So that the man that is tender among you, and very delicate, his eyes shall be evil toward his brother, and toward the wife of his bosom, and toward the remnant of his children which he shall leave.... For a fire is kindled in mine anger, and shall burn into the lowest hell, and shall consume the earth with her increase, and set on fire the foundations of the mountains. I will heap mischiefs upon them; I will spend mine arrows upon them. They shall be burnt with hunger, and devoured with burning heat, and with bitter destruction: I will also send the teeth 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 grey hairs. I think I have quoted enough to show that what I say of the Jewish God Jehovah is based on fact. But I could, if needful, heap proof on proof, for the books of the Old Testament reek with blood, and are horrible with atrocities. Now, consider, is the God of whom we have been reading a God of love? Is He the Father of Christ? Is He not rather the savage idol of a savage tribe? Man and his gods: what a tragi-comedy it is. Man has never seen one of his gods, never heard the voice of one of his gods, does not know the shape, expression, or bearing of one of his gods. Yet man has cursed man, hated man, hunted man, tortured man, and murdered man, for the sake of shadows and fantasies of his own terror, or vanity, or desire. We tiny, vain feeblenesses, we fussy ephemera; we sting each other, hate each other, hiss at each other, for the sake of the monster gods of our own delirium. As we are whirled upon our spinning, glowing planet through the unfathomable spaces, where myriads of suns, like golden bees, gleam through the awful mystery of "the vast void night," what are the phantom gods to us? They are no more than the waterspouts on the ocean, or the fleeting shadows on the hills. But the man, and the woman, and the child, and the dog with its wistful eyes; these know us, touch us, appeal to us, love us, serve us, grieve us. Shall we kill these, or revile them, or desert them, for the sake of the lurid ghost in the cloud, or the fetish in his box? Do you think the bloodthirsty vindictive Jahweh, who prized nothing but his own aggrandisement, and slew or cursed all who offended him, is the Creator, the same who made the jewels of the Pleiades, and the resplendent mystery of the Milky Way?