Have they taught us how to cultivate the earth, to build houses, to weave cloth, to prepare food? Have they taught us to paint pictures, to chisel statues, to build bridges, or ships, or anything of beauty or of use? Did we get our ideas of government, of religious freedom, of the liberty of thought, from the Old Testament? Did we get from any of these books a hint of any science? Is there in the "sacred volume" a word, a line, that has added to the wealth, the intelligence and the happiness of mankind? Is there one of the books of the Old Testament as entertaining as Robinson Crusoe, the Travels of Gulliver, or Peter Wilkins and his Flying Wife? Did the author of Genesis know as much about nature as Humboldt, or Darwin, or Haeckel? Is what is called the Mosaic Code as wise or as merciful as the code of any civilized nation? Were the writers of Kings and Chronicles as great historians, as great writers, as Gibbon and Draper? Is Jeremiah or Habakuk equal to Dickens or Thackeray? Can the authors of Job and the Psalms be compared with Shakespeare? Why should we attribute the best to man and the worst to God? V. WAS JEHOVAH A GOD OF LOVE? DID these words come from the heart of love?--"When the Lord thy God shall drive them before thee, thou shalt smite them and utterly destroy them; thou shalt make no covenant with them, or show mercy unto them." "I will heap mischief upon them. I will send mine arrows upon them; they shall be burned with hunger and devoured with burning heat and with bitter destruction." "I will send the tooth of beasts upon them, with the poison of serpents of the dust." "The sword without, and terror within, shall destroy both the young man and the virgin; the suckling also with the man of gray hairs." "Let his children be fatherless and his wife a widow; let his children be continually vagabonds and beg; let them seek their bread also out of their desolate places; let the extortioner catch all that he hath, and let the stranger spoil his labor; let there be none to extend mercy unto him, neither let there be any to favor his fatherless children." "And thou shalt eat the fruit of thine own body--the flesh of thy sons and daughters." "And the heaven that is over thee shall be brass, and the earth that is under thee shall be iron." "Cursed shalt thou be in the city, and cursed shalt thou be in the field." "I will make my arrows drunk with blood." "I will laugh at their calamity." Did these curses, these threats, come from the heart of love or from the mouth of savagery? Was Jehovah god or devil? Why should we place Jehovah above all the gods? Has man in his ignorance and fear ever imagined a greater monster? Have the barbarians of any land, in any time, worshipped a more heartless god?