|PRODUCE a book like the bible," is the oft-repeated challenge addressed to the critics of the book. It is impossible to produce a book like the bible, without copying it. Another bible, exactly like the one we now have, could only be had by making the second a duplicate of the first. There is no other way of reproducing a book. We can no more reproduce the bible than we can the "Arabian Nights," or Shakespeare. In fact, no two things in nature are exactly alike. Men differ from one another, even as do books. Another Socrates, or another Napoleon, or another Lincoln, would be an impossibility. It is equally out of the question to have another Nero, Constantine, or Pope Alexander VI. To ask us to produce a book like the bible is as unreasonable as to ask us to produce another Koran, or another Mahomet. If the new Koran be like the old, no addition, or improvement has been made to religious literature by its production; if the new Koran be different from the old, then it is not a reproduction. "Let them produce it!" sounds pompous enough, but it is all noise and rattle. In a private letter to an inquirer, to whom I am indebted for the quotation I am about to make, Mr. W. J. Bryan, referring to the author of this book, asks, "If Mr. Mangasarian has books better than the bible, there is nothing to prevent his presenting them to the public, and driving the bible out of use." But that is precisely what is being done. The bible has been, a step at a time, driven completely out of use in the halls of learning. It is no longer an authority, for example, on questions of science--geology, astronomy, chemistry, biology and all the other branches of one of the principal pursuits of man. Better books on these subjects have replaced the "Word of God." What is true of science is true of history, politics, government, education, commerce; in all these departments and activities of life better books have relegated the bible into the background. Did the framers of the American Constitution, for instance, which Gladstone calls "the proudest product of the pen and brain" of man, consult the bible for their work? Did they borrow the doctrine of the separation of Church and State from the bible? The Church in the bible dominates the State; but the Americans compelled the Church to take its hands off the State. Did they learn that lesson from the bible? The Constitution, again, declares that all power is derived from the consent of the governed. Is that biblical? Does not the "Word of God" plainly teach that "the powers that be are appointed of God," and that not to obey the powers thus appointed, whether they be good or evil, is to receive "damnation to their souls"? Evidently, then, the makers of America had better books than the bible to be guided by.