The real bible is not the result of inspired men, nor prophets, nor evangelists, nor christs. The real bible has not been written, but is being written. Every man who finds a fact adds a word to this great book. The bad passages in the bible are not inspired. No god ever ordered a soldier to sheathe his sword in the breast of a mother. No god ever ordered a warrior to butcher a smiling, prattling babe. No god ever upheld tyranny. No god ever said, be subject to the powers that be. No god endeavored to make man a slave and woman a beast of burden. There are thousands of good passages in the bible. Many of them are true. There are in it wise laws, good customs, some lofty and splendid things. And I do not care whether they are inspired or not, so they are true. But what I do insist upon is that the bad is not inspired. There is no hope for you. It is just as bad to deny hell as it is to deny heaven. Prof. Swing says the bible is a poem. Dr. Ryder says it is a picture. The Garden of Eden is pictorial; a pictorial snake and a pictorial woman, I suppose, and a pictorial man, and may be it was a pictorial sin. And only a pictorial atonement! Man must learn to rely on himself. Reading bibles will not protect him from the blasts of winter, but houses, fire and clothing will. To prevent famine one plow is worth a million sermons, and even patent medicines will cure more diseases than all the prayers uttered since the beginning of the world. Ingersoll's Lecture on Voltaire Ladies and Gentlemen: The infidels of one age have often been the aureoled saints of the next. The destroyers of the old are the creators of the new. As time sweeps on the old passes away and the new in its turn becomes of old. There is in the intellectual world, as in the physical, decay and growth, and ever by the grave of buried age stand youth and joy. The history of intellectual progress is written in the lives of infidels. Political rights have been preserved by traitors; the liberty of mind by heretics. To attack the king was treason; to dispute the priest was blasphemy. For many years the sword and cross were allies. Together they attacked the rights of man. They defended each other. The throne and altar were twins--two vultures from the same egg. James I said: "No bishop; no king." He might have added: No cross, no crown. The king owned the bodies of men; the priest, the souls. One lived on taxes collected by force, the other on alms collected by fear--both robbers, both beggars. These robbers and these beggars controlled two worlds. The king made laws, the priest made creeds. Both obtained their authority from God, both were the agents of the infinite. With bowed backs the people carried the burdens of one, and with wonder's open mouth received the dogmas of the other. If the people aspired to be free, they were crushed by the king, and every priest was a Herod, who slaughtered the children of the brain.