"In every country and in every age the priest has been hostile to liberty; he is always in alliance with the despot, abetting his abuses in return for protection to his own." Writing of his country and his country's church, Macaulay says: "The Church of England continued to be for more than 150 years the servile handmaid of monarchy, the steady enemy of public liberty. The divine right of kings and the duty of passively obeying all their commands were her favorite tenets. She held these tenets firmly through times of oppression, persecution, and licentiousness, while law was trampled down, while judgment was perverted, while the people were eaten as though they were bread" (Essays, Vol. I., page 60). Intolerance. I refuse to accept the Bible as a moral guide because its teachings have filled the world with intolerance and persecution. "If thy brother, the son of thy mother, or thy son, or thy daughter, or the wife of thy bosom, or thy friend, which is as thine own soul, entice thee secretly, saying, Let us go and serve other gods, which thou hast not known, thou nor thy fathers: namely, of the gods of the people which are round about you [that is, accept another religion] ... thou shalt not consent unto him; neither shall thine eye pity him; neither shalt thou spare, neither shalt thou conceal him; but thou shalt surely kill him; thine hand shall be first upon him to put him to death, and afterwards the hand of all the people" (Deut. xiii, 6-9). Kill your friend, kill your brother, kill your wife, kill your child, for accepting another religious belief! Did a merciful God inspire this prayer? "Let his days be few; and let another take his office. Let his children be fatherless, and his wife a widow. Let his children be continually vagabonds, and beg; let them seek their bread also out of their desolate places. Let the extortioner catch all that he hath; and let the strangers spoil his labor. Let there be none to extend mercy unto him; neither let there be any to favor his fatherless children" (Ps. cix, 8-12). "In the literature of the world there is nothing more heartless, more infamous, than the 109th Psalm."--Ingersoll. Let me quote from the New Testament: "He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved; but he that believeth not shall be damned" (Mark xvi, 16). "Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire" (Matt. xxv, 41). "These shall go away into everlasting punishment" (Matt. xxv, 46). "Cast into hell, into the fire that never shall be quenched" (Mark ix, 45).