I do not believe that men have ever been made merciful in war by reading the Old Testament. I do not believe that men have ever been prompted to break the chain of a slave by reading the Pentateuch. The question is not whether Florence Nightingale and Miss Dix were cruel. I have said nothing about John Howard, nothing about Abbott Lawrence. I say nothing about people in this connection. The question is: Is the Bible a cruel book? not: Was Miss Nightingale a cruel woman? There have been thousands and thousands of loving, tender and char- itable Mohammedans. Mohammedan mothers love their children as well as Christian mothers can. Mohammedans have died in defence of the Koran-- died for the honor of an impostor. There were millions of charitable people in India--millions in Egypt--and I am not sure that the world has ever 192 produced people who loved one another better than the Egyptians. I think there are many things in the Old Testament calculated to make man cruel. Mr. Talmage asks: "What has been the effect upon your children? As "they have become more and more fond of the "Scriptures have they become more and more fond "of tearing off the wings of flies and pinning grass- "hoppers and robbing birds' nests?" I do not believe that reading the bible would make them tender toward flies or grasshoppers. According to that book, God used to punish animals for the crimes of their owners. He drowned the animals in a flood. He visited cattle with disease. He bruised them to death with hailstones--killed them by the thousand. Will the reading of these things make children kind to animals? So, the whole system of sacrifices in the Old Testament is calculated to harden the heart. The butchery of oxen and lambs, the killing of doves, the perpetual destruction of life, the con- tinual shedding of blood--these things, if they have any tendency, tend only to harden the heart of child- hood. The Bible does not stop simply with the killing of animals. The Jews were commanded to kill their 193 neighbors--not only the men, but the women; not only the women, but the babes. In accordance with the command of God, the Jews killed not only their neighbors, but their own brothers; and according to this book, which is the foundation, as Mr. Talmage believes, of all mercy, men were commanded to kill their wives because they differed with them on the subject of religion. Nowhere in the world can be found laws more un- just and cruel than in the Old Testament. _Question_. Mr. Talmage wants you to tell where the cruelty of the Bible crops out in the lives of Chris- tians?