I would like to see the clergy who have been answering me, tested in this way: Let them drink poison, let them take up serpents, let them cure the sick by the laying on of hands, and I will then believe that they believe. I deny the witchcraft stories of the world. Witches are born in the ignorant, frightened minds of men. Reason will exorcise them. "They are tales told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing." These devils have covered the world with blood and tears. They have filled the earth with fear. They have filled the lives of children with darkness and horror. They have peopled the sweet world of imagination with monsters. They have made religion a strange mingling of fear and ferocity. I am doing what I can to reave the heavens of these monsters. For my part, I laugh at them all. I hold them all in contempt, ancient and modern, great and small. THE BIBLE IDEA OF THE RIGHTS OF CHILDREN. VI. ALL religion has for its basis the tyranny of God and the slavery of man. 18. "If a man have a stubborn and rebellious son, which will not obey the voice of his father, or the voice of his mother, and that, when they have chastened him, will not hearken unto them. 19. "Then shall his father and his mother lay hold on him, and bring him out unto the elders of his city, and unto, the gate of his place. 20. "And they shall say unto the elders of his city, This our son is stubborn and rebellious, he will not obey our voice, he is a glutton and a drunkard. 21. "And all the men of his city shall stone him with stones, that he die; so shalt thou put evil away from among you; and all Israel shall hear, and fear."--_Deut. xxi._ Abraham was commanded to offer his son Isaac as a sacrifice. He proceeded to obey. And the boy, being then about thirty years of age, was not consulted. At the command of a phantom of the air, a man was willing to offer upon the altar his only son. And such was the slavery of children, that the only son had not the spirit to resist. Have you ever read the story of Jephthah? 30 "And Jephthah vowed a vow unto the Lord, and said, If thou shalt without fail deliver the children of Ammon into mine hands, 31. "Then it shall be, that whatsoever cometh forth of the doors of my house to meet me, when I return in peace from the children of Ammon, shall surely be the Lord's, and I will offer it up for a burnt offering. 32. "So Jephthah passed over unto the children of Ammon to fight against them; and the Lord delivered them into his hands. 33. "And he smote them from Aroer, even till thou come to Minnith, even twenty cities, and unto the plain of the vineyards, with a very great slaughter. Thus the children of Ammon were subdued before the children of Israel. 34."And Jephthah came to Mizpeh unto his house, and behold, his daughter came out to meet him with timbrels and with dances; and she was his only child; beside her he had neither son nor daughter.