2 Sam. xii.

The latter part of the verse is omitted as being unfit to read. Don't
understand that I think any of it is exactly choice literature; but that
cover has been used to silence objection long enough. If it is fit to
teach as the word and will of God for women, it ought to be fit to read
in a theatre--but it is not.

What do you think of a religion that upholds such morals and such
justice as that just quoted? What do you think of women supporting the
Bible in the face of that as the will of God? Of all human beings a
woman should spurn the Bible first. She, above all others, should try
to destroy its influence; and I mean to do what little I can in that
direction. The morals of the nineteenth century have outgrown the Bible.
Jehovah stands condemned before the bar of every noble soul. What Moses
and David and Samuel taught as the word and will of God, we, who are
fortunate enough to live in the same age with Charles Darwin, know to
be the expression of a low social condition untempered by the light of
science. Their "thus saith the Lord," read in the light of to-day, is
"thus saith ignorance and fear"--no more, no less.

If you will read the 12th chapter of Leviticus, which is unfit to read
here, you will see that the Bible esteems it twice as great a crime to
be the mother of a girl as to be the mother of a boy; so highly esteemed
was woman by the priesthood; so great a favorite was she of Jehovah.*

* See Appendix K.

And do you know there is a law in the Bible* which "the Lord spake unto
Moses" that says if a man is jealous of his wife, "whether he have cause
or not," he is to take her to a priest, and take a little barley meal
(if you ever want to try it, remember it must be barley meal; I don't
suppose the priest could tell whether she was guilty or not if you were
to take corn meal or hominy grits) and put it in the wife's hands. And
the priest is to take some "holy" water and scrape up the dirt off the
floor of the Tabernacle, and put the dirt in the water and make the
wife drink it. Now just imagine an infinite God getting up a scheme like
that! Then the priest curses her and says if she is guilty she shall
rot.... "and she shall say Amen." That is her defence! Then the priest
takes the stuff she has in her hands--this barley-meal "jealousy
offering"--and "waves it before the Lord." (I suppose you all know what
that part is done for. If you don't, ask some theological student with
a number si