Did you belong to any church?
Yes sir, and to the Young Men's Christian Association besides.
What was your business?
Cashier in a Savings Bank.
Did you ever run away with any money?
Where I came from, a witness could not be compelled to criminate
himself.
The law is different here. Answer the question. Did you run away with
any money?
Yes sir.
How much?
One hundred thousand dollars.
Did you take anything else with you?
Yes sir.
Well, what else?
I took my neighbor's wife--we sang together in the choir.
Did you have a wife and children of your own?
Yes sir.
And you deserted them?
Yes sir, but such was my confidence in God that I believed he would take
care of them.
Have you heard of them since?
No sir.
Did you believe in the rib story?
Bless your soul, of course I did. A thousand times I regretted that
there were no harder stories in the bible, so that I could have shown my
wealth of faith.
Do you believe the rib story yet?
Yes, with all my heart.
Give him a harp!
Well, as I was saying, God made a woman from Adam's rib. Of course, I do
not know exactly how this was done, but when he got the woman finished,
he presented her to Adam. He liked her, and they commenced house-keeping
in the celebrated garden of Eden.
Must we, in order to be good, gentle and loving in our lives, believe
that the creation of woman was a second thought? That Jehovah really
endeavored to induce Adam to take one of the lower animals as an
helpmeet for him? After all, is it not possible to live honest and
courageous lives without believing these fables? It is said that from
Mount Sinai God gave, amid thunderings and lightnings, ten commandments
for the guidance of mankind; and yet among them is not found--"Thou
shalt believe the Bible."
XVI. THE GARDEN
In the first account we are told that God made man, male and female,
and said to them "Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth and
subdue it."
In the second account only the man is made, and he is put in a garden
"to dress it and to keep it." He is not told to subdue the earth, but to
dress and keep a garden.
In the first account man is given every herb bearing seed upon the face
of the earth and the fruit of every tree for food, and in the second,
he is given only the fruit of all the trees in the garden with the
exception "of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil" which was a
deadly poison.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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