We cannot conclude this lecture without making the important observation, that, while the instruction of youth continues to be founded upon these Jew books, which hold forth such barbarous and vicious men as patterns of humanity, virtue, and sound morality, no material improvement can ever be made in the moral condition of society. These books are imposed upon the mind as the one thing needful in education, because they divert from the study of the useful and salutary truths of Nature (the knowledge of which is the bane of the priest), which stand in direct opposition to the fabulous absurdities of Jewish theology;* and, therefore, our hireling priests, who dread nothing so much as the development of these truths, use their utmost energies in suppressing all such investigation; whilst they instil such reveries only as promote ignorance, and keep the mind in childhood through life. When the fogs of religious stupidity have thus mentally moulded the audience, the pulpit becomes a fountain of the most unqualified nonsense, which is safely showered down in torrents without any danger of detection, on the part of "the long-ear'd rout," who, being taught to spurn the evidence of their senses, when put in competition with faith, are prepared to swallow the grossest impossibilities:-- "For zeal, fanatic zeal, once wedded fast To some dear falsehood, hugs it to the last." * The caricatures (they do not deserve a better name) which the Jews followed by the Christians have drawn of the Supreme Power, are extremely disgusting to rational piety; they make their deity command theft and murder: he avowedly breaks his promise (Numb, xiv., 34). He grieves and repents of his past conduct (Gen. vi., 6). He prompts his prophets to lying (1 Kings xxii., 22). The theology of the present day, says D'Holbach, is a subtile venom, calculated, through the importance attached to it, to infect everyone. By dint of metaphysics, modern theologians have become systematically absurd and wicked, in teaching the odious ideas they entertain of the deity.