And this wholesale slaughter of innocent animals, we are told, was highly pleasing to the Lord. But "What was his high pleasure in The fumes of scorching flesh and smoking blood, To the pain of the bleating mothers, which Still yearned for their dead offspring? or the pangs Of the sad ignorant victim underneath The pious knife?" --Byron. A God of mercy, it would seem, ought to protect the weaker orders of his creation; but the God of the Bible manifests an utter disregard for them. When the being created in his own image proved too true a copy, and he wished to destroy it, he sent a deluge, "and all flesh died that moved upon the earth." To wreak his vengeance upon Pharaoh, he visited with disease and death his unoffending cattle. In times of war, he ordered his followers to "slay both man and beast." Saul's great transgression, the chief cause of his dethronement and death, was that he saved alive some sheep and oxen instead of killing them as God desired. David and Joshua, God's favorite warriors, houghed the horses of their enemies, and thus disabled turned them loose to die. We teach a child that it is wrong to rob the nests of birds. It opens the Bible and reads: "If a bird's nest chance to be before thee in the way in any tree, or on the ground, whether they be young ones, or eggs, and the dam sitting upon the young, or upon the eggs, thou shalt not take the dam with the young; but thou shalt in any wise let the dam go, and take the young to thee" (Deut. xxii, 6, 7). Throughout Christendom "man's inhumanity to man" is only equaled by his cruelty to the inferior animals. The Buddhist, who has not the Bible for his guide, considers it a sin to harm the meanest creature. Even the savage kills only what he needs for food, or such as threaten him with danger. But the Christian, whose Bible gives him dominion over the beasts of the field and the fowls of the air, maims and murders in pure wantonness, and after years of patient service, even turns his beast of burden out to die of hunger and neglect. For the sake of these dumb creatures, would that our world had less theology, and more humanity; had fewer Moodys, and more Henry Berghs! CHAPTER XXXIII. TYRANNY--INTOLERANCE. Tyranny. I refuse to accept the Bible as a moral guide because it enjoins submission to tyrants. "Submit yourselves to every ordinance of man, ... whether it be to the king as supreme; or unto governors" (1 Pet. ii, 13). "Let every soul be subject unto the higher powers. For there is no power but of God. Whosoever therefore resisteth the power, resisteth the ordinance of God; and they that resist shall receive to themselves damnation" (Rom. xiii, 1, 2). And these sentiments were uttered when a Nero sat upon the throne--when Palestine was being crushed beneath the iron heel of despotism--when brave and patriotic men were struggling for freedom.