It is difficult to speak to ears polite of the obscenity of the Bible. There are more than one hundred passages of the most coarse and vulgar description. To print these in a book and send it through the United States mails, if law were impartially administered, would put a man in the penitentiary. There are entire chapters that reek with obscenity from beginning to end. We cannot tell you about Onan, and Tamar, and Lot and his two daughters, and scores of other obscene matters. There are passages even in the New Testament that cannot be mentioned in the presence of a virtuous woman. When we enter a lady’s parlor and see the richly-gilded Bible upon the centre-table, we shudder as we remember the obscenity that is contained between its costly lids. When we see a young girl tripping along our streets, Bible in hand, we wonder if she knows that she carries more obscenity than Byron ever wrote, than Shelley ever dreamed of, than the vilest French novelist ever dared to print. We have very grave doubts about putting the Bible into the hands of children. They are, through it, made familiar with much that is demoralizing. We have many reasons for rejecting the dogma of the plenary inspiration of the Scriptures and of their infallibility. These fragmentary writings must be judged by their merits—by what they are. It has been shown by the author of Supernatural Religion that we gain more than we lose by taking this rational view of the Bible. An illusion is lost, but a reality is gained which is full of hope and peace. The unknown men who mostly wrote the little pamphlets which make up the Bible probably did the best they knew—that is, they wrote according to the degree of their development—but some of the writers were on a very low plane. We should read these books and all other sacred writings of all nations just as we study geology—as showing what was in the mind of man when the books were written, ‘just as we learn from the earth’s strata the history and order of the various periodic formations. The bibles of the ages are accessible to every man who can read. All of them contain much that is valuable, with much that is frivolous, superstitious, and false. But these books belong to our race, and happy is the man who knows how to use them wisely. He who rejects all makes as great a mistake as he who accepts all. The true position is that the Bible contains the best thoughts of many of the best men that have lived in the ages of the past, expressed according to their light; and, while their obvious errors should be rejected, whatever commends itself to our reason, according to the best light of to-day, and to which each man’s own inspiration and spiritual discernment responds, should be reverently studied and highly esteemed. Religion is not a product of the Bible, but the Bible is a product of religion—natural religion—though often misunderstood and perverted. We do not throw aside the bibles, but accept them for just what we find them to be worth.