bled conscience. He had
the sanction of the Bible for the curse plainly upon Africa. He was
fulfilling the Divine will in breeding black cattle for the auction block.
Piety and profit were one, and godliness had great gain, and some
contentment also. Thus the extermination of the Canaanites, for which the
Hebrews pleaded long after the Divine order, and for which they had
substantial warrant in Destiny's determination to rid the land of these
corrupting tribes and make room for the noble life Israel was to develop,
has been the stock argument of kings and soldiers for their bloody trade.
Thus poor human consciences have been sorely hurt and troubled as men have
read, in stories such as those of Jael and Sisera and Jacob and Esau, of
acts which their better nature instinctively condemned. They have felt
themselves arraigning the Bible and suspecting God.

If indeed the Bible is a book let down from the skies, of which God can be
called the 'author,' then all such uses of it may be correct enough, and
in those dark and savage words and deeds I may be obliged to find the
words of God and the deeds He holds up to our admiration and imitation;
though I do not see that such a use is a necessity, even on this theory.
Fancy a man quoting Shylock when he pleads for his bond, or Iago's
devilish innuendos against Desdemona's purity, as showing what Shakespeare
liked or what he would have us imitate! "These are the words of
Shakespeare!" Yes, but of Shakespeare's Shylock, Shakespeare's Iago.

If, however, the Old Testament is the national library of the Jews, I
must expect to find all sorts of early Jewish notions, in ethics and
religion, bodied in the words of the speakers they introduce, and the
deeds of the men of whom they tell the tales.

If the Bible is the record of a real revelation which came in the spirits
of ancient men, through the historic growth of conscience and reason; and
if these books are the literature embalming that growth of a people out of
ignorance and superstition into the light of pure ethics and spiritual
religion; then I must look to find all sorts of crudities and crassnesses
in the representation of God, and all phases of unmoral and immoral life,
as parts of the error and imperfection out of which they were educated.
These deeds and words are the milestones in the path of progress by which
Judaism reached Christianity. If the individual is to reproduce the story
of the race, as our wise men tell us,