and brave enough to ignore St. Paul, and rise superior
to his God.

And remember that I have not read you the worst stories of the Bible.
The greater number of those which refer to women are wholly unfit to
read here. Are you willing to think they are the word of God? I am not.
Believe in a God if you will, but do not degrade him by accepting an
interpretation of him that would do injustice to Mephistopheles! Have
a religion if you desire, but demand that it be free from impurity and
lies, and that it be just. Exercise faith if you must, but temper it
wisely with reason. Do not allow ministers to tell you stories that are
sillier than fairy tales, more brutal than barbaric warfare, and too
unclean to be read, and then assure you that they are the word of God.
Use your reason; and when you are told that God came down and talked to
Moses behind a bush, and told him to murder several thousand innocent
people; when you are told that he created a vast universe and filled it
with people upon all of whom he placed a never-ending curse because of a
trivial disobedience of one; give him the benefit of a reasonable doubt
and save your reputation for slander.

Now just stop and think about it. Don't you think that if a God had come
down and talked to Moses he would have had something more important to
discuss than the arrangement of window curtains and the cooking of a
sheep? Since Moses was the leader of God's people, their lawgiver,
the guardian of their morals, don't you think that the few minutes of
conversation could have been better spent in calling attention to some
of the little moral delinquencies of Moses himself? Don't you think
it would have been more natural for an infinite and just ruler to have
mentioned the impropriety of murdering so many men, and degrading so
many young girls to a life worse than that of the vilest quarter of any
infamous dive, than to have occupied the time in trivial details about
a trumpery jewel-box? Since God elected such a man as Moses to guide
and govern his people, does it not seem natural that he would have given
more thought to the moral worth and practices of his representative on
earth, than to the particular age at which to kill a calf? If he were
going to take the trouble to say anything, would it not seem more
natural that he should say something important?

In his numerous chats with Solomon, don't you think he could have added
somewhat to that gentleman's phenomenal wisdom by