Compare, once more, the saying of Jesus, that, "If thy right eye offend thee, pluck it out and cast it from thee... and if thy right hand offend thee, cut it off and cast it from thee: for it is profitable for thee that one of thy members should perish, and not that thy whole body shall be cast into hell," (Matthew v, 29-31); and this other remarkable advice to make "eunuchs of themselves for the kingdom of heaven's sake" (Matthew xix, 12), with the gloriously wholesome thought of Seneca on such absurd religious practices: "One, out of zeal, makes himself an eunuch, another lances his arms; if this be the way to please their gods, what should a man do if he had a mind to anger them? or, if this be the way to please them, they do certainly deserve not to be worshiped at all... the most barbarous and notorious of tyrants... never went so far as to command any man to torment himself." * * Seneca's Morals xvii. What would not the clergy have given if the above passage had been in their bible, instead of in the writings of a "heathen"? Jesus recommended self-torture; Seneca says, even tyrants "never went so far as to recommend any man to torment himself." Of course, in his extremity, the Christian will plead for a spiritual interpretation of Jesus' sayings: But why use such decidedly materialistic terms, as "plucking out eyes," "cutting off arms," and "making eunuchs of one's self," to convey ideal meanings? Why could not Jesus talk _plainly_, like Seneca? In the selection of these few quotations, I have refrained from culling also from the pages of modern writers, lest it be said that since these modern men and women appeared after Christianity, it is to the bible that the world is indebted for their great thoughts and works. Of course, this is not true, seeing how the church persecuted these men and women, and drove them to the stake, or at least, placed the offspring of their brain upon the _Index_, branding their thought as blasphemy. Nevertheless, I have denied myself the pleasure of invoking the galaxy of intellectual leaders, from Bruno and Spinoza, to Goethe and Voltaire, and, Shakespeare and Shelley, and Ibsen and Emerson, who though they had their many faults, were morally as well as mentally, as far above Ezra, Nehemiah, Noah, Solomon, or Peter and Paul, as sense and beauty are above folly and platitude.