Part 10

"From records in the State archives of Hesse- "Darmstadt, dating back to the thirteenth century, "it appears that the public executioner's fee for boiling "a criminal in oil was twenty-four florins; for decapi- "tating with the sword, fifteen florins and-a-half; for "quartering, the same; for breaking on the wheel, "five florins, thirty kreuzers; for tearing a man to "pieces, eighteen florins. Ten florins per head was "his charge for hanging, and he burned delinquents "alive at the rate of fourteen florins apiece. For ap- "plying the 'Spanish boot' his fee was only two "florins. Five florins were paid to him every time he "subjected a refractory witness to the torture of the "rack. The same amount was his due for 'branding "'the sign of the gallows with a red-hot iron upon "'the back, forehead, or cheek of a thief,' as well as "for 'cutting off the nose and ears of a slanderer or

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"'blasphemer.' Flogging with rods was a cheap "punishment, its remuneration being fixed at three "florins, thirty kreuzers."

The Bible has made men cruel. It is a cruel book. And yet, amidst its thorns, amidst its thistles, amidst its nettles and its swords and pikes, there are some flowers, and these I wish, in common with all good men, to save.

I do not believe that men have ever been made merciful in war by reading the Old Testament. I do not believe that men have ever been prompted to break the chain of a slave by reading the Pentateuch. The question is not whether Florence Nightingale and Miss Dix were cruel. I have said nothing about John Howard, nothing about Abbott Lawrence. I say nothing about people in this connection. The question is: Is the Bible a cruel book? not: Was Miss Nightingale a cruel woman? There have been thousands and thousands of loving, tender and char- itable Mohammedans. Mohammedan mothers love their children as well as Christian mothers can. Mohammedans have died in defence of the Koran-- died for the honor of an impostor. There were millions of charitable people in India--millions in Egypt--and I am not sure that the world has ever

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produced people who loved one another better than the Egyptians.

I think there are many things in the Old Testament calculated to make man cruel. Mr. Talmage asks: "What has been the effect upon your children? As "they have become more and more fond of the "Scriptures have they become more and more fond "of tearing off the wings of flies and pinning grass- "hoppers and robbing birds' nests?"

I do not believe that reading the bible would make them tender toward flies or grasshoppers. According to that book, God used to punish animals for the crimes of their owners. He drowned the animals in a flood. He visited cattle with disease. He bruised them to death with hailstones--killed them by the thousand. Will the reading of these things make children kind to animals? So, the whole system of sacrifices in the Old Testament is calculated to harden the heart. The butchery of oxen and lambs, the killing of doves, the perpetual destruction of life, the con- tinual shedding of blood--these things, if they have any tendency, tend only to harden the heart of child- hood.

The Bible does not stop simply with the killing of animals. The Jews were commanded to kill their

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neighbors--not only the men, but the women; not only the women, but the babes. In accordance with the command of God, the Jews killed not only their neighbors, but their own brothers; and according to this book, which is the foundation, as Mr. Talmage believes, of all mercy, men were commanded to kill their wives because they differed with them on the subject of religion.

Nowhere in the world can be found laws more un- just and cruel than in the Old Testament.

_Question_. Mr. Talmage wants you to tell where the cruelty of the Bible crops out in the lives of Chris- tians?

_Answer_. In the first place, millions of Christians have been persecutors. Did they get the idea of persecution from the Bible? Will not every honest man admit that the early Christians, by reading the Old Testament, became convinced that it was not only their privilege, but their duty, to destroy heathen nations? Did they not, by reading the same book, come to the conclusion that it was their solemn duty to extirpate heresy and heretics? According to the New Testament, nobody could be saved unless he believed in the Lord Jesus Christ. The early Chris-

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tians believed this dogma. They also believed that they had a right to defend themselves and their children from "heretics."

We all admit that a man has a right to defend his children against the assaults of a would-be murderer, and he has the right to carry this defence to the extent of killing the assailant. If we have the right to kill people who are simply trying to kill the bodies of our children, of course we have the right to kill them when they are endeavoring to assassinate, not simply their bodies, but their souls. It was in this way Christians reasoned. If the Testament is right, their reasoning was correct. Whoever believes the New Testament literally--whoever is satisfied that it is absolutely the word of God, will become a perse- cutor. All religious persecution has been, and is, in exact harmony with the teachings of the Old and New Testaments. Of course I mean with some of the teachings. I admit that there are passages in both the Old and New Testaments against persecu- tion. These are passages quoted only in time of peace. Others are repeated to feed the flames of war.

I find, too, that reading the Bible and believing the Bible do not prevent even ministers from telling false-

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hoods about their opponents. I find that the Rev. Mr. Talmage is willing even to slander the dead,-- that he is willing to stain the memory of a Christian, and that he does not hesitate to give circulation to what he knows to be untrue. Mr. Talmage has himself, I believe, been the subject of a church trial. How many of the Christian witnesses against him, in his judgment, told the truth? Yet they were all Bible readers and Bible believers. What effect, in his judgment, did the reading of the Bible have upon his enemies? Is he willing to admit that the testi- mony of a Bible, reader and believer is true? Is he willing to accept the testimony even of ministers? --of his brother ministers? Did reading the Bible make them bad people? Was it a belief in the Bible that colored their testimony? Or, was it a belief in the Bible that made Mr. Talmage deny the truth of their statements?

_Question_. Mr. Talmage charges you with having said that the Scriptures are a collection of polluted writings?

_Answer_. I have never said such a thing. I have said, and I still say, that there are passages in the Bible unfit to be read--passages that never should

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have been written--passages, whether inspired or uninspired, that can by no possibility do any human being any good. I have always admitted that there are good passages in the Bible--many good, wise and just laws--many things calculated to make men better--many things calculated to make men worse. I admit that the Bible is a mixture of good and bad, of truth and falsehood, of history and fiction, of sense and nonsense, of virtue and vice, of aspiration and revenge, of liberty and tyranny.

I have never said anything against Solomon's Song. I like it better than I do any book that pre- cedes it, because it touches upon the human. In the desert of murder, wars of extermination, polygamy, concubinage and slavery, it is an oasis where the trees grow, where the birds sing, and where human love blossoms and fills the air with perfume. I do not regard that book as obscene. There are many things in it that are beautiful and tender, and it is calculated to do good rather than harm.

Neither have I any objection to the book of Eccle- siastes--except a few interpolations in it. That book was written by a Freethinker, by a philosopher. There is not the slightest mention of God in it, nor of another state of existence. All portions in which

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God is mentioned are interpolations. With some of this book I agree heartily. I believe in the doctrine of enjoying yourself, if you can, to-day. I think it foolish to spend all your years in heaping up treas- ures, not knowing but he who will spend them is to be an idiot. I believe it is far better to be happy with your wife and child now, than to be miserable here, with angelic expectations in some other world.

Mr. Talmage is mistaken when he supposes that all Bible believers have good homes, that all Bible readers are kind in their families. As a matter of fact, nearly all the wife-whippers of the United States are orthodox. Nine-tenths of the people in the penitentiaries are believers. Scotland is one of the most orthodox countries in the world, and one of the most intem- perate. Hundreds and hundreds of women are arrested every year in Glasgow for drunkenness. Visit the Christian homes in the manufacturing dis- tricts of England. Talk with the beaters of children and whippers of wives, and you will find them be- lievers. Go into what is known as the "Black "Country," and you will have an idea of the Chris- tian civilization of England.

Let me tell you something about the "Black "Country." There women work in iron; there women

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do the work of men. Let me give you an instance: A commission was appointed by Parliament to ex- amine into the condition of the women in the "Black "Country," and a report was made. In that report I read the following:

"A superintendent of a brickyard where women "were engaged in carrying bricks from the yard to "the kiln, said to one of the women:

"'Eliza, you don't appear to be very uppish this "morning.'"

"'Neither would you be very uppish, sir,' she re- "plied, 'if you had had a child last night.'"

This gives you an idea of the Christian civilization of England.

England and Ireland produce most of the prize- fighters. The scientific burglar is a product of Great Britain. There is not the great difference that Mr. Talmage supposes, between the morality of Pekin and of New York. I doubt if there is a city in the world with more crime according to the population than New York, unless it be London, or it may be Dublin, or Brooklyn, or possibly Glasgow, where a man too pious to read a newspaper published on Sunday, stole millions from the poor.

I do not believe there is a country in the world

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where there is more robbery than in Christian lands-- no country where more cashiers are defaulters, where more presidents of banks take the money of depositors, where there is more adulteration of food, where fewer ounces make a pound, where fewer inches make a yard, where there is more breach of trust, more respectable larceny under the name of embezzlement, or more slander circulated as gospel.

_Question_. Mr. Talmage insists that there are no contradictions in the Bible--that it is a perfect har- mony from Genesis to Revelation--a harmony as perfect as any piece of music ever written by Beethoven or Handel?

_Answer_. Of course, if God wrote it, the Bible ought to be perfect. I do not see why a minister should be so perfectly astonished to find that an inspired book is consistent with itself throughout. Yet the truth is, the Bible is infinitely inconsistent.

Compare the two systems--the system of Jehovah and that of Jesus. In the Old Testament the doctrine of "an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth" was taught. In the New Testament, "forgive your "enemies," and "pray for those who despitefully "use you and persecute you." In the Old Testament

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it is kill, burn, massacre, destroy; in the New forgive. The two systems are inconsistent, and one is just about as far wrong as the other. To live for and thirst for revenge, to gloat over the agony of an enemy, is one extreme; to "resist not evil" is the other extreme; and both these extremes are equally distant from the golden mean of justice.

The four gospels do not even agree as to the terms of salvation. And yet, Mr. Talmage tells us that there are four cardinal doctrines taught in the Bible-- the goodness of God, the fall of man, the sympathetic and forgiving nature of the Savior, and two desti- nies--one for believers and the other for unbelievers. That is to say:

1. That God is good, holy and forgiving.

2. That man is a lost sinner.

3. That Christ is "all sympathetic," and ready to take the whole world to his heart.

4. Heaven for believers and hell for unbelievers.

_First_. I admit that the Bible says that God is

good and holy. But this Bible also tells what God did, and if God did what the Bible says he did, then I insist that God is not good, and that he is not holy, or forgiving. According to the Bible, this good God believed in religious persecution; this good

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God believed in extermination, in polygamy, in con- cubinage, in human slavery; this good God com- manded murder and massacre, and this good God could only be mollified by the shedding of blood. This good God wanted a butcher for a priest. This good God wanted husbands to kill their wives-- wanted fathers and mothers to kill their children. This good God persecuted animals on account of the crimes of their owners. This good God killed the common people because the king had displeased him. This good God killed the babe even of the maid behind the mill, in order that he might get even with a king. This good God committed every possible crime.

_Second_. The statement that man is a lost sinner is not true. There are thousands and thousands of magnificent Pagans--men ready to die for wife, or child, or even for friend, and the history of Pagan countries is filled with self-denying and heroic acts. If man is a failure, the infinite God, if there be one, is to blame. Is it possible that the God of Mr. Tal- mage could not have made man a success? Accord- ing to the Bible, his God made man knowing that in about fifteen hundred years he would have to drown all his descendants.

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Why would a good God create a man that he knew would be a sinner all his life, make hundreds of thousands of his fellow-men unhappy, and who at last would be doomed to an eternity of suffering? Can such a God be good? How could a devil have done worse?

_Third._ If God is infinitely good, is he not fully as sympathetic as Christ? Do you have to employ Christ to mollify a being of infinite mercy? Is Christ any more willing to take to his heart the whole world than his Father is? Personally, I have not the slightest objection in the world to anybody believing in an infinitely good and kind God--not the slightest objection to any human being worshiping an infi- nitely tender and merciful Christ--not the slightest objection to people preaching about heaven, or about the glories of the future state--not the slightest.

_Fourth_. I object to the doctrine of two destinies for the human race. I object to the infamous false- hood of eternal fire. And yet, Mr. Talmage is en- deavoring to poison the imagination of men, women and children with the doctrine of an eternal hell. Here is what he preaches, taken from the "Constitu- "tion of the Presbyterian Church of the United "States:"

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"By the decrees of God, for the manifestation of "his glory, some men and angels are predestinated "to everlasting life, and others foreordained to ever- "lasting death."

That is the doctrine of Mr. Talmage. He wor- ships a God who damns people "for the manifesta- "tion of his glory,"--a God who made men, knowing that they would be damned--a God who damns babes simply to increase his reputation with the angels. This is the God of Mr. Talmage. Such a God I abhor, despise and execrate.

_Question_. What does Mr. Talmage think of man- kind? What is his opinion of the "unconverted"? How does he regard the great and glorious of the earth, who have not been the victims of his particular superstition? What does he think of some of the best the earth has produced?

_Answer_. I will tell you how he looks upon all such. Read this from his "Confession of Faith:"

"Our first parents, being seduced by the subtlety "of the tempter, sinned in eating the forbidden fruit. "By this sin, they fell from their original righteous- "ness and communion with God, and so became "dead in sin, and wholly defiled in all the faculties

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"and parts of soul and body; and they being the "root of all mankind, the guilt of this sin was "imputed, and the same death in sin and corrupted "nature conveyed to all their posterity. From this "original corruption--whereby we are utterly indis- "posed, disabled, and made opposite to all good, "and wholly inclined to all evil, do proceed all actual "transgressions."

This is Mr. Talmage's view of humanity.

Why did his God make a devil? Why did he allow the devil to tempt Adam and Eve? Why did he leave innocence and ignorance at the mercy of subtlety and wickedness? Why did he put "the "tree of the knowledge of good and evil" in the garden? For what reason did he place temptation in the way of his children? Was it kind, was it just, was it noble, was it worthy of a good God? No wonder Christ put into his prayer: "Lead us not "into temptation."

At the time God told Adam and Eve not to eat, why did he not tell them of the existence of Satan? Why were they not put upon their guard against the serpent? Why did not God make his appearance just before the sin, instead of just after. Why did he not play the role of a Savior instead of that of a

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detective? After he found that Adam and Eve had sinned--knowing as he did that they were then totally corrupt--knowing that all their children would be corrupt, knowing that in fifteen hundred years he would have to drown millions of them, why did he not allow Adam and Eve to perish in accord- ance with natural law, then kill the devil, and make a new pair?

When the flood came, why did he not drown all? Why did he save for seed that which was "perfectly "and thoroughly corrupt in all its parts and facul- "ties"? If God had drowned Noah and his sons and their families, he could have then made a new pair, and peopled the world with men not "wholly "defiled in all their faculties and parts of soul and "body."

Jehovah learned nothing by experience. He per- sisted in his original mistake. What would we think of a man who finding that a field of wheat was worthless, and that such wheat never could be raised with profit, should burn all of the field with the exception of a few sheaves, which he saved for seed? Why save such seed? Why should God have pre- served Noah, knowing that he was totally corrupt, and that he would again fill the world with infamous

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people--people incapable of a good action? He must have known at that time, that by preserving Noah, the Canaanites would be produced, that these same Canaanites would have to be murdered, that the babes in the cradles would have to be strangled. Why did he produce them? He knew at that time, that Egypt would result from the salvation of Noah, that the Egyptians would have to be nearly de- stroyed, that he would have to kill their first-born, that he would have to visit even their cattle with disease and hailstones. He knew also that the Egyptians would oppress his chosen people for two hundred and fifteen years, that they would upon the back of toil inflict the lash. Why did he preserve Noah? He should have drowned all, and started with a new pair. He should have warned them against the devil, and he might have succeeded, in that way, in covering the world with gentlemen and ladies, with real men and real women.

We know that most of the people now in the world are not Christians. Most who have heard the gospel of Christ have rejected it, and the Presby- terian Church tells us what is to become of all these people. This is the "glad tidings of great joy." Let us see:

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"All mankind, by their fall, lost communion with "God, are under his wrath and curse, and so made "liable to all the miseries of this life, to death itself, "and to the pains of hell forever."

According to this good Presbyterian doctrine, all that we suffer in this world, is the result of Adam's fall. The babes of to-day suffer for the crime of the first parents. Not only so; but God is angry at us for what Adam did. We are under the wrath of an infinite God, whose brows are corrugated with eternal hatred.

Why should God hate us for being what we are and necessarily must have been? A being that God made--the devil--for whose work God is responsible, according to the Bible wrought this woe. God of his own free will must have made the devil. What did he make him for? Was it necessary to have a devil in heaven? God, having infinite power, can of course destroy this devil to-day. Why does he per- mit him to live? Why did he allow him to thwart his plans? Why did he permit him to pollute the inno- cence of Eden? Why does he allow him now to wrest souls by the million from the redeeming hand of Christ?

According to the Scriptures, the devil has always

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been successful. He enjoys himself. He is called "the prince of the power of the air." He has no conscientious scruples. He has miraculous power. All miraculous power must come of God, otherwise it is simply in accordance with nature. If the devil can work a miracle, it is only with the consent and by the assistance of the Almighty. Is the God of Mr. Talmage in partnership with the devil? Do they divide profits?

We are also told by the Presbyterian Church-- I quote from their Confession of Faith--that "there "is no sin so small but it deserves damnation.'' Yet Mr. Talmage tells us that God is good, that he is filled with mercy and loving-kindness. A child nine or ten years of age commits a sin, and thereupon it deserves eternal damnation. That is what Mr. Talmage calls, not simply justice, but mercy; and the sympathetic heart of Christ is not touched. The same being who said: "Suffer little children to come unto me," tells us that a child, for the smallest sin, deserves to be eternally damned. The Presbyterian Church tells us that infants, as well as adults, in order to be saved, need redemption by the blood of Christ, and regen- eration by the Holy Ghost.

I am charged with trying to take the consolation

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of this doctrine from the world. I am a criminal because I am endeavoring to convince the mother that her child does not deserve eternal punishment. I stand by the graves of those who "died in their "sins," by the tombs of the "unregenerate," over the ashes of men who have spent their lives working for their wives and children, and over the sacred dust of soldiers who died in defence of flag and country, and I say to their friends--I say to the living who loved them, I say to the men and women for whom they worked, I say to the children whom they edu- cated, I say to the country for which they died: These fathers, these mothers, these wives, these husbands, these soldiers are not in hell.

_Question_. Mr. Talmage insists that the Bible is scientific, and that the real scientific man sees no contradiction between revelation and science; that, on the contrary, they are in harmony. What is your understanding of this matter?

_Answer_. I do not believe the Bible to be a sci- entific book. In fact, most of the ministers now admit that it was not written to teach any science. They admit that the first chapter of Genesis is not geo- logically true. They admit that Joshua knew nothing

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