dmire him, or else the Church is founded upon the ignorance and fear of
its dupes, and teaches them what is not true.

They say it is wicked to inquire into the facts. I say it is wrong not
to. It seems to me that in a matter like this the most important thing
is to be honest all round, and that if the claims of the Church are true
no inquiry can injure them. They say, "Oh, well, drop all the bad part,
and only take the good. There is a great deal of good in it too." But if
I don't know what is good myself I won't go to Moses and that class of
men to find out. I'll go to somebody who has got a clean record. I won't
go to men who robbed and murdered in the name of God; I won't go to men
who bought and sold their fellow-men; I won't go to men who gave their
own daughters over to the hate and lust of others, even bargaining for
them with sons and brothers. Such men cannot tell me what is good.
Such men cannot make a religion for me to live by, or a God that I can
accept.

I am sometimes told that intelligent ministers nowadays do not believe
in the inspiration of the Bible, and do not teach it. Yet every minister
who, like the Rev. R. Heber Newton, dares to suggest mildly that even
the apple story is a fable, is silenced by his bishop or hounded down
for "heresy." And still they go right on telling little children that it
is the "word of God" and the only guide of life. For truth, better give
them AEsop's Fables or the Arabian Nights; for purity the Decameron or
Don Juan; for examples of justice the story of Blue-Beard or the life of
Henry the Eighth.

I wish you would read the Bible carefully _just as you would any other
book_, and see what you think of its morals. I am debarred from touching
the parts of it that are the greatest insult to purity and the most
infamous travesties of justice. I can only say to you, read it, and if
you are lovers of purity you will find that it teaches respect for a God
who taught the most degrading impurity and defended those who forced it
upon others. If you believe in the sacredness of human life, he gave the
largest license to murder. It does not matter that Moses said he
told him _to tell somebody else_ "Thou shalt not kill;"* for the same
gentleman remarked upon several other occasions that God told him not
only to kill, but to steal, to lie, to commit arson, to break pretty
much all the other commandments--and to be a professional tramp besides.
(I am told that he followed this latt