24. "Love your enemies." (Matt. v. 44.) Then what kind of feeling should we cultivate toward friends? And how much did he love his enemies when he called them "fools," "liars," "hypocrites," "generation of vipers," &c.? And yet he is held up as "our" example in love, meekness, and forbearance. But no man ever did love an enemy. It is a moral impossibility, as much so as to love bitter or nauseating food. The advice of the Roman slave Syrus is indicative of more sense and wisdom--"Treat your enemy kindly, and thus make him a friend." 25. We are required to forgive an enemy four hundred and ninety times; that is, "seventy times seven." (Matt, vii.) Another outburst of religious enthusiasm; another proof of an overheated imagination. 26. "Be ye perfect, even as your Father in heaven is perfect." (Matt. v. 48.) Here is more of the religious extravagance of a mind uncultured by science. For it is self-evident that human beings can make no approximation to divine perfection. The distance between human imperfection and a perfect God is, and ever must be, infinite. 27. Christ commended those who "became eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven's sake" (Matt. xix. 12)--a custom requiring a murderous, self-butchering process; destructive of the energies of life and the vigor of manhood, and rendering the subject weak, effeminate, and mopish, and unfit for the business of life. It is a low species of piety, and discloses a lamentable lack of a scientific knowledge of the true functions of the sexual organs on the part of Jesus. 28. Christ also encouraged his disciples to "pluck out the eye," and "cut off the hand," as a means of rendering it impossible to perpetrate evil with those members. And we would suggest, if such advice is consistent with sound reasoning, the head also should be cut off, as a means of more effectually carrying out the same principle. Such advice never came from the mouth of a philosopher. It is a part of Christ's system of extravagant piety. 29. He also taught the senseless, oriental tradition of "the unpardonable sin against the Holy Ghost"--a fabulous being who figured more anciently in the history of various countries. (See Chapter XXII.) No philosopher or man of science could harbor such childish misconceptions as are embodied in this tradition, which neither describes the being nor explains the nature of the sin. 30. We find many proofs, in Christ's Gospel history, that he believed in the ancient heathen tradition which taught that disease is caused by demons and evil spirits. (See Luke vii. 21, and viii. 2.) 31. Many cases are reported of his relieving the obsessed by casting out the diabolical intruders, in imitation of the oriental custom long in vogue in various countries, by which he evinced a profound ignorance of the natural causes of disease.