the trees and fruit of the land shall be devoured by locusts, and that all these curses shall pursue them and overtake them, until they be destroyed; that they shall be slaves to their enemies, and be constantly in hunger and thirst and nakedness, and in want of all things. And as though this were not enough, the Lord tells them that he will bring a nation against them swift as eagles, a nation fierce and savage, that will show no mercy and no favor to old or young, and leave them neither corn, nor wine, nor oil, nor flocks, nor herds; and this nation shall besiege them in their cities until they are reduced to the necessity of eating the flesh of their own sons and daughters; so that the men would eat their wives and their children, and women eat their husbands and their own sons and daughters, and their own babes. All these curses God pronounced upon them if they did not observe to do all the words of the law that were written in his book. This same merciful God threatened that he would bring upon them all the diseases of Egypt--every sickness and every plague; that he would scatter them from one end of the earth to the other; that they should find no rest; that their lives should hang in perpetual doubt; that in the morning they would 227 say: Would God it were evening! and in the even- ing, Would God it were morning! and that he would finally take them back to Egypt where they should be again sold for bondmen and bondwomen. This curse, the foundation of the _Anathema maranatha_; this curse, used by the pope of Rome to prevent the spread of thought; this curse used even by the Protestant Church; this curse born of barba- rism and of infinite cruelty, is now said to have issued from the lips of an infinitely merciful God. One would suppose that Jehovah had gone insane; that he had divided his kingdom like Lear, and from the darkness of insanity had launched his curses upon a world. In order that there may be no doubt as to the mercy of Jehovah, read the thirteenth chapter of Deuteronomy: "If thy brother, the son of thy mother, or thy "son, or thy daughter, or the wife of thy bosom, or "thy friend, which is as thine own soul, entice thee "secretly, saying, Let us go and serve other gods, "which thou hast not known, thou nor thy fathers; " * * * thou shalt not consent unto him, nor "hearken unto him; neither shall thine eyes pity him, "neither shalt thou spare, neither shalt thou conceal 228 "him; but thou shalt surely kill him: thine hand "shall be first upon him to put him to death, and "afterwards the hand of all the people; and thou "shalt stone him with stones that he die, because he "hath sought to entice thee away from the Lord thy "God."