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INTRODUCTION.

MAN has certain wants.

In proportion as these wants are or are not suitably supplied will be his happiness or his misery in this and in all future states of his existence. This will be admitted by every reflecting mind. If any natural want be not supplied at all, or if the supply be unsuitable in quality or in quantity, suffering must ensue. To know what are our true natural wants, and what constitutes the natural supply, is all man needs to know, in order to his perfection and happiness.

It is admitted by all, that, without any direct, arbitrary instructions from his Creator, man may know, to a certain extent, what are his wants, and what constitutes a healthful supply. But it is argued that there is no power in man that is fully competent to guide him in this matter. It is said that some supernatural instruction, direct from God, is necessary to preserve him from error and its fatal results, and that man's destiny cannot be happily worked out without it.

The great argument for this necessity is derived from man's inability to comprehend what are his natural wants, and to select the suitable supplies. This inability is argued from the mistakes man often makes in regard to these matters. It is certain he does make mistakes in seeking supplies for the wants of body and soul. Society, for instance, is a want of every man. fearfully men mistake in seeking a supply for that want!

How

The errors and the crimes of nations that have not the Bible

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are put down as evidences of man's inability to determine, without a supernatural revelation, what constitutes a natural supply to his wants. The bloody scenes of the French Revolution, and the massacres and cruelties of savages, are adduced to prove the necessity of an arbitrary revelation. But the fact is overlooked that all these tribes and nations, that have not the Bible, and commit these atrocities, do them, not under the guidance of their natural instincts and reason, but under the teachings of what they consider a supernatural revelation. Even the horrors of the French Revolution (horrors that sink into insignificance compared to those of the Inquisition, of the Crusades, of the wars of Christians, of slavery, and of the murder of friendless old men and women for supposed witchcraft - all done under the direct sanction of the Bible, as understood by those who did them) were not the result of the natural reason and sympathies of those who committed them; for the actors in that tragedy had been trained to a belief in the Bible as man's only standard of duty, and they committed no deeds more cruel and murderous than they were taught to believe God had expressly commanded in their sacred volume. There is not a scene of treachery, of cruelty, of murder, or of licentiousness, recorded of that national tragedy, which is not fully matched by deeds recorded in the Bible, and there said to have been done by the express command or sanction of what the Jews and Christians called God, and by his "chosen, holy people."

It seems impossible for man to devise or perpetrate any grosser offences against justice and mercy, than the Bible records as having been done by the sanction of God. If the crimes of nations that have not the Bible are arguments for the necessity of a supernatural revelation for them, what must the crimes of Bible nations prove? They prove that their supposed supernatural revelation has been of no use to them; or that it is no better than human instincts and reason as a guide of life. If

the crimes committed by heathen nations are proofs that Nature is not a sufficient guide for man, the same crimes, and even worse ones, done by Christian nations, and that, too, under the sanction of their sacred oracles, - prove most conclusively that the Bible is not a sufficient guide. The same facts and arguments that are brought to show that Nature is not to be trusted to regulate the intercourse of man with man, prove, beyond a doubt, that the Bible is not to be trusted; for no savage ever perpetrated deeds more revengeful and unjust than are habitually and systematically done by Christians. The Bible as a guide of life, tested by the spirit and actions of those who receive it, has no advantage over human nature in its most savage forms. The United States and England two of the most enlightened Bible nations - commit more violations of the laws of nature, under the names of war, slavery, and government, than the wildest and most savage tribe of men on the globe ever committed. In seeking supplies for their social and spiritual wants, no people show themselves more imbecile in judgment, more dark in their moral perceptions, and more utterly incapable of a true selection, than those who profess to be guided by the Bible. Of all teachers or guides of life, none can be worse than the Bible, when received as it generally is, that is, the whole of it as the word of God.

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I would know the wants of an oak or a rose. I go to the tree or flower, and never think that a direct revelation from its Creator is necessary to enable me to know it. I expect no such instruction to teach me the number and nature of those wants, nor yet how to supply them. These things are to be learned only by a close attention to the facts in relation to the nature and growth of the tree or flower. The wants of any animal are revealed in the animal, not in a book; and if we would know them, and how to supply them, we must go to the animal, and study its nature and habits, and not to a book.

So man's wants are revealed in his body and soul, and nowhere else. Would we know those wants, we must go to man, not to God. If we would know how to get a natural supply for them, we must observe what things are adapted healthfully to satisfy those wants. A supernatural revelation is as necessary to instruct us as to the wants of a tree, and how to supply them, as to inform us what are our wants, and how to supply them.

GOD IS A WANT OF HUMAN NATURE. But what kind of a God is adapted to meet that want? Not a God of vengeance, wrath, blood, and cruelty. A being who can be pleased to see human beings oppress and kill one another; who can approve or connive at polygamy, incest, rape, plunder and murder; who can be appeased by the slaughter of innocent men, or by the blood of beasts, or by the blood of his "only-begotten Son," cannot meet this want. The soul fears, but cannot love him. Only a God of love and justice, who respects man's right to life, happiness, can ever meet the demands of our nature. The pure, just, truth-loving soul cannot be satisfied with all the ideas of God that are put forth in the Bible.

IMMORTALITY IS A WANT OF OUR NATURE.

liberty, and

Man has the power

Nature creates the want,

Nature creates no want

I believe that all that

to appreciate life. He has the power to wish to live, and to apprehend the idea of unending being. and Nature has a supply for that want. for which she does not create a supply. is essential to constitute a man or woman will live forever. But the Immortality presented by the Bible does not meet our wants in this matter, any more than does that presented by the mythology of Greece and Rome. The writers of the Bible, whoever they were, presented such views of God and Immortality as they possessed. They were the highest and purest they had. But it is absurd to suppose that human beings have made no improvement in their conceptions of God and Immortality since the days of Moses and Jesus. In the five books attributed

to Moses. but of which it is now admitted by many that he never wrote a word - - there is not an allusion to another state; and in no book are there recorded more gross and revolting ideas of God than in those. In the teachings of Jesus and the apostles there are allusions to another state; but they seem to me to be unnatural and unfitted to the wants of the human soul. For instance, the parable of the rich man and Lazarus (Luke 16: 19-31); the account of the separation (Matt. 25: 31—46); the descriptions in the book of Revelation (chapters 20 and 21). It is represented as a fixed state, in which all who enter it with a certain character for evil will ever remain evil; holding out no hope that the mistakes and sins of this state can be remedied there. The representation is, that all the future, after leaving this state, is to depend solely on the character formed here, or on faith in the sufferings and death of Jesus. It seems to me much more natural to consider the next state in close and pleasant juxtaposition with this, and human spirits as having the same variety of character there which exists here. It seems more rational to suppose that they are free agents there as they are here; that they progress in knowledge and goodness there as they do here, by the application of the powers which they will there possess to the study of their then existing relations, and to the performance of the duties that grow out of those relations. The social relations and sympathies will exist there as they do here, only in a higher and purer form. Such seems to be the most natural view of the next state of our being.

The Bible may be considered as a history of various attempts to administer to human wants a natural supply. The Shaster is another; the Koran another. They are all useful books in proportion as their writers understand and faithfully describe human nature. The patriarchs, legislators, priests, and prophets, of the Jewish nation made known what they supposed would meet the natural wants and promote the

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