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The Bible says: Servants, obey your masters." If servants means slaves, or bondmen and bondmaids, then they should not obey their masters. The Bible urges them to do just the thing they ought not to do; for no power in the universe can make it obligatory on one human being to obey another as a slave. This truth should be taught to every slave, that he owes no allegiance to any being or government, in heaven or on earth, as a slave; for, as a slave, man owes no duties; as a slaveholder, man has no rights, not even the right to eat, to sleep, to breathe, to live; and to combine with slaveholders to do anything, as slaveholders, is to recognize their right to hold slaves, and to endorse their slaveholding character. In this the Bible is in error.

ITEM VI.

THE Bible says, God required the children of Achan to be stoned to death, because their father stole; and that he affirmed that Jehu did right in cutting off the heads of the seventy sons of Ahab, because their father sinned; and that God commanded parents to stone their stubborn, rebellious and disobedient children to death. (Josh. 7: 24-26; 2d Kings, 10th chap.; Deut. 21: 18-21.) Now, the God of Nature and Justice never required nor approved these deeds, because they are unnatural and unjust. Who dares say it is in accordance with nature and justice now for parents to stone their stubborn and disobedient children to death; or to punish children at all because their fathers have sinned? Nature cries out against such inhumanity now. So it always did, for it never changes. How any father and mother can believe that the Author of their parental nature ever commanded parents to seize their disobedient children, drag them to the place of execution, and there hurl stones at their heads till they kill them, is more than I can comprehend. How

any man, having any sense of justice and equity, can believe that a God of Justice ever commanded a child to be stoned to death, or beheaded, because his parents sinned, it is impossible to conceive. Nature shudders and shrieks out in horror against the monstrous deed. I cannot believe the Bible speaks truth in these matters.

ITEM VII.

AGAIN. The Bible gives the following as one of the express commands of God (Deut. 13: 6, 8, 9, 10) : —

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"If thy brother, the son of thy mother, or thy son, or thy daughter, or the wife of thy bosom, or the friend which is as thine own soul, entice thee secretly, saying, Let us go and serve other gods which thou hast not known, thou nor thy fathers; * thou shalt not consent unto him, nor hearken unto him; neither shall thine eye pity him, neither shalt thou spare, neither shalt thou conceal him. But thou shalt surely kill him; thy hand shall be first upon him to put him to death; and, afterwards, the hand of the people, and thou shalt stone him with stones that he die, because he hath sought to thrust thee away from the Lord thy God."

Is it the natural, inalienable right of each man and woman to judge for themselves of the character of God, and of the true and most acceptable form of worshipping Him? It is. Has each one a right to persuade others to adopt his views of God and worship? He has. Freedom to worship God according to conscience, is, like the right to life and liberty, natural and inalienable. Can it be just and right to put a man to death for his ideas and practices in regard to God and worship? It cannot. But the Bible requires it to be done.

Suppose my views of God and worship differ materially from those entertained by my father and mother, my brothers and sisters; by my friends and neighbors; by the community and nation in which I live; and by Christendom generally; and by

the great mass of mankind. Their conceptions of God are most derogatory to Him, and ruinous to themselves. They are abhorrent to my ideas of justice and goodness; for their highest idea of God is, that He is a being whose nature can connive at war, slavery, and the death penalty; whose wrath can be appeased, and forgiveness rendered possible, only by the shedding of innocent blood; and whose spirit can be gratified by stimulating human beings to mutual slaughter. The object of their religious adoration is, to me, a demon of wrath, revenge and blood; and but for the fact that their conceptions of God could never wholly root out nor suppress in their hearts their kindly instincts and sympathies, and their reverence for truth and humanity, and their sentiments of justice and right, their theology had converted them into monsters of injustice and cruelty. From a desire to save them from dangerous views of God, and from a puerile and false worship, I go to them and seek earnestly to win them to what I deem higher and truer views, and to a more practical and elevated worship. My father and mother seize me, and, without pity for my sufferings, without respect for my rights, without regard to my sincerity, and regardless of my filial love and their own parental nature, they stone me to death. Is there one who will say such conduct in my parents would not be opposed to the purest instincts and sympathies of humanity, and the immutable principles of natural justice and equity? Not one. Yet the Bible says, God required parents to seize their sons and daughters, husbands their wives, brothers their sisters, and sisters their brothers, and those whom they loved as their own souls, and drag them to the place of execution, and there to stone them with stones till they were dead; solely because they sought to persuade them to embrace other ideas of God and worship than those entertained by their ancestors. The God that made the human soul, with its instincts

and sympathies, never instigated man to such a deed, the Bible to the contrary notwithstanding. (See Deut. 17: 2-—7.)

ITEM VIII.

THE Bible says God spoke thus to the Jews (Deut. 25: 17, 18, 19):

"Remember what Amalek did unto thee by the way, when ye came forth out of Egypt; how he met thee by the way, and smote the hindmost of thee; even all that were feeble behind thee, when thou wast faint and weary, and he feared not God. Therefore it shall be, when the Lord thy God hath given thee rest from all thine enemies round about, in the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee for an inheritance to possess it, that thou shalt blot out the remembrance of Amalek from under heaven; THOU SHALT NOT FORGET IT."

The account of the attack of the Amalekites is in Ex. 17: 8-16. To defend their country against the Israelites, they attacked them, slew them, and harassed them as they could to drive them back. Because they did so, it says (verse 16), "The Lord hath sworn that the Lord will have war with Amalek from generation to generation." Moses was commanded to record the injury done to them by Amalek, that it might be remembered against him, and the wrath and revenge of the Israelites kept alive till a suitable time arrived to gratify it. So says the book in substance. In 1st Samuel, 15th chapter, is an account of the final extermination of Amalek, and the accomplishment of the long-nurtured revenge. Saul is sent by Samuel to do the deed, and the commission is in these words: "Thus saith the Lord of hosts I remember that which Amalek did to Israel; how he laid in wait for him in the way when he came up out of Egypt. Now go, and smite Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have, and spare them not; but SLAY BOTH MEN AND WOMEN, INFANT AND SUCKLING, OX and sheep, camel

remote ancestors.

and ass." Some four hundred years had passed since the injury was done. Those who did the deed had been long gone and forgotten. Several generations of their posterity had followed them. Now we are told God rouses up in the Jews the spirit of revenge, and sends them out to slaughter men, women, infants, and sucklings," to punish them for wrongs done by their And because Saul spared the sheep and oxen of the Amalekites, and their king Agag, the book tells us God punished Saul by wresting the sceptre over Israel from the hands of his posterity. Can it be believed that the God of Nature ever commanded a tribe of men to be exterminated, because their ancestors, centuries before, did wrong? Can it be believed that the Father of men ever thus commanded his children to cherish the spirit of deadly hatred towards their fellow-beings, from age to age; and then, after ages had past, instigated them to satiate their cherished revenge in the blood of infants and sucklings, because they were the posterity of those who had wronged them? Yes, this is all devoutly believed as truth by Christendom; and I am denied the name of Christian, because I will not believe it. The Bible is mistaken in its views of God, when it thus represents him. I shall never be a Christian, if to be one I must believe this.

ITEM IX.

THE Bible represents God as saying to the Jews (Deut. 7:1-6):

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"When the Lord thy God shall bring thee into the land whither thou goest to possess it, and hath cast out many nations before thee; and when the Lord thy God shall deliver them before thee, thou shalt smite them and utterly destroy them; thou shalt make no covenant with them, nor show mercy unto them; neither shalt thou make marriages with them; thy daughter thou shalt not give unto his son, nor his