titude of the Church, still maintained in these days, when the spirit
of science pervades every form of thought, has been productive of
probably the largest body that ever existed in the country, of sensible
men and women, who never enter a church door. They want to know
whatsoever things are true; they do not want to be dredged with the
mummy dust of dogma."

"But the Bible--the Bible!"

"It is necessary for me to tell you all that I feel on this subject; all
that I have felt for several years past--ever since I left the divinity
school behind me, and went into the world of thinking men and women. It
is necessary to tell these men and women in unmistakable language that
our faith aims at a perfect type of manhood--at the perfection of
truth. It is necessary to tell them that we do not regard, except with
abhorrence, such types of men as have for centuries been held up to
admiration simply because they have for centuries been the objects of
admiration, of imitation, of veneration, on the part of the debased
people who gave us the earlier books of the Bible. The memory of
Jacob became the dominant influence among the Hebrew nation; hence the
continuous curse that rested upon them, the curse that rests upon the
cheat, the defrauder of his own household, his brother, his father,
his uncle. It is necessary to say that the world should know that our
religion is founded upon truth, purity, self-sacrifice--that it abhors
the cheat and the sensualist. It is necessary to proclaim to the world
our abhorrence of the cult whose highest development was the Pharisee.
The aim of the religion of Christ is to produce the perfect man, and to
root out the Pharisee. When the Church ceases to connive at falsehood
and sensualism; when it openly professes its abhorrence of the religion
of the Hebrews; then, and then only, will it become the power in the
earth which the exponent of Christianity should become. Humanity had
been crying out for the religion of humanity, that is, Christianity, for
centuries, but the Church tells it that true religion is an amalgamation
of the loveliness of Christianity and the barbarity of Judaism--an
impossible amalgamation, and one which millions of poor souls have
perished in a vain attempt to accomplish. Humanity wants Christ, and
Christ only, and that the Church has hitherto refused to give; hence the
millions of thinking men and women, believers in the religion of Christ,
who remain forever outside the wall