Australia to dig for a treasure known to have been buried there during a war, the locality of which she describes in writing so accurately that she presumes there can be no difficulty in finding it. In a few weeks she dispatches a messenger to the island to ascertain what progress the miners are making. But imagine his surprise, on reaching the place, to learn that the laborers are divided up into six hundred companies, and each company stoutly insisting that the spot where they are digging answers exactly to the locality described by the written instrument. Now, on the messenger reporting the case to the queen, what would she conclude--ay, what could she conclude--but that she had made some serious blunder or omission in her attempted description of the place? It is not possible that an explicit revelation of the matter could have led to such endless confusion and disputes. In like manner we are morally compelled to conclude--yes, every principle of reasoning and common sense impels us to the conclusion--that God has made a serious blunder in attempting to give forth a perfect revelation to the world, if (as it seems) he has left it so ambiguous, so unintelligible, and so contradictory in its doctrines and teachings, that six hundred churches have risen up, and are now disputing about what its doctrines and teachings are. These six hundred churches comprise a hundred and fifty millions of guessing Christians, all guessing their way to heaven, with ninety-thousand chances against their ever reaching the heavenly kingdom. To "the angel host" looking down, observing this infinite diversity, demoralization, and conflict among the disciples of the Christian faith, it must be regarded as a species of religious monomania; for we may assume that no intelligent mind, which is not blinded by religious superstition, could be drawn into such a delusion as to conclude that such a book or such a religion or revelation is from an all-wise and all-powerful God, or that it is necessary to believe it, or that it is possible to believe it in any rational sense, or that it can have the remotest connection with our salvation. It makes God a fool, man a lunatic, religion a farce, and the Bible superlative nonsense. Revelation is defined to be "the act of making known." But what is made known by a book whose language is so contradictory and so ambiguous that no two persons in a million agree with respect to all it teaches? Every preacher and teacher simply makes known his ignorance whenever he assumes to know what the Bible teaches; and yet i is called "a perfect revelation of God's will." It is an assumption that makes God an ignoramus and a tyrant to suppose he would give forth a perfect revelation to the world, and require us to accept it as such on pain of endless damnation, and yet leave it in such a jumbled, bungling, and unintelligent condition that it is impossible to understand it. Such an assumption certainly borders on blasphemy.