The fact is, we have grown less and less Christian every year from 1620 until now, and the fact is that we have grown more and more civilized, more and more charitable, nearer and nearer just. Mr. Talmage speaks as though all the people in what he calls the civilized world were Christians. Ad- 335 mitting this to be true, I find that in these countries millions of men are educated, trained and drilled to kill their fellow Christians. I find Europe covered with forts to protect Christians from Christians, and the seas filled with men-of-war for the purpose of ravaging the coasts and destroying the cities of Chris- tian nations. These countries are filled with prisons, with workhouses, with jails and with toiling, ignorant and suffering millions. I find that Christians have invented most of the instruments of death, that Christians are the greatest soldiers, fighters, de- stroyers. I find that every Christian country is taxed to its utmost to support these soldiers; that every Christian nation is now groaning beneath the grievous burden of monstrous debt, and that nearly all these debts were contracted in waging war. These bonds, these millions, these almost incalculable amounts, were given to pay for shot and shell, for rifle and torpedo, for men-of-war, for forts and arsenals, and all the devilish enginery of death. I find that each of these nations prays to God to assist it as against all others; and when one nation has overrun, ravaged and pillaged another, it immediately returns thanks to the Almighty, and the ravaged and pillaged kneel and thank God that it is no worse. 336 Mr. Talmage is welcome to all the evidence he can find in the history of what he is pleased to call the civilized nations of the world, tending to show the inspiration of the Bible. And right here it may be well enough to say again, that the question of inspiration can not be settled by the votes of the superstitious millions. It can not be affected by numbers. It must be decided by each human being for himself. If every man in this world, with one exception, believed the Bible to be the in- spired word of God, the man who was the exception could not lose his right to think, to investigate, and to judge for himself. _Question_. You do not think, then, that any of the arguments brought forward by Mr. Talmage for the purpose of establishing the inspiration of the Bible, are of any weight whatever? _Answer_. I do not. I do not see how it is possible to make poorer, weaker or better arguments than he has made. Of course, there can be no "evidence" of the in- spiration of the Scriptures. What is "inspiration"? Did God use the prophets simply as instruments? Did he put his thoughts in their minds, and use their 337