The stomach commits no sin, but leads nevertheless to many wrongs, to one's self. All crimes are sins, but all sins are not crimes. And all injuries done to others are accounted both sins and crimes. What seems very strange yet is wonderfully true is that all sins and crimes against others find their origin in the indulgence of either stomach or sexual organs. Starvation may lead to crime. Hunger often drives to theft. Extravagance, lust, and luxury lead to any variety of crime, from forgery to appropriating another man's wife. In the gratification of those two organs, passions, we find the cradle of all crime. And what we call morality means the proper regulation of these passions, of these organs. The church occasionally takes cognizance of sins, when discovered, that do not come within the category of crime, as was seen recently in the case of a Major Theobald who seduced his niece while nursing his invalid wife; he was suspended for one year, but saved his soul! All our civil justices in the city of New York are kept busy to regulate and to punish overindulgences of the stomach and some other petty wrongs. Our criminal courts are kept busy in punishing those who have wrongfully appropriated other people's property, or injured or killed another. The superior civil courts attend to the disputes about property. Why do those who adopt for their mode of livelihood the profession of theology want to exercise salvation? What have they to save? Let us examine for what sins the Deluge was brought, Sodom and Gomorrah were destroyed, and Christ was crucified. The principal scriptural sins: Cain commits murder, from jealousy, because God preferred meat to vegetables (Gen. iv, 8). Gen. vi, 5: "And God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually." The contents of this sentence is absurd. The heart cannot imagine, or think. The function of the heart is the circulation of the blood. What this wickedness consisted of, we do not know. History has no record exactly where this Flood or Deluge took place. That it was localized is certain. It was in all probability nothing more than an overflow of the river Euphrates--that is joined by the river Tigris, and terminates in the Gulf of Persia--in consequence of a series of consecutive rainstorms, etc., and God had as much to do with this supposed deluge as he has to do with any deluge in the Mississippi valley when that river overflows. Gen. vi, 6: "And it repented the Lord that he had made man on the earth and it grieved him at his heart." Now we are getting at God's anatomy! Man may labor under delusions--hear voices, etc. All those extravagant statements are perfectly excusable from our modern standpoint.