Even Christian professors will profit by it when they find that the grasping avarice which prompts them to try to monopolize wealth, and thus withhold the means of comfort and happiness from their neighbors, is not the way to attain real happiness for themselves. When the glorious era arrives that men will daily look after the happiness of others as well as their own, then we shall have a true religion, and a true state of society, and a happy world. CHAPTER XLVII.--THE BIBLE SANCTIONS EVERY SPECIES OF CRIME. "Be ye perfect, as your Father in heaven is perfect" (Matt, v. 48). All Christian professors admit that this perfection is to be attained by following his practical example, and that the way to become acquainted with this practical example is to read the Bible. Let us see, then, where a practical compliance with this precept, as thus understood, will lead us. If the God of the Bible is to be accepted as our "heavenly Father," then a compliance with this precept will leave no crime uncommitted, and no sin not perpetrated; for he is represented as either committing or sanctioning every species of crime, wickedness, and immorality known to society in the age in which the Bible was written. That the truth of this statement may not be called in question, we will proceed to bring forward evidence to prove it. I. THE BIBLE SANCTIONS MURDER. We find a scriptural warrant for the highest crime known to the law,--that of murder. God is represented as saying to his holy people, "Go ye out and slay every man his brother, every man his companion, and every man his neighbor" (Exod. xxii. 27). And, relative to the dissenter from the faith, he is represented as saying, "Ye shall stone him with stones that he die." Now, if such texts are not calculated to foster the spirit of murder, and to extinguish the natural repugnance to cruelty and bloodshed in the human mind, we can conceive of no language that would have such an effect, especially when it is taken in connection with Christ's injunction, "He that hath not a sword, let him sell his coat, and buy one."