mselves". We are told that sixteen thousand single women were
spared, of whom "the Lord's tribute was thirty and two!" In the Book
of Joshua we read that he had an interview with a supernatural
personage called "the captain of the Lord's host", and how this
captain had given to him a magic spell which would destroy the city of
Jericho. The city should be accursed, "even it and all that are
therein, to the Lord"; every living thing except one traitor-harlot
was to be slaughtered, and all the wealth of the city reserved to the
priestly caste. This was carried out to the letter, except that
"Achan, the son of Carmi, the son of Zabdi, the son of Zerah, of the
tribe of Judah, took of the accursed thing"--that is, he hid some gold
and silver in his tent; whereupon the army met with a defeat, and
everybody knew that something was wrong, and Joshua rent his clothes
and fell to the earth upon his face before the ark of the Lord, and
got another message from Jehovah, to the effect that the guilty man
should be burned with fire, "he and all that he hath."

And Joshua, and all Israel with him, took Achan the son of
Zerah, and the silver, and the garment, and the wedge of
gold, and his sons, and his daughters, and his oxen, and his
asses, and his sheep, and his tent, and all that he had: and
they brought them unto the Valley of Achor. And Joshua said,
Why hast thou troubled us? the Lord shall trouble thee this
day. And all Israel stoned him with stones, and burned them
with fire, after they had stoned him with stones.

We have no means of knowing what was the character of the unfortunate
inhabitants of the city of Jericho, nor of the Hittites and the
Girgashites and the Amorites and all the rest of the victims of
Jehovah. To be sure, we are told by the Hebrew priests that they
sacrificed their children to their gods; but then, consider what we
should believe about the Hebrew religion, if we took the word of rival
priestly castes! Consider, for example, that in this twentieth century
we saw an orthodox Jew tried in a Russian court of law for having made
a sacrifice of Christian babies; nevertheless we know that the Jews
represent a considerable part of the intelligence and idealism of
Russia. We know in the same way that the Moors had most of the culture
and all of the scientific knowledge of Spain, that the Huguenots had
most of the conscience and industry of France; and we know that they
we