
+
+"And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed
+into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.
+
+"And the Lord God planted a garden eastward in Eden; and there he put
+the man whom he had formed.
+
+"And out of the ground made the Lord God to grow every tree that is
+pleasant to the sight, and good for food; the tree of life also in the
+midst of the garden, and the tree of knowledge of good and evil.
+
+"And a river went out of Eden to water the garden; and from thence it
+was parted and became into four heads.
+
+"The name of the first is Pison; that is it which compasseth the whole
+land of Havilah, where there is gold.
+
+"And the gold of that land is good: there is bdellium and the onyx
+stone.
+
+"And the name of the second river is Gihon: the same is it that
+compasseth the whole land of Ethiopia.
+
+"And the name of the third river is Hiddekel; that is it which goeth
+toward the east of Assyria. And the fourth river is Euphrates.
+
+"And the Lord God took the man, and put him into the garden of Eden to
+dress it and to keep it.
+
+"And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, Of every tree of the garden
+thou mayest freely eat; But of the tree of the knowledge of good and
+evil, thou shalt not eat of it; for in the day that thou eatest thereof
+thou shalt surely die.
+
+"And the Lord God said, It is not good that the man should be alone; I
+will make him an helpmeet for him.
+
+"And out of the ground the Lord God formed every beast of the field, and
+every fowl of the air; and brought them unto Adam to see what he would
+call them: and whatsoever Adam called every living creature, that was
+the name thereof.
+
+"And Adam gave names to all cattle, and to the fowl of the air, and to
+every beast of the field; but for Adam there was not found a helpmeet
+for him.
+
+"And the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam, and he slept;
+and he took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh instead thereof.
+
+"And the rib, which the Lord God had taken from man, made he a woman and
+brought her unto the man.
+
+"And Adam said, This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh; she
+shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of man.
+
+"Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave
+unto his wife; and they shall be one flesh.
+
+"And they were both naked, the man and his wife, and were not ashamed."
+
+Order of creation in the first account:
+
+1. The heaven and the earth, and light were made.
+
+2. The firmament was constructed and the waters divided.
+
+3. The waters gathered into seas--and then came dry land, grass, herbs
+and fruit trees.
+
+4. The sun and moon. He made the stars also.
+
+5. Fishes, fowls, and great whales.
+
+6. Beasts, cattle, every creeping thing, man and woman.
+
+Order of creation in the second account:
+
+1. The heavens and the earth.
+
+2. A mist went up from the earth, and watered the whole face of the
+ground.
+
+3. Created a man out of dust, by the name of Adam.
+
+4. Planted a garden eastward in Eden, and put the man in it.
+
+5. Created the beasts and fowls.
+
+6. Created a woman out of one of the man's ribs.
+
+In the second account, man was made _before_ the beasts and fowls. If
+this is true, the first account is false. And if the theologians of our
+time are correct in their view that the Mosaic day means thousands of
+ages, then, according to the second account, Adam existed millions of
+years before Eve was formed. He must have lived one Mosaic day before
+there were any trees, and another Mosaic day before the beasts and fowls
+were created. Will some kind clergymen tell us upon what kind of food
+Adam subsisted during these immense periods?
+
+In the second account a man is made, and the fact that he was without a
+helpmeet did not occur to the Lord God until a couple "of vast periods"
+afterwards. The Lord God suddenly coming to an appreciation of the
+situation said, "It is not good that the man should be alone. I will
+make him a helpmeet for him."
+
+Now, after concluding to make "an helpmeet" for Adam, what did the Lord
+God do? Did he at once proceed to make a woman? No. What did he do? He
+made the beasts, and tried to induce Adam to take one of them for "an
+helpmeet." If I am incorrect, read the following account, and tell me
+what it means:
+
+"And the Lord God said, It is not good that the man should be alone; I
+will make him an helpmeet for him.
+
+"And out of the ground the Lord God formed every beast of the field, and
+every fowl of the air; and brought them unto Adam to see what he would
+call them: and whatsoever Adam called every living creature, that was
+the name thereof.
+
+"And Adam gave names to all cattle, and to the fowl of the air, and to
+every beast of the field; but for Adam there was not found an helpmeet
+for him."
+
+Unless the Lord God was looking for an helpmeet for Adam, why did
+he cause the animals to pass before him? And why did he, after the
+menagerie had passed by, pathetically exclaim, "But for Adam there was
+not found an helpmeet for him?"
+
+It seems that Adam saw nothing that struck his fancy. The fairest ape,
+the sprightliest chimpanzee, the loveliest baboon, the most bewitching
+orangoutang, the most fascinating gorilla failed to touch with love's
+sweet pain, poor Adam's lonely heart. Let us rejoice that this was so.
+Had he fallen in love then, there never would have been a Freethinker in
+this world.
+
+Dr. Adam Clark, speaking of this remarkable proceeding says:--"God
+caused the animals to pass before Adam to show him that no creature yet
+formed could make him a suitable companion; that Adam was convinced that
+none of these animals could be a suitable companion for him, and that
+therefore he must continue in a state that was not good (celibacy)
+unless he became a further debtor to the bounty of his maker, for among
+all the animals which he had formed, there was not a helpmeet for Adam."
+
+Upon this same subject, Dr. Scott informs us "that it was not conducive
+to the happiness of the man to remain without the consoling society,
+and endearment of tender friendship, nor consistent with the end of his
+creation to be without marriage by which the earth might be replenished
+and worshipers and servants raised up to render him praise and glory.
+Adam seems to have been vastly better acquainted by intuition or
+revelation with the distinct properties of every creature than the most
+sagacious observer since the fall of man.
+
+"Upon this review of the animals, not one was found in outward form his
+counterpart, nor one suited to engage his affections, participate in his
+enjoyments, or associate with him in the worship of God."
+
+Dr. Matthew Henry admits that "God brought all the animals together
+to see if there was a suitable match for Adam in any of the numerous
+families of the inferior creatures, but there was none. They were all
+looked over, but Adam could not be matched among them all. Therefore God
+created a new thing to be a helpmeet for him."
+
+Failing to satisfy Adam with any of the inferior animals, the Lord God
+caused a deep sleep to fall upon him, and while in this sleep took out
+one of Adam's ribs and "closed up the flesh instead thereof." And out of
+this rib, the Lord God made a woman, and brought her to the man.
+
+Was the Lord God compelled to take a part of the man because he had used
+up all the original "nothing" out of which the universe was made? Is it
+possible for any sane and intelligent man to believe this story? Must a
+man be born a second time before this account seems reasonable?
+
+Imagine the Lord God with a bone in his hand with which to start
+a woman, trying to make up his mind whether to make a blonde or a
+brunette!
+
+Just at this point it may be proper for me to warn all persons from
+laughing at or making light of, any stories found in the "Holy Bible."
+When you come to die, every laugh will be a thorn in your pillow. At
+that solemn moment, as you look back upon the records of your life, no
+matter how many men you may have wrecked and ruined; no matter how many
+women you have deceived and deserted, all that can be forgiven; but
+if you remember then that you have laughed at even one story in God's
+"sacred book" you will see through the gathering shadows of death the
+forked tongues of devils, and the leering eyes of fiends.
+
+These stories must be believed, or the work of regeneration can never be
+commenced. No matter how well you act your part, live as honestly as you
+may, clothe the naked, feed the hungry, divide your last farthing
+with the poor, and you are simply traveling the broad road that leads
+inevitably to eternal death, unless at the same time you implicitly
+believe the bible to be the inspired word of God.
+
+Let me show you the result of unbelief. Let us suppose, for a moment,
+that we are at the Day of Judgment, listening to the trial of souls
+as they arrive. The Recording Secretary, or whoever does the
+cross-examining, says to a soul:
+
+Where are you from?
+
+I am from the Earth.
+
+What kind of a man were you?
+
+Well, I don't like to talk about myself. I suppose you can tell by
+looking at your books.
+
+No sir. You must tell what kind of a man you were.
+
+Well, I was what you might call a first-rate fellow. I loved my wife and
+children. My home was my heaven. My fireside was a paradise to me. To
+sit there and see the lights and shadows fall upon the faces of those I
+loved, was to me a perfect joy.
+
+How did you treat your family?
+
+I never said an unkind word. I never caused my wife, nor one of my
+children, a moment's pain.
+
+Did you pay your debts?
+
+I did not owe a dollar when I died, and left enough to pay my funeral
+expenses, and to keep the fierce wolf of want from the door of those I
+loved.
+
+Did you belong to any church?
+
+No sir. They were too narrow, pinched and bigoted for me, I never
+thought that I could be very happy if other folks were damned.
+
+Did you believe in eternal punishment?
+
+Well, no. I always thought that God could get his revenge in far less
+time.
+
+Did you believe the rib story?
+
+Do you mean the Adam and Eve business?
+
+Yes! Did you believe that?
+
+To tell you the God's truth, that was just a little more than I could
+swallow.
+
+Away with him to hell!
+
+Next!
+
+Where are you from? I am from the world too.
+
+Did you belong to any church?
+
+Yes sir, and to the Young Men's Christian Association besides.
+
+What was your business?
+
+Cashier in a Savings Bank.
+
+Did you ever run away with any money?
+
+Where I came from, a witness could not be compelled to criminate
+himself.
+
+The law is different here. Answer the question. Did you run away with
+any money?
+
+Yes sir.
+
+How much?
+
+One hundred thousand dollars.
+
+Did you take anything else with you?
+
+Yes sir.
+
+Well, what else?
+
+I took my neighbor's wife--we sang together in the choir.
+
+Did you have a wife and children of your own?
+
+Yes sir.
+
+And you deserted them?
+
+Yes sir, but such was my confidence in God that I believed he would take
+care of them.
+
+Have you heard of them since?
+
+No sir.
+
+Did you believe in the rib story?
+
+Bless your soul, of course I did. A thousand times I regretted that
+there were no harder stories in the bible, so that I could have shown my
+wealth of faith.
+
+Do you believe the rib story yet?
+
+Yes, with all my heart.
+
+Give him a harp!
+
+Well, as I was saying, God made a woman from Adam's rib. Of course, I do
+not know exactly how this was done, but when he got the woman finished,
+he presented her to Adam. He liked her, and they commenced house-keeping
+in the celebrated garden of Eden.
+
+Must we, in order to be good, gentle and loving in our lives, believe
+that the creation of woman was a second thought? That Jehovah really
+endeavored to induce Adam to take one of the lower animals as an
+helpmeet for him? After all, is it not possible to live honest and
+courageous lives without believing these fables? It is said that from
+Mount Sinai God gave, amid thunderings and lightnings, ten commandments
+for the guidance of mankind; and yet among them is not found--"Thou
+shalt believe the Bible."
+
+
+
+
+XVI. THE GARDEN
+
+In the first account we are told that God made man, male and female,
+and said to them "Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth and
+subdue it."
+
+In the second account only the man is made, and he is put in a garden
+"to dress it and to keep it." He is not told to subdue the earth, but to
+dress and keep a garden.
+
+In the first account man is given every herb bearing seed upon the face
+of the earth and the fruit of every tree for food, and in the second,
+he is given only the fruit of all the trees in the garden with the
+exception "of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil" which was a
+deadly poison.
+
+There was issuing from this garden a river that was parted into four
+heads. The first of these, Pison, compassed the whole land of Havilah,
+the second, Gihon, that compassed the whole land of Ethiopia, the third,
+Heddekel, that flowed toward the east of Assyria, and the fourth, the
+Euphrates. Where are these four rivers now? The brave prow of discovery
+has visited every sea; the traveler has pressed with weary feet the soil
+of every clime; and yet there has been found no place from which four
+rivers sprang. The Euphrates still journeys to the gulf, but where are
+Pison, Gihon and the mighty Heddekel? Surely by going to the source
+of the Euphrates we ought to find either these three rivers or their
+ancient beds. Will some minister when he answers the "Mistakes of
+Moses" tell us where these rivers are or were? The maps of the world are
+incomplete without these mighty streams. We have discovered the sources
+of the Nile; the North Pole will soon be touched by an American; but
+these three rivers still rise in unknown hills, still flow through
+unknown lands, and empty still in unknown seas.
+
+The account of these four rivers is what the Rev. David Swing would call
+"a geographical poem." The orthodox clergy cover the whole affair with
+the blanket of allegory, while the "scientific" christian folks talk
+about cataclysms, upheavals, earthquakes, and vast displacements of the
+earth's crust.
+
+The question, then arises, whether within the last six thousand years
+there have been such upheavals and displacements? Talk as you will about
+the vast "creative periods" that preceded the appearance of man; it
+is, according to the bible, only about six thousand years since man was
+created. Moses gives us the generations of men from Adam until his day,
+and this account cannot be explained away by calling centuries, days.
+
+According to the second account of creation, these four rivers were
+made after the creation of man, and consequently they must have been
+obliterated by convulsions of Nature within six thousand years.
+
+Can we not account for these contradictions, absurdities, and falsehoods
+by simply saying that although the writer may have done his level best,
+he failed because he was limited in knowledge, led away by tradition,
+and depended too implicitly upon the correctness of his imagination?
+Is not such a course far more reasonable than to insist that all these
+things are true and must stand though every science shall fall to mental
+dust?
+
+Can any reason be given for not allowing man to eat of the fruit of the
+tree of knowledge? What kind of tree was that? If it is all an allegory,
+what truth is sought to be conveyed? Why should God object to that fruit
+being eaten by man? Why did he put it in the midst of the garden? There
+was certainly plenty of room outside. If he wished to keep man and this
+tree apart, why did he put them together? And why, after he had eaten,
+was he thrust out? The only answer that we have a right to give, is
+the one given in the bible. "And the Lord God said, Behold the man has
+become as one of us to know good and evil; and now, lest he put forth
+his hand and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live forever:
+Therefore the Lord God sent him forth from the garden of Eden, to till
+the ground from whence he was taken."
+
+Will some minister, some graduate of Andover, tell us what this means?
+Are we bound to believe it without knowing what the meaning is? If it is
+a revelation, what does it reveal? Did God object to education then, and
+does that account for the hostile attitude still assumed by theologians
+towards all scientific truth? Was there in the garden a tree of life,
+the eating of which would have rendered Adam and Eve immortal? Is it
+true, that after the Lord God drove them from the garden that he placed
+upon its Eastern side "Cherubim and a flaming sword which turned every
+way to keep the way of the tree of life?" Are the Cherubims and the
+flaming sword guarding that tree yet, or was it destroyed, or did its
+rotting trunk, as the Rev. Robert Collyer suggests "nourish a bank of
+violets?"
+
+What objection could God have had to the immortality of man? You
+see that after all, this sacred record, instead of assuring us of
+immortality, shows us only how we lost it. In this there is assuredly
+but little consolation.
+
+According to this story we have lost one Eden, but nowhere in the Mosaic
+books are we told how we may gain another. I know that the Christians
+tell us there is another, in which all true believers will finally be
+gathered, and enjoy the unspeakable happiness of seeing the unbelievers
+in hell; but they do not tell us where it is.
+
+Some commentators say that the Garden of Eden was in the third
+heaven--some in the fourth, others have located it in the moon, some
+in the air beyond the attraction of the earth, some on the Earth, some
+under the Earth, some inside the Earth, some at the North Pole, others
+at the South, some in Tartary, some in China, some on the borders of the
+Ganges, some in the island of Ceylon, some in Armenia, some in Africa,
+some under the Equator, others in Mesopotamia, in Syria, Persia, Arabia,
+Babylon, Assyria, Palestine and Europe. Others have contended that
+it was invisible, that it was an allegory, and must be spiritually
+understood.
+
+But whether you understand these things or not, you must believe them.
+You may be laughed at in this world for insisting that God put Adam into
+a deep sleep and made a woman out of one of his ribs, but you will be
+crowned and glorified in the next You will also have the pleasure of
+hearing the gentlemen howl there, who laughed at you here. While you
+will not be permitted to take any revenge, you will be allowed to
+smilingly express your entire acquiescence in the will of God. But where
+is the new Eden? No one knows. The one was lost, and the other has not
+been found.
+
+Is it true that man was once perfectly pure and innocent, and that
+he became degenerate by disobedience? No. The real truth is, and the
+history of man shows, that he has advanced. Events, like the pendulum
+of a clock have swung forward and backward, but after all, man, like
+the hands, has gone steadily on. Man is growing grander. He is not
+degenerating. Nations and individuals fail and die, and make room
+for higher forms. The intellectual horizon of the world widens as the
+centuries pass. Ideals grow grander and purer; the difference between
+justice and mercy becomes less and less; liberty enlarges, and love
+intensifies as the years sweep on. The ages of force and fear, of
+cruelty and wrong, are behind us and the real Eden is beyond. It is said
+that a desire for knowledge lost us the Eden of the past; but whether
+that is true or not, it will certainly give us the Eden of the future.
+
+
+
+
+XVII. THE FALL
+
+We are told that the serpent was more subtle than any beast of the
+field, that he had a conversation with Eve, in which he gave his opinion
+about the effect of eating certain fruit; that he assured her it was
+good to eat, that it was pleasant to the eye, that it would make her
+wise; that she was induced to take some; that she persuaded her husband
+to try it; that God found it out, that he then cursed the snake;
+condemning it to crawl and eat the dust; that he multiplied the sorrows
+of Eve, cursed the ground for Adam's sake, started thistles and thorns,
+condemned man to eat the herb of the field in the sweat of his face,
+pronounced the curse of death, "Dust thou art and unto dust shalt thou
+return," made coats of skins for Adam and Eve, and drove them out of
+Eden.
+
+Who, and what was this serpent? Dr. Adam Clark says:--"The serpent must
+have walked erect, for this is necessarily implied in his punishment.
+That he was endued with the gift of speech, also with reason. That these
+things were given to this creature. The woman no doubt having often seen
+him walking erect, and talking and reasoning, therefore she testifies
+no sort of surprise when he accosts her in the language related in
+the text. It therefore appears to me that a creature of the ape or
+orangoutang kind is here intended, and that satan made use of this
+creature as the most proper instrument for the accomplishment of his
+murderous purposes against the life of the soul of man. Under this
+creature he lay hid, and by this creature he seduced our first parents.
+Such a creature answers to every part of the description in the text. It
+is evident from the structure of its limbs and its muscles that it might
+have been originally designed to walk erect, and that nothing else than
+the sovereign controlling power could induce it to put down hands--in
+every respect formed like those of man--and walk like those creatures
+whose claw-armed parts prove them to have been designed to walk on
+all fours. The stealthy cunning, and endless variety of the pranks
+and tricks of these creatures show them even now to be wiser and more
+intelligent than any other creature man alone excepted. Being obliged
+to walk on all fours and gather their food from the ground, they are
+literally obliged to eat the dust; and though exceeding cunning,
+and careful in a variety of instances to separate that part which is
+wholesome and proper for food from that which is not so, in the article
+of cleanliness they are lost to all sense of propriety. Add to this
+their utter aversion to walk upright; it requires the utmost discipline
+to bring them to it, and scarcely anything offends or irritates them
+more than to be obliged to do it. Long observation of these animals
+enables me to state these facts. For earnest, attentive watching, and
+for chattering and babbling they (the ape) have no fellows in the animal
+world. Indeed, the ability and propensity to chatter, is all they have
+left of their original gift of speech, of which they appear to have been
+deprived at the fall as a part of their punishment."
+
+Here then is the "connecting link" between man and the lower creation.
+The serpent was simply an orang-outang that spoke Hebrew with the
+greatest ease, and had the outward appearance of a perfect gentleman,
+seductive in manner, plausible, polite, and most admirably calculated to
+deceive.
+
+It never did seem reasonable to me that a long, cold and disgusting
+snake with an apple in his mouth, could deceive anybody; and I am glad,
+even at this late date to know that the something that persuaded Eve to
+taste the forbidden fruit was, at least, in the shape of a man.
+
+Dr. Henry does not agree with the zoological explanation of Mr. Clark,
+but insists that "it is certain that the devil that beguiled Eve is the
+old serpent, a malignant by creation, an angel of light, an immediate
+attendant upon God's throne, but by sin an apostate from his first
+state, and a rebel against God's crown and dignity. He who attacked
+our first parents was surely the prince of devils, the ring leader in
+rebellion. The devil chose to act his part in a serpent, because it is
+a specious creature, has a spotted, dappled skin, and then, went erect.
+Perhaps it was a flying serpent which seemed to come from on high, as a
+messenger from the upper world, one of the seraphim; because the serpent
+is a subtile creature. What Eve thought of this serpent speaking to her,
+we are not likely to tell, and, I believe, she herself did not know
+what to think of it. At first, perhaps, she supposed it might be a good
+angel, and yet afterwards might suspect something amiss. The person
+tempted was a woman, now-alone, and at a distance from her husband,
+but near the forbidden tree. It was the devil's subtlety to assault the
+weaker vessel with his temptations, as we may suppose her inferior to
+Adam in knowledge, strength and presence of mind. Some think that Eve
+received the command not immediately from God, but at second hand from
+her husband, and might, therefore, be the more easily persuaded to
+discredit it. It was the policy of the devil to enter into discussion
+with her when she was alone. He took advantage by finding her near the
+forbidden tree. God permitted Satan to prevail over Eve, for wise and
+holy ends. Satan teaches men first to doubt, and then to deny. He makes
+skeptics first, and by degrees makes them atheists."
+
+We are compelled to admit that nothing could be more attractive to a
+woman than a snake walking erect, with a "spotted, dappled skin," unless
+it were a serpent with wings. Is it not humiliating to know that our
+ancestors believed these things? Why should we object to the Darwinian
+doctrine of descent after this?
+
+Our fathers thought it their duty to believe, thought it a sin to
+entertain the slightest doubt, and really supposed that their credulity
+was exceedingly gratifying to God. To them, the story was entirely real.
+They could see the garden, hear the babble of waters, smell the perfume
+of flowers. They believed there was a tree where knowledge grew like
+plums or pears; and they could plainly see the serpent coiled amid its
+rustling leaves, coaxing Eve to violate the laws of God.
+
+Where did the serpent come from? On which of the six days was he
+created? Who made him? Is it possible that God would make a successful
+rival? He must have known that Adam and Eve would fall. He knew what
+a snake with a "spotted, dappled skin" could do with an inexperienced
+woman. Why did he not defend his children? He knew that if the serpent
+got into the garden, Adam and Eve would sin, that he would have to drive
+them out, that afterwards the world would be destroyed, and that he
+himself would die upon the cross.
+
+Again, I ask what and who was this serpent? He was not a man, for only
+one man had been made. He was not a woman. He was not a beast of the
+field, because "he was more subtile than any beast of the field which
+the Lord God had made." He was neither fish nor fowl, nor snake, because
+he had the power of speech, and did not crawl upon his belly until after
+he was cursed. Where did this serpent come from? Why was he not kept out
+of the garden? Why did not the Lord God take him by the tail and snap
+his head off? Why did he not put Adam and Eve on their guard about this
+serpent? They, of course, were not acquainted in the neighborhood, and
+knew nothing about the serpent's reputation for truth and veracity
+among his neighbors. Probably Adam saw him when he was looking for "an
+helpmeet," and gave him a name, but Eve had never met him before. She
+was not surprised to hear a serpent talk, as that was the first one she
+had ever met. Every thing being new to her, and her husband not being
+with her just at that moment, it need hardly excite our wonder that she
+tasted the fruit by way of experiment. Neither should we be surprised
+that when she saw it was good and pleasant to the eye, and a fruit to
+be desired to make one wise, she had the generosity to divide with her
+husband.
+
+Theologians have filled thousands of volumes with abuse of this serpent,
+but it seems that he told the exact truth. We are told that this serpent
+was, in fact, Satan, the greatest enemy of mankind, and that he entered
+the serpent, appearing to our first parents in its body. If this is
+so, why should the serpent have been cursed? Why should God curse the
+serpent for what had really been done by the devil? Did Satan remain
+in the body of the serpent, and in some mysterious manner share his
+punishment? Is it true that when we kill a snake we also destroy an evil
+spirit, or is there but one devil, and did he perish at the death of
+the first serpent? Is it on account of that transaction in the garden
+of Eden, that all the descendents of Adam and Eve known as Jews and
+Christians hate serpents?
+
+Do you account for the snake-worship in Mexico, Africa and India in the
+same way?
+
+What was the form of the serpent when he entered the garden, and in what
+way did he move from place to place? Did he walk or fly? Certainly he
+did not crawl, because that mode of locomotion was pronounced upon him
+as a curse. Upon what food did he subsist before his conversation with
+Eve? We know that after that he lived upon dust, but what did he eat
+before? It may be that this is all poetic; and the truest poetry is,
+according to Touchstone, "the most feigning."
+
+In this same chapter we are informed that "unto Adam also and to his
+wife did the Lord God make coats of skins and clothed them." Where did
+the Lord God get those skins? He must have taken them from the animals;
+he was a butcher. Then he had to prepare them; he was a tanner. Then
+he made them into coats; he was a tailor. How did it happen that they
+needed coats of skins, when they had been perfectly comfortable in a
+nude condition? Did the "fall" produce a change in the climate?
+
+Is it really necessary to believe this account in order to be happy
+here, or hereafter? Does it tend to the elevation of the human race to
+speak of "God" as a butcher, tanner and tailor?
+
+And here, let me say once for all, that when I speak of God, I mean
+the being described by Moses: the Jehovah of the Jews. There may be for
+aught I--know, somewhere in the unknown shoreless vast, some being whose
+dreams are constellations and within whose thought the infinite exists.
+About this being, if such an one exists, I have nothing to say. He has
+written no books, inspired no barbarians, required no worship, and has
+prepared no hell in which to burn the honest seeker after truth.
+
+When I speak of God, I mean that god who prevented man from putting
+forth his hand and taking also of the fruit of the tree of life that
+he might live forever; of that god who multiplied the agonies of woman,
+increased the weary toil of man, and in his anger drowned a world--of
+that god whose altars reeked with human blood, who butchered babes,
+violated maidens, enslaved men and filled the earth with cruelty and
+crime; of that god who made heaven for the few, hell for the many,
+and who will gloat forever and ever upon the writhings of the lost and
+damned.
+
+
+
+
+XVIII. DAMPNESS.
+
+And it came to pass, when men began to multiply on the face of the
+earth, and daughters were born unto them.
+
+"That the sons of God saw the daughters of men that they were fair; and
+they took them wives of all which they chose.
+
+"And the Lord said, My spirit shall not always strive with man, for that
+he also is flesh; yet his days shall be an hundred and twenty years.
+
+"There were giants in the earth in those days; and also after that
+when the sons of God came in unto the daughters of men, and they bare
+children to them, the same became mighty men which were of old, men of
+renown.
+
+"And God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and
+that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil
+continually.
+
+"And it repented the Lord that he had made man on the earth, and it
+grieved him at his heart.
+
+"And the Lord said, I will destroy man whom I have created from the
+face of the earth; both man, and beast, and the creeping thing, and the
+fowls of the air; for it repenteth me that I have made them."
+
+From this account it seems that driving Adam and Eve out of Eden did not
+have the effect to improve them or their children. On the contrary, the
+world grew worse and worse. They were under the immediate control and
+government of God, and he from time to time made known his will; but in
+spite of this, man continued to increase in crime.
+
+Nothing in particular seems to have been done. Not a school was
+established. There was no written language. There was not a bible in the
+world. The "scheme of salvation" was kept a profound secret. The five
+points of Calvinism had not been taught. Sunday schools had not been
+opened. In short, nothing had been done for the reformation of the
+world. God did not even keep his own sons at home, but allowed them to
+leave their abode in the firmament, and make love to the daughters
+of men. As a result of this, the world was filled with wickedness and
+giants to such an extent that God regretted "that he had made man on
+the earth, and it grieved him at his heart."
+
+Of course God knew when he made man, that he would afterwards regret
+it. He knew that the people would grow worse and worse until destruction
+would be the only remedy. He knew that he would have to kill all except
+Noah and his family, and it is hard to see why he did not make Noah and
+his family in the first place, and leave Adam and Eve in the original
+dust. He knew that they would be tempted, that he would have to drive
+them out of the garden to keep them from eating of the tree of life;
+that the whole thing would be a failure; that Satan would defeat his
+plan; that he could not reform the people; that his own sons would
+corrupt them, and that at last he would have to drown them all except
+Noah and his family. Why was the garden of Eden planted? Why was the
+experiment made? Why were Adam and Eve exposed to the seductive arts of
+the serpent? Why did God wait until the cool of the day before looking
+after his children? Why was he not on hand in the morning?
+
+Why did he fill the world with his own children, knowing that he would
+have to destroy them? And why does this same God tell me how to raise my
+children when he had to drown his?
+
+It is a little curious that when God wished to reform the ante-diluvian
+world he said nothing about hell; that he had no revivals, no
+camp-meetings, no tracts, no outpourings of the Holy Ghost, no baptisms,
+no noon prayer meetings, and never mentioned the great doctrine of
+salvation by faith. If the orthodox creeds of the world are true, all
+those people went to hell without ever having heard that such a place
+existed. If eternal torment is a fact, surely these miserable wretches
+ought to have been N warned. They were threatened only with water when
+they were in fact doomed to eternal fire!
+
+Is it not strange that God said nothing to Adam and Eve about a future
+life; that he should have kept these "infinite verities" to himself and
+allowed millions to live and die without the hope of heaven, or the fear
+of hell?
+
+It may be that hell was not made at that time. In the six days of
+creation nothing is said about the construction of a bottomless pit, and
+the serpent himself did not make his appearance until after the creation
+of man and woman. Perhaps he was made on the first Sunday, and from that
+fact came, it may be, the old couplet,
+
+     "And Satan still some mischief finds
+     For idle hands to do."
+
+The sacred historian failed also to tell us when the cherubim and the
+flaming sword were made, and said nothing about two of the persons
+composing the trinity. It certainly would have been an easy thing to
+enlighten Adam and his immediate descendants. The world was then only
+about fifteen hundred and thirty-six years old, and only about three
+or four generations of men had lived. Adam had been dead only about
+six hundred and six years, and some of his grand children must, at that
+time, have been alive and well.
+
+It is hard to see why God did not civilize these people. He certainly
+had the power to use, and the wisdom to devise the proper means. What
+right has a god to fill a world with fiends? Can there be goodness in
+this? Why should he make experiments that he knows must fail? Is there
+wisdom in this? And what right has a man to charge an infinite being
+with wickedness and folly?
+
+According to Moses, God made up his mind not only to destroy the people,
+but the beasts and the creeping things, and the fowls of the air. What
+had the beasts, and the creeping things, and the birds done to excite
+the anger of God? Why did he repent having made them? Will some
+christian give us an explanation of this matter? No good man will
+inflict unnecessary pain upon a beast; how then can we worship a god who
+cares nothing for the agonies of the dumb creatures that he made?
+
+Why did he make animals that he knew he would destroy? Does God delight
+in causing pain? He had the power to make the beasts, and fowls, and
+creeping things in his own good time and way, and it is to be presumed
+that he made them according to his wish. Why should he destroy them?
+They had committed no sin. They had eaten no forbidden fruit, made no
+aprons, nor tried to reach the tree of life. Yet this god, in blind
+unreasoning wrath destroyed "all flesh wherein was the breath of life,
+and every living thing beneath the sky, and every substance wherein was
+life that he had made."
+
+Jehovah, having made up his mind to drown the world, told Noah to make
+an Ark of gopher wood three hundred cubits long, fifty cubits wide and
+thirty cubits high. A cubit is twenty-two inches; so that the ark was
+five hundred and fifty feet long, ninety-one feet and eight inches wide
+and fifty-five feet high. This ark was divided into three stories, and
+had on top, one window twenty-two inches square. Ventilation must have
+been one of Jehovah's hobbies. Think of a ship larger than the Great
+Eastern with only one window, and that but twenty-two inches square!
+
+The ark also had one door set in the side thereof that shut from the
+outside. As soon as this ship was finished, and properly victualed, Noah
+received seven days notice to get the animals in the ark.
+
+It is claimed by some of the scientific theologians that the flood was
+partial, that the waters covered only a small portion of the world, and
+that consequently only a few animals were in the ark. It is impossible
+to conceive of language that can more clearly convey the idea of a
+universal flood than that found in the inspired account. If the flood
+was only partial, why did God say he would "destroy all flesh wherein
+is the breath of life from under heaven, and that every thing that is
+in the earth shall die?" Why did he say "I will destroy man whom I have
+created from the face of the earth, both man and beast, and the creeping
+thing and the fowls of the air?" Why did he say "And every living
+substance that I have made will I destroy from off the face of the
+earth?" Would a partial, local flood have fulfilled these threats?
+
+Nothing can be clearer than that the writer of this account intended to
+convey, and did convey the idea that the flood was universal. Why should
+christians try to deprive God of the glory of having wrought the most
+stupendous of miracles? Is it possible that the Infinite could not
+overwhelm with waves this atom called the Earth? Do you doubt his power,
+his wisdom or his justice?
+
+Believers in miracles should not endeavor to explain them. There is but
+one way to explain anything, and that is to account for it by natural
+agencies. The moment you explain a miracle, it disappears. You should
+depend not upon explanation, but assertion. You should not be driven
+from the field because the miracle is shown to be unreasonable. You
+should reply that all miracles are unreasonable. Neither should you be
+in the least disheartened if it is shown to be impossible. The possible
+is not miraculous. You should take the ground that if miracles were
+reasonable, and possible, there would be no reward paid for believing
+them. The christian has the goodness to believe, while the sinner asks
+for evidence. It is enough for God to work miracles without being called
+upon to substantiate them for the benefit of unbelievers.
+
+Only a few years ago, the christians believed implicitly in the literal
+truth of every miracle recorded in the bible. Whoever tried to explain
+them in some natural way, was looked upon as an infidel in disguise,
+but now he is regarded as a benefactor. The credulity of the Church is
+decreasing, and the most marvelous miracles are now either "explained,"
+or allowed to take refuge behind the mistakes of the translators, or
+hide in the drapery of allegory.
+
+In the sixth chapter, Noah is ordered to take "of every living thing
+of all flesh, two of every sort into the ark--male and female." In the
+seventh chapter the order is changed, and Noah is commanded, according
+to the Protestant bible, as follows: "Of every clean beast thou shalt
+take to thee by sevens, the male and his female, and of beasts that are
+not clean, by two, the male and his female. Of fowls also of the air by
+sevens, the male and the female."
+
+According to the Catholic bible, Noah was commanded--"Of all clean
+beasts take seven and seven, the male and the female. But of the beasts
+that are unclean two and two, the male and the female. Of the fowls also
+of the air seven and seven, the male and the female."
+
+For the purpose of belittling this miracle, many commentators have
+taken the ground that Noah was not ordered to take seven males and seven
+females of each kind of clean beasts, but seven in all. Many christians
+contend that only seven clean beasts of each kind were taken into the
+ark--three and a half of each sex.
+
+If the account in the seventh chapter means anything, it means _first_,
+that of each kind of clean beasts, fourteen were to be taken, seven
+males, and seven females; _second_, that of unclean beasts should be
+taken, two of each kind, one of each sex, and _third_, that he should
+take of every kind of fowls, seven of each sex.
+
+It is equally clear that the command in the 19th and 20th verses of the
+6th chapter, is to take two of each sort, one male and one female. And
+this agrees exactly with the account in the 7th, 8th, 9th, 14th. 15th,
+and 16th verses of the 7th chapter.
+
+The next question is, how many beasts, fowls and creeping things did
+Noah take into the ark?
+
+There are now known and classified at least twelve thousand five hundred
+species of birds. There are still vast territories in China, South
+America, and Africa unknown to the ornithologist. Of the birds, Noah
+took fourteen of each species, according to the 3d verse of the 7th
+chapter, "Of fowls also of the air by sevens, the male and the female,"
+making a total of 175,000 birds.
+
+And right here allow me to ask a question. If the flood was simply a
+partial flood, why were birds taken into the ark? It seems to me that
+most birds, attending strictly to business, might avoid a partial flood.
+
+There are at least sixteen hundred and fifty-eight kinds of beasts. Let
+us suppose that twenty-five of these are clean. Of the clean, fourteen
+of each kind--seven of each sex--were taken. These amount to 350. Of
+the unclean--two of each kind, amounting to 3,266. There are some six
+hundred and fifty species of reptiles. Two of each kind amount to-1,300.
+And lastly, there are of insects including the creeping things, at least
+one million species, so that Noah and his folks had to get of these into
+the ark about 2,000,000.
+
+Animalculae have not been taken into consideration. There are probably
+many hundreds of thousands of species; many of them invisible; and
+yet Noah had to pick them out by pairs. Very few people have any just
+conception of the trouble Noah had.
+
+We know that there are many animals on this continent not found in the
+Old World. These must have been carried from here to the ark, and then
+brought back afterwards. Were the peccary, armadillo, ant-eater, sloth,
+agouti, vampire-bat, marmoset, howling and prehensile-tailed monkey, the
+raccoon and muskrat carried by the angels from America to Asia? How did
+they get there? Did the polar bear leave his field of ice and journey
+toward the tropics? How did he know where the ark was? Did the kangaroo
+swim or jump from Australia to Asia? Did the giraffe, hippopotamus,
+antelope and orang-outang journey from Africa in search of the ark? Can
+absurdities go farther than this?
+
+What had these animals to eat while on the journey? What did they eat
+while in the ark? What did they drink? When the rain came, of course
+the rivers ran to the seas, and these seas rose and finally covered the
+world. The waters of the seas, mingled with those of the flood, would
+make all salt. It has been calculated that it required, to drown the
+world, about eight times as much water as was in all the seas. To find
+how salt the waters of the flood must have been, take eight quarts of
+fresh water, and add one quart from the sea. Such water would create
+instead of allaying thirst. Noah had to take in his ark fresh water for
+all his beasts, birds and living things. He had to take the proper food
+for all. How long was he in the ark? Three hundred and seventy-seven
+days! Think of the food necessary for the monsters of the ante-diluvian
+world!
+
+Eight persons did all the work. They attended to the wants of 175,000
+birds, 3,616 beasts, 1,300 reptiles, and 2,000,000 insects, saying
+nothing of countless animalculae.
+
+Well, after they all got in, Noah pulled down the window, God shut the
+door, and the rain commenced.
+
+How long did it rain?
+
+Forty days.
+
+How deep did the water get?
+
+About five miles and a half.
+
+How much did it rain a day?
+
+Enough to cover the whole world to a depth of about seven hundred and
+forty-two feet.
+
+Some Christians say that the fountains of the great deep were broken up.
+Will they be kind enough to tell us what the fountains of the great deep
+are? Others say that God had vast stores of water in the center of the
+earth that he used on that occasion. How did these waters happen to run
+up hill?
+
+Gentlemen, allow me to tell you once more that you must not try to
+explain these things. Your efforts in that direction do no good, because
+your explanations are harder to believe than the miracle itself. Take my
+advice, stick to assertion, and let explanation alone.
+
+Then, as now, Dhawalagiri lifted its crown of snow twenty-nine thousand
+feet above the level of the sea, and on the cloudless cliffs of
+Chimborazo then, as now, sat the condor; and yet the waters rising seven
+hundred and twenty-six feet a day--thirty feet an hour, six inches
+a minute,--rose over the hills, over the volcanoes, filled the vast
+craters, extinguished all the fires, rose above every mountain peak
+until the vast world was but one shoreless sea covered with the
+innumerable dead.
+
+Was this the work of the most merciful God, the father of us all? If
+there is a God, can there be the slightest danger of incurring his
+displeasure by doubting even in a reverential way, the truth of such a
+cruel lie? If we think that God is kinder than he really is, will our
+poor souls be burned for that?
+
+How many trees can live under miles of water for a year? What became of
+the soil washed, scattered, dissolved, and covered with the _debris_ of
+a world? How were the tender plants and herbs preserved? How were the
+animals preserved after leaving the ark? There was no grass except such
+as had been submerged for a year. There were no animals to be devoured
+by the carnivorous beasts. What became of the birds that fed on worms
+and insects? What became of the birds that devoured other birds?
+
+It must be remembered that the pressure of the water when at the highest
+point--say twenty-nine thousand feet, would have been about eight
+hundred tons on each square foot. Such a pressure certainly would have
+destroyed nearly every vestige of vegetable life, so that when the
+animals came out of the ark, there was not a mouthful of food in the
+wide world. How were they supported until the world was again clothed
+with grass? How were those animals taken care of that subsisted on
+others? Where did the bees get honey, and the ants seeds? There was not
+a creeping thing upon the whole earth; not a breathing creature beneath
+the whole heavens; not a living substance. Where did the tenants of the
+ark get food?
+
+There is but one answer, if the story is true. The food necessary
+not only during the year of the flood, but sufficient for many months
+afterwards, must have been stored in the ark.
+
+There is probably not an animal in the world that will not, in a year,
+eat and drink ten times its weight. Noah must have provided food and
+water for a year while in the ark, and food for at least six months
+after they got ashore. It must have required for a pair of elephants,
+about one hundred and fifty tons of food and water. A couple of mammoths
+would have required about twice that amount. Of course there were other
+monsters that lived on trees; and in a year would have devoured quite a
+forest.
+
+How could eight persons have distributed this food, even if the ark had
+been large enough to hold it? How was the ark kept clean? We know how it
+was ventilated; but what was done with the filth? How were the animals
+watered? How were some portions of the ark heated for animals from the
+tropics, and others kept cool for the polar bears? How did the animals
+get back to their respective countries? Some had to creep back about
+six thousand miles, and they could only go a few feet a day. Some of the
+creeping things must have started for the ark just as soon as they were
+made, and kept up a steady jog for sixteen hundred years. Think of
+a couple of the slowest snails leaving a point opposite the ark and
+starting for the plains of Shinar, a distance of twelve thousand miles.
+Going at the rate of a mile a month, it would take them a thousand
+years. How did they get there? Polar bears must have gone several
+thousand miles, and so sudden a change in climate must have been
+exceedingly trying upon their health. How did they know the way to go?
+Of course, all the polar bears did not go. Only two were required. Who
+selected these?
+
+Two sloths had to make the journey from South America. These creatures
+cannot travel to exceed three rods a day. At this rate, they would make
+a mile in about a hundred days. They must have gone about six thousand
+five hundred miles, to reach the ark. Supposing them to have traveled by
+a reasonably direct route, in order to complete the journey before Noah
+hauled in the plank, they must have started several years before the
+world was created. We must also consider that these sloths had to board
+themselves on the way, and that most of their time had to be taken up
+getting food and water. It is exceedingly doubtful whether a sloth could
+travel six thousand miles and board himself in less than three thousand
+years.
+
+Volumes might be written upon the infinite absurdity of this most
+incredible, wicked and foolish of all the fables contained in that
+repository of the impossible, called the bible. To me it is a matter
+of amazement, that it ever was for a moment believed by any intelligent
+human being.
+
+Dr. Adam Clark says that "the animals were brought to the ark by the
+power of God, and their enmities were so removed or suspended, that the
+lion could dwell peaceably with the lamb, and the wolf sleep happily by
+the side of the kid. There is no positive evidence that animal food was
+ever used before the flood. Noah had the first grant of this kind."
+
+Dr. Scott remarks, "There seems to have been a very extraordinary
+miracle, perhaps by the ministration of angels, in bringing two of every
+species to Noah, and rendering them submissive, and peaceful with each
+other. Yet it seems not to have made any impression upon the hardened
+spectators. The suspension of the ferocity of the savage beasts during
+their continuance in the ark, is generally considered as an apt figure
+of the change that takes place in the disposition of sinners when they
+enter the true church of Christ."
+
+He believed the deluge to have been universal. In his day science had
+not demonstrated the absurdity of this belief, and he was not compelled
+to resort to some theory not found in the bible. He insisted that "by
+some vast convulsion, the very bowels of the earth were forced upwards,
+and rain poured down in cataracts and water-spouts, with no intermission
+for forty days and nights, and until in every place a universal deluge
+was effected.
+
+"The presence of God was the only comfort of Noah in his dreary
+confinement, and in witnessing the dire devastation of the earth and its
+inhabitants, and especially of the human species--of his companions, his
+neighbors, his relatives--all those to whom he had preached, for whom he
+had prayed and over whom he had wept, and even of many who had helped to
+build the ark.
+
+"It seems that by a peculiar providential interposition, no animal of
+any sort died, although they had been shut up in the ark above a year;
+and it does not appear that there had been any increase of them during
+that time.
+
+"The Ark was flat-bottomed--square at each end--roofed like a house so
+that it terminated at the top in the breadth of a cubit. It was divided
+into many little cabins for its intended inhabitants. Pitched within and
+without to keep it tight and sweet, and lighted from the upper part.
+But it must, at first sight, be evident that so large a vessel, thus
+constructed, with so few persons on board, was utterly unfitted to
+weather out the deluge, except it was under the immediate guidance and
+protection of the Almighty."
+
+Dr. Henry furnished the Christian world with the following:--
+
+"As our bodies have in them the humors which, when God pleases, become
+the springs and seeds of mortal disease, so the earth had, in its
+bowels, those waters which, at God's command, sprung up and flooded it.
+
+"God made the world in six days, but he was forty days in destroying it,
+because he is slow to anger.
+
+"The hostilities between the animals in the ark ceased, and ravenous
+creatures became mild and manageable, so that the wolf lay down with the
+lamb, and the lion ate straw like an ox.
+
+"God shut the door of the ark to secure Noah and to keep him safe, and
+because it was necessary that the door should be shut very close lest
+the water should break in and sink the ark, and very fast lest others
+might break it down.
+
+"The waters rose so high that not only the low flat countries were
+deluged, but to make sure work and that none might escape, the tops of
+the highest mountains were overflowed fifteen cubits. That is, seven
+and a half yards, so that salvation was not hoped for from hills or
+mountains.
+
+"Perhaps some of the people got to the top of the ark, and hoped to
+shift for themselves there. But either they perished there for want of
+food, or the dashing rain washed them off the top. Others, it may be,
+hoped to prevail with Noah for admission into the ark, and plead old
+acquaintance.
+
+"'Have we not eaten and drank in thy presence? Hast thou not preached
+in our streets? 'Yea,' said Noah, 'many a time, but to little purpose.
+I called but ye refused; and now it is not in my power to help you. God
+has shut the door and I cannot open it.'
+
+"We may suppose that some of those who perished in the deluge had
+themselves assisted Noah, or were employed by him in building the ark.
+
+"Hitherto, man had been confined to feed only upon the products of the
+earth. Fruits, herbs and roots, and all sorts of greens, and milk, which
+was the first grant; but the flood having perhaps washed away much
+of the fruits of the earth, and rendered them much less pleasant and
+nourishing, God enlarged the grant and allowed him to eat flesh, which
+perhaps man never thought of until now, that God directed him to it. Nor
+had he any more desire to it than the sheep has to suck blood like the
+wolf. But now, man is allowed to feed upon flesh as freely and safely as
+upon the green herb."
+
+Such was the debasing influence of a belief in the literal truth of the
+bible upon these men, that their commentaries are filled with passages
+utterly devoid of common sense.
+
+Dr. Clark speaking of the mammoth says:
+
+"This animal, an astonishing proof of God's power, he seems to have
+produced merely to show what he could do. And after suffering a few of
+them to propagate, he extinguished the race by a merciful providence,
+that they might not destroy both man and beast.
+
+"We are told that it would have been much easier for God to destroy all
+the people and make new ones, but he would not want to waste anything
+and no power or skill should be lavished where no necessity exists.
+
+"The animals were brought to the ark by the power of God."
+
+Again gentlemen, let me warn you of the danger of trying to explain a
+miracle. Let it alone. Say that you do not understand it, and do not
+expect to until taught in the schools of the New Jerusalem. The more
+reasons you give, the more unreasonable the miracle will appear. Through
+what you say in defence people are led to think, and as soon as they
+really think, the miracle is thrown away.
+
+Among the most ignorant nations you will find the most wonders, among
+the most enlightened, the least. It is with individuals, the same as
+with nations. Ignorance believes, Intelligence examines and explains.
+
+For about seven months the ark, with its cargo of men, animals and
+insects, tossed and wandered without rudder or sail upon a boundless
+sea. At last it grounded on the mountains of Ararat; and about three
+months afterwards the tops of the mountains became visible. It must not
+be forgotten that the mountain where the ark is supposed to have first
+touched bottom, was about seventeen thousand feet high. How were the
+animals from the tropics kept warm? When the waters were abated it would
+be intensely cold at a point seventeen thousand feet above the level of
+the sea. May be there were stoves, furnaces, fire places and steam coils
+in the ark, but they are not mentioned in the inspired narrative. How
+were the animals kept from freezing? It will not do to say that Ararat
+was not very high after all.
+
+If you will read the fourth and fifth verses of the eight chapter you
+will see that although the ark rested in the seventh month, on the
+seventeenth day of the month, upon the mountains of Ararat, it was not
+until the first day of the tenth month "that the tops of the mountains
+could be seen." From this it would seem that the ark must have rested
+upon about the highest peak in that country. Noah waited forty days
+more, and then for the first time opened the window and took a breath
+of fresh air. He then sent out a raven that did not return, then a dove
+that returned. He then waited seven days and sent forth a dove that
+returned not. From this he knew that the waters were abated. Is it
+possible that he could not see whether the waters had gone? Is it
+possible to conceive of a more perfectly childish way of ascertaining
+whether the earth was dry?
+
+At last Noah "removed the covering of the ark, and looked and behold the
+face of the ground was dry," and thereupon God told him to disembark. In
+his gratitude Noah built an altar and took of every clean beast and of
+every clean fowl, and offered "burnt offerings". And the Lord smelled a
+sweet savor and said in his heart that he would not any more curse the
+ground for man's sake. For saying this in his heart the Lord gives as a
+reason, not that man is, or will be good, but because "the imagination
+of man's heart is evil from his youth." God destroyed man because "the
+wickedness of man was great in the earth, and _because every imagination
+of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually_." And he
+promised for the same reason not to destroy him again. Will some
+gentleman skilled in theology give us an explanation?
+
+After God had smelled the sweet savor of sacrifice, he seems to have
+changed his idea as to the proper diet for man. When Adam and Eve were
+created they were allowed to eat herbs bearing seed, and the fruit of
+trees. When they were turned out of Eden, God said to them "Thou shalt
+eat the herb of the field." In the first chapter of Genesis the "green
+herb" was given for food to the beasts, fowls and creeping things. Upon
+being expelled from the garden, Adam and Eve, as to their food, were
+put upon an equality with the lower animals. According to this, the
+ante-diluvians were vegetarians. This may account for their wickedness
+and longevity.
+
+After Noah sacrificed, and God smelled the sweet savor; he said--"Every
+moving thing that liveth shall be meat for you, even as the green herb
+have I given you all things." Afterwards this same God changed his mind
+again, and divided the beasts and birds into clean and unclean, and made
+it a crime for man to eat the unclean. Probably food was so scarce when
+Noah was let out of the ark that Jehovah generously allowed him to eat
+anything and everything he could find.
+
+According to the account, God then made a covenant with Noah to the
+effect that he would not again destroy the world with a flood, and as
+the attesting witness of this contract, a rainbow was set in the cloud.
+This bow was placed in the sky so that it might perpetually remind God
+of his promise and covenant. Without this visible witness and reminder,
+it would seem that Jehovah was liable to forget the contract, and drown
+the world again. Did the rainbow originate in this way? Did God put it
+in the cloud simply to keep his agreement in his memory?
+
+For me it is impossible to believe the story of the deluge. It seems so
+cruel, so barbaric, so crude in detail, so absurd in all its parts,
+and so contrary to all we know of law, that even credulity itself is
+shocked.
+
+Many nations have preserved accounts of a deluge in which all people,
+except a family or two, were destroyed. Babylon was certainly a city
+before Jerusalem was founded. Egypt was in the height of her power when
+there were only seventy Jews in the world, and India had a literature
+before the name of Jehovah had passed the lips of superstition. An
+account of a general deluge "was discovered by George Smith, translated
+from another account that was written about two thousand years before
+Christ." Of course it is impossible to tell how long the story had
+lived in the memory of tradition before it was reduced to writing by the
+Babylonians. According to this account, which is, without doubt, much
+older than the one given by Moses, Tamzi built a ship at the command of
+the god Hea, and put in it his family and the beasts of the field. He
+pitched the ship inside and outside with bitumen, and as soon as it was
+finished, there came a flood of rain and "destroyed all life from the
+face of the whole earth. On the seventh day there was a calm, and the
+ship stranded on the mountain Nizir." Tamzi waited for seven days more,
+and then let out a dove. Afterwards, he let out a swallow, and that, as
+well as the dove returned. Then he let out a raven, and as that did not
+return, he concluded that the water had dried away, and thereupon
+left the ship. Then he made an offering to god, or the gods, and "Hea
+interceded with Bel," so that the earth might never again be drowned.
+
+This is the Babylonian story, told without the contradictions of the
+original. For in that, it seems, there are two accounts, as well as
+in the bible. Is it not a strange coincidence that there should be
+contradictory accounts mingled in both the Babylonian and Jewish
+stories?
+
+In the bible there are two accounts. In one account, Noah was to take
+two of all beasts, birds, and creeping things into the ark, while in the
+other he was commanded to take of clean beasts, and all birds by
+sevens of each kind. According to one account, the flood only lasted
+one hundred and fifty days--as related in the third verse of the eighth
+chapter; while the other account fixes the time at three hundred and
+seventy-seven days. Both of these accounts cannot be true. Yet in order
+to be saved, it is not sufficient to believe one of them--you must
+believe both.
+
+Among the Egyptians there was a story to the effect that the great god
+Ra became utterly maddened with the people, and deliberately made up his
+mind that he would exterminate mankind. Thereupon he began to destroy,
+and continued in the terrible work until blood flowed in streams, when
+suddenly he ceased, and took an oath that he would not again destroy the
+human race. This myth was probably thousands of years old when Moses was
+born.
+
+So, in India, there was a fable about the flood. A fish warned Manu
+that a flood was coming. Manu built a "box" and the fish towed it to a
+mountain and saved all hands.
+
+The same kind of stories were told in Greece, and among our own Indian
+tribes. At one time the christian pointed to the fact that many nations
+told of a flood, as evidence of the truth of the Mosaic account; but
+now, it having been shown that other accounts are much older, and
+equally reasonable, that argument has ceased to be of any great value.
+
+It is probable that all these accounts had a common origin. They were
+likely born of something in nature visible to all nations. The idea of a
+universal flood, produced by a god to drown the world on account of
+the sins of the people, is infinitely absurd. The solution of all these
+stories has been supposed to be, the existence of partial floods in most
+countries; and for a long time this solution was satisfactory. But the
+fact that these stories are greatly alike, that only one man is warned,
+that only one family is saved, that a boat is built, that birds are sent
+out to find if the water had abated, tend to show that they had a common
+origin. Admitting that there were severe floods in all countries; it
+certainly cannot follow that in each instance only one family would be
+saved, or that the same story would in each instance be told. It may be
+urged that the natural tendency of man to exaggerate calamities, might
+account for this agreement in all the accounts, and it must be admitted
+that there is some force in the suggestion, I believe, though, that the
+real origin of all these myths is the same, and that it was originally
+an effort to account for the sun, moon and stars. The sun and moon
+were the man and wife, or the god and goddess, and the stars were their
+children. From a celestial myth, it became a terrestrial one; the air,
+or ether-ocean became a flood, produced by rain, and the sun moon and
+stars became man, woman and children.
+
+In the original story, the mountain was the place where in the far east
+the sky was supposed to touch the earth, and it was there that the ship
+containing the celestial passengers finally rested from its voyage. But
+whatever may be the origin of the stories of the flood, whether told
+first by Hindu, Babylonian or Hebrew, we may rest perfectly assured that
+they are all equally false.
+
+
+
+
+XIX. BACCHUS AND BABEL
+
+As soon as Noah had disembarked, he proceeded to plant a vineyard, and
+began to be a husbandman; and when the grapes were ripe he made wine and
+drank of it to excess; cursed his grandson, blessed Shem and Japheth,
+and after that lived for three hundred and fifty years. What he did
+during these three hundred and fifty years, we are not told. We never
+hear of him again. For three hundred and fifty years he lived among
+his sons, and daughters, and their descendants. He must have been a
+venerable man. He was the man to whom God had made known his intention
+of drowning the world. By his efforts, the human race had been saved.
+He must have been acquainted with Methuselah for six hundred years, and
+Methuselah was about two hundred and forty years old, when Adam died.
+Noah must himself have known the history of mankind, and must have been
+an object of almost infinite interest; and yet for three hundred and
+fifty years he is neither directly nor indirectly mentioned. When Noah
+died, Abraham must have been more than fifty years old; and Shem, the
+son of Noah, lived for several hundred years after the death of Abraham;
+and yet he is never mentioned. Noah when he died, was the oldest man in
+the whole world by about five hundred years; and everybody living at
+the time of his death knew that they were indebted to him, and yet no
+account is given of his burial. No monument was raised to mark the spot.
+This, however, is no more wonderful than the fact that no account is
+given of the death of Adam or of Eve, nor of the place of their burial.
+This may all be accounted for by the fact that the language of man was
+confounded at the building of the tower of Babel, whereby all tradition
+may have been lost, so that even the sons of Noah could not give an
+account of their voyage in the ark; and, consequently, some one had to
+be directly inspired to tell the story, after new languages had been
+formed.
+
+It has always been a mystery to me how Adam, Eve, and the serpent were
+taught the same language. Where did they get it? We know now, that
+it requires a great number of years to form a language; that it is of
+exceedingly slow growth. We also know that by language, man conveys to
+his fellows the impressions made upon him by what he sees, hears, smells
+and touches. We know that the language of the savage consists of a few
+sounds, capable of expressing only a few ideas or states of the
+mind, such as love, desire, fear, hatred, aversion and contempt. Many
+centuries are required to produce a language capable of expressing
+complex ideas. It does not seem to me that ideas can be manufactured by
+a deity and put in the brain of man. These ideas must be the result of
+observation and experience.
+
+Does anybody believe that God directly taught a language to Adam and
+Eve, or that he so made them that they, by intuition spoke Hebrew, or
+some language capable of conveying to each other their thoughts? How did
+the serpent learn the same language? Did God teach it to him, or did he
+happen to overhear God, when he was teaching Adam and Eve? We are told
+in the second chapter of Genesis that God caused all the animals to pass
+before Adam to see what he would call them. We cannot infer from this
+that God named the animals and informed Adam what to call them. Adam
+named them himself. Where did he get his words? We cannot imagine a man
+just made out of dust, without the experience of a moment, having the
+power to put his thoughts in language. In the first place, we cannot
+conceive of his having any thoughts until he has combined, through
+experience and observation, the impressions that nature had made upon
+him through the medium of his senses. We cannot imagine of his knowing
+anything, in the first instance, about different degrees of heat, nor
+about darkness, if he was made in the day-time, nor about light, if
+created at night, until the next morning. Before a man can have what we
+call thoughts, he must have had a little experience. Something must have
+happened to him before he can have a thought, and before he can express
+himself in language. Language is a growth, not a gift. We account now
+for the diversity of language by the fact that tribes and nations have
+had different experiences, different wants, different surroundings, and,
+one result of all these differences is, among other things, a difference
+in language. Nothing can be more absurd than to account for the
+different languages of the world by saying that the original language
+was confounded at the tower of Babel.
+
+According to the bible, up to the time of the building of that tower,
+the whole earth was of one language and of one speech, and would have so
+remained until the present time had not an effort been made to build
+a tower whose top should reach into heaven. Can any one imagine what
+objection God would have to the building of such a tower? And how could
+the confusion of tongues prevent its construction? How could language
+be confounded? It could be confounded only by the destruction of memory.
+Did God destroy the memory of mankind at that time, and if so, how?
+Did he paralyze that portion of the brain presiding over the organs
+of articulation, so that they could not speak the words, although they
+remembered them clearly, or did he so touch the brain that they
+could not hear? Will some theologian, versed in the machinery of the
+miraculous, tell us in what way God confounded the language of mankind?
+
+Why would the confounding of the language make them separate? Why would
+they not stay together until they could understand each other? People
+will not separate, from weakness. When in trouble they come together
+and desire the assistance of each other. Why, in this instance, did they
+separate? What particular ones would naturally come together if nobody
+understood the language of any other person? Would it not have been just
+as hard to agree when and where to go, without any language to express
+the agreement, as to go on with the building of the tower?
+
+Is it possible that any one now believes that the whole world would be
+of one speech had the language not been confounded at Babel? Do we not
+know that every word was suggested in some way by the experience of men?
+Do we not know that words are continually dying, and continually being
+born; that every language has its cradle and its cemetery--its buds, its
+blossoms, its fruits and its withered leaves? Man has loved, enjoyed,
+hated, suffered and hoped, and all words have been born of these
+experiences.
+
+Why did "the Lord come down to see the city and the tower?" Could he
+not see them from where he lived or from where he was? Where did he come
+down from? Did he come in the daytime, or in the night? We are taught
+now that God is everywhere; that he inhabits immensity; that he is in
+every atom, and in every star. If this is true, why did he "come down to
+see the city and the tower?" Will some theologian explain this?
+
+After all, is it not much easier and altogether more reasonable to say
+that Moses was mistaken, that he knew little of the science of language,
+and that he guessed a great deal more than he investigated?
+
+
+
+
+XX. FAITH IN FILTH
+
+No light whatever is shed upon what passed in the world after the
+confounding of language at Babel, until the birth of Abraham. But,
+before speaking of the history of the Jewish people, it may be proper
+for me to say that many things are recounted in Genesis, and other books
+attributed to Moses, of which I do not wish to speak. There are many
+pages of these books unfit to read, many stories not calculated, in my
+judgment, to improve the morals of mankind. I do not wish even to call
+the attention of my readers to these things, except in a general way. It
+is to be hoped that the time will come when such chapters and passages
+as cannot be read without leaving the blush of shame upon the cheek of
+modesty, will be left out, and not published as a part of the bible.
+If there is a God, it certainly is blasphemous to attribute to him the
+authorship of pages too obscene, beastly and vulgar to be read in the
+presence of men and women.
+
+The believers in the bible are loud in their denunciation of what they
+are pleased to call the immoral literature of the world; and yet few
+books have been published containing more moral filth than this inspired
+word of God. These stories are not redeemed by a single flash of wit or
+humor. They never rise above the dull details of stupid vice. For one,
+I cannot afford to soil my pages with extracts from them; and all such
+portions of the Scriptures I leave to be examined, written upon, and
+explained by the clergy. Clergymen may know some way by which they can
+extract honey from these flowers. Until these passages are expunged
+from the Old Testament, it is not a fit book to be read by either old
+or young. It contains pages that no minister in the United States would
+read to his congregation for any reward whatever. There are chapters
+that no gentleman would read in the presence of a lady. There are
+chapters that no father would read to his child. There are narratives
+utterly unfit to be told; and the time will come when mankind will
+wonder that such a book was ever called inspired.
+
+I know that in many books besides the bible there are immodest lines.
+Some of the greatest writers have soiled their pages with indecent
+words. We account for this by saying that the authors were human; that
+they catered to the taste and spirit of their times. We make excuses,
+but at the same time regret that in their works they left an impure
+word. But what shall we say of God? Is it possible that a being of
+infinite purity--the author of modesty, would smirch the pages of his
+book with stories lewd, licentious and obscene? If God is the author of
+the bible, it is, of course, the standard by which all other books can,
+and should be measured. If the bible is not obscene, what book is? Why
+should men be imprisoned simply for imitating God? The christian world
+should never say another word against immoral books until it makes the
+inspired volume clean. These vile and filthy things were not written
+for the purpose of conveying and enforcing moral truth, but seem to
+have been written because the author loved an unclean thing. There is
+no moral depth below that occupied by the writer or publisher of obscene
+books, that stain with lust, the loving heart of youth. Such men should
+be imprisoned and their books destroyed. The literature of the world
+should be rendered decent, and no book should be published that cannot
+be read by, and in the hearing of the best and purest people. But as
+long as the bible is considered as the work of God, it will be hard
+to make all men too good and pure to imitate it; and as long as it is
+imitated there will be vile and filthy books. The literature of our
+country will not be sweet and clean until the bible ceases to be
+regarded as the production of a god.
+
+We are continually told that the bible is the very foundation of modesty
+and morality; while many of its pages are so immodest and immoral that
+a minister, for reading them in the pulpit, would be instantly denounced
+as an unclean wretch. Every woman would leave the church, and if the men
+stayed, it would be for the purpose of chastising the minister.
+
+Is there any saving grace in hypocrisy? Will men become clean in speech
+by believing that God is unclean? Would it not be far better to admit
+that the bible was written by barbarians in a barbarous, coarse and
+vulgar age? Would it not be safer to charge Moses with vulgarity,
+instead of God? Is it not altogether more probable that some ignorant
+Hebrew would write the vulgar words? The christians tell me that God is
+the author of these vile and stupid things? I have examined the question
+to the best of my ability, and as to God my verdict is:--Not guilty.
+Faith should not rest in filth.
+
+Every foolish and immodest thing should be expunged from the bible.
+Let us keep the good. Let us preserve every great and splendid thought,
+every wise and prudent maxim, every just law, every elevated idea, and
+every word calculated to make man nobler and purer, and let us have
+the courage to throw the rest away. The souls of children should not
+be stained and soiled. The charming instincts of youth should not be
+corrupted and defiled. The girls and boys should not be taught that
+unclean words were uttered by "inspired" lips. Teach them that these
+words were born of savagery and lust. Teach them that the unclean is the
+unholy, and that only the pure is sacred.
+
+
+
+
+XXI. THE HEBREWS
+
+After language had been confounded and the people scattered, there
+appeared in the land of Canaan a tribe of Hebrews ruled by a chief or
+sheik called Abraham. They had a few cattle, lived in tents, practiced
+polygamy, wandered from place to place, and were the only folks in the
+whole world to whom God paid the slightest attention. At this time
+there were hundreds of cities in India filled with temples and palaces;
+millions of Egyptians worshiped Isis and Osiris, and had covered their
+land with marvelous monuments of industry, power and skill. But these
+civilizations were entirely neglected by the Deity, his whole attention
+being taken up with Abraham and his family.
+
+It seems, from the account, that God and Abraham were intimately
+acquainted, and conversed frequently upon a great variety of subjects.
+By the twelfth chapter of Genesis it appears that he made the following
+promises to Abraham. "I will make of thee a great nation, and I will
+bless thee, and make thy name great: and thou shalt be a blessing. And I
+will bless them that bless thee, and curse him that curseth thee."
+
+After receiving this communication from the Almighty, Abraham went into
+the land of Canaan, and again God appeared to him and told him to take
+a heifer three years old, a goat of the same age, a sheep of equal
+antiquity, a turtle dove and a young pigeon. Whereupon Abraham killed
+the animals "and divided them in the midst, and laid each piece one
+against another." And it came to pass that when the sun went down and
+it was dark, behold a smoking furnace and a burning lamp that passed
+between the raw and bleeding meat. The killing of these animals was
+a preparation for receiving a visit from God. Should an American
+missionary in Central Africa find a negro chief surrounded by
+a butchered heifer, a goat and a sheep, with which to receive a
+communication from the infinite God, my opinion is, that the missionary
+would regard the proceeding as the direct result of savagery. And if
+the chief insisted that he had seen a smoking furnace and a burning
+lamp going up and down between the pieces of meat, the missionary would
+certainly conclude that the chief was not altogether right in his mind.
+
+If the bible is true, this same God told Abraham to take and sacrifice
+his only son, or rather the only son of his wife, and a murder would
+have been committed had not God, just at the right moment, directed him
+to stay his hand and take a sheep instead.
+
+God made a great number of promises to Abraham, but few of them were
+ever kept. He agreed to make him the father of a great nation, but he
+did not. He solemnly promised to give him a great country, including all
+the land between the river of Egypt and the Euphrates, but he did not.
+
+In due time Abraham passed away, and his son Isaac took his place at
+the head of the tribe. Then came Jacob, who "watered stock" and enriched
+himself with the spoil of Laban. Joseph was sold into Egypt by his
+jealous brethren, where he became one of the chief men of the kingdom,
+and in a few years his father and brothers left their own country and
+settled in Egypt. At this time there were seventy Hebrews in the world,
+counting Joseph and his children. They remained in Egypt two hundred and
+fifteen years. It is claimed by some that they were in that country for
+four hundred and thirty years. This is a mistake. Josephus says they
+were in Egypt two hundred and fifteen years, and this statement is
+sustained by the best biblical scholars of all denominations. According
+to the 17th verse of the 3rd chapter of Galatians, it was four hundred
+and thirty years from the time the promise was made to Abraham to
+the giving of the law, and as the Hebrews did not go to Egypt for two
+hundred and fifteen years after the making of the promise to Abraham,
+they could in no event have been in Egypt more than two hundred and
+fifteen years. In our bible the 40th verse of the 12th chapter of
+Exodus, is as follows:--
+
+"Now the sojourning of the children of Israel, who dwelt in Egypt, was
+four hundred and thirty years."
+
+This passage does not say that the sojourning was all done in Egypt;
+neither does it say that the children of Israel dwelt in Egypt four
+hundred and thirty years; but it does say that the sojourning of the
+children of Israel who dwelt in Egypt was four hundred and thirty
+years. The Vatican copy of the Septuagint renders the same passage as
+follows:--
+
+"The sojourning of the children of Israel which they sojourned in Egypt,
+and in the land of Canaan, was four hundred and thirty years."
+
+The Alexandrian version says:--"The sojourning of the children of Israel
+which they and their fathers sojourned in Egypt, and in the land of
+Canaan, was four hundred and thirty years."
+
+And in the Samaritan bible we have:--"The sojourning of the children of
+Israel and of their fathers which they sojourned in the land of Canaan,
+and in the land of Egypt, was four hundred and thirty years."
+
+There were seventy souls when they went down into Egypt, and they
+remained two hundred and fifteen years, and at the end of that time they
+had increased to about three million. How do we know that there were
+three million at the end of two hundred and fifteen years? We know it
+because we are informed by Moses that "there were six hundred thousand
+men of war." Now, to each man of war, there must have been at least five
+other people. In every State in this Union there will be to each voter,
+five other persons at least, and we all know that there are always more
+voters than men of war. If there were six hundred thousand men of war,
+there must have been a population of at least three million. Is it
+possible that seventy people could increase to that extent in two
+hundred and fifteen years? You may say that it was a miracle; but
+what need was there of working a miracle? Why should God miraculously
+increase the number of slaves? If he wished miraculously to increase the
+population, why did he not wait until the people were free?
+
+In 1776, we had in the American Colonies about three millions of people.
+In one hundred years we doubled four times: that is to say, six, twelve,
+twenty-four, forty-eight million,--our present population.
+
+We must not forget that during all these years there has been pouring
+into our country a vast stream of emigration, and that this, taken
+in connection with the fact that our country is productive beyond all
+others, gave us only four doubles in one hundred years. Admitting that
+the Hebrews increased as rapidly without emigration as we, in this
+country, have with it, we will give to them four doubles each century,
+commencing with seventy people, and they would have, at the end of
+two hundred years, a population of seventeen thousand nine hundred and
+twenty. Giving them another double for the odd fifteen years and there
+would be, provided no deaths had occurred, thirty-five thousand eight
+hundred and forty people. And yet we are told that instead of having
+this number, they had increased to such an extent that they had six
+hundred thousand men of war: that is to say, a population of more than
+three millions!
+
+Every sensible man knows that this account is not, and cannot be true.
+We know that seventy people could not increase to three million in two
+hundred and fifteen years.
+
+About this time the Hebrews took a census, and found that there were
+twenty-two thousand two hundred and seventy-three first born males.
+It is reasonable to suppose that there were about as many first born
+females. This would make forty-four thousand five hundred and forty-six
+first born children. Now, there must have been about as many mothers
+as there were first born children. If there were only about forty-five
+thousand mothers and three millions of people, the mothers must have had
+on an average about sixty-six children apiece.
+
+At this time, the Hebrews were slaves, and had been for two hundred
+and fifteen years. A little while before, an order had been made by the
+Egyptians that all the male children of the Hebrews should be killed.
+One, contrary to this order, was saved in an ark made of bullrushes
+daubed with slime. This child was found by the daughter of Pharaoh, and
+was adopted, it seems, as her own, and, may be, was. He grew to be
+a man, sided with the Hebrews, killed an Egyptian that was smiting a
+slave, hid the body in the sand, and fled from Egypt to the land of
+Midian, became acquainted with a priest who had seven daughters, took
+the side of the daughters against the ill-mannered shepherds of that
+country, and married Zipporah, one of the girls, and became a shepherd
+for her father. Afterward, while tending his flock, the Lord appeared to
+him in a burning bush, and commanded him to go to the king of Egypt and
+demand from him the liberation of the Hebrews. In order to convince him
+that the something burning in the bush was actually God, the rod in his
+hand was changed into a serpent, which, upon being caught by the tail,
+became again a rod. Moses was also told to put his hand in his bosom,
+and when he took it out it was as leprous as snow. Quite a number of
+strange things were performed, and others promised. Moses then agreed to
+go back to Egypt provided his brother could go with him. Whereupon
+the Lord appeared to Aaron, and directed him to meet Moses in the
+wilderness. They met at the mount of God, went to Egypt, gathered
+together all the elders of the children of Israel, spake all the words
+which God had spoken unto Moses, and did all the signs in the sight of
+the people. The Israelites believed, bowed their heads and worshiped;
+and Moses and Aaron went in and told their message to Pharaoh the king.
+
+
+
+
+XXII. THE PLAGUES
+
+Three millions of people were in slavery. They were treated with the
+utmost rigor, and so fearful were their masters that they might, in
+time, increase in numbers sufficient to avenge themselves, that they
+took from the arms of mothers all the male children and destroyed
+them. If the account given is true, the Egyptians were the most cruel,
+heartless and infamous people of which history gives any record. God
+finally made up his mind to free the Hebrews; and for the accomplishment
+of this purpose he sent, as his agents, Moses and Aaron, to the king
+of Egypt. In order that the king might know that these men had a divine
+mission, God gave Moses the power of changing a stick into a serpent,
+and water into blood. Moses and Aaron went before the king, stating that
+the Lord God of Israel ordered the King of Egypt to let the Hebrews
+go that they might hold a feast with God in the wilderness. Thereupon
+Pharaoh, the king, enquired who the Lord was, at the same time stating
+that he had never made his acquaintance, and knew nothing about him.
+To this they replied that the God of the Hebrews had met with them, and
+they asked to go a three days journey into the desert and sacrifice
+unto this God, fearing that if they did not he would fall upon them with
+pestilence or the sword. This interview seems to have hardened Pharaoh,
+for he ordered the tasks of the children of Israel to be increased; so
+that the only effect of the first appeal was to render still worse the
+condition of the Hebrews. Thereupon, Moses returned unto the Lord and
+said "Lord, wherefore hast thou so evil entreated this people? Why is it
+that thou hast sent me? For since I came to Pharaoh to speak in thy name
+he hath done evil to this people; neither hast thou delivered thy people
+at all."
+
+Apparently stung by this reproach, God answered:--
+
+"Now shalt thou see what I will do to Pharoah; for with a strong hand
+shall he let them go; and with a strong hand shall he drive them out of
+his land."
+
+God then recounts the fact that he had appeared unto Abraham, Isaac and
+Jacob, that he had established a covenant with them to give them the
+land of Canaan, that he had heard the groanings of the children of
+Israel in Egyptian bondage; that their groanings had put him in mind of
+his covenant, and that he had made up his mind to redeem the children
+of Israel with a stretched out arm and with great judgments. Moses then
+spoke to the children' of Israel again, but they would listen to him no
+more. His first effort in their behalf had simply doubled their trouble
+and they seemed to have lost confidence in his power. Thereupon Jehovah
+promised Moses that he would make him a god unto Pharaoh, and that
+Aaron should be his prophet, but at the same time informed him that his
+message would be of no avail; that he would harden the heart of Pharaoh
+so that he would not listen; that he would so harden his heart that he
+might have an excuse for destroying the Egyptians. Accordingly, Moses
+and Aaron again went before Pharaoh. Moses said to Aaron;--"Cast down
+your rod before Pharaoh," which he did, and it became a serpent. Then
+Pharaoh not in the least surprised, called for his wise men and
+his sorcerers, and they threw down their rods and changed them into
+serpents. The serpent that had been changed from Aaron's rod was, at
+this time crawling upon the floor, and it proceeded to swallow the
+serpents that had been produced by the magicians of Egypt. What became
+of these serpents that were swallowed, whether they turned back into
+sticks again, is not stated. Can we believe that the stick was changed
+into a real living serpent, or did it assume simply the appearance of a
+serpent? If it bore only the appearance of a serpent it was a deception,
+and could not rise above the dignity of legerdemain. Is it necessary
+to believe that God is a kind of prestigiator--a sleight-of-hand
+per-former, a magician or sorcerer? Can it be possible that an infinite
+being would endeavor to secure the liberation of a race by performing a
+miracle that could be equally performed by the sorcerers and magicians
+of a barbarian king?
+
+Not one word was said by Moses or Aaron as to the wickedness of
+depriving a human being of his liberty. Not a word was said in favor
+of liberty. Not the slightest intimation that a human being was justly
+entitled to the product of his own labor. Not a word about the cruelty
+of masters who would destroy even the babes of slave mothers. It seems
+to me wonderful that this God did not tell the king of Egypt that no
+nation could enslave another, without also enslaving itself; that it was
+impossible to put a chain around the limbs of a slave, without putting
+manacles upon the brain of the master. Why did he not tell him that a
+nation founded upon slavery could not stand? Instead of declaring these
+things, instead of appealing to justice, to mercy and to liberty, he
+resorted to feats of jugglery. Suppose we wished to make a treaty with
+a barbarous nation, and the president should employ a sleight-of-hand
+performer as envoy extraordinary, and instruct him, that when he came
+into the presence of the savage monarch, he should cast down an umbrella
+or a walking stick, which would change into a lizard or a turtle; what
+would we think? Would we not regard such a performance as beneath the
+dignity even of a president? And what would be our feelings if the
+savage king sent for his sorcerers and had them perform the same feat?
+If such things would appear puerile and foolish in the president of a
+great republic, what shall be said when they were resorted to by the
+creator of all worlds? How small, how contemptible such a God appears!
+Pharaoh, it seems, took about this view of the matter, and he would not
+be persuaded that such tricks were performed by an infinite being.
+
+Again, Moses and Aaron came before Pharaoh as he was going to the river
+s bank, and the same rod which had changed to a serpent, and, by this
+time changed back, was taken by Aaron, who, in the presence of Pharaoh,
+smote the water of the river, which was immediately turned to blood, as
+well as all the water in all the streams, ponds, and pools, as well as
+all water in vessels of wood and vessels of stone in the entire land of
+Egypt. As soon as all the waters in Egypt had been turned into blood,
+the magicians of that country did the same with their enchantments. We
+are not informed where they got the water to turn into blood, since
+all the water in Egypt had already been so changed. It seems from the
+account that the fish in the Nile died, and the river emitted a stench,
+and there was not a drop of water in the land of Egypt that had not been
+changed into blood. In consequence of this, the Egyptians digged "around
+about the river" for water to drink. Can we believe this story? Is it
+necessary to salvation to admit that all the rivers, pools, ponds and
+lakes of a country were changed into blood, in order that a king might
+be induced to allow the children of Israel the privilege of going a
+three days journey into the wilderness to make sacrifices to their God?
+
+It seems from the account that Pharaoh was told that the God of the
+Hebrews would, if he refused to let the Israelites go, change all the
+waters of Egypt into blood, and that, upon his refusal, they were so
+changed. This had, however, no influence upon him, for the reason that
+his own magicians did the same. It does not appear that Moses and Aaron
+expressed the least surprise at the success of the Egyptian sorcerers.
+At that time it was believed that each nation had its own god. The
+only claim that Moses and Aaron made for their God was, that he was the
+greatest and most powerful of all the gods, and that with anything like
+an equal chance he could vanquish the deity of any other nation.
+
+After the waters were changed to blood Moses and Aaron waited for seven
+days. At the end of that time God told Moses to again go to Pharaoh and
+demand the release of his people, and to inform him that, if he refused,
+God would strike all the borders of Egypt with frogs. That he would make
+frogs so plentiful that they would go into the houses of Pharaoh, into
+his bedchamber, upon his bed, into the houses of his servants, upon his
+people, into their ovens, and even into their kneading troughs,
+This threat had no effect whatever upon Pharaoh, And thereupon Aaron
+stretched out his hand over the waters of Egypt, and the frogs came
+up and covered the land. The magicians of Egypt did the same, and with
+their enchantments brought more frogs upon the land of Egypt These
+magicians do not seem to have been original in their ideas, but so far
+as imitation is concerned, were perfect masters of their art. The frogs
+seem to have made such an impression upon Pharaoh that he sent for Moses
+and asked him to entreat the Lord that he would take away the frogs.
+Moses agreed to remove them from the houses and the land, and allow
+them to remain only in the rivers. Accordingly the frogs died out of the
+houses, and out of the villages, and out of the fields, and the people
+gathered them together in heaps. As soon as the frogs had left the
+houses and fields, the heart of Pharaoh became again hardened, and he
+refused to let the people go.
+
+Aaron then, according to the command of God, stretched out his hand,
+holding the rod, and smote the dust of the earth, and it became lice in
+man and in beast, and all the dust became lice throughout the land of
+Egypt. Pharaoh again sent for his magicians, and they sought to do
+the same with their enchantments, but they could not. Whereupon the
+sorcerers said unto Pharaoh: "This is the finger of God."
+
+Notwithstanding this, however, Pharaoh refused to let the Hebrews go.
+God then caused a grievous swarm of flies to come into the house of
+Pharaoh and into his servants' houses, and into all the land of Egypt,
+to such an extent that the whole land was corrupted by reason of the
+flies. But into that part of the country occupied by the children of
+Israel there came no flies. Thereupon Pharaoh sent for Moses and Aaron
+and said to them: "Go, and sacrifice to your God in this land." They
+were not willing to sacrifice in Egypt, and asked permission to go on a
+journey of three days into the wilderness. To this Pharaoh acceded, and
+in consideration of this Moses agreed to use his influence with the Lord
+to induce him to send the flies out of the country. He accordingly told
+the Lord of the bargain he had made with Pharaoh, and the Lord agreed to
+the compromise, and removed the flies from Pharaoh and from his servants
+and from his people, and there remained not a single fly in the land of
+Egypt. As soon as the flies were gone, Pharaoh again changed his mind,
+and concluded not to permit the children of Israel to depart. The Lord
+then directed Moses to go to Pharaoh and tell him that if he did not
+allow the children of Israel to depart, he would destroy his cattle, his
+horses, his camels and his sheep; that these animals would be afflicted
+with a grievous disease, but that the animals belonging to the Hebrews
+should not be so afflicted. Moses did as he was bid. On the next day all
+the cattle of Egypt died; that is to say, all the horses, all the asses,
+all the camels, all the oxen and all the sheep; but of the animals owned
+by the Israelites, not one perished. This disaster had no effect upon
+Pharaoh, and he still refused to let the children of Israel go. The Lord
+then told Moses and Aaron to take some ashes out of a furnace, and
+told Moses to sprinkle them toward the heavens in the sight of Pharaoh;
+saying that the ashes should become small dust in all the land of Egypt,
+and should be a boil breaking forth with blains upon man and upon beast
+throughout all the land.
+
+How these boils breaking out with blains, upon cattle that were already
+dead, should affect Pharaoh, is a little hard to understand. It must
+not be forgotten that all the cattle and all beasts had died with the
+murrain before the boils had broken out This was a most decisive victory
+for Moses and Aaron. The boils were upon the magicians to that extent
+that they could not stand before Moses. But it had no effect upon
+Pharaoh, who seems to have been a man of great firmness. The Lord then
+instructed Moses to get up early in the morning and tell Pharaoh that he
+would stretch out his hand and smite his people with a pestilence, and
+would, on the morrow, cause it to rain a very grievous hail, such as
+had never been known in the land of Egypt. He also told Moses to give
+notice, so that they might get all the cattle that were in the fields
+under cover. It must be remembered that all these cattle had recently
+died of the murrain, and their dead bodies had been covered with boils
+and blains. This, however, had no effect, and Moses stretched forth his
+hand toward heaven, and the Lord sent thunder, and hail and lightning,
+and fire that ran along the ground, and the hail fell upon all the land
+of Egypt, and all that were in the fields, both man and beast, were
+smitten, and the hail smote every herb of the field, and broke every
+tree of the country except that portion inhabited by the children of
+Israel; there, there was no hail.
+
+During this hail storm Pharaoh sent for Moses and Aaron and admitted
+that he had sinned, that the Lord was righteous, and that the Egyptians
+were wicked, and requested them to ask the Lord that there be no more
+thunderings and hail, and that he would let the Hebrews go. Moses agreed
+that as soon as he got out of the city he would stretch forth his hands
+unto the Lord, and that the thunderings should cease and the hail should
+stop. But, when the rain and the hail and the thundering ceased, Pharaoh
+concluded that he would not let the children of Israel go.
+
+Again, God sent Moses and Aaron, instructing them to tell Pharaoh that
+if he refused to let the people go, the face of the earth would be
+covered with locusts, so that man would not be able to see the ground,
+and that these locusts would eat the residue of that which escaped from
+the hail; that they would eat every tree out of the field; that they
+would fill the houses of Pharaoh and the houses of all his servants, and
+the houses of all the Egyptians. Moses delivered the message, and went
+out from Pharaoh. Some of Pharaoh's servants entreated their master
+to let the children of Israel go. Pharaoh sent for Moses and Aaron and
+asked them, who wished to go into the wilderness to sacrifice. They
+replied that they wished to go with the young and old; with their sons
+and daughters, with flocks and herds. Pharaoh would not consent to this,
+but agreed that the men might go. There upon Pharaoh drove Moses and
+Aaron out of his sight. Then God told Moses to stretch forth his hand
+upon the land of Egypt for the locusts, that they might come up and eat
+every herb, even all that the hail had left. "And Moses stretched out
+his rod over the land of Egypt, and the Lord brought an East wind all
+that day and all that night; and and when it was morning the East wind
+brought the locusts; and they came up over all the land of Egypt and
+rested upon all the coasts covering the face of the whole earth, so that
+the land was darkened; and they ate every herb and all the fruit of the
+trees which the hail had left, and there remained not any green thing
+on the trees or in the herbs of the field throughout the land of Egypt."
+Pharaoh then called for Moses and Aaron in great haste, admitted that
+he had sinned against the Lord their God and against them, asked their
+forgiveness and requested them to intercede with God that he might take
+away the locusts. They went out from his presence and asked the Lord to
+drive the locusts away, "And the Lord made a strong west wind which took
+away the locusts, and cast them into the Red Sea so that there remained
+not one locust in all the coasts of Egypt."
+
+As soon as the locusts were gone, Pharaoh changed his mind, and, in the
+language of the sacred text, "the Lord hardened Pharaoh's heart so that
+he would not let the children of Israel go."
+
+The Lord then told Moses to stretch out his hand toward heaven that
+there might be darkness over the land of Egypt, "even darkness which
+might be felt." "And Moses stretched forth his hand toward heaven, and
+there was a thick darkness over the land of Egypt for three days during
+which time they saw not each other, neither arose any of the people from
+their places for three days; but the children of Israel had light in
+their dwellings."
+
+It strikes me that when the land of Egypt was covered with thick
+darkness--so thick that it could be felt, and when light was in the
+dwellings of the Israelites, there could have been no better time for
+the Hebrews to have left the country.
+
+Pharaoh again called for Moses, and told him that his people could go
+and serve the Lord, provided they would leave their flocks and herds.
+Moses would not agree to this, for the reason that they needed the
+flocks and herds for sacrifices and burnt offerings, and he did not know
+how many of the animals God might require, and for that reason he could
+not leave a single hoof. Upon the question of the cattle, they divided,
+and Pharaoh again refused to let the people go. God then commanded Moses
+to tell the Hebrews to borrow, each of his neighbor, jewels of silver
+and gold. By a miraculous interposition the Hebrews found favor in the
+sight of the Egyptians so that they loaned the articles asked for. After
+this, Moses again went to Pharaoh and told him that all the first-born
+in the land of Egypt, from the first-born of Pharaoh upon the throne,
+unto the first-born of the maid-servant who was behind the mill, as well
+as the first-born of beasts, should die.
+
+As all the beasts had been destroyed by disease and hail, it is
+troublesome to understand the meaning of the threat as to their
+first-born.
+
+Preparations were accordingly made for carrying this frightful threat
+into execution. Blood was put on the door-posts of all houses inhabited
+by Hebrews, so that God, as he passed through that land, might not be
+mistaken and destroy the first-born of the Jews. "And it came to pass
+that at midnight the Lord smote all the first-born in the land of Egypt,
+the first-born of Pharaoh who sat on the throne, and the first-born of
+the captive who was in the dungeon. And Pharaoh rose up in the night,
+and all his servants, and all the Egyptians, and there was a great cry
+in Egypt, for there was not a house where there was not one dead."
+
+What had these children done? Why should the babes in the cradle be
+destroyed on account of the crime of Pharaoh? Why should the cattle be
+destroyed because man had enslaved his brother? In those days women and
+children and cattle were put upon an exact equality, and all considered
+as the property of the men; and when man in some way excited the wrath
+of God, he punished them by destroying all their cattle, their wives,
+and their little ones. Where can words be found bitter enough to
+describe a god who would kill wives and babes because husbands and
+fathers had failed to keep his law? Every good man, and every good
+woman, must hate and despise such a deity.
+
+Upon the death of all the first-born Pharaoh sent for Moses and Aaron,
+and not only gave his consent that they might go with the Hebrews into
+the wilderness, but besought them to go at once.
+
+Is it possible that an infinite God, creator of all worlds and sustainer
+of all life, said to Pharaoh, "If you do not let my people go, I will
+turn all the water of your country into blood," and that upon the
+refusal of Pharaoh to release the people, God did turn all the waters
+into blood? Do you believe this?
+
+Do you believe that Pharaoh even after all the water was turned to
+blood, refused to let the Hebrews go, and that thereupon God told him he
+would cover his land with frogs? Do you believe this?
+
+Do you believe that after the land was covered with frogs Pharaoh still
+refused to let the people go, and that God then said to him, "I will
+cover you and all your people with lice?" Do you believe God would make
+this threat?
+
+Do you also believe that God told Pharaoh, "If you do not let these
+people go, I will fill all your houses and cover your country with
+flies?" Do you believe God makes such threats as this?
+
+Of course God must have known that turning the waters into blood,
+covering the country with frogs, infesting all flesh with lice, and
+filling all houses with flies, would not accomplish his object, and that
+all these plagues would have no effect whatever upon the Egyptian king.
+
+Do you believe that, failing to accomplish anything by the flies, God
+told Pharaoh that if he did not let the people go he would kill his
+cattle with murrain? Does such a threat sound God-like?
+
+Do you believe that, failing to effect anything by killing the cattle,
+this same God then threatened to afflict all the people with boils,
+including the magicians who had been rivaling him in the matter of
+miracles; and failing to do anything by boils, that he resorted to hail?
+Does this sound reasonable? The hail experiment having accomplished
+nothing, do you believe that God murdered the first-born of animals and
+men? Is it possible to conceive of anything more utterly absurd, stupid,
+revolting, cruel and senseless, than the miracles said to have been
+wrought by the Almighty for the purpose of inducing Pharaoh to liberate
+the children of Israel?
+
+Is it not altogether more reasonable to say that the Jewish people,
+being in slavery, accounted for the misfortunes and calamities, suffered
+by the Egyptians, by saying that they were the judgments of God?
+
+When the Armada of Spain was wrecked and scattered by the storm, the
+English people believed that God had interposed in their behalf,
+and publicly gave thanks. When the battle of Lepanto was won, it was
+believed by the catholic world that the victory was given in answer to
+prayer. So, our fore-fathers in their revolutionary struggle saw, or
+thought they saw, the hand of God, and most firmly believed that they
+achieved their independence by the interposition of the Most High.
+
+Now, it may be that while the Hebrews were enslaved by the Egyptians,
+there were plagues of locusts and flies. It may be that there were
+some diseases by which many of the cattle perished. It may be that a
+pestilence visited that country so that in nearly every house there
+was some one dead. If so, it was but natural for the enslaved and
+superstitious Jews to account for these calamities by saying that they
+were punishments sent by their God. Such ideas will be found in the
+history of every country.
+
+For a long time the Jews held these opinions, and they were handed from
+father to son simply by tradition. By the time a written language had
+been produced, thousands of additions had been made, and numberless
+details invented; so that we have not only an account of the plagues
+suffered by the Egyptians, but the whole woven into a connected story,
+containing the threats made by Moses and Aaron, the miracles wrought by
+them, the promises of Pharaoh, and finally the release of the Hebrews,
+as a result of the marvelous things performed in their behalf by
+Jehovah.
+
+In any event it is infinitely more probable that the author was
+misinformed, than that the God of this universe was guilty of these
+childish, heartless and infamous things. The solution of the whole
+matter is this:--Moses was mistaken.
+
+
+
+
+XXIII. THE FLIGHT
+
+Three millions of people, with their flocks and herds, with borrowed
+jewelry and raiment, with unleavened dough in kneading troughs bound in
+their clothes upon their shoulders, in one night commenced their journey
+for the land of promise. We are not told how they were informed of the
+precise time to start. With all the modern appliances, it would require
+months of time to inform three millions of people of any fact.
+
+In this vast assemblage there were six hundred thousand men of war, and
+with them were the old, the young, the diseased and helpless. Where were
+those people going? They were going to the desert of Sinai, compared
+with which Sahara is a garden. Imagine an ocean of lava torn by storm
+and vexed by tempest, suddenly gazed at by a Gorgon and changed instantly
+to stone! Such was the desert of Sinai.
+
+All of the civilized nations of the world could not feed and support
+three millions of people on the desert of Sinai for forty years. It
+would cost more than one hundred thousand millions of dollars, and would
+bankrupt Christendom. They had with them their flocks and herds, and the
+sheep were so numerous that the Israelites sacrificed, at one time, more
+than one hundred and fifty thousand first-born lambs. How were these
+flocks supported? What did they eat? Where were meadows and pastures for
+them? There was no grass, no forests--nothing! There is no account
+of its having rained baled hay, nor is it even claimed that they were
+miraculously fed. To support these flocks, millions of acres of pasture
+would have been required. God did not take the Israelites through the
+land of the Philistines, for fear that when they saw the people of that
+country they would return to Egypt, but he took them by the way of
+the wilderness to the Red Sea, going before them by day in a pillar of
+cloud, and by night, in a pillar of fire.
+
+When it was told Pharaoh that the people had fled, he made ready
+and took six hundred chosen chariots of Egypt, and pursued after the
+children of Israel, overtaking them by the sea. As all the animals had
+long before that time been destroyed, we are not informed where Pharaoh
+obtained the horses for his chariots. The moment the children of Israel
+saw the hosts of Pharaoh, although they had six hundred thousand men
+of war, they immediately cried unto the Lord for protection. It is
+wonderful to me that a land that had been ravaged by the plagues
+described in the bible, still had the power to put in the field an army
+that would carry terror to the hearts of six hundred thousand men of
+war. Even with the help of God, it seems, they were not strong enough
+to meet the Egyptians in the open field, but resorted to strategy. Moses
+again stretched forth his wonderful rod over the waters of the Red Sea,
+and they were divided, and the Hebrews passed through on dry land, the
+waters standing up like a wall on either side. The Egyptians pursued
+them; "and in the morning watch the Lord looked into the hosts of the
+Egyptians, through the pillar of fire," and proceeded to take the wheels
+off their chariots. As soon as the wheels were off, God told Moses to
+stretch out his hand over the sea. Moses did so, and immediately "the
+waters returned and covered the chariots and horsemen and all the hosts
+of Pharaoh that came into the sea, and there remained not so much as one
+of them."
+
+This account may be true, but still it hardly looks reasonable that God
+would take the wheels off the chariots. How did he do it? Did he pull
+out the linch-pins, or did he just take them off by main force?
+
+What a picture this presents to the mind! God the creator of the
+universe, maker of every shining, glittering star, engaged in pulling
+off the wheels of wagons, that he might convince Pharaoh of his
+greatness and power!
+
+Where were these people going? They were going to the promised land.
+How large a country was that? About twelve thousand square miles. About
+one-fifth the size of the State of Illinois. It was a frightful country,
+covered with rocks and desolation. How many people were in the promised
+land already? Moses tells us there were seven nations in that country
+mightier than the Jews. As there were at least three millions of Jews,
+there must have been at least twenty-one millions of people already in
+that country. These had to be driven out in order that room might be
+made for the chosen people of God.
+
+It seems, however, that God was not willing to take the children of
+Israel into the promised land immediately. They were not fit to inhabit
+the land of Canaan; so he made up his mind to allow them to wander upon
+the desert until all except two, who had left Egypt, should perish. Of
+all the slaves released from Egyptian bondage, only two were allowed to
+reach the promised land!
+
+As soon as the Hebrews crossed the Red Sea, they found themselves
+without food, and with water unfit to drink by reason of its bitterness,
+and they began to murmur against Moses, who cried unto the Lord, and
+"the Lord showed him a tree." Moses cast this tree into the waters,
+and they became sweet. "And it came to pass in the morning the dew lay
+around about the camp; and when the dew that lay was gone, behold,
+upon the face of the wilderness lay a small round thing, small as the
+hoar-frost upon the ground. And Moses said unto them, this is the bread
+which the Lord hath given you to eat." This manna was a very peculiar
+thing. It would melt in the sun, and yet they could cook it by seething
+and baking. One would as soon think of frying snow or of broiling
+icicles. But this manna had another remarkable quality. No matter how
+much or little any person gathered, he would have an exact omer; if he
+gathered more, it would shrink to that amount, and if he gathered less,
+it would swell exactly to that amount. What a magnificent substance
+manna would be with which to make a currency--shrinking and swelling
+according to the great laws of supply and demand!
+
+"Upon this manna the children of Israel lived for forty years, until
+they came to a habitable land. With this meat were they fed until
+they reached the borders of the land of Canaan." We are told in the
+twenty-first chapter of Numbers, that the people at last became tired of
+the manna, complained of God, and asked Moses why he brought them out of
+the land of Egypt to die in the wilderness. And they said:--"There is no
+bread, nor have we any water. Our soul loatheth this light food."
+
+We are told by some commentators that the Jews lived on manna for forty
+years; by others that they lived upon it for only a short time. As
+a matter of fact the accounts differ, and this difference is the
+opportunity for commentators. It also allows us to exercise faith in
+believing that both accounts are true. If the accounts agreed, and were
+reasonable, they would be believed by the wicked and unregenerated. But
+as they are different and unreasonable, they are believed only by the
+good. Whenever a statement in the bible is unreasonable, and you believe
+it, you are considered quite a good christian. If the statement is
+grossly absurd and infinitely impossible, and you still believe it, you
+are a saint.
+
+The children of Israel were in the desert, and they were out of water.
+They had nothing to eat but manna, and this they had had so long that
+the soul of every person abhorred it. Under these circumstances they
+complained to Moses. Now, as God is infinite, he could just as well have
+furnished them with an abundance of the purest and coolest of water, and
+could, without the slightest trouble to himself, have given them three
+excellent meals a day, with a generous variety of meats and vegetables,
+it is very hard to see why he did not do so. It is still harder to
+conceive why he fell into a rage when the people mildly suggested that
+they would like a change of diet. Day after day, week after week, month
+after month, year after year, nothing but manna. No doubt they did
+the best they could by cooking it in different ways, but in spite of
+themselves they began to loathe its sight and taste, and so they asked
+Moses to use his influence to secure a change in the bill of fare.
+
+Now, I ask, whether it was unreasonable for the Jews to suggest that a
+little meat would be very gratefully received? It seems, however, that
+as soon as the request was made, this God of infinite mercy became
+infinitely enraged, and instead of granting it, went into, partnership
+with serpents, for the purpose of punishing the hungry wretches to whom
+he had promised a land flowing with milk and honey.
+
+Where did these serpents come from? How did God convey the information
+to the serpents, that he wished them to go to the desert of Sinai and
+bite some Jews? It may be urged that these serpents were created for the
+express purpose of punishing the children of Israel for having had the
+presumption, like Oliver Twist, to ask for more.
+
+There is another account in the eleventh chapter of Numbers, of the
+people murmuring because of their food. They remembered the fish, the
+cucumbers, the melons, the leeks, the onions and the garlic of Egypt,
+and they asked for meat The people went to the tent of Moses and asked
+him for flesh. Moses cried unto the Lord and asked him why he did not
+take care of the multitude. God thereupon agreed that they should have
+meat, not for a day or two, but for a month, until the meat should come
+out of their nostrils and become loathsome to them. He then caused a
+wind to bring quails from beyond the sea, and cast them into the camp,
+on every side of the camp around about for the space of a days journey.
+And the people gathered them, and while the flesh was yet between their
+teeth the wrath of God being provoked against them, struck them with
+an exceeding great plague. Serpents, also, were sent among them, and
+thousands perished for the crime of having been hungry.
+
+The Rev. Alexander Cruden commenting upon this account says:--
+
+"God caused a wind to rise that drove the quails within and about the
+camp of the Israelites; and it is in this that the miracle consists,
+that they were brought so seasonably to this place, and in so great
+numbers as to suffice above a million of persons above a month. Some
+authors affirm, that in those eastern and southern countries, quails
+are innumerable, so that in one part of Italy within the compass of five
+miles, there were taken about an hundred thousand of them every day for
+a month together; and that sometimes they fly so thick over the sea,
+that being weary they fall into ships, sometimes in such numbers, that
+they sink them with their weight."
+
+No wonder Mr. Cruden believed the Mosaic account.
+
+Must we believe that God made an arrangement with hornets for the
+purpose of securing their services in driving the Canaanites from
+the land of promise? Is this belief necessary unto salvation? Must we
+believe that God said to the Jews that he would send hornets before them
+to drive out the Canaanites, as related in the twenty-third chapter of
+Exodus, and the seventh chapter of Deuteronomy? How would the hornets
+know a Canaanite? In what way would God put it in the mind of a hornet
+to attack a Canaanite? Did God create hornets for that especial purpose,
+implanting an instinct to attack a Canaanite, but not a Hebrew? Can
+we conceive of the Almighty granting letters of marque and reprisal to
+hornets? Of course it is admitted that nothing in the world would
+be better calculated to make a man leave his native land than a few
+hornets. Is it possible for us to believe that an infinite being would
+resort to such expedients in order to drive the Canaanites from their
+country? He could just as easily have spoken the Canaanites out of
+existence as to have spoken the hornets in. In this way a vast amount of
+trouble, pain and suffering would have been saved. Is it possible that
+there is, in this country, an intelligent clergyman who will insist that
+these stories are true; that we must believe them in in order to be good
+people in this world, and glorified souls in the next?
+
+We are also told that God instructed the Hebrews to kill the Canaanites
+slowly, giving as a reason that the beasts of the field might increase
+upon his chosen people. When we take into consideration the fact that
+the Holy Land contained only about eleven or twelve thousand square
+miles, and was at that time inhabited by at least twenty-one millions of
+people, it does not seem reasonable that the wild beasts could have been
+numerous enough to cause any great alarm. The same ratio of population
+would give to the State of Illinois at least one hundred and twenty
+millions of inhabitants. Can anybody believe that, under such
+circumstances, the danger from wild beasts could be very great? What
+would we think of a general, invading such a state, if he should order
+his soldiers to kill the people slowly, lest the wild beasts might
+increase upon them? Is it possible that a God capable of doing the
+miracles recounted in the Old Testament could not, in some way, have
+disposed of the wild beasts? After the Canaanites were driven out, could
+he not have employed the hornets to drive out the wild beasts? Think of
+a God that could drive twenty-one millions of people out of the promised
+land, could raise up innumerable stinging flies, and could cover
+the earth with fiery serpents, and yet seems to have been perfectly
+powerless against the wild beasts of the land of Canaan!
+
+Speaking of these hornets, one of the good old commentators, whose
+views have long been considered of great value by the believers in the
+inspiration of the bible, uses the following language:--"Hornets are a
+sort of strong flies, which the Lord used as instruments to plague
+the enemies of his people. They are of themselves very troublesome and
+mischievous, and those the Lord made use of were, it is thought, of an
+extraordinary bigness and perniciousness. It is said they live as the
+wasps, and that they have a king or captain, and pestilent stings
+as bees, and that, if twenty-seven of them sting man or beast, it is
+certain death to either. Nor is it strange that such creatures did drive
+out the Canaanites from their habitations; for many heathen writers give
+instances of some people driven from their seats by frogs, others by
+mice, others by bees and wasps. And it is said that a christian city,
+being besieged by Sapores, king of Persia, was delivered by hornets; for
+the elephants and beasts being stung by them, waxed unruly, and so the
+whole army fled."
+
+Only a few years ago, all such stories were believed by the christian
+world; and it is a historical fact, that Voltaire was the third man of
+any note in Europe, who took the ground that the mythologies of Greece
+and Rome were without foundation. Until his time, most christians
+believed as thoroughly in the miracles ascribed to the Greek and Roman
+gods as in those of Christ and Jehovah. The christian world cultivated
+credulity, not only as one of the virtues, but as the greatest of them
+all. But, when Luther and his followers left the church of Rome, they
+were compelled to deny the power of the catholic church, at that time,
+to suspend the laws of nature, but took the ground that such power
+ceased with the apostolic age. They insisted that all things now
+happened in accordance with the laws of nature, with the exception of a
+few special interferences in favor of the protestant church in answer
+to prayer. They taught their children a double philosophy: by one, they
+were to show the impossibility of catholic miracles, because opposed to
+the laws of nature; by the other, the probability of the miracles of the
+apostolic age, because they were in conformity with the statements of
+the scriptures. They had two foundations: one, the law of nature, and
+the other, the word of God. The protestants have endeavored to carry
+on this double process of reasoning, and the result has been a gradual
+increase of confidence in the law of nature, and a gradual decrease of
+confidence in the word of God.
+
+We are told, in this inspired account, that the clothing of the Jewish
+people did not wax old, and that their shoes refused to wear out. Some
+commentators have insisted that angels attended to the wardrobes of the
+Hebrews, patched their garments, and mended their shoes. Certain it is,
+however, that the same clothes lasted them for forty years, during the
+entire journey from Egypt to the Holy Land. Little boys starting out
+with their first pantaloons, grew as they traveled, and their clothes
+grew with them.
+
+Can it be necessary to believe a story like this? Will men make better
+husbands, fathers, neighbors, and citizens, simply by giving credence
+to these childish and impossible things? Certainly an infinite God could
+have transported the Jews to the Holy Land in a moment, and could, as
+easily, have removed the Canaanites to some other country. Surely there
+was no necessity for doing thousands and thousands of petty miracles,
+day after day for forty years, looking after the clothes of three
+millions of people, changing the nature of wool, and linen, and leather,
+so that they would not "wax old." Every step, every motion, would wear
+away some part of the clothing, some part of the shoes. Were these
+parts, so worn away, perpetually renewed, or was the nature of things
+so changed that they could not wear away? We know that whenever matter
+comes in contact with matter, certain atoms, by abrasion, are lost. Were
+these atoms gathered up every night by angels, and replaced on the soles
+of the shoes, on the elbows of coats, and on the knees of pantaloons, so
+that the next morning they would be precisely in the condition they were
+on the morning before? There must be a mistake somewhere.
+
+Can we believe that the real God, if there is one, ever ordered a man
+to be killed simply for making hair oil, or ointment? We are told in
+the thirtieth chapter of Exodus, that the Lord commanded Moses to take
+myrrh, cinnamon, sweet calamus, cassia, and olive oil, and make a
+holy ointment for the purpose of anointing the tabernacle, tables,
+candlesticks and other utensils, as well as Aaron and his sons; saying,
+at the same time, that whosoever compounded any like it, or whoever put
+any of it on a stranger, should be put to death. In the same chapter,
+the Lord furnishes Moses with a recipe for making a perfume, saying,
+that whoever should make any which smelled like it, should be cut off
+from his people. This, to me, sounds so unreasonable that I cannot
+believe it. Why should an infinite God care whether mankind made
+ointments and perfumes like his or not? Why should the Creator of all
+things threaten to kill a priest who approached his altar without having
+washed his hands and feet? These commandments and these penalties would
+disgrace the vainest tyrant that ever sat, by chance, upon a throne.
+There must be some mistake. I cannot believe that an infinite
+Intelligence appeared to Moses upon Mount Sinai having with him a
+variety of patterns for making a tabernacle, tongs, snuffers and dishes.
+Neither can I believe that God told Moses how to cut and trim a coat for
+a priest. Why should a God care about such things? Why should he insist
+on having buttons sewed in certain rows, and fringes of a certain color?
+Suppose an intelligent civilized man was to overhear, on Mount Sinai,
+the following instructions from God to Moses:--
+
+"You must consecrate my priests as follows:--You must kill a bullock
+for a sin offering, and have Aaron and his sons lay their hands upon the
+head of the bullock. Then you must take the blood and put it upon the
+horns of the altar round about with your finger, and pour some blood at
+the bottom of the altar to make a reconciliation; and of the fat that
+is upon the inwards, the caul above the liver and two kidneys, and
+their fat, and burn them upon the altar. You must get a ram for a burnt
+offering, and Aaron and his sons must lay their hands upon the head of
+the ram. Then you must kill it and sprinkle the blood upon the altar,
+and cut the ram into pieces, and burn the head, and the pieces, and the
+fat, and wash the inwards and the lungs in water and then burn the whole
+ram upon the altar for a sweet savor unto me. Then you must get another
+ram, and have Aaron and his sons lay their hands upon the head of that,
+then kill it and take of its blood, and put it on the top of Aaron s
+right ear, and on the thumb of his right hand, and on the great toe of
+his right foot. And you must also put a little of the blood upon the
+top of the right ears of Aaron's sons, and on the thumbs of their right
+hands and on the great toes of their right feet. And then you must take
+of the fat that is on the inwards, and the caul above the liver and the
+two kidneys, and their fat, and the right shoulder, and out of a basket
+of unleavened bread you must take one unleavened cake and another of oil
+bread, and one wafer, and put them on the fat of the right shoulder. And
+you must take of the anointing oil, and of the blood, and sprinkle it on
+Aaron, and on his garments, and on his sons garments, and sanctify
+them and all their clothes."--Do you believe that he would have even
+suspected that the creator of the universe was talking?
+
+Can any one now tell why God commanded the Jews, when they were upon the
+desert of Sinai, to plant trees, telling them at the same time that they
+must not eat any of the fruit of such trees until after the fourth year?
+Trees could not have been planted in that desert, and if they had been,
+they could not have lived. Why did God tell Moses, while in the desert,
+to make curtains of fine linen? Where could he have obtained his flax?
+There was no land upon which it could have been produced. Why did he
+tell him to make things of gold, and silver, and precious stones, when
+they could not have been in possession of these things? There is but one
+answer, and that is, the Pentateuch was written hundreds of years after
+the Jews had settled in the Holy Land, and hundreds of years after Moses
+was dust and ashes.
+
+When the Jews had a written language, and that must have been long after
+their flight from Egypt, they wrote out their history and their laws.
+Tradition had filled the infancy of the nation with miracles and special
+interpositions in their behalf by Jehovah. Patriotism would not allow
+these wonders to grow small, and priestcraft never denied a miracle.
+There were traditions to the effect that God had spoken face to face
+with Moses; that he had given him the tables of the law, and had, in a
+thousand ways, made known his will; and whenever the priests wished to
+make new laws, or amend old ones, they pretended to have found something
+more that God said to Moses at Sinai. In this way obedience was more
+easily secured. Only a very few of the people could read, and, as a
+consequence, additions, interpolations and erasures had no fear of
+detection. In this way we account for the fact that Moses is made to
+speak of things that did not exist in his day, and were unknown for
+hundreds of years after his death.
+
+In the thirtieth chapter of Exodus, we are told that the people, when
+numbered, must give each one a half shekel after the shekel of the
+_sanctuary_. At that time no such money existed, and consequently the
+account could not, by any possibility, have been written until after
+there was a shekel of the sanctuary, and there was no such thing until
+long after the death of Moses. If we should read that Caesar paid his
+troops in pounds, shillings and pence, we would certainly know that the
+account was not written by Caesar, nor in his time, but we would know
+that it was written after the English had given these names to certain
+coins.
+
+So, we find, that when the Jews were upon the desert it was commanded
+that every mother should bring, as a sin offering, a couple of doves to
+the priests, and the priests were compelled to eat these doves in the
+most holy place. At the time this law appears to have been given, there
+were three million people, and only three priests, Aaron, Eleazer and
+Ithamar. Among three million people there would be, at least, three
+hundred births a day. Certainly we are not expected to believe that
+these three priests devoured six hundred pigeons every twenty-four
+hours.
+
+Why should a woman ask pardon of God for having been a mother? Why
+should that be considered a crime in Exodus, which is commanded as a
+duty in Genesis? Why should a mother be declared unclean? Why should
+giving birth to a daughter be regarded twice as criminal as giving birth
+to a son? Can we believe that such laws and ceremonies were made and
+instituted by a merciful and intelligent God? If there is anything in
+this poor world suggestive of, and standing for, all that is sweet,
+loving and pure, it is a mother holding in her thrilled and happy arms
+her prattling babe. Read the twelfth chapter of Leviticus, and you will
+see that when a woman became the mother of a boy she was so unclean
+that she was not allowed to touch a hallowed thing, nor to enter the
+sanctuary for forty days. If the babe was a girl, then the mother was
+unfit for eighty days, to enter the house of God, or to touch the sacred
+tongs and snuffers. These laws, born of barbarism, are unworthy of our
+day, and should be regarded simply as the mistakes of savages.
+
+Just as low in the scale of intelligence are the directions given in the
+fifth chapter of Numbers, for the trial of a wife of whom the husband
+was jealous. This foolish chapter has been the foundation of all appeals
+to God for the ascertainment of facts, such as the corsned, trial by
+battle, by water, and by fire, the last of which is our judicial oath.
+It is very easy to believe that in those days a guilty woman would
+be afraid to drink the water of jealousy and take the oath, and that,
+through fear, she might be made to confess. Admitting that the deception
+tended not only to prevent crime, but to discover it when committed,
+still, we cannot admit that an honest god would, for any purpose, resort
+to dishonest means. In all countries fear is employed as a means of
+getting at the truth, and in this there is nothing dishonest, provided
+falsehood is not resorted to for the purpose of producing the fear.
+Protestants laugh at catholics because of their belief in the efficacy
+of holy water, and yet they teach their children that a little holy
+water, in which had been thrown some dust from the floor of the
+sanctuary, would work a miracle in a woman's flesh. For hundreds of
+years our fathers believed that a perjurer could not swallow a piece of
+sacramental bread. Such stories belong to the childhood of our race, and
+are now believed only by mental infants and intellectual babes.
+
+I cannot believe that Moses had in his hands a couple of tables of
+stone, upon which God had written the ten commandments, and that when he
+saw the golden calf, and the dancing, that he dashed the tables to the
+earth and broke them in pieces. Neither do I believe that Moses took a
+golden calf, burnt it, ground it to powder, and made the people drink it
+with water, as related in the thirty-second chapter of Exodus.
+
+There is another account of the giving of the ten commandments to Moses,
+in the nineteenth and twentieth chapters of Exodus. In this account not
+one word is said about the people having made a golden calf, nor about
+the breaking of the tables of stone. In the thirty-fourth chapter of
+Exodus, there is an account of the renewal of the broken tables of
+the law, and the commandments are given, but they are not the same
+commandments mentioned in the twentieth chapter. There are two accounts
+of the same transaction. Both of these stories cannot be true, and yet
+both must be believed. Any one who will take the trouble to read
+the nineteenth and twentieth chapters, and the last verse of the
+thirty-first chapter, the thirty-second, thirty-third, and thirty-fourth
+chapters of Exodus, will be compelled to admit that both accounts cannot
+be true.
+
+From the last account it appears that while Moses was upon Mount Sinai
+receiving the commandments from God, the people brought their jewelry
+to Aaron, and he cast for them a golden calf. This happened before any
+commandment against idolatry had been given. A god ought, certainly,
+to publish his laws before inflicting penalties for their violation. To
+inflict punishment for breaking unknown and unpublished laws is, in
+the last degree, cruel and unjust. It may be replied that the Jews knew
+better than to worship idols, before the law was given. If this is so,
+why should the law have been given? In all civilized countries, laws are
+made and promulgated, not simply for the purpose of informing the people
+as to what is right and wrong, but to inform them of the penalties to be
+visited upon those who violate the laws. When the ten commandments
+were given, no penalties were attached. Not one word was written on
+the tables of stone as to the punishments that would be inflicted for
+breaking any or all of the inspired laws. The people should not have
+been punished for violating a commandment before it was given. And yet,
+in this case, Moses commanded the sons of Levi to take their swords and
+slay every man his brother, his companion, and his neighbor. The brutal
+order was obeyed, and three thousand men were butchered. The Levites
+consecrated themselves unto the Lord by murdering their sons, and their
+brothers, for having violated a commandment before it had been given.
+
+It has been contended for many years that the ten commandments are the
+foundation of all ideas of justice and of law. Eminent jurists have
+bowed to popular prejudice, and deformed their works by statements to
+the effect that the Mosaic laws are the fountains from which sprang all
+ideas of right and wrong. Nothing can be more stupidly false than such
+assertions. Thousands of years before Moses was born, the Egyptians
+had a code of laws. They had laws against blasphemy, murder, adultery,
+larceny, perjury, laws for the collection of debts, the enforcement
+of contracts, the ascertainment of damages, the redemption of property
+pawned, and upon nearly every subject of human interest. The Egyptian
+code was far better than the Mosaic.
+
+Laws spring from the instinct of self-preservation, Industry objected
+to supporting idleness, and laws were made against theft. Laws were made
+against murder, because a very large majority of the people have always
+objected to being murdered. All fundamental laws were born simply of the
+instinct of self-defence. Long before the Jewish savages assembled at
+the foot of Sinai, laws had been made and enforced, not only in Egypt
+and India, but by every tribe that ever existed.
+
+It is impossible for human beings to exist together, without certain
+rules of conduct, certain ideas of the proper and improper, of the right
+and wrong, growing out of the relation. Certain rules must be made,
+and must be enforced. This implies law, trial and punishment. Whoever
+produces anything by weary labor, does not need a revelation from heaven
+to teach him that he has a right to the thing produced. Not one of
+the learned gentlemen who pretend that the Mosaic laws are filled with
+justice and intelligence, would live, for a moment, in any country where
+such laws were in force.
+
+Nothing can be more wonderful than the medical ideas of Jehovah. He
+had the strangest notions about the cause and cure of disease. With
+him everything was miracle and wonder. In the fourteenth chapter of
+Leviticus, we find the law for cleansing a leper:--"Then shall the
+priest take for him that is to be cleansed, two birds, alive and clean,
+and cedar wood, and scarlet, and hyssop. And the priest shall command
+that one of the birds be killed in an _earthen_ vessel, over _running_
+water. As for the living bird, he shall take it, and the cedar wood, and
+the scarlet, and the hyssop, and shall dip them, and the living bird,
+in the blood of the bird that was killed over the running water. And he
+shall sprinkle upon him that is to be cleansed from the leprosy, seven
+times, and shall pronounce him clean, and shall let the living bird
+loose into the open field."
+
+We are told that God himself gave these directions to Moses. Does
+anybody believe this? Why should the bird be killed in an _earthen_
+vessel? Would the charm be broken if the vessel was of wood? Why over
+_running_ water? What would be thought of a physician now, who would
+give a prescription like that?
+
+Is it not strange that God, although he gave hundreds of directions for
+the purpose of discovering the presence of leprosy, and for cleansing
+the leper after he was healed, forgot to tell how that disease could be
+cured? Is it not wonderful that while God told his people what animals
+were fit for food, he failed to give a list of plants that man might
+eat? Why did he leave his children to find out the hurtful and the
+poisonous by experiment, knowing that experiment, in millions of cases,
+must be death?
+
+When reading the history of the Jewish people, of their flight from
+slavery to death, of their exchange of tyrants, I must confess that my
+sympathies are all aroused in their behalf. They were cheated, deceived
+and abused. Their god was quick-tempered unreasonable, cruel, revengeful
+and dishonest. He was always promising but never performed. He wasted
+time in ceremony and childish detail, and in the exaggeration of what
+he had done. It is impossible for me to conceive of a character more
+utterly detestable than that of the Hebrew god. He had solemnly promised
+the Jews that he would take them from Egypt to a land flowing with
+milk and honey. He had led them to believe that in a little while their
+troubles would be over, and that they would soon in the land of Canaan,
+surrounded by their wives and little ones, forget the stripes and tears
+of Egypt. After promising the poor wanderers again and again that he
+would lead them in safety to the promised land of joy and plenty, this
+God, forgetting every promise, said to the wretches in his power:--"Your
+carcasses shall fall in this wilderness and your children shall wander
+until your carcasses be wasted." This curse was the conclusion of the
+whole matter. Into this dust of death and night faded all the promises
+of God. Into this rottenness of wandering despair fell all the dreams
+of liberty and home. Millions of corpses were left to rot in the desert,
+and each one certified to the dishonesty of Jehovah. I cannot believe
+these things. They are so cruel and heartless, that my blood is chilled
+and my sense of justice shocked. A book that is equally abhorrent to my
+head and heart, cannot be accepted as a revelation from God.
+
+When we think of the poor Jews, destroyed, murdered, bitten by serpents,
+visited by plagues, decimated by famine, butchered by each, other,
+swallowed by the earth, frightened, cursed, starved, deceived, robbed
+and outraged, how thankful we should be that we are not the chosen
+people of God. No wonder that they longed for the slavery of Egypt,
+and remembered with sorrow the unhappy day when they exchanged masters.
+Compared with Jehovah, Pharaoh was a benefactor, and the tyranny of
+Egypt was freedom to those who suffered the liberty of God.
+
+While reading the Pentateuch, I am filled with indignation, pity and
+horror. Nothing can be sadder than the history of the starved and
+frightened wretches who wandered over the desolate crags and sands of
+wilderness and desert, the prey of famine, sword, and plague. Ignorant
+and superstitious to the last degree, governed by falsehood, plundered
+by hypocrisy, they were the sport of priests, and the food of fear. God
+was their greatest enemy, and death their only friend.
+
+It is impossible to conceive of a more thoroughly despicable, hateful,
+and arrogant being, than the Jewish god. He is without a redeeming
+feature. In the mythology of the world he has no parallel. He, only, is
+never touched by agony and tears. He delights only in blood and pain.
+Human affections are naught to him. He cares neither for love nor music,
+beauty nor joy. A false friend, an unjust judge, a braggart, hypocrite,
+and tyrant, sincere in hatred, jealous, vain, and revengeful, false in
+promise, honest in curse, suspicious, ignorant, and changeable, infamous
+and hideous:--such is the God of the Pentateuch.
+
+
+
+
+XXIV. CONFESS AND AVOID
+
+The scientific christians now admit that the bible is not inspired in
+its astronomy, geology, botany, zoology, nor in any science. In other
+words, they admit that on these subjects, the bible cannot be depended
+upon. If all the statements in the scriptures were true, there would
+be no necessity for admitting that some of them are not inspired. A
+christian will not admit that a passage in the bible is uninspired,
+until he is satisfied that it is untrue. Orthodoxy itself has at last
+been compelled to say, that while a passage may be true and uninspired,
+it cannot be inspired if false.
+
+If the people of Europe had known as much of astronomy and geology when
+the bible was introduced among them, as they do now, there never could
+have been one believer in the doctrine of inspiration. If the writers of
+the various parts of the bible had known as much about the sciences as
+is now known by every intelligent man, the book never could have
+been written. It was produced by ignorance, and has been believed and
+defended by its author. It has lost power in the proportion that man
+has gained knowledge. A few years ago, this book was appealed to in the
+settlement of all scientific questions; but now, even the clergy
+confess that in such matters, it has ceased to speak with the voice
+of authority. For the establishment of facts, the word of man is now
+considered far better than the word of God. In the world of science,
+Jehovah was superseded by Copernicus, Galileo, and Kepler. All that God
+told Moses, admitting the entire account to be true, is dust and ashes
+compared to the discoveries of Des Cartes, La Place, and Humboldt. In
+matters of fact, the bible has ceased to be regarded as a standard.
+Science has succeeded in breaking the chains of theology. A few years
+ago, Science endeavored to show that it was not inconsistent with the
+bible. The tables have been turned, and now, Religion is endeavoring to
+prove that the bible is not inconsistent with Science. The standard has
+been changed.
+
+For many ages, the christians contended that the bible, viewed simply as
+a literary performance, was beyond all other books, and that man without
+the assistance of God could not produce its equal. This claim was made
+when but few books existed, and the bible, being the only book generally
+known, had no rival. But this claim, like the other, has been abandoned
+by many, and soon will be, by all. Compared with Shakespeare's "book
+and volume of the brain," the "sacred" bible shrinks and seems as feebly
+impotent and vain, as would a pipe of Pan, when some great organ, voiced
+with every tone, from the hoarse thunder of the sea to the winged warble
+of a mated bird, floods and fills cathedral aisles with all the wealth
+of sound.
+
+It is now maintained--and this appears to be the last fortification
+behind which the doctrine of inspiration skulks and crouches--that the
+bible, although false and mistaken in its astronomy, geology, geography,
+history and philosophy, is inspired in its morality. It is now claimed
+that had it not been for this book, the world would have been inhabited
+only by savages, and that had it not been for the holy scriptures, man
+never would have even dreamed of the unity of God. A belief in one God
+is claimed to be a dogma of almost infinite importance, that without
+this belief civilization is impossible, and that this fact is the sun
+around which all the virtues revolve, For my part, I think it infinitely
+more important to believe in man. Theology is a superstition--Humanity a
+religion.
+
+
+
+
+XXV. "INSPIRED" SLAVERY
+
+Perhaps the bible was inspired upon the subject of human slavery. Is
+there, in the civilized world, today, a clergyman who believes in the
+divinity of slavery? Does the bible teach man to enslave his brother? If
+it does, is it not blasphemous to say that it is inspired of God? If
+you find the institution of slavery upheld in a book said to have been
+written by God, what would you expect to find in a book inspired by the
+devil? Would you expect to find that book in favor of liberty? Modern
+christians, ashamed of the God of the Old Testament, endeavor now to
+show that slavery was neither commanded nor opposed by Jehovah. Nothing
+can be plainer than the following passages from the twenty-fifth chapter
+of Leviticus. "Moreover of the children of the strangers that do sojourn
+among you, of them shall ye buy, and of their families that are with
+you, which they begat in your land: and they shall be your possession.
+And ye shall take them as an inheritance for your children after you, to
+inherit them for a possession, they shall be your bond-men forever. Both
+thy bond-men, and thy bond-maids, which thou shalt have, shall be of
+the heathen that are round about you; of them shall ye buy bond-men, and
+bond-maids."
+
+Can we believe in this, the Nineteenth Century, that these infamous
+passages were inspired by God? that God approved not only of human
+slavery, but instructed his chosen people to buy the women, children and
+babes of the heathen round about them? If it was right for the Hebrews
+to buy, it was also right for the heathen to sell. This God, by
+commanding the Hebrews to buy, approved of the selling of sons and
+daughters. The Canaanite who, tempted by gold, lured by avarice, sold
+from the arms of his wife the dimpled babe, simply made it possible for
+the Hebrews to obey the orders of their God. If God is the author of
+the bible, the reading of these passages ought to cover his cheeks with
+shame. I ask the christian world to-day, was it right for the heathen
+to sell their children? Was it right for God not only to uphold, but to
+command the infamous traffic in human flesh? Could the most revengeful
+fiend, the most malicious vagrant in the gloom of hell, sink to a lower
+moral depth than this?
+
+According to this God, his chosen people were not only commanded to buy
+of the heathen round about them, but were also permitted to buy each
+other for a term of years. The law governing the purchase of Jews is
+laid down in the twenty-first chapter of Exodus. "If thou buy a Hebrew
+servant, six years shall he serve: and in the seventh he shall go out
+free for nothing. If he came in by himself, he shall go out by himself:
+if he were married, then his wife shall go out with him. If his master
+have given him a wife, and she have borne him sons or daughters, the
+wife and her children shall be her master's, and he shall go out by
+himself. And if the servant shall plainly say, I love my master, my
+wife, and my children; I will not go out free: Then his master shall
+bring him unto the judges; he shall also bring him to the door, or unto
+the door-post: and his master shall bore his ear through with an awl:
+and he shall serve him forever."
+
+Do you believe that God was the author of this infamous law? Do you
+believe that the loving father of us all, turned the dimpled arms of
+babes into manacles of iron? Do you believe that he baited the dungeon
+of servitude with wife and child? Is it possible to love a God who would
+make such laws? Is it possible not to hate and despise him?
+
+The heathen are not spoken of as human beings. Their rights are never
+mentioned. They were the rightful food of the sword, and their bodies
+were made for stripes and chains.
+
+In the same chapter of the same inspired book, we are told that, "if a
+man smite his servant, or his maid, with a rod, and he dies under his
+hand, he shall be surely punished. Notwithstanding, if he continue a day
+or two, he shall not be punished, for he is his money."
+
+Must we believe that God called some of his children the money of
+others? Can we believe that God made lashes upon the naked back, a
+legal tender for labor performed? Must we regard the auction block as an
+altar? Were blood hounds apostles? Was the slave-pen a temple? Were the
+stealers and whippers of babes and women the justified children of God?
+
+It is now contended that while the Old Testament is touched with the
+barbarism of its time, that the New Testament is morally perfect, and
+that on its pages can be found no blot or stain. As a matter of fact,
+the New Testament is more decidedly in favor of human slavery than the
+old.
+
+For my part, I never will, I never can, worship a God who upholds the
+institution of slavery. Such a God I hate and defy. I neither want his
+heaven, nor fear his hell.
+
+
+
+
+XXVI. "INSPIRED" MARRIAGE
+
+Is there an orthodox clergyman in the world, who will now declare that
+he believes the institution of polygamy to be right? Is there one who
+will publicly declare that, in his judgment, that institution ever was
+right? Was there ever a time in the history of the world when it was
+right to treat woman simply as property? Do not attempt to answer these
+questions by saying, that the bible is an exceedingly good book, that we
+are indebted for our civilization to the sacred volume, and that without
+it, man would lapse into savagery, and mental night. This is no answer.
+Was there a time when the institution of polygamy was the highest
+expression of human virtue? Is there a christian woman, civilized,
+intelligent, and free, who believes in the institution of polygamy? Are
+we better, purer, and more intelligent than God was four thousand years
+ago? Why should we imprison Mormons, and worship God? Polygamy is just
+as pure in Utah, as it could have been in the promised land. Love and
+Virtue are the same the whole world round, and Justice is the same in
+every star. All the languages of the world are not sufficient to express
+the filth of polygamy. It makes of man, a beast, of woman, a trembling
+slave. It destroys the fireside, makes virtue an outcast, takes from
+human speech its sweetest words, and leaves the heart a den, where crawl
+and hiss the slimy serpents of most loathsome lust. Civilization rests
+upon the family. The good family is the unit of good government. The
+virtues grow about the holy hearth of home--they cluster, bloom, and
+shed their perfume round the fireside where the one man loves the one
+woman. Lover--husband--wife--mother--father--child--home!--without these
+sacred words, the world is but a lair, and men and women merely beasts.
+
+Why should the innocent maiden and the loving mother worship the
+heartless Jewish God? Why should they, with pure and stainless lips,
+read the vile record of inspired lust?
+
+The marriage of the one man to the one woman is the citadel and fortress
+of civilization. Without this, woman becomes the prey and slave of lust
+and power, and man goes back to savagery and crime. From the bottom of
+my heart I hate, abhor and execrate all theories of life, of which the
+pure and sacred home is not the corner-stone. Take from the world the
+family, the fireside, the children born of wedded love, and there is
+nothing left. The home where virtue dwells with love is like a lily with
+a heart of fire--the fairest flower in all the world.
+
+
+
+
+XXVII. "INSPIRED" WAR
+
+If the bible be true, God commanded his chosen people to destroy men
+simply for the crime of defending their native land. They were not
+allowed to spare trembling and white-haired age, nor dimpled babes
+clasped in the mothers' arms. They were ordered to kill women, and to
+pierce, with the sword of war, the unborn child. "Our heavenly Father"
+commanded the Hebrews to kill the men and women, the fathers, sons and
+brothers, but to preserve the girls alive. Why were not the maidens also
+killed? Why were they spared? Read the thirty-first chapter of Numbers,
+and you will find that the maidens were given to the soldiers and the
+priests. Is there, in all the history of war, a more infamous thing than
+this? Is it possible that God permitted the violets of modesty, that
+grow and shed their perfume in the maiden's heart, to be trampled
+beneath the brutal feet of lust? If this was the order of God, what,
+under the same circumstances, would have been the command of a devil?
+When, in this age of the world, a woman, a wife, a mother, reads this
+record, she should, with scorn and loathing, throw the book away. A
+general, who now should make such an order, giving over to massacre
+and rapine a conquered people, would be held in execration by the whole
+civilized world. Yet, if the bible be true, the supreme and infinite God
+was once a savage.
+
+A little while ago, out upon the western plains, in a little path
+leading to a cabin, were found the bodies of two children and their
+mother. Her breast was filled with wounds received in the defence of her
+darlings. They had been murdered by the savages. Suppose when looking at
+their lifeless forms, some one had said, "This was done by the command
+of God!" In Canaan there were countless scenes like this. There was
+no pity in inspired war. God raised the black flag, and commanded his
+soldiers to kill even the smiling infant in its mother's arms. Who
+is the blasphemer; the man who denies the existence of God, or he who
+covers the robes of the Infinite with innocent blood?
+
+We are told in the Pentateuch, that God, the father of us all, gave
+thousands of maidens, after having killed their fathers, their mothers,
+and their brothers, to satisfy the brutal lusts of savage men. If there
+be a God, I pray him to write in his book, opposite my name, that I
+denied this lie for him.
+
+
+
+
+XXVIII. "INSPIRED" RELIGIOUS LIBERTY
+
+According to the bible, God selected the Jewish people through whom to
+make known the great fact, that he was the only true and living God. For
+this purpose, he appeared on several occasions to Moses--came down to
+Sinai's top clothed in cloud and fire, and wrought a thousand miracles
+for the preservation and education of the Jewish people. In their
+presence he opened the waters of the sea. For them he caused bread to
+rain from heaven. To quench their thirst, water leaped from the dry and
+barren rock. Their enemies were miraculously destroyed; and for forty
+years, at least, this God took upon himself the government of the Jews.
+But, after all this, many of the people had less confidence in him
+than in gods of wood and stone. In moments of trouble, in periods of
+disaster, in the darkness of doubt, in the hunger and thirst of famine,
+instead of asking this God for aid, they turned and sought the help of
+senseless things. This God, with all his power and wisdom, could not
+even convince a few wandering and wretched savages that he was more
+potent than the idols of Egypt. This God was not willing that the Jews
+should think and investigate for themselves. For heresy, the penalty
+was death. Where this God reigned, intellectual liberty was unknown. He
+appealed only to brute force; he collected taxes by threatening
+plagues; he demanded worship on pain of sword and fire; acting as spy,
+inquisitor, judge and executioner.
+
+In the thirteenth chapter of Deuteronomy, we have the ideas of God as to
+mental freedom. "If thy brother, the son of thy mother, or thy son, or
+the wife of thy bosom, or thy friend which is as thine own soul, entice
+thee secretly, saying, Let us go and serve other gods, which thou hast
+not known, thou nor thy fathers; _namely_ of the gods of the people
+which are around about you, nigh unto thee, or far off from thee, from
+the one end of the earth even unto the other end of the earth, Thou
+shalt not consent unto him, nor hearken unto him, neither shall thine
+eye pity him, neither shalt thou spare him, neither shalt thou conceal
+him. But thou shalt surely kill him; thine hand shall be first upon him
+to put him to death, and afterward the hand of all the people. And thou
+shalt stone him with stones that he die."
+
+This is the religious liberty of God; the toleration of Jehovah. If
+I had lived in Palestine at that time, and my wife, the mother of my
+children, had said to me, "I am tired of Jehovah, he is always asking
+for blood; he is never weary of killing; he is always telling of his
+might and strength; always telling what he has done for the Jews,
+always asking for sacrifices; for doves and lambs--blood, nothing
+but blood.--Let us worship the sun. Jehovah is too revengeful, too
+malignant, too exacting. Let us worship the sun. The sun has clothed the
+world in beauty; it has covered the earth with flowers; by its divine
+light I first saw your face, and my beautiful babe."--If I had obeyed
+the command of God, I would have killed her. My hand would have been
+first upon her, and after that the hands of all the people, and she
+would have been stoned with stones until she died. For my part, I would
+never kill my wife, even if commanded so to do by the real God of this
+universe. Think of taking up some ragged rock and hurling it against the
+white bosom filled with love for you; and when you saw oozing from
+the bruised lips of the death wound, the red current of her sweet
+life--think of looking up to heaven and receiving the congratulations of
+the infinite fiend whose commandment you had obeyed!
+
+Can we believe that any such command was ever given by a merciful and
+intelligent God? Suppose, however, that God did give this law to the
+Jews, and did tell them that whenever a man preached a heresy, or
+proposed to worship any other god that they should kill him; and suppose
+that afterward this same God took upon himself flesh, and came to this
+very chosen people and taught a different religion, and that thereupon
+the Jews crucified him; I ask you, did he not reap exactly what he
+had sown? What right would this God have to complain of a crucifixion
+suffered in accordance with his own command?
+
+Nothing can be more infamous than intellectual tyranny. To put chains
+upon the body is as nothing compared with putting shackles on the brain.
+No god is entitled to the worship or the respect of man who does not
+give, even to the meanest of his children, every right that he claims
+for himself.
+
+If the Pentateuch be true, religious persecution is a duty. The dungeons
+of the Inquisition were temples, and the clank of every chain upon
+the limbs of heresy was music in the ear of God. If the Pentateuch was
+inspired, every heretic should be destroyed; and every man who advocates
+a fact inconsistent with the sacred book, should be consumed by sword
+and flame.
+
+In the Old Testament no one is told to reason with a heretic, and not
+one word is said about relying upon argument, upon education, nor upon
+intellectual development--nothing except simple brute force. Is there
+to-day a christian who will say that four thousand years ago, it was
+the duty of a husband to kill his wife if she differed with him upon
+the subject of religion? Is there one who will now say that, under such
+circumstances, the wife ought to have been killed? Why should God be so
+jealous of the wooden idols of the heathen? Could he not compete with
+Baal? Was he envious of the success of the Egyptian magicians? Was it
+not possible for him to make such a convincing display of his power as
+to silence forever the voice of unbelief? Did this God have to resort to
+force to make converts? Was he so ignorant of the structure of the human
+mind as to believe all honest doubt a crime? If he wished to do away
+with the idolatry of the Canaanites, why did he not appear to them? Why
+did he not give them the tables of the law? Why did he only make known
+his will to a few wandering savages in the desert of Sinai? Will some
+theologian have the kindness to answer these questions? Will some
+minister, who now believes in religious liberty, and eloquently
+denounces the intolerance of Catholicism, explain these things; will he
+tell us why he worships an intolerant God? Is a god who will burn a soul
+forever in another world, better than a christian who burns the body for
+a few hours in this? Is there no intellectual liberty in heaven? Do the
+angels all discuss questions on the same side? Are all the investigators
+in perdition? Will the penitent thief, winged and crowned, laugh at the
+honest folks in hell? Will the agony of the damned increase or decrease
+the happiness of God? Will there be, in the universe, an eternal _auto
+da fe?_
+
+
+
+
+XXIX. CONCLUSION
+
+If the Pentateuch is not inspired in its astronomy, geology, geography,
+history or philosophy, if it is not inspired concerning slavery,
+polygamy, war, law, religious or political liberty, or the rights of
+men, women and children, what is it inspired in, or about? The unity
+of God?--that was believed long before Moses was born. Special
+providence?--that has been the doctrine of ignorance in all ages.
+The rights of property?--theft was always a crime. The sacrifice of
+animals?--that was a custom thousands of years before a Jew existed.
+The sacredness of life?--there have always been laws against murder.
+The wickedness of perjury?--truthfulness has always been a virtue.
+The beauty of chastity?--the Pentateuch does not teach it. Thou shalt
+worship no other God?--that has been the burden of all religions.
+
+Is it possible that the Pentateuch could not have been written by
+uninspired men? that the assistance of God was necessary to produce
+these books? Is it possible that Galileo ascertained the mechanical
+principles of "Virtual Velocity," the laws of falling bodies and of all
+motion; that Copernicus ascertained the true position of the earth and
+accounted for all celestial phenomena; that Kepler discovered his three
+laws--discoveries of such importance that the 8th of May, 1618, may be
+called the birth-day of modern science; that Newton gave to the world
+the Method of Fluxions, the Theory of Universal Gravitation, and
+the Decomposition of Light; that Euclid, Cavalieri, Des Cartes, and
+Leibnitz, almost completed the science of mathematics; that all the
+discoveries in optics, hydrostatics, pneumatics and chemistry, the
+experiments, discoveries, and inventions of Galvani, Volta, Franklin
+and Morse, of Trevethick, Watt and Fulton and of all the pioneers of
+progress--that all this was accomplished by uninspired men, while the
+writer of the Pentateuch was directed and inspired by an infinite God?
+Is it possible that the codes of China, India, Egypt, Greece and Rome
+were made by man, and that the laws recorded in the Pentateuch were
+alone given by God? Is it possible that AEschylus and Shakespeare, Burns,
+and Beranger, Goethe and Schiller, and all the poets of the world, and
+all their wondrous tragedies and songs are but the work of men, while
+no intelligence except the infinite God could be the author of the
+Pentateuch? Is it possible that of all the books that crowd the
+libraries of the world, the books of science, fiction, history and song,
+that all save only one, have been produced by man? Is it possible that
+of all these, the bible only is the work of God?
+
+If the Pentateuch is inspired, the civilization of of our day is a
+mistake and crime. There should be no political liberty. Heresy should
+be trodden out beneath the bigot's brutal feet. Husbands should divorce
+their wives at will, and make the mothers of their children houseless
+and weeping wanderers. Polygamy ought to be practiced; women should
+become slaves; we should buy the sons and daughters of the heathen and
+make them bondmen and bondwomen forever. We should sell our own flesh
+and blood, and have the right to kill our slaves. Men and women should
+be stoned to death for laboring on the seventh day. "Mediums," such
+as have familiar spirits, should be burned with fire. Every vestige of
+mental liberty should be destroyed, and reason's holy torch extinguished
+in the martyr's blood.
+
+Is it not far better and wiser to say that the Pentateuch while
+containing some good laws, some truths, some wise and useful things is,
+after all, deformed and blackened by the savagery of its time? Is it not
+far better and wiser to take the good and throw the bad away?
+
+Let us admit what we know to be true; that Moses was mistaken about a
+thousand things; that the story of creation is not true; that the garden
+of Eden is a myth; that the serpent and the tree of knowledge, and the
+fall of man are but fragments of old mythologies lost and dead; that
+woman was not made out of a rib; that serpents never had the power of
+speech; that the sons of God did not marry the daughters of men; that
+the story of the flood and ark is not exactly true; that the tower of
+Babel is a mistake; that the confusion of tongues is a childish thing;
+that the origin of the rainbow is a foolish fancy; that Methuselah did
+not live nine hundred and sixty-nine years; that Enoch did not leave
+this world, taking with him his flesh and bones; that the story of Sodom
+and Gomorrah is somewhat improbable; that burning brimstone never fell
+like rain; that Lot's wife was not changed into chloride of sodium; that
+Jacob did not, in fact, put his hip out of joint wrestling with God;
+that the history of Tamar might just as well have been left out; that a
+belief in Pharaoh's dreams is not essential to salvation; that it makes
+but little difference whether the rod of Aaron was changed to a serpent
+or not; that of all the wonders said to have been performed in Egypt,
+the greatest is, that anybody ever believed the absurd account; that
+God did not torment the innocent cattle on account of the sins of their
+owners; that he did not kill the first born of the poor maid behind
+the mill because of Pharaoh's crimes; that flies and frogs were not
+ministers of God's wrath; that lice and locusts were not the executors
+of his will; that seventy people did not, in two hundred and fifteen
+years, increase to three million; that three priests could not eat
+six hundred pigeons in a day; that gazing at a brass serpent could not
+extract poison from the blood; that God did not go in partnership with
+hornets; that he did not murder people simply because they asked for
+something to eat; that he did not declare the making of hair oil
+and ointment an offence to be punished with death; that he did not
+miraculously preserve cloth and leather; that he was not afraid of wild
+beasts; that he did not punish heresy with sword and fire; that he was
+not jealous, revengeful, and unjust; that he knew all about the sun,
+moon, and stars; that he did not threaten to kill people for eating the
+fat of an ox; that he never told Aaron to draw cuts to see which of two
+goats should be killed; that he never objected to clothes made of woolen
+mixed with linen; that if he objected to dwarfs, people with flat noses
+and too many fingers, he ought not to have created such folks; that
+he did not demand human sacrifices as set forth in the last chapter
+of Leviticus; that he did not object to the raising of horses; that he
+never commanded widows to spit in the faces of their brothers-in-law;
+that several contradictory accounts of the same transaction cannot all
+be true; that God did not talk to Abraham as one man talks to another;
+that angels were not in the habit of walking about the earth eating veal
+dressed with milk and butter, and making bargains about the destruction
+of cities; that God never turned himself into a flame of fire, and lived
+in a bush; that he never met Moses in a hotel and tried to kill him;
+that it was absurd to perform miracles to induce a king to act in a
+certain way and then harden his heart so that he would refuse; that God
+was not kept from killing the Jews by the fear that the Egyptians would
+laugh at him; that he did not secretly bury a man and then allow the
+corpse to write an account of the funeral; that he never believed the
+firmament to be solid; that he knew slavery was and always would be a
+frightful crime; that polygamy is but stench and filth; that the brave
+soldier will always spare an unarmed foe; that only cruel cowards
+slay the conquered and the helpless; that no language can describe the
+murderer of a smiling babe; that God did not want the blood of doves and
+lambs; that he did not love the smell of burning flesh; that he did not
+want his altars daubed with blood; that he did not pretend that the sins
+of a people could be transferred to a goat; that he did not believe in
+witches, wizards, spooks, and devils; that he did not test the virtue of
+woman with dirty water; that he did not suppose that rabbits chewed the
+cud; that he never thought there were any four-footed birds; that he did
+not boast for several hundred years that he had vanquished an Egyptian
+king; that a dry stick did not bud, blossom, and bear almonds in one
+night; that manna did not shrink and swell, so that each man could
+gather only just one omer; that it was never wrong to "countenance the
+poor man in his cause;" that God never told a people not to live in
+peace with their neighbors; that he did not spend forty days with Moses
+on Mount Sinai giving him patterns for making clothes, tongs, basins,
+and snuffers; that maternity is not a sin; that physical deformity is
+not a crime; that an atonement cannot be made for the soul by shedding
+innocent blood; that killing a dove over running water will not make its
+blood a medicine; that a god who demands love knows nothing of the human
+heart; that one who frightens savages with loud noises is unworthy the
+love of civilized men; that one who destroys children on account of
+the sins of their fathers is a monster; that an infinite god never
+threatened to give people the itch; that he never sent wild beasts to
+devour babes; that he never ordered the violation of maidens; that
+he never regarded patriotism as a crime; that he never ordered the
+destruction of unborn children; that he never opened the earth and
+swallowed wives and babes because husbands and fathers had displeased
+him; that he never demanded that men should kill their sons and
+brothers, for the purpose of sanctifying themselves; that we cannot
+please God by believing the improbable; that credulity is not a virtue;
+that investigation is not a crime; that every mind should be free;
+that all religious persecution is infamous in God, as well as man; that
+without liberty, virtue is impossible; that without freedom, even love
+cannot exist; that every man should be allowed to think and to express
+his thoughts; that woman is the equal of man; that children should be
+governed by love and reason; that the family relation is sacred; that
+war is a hideous crime; that all intolerance is born of ignorance and
+hate; that the freedom of today is the hope of to-morrow; that the
+enlightened present ought not to fall upon its knees and blindly worship
+the barbaric past; and that every free, brave and enlightened man should
+publicly declare that all the ignorant, infamous, heartless, hideous
+things recorded in the "inspired" Pentateuch are not the words of God,
+but simply "Some Mistakes of Moses."
+
+
+
+
+
+A TRIBUTE
+
+TO
+
+Ebon C. ingersoll,
+
+BY HIS BROTHER
+
+Robert.
+
+Dec. 12, 1831. MAY 31, 1879.
+
+A Tribute to Ebon C. Ingersoll,
+
+By his Brother Robert.
+
+THE RECORD OF A GENEROUS LIFE RUNS LIKE A VINE AROUND THE MEMORY OF OUR
+DEAD, AND EVERY SWEET, UNSELFISH ACT IS NOW A PERFUMED FLOWER.
+
+Dear Friends: I am going to do that which the dead oft promised he would
+do for me.
+
+The loved and loving brother, husband, father, friend, died where
+manhood's morning almost touches noon, and while the shadows still were
+falling toward the west.
+
+He had not passed on life's highway the stone that marks the highest
+point; but, being weary for a moment, he lay down by the wayside, and,
+using his burden for a pillow, fell into that dreamless sleep that
+kisses down his eyelids still. While yet in love with life and raptured
+with the world, he passed to silence and pathetic dust.
+
+Yet, after all, it may be best, just in the happiest, sunniest hour
+of all the voyage, while eager winds are kissing every sail, to dash
+against the unseen rock, and in an instant hear the billows roar above a
+sunken ship. For whether in mid sea or 'mong the breakers of the farther
+shore, a wreck at last must mark the end of each and all. And every
+life, no matter if its every hour is rich with love and every moment
+jeweled with a joy, will, at its close, become a tragedy as sad and deep
+and dark as can be woven of the warp and woof of mystery and death.
+
+This brave and tender man in every storm of life was oak and rock; but
+in the sunshine he was vine and flower. He was the friend of all heroic
+souls. He climbed the heights, and left all superstitions far below,
+while on his forehead fell the golden dawning, of the grander day.
+
+He loved the beautiful, and was with color, form, and music touched to
+tears. He sided with the weak, the poor, and wronged, and lovingly
+gave alms. With loyal heart and with the purest hands he faithfully
+discharged all public trusts.
+
+He was a worshipper of liberty, a friend of the oppressed. A thousand
+times I have heard him quote these words: "_For Justice all place a
+temple, and all season, summer!_" He believed that happiness was the
+only good, reason the only torch, justice the only worship, humanity the
+only religion, and love the only priest. He added to the sum of human
+joy; and were every one to whom he did some loving service to bring a
+blossom to his grave, he would sleep to-night beneath a wilderness of
+flowers.
+
+Life is a narrow vale between the cold and barren peaks of two
+eternities. We strive in vain to look beyond the heights. We cry aloud,
+and the only answer is the echo of our wailing cry. From the voiceless
+lips of the unreplying dead there comes no word; but in the night of
+death hope sees a star and listening love can hear the rustle of a wing.
+
+He who sleeps here, when dying, mistaking the approach of death for the
+return of health, whispered with his latest breath, "I am better now."
+Let us believe, in spite of doubts and dogmas, of fears and tears, that
+these dear words are true of all the countless dead.
+
+And now, to you, who have been chosen, from among the many men he loved,
+to do the last sad office for the dead, we give his sacred dust.
+
+Speech cannot contain our love. There was, there is, no gentler,
+stronger, manlier man.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's Mistakes of Moses, by Robert G. Ingersoll
+
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