In the sixty-eighth Psalm is found this merciful passage: "That thy foot may be dipped in the blood "of thine enemies, and the tongue of thy dogs in the "same. So we find in the eleventh chapter of Joshua the reason why the Canaanites and other nations made war upon the Jews. It is as follows: "For it was of 242 "the Lord to harden their hearts that they should "come against Israel in battle, that he might destroy "them utterly, and that they might have no favor, but "that he might destroy them." Read the thirtieth chapter of Exodus and you will find that God gave to Moses a recipe for making the oil of holy anointment, and in the thirty-second verse we find that no one was to make any oil like it and in the next verse it is declared that whoever compounded any like it, or whoever put any of it on a stranger, should be cut off from the Lord's people. In the same chapter, a recipe is given for per- fumery, and it is declared that whoever shall make any like it, or that smells like it, shall suffer death. In the next chapter, it is decreed that if any one fails to keep the Sabbath "he shall be surely put to death." There are in the Pentateuch hundreds and hun- dreds of passages showing the cruelty of Jehovah. What could have been more cruel than the flood? What more heartless than to overwhelm a world? What more merciless than to cover a shoreless sea with the corpses of men, women and children? The Pentateuch is filled with anathemas, with curses, with words of vengeance, of jealousy, of hatred, and brutality. By reason of these passages, 243 millions of people have plucked from their hearts the flowers of pity and justified the murder of women and the assassination of babes. In the second chapter of Second Kings we find that the prophet Elisha was on his way to a place called Bethel, and as he was going, there came forth little children out of the city and mocked him and said: "Go up thou bald head; Go up thou bald "head! And he turned back and looked on them "and cursed them in the name of the Lord. And "there came forth two she bears out of the wood and "tare forty and two children of them." Of course he obtained his miraculous power from Jehovah; and there must have been some communi- cation between Jehovah and the bears. Why did the bears come? How did they happen to be there? Here is a prophet of God cursing children in the name of the Lord, and thereupon these children are torn in fragments by wild beasts. This is the mercy of Jehovah; and yet I am told that the Bible has nothing cruel in it; that it preaches only mercy, justice, charity, peace; that all hearts are softened by reading it; that the savage nature of man is melted into tenderness and pity by it, and that only the totally depraved can find evil in it. 244 And so I might go on, page after page, book after book, in the Old Testament, and describe the cruelties committed in accordance with the commands of Jehovah.