Our American author, Thoreau, was right when he said that, "The modern Christian is a man who has consented to say all the prayers in the liturgy, provided you will let him go straight to bed and sleep quietly afterward." That is to say, he does not wish to be disturbed. "All his prayers begin with," says Thoreau, "Now I lay me down to sleep." _Sleep_, seems to be his quest, intellectual as well as physical, "and he is forever looking forward to the time when he shall go to his '_long_ rest.'" He looks forward to a future of inactivity. All effort, especially intellectual effort, is distasteful to him, and is apt to offend and unsettle him. Hence the intellectual life must not be real; what must be real is the _sleep_. Those of you who support these lectures, as well as those of you who only hear them, know that our position is the very reverse of what Jesus and the Church recommend. We do not believe in persecution. We do not even suggest that anybody should be drowned; but if our human nature is so depraved that persecution and murder are inevitable, then, in our humble opinion, it will be more economical to drown the people who will not permit a Darwin to give his thought to the world, than to drown a Darwin. The man who is offended at freedom of speech, can be dispensed with more safely than the man who avails himself of this divine privilege. If my freedom of speech offends my neighbor, his fear of freedom is a greater offense to me. Which of us deserves most to be drowned? But in the next place the suggestion that people who rob their weaker fellows of their illusions should be drowned, even when it does not lead to persecution, is an encouragement to _hypocrisy_ and _imposture_, as the story of the composition of the Bible which will now be told, shows. You have to listen as closely as you can, if you do not wish to do me the injustice of misrepresenting me. I have traveled extensively in the Orient, and have conversed with and read the works of eminent scholars who have enjoyed a first-hand acquaintance with eastern people, and the unanimous testimony is that one of the besetting sins of Oriental races, is lying. It is not because the Asiatics are wickeder than European nations, for in other respects they are as good, if not better, than ourselves. The average of morality is perhaps about the same in all countries. But the notorious vice of all Asiatic peoples is lying. They lie with a freedom and a fluency,--with such plausibility and so straight a face,--that one can hardly distinguish their lie from their truth. Curious though it may seem, people who are given to lying are often the first to be deceived by their own lies. They "Keep on till their own lies deceive them. And oft' repeating, at length believed 'em." Now, then, I am going to look this audience in the face, and then I am going to say just this: _The Bible is an Oriental book._