use he could not help it or did not wish to; who watched
this world develop for a little while, and then, because it did not go
as he wanted it to, had to drown it, and start over again; the God who
in the Old Testament told the people that slavery was right, provided
they did not enslave the members of their own nation, but only those
outside of it; the God who indorsed polygamy, telling a man that he was
at liberty to have just as many wives as he wanted and could obtain,
and that he was free to dispose of them by simply giving them a little
notice and telling them to quit; the God who indorsed hypocrisy and
lying on the part of his people; the God who sent a little light on one
little people along one edge of the Mediterranean, and left all the
rest of the world in darkness; the God who is to damn all of these
people who were left in darkness because they did not know that of
which they never had any chance to hear; the God who is to cast all his
enemies into the pit, trampling them down, as Edwards pictures so
horribly to us, in his hate for ever and ever. This God has been taken
away.

In the third place, the story of Eden, the creation of man and then
immediately the fall of man and the resulting doctrine of total
depravity, this has been taken away. That man was made in the image of
God, and then, inside of a few days, fell into the hands of the Power
of Evil, and that since that day he has been the legitimate subject
here on this earth of the prince of this world, that is, the devil, and
that is taught both in the Old Testament and in the New, that man is
this kind of a being, this is forever gone. There is no rational,
intelligent, free belief in it left.

Then the old theory of the Bible has been taken away, that theory which
makes it a book without error or flaw, and makes us under the highest
obligation to receive all its teachings as the veritable word of God,
whether they seem to us hideous, blasphemous, immoral, degrading, or
not. This is gone.

Professor Goldwin Smith, in an article published within a year, treats
the belief, the continued holding to this old theory about the Bible,
under the head of Christianity's "Millstone." He writes from the point
of view of the old belief; but he says, if Christianity is going to be
saved, this millstone must be taken off from about its neck, and
allowed to sink into the sea.

If we hold that theory, what? Why, then, we must still believe that, in
order to hel