Turning from this subject, Mr. Ingersoll read numerous extracts from the bible, with interpolated comments. He claimed that the bible authorized slavery, and that many devoted believers in that book had turned the cross of Christ into a whipping post. He did not wish it understood that he could find no good in believers in creeds; far from it, for some of his dearest friends were most orthodox in their religious ideas, and there had been hundreds of thousands of good men among both clergy and laymen. History has shown no people more nobly self-sacrificing than the Jesuit Fathers who first visited this country to proselyte among the Indians. But these men and their like were better than their creeds; better than the book in which their faith was centered. The bible tells us distinctly that the world was made in six days--not periods, but actual, bona fide days--a statement which it iterates and reiterates. It also tells us that God lengthened the day for the benefit of a gentleman named Joshua, in other words, that he stopped the rotary motion of the earth. Motion is changed into heat by stoppage, and the world turns with such velocity that its sudden stoppage would create a heat of intensity beyond the wildest flight of our imagination, and yet this impossible feat was performed that Joshua might have longer time to expend in slaying a handful of Amorites. The bible also upholds the doctrines of witchcraft and spiritualism, for Saul visited the witch of Endor, and she, after preparing the cabinet, trotted out the spirit of Samuel, said spirit kindly joining in conversation with Saul, without requiring the aid of a trance medium. The speaker then quoted at length from Leviticus concerning wizards and evil spirits, described the temptation of Christ by Satan, and the driving of devils from man into swine. He sneered at the rights of children as biblically described, citing the law which sentenced them to be stoned to death for disobedience to parents, the almost sacrifice of Isaac by his father, and the actual murder of Jephthah's daughter, asking if a God who could demand such worship was worthy the love of man. He next referred to the conversation between God and Satan concerning the man Job, and of the reward given to the latter for his long continued patience. His three daughters and his seven sons had been taken from him merely to test his patience, and the merciful God gave him in exchange three other daughters and seven sons, but they were not the children whom he had loved and lost. The bible represents woman as vastly inferior to man, while he believed, with Robbie Burns, that God made man with a prentice-hand, and woman after He had learned the trade. Polygamy, also, was a doctrine supported by this pure and pious work; a doctrine so foul that language is not strong enough to express its infamy. The bible taught, as a religious creed, that if your wife, your sister, your brother, your dearest friend, tempted you