This, according to Mr. Talmage, is a commandment of the infinite God. According to him, God ordered a man to murder his own son, his own wife, his own brother, his own daughter, if they dared even to sug- gest the worship of some other God than Jehovah. For my part, it is impossible not to despise such a God--a God not willing that one should worship what he must. No one can control his admiration, and if a savage at sunrise falls upon his knees and offers homage to the great light of the East, he can- not help it. If he worships the moon, he cannot help it. If he worships fire, it is because he cannot control his own spirit. A picture is beautiful to me in spite of myself. A statue compels the applause of my brain. The worship of the sun was an exceedingly natural religion, and why should a man or woman be destroyed for kneeling at the fireside of the world? No wonder that this same God, in the very next chapter of Deuteronomy to that quoted, says to his 229 chosen people: "Ye shall not eat of anything that "dieth of itself: thou shalt give it unto the stranger "that is within thy gates, that he may eat it; or thou "mayest sell it unto an alien: for thou art a holy "people unto the Lord thy God." What a mingling of heartlessness and thrift--the religion of sword and trade! In the seventh chapter of Deuteronomy, Jehovah gives his own character. He tells the Israelites that there are seven nations greater and mightier than themselves, but that he will deliver them to his chosen people, and that they shall smite them and utterly destroy them; and having some fear that a drop of pity might remain in the Jewish heart, he says: "Thou shalt make no covenant with them, nor "show mercy unto them. * * * Know therefore "that the Lord thy God, he is God, the faithful God, "which keepeth covenant and mercy with them that "love him and keep his commandments to a thousand "generations, and repayeth them that hate him to "their face, to destroy them: he will not be slack to "him that hateth him, he will repay him to his face." This is the description which the merciful, long-suffer- ing Jehovah gives of himself. So, he promises great prosperity to the Jews if 230 they will only obey his commandments, and says: "And the Lord will take away from thee all sickness, "and will put none of the evil diseases of Egypt "upon thee, but will lay them upon all them that "hate thee. And thou shalt consume all the people "which the Lord thy God shall deliver thee; thine "eye shall have no pity upon them." Under the immediate government of Jehovah, mercy was a crime. According to the law of God, pity was weakness, tenderness was treason, kindness was blasphemy, while hatred and massacre were virtues.