That the bible gives little thought to the rights of animals may be inferred not only from St. Paul's rather brutal exclamation, "Does God care for the oxen?" but also from the practice among the Jews to this day, of tormenting an animal before killing him for food. In the _Humane Review_, an eye witness of the Jewish method of slaughter to provide _Kosher_ meat for the market gives the following description of the operation: _As soon as the animal has been brought into the slaughtering chamber it is thrown to the ground either by attaching a rope or chain to the legs and then suddenly hauling on it, or by twisting the head upward and sideways by means of an appliance attached to the horns and passing under the jaw, in such a way that the animal loses its balance and falls to the ground, in doing which it not infrequently injures itself so that there is loss of blood or fracture of horn or rib. The animal is then rendered powerless by having its feet bound together, or the tail drawn through the hind legs forward and upward, while one of the slaughtermen places his foot on the animal's stomach and prevents its attempting to offer resistance. The head is then forced down so that it rests on the horns, and the nose is pressed against the floor. This can only be done by the exertion of great force on the part of the slaughtermen, with corresponding resistance, involving terror and suffering on that of the animal. The Jewish official who performs the act of slaughter then passes his hand over the animal's tightly drawn throat, and mutters the so-called "Schechita" prayer. He then cuts the animal's throat right through the vertebrae, drawing the knife to and fro in so doing. The blood which spurts from the severed arteries is scattered like rain by the breath which escapes from the lungs, and as the breath is drawn in it enters the gullet and lungs with a loud rattling noise. The gaping wound yawns wide, the animal opens and closes its eyes, rolling them to and fro, and opens and shuts its mouth as though gasping for breath. If the flow of blood from the arteries in the neck ceases, one of the slaughtermen--not the Jewish official--draws them out, cuts away part of them with the surrounding tissues, and throws the severed portion away. And while all this is going on the animal is alive and conscious of pain and terror._ II. The Portrait of God in the Bible |TO prove the charge that the bible God is quite unfit for modern purposes, we have only to open the "holy" book at almost any page to find such positive commandments as the following emanating from him: _Now go and smite Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have, and spare them not; but slay both man and woman, infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and ass._* Slaughter on a small scale, or at intervals, does not seem to satisfy the bible deity. Like a vortex, he cries for more, more.