Chapter XII (3)

"to Jonah," telling him to "go and cry against the "city of Nineveh;" but Jonah, instead of going, endeavored to evade the Lord by taking ship for Tarshish. As soon as the Lord heard of this, he "sent out a great wind into the sea," and frightened the sailors to that extent that after assuring them- selves, by casting lots, that Jonah was the man, they threw him into the sea. After escaping from the whale, he went to Nineveh, and delivered his pre- tended message from God. In consequence of his message, Jonah having no credentials from God,-- nothing certifying to his official character, the King of Nineveh covered himself with sack-cloth and sat down in some ashes. He then caused a decree to be issued that every man and beast should abstain from food and water; and further, that every man and beast should be covered with sack-cloth. This was done in the hope that Jonah's God would repent, and turn away his fierce anger. When we take into con- sideration the fact that the people of Nineveh were not Hebrews, and had not the slightest confidence in the God of the Jews--knew no more of, and cared no more for, Jehovah than we now care for Jupiter, or Neptune; the effect produced by the proclamation of Jonah is, to say the least of it, almost incredible.

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We are also informed, in this book, that the moment God saw all the people sitting in the ashes, and all the animals covered with sack-cloth, he repented. This failure on the part of God to destroy the unbelievers displeased Jonah exceedingly, and he was very angry. Jonah was much like the modern minister, who seems always to be personally aggrieved if the pestilence and famine prophesied by him do not come. Jonah was displeased to that degree, that he asked God to kill him. Jonah then went out of the city, even after God had repented, made him a booth and sat under it, in the shade, waiting to see what would become of the city. God then "prepared a gourd, and made it to come up "over Jonah that it might be a shadow over his "head to deliver him from his grief." And then we have this pathetic line: "So Jonah was exceedingly "glad of the gourd."

God having prepared a fish, and also prepared a gourd, proposed next morning to prepare a worm. And when the sun rose next day, the worm that God had prepared, "smote the gourd, so that "it withered." I can hardly believe that an in- finite being prepared a worm to smite a gourd so that it withered, in order to keep the sun from

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the bald head of a prophet. According to the account, after sunrise, and after the worm had smitten the gourd, "God prepared a vehement east "wind." This was not an ordinary wind, but one prepared expressly for that occasion. After the wind had been prepared, "the sun beat upon the head of "Jonah, and he fainted, and wished in himself to "die." All this was done in order to convince Jonah that a man who would deplore the loss of a gourd, ought not to wish for the destruction of a city.

Is it possible for any intelligent man now to believe that the history of Jonah is literally true? For my part, I cannot see the necessity either of believing it, or of preaching it. It has nothing to do with honesty, with mercy, or with morality. The bad may believe it, and the good may hold it in contempt. I do not see that civilization has the slightest interest in the fish, the gourd, the worm, or the vehement east wind.

Does Mr. Talmage think that it is absolutely neces- sary to believe _all_ the story? Does he not think it probable that a God of infinite mercy, rather than damn the soul of an honest man to hell forever, would waive, for instance, the worm,--provided he believed in the vehement east wind, the gourd and the fish?

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Mr. Talmage, by insisting on the literal truth of the Bible stories, is doing Christianity great harm. Thousands of young men will say: "I can't become "a Christian if it is necessary to believe the adven- "tures of Jonah." Mr. Talmage will put into the paths of multitudes of people willing to do right, anxious to make the world a little better than it is,-- this stumbling block. He could have explained it, called it an allegory, poetical license, a child of the oriental imagination, a symbol, a parable, a poem, a dream, a legend, a myth, a divine figure, or a great truth wrapped in the rags and shreds and patches of seeming falsehood. His efforts to belittle the miracle, to suggest the mouth instead of the stomach,--to suggest that Jonah took deck passage, or lodged in the forecastle instead of in the cabin or steerage,-- to suggest motion as a means of avoiding digestion, is a serious theological blunder, and may cause the loss of many souls.

If Mr. Talmage will consult with other ministers, they will tell him to let this story alone--that he will simply "provoke investigation and discussion"--two things to be avoided. They will tell him that they are not willing their salary should hang on so slender a thread, and will advise him not to bother his gourd

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about Jonah's. They will also tell him that in this age of the world, arguments cannot be answered by "a vehement east wind."

Some people will think that it would have been just as easy for God to have pulled the gourd up, as to have prepared a worm to bite it.

_Question_. Mr. Talmage charges that you have said there are indecencies in the Bible. Are you still of that opinion?

_Answer_. Mr. Talmage endeavors to evade the charge, by saying that "there are things in the Bible "not intended to be read, either in the family circle, "or in the pulpit, but nevertheless they are to be "read." My own judgment is, that an infinite being should not inspire the writing of indecent things. It will not do to say, that the Bible description of sin "warns and saves." There is nothing in the history of Tamar calculated to "warn and save and the same may be said of many other passages in the Old Testament. Most Christians would be glad to know that all such passages are interpolations. I regret that Shakespeare ever wrote a line that could not be read any where, and by any person. But Shakespeare, great as he was, did not rise en-

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tirely above his time. So of most poets. Nearly all have stained their pages with some vulgarity; and I am sorry for it, and hope the time will come when we shall have an edition of all the great writers and poets from which every such passage is elimi- nated.

It is with the Bible as with most other books. It is a mingling of good and bad. There are many exquisite passages in the Bible,--many good laws,-- many wise sayings,--and there are many passages that should never have been written. I do not pro- pose to throw away the good on account of the bad, neither do I propose to accept the bad on account of the good. The Bible need not be taken as an entirety. It is the business of every man who reads it, to discriminate between that which is good and that which is bad. There are also many passages neither good nor bad,--wholly and totally indifferent --conveying 110 information--utterly destitute of ideas,--and as to these passages, my only objection to them is that they waste time and paper.

I am in favor of every passage in the Bible that conveys information. I am in favor of every wise proverb, of every verse coming from human ex- perience and that appeals to the heart of man. I am

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in favor of every passage that inculcates justice, generosity, purity, and mercy. I am satisfied that much of the historical part is false. Some of it is probably true. Let us have the courage to take the true, and throw the false away. I am satisfied that many of the passages are barbaric, and many of them are good. Let us have the wisdom to accept the good and to reject the barbaric.

No system of religion should go in partnership with barbarism. Neither should any Christian feel it his duty to defend the savagery of the past. The philosophy of Christ must stand independently of the mistakes of the Old Testament. We should do jus- tice whether a woman was made from a rib or from "omnipotence." We should be merciful whether the flood was general, or local. We should be kind and obliging whether Jonah was swallowed by a fish or not. The miraculous has nothing to do with the moral. Intelligence is of more value than inspiration. Brain is better than Bible. Reason is above all religion. I do not believe that any civilized human being clings to the Bible on account of its barbaric passages. I am candid enough to believe that every Christian in the world would think more of the Bible, if it had not upheld slavery, if it had denounced

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polygamy, if it had cried out against wars of exter- mination, if it had spared women and babes, if it had upheld everywhere, and at all times, the standard of justice and mercy. But when it is claimed that the book is perfect, that it is inspired, that it is, in fact, the work of an infinitely wise and good God,--then it should be without a defect. There should not be within its lids an impure word; it should not express an impure thought. There should not be one word in favor of injustice, not one word in favor of slavery, not one word in favor of wars of extermination. There must be another revision of the Scriptures. The chaff must be thrown away. The dross must be rejected; and only that be retained which is in exact harmony with the brain and heart of the greatest and the best.

_Question_. Mr. Talmage charges you with unfair- ness, because you account for the death of art in Palestine, by the commandment which forbids the making of graven images.

_Answer_. I have said that that commandment was the death of art, and I say so still. I insist that by reason of that commandment, Palestine produced no painter and no sculptor until after the destruction of

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Jerusalem. Mr. Talmage, in order to answer that statement, goes on to show that hundreds and thou- sands of pictures were produced in the Middle Ages. That is a departure in pleading. Will he give us the names of the painters that existed in Palestine from Mount Sinai to the destruction of the temple? Will he give us the names of the sculptors between those times? Mohammed prohibited his followers from making any representation of human or animal life, and as a result, Mohammedans have never produced a painter nor a sculptor, except in the portrayal and chiseling of vegetable forms. They were confined to trees and vines, and flowers. No Mohammedan has portrayed the human face or form. But the commandment of Jehovah went farther than that of Momammed, and prevented portraying the image of anything. The assassination of art was complete.

There is another thing that should not be forgotten.

We are indebted for the encouragement of art, not to the Protestant Church; if indebted to any, it is to the Catholic. The Catholic adorned the cathedral

with painting and statue--not the Protestant. The Protestants opposed music and painting, and refused to decorate their temples. But if Mr. Tal- mage wishes to know to whom we are indebted for

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art, let him read the mythology of Greece and Rome. The early Christians destroyed paintings and statues. They were the enemies of all beauty. They hated and detested every expression of art. They looked upon the love of statues as a form of idolatry. They looked upon every painting as a remnant of Pagan- ism. They destroyed all upon which they could lay their ignorant hands. Hundred of years afterwards, the world was compelled to search for the fragments that Christian fury had left. The Greeks filled the world with beauty. For every stream and mountain and cataract they had a god or goddess. Their sculptors impersonated every dream and hope, and their mythology feeds, to-day, the imagination of mankind. The Venus de Milo is the impersonation of beauty, in ruin--the sublimest fragment of the ancient world. Our mythology is infinitely unpoetic and barren--our deity an old bachelor from eternity, who once believed in indiscriminate massacre. Upon the throne of our heaven, woman finds no place. Our mythology is destitute of the maternal.

_Question_. Mr. Talmage denies your statement that the Old Testament humiliates woman. He also denies that the New Testament says anything against woman. How is it?

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_Answer_. Of course, I never considered a book up- holding polygamy to be the friend of woman. Eve, according to that book, is the mother of us all, and yet the inspired writer does not tell us how long she lived,--does not even mention her death,--makes not the slightest reference as to what finally became of her. Methuselah lived nine hundred and sixty- nine years, and yet, there is not the slightest mention made of Mrs. Methuselah. Enoch was translated, and his widow is not mentioned. There is not a word about Mrs. Seth, or Mrs. Enos, or Mrs. Cainan, or Mrs. Mahalaleel, or Mrs. Jared. We do not know the name of Mrs. Noah, and I believe not the name of a solitary woman is given from the creation of Eve--with the exception of two of Lamech's wives--until Sarai is mentioned as being the wife of Abram.

If you wish really to know the Bible estimation of woman, turn to the fourth and fifth verses of the twelfth chapter of Leviticus, in which a woman, for the crime of having borne a son, is unfit to touch a hallowed thing, or to come in the holy sanctuary for thirty-three days; but if a woman was the mother of a girl, then she became totally unfit to enter the sanctuary, or pollute with her touch a hallowed thing,

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for sixty-six days. The pollution was twice as great when she had borne a daughter.

It is a little difficult to see why it is a greater crime to give birth to a daughter than to a son. Surely, a law like that did not tend to the elevation of woman. You will also find in the same chapter that a woman had to offer a pigeon, or a turtle-dove, as a sin offer- ing, in order to expiate the crime of having become a mother. By the Levitical law, a mother was unclean. The priest had to make an atonement for her.

If there is, beneath the stars, a figure of complete and perfect purity, it is a mother holding in her arms her child. The laws respecting women, given by commandment of Jehovah to the Jews, were born of barbarism, and in this day and age should be re- garded only with detestation and contempt. The twentieth and twenty-first verses of the nineteenth chapter of Leviticus show that the same punishment was not meted to men and women guilty of the same crime.

The real explanation of what we find in the Old Testament degrading to woman, lies in the fact, that the overflow of Love's mysterious Nile--the sacred source of life--was, by its savage authors, deemed unclean.

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_Question_. But what have you to say about the women of the Bible, mentioned by Mr. Talmage, and held up as examples for all time of all that is sweet and womanly?

_Answer_. I believe that Esther is his principal heroine. Let us see who she was.

According to the book of Esther, Ahasuerus who was king of Persia, or some such place, ordered Vashti his queen to show herself to the people and the princes, because she was "exceedingly fair "to look upon." For some reason--modesty per- haps--she refused to appear. And thereupon the king "sent letters into all his provinces and to every "people after their language, that every man should "bear rule in his own house;" it being feared that if it should become public that Vashti had disobeyed, all other wives might follow her example. The king also, for the purpose of impressing upon all women the necessity of obeying their husbands, issued a decree that "Vashti should come no more before "him," and that he would "give her royal estate "unto another." This was done that "all the "wives should give to their husbands honor, both to "great and small."

After this, "the king appointed officers in all the

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"provinces of his kingdom that they might gather "together all the fair young virgins," and bring them to his palace, put them in the custody of his chamberlain, and have them thoroughly washed. Then the king was to look over the lot and take each day the one that pleased him best until he found the one to put in the place of Vashti. A fellow by the name of Mordecai, living in that part of the country, hearing of the opportunity to sell a girl, brought Esther, his uncle's daughter,--she being an orphan, and very beautiful--to see whether she might not be the lucky one.

The remainder of the second chapter of this book, I do not care to repeat. It is sufficient to say that Esther at last was chosen.

The king at this time did not know that Esther was a Jewess. Mordecai her kinsman, however, discovered a plot to assassinate the king, and Esther told the king, and the two plotting gentlemen were hanged on a tree.

After a while, a man by the name of Haman was made Secretary of State, and everybody coming in his presence bowed except Mordecai. Mordecai was probably depending on the influence of Esther. Haman finally became so vexed, that he made up

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his mind to have all the Jews in the kingdom destroyed. (The number of Jews at that time in Persia must have been immense.) Haman there- upon requested the king to have an order issued to destroy all the Jews, and in consideration of the order, proposed to pay ten thousand talents of silver. And thereupon, letters were written to the governors of the various provinces, sealed with the king's ring, sent by post in all directions, with instructions to kill all the Jews, both young and old--little children and women,--in one day. (One would think that the king copied this order from another part of the Old Testament, or had found an original by Jehovah.) The people immediately made preparations for the killing. Mordecai clothed himself with sack-cloth, and Esther called upon one of the king's chamberlains, and she finally got the history of the affair, as well as a copy of the writing, and thereupon made up her mind to go in and ask the king to save her people.

At that time, Bismarck's idea of government being in full force, any one entering the king's presence with- out an invitation, was liable to be put to death. And in case any one did go in to see the king, if the king failed to hold out his golden sceptre, his life was not spared. Notwithstanding this order, Esther put on

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her best clothes, and stood in the inner court of the king's house, while the king sat on his royal throne. When the king saw her standing in the court, he held out his sceptre, and Esther drew near, and he asked her what she wished; and thereupon she asked that the king and Haman might take dinner with her that day, and it was done. While they were feasting, the king again asked Esther what she wanted; and her second request was, that they would come and dine with her once more. When Haman left the palace that day, he saw Mordecai again at the gate, standing as stiffly as usual, and it filled Haman with indignation. So Haman, taking the advice of his wife, made a gallows fifty cubits high, for the special benefit of Mordecai. The next day, when Haman went to see the king, the king, having the night before refreshed his memory in respect to the service done him by Mordecai, asked Haman what ought to be done for the man whom the king wished to honor. Haman, supposing of course that the king referred to him, said that royal purple ought to be brought forth, such as the king wore, and the horse that the king rode on, and the crown-royal should be set on the man's head;--that one of the most noble princes should lead the horse,

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and as he went through the streets, proclaim: "Thus "shall it be done to the man whom the king de- "lighteth to honor."

Thereupon the king told Haman that Mordecai was the man that the king wished to honor. And Haman was forced to lead this horse, backed by Mordecai, through the streets, shouting: "This shall "be done to the man whom the king delighteth to "honor." Immediately afterward, he went to the banquet that Esther had prepared, and the king again asked Esther her petition. She then asked for the salvation of her people; stating at the same time, that if her people had been sold into slavery, she would have held her tongue; but since they were about to be killed, she could not keep silent. The king asked her who had done this thing; and Esther replied that it was the wicked Haman.

Thereupon one of the chamberlains, remembering the gallows that had been made for Mordecai, men- tioned it, and the king immediately ordered that Haman be hanged thereon; which was done. And Mordecai immediately became Secretary of State. The order against the Jews was then rescinded; and Ahasuerus, willing to do anything that Esther de- sired, hanged all of Haman's folks. He not only did

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this, but he immediately issued an order to all the Jews allowing them to kill the other folks. And the Jews got together throughout one hundred and twenty-seven provinces, "and such was their power, "that no man could stand against them; and there- "upon the Jews smote all their enemies with the "stroke of the sword, and with slaughter and de- "struction, and did whatever they pleased to those "who hated them." And in the palace of the king, the Jews slew and destroyed five hundred men, besides ten sons of Haman; and in the rest of the provinces, they slew seventy-five thousand people. And after this work of slaughter, the Jews had a day of glad- ness and feasting.

One can see from this, what a beautiful Bible character Esther was--how filled with all that is womanly, gentle, kind and tender!

This story is one of the most unreasonable, as well as one of the most heartless and revengeful, in the whole Bible. Ahasuerus was a monster, and Esther equally infamous; and yet, this woman is held up for the admiration of mankind by a Brooklyn pastor. There is this peculiarity about the book of Esther: the name of God is not mentioned in it, and the deity is not referred to, directly or indirectly;--yet

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it is claimed to be an inspired book. If Jehovah wrote it, he certainly cannot be charged with egotism.

I most cheerfully admit that the book of Ruth is quite a pleasant story, and the affection of Ruth for her mother-in-law exceedingly touching, but I am of opinion that Ruth did many things that would be re- garded as somewhat indiscreet, even in the city of Brooklyn.

All I can find about Hannah is, that she made a little coat for her boy Samuel, and brought it to him from year to year. Where he got his vest and pantaloons we are not told. But this fact seems hardly enough to make her name immortal.

So also Mr. Talmage refers us to the wonderful woman Abigail. The story about Abigail, told in plain English, is this: David sent some of his fol- lowers to Nabal, Abigail's husband, and demanded food. Nabal, who knew nothing about David, and cared less, refused. Abigail heard about it, and took food to David and his servants. She was very much struck, apparently, with David and David with her. A few days afterward Nabal died--supposed to have been killed by the Lord--but probably poisoned; and thereupon David took Abigail to wife. The

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whole matter should have been investigated by the grand jury.

We are also referred to Dorcas, who no doubt was a good woman--made clothes for the poor and gave alms, as millions have done since then. It seems that this woman died. Peter was sent for, and there- upon raised her from the dead, and she is never men- tioned any more. Is it not a little strange that a woman who had been actually raised from the dead, should have so completely passed out of the memory of her time, that when she died the second time, she was entirely unnoticed?

Is it not astonishing that so little is in the New Testament concerning the mother of Christ? My own opinion is, that she was an excellent woman, and the wife of Joseph; and that Joseph was the actual father of Christ. I think there can be no reasonable doubt that such was the opinion of the authors of the original gospels. Upon any other hypothesis, it is impossible to account for their having given the genealogy of Joseph to prove that Christ was of the blood of David. The idea that he was the Son of God, or in any way miraculously produced, was an afterthought, and is hardly entitled now to serious consideration. The gospels were written so long after

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the death of Christ, that very little was known of him, and substantially nothing of his parents. How is it that not one word is said about the death of Mary-- not one word about the death of Joseph? How did it happen that Christ did not visit his mother after his resurrection? The first time he speaks to his mother is when he was twelve years old. His mother having told him that she and his father had been seeking him, he replied: "How is it that ye sought me: wist "ye not that I must be about my Father s business?"

The second time was at the marriage feast in Cana, when he said to her: "Woman, what have I to do "with thee?" And the third time was at the cross, when "Jesus, seeing his mother standing by the "disciple whom he loved, said to her: Woman, be- "hold thy son;" and to the disciple: "Behold thy "mother." And this is all.

The best thing about the Catholic Church is the deification of Mary,--and yet this is denounced by Protestantism as idolatry. There is something in the human heart that prompts man to tell his faults more freely to the mother than to the father. The cruelty of Jehovah is softened by the mercy of Mary.

Is it not strange that none of the disciples of Christ

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said anything about their parents,--that we know absolutely nothing of them? Is there any evidence that they showed any particular respect even for the mother of Christ?

Mary Magdalen is, in many respects, the tenderest and most loving character in the New Testament. According to the account, her love for Christ knew no abatement,--no change--true even in the hopeless shadow of the cross. Neither did it die with his death. She waited at the sepulchre; she hasted in the early morning to his tomb, and yet the only comfort Christ gave to this true and loving soul lies in these strangely cold and heartless words: "Touch "me not."

There is nothing tending to show that the women spoken of in the Bible were superior to the ones we know. There are to-day millions of women making coats for their sons,--hundreds of thousands of women, true not simply to innocent people, falsely accused, but to criminals. Many a loving heart is as true to the gallows as Mary was to the cross. There are hundreds of thousands of women accept- ing poverty and want and dishonor, for the love they bear unworthy men; hundreds and thousands, hun- dreds and thousands, working day and night, with

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strained eyes and tired hands, for husbands and children,--clothed in rags, housed in huts and hovels, hoping day after day for the angel of death. There are thousands of women in Christian England, working in iron, laboring in the fields and toiling in mines. There are hundreds and thousands in Europe, everywhere, doing the work of men--deformed by toil, and who would become simply wild and ferocious beasts, except for the love they bear for home and child.

You need not go back four thousand years for heroines. The world is filled with them to-day. They do not belong to any nation, nor to any religion, nor exclusively to any race. Wherever woman is found, they are found.

There is no description of any women in the Bible that equal thousands and thousands of women known to-day. The women mentioned by Mr. Talmage fall almost infinitely below, not simply those in real life, but the creations of the imagination found in the world of fiction. They will not compare with the women born of Shakespeare's brain. You will find none like Isabella, in whose spotless life, love and reason blended into perfect truth; nor Juliet, within whose heart passion and purity met, like white and red within the bosom of a rose; nor Cordelia, who chose to

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suffer loss rather than show her wealth of love with those who gilded dross with golden words in hope of gain; nor Miranda, who told her love as freely as a flower gives its bosom to the kisses of the sun; nor Imogene, who asked: "What is it to be false?" nor Hermione, who bore with perfect faith and hope the cross of shame, and who at last forgave with all her heart; nor Desdemona, her innocence so perfect and her love so pure, that she was incapable of sus- pecting that another could suspect, and sought with dying words to hide her lover's crime.

If we wish to find what the Bible thinks of woman, all that is necessary to do is to read it. We will find that everywhere she is spoken of simply as property,--as belonging absolutely to the man. We will find that whenever a man got tired of his wife, all he had to do was to give her a writing of divorcement, and that then the mother of his children became a houseless and a homeless wanderer. We will find that men were allowed to have as many wives as they could get, either by courtship, purchase, or conquest. The Jewish people in the olden time were in many respects like their barbarian neighbors.

If we read the New Testament, we will find in the

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epistle of Paul to Timothy, the following gallant passages:

"Let the woman learn in silence, with all "subjection."

"But I suffer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp "authority over the man, but to be in silence."

And for these kind, gentle and civilized remarks, the apostle Paul gives the following reasons:

"For Adam was first formed, then Eve."

"And Adam was not deceived, but the woman "being deceived was in the transgression."

Certainly women ought to feel under great obli- gation to the apostle Paul.

In the fifth chapter of the same epistle, Paul, advising Timothy as to what kind of people he should admit into his society or church, uses the following language:

"Let not a widow be taken into the number under "threescore years old, having been the wife of one "man."

"But the younger widows refuse, for when they "have begun to wax wanton against Christ, they will "marry."

This same Paul did not seem to think polygamy wrong, except in a bishop. He tells Timothy that:

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"A bishop must be blameless, the husband of one "wife."

He also lays down the rule that a deacon should be the husband of one wife, leaving us to infer that the other members might have as many as they could get.

In the second epistle to Timothy, Paul speaks of "grandmother Lois," who was referred to in such extravagant language by Mr. Talmage, and nothing is said touching her character in the least. All her virtues live in the imagination, and in the imagina- tion alone.

Paul, also, in his epistle to the Ephesians, says:

"Wives, submit yourselves unto your own hus- "bands, as unto the Lord. For the husband is the "head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of the "church."

"Therefore, as the church is subject unto Christ, "so let the wives be to their own husbands, in "everything."

You will find, too, that in the seventh chapter of First Corinthians, Paul laments that all men are not bachelors like himself, and in the second verse of that chapter he gives the only reason for which he was willing that men and women should marry. He advised all the unmarried, and all widows, to remain

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as he was. In the ninth verse of this same chapter is a slander too vulgar for repetition,--an estimate of woman and of woman's love so low and vile, that every woman should hold the inspired author in infinite abhorrence.

Paul sums up the whole matter, however, by telling those who have wives or husbands, to stay with them--as necessary evils only to be tolerated--but sincerely regrets that anybody was ever married; and finally says that:

"They that have wives should be as though they "had none;" because, in his opinion:

"He that is unmarried careth for the things that "belong to the Lord, how he may please the Lord; "but he that is married careth for the things that are "of the world, how he may please his wife."

"There is this difference also," he tells us, "be- "tween a wife and a virgin. The unmarried woman "careth for the things of the Lord, that she may be "holy both in body and in spirit; but she that is "married careth for the things of the world, how she " may please her husband."

Of course, it is contended that these things have tended to the elevation of woman.

The idea that it is better to love the Lord than to

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love your wife, or your husband, is infinitely absurd. Nobody ever did love the Lord,--nobody can--until he becomes acquainted with him.

Saint Paul also tells us that "Man is the image "and glory of God; but woman is the glory of "man;" and for the purpose of sustaining this posi- tion, says:

"For the man is not of the woman, but the woman "of the man; neither was the man created for the "woman, but the woman for the man."

Of course, we can all see that man could have gotten along well enough without woman, but woman, by no possibility, could have gotten along without man. And yet, this is called "inspired;" and this apostle Paul is supposed to have known more than all the people now upon the earth. No wonder Paul at last was constrained to say: "We are fools for "Christ's sake."

_Question_. How do you account for the present condition of woman in what is known as "the civilized "world," unless the Bible has bettered her condition?

_Answer_. We must remember that thousands of things enter into the problem of civilization. Soil, climate, and geographical position, united with count-

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less other influences, have resulted in the civilization of our time. If we want to find what the influence of the Bible has been, we must ascertain the condition of Europe when the Bible was considered as abso- lutely true, and when it wielded its greatest influence.

Christianity as a form of religion had actual posses- sion of Europe during the Middle Ages. At that time, it exerted its greatest power. Then it had the opportunity of breaking the shackles from the limbs of woman. Christianity found the Roman matron a free woman. Polygamy was never known in Rome; and although divorces were allowed by law, the Roman state had been founded for more than five hundred years before either a husband or a wife asked for a divorce. From the foundation of Chris- tianity,--I mean from the time it became the force in the Roman state,--woman, as such, went down in the scale of civilization. The sceptre was taken from her hands, and she became once more the slave and serf of man. The men also were made slaves, and woman has regained her liberty by the same means that man has regained his,--by wresting authority from the hands of the church. While the church had power, the wife and mother was not considered as good as the begging nun; the husband and father was far below the vermin-covered monk; homes were of no value compared with the cathedral; for God had to have a house, no matter how many of his children were wanderers. During all the years in which woman has struggled for equal liberty with man, she has been met with the Bible doctrine that she is the inferior of the man; that Adam was made first, and Eve afterwards; that man was not made for woman, but that woman was made for man.

I find that in this day and generation, the meanest men have the lowest estimate of woman; that the greater the man is, the grander he is, the more he thinks of mother, wife and daughter. I also find that just in the proportion that he has lost confidence in the polygamy of Jehovah and in the advice and philosophy of Saint Paul, he believes in the rights and liberties of woman. As a matter of fact, men have risen from a perusal of the Bible, and murdered their wives. They have risen from reading its pages, and inflicted cruel and even mortal blows upon their children. Men have risen from reading the Bible and torn the flesh of others with red-hot pincers. They have laid down the sacred volume long enough to pour molten lead into the ears of others. They have stopped reading the sacred Scriptures for a sufficient time to

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incarcerate their fellow-men, to load them with chains, and then they have gone back to their reading, allowing their victims to die in darkness and despair. Men have stopped reading the Old Testament long enough to drive a stake into the ground and collect a few fagots and burn an honest man. Even ministers have denied themselves the privilege of reading the sacred book long enough to tell falsehoods about their fellow-men. There is no crime that Bible readers and Bible believers and Bible worshipers and Bible defenders have not committed. There is no meanness of which some Bible reader, believer, and defender, has not been guilty. Bible believers and Bible defenders have filled the world with calumnies and slanders. Bible believers and Bible defenders have not only whipped their wives, but they have murdered them; they have murdered their children. I do not say that reading the Bible will necessarily make men dishonest, but I do say, that reading the Bible will not prevent their committing crimes. I do not say that believing the Bible will necessarily make men commit burglary, but I do say that a belief in the Bible has caused men to persecute each other, to imprison each other, and to burn each other.

Only a little while ago, a British clergyman mur-

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dered his wife. Only a little while ago, an American Protestant clergyman whipped his boy to death be- cause the boy refused to say a prayer.

The Rev. Mr. Crowley not only believed the Bible, but was licensed to expound it. He had been "called" to the ministry, and upon his head had been laid the holy hands; and yet, he deliberately starved orphans, and while looking upon their sunken eyes and hollow cheeks, sung pious hymns and quoted with great unction: "Suffer little chil- "dren to come unto me."

As a matter of fact, in the last twenty years, more money has been stolen by Christian cashiers, Christian presidents, Christian directors, Christian trustees and Christian statesmen, than by all other convicts in all the penitentiaries in all the Christian world.

The assassin of Henry the Fourth was a Bible reader and a Bible believer. The instigators of the massacre of St. Bartholomew were believers in your sacred Scriptures. The men who invested their money in the slave-trade believed themselves filled with the Holy Ghost, and read with rapture the Psalms of David and the Sermon on the Mount. The murderers of Scotch Presbyterians were believers in Revelation, and the

134 Presbyterians, when they murdered others, were also believers. Nearly every man who expiates a crime upon the gallows is a believer in the Bible. For a thousand years, the daggers of assassination and the swords of war were blest by priests--by the believers in the sacred Scriptures. The assassin of President Garfield is a believer in the Bible, a hater of infidelity, a believer in personal inspiration, and he expects in a few weeks to join the winged and redeemed in heaven.

If a man would follow, to-day, the teachings of the Old Testament, he would be a criminal. If he would follow strictly the teachings of the New, he would be insane.

FOURTH INTERVIEW.

_Son. There is no devil.

Mother. I know there is.

Son. How do you know?

Mother. Because they make pictures that look just like him.

Son. But, mother--

Mother. Don't "mother" me! You are trying to disgrace your parents._

_Question_. I want to ask you a few questions about Mr. Talmage's fourth sermon against you, entitled: "The Meanness of Infidelity," in which he compares you to Jehoiakim, who had the temerity to throw some of the writings of the weeping Jeremiah into the fire?

_Answer_. So far as I am concerned, I really re- gret that a second edition of Jeremiah's roll was gotten out. It would have been far better for us all, if it had been left in ashes. There was nothing but curses and prophecies of evil, in the sacred roll that

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Jehoiakim burned. The Bible tells us that Jehovah became exceedingly wroth because of the destruction of this roll, and pronounced a curse upon Jehoiakim and upon Palestine. I presume it was on account of the burning of that roll that the king of Babylon destroyed the chosen people of God. It was on account of that sacrilege that the Lord said of Jehoiakim: "He shall have none to sit upon the "throne of David; and his dead body shall be cast "out in the day to the heat, and in the night to the "frost." Any one can see how much a dead body would suffer under such circumstances. Imagine an infinitely wise, good and powerful God taking ven- geance on the corpse of a barbarian king! What joy there must have been in heaven as the angels watched the alternate melting and freezing of the dead body of Jehoiakim!

Jeremiah was probably the most accomplished croaker of all time. Nothing satisfied him. He was a prophetic pessimist,--an ancient Bourbon. He was only happy when predicting war, pestilence and famine. No wonder Jehoiakim despised him, and hated all he wrote.

One can easily see the character of Jeremiah from the following occurrence: When the Babylonians

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had succeeded in taking Jerusalem, and in sacking the city, Jeremiah was unfortunately taken prisoner; but Captain Nebuzaradan came to Jeremiah, and told him that he would let him go, because he had pro- phesied against his own country. He was regarded as a friend by the enemy.

There was, at that time, as now, the old fight between the church and the civil power. Whenever a king failed to do what the priests wanted, they immediately prophesied overthrow, disaster, and de- feat. Whenever the kings would hearken to their voice, and would see to it that the priests had plenty to eat and drink and wear, then they all declared that Jehovah would love that king, would let him live out all his days, and allow his son to reign in his stead. It was simply the old conflict that is still being waged, and it will be carried on until universal civil- ization does away with priestcraft and superstition.

The priests in the days of Jeremiah were the same as now. They sought to rule the State. They pre- tended that, at their request, Jehovah would withhold or send the rain; that the seasons were within their power; that they with bitter words could blight the fields and curse the land with want and death. They gloried then, as now, in the exhibition of God's wrath.

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In prosperity, the priests were forgotten. Success scorned them; Famine flattered them; Health laughed at them; Pestilence prayed to them; Disaster was their only friend.

These old prophets prophesied nothing but evil, and consequently, when anything bad happened, they claimed it as a fulfillment, and pointed with pride to the fact that they had, weeks or months, or years before, foretold something of that kind. They were really the originators of the phrase, "I told you so!"

There was a good old Methodist class-leader that lived down near a place called Liverpool, on the Illinois river. In the spring of 1861 the old man, telling his experience, among other things said, that he had lived there by the river for more than thirty years, and he did not believe that a year had passed that there were not hundreds of people during the hunting season shooting ducks on Sunday; that he had told his wife thousands of times that no good would come of it; that evil would come of it; "And "now, said the old man, raising his voice with the importance of the announcement, "war is upon us!"

_Question_. Do you wish, as Mr. Talmage says, to de- stroy the Bible--to have all the copies burned to ashes? What do you wish to have done with the Bible?

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_Answer_. I want the Bible treated exactly as we treat other books--preserve the good and throw away the foolish and the hurtful. I am fighting the doctrine of inspiration. As long as it is believed that the Bible is inspired, that book is the master--no mind is free. With that belief, intellectual liberty is impossible. With that belief, you can investigate only at the risk of losing your soul. The Catholics have a pope. Protestants laugh at them, and yet the pope is capable of intellectual advancement. In addition to this, the pope is mortal, and the church cannot be afflicted with the same idiot forever. The Protestants have a book for their pope. The book cannot advance. Year after year, and century after century, the book remains as ignorant as ever. It is only made better by those who believe in its inspira- tion giving better meanings to the words than their ancestors did. In this way it may be said that the Bible grows a little better.

Why should we have a book for a master? That which otherwise might be a blessing, remains a curse. If every copy of the Bible were destroyed, all that is good in that book would be reproduced in a single day. Leave every copy of the Bible as it is, and have every human being believe in its inspiration,

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and intellectual liberty would cease to exist. The whole race, from that moment, would go back to- ward the night of intellectual death.

The Bible would do more harm if more people really believed it, and acted in accordance with its teachings. Now and then a Freeman puts the knife to the heart of his child. Now and then an assassin relies upon some sacred passage; but, as a rule, few men believe the Bible to be absolutely true.

There are about fifteen hundred million people in the world. There are not two million who have read the Bible through. There are not two hundred million who ever saw the Bible. There are not five hundred million who ever heard that such a book exists.

Christianity is claimed to be a religion for all mankind. It was founded more than eighteen cen- turies ago; and yet, not one human being in three has ever heard of it. As a matter of fact, for more than fourteen centuries and-a-half after the crucifixion of Christ, this hemisphere was absolutely unknown. There was not a Christian in the world who knew there was such a continent as ours, and all the inhabitants of this, the New World, were deprived of the gospel for fourteen centuries and-a-half, and

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knew nothing of its blessings until they were in- formed by Spanish murderers and marauders. Even in the United States, Christianity is not keeping pace with the increase of population. When we take into consideration that it is aided by the momentum of eighteen centuries, is it not wonderful that it is not to-day holding its own? The reason of this is, that we are beginning to understand the Scriptures. We are beginningto see, and to see clearly, that they are simply of human origin, and that the Bible bears the marks of the barbarians who wrote it. The best educated among the clergy admit that we know but little as to the origin of the gospels; that we do not positively know the author of one of them; that it is really a matter of doubt as to who wrote the five books attributed to Moses. They admit now, that Isaiah was written by more than one person; that Solomon's Song was not written by that king; that Job is, in all probability, not a Jewish book; that Ecclesiastes must have been written by a Freethinker, and by one who had his doubts about the immortality of the soul. The best biblical students of the so- called orthodox world now admit that several stories were united to make the gospel of Saint Luke; that Hebrews is a selection from many fragments, and

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that no human being, not afflicted with delirium tremens, can understand the book of Revelation.

I am not the only one engaged in the work of destruction. Every Protestant who expresses a doubt as to the genuineness of a passage, is destroying the Bible. The gentlemen who have endeavored to treat hell as a question of syntax, and to prove that eternal punishment depends upon grammar, are helping to bring the Scriptures into contempt. Hundreds of years ago, the Catholics told the Protestant world that it was dangerous to give the Bible to the people. The Catholics were right; the Protestants were wrong. To read is to think. To think is to investi- gate. To investigate is, finally, to deny. That book should have been read only by priests. Every copy should have been under the lock and key of bishop, cardinal and pope. The common people should have received the Bible from the lips of the ministers. The world should have been kept in ignorance. In that way, and in that way only, could the pulpit have maintained its power. He who teaches a child the alphabet sows the seeds of heresy. I have lived to see the schoolhouse in many a village larger than the church. Every man who finds a fact, is the enemy of theology. Every man who expresses an

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honest thought is a soldier in the army of intellectual liberty.

_Question_. Mr. Talmage thinks that you laugh too much,--that you exhibit too much mirth, and that no one should smile at sacred things?

_Answer_. The church has always feared ridicule. The minister despises laughter. He who builds upon ignorance and awe, fears intelligence and mirth. The theologians always begin by saying: "Let us be "solemn." They know that credulity and awe are twins. They also know that while Reason is the pilot of the soul, Humor carries the lamp. Whoever has the sense of humor fully developed, cannot, by any possibility, be an orthodox theologian. He would be his own laughing stock. The most absurd stories, the most laughable miracles, read in a solemn, stately way, sound to the ears of ignorance and awe like truth. It has been the object of the church for eighteen hundred years to prevent laughter.

A smile is the dawn of a doubt.

Ministers are always talking about death, and coffins, and dust, and worms,--the cross in this life, and the fires of another. They have been the enemies of human happiness. They hate to hear

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