cer, Thoreau, Matthew Arnold, and Emerson are worth
more to us than all the Prophets.

I hold a high opinion of the literary quality of some parts of the Old
Testament; but I seriously think that the loss of the first fourteen
books would be a distinct gain to the world. For the rest, there is
considerable literary and some ethical value in Job (which is not
Jewish), in Ecclesiastes (which is Pagan), in the Song of Solomon (which
is an erotic love song), and in parts of Isaiah, Proverbs, Jeremiah,
Ezekiel, and Amos. But I don't think any of these books equal to Henry
George's _Progress and Poverty_, or William Morris' _News from Nowhere_.
Of course, I am not blaming Moses and the Prophets: they could only tell
us what they knew.

The Ten Commandments have been effusively praised. There is nothing
in those Commandments to restrain the sweater, the rack-renter, the
jerry-builder, the slum landlord, the usurer, the liar, the libertine,
the gambler, the drunkard, the wife-beater, the slave-owner, the
religious persecutor, the maker of wheat and cotton rings, the
fox-hunter, the bird-slayer, the ill-user of horses and dogs and cattle.
There is nothing about "cultivating towards all beings a bounteous
friendly mind," nothing about liberty of speech and conscience, nothing
about the wrong of causing pain, nor the virtue of causing happiness;
nothing against anger or revenge, nor in favour of mercy and
forgiveness. Of the Ten Commandments, seven are designed as defences
of the possessions and prerogatives of God and the property-owner. As a
moral code the Commandments amount to very little.

Moreover, the Bible teaches erroneous theories of history, theology, and
science.

It relates childish stories of impossible miracles as facts.

It presents a low idea of God.

It gives an erroneous account of the relations between God and man.

It fosters international hatred.

It fosters religious pride and fanaticism.

Its penal code is horrible.

Its texts have been used for nearly two thousand years in defence of
war, slavery, religious persecution, and the slaughter of "witches" and
of "sorcerers."

In a hundred wars the Christian soldiery have perpetrated massacre and
outrage with the blood-bolstered phrases of the Bible on their lips.

In a thousand trials the cruel witness of Moses has sent innocent women
to a painful death.

And always when an apology or a defence of the barbarities of human
slavery was needed it