er occupation for forty years,
which I should think would give him the belt.) So you see we have the
same gentleman's word for all of it; and at times, I must confess, it
does not seem to me absolutely reliable authority. There is one thing
certain, if the returns are correct, and that is that Moses did not take
his own medicine in the little matter of keeping the commandments. They
were for his enemies and his slaves.

* See Lecture 3, "Theological Fictions."

If you love liberty remember that the Bible teaches slavery in every
form, not only the buying of slaves, but the stealing them into bondage.
How any man or woman who censured slavery in our Southern States
can permit their children to be taught that the Bible is a book of
authority, and think they are consistent, I cannot understand. Every
slave-whip had for its lash the Bible. Every slave-holder had its
teachings for his guide. Every slave-driver found his authority there.
When the sword of the North severed the thongs of the black man, it
destroyed the absolute control of the Bible in America; and gave a fatal
blow to Jehovah the God of oppression. Only in the South is it that the
Bible still holds its own. Freedom has outgrown it; and the young South
is reading it, for the first time, with an eraser!

If you respect your mother, if you wish your children to respect theirs,
you will find that the Bible teaches not only disrespect for her, but
abject slavery and the most oppressive degradation. If you love your
young sister, your beautiful pure daughter, remember that Jehovah taught
that, whenever men could do so, they were to abuse, ruin, degrade
them; and remember, further, that his "prophets"--_the men who made our
religion--did these things and gloried in the work_.

It is for this reason that I say it is right and peculiarly fitting that
women should object to his teaching. After you have read the 31st ch.
of Numbers, with its "thus saith the Lord," think then if you want to
follow such teachings. Decide then whether or not the words, the acts,
the commands, or the religion of such men is good enough for you. Think
then whether or not you want your daughters, your sons, to believe that
the Bible has one grain of authority, or is in any sense a "revelation
of the divine will."

Don't allow ministers to palm off platitudes on you for "revelation;"
and don't let them make you believe that anything that Moses or David or
Solomon said was the command