upon their nature, by the teachings of a supposed arbitrary command from God. What prompted Abraham to cast his concubine and child into the wilderness? A supposed arbitrary command from God. His paternal nature, the revelation of God in his soul, rebelled against it; but this supposed direct command caused him to violate his nature. What led him to offer up his son Isaac? The same. What led the Jews to stone their children to death for disobedience? What led to the execution of that bloody penal code and those bloody wars? A supposed arbitrary revelation. Human nature revolts at such cruelty and injustice; but a supposed direct fiat from God must overrule nature. So of the array of bloody sacrifices of animals. These were all done under a supposed revelation direct from God. So the Hindoo mother casts her babe into the jaws of the crocodile, and the Hindoo devotee is crushed beneath the car of his God; human victims are offered; poor, friendless old people have been burnt and hung as witches; the tortures of the Inquisition practised; heretics burned; tribes and nations. butchered, all under the instigation of a supposed arbitrary revelation. Nations that receive the Bible as a Revelation practise slavery and war, and every crime, under its sanctions. The doctrine of Arbitrary Revelation has led to the commission of crimes against Nature, and filled the world with woe. error is taught in the Bible. I believe God communicates with men only through the fixed facts and laws of Nature; through laws that never were and never can be repealed nor suspended, for one moment, for any cause; and never by direct command. Therefore, I cannot receive the whole Bible as the word of God.

This

ITEM II.

THE BIBLE ERRS IN TEACHING THAT GOD IS PARTIAL IN REVEALING HIS LAWS TO MAN.

THE Bible teaches that He communicates his laws to one man, and leaves it to him to teach them to others; and to one age or nation, and leaves it to that age or nation to teach them to others; and that He holds us amenable to laws of which we can have no knowledge, unless others, who, as it is supposed, have received them direct from him, see fit to teach them to us. It informs us that laws were given to Moses, to which the whole human race is to be held amenable to the end of time; and that those laws were written in the Hebrew language — a language which not one in ten thousand of the race ever did or ever will hear. Not one in a million can know those laws, except through a translation, of the correctness of which they must ever be ignorant. None can ever know them, except by getting somebody to teach them what they are, or by learning to read, and by getting a printed copy of them.

Is this the way God legislates for man? It would make him a tyrant, by holding him up as a Sovereign who holds us amenable to laws which he never gave to us, and of which we cannot possibly obtain any certain knowledge. To create a being, and make his destiny turn on the chances of getting a book, written some two or three thousand years ago, in Greek and Hebrew, and in learning to read those languages, which have been dead for ages, or getting some one else to read them and to interpret them, is an act of injustice that would consign any human being to execration.

Suppose a human father to have four children; one speaks Hebrew, one Greek, one Latin, and one English. The father

understands them all. He goes to the eldest, who speaks Hebrew, and in that language writes out a code of laws, which, he says, are essential to the welfare of all his children. He gives this code to the one who speaks Hebrew, and tells him to teach it to the rest. The father retires, and leaves the three younger to get at the laws as they can; yet he holds them all alike amenable to them. How are these to know the laws of life? The one that speaks Hebrew cannot speak the languages of the rest; nor can they speak Hebrew; nor can any one speak the language of any other. Must those children suffer because they cannot speak Hebrew, or because the one that speaks Hebrew cannot speak Greek, Latin nor English? Such a father would be denounced as a monster. But the Bible represents God in just that light. There are thousands of languages among men. The Bible says God gave his laws to a few men, in Hebrew and Greek, and left all the rest of the race to get at them as they best could; and yet holds them amenable to those laws. It cannot be true. Nature comes to vindicate herself and her God against such a charge.

God reveals to each human being all the laws necessary for him to know. To Moses and the prophets, he revealed them for themselves alone, and not for others. What Paul received from God was a law for him alone. Jesus was a law unto himself, and to none other. The pulsations of his heart could give motion to no blood but his own. His lungs could inhale air only for himself. His soul could feel and think only for him. In everything he was a law unto himself, and could no more be a law for me, than yon oak could be a law for another oak, that shall be in existence eighteen hundred years hence. So each human being must be a law to himself, and cannot be a law for others. Jesus taught what he knew of himself and others, and so far as his teachings conform to Nature, they are true, no further.

But in this every human being is equally favored; for on the body and soul of each one the laws by which he is to be governed are written; and whoever obeys them as perfectly as Jesus did is as true and perfect a man; and whoever teaches them as he did is a teacher sent of God, in the same sense that he was. Every child, as a birthright, has a code of laws. engraven on its nature. To know what he must do, he needs the knowledge of no books, written in any dead or living language; he needs to know his own true, natural wants, and how to supply them. These are all he needs to know. Let him fully understand and obey these, and he will have all he is capable of receiving. In other words, KNOW THYSELF, AND BE TRUE TO THYSELF, and then thou wilt be true to thy fellow-men and thy God. Just so far as Moses, and Jesus, and Mohammed, taught men a true knowledge of themselves, their instructions are true and useful, and no further.

Look not, then, to Moses, to the prophets and apostles, to Mohammed or to any other man, to learn the will of God touching your health and happiness; but to yourselves. Look not to Jesus to learn what your wants and necessities are, and how to supply them truly; look not to Jesus, as his life is recorded in the Bible, to learn what you must do to be just and happy; but look to your own bodies and souls; consult their true wants and relations, and obey them; consult not God in Moses, nor in Jesus, nor in the Bible, nor in any other man or book; but consult God in your own nature, and sternly obey that ever-true and ever-speaking Word, and you will indeed be his sincere worshippers; for that worship consists solely in fidelity to our physical, intellectual, social, and spiritual

natures.

God has revealed his laws to me, to you, and to each human being, as perfectly, to the same extent, and in the same way, as he revealed himself to Jesus, for he has given to each one of us

the very same Revelation that he gave to him, and in the same way; he has stamped it on our bodies and souls, as he did on his. Jesus, if he knew more of the divine law than we do, obtained that knowledge just as we must; that is, by the application of the powers he possessed to the study of human nature, in himself and in others. If he knew more of God than we do, it was because he more closely heeded the divine voice that spoke to him through the works of Nature.

As well assert that God reveals the laws of vegetable life and health to one tree for every other tree in the forest of the same kind, as that he revealed his laws to Jesus for all human kind. But we are assured the Bible says he did. The assertion is derogatory to truth, and must be injurious to man. God is impartial as a lawgiver, judge, and sovereign. A code of perfect and just laws is presented to each human being as a birthright inheritance, written in a language each can understand, which, if he obeys, he lives, if he disobeys, he dies. Had the time, talent, industry and money, that have been expended in translating, explaining, enforcing and propagating, the Bible, been devoted to an investigation and explanation of this code, and in training the human family to obedience to it, how different had been the result! How infinitely more productive of good! It is great injustice to a child to direct it out of itself for a law of physical or spiritual health and life.

ITEM III.

THE BIBLE IS IN ERROR WHEN IT TEACHES THAT MAN MAY BR JUSTLY HELD AMENABLE TO ANY LAW OR BEING OUTSIDE OF HIMSELF.

No matter by whom given, man cannot be justly held amenable to any law not written on his own nature; for the simple