Children’s diseases are a logical result of children’s beatings ❦ To shock, pain, grieve, anger or violently suppress a human being is to run a grave risk of lowering that individual’s physical vitality to a point where the person is an easy prey for any disease that happens along. That which interferes with the vital functions, even in a transient way, is not wise nor good. ¶ Extreme anger is apt to be followed by lassitude or some marked physical disturbance. In fact, it is well known that hate secretes a toxin which manifests itself in the breath, and in the tissues ❦ What we call a disease is a symptom of vitality decreased to a point where the forces of dissolution are active. A shock which will blanch the cheek disturbs the circulation, and interferes with the digestion. ¶ Perhaps the whipping did not mutilate, but it angered and shocked until a fever followed. Dyspepsia is a matter of the nerves. Much of our bad theology, if we could trace it, would be found to have its rise in indigestion. And that it has caused pathological disturbances of countless varieties, from catarrh to acute mania, is known to every thinking physician. ¶ And of all causes of sickness, I know of none that has borne a greater crop of cosmic cockleburs than the old-time plan of whipping children. When Solomon put forth that unwise saying, “Spare the rod and spoil the child,” an extent of harm was done the human race that no pen can compute. That one statement should have convinced every intelligent person that the Bible was just like every other book—good and bad in spots. If accepted literally, the Bible is an atrocious book, false, obscene and misleading, tending to insanity, disease and death. Fortunately, we are now allowed to take the Bible as the garbled literature of a barbaric and superstitious past, collected from many sources, and good and bad, wise and silly, sublime and vicious—all as the case may be. ¶ That millions of parents have bolstered their brutal tendency to punish and inflict pain by that remark about sparing the rod, every one knows. And always the tendency to beat the little thing, too weak to strike back, was more to ease the feelings of the parent than to improve and benefit the child. Moreover, it was educating the child, for the youngster grew up and inflicted upon its own children all the horror that it had, itself, endured. It was heir to the brutality, heir to the Bible, heir to the strap, birch, rod, ferrule and hairbrush, so these were in daily use in all Christian homes. ¶ In my childhood, I remember a Baptist preacher who lived neighbor to us ❦ This man was loud, lacrimose, brutal, a devout Christian, and a preacher of power, snatching many souls from the burning. The way that gospel sharp used to pass out his tidings of great joy broke in on my childish fancies, so I became convinced that if God was really just, that pious, bawling beast who fed fat on our chickens would go to hell, sure. But I kept my suspicions to myself.