With the characteristic moral teaching of the Christian Bible, presented in the preceding chapter and throughout this work, we see not how to escape the conviction that the Bible has inflicted, and must necessarily inflict, a demoralizing influence on society wherever it is read and _believed_. It is morally impossible for _any person_ to read and believe a book sanctioning, or appearing to sanction, so many species of crime and immorality without sustaining more or less moral and mental injury by it. For whatever views he may entertain with respect to the numerous crimes therein reported as having been committed with the approval, and often at the command, of a just God, it must naturally and inevitably have the tendency to weaken his detestation of those crimes, and also weaken his zeal and effort to extinguish them and other similar crimes now existing in society. It must also lower his conception of the moral attributes of Deity. However honest, and however naturally opposed to such immoralities at the outset, it is impossible for him to entertain the belief that they were once approved, or even connived at, by a morally perfect being, without becoming unconsciously weakened in his feelings of opposition to, and his hatred of, such deeds. It may be alleged that these practices are at war with those precepts which enjoin us to do unto others as we would have them do unto us; and that of loving our neighbors as ourselves, &c. This is true; but reason and experience both teach us, as an important lesson in moral and mental philosophy, that, when a book which is accepted as a guide for the conduct and moral actions of men contains contradictory precepts, the people will seize on and reduce to practice those most consonant with their natures, and most congenial to their natural feelings and Inclinations. Hence it can easily be seen, that as the animal feelings and propensities which lead to the commission of crime, when unduly exercised, have always been stronger with the masses or the populace than the moral feelings, they have consequently always been more disposed to yield a compliance with those precepts which sanction, or appear to sanction, the commission of crime, than those which are condemnatory of crime. All persons in whose minds the animal propensities are the strongest will seize with eagerness the least authority, or appearance of authority, for committing those crimes which they are naturally inclined to commit, and for which they are glad to find a license or encouragement to commit. Under such circumstances they will ignore the virtuous precepts, and yield a compliance with those of an opposite character. Therefore Christian professors who expect the Bible to exert a moral influence in reforming the world and freeing it from crime, because it contains some beautiful and sound moral precepts, will be disappointed; for those precepts will be neutralized, and their effects destroyed, by those of an opposite character.