ess, love, justice, truth,
mercy and benevolence, but an unthinkable monster, more diabolical and
cruel than the wildest savage ever known to the earth, or the most
ferocious beast of prey in the jungle. I might naturally fear such a
God, but never love or respect, but eternally hate him.

I have already given my views of the story of Eden and the fall of man;
that man never fell, but is still incomplete, but progressing onward
and upward forever; that he was never, on the general average, higher
or better than now; and as the years and ages go on he will continue
thus to grow better and nobler, making his own heaven as he goes along,
and destroying his own hell by learning his lessons of suffering for
wrong doing, and leaving it behind him. No, God did not make man in
his own image, implant in his very nature that eternal aspiration
upward that is possessed by every normal human being, and then make a
devil to tempt and ruin him, and a hell in which to eternally torment
him.

I quote again from Omar Khayyam:

"Oh, Thou who didst with pitfall and with gin
Beset the road I was to wander in,
Thou wilt not with predestined evil round
Enmesh, and then impute my fall to sin.
... "Ne'er a peevish boy
Would break the bowl from which he drank in joy;
And he that with his hand the vessel made
Will not in after wrath destroy."

_REDEMPTION AND ATONEMENT_

It is hardly necessary to the purpose of this work, to say anything at
all on these subjects. If man was never lost, kidnapped or stolen from
God, he needed no _redeemer_, to _buy him back_ with a price. If man
never "fell" from the favor of God by disobedience, and thereby
incurred his anger, illwill and wrath that sought vengeance on his
life, he needed no one to mediate, propitiate or atone for him by
shedding his own blood as a substitute. The whole doctrine of
redemption and atonement falls flat when the doctrine of the fall of
man is removed from under it. But as this is the very crux of the
whole orthodox Christian system, the reader may be interested to know
what conclusions I reached concerning it, after some years of study, as
to both its origin and meaning. These conclusions I reached, not only
from the study of the Bible, but from the study of history generally;
and especially the history of religion, in other races as well as the
Jews. It must be remembered that this doctrine of atonement by the
shedding of blood, is--or rather