And he stripped off his clothes also, and prophesied before Samuel in like manner, and lay down naked all that day and all that night. Wherefore, they say, is Saul also among the prophets?_ Mark the word "also," which means that all his messengers had likewise stripped themselves when "the Spirit of the Lord was upon them." David did the same thing when he danced naked before the ark. To the chief of the Old Testament prophets, Isaiah, came this instruction from heaven: _At the same time spake the Lord by Isaiah the son of Amoz, saying, Go and loose the sackcloth from off thy loins, and put off thy shoe from thy foot. And he did so, walking naked and barefoot._ * And he walked the streets, if the bible is to be depended, for three years "naked and barefoot.... for a sign and wonder upon Egypt and upon Ethiopia," whatever that may mean. Another prophet, Micah, declares he will not only go about "stripped and naked," but he will also "howl." ** And are these the men to be compared with the masters of eloquence in ancient and modern history? * Isaiah xx, 2. ** Micah i, 8. Is it necessary, after all this, to call attention to the better and purer eloquence of Demosthenes, thundering against the menace of Macedonia to the liberties of Athens; of Cicero, defending, both with his voice and sword, the culture of Europe against the barbarians of the north; of Plato's _Apologia_ of Socrates, the finest argument for freedom of thought and speech that has come down to us from the past; of Pericles, eulogy of Athens, city of the light; of the _Antigone_ of Sophocles, or the _Prometheus_ of Æschylus, unexcelled in literature, as the Grecian Pantheon is in architecture! And have we not forty centuries of forensic eloquence to pit against the explosions and fulminations of the diviners and soothsayers of the bible? There is Mirabeau, Danton, Cavour, Castellar, Garibaldi, Mazzini, Burke, Charles Sumner, Carl Schurz, Abraham Lincoln, and a glorious host of others, whose voices trembled with the woes of Ireland, or the victories of England, or the hopes of United Germany, or the cries of mangled France! Besides, the orators of Europe saved their countries by the new hope and energy they instilled into them; the prophets of the bible drove the nation they represented into ignominious bondage, and left desolation and ruin where there was once a people and a nation. Even the debris which Rome and Greece have left behind them is the envy of all the world to-day, while not even the Jews are willing to go back to their own Jerusalem. II. The Bible and Religion