But it is to the credit of the Christian clergy that they do not say more foolish things or oftener than they do--seeing that their entire life is spent in reading and teaching from a book full of fables, gossip, inanities, miracles, and, if I may say so--conundrums. What, for instance, may be expected from men who have to feed on such meaningless and even revolting texts as the following: _I will tread down the people in mine anger, and make them drunk in my fury._ ** The deity making the people drunk to get even with them! We leave the text to the clergy. _Thus saith the Lord God; Speak unto every feathered fowl, every beast of the field.... Come; gather yourselves on every side to my sacrifice that I do sacrifice for you, even a great sacrifice upon the mountains of Israel, that ye may eat flesh, and drink blood. Ye shall eat the flesh of the mighty, and drink the blood of the princes of the earth. ... Thus ye shall be filled at my table with horses and chariots, with mighty men, and with all men of war, saith the Lord God._ *** * Revelation xix, 11-15. ** Isaiah lxiii, 6. *** Ezekiel xxxix, 17-20. And again: _And I saw an angel standing in the sun; and he cried with a loud voice, saying to all the fowls that fly in the midst of heaven, Come and gather yourselves together, unto the supper of the great God; that ye may eat the flesh of kings, and the flesh of captains, and the flesh of mighty men, and the flesh of horses, and of them that sit on them, and the flesh of all men [of war], both free and bond, small and great._ * And what is the sense in the following: _His glory is like the firstling of his bullock, and his horns are like the horns of unicorns: with them he shall push the people together to the ends of the earth._ ** * Revelation xix, 17, 18. * Deuteronomy xxxiii, 17. A sensible man would leave such a text severely alone; but the clergy try to make the bullock stand for Christ, the horns, for the extremities of the cross, and the "pushing" has reference to the day of judgment, etc. Dear me! Who would care to spend the red blood in his veins in such an occupation? The beauty of the better bible, composed of such words of Reason as I have culled from only a few of the ancient masters, lies in the fact that there is not a single passage therein to perplex the understanding, pervert the moral sense or cause a blush. It can not be said of the Jew-ish-Christian bible that it is free from passages which no civilized community would allow in any other than an "inspired" production. And this is enough to condemn the book. The argument that the offensive portions of the Word of God should not be taken separately, but in connection with the better parts of the book, amounts to a plea of guilty. How can the commandment to bear false witness, or to plunder, or to outrage women, become "divine" by being printed in the same book with the Golden Rule?