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SOME 
 
 Mistakes of Moses. 
 
 BY 
 
 Robert G. Ingersoll. 
 
 THE DESTROYER OF WEEDS, THISTLES AND THORNS, IS A BENEFACTOR 
 WHETHER HE SOWETH GRAIN OR NOT. 
 
 Tenth Edition. 
 
 NEW YORK: 
 
 C. P. FARRELL, Publisher, 
 
 1889. 
 
Jintered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1879, by 
 ROBERT G. INGERSOLL 
 in the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington, D. C. 
 
 ECKLER, PRINTER, 35 FULTON ST., N.Y. 
 
<r^ @ a Jf^SnO^k i '^ ^ 
 
 TO 
 
 _^gMRS. SUE. M. FARRELL/^- 
 
 IN LAW MY SISTER, 
 
 AND IN FACT MY FRIEND, 
 
 THIS VOLUME, 
 
 AS A TOKEN OF RESPECT AND LOVE, 
 
 IS DEDICATED. 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 For many years I have regarded the Pentateuch 
 simply as a record of a barbarous people, in 
 which are found a great number of the ceremonies 
 of savagery, many absurd and unjust laws, and 
 thousands of ideas inconsistent with known and 
 demonstrated facts. To me it seemed almost a 
 crime to teach that this record was written by inspired 
 men ; that slavery, polygamy, wars of conquest and 
 extermination were right, and that there was a time 
 when men could win the approbation of infinite 
 Intelligence, Justice, and Mercy, by violating 
 maidens and by butchering babes. To me it seemed 
 more reasonable that savage men had made these 
 laws ; and I endeavored in a lecture, entitled " Some 
 Mistakes of Moses," to point out some of the errors, 
 
VI PREFACE. 
 
 contradictions, and impossibilities contained in the 
 Pentateuch. The lecture was never written and 
 consequently never delivered twice the same. On 
 several occasions it was reported and published 
 without consent, and without revision. All these 
 publications were grossly and glaringly incorrect. 
 As published, they have been answered several 
 hundred times, and many of the clergy are still 
 engaged in the great work. To keep these rev- 
 erend gentlemen from wasting their talents on the 
 mistakes of reporters and printers, I concluded to 
 publish the principal points in all my lectures on this 
 subject. And here, it may be proper for me to say, 
 that arguments cannot be answered by personal 
 abuse ; that there is no logic in slander, and that 
 falsehood, in the long run, defeats itself. People 
 who love their enemies should, at least, tell the truth 
 about their friends. Should it turn out that I am 
 the worst man in the whole world, the story of the 
 flood will remain just as improbable as before, and 
 the contradictions of the Pentateuch will still 
 demand an explanation. 
 
PREFACE. VII 
 
 There was a time when a falsehood, fulminated 
 from the pulpit, smote like a sword ; but, the supply 
 having greatly exceeded the demand, clerical misrep- 
 resentation has at last become almost an innocent 
 amusement. Remembering that only a few years 
 ago men, women, and even children, were impris- 
 oned, tortured and burned, for having expressed in 
 an exceedingly mild and gentle way, the ideas 
 entertained by me, I congratulate myself that 
 calumny is now the pulpit's last resort. The old 
 instruments of torture are kept only to gratify 
 curiosity ; the chains are rusting away, and the 
 demolition of time has allowed even the dungeons of 
 the Inquisition to be visited by light. The church, 
 impotent and malicious, regrets, not the abuse, but 
 the loss of her power, and seeks to hold by false- 
 hood what she gained by cruelty and force, by fire 
 and fear. Christianity cannot live in peace with any 
 other form of faith. If that religion be true, there is 
 but one savior, one inspired book, and but one little 
 narrow grass-grown path that leads to heaven. 
 Such a religion is necessarily uncompromising. 
 
vm PREFACE. 
 
 unreasoning, aggressive and insolent. Christianity 
 has held all other creeds and forms in infinite con- 
 tempt, divided the world into enemies and friends, 
 and verified the awful declaration of its founder — a 
 declaration that wet with blood the sword he came to 
 bring, and made the horizon of a thousand years 
 lurid with the fagots' flames. 
 
 Too great praise challenges attention, and often 
 brings to light a thousand faults that otherwise the 
 general eye would never see. Were we allowed to 
 read the bible as we do all other books, we would 
 admire its beauties, treasure its worthy thoughts, 
 and account for all its absurd, grotesque and cruel 
 things, by saying that its authors lived in rude, 
 barbaric times. But we are told that it was written 
 by inspired men ; that it contains the will of God ; 
 that it is perfect, pure, and true in all its parts ; the 
 source and standard of all moral and religious truth ; 
 that it is the star and anchor of all human hope ; the 
 only guide for man, the only torch in Nature's night. 
 These claims are so at variance with every known 
 recorded fact, so palpably absurd, that every free, 
 
PREFACE. ix 
 
 unbiased soul is forced to raise the standard of 
 revolt. 
 
 We read the pagan sacred books with profit and 
 delight. With myth and fable we are ever charmed, 
 and find a pleasure in the endless repetition of the 
 beautiful, poetic, and absurd. We find, in all these 
 records of the past, philosophies and dreams, and 
 efforts stained with tears, of great and tender souls 
 who tried to pierce the mystery of life and death, to 
 answer the eternal questions of the Whence and 
 Whither, and vainly sought to make, with bits of 
 shattered glass, a mirror that would, in very truth, 
 reflect the face and form of Nature's perfect self. 
 
 These myths were born of hopes, and fears, and 
 tears, and smiles, and they were touched and colored 
 by all there is of joy and grief between the rosy 
 dawn of birth, and death's sad night. They clothed 
 even the stars with passion, and gave to gods the 
 faults and frailties of the sons of men. In them, the 
 winds and waves were music, and all the lakes, and 
 streams, and springs, — the mountains, woods and 
 perfumed dells were haunted by a thousand fairy 
 
X PREFACE. 
 
 forms. They thrilled the veins of Spring- with trem- 
 ulous desire ; made tawny Summer's billowed breast 
 the throne and home of love ; filled Autumn's arms 
 with sun-kissed grapes, and gathered sheaves ; and 
 pictured Winter as a weak old king who felt, like 
 Lear upon his withered face, Cordelia's tears. 
 These myths, though false, are beautiful, and have 
 for many ages and in countless ways, enriched the 
 heart and kindled thought. But if the world were 
 taught that all these things are true and all inspired 
 of God, and that eternal punishment will be the lot 
 of him who dares deny or doubt, the sweetest myth 
 of all the Fable World would lose its beauty, and 
 become a scorned and hateful thing to every brave 
 and thoughtful man. 
 
 Robert G. Ingersoll. 
 
 Washington, D. C, Oct. 7th, i8yg. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 Chapter, 
 
 I. Some Mistakes of Moses, 
 
 II. Free Schools, - 
 
 III. The Politicians, 
 
 IV. Man and Woman, - 
 V. The Pentateuch, 
 
 VI. Monday, - 
 
 VII. Tuesday, ... 
 
 VIII. Wednesday, ... 
 
 IX. Thursday, 
 
 X. He made the Stars also, 
 
 XI. Friday, 
 
 XII. Saturday, ... 
 
 XIII. Let us Make Man, 
 
 XIV. Sunday, - - 
 
 XV. The Necessity for a Good Memory, 
 
 XVI. The Garden, 
 
 XVII. The Fall, 
 
 XVIII. Dampness, 
 
 XIX. Bacchus and Babel, 
 
 XX. Faith in Filth, - 
 
 XXI. The Hebrews, 
 
 XXII. The Plagues, 
 
 XXIII. The Flight, 
 
 XXIV. Confess and Avoid, 
 XXV. " Inspired" Slavery, 
 
 XXVI. "Inspired" Marriage, 
 
 XXVII. "Inspired" War, 
 
 XXVIII. "Inspired" Religious Liberty, 
 
 XXIX. Conclusion, - * 
 
 Page. 
 
 26 
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 35 
 46 
 
 56 
 63 
 67 
 72 
 81 
 84 
 
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 108 
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 Some Mistakes of Moses. 
 
 HE WHO ENDEAVORS TO CONTROL THE MIND BY FORCE 
 IS A TYRANT, AND HE WHO SUBMITS IS A SLAVE. 
 
 I. 
 
 I want to do what little I can to make my country 
 truly free, to broaden the intellectual horizon 
 of our people, to destroy the prejudices born of 
 ignorance and fear, to do away with the blind wor- 
 ship of the ignoble past, with the idea that all the 
 great and good are dead, that the living are totally 
 depraved, that all pleasures are sins, that sighs and 
 groans are alone pleasing to God, that thought is 
 dangerous, that intellectual courage is a crime, that 
 cowardice is a virtue, that a certain belief is necessary 
 to secure salvation, that to carry a cross in this world 
 will give us a palm in the next, and that we must 
 allow some priest to be the pilot of our souls. 
 
14 SOME MISTAKES OF MOSES. 
 
 Until every soul is freely permitted to investigate 
 every book, and creed, and dogma for itself, the world 
 cannot be free. Mankind will be enslaved until there 
 is mental grandeur enough to allow each man to have 
 his thought and say. This earth will be a paradise 
 when men can, upon all these questions differ, and 
 yet grasp each other's hands as friends. It is amazing 
 to me that a difference of opinion upon subjects 
 that we know nothing with certainty about, should 
 make us hate, persecute, and despise each other. 
 Why a difference of opinion upon predestination, or 
 the trinity, should make people imprison and burn 
 each other seems beyond the comprehension of man ; 
 and yet in all countries where Christians have existed, 
 they have destroyed each other to the exact extent 
 of their power. Why should a believer in God hate 
 an atheist ? Surely the atheist has not injured God, 
 and surely he is human, capable of joy and pain, and 
 entitled to all the rights of man. Would it not be 
 far better to treat this atheist, at least, as well 
 as he treats us ? 
 
 Christians tell me that they love their enemies, 
 and yet all I ask is — not that they love their enemies, 
 not that they love their friends even, but that they 
 treat those who differ from them, with simple fairness. 
 
SOME MISTAKES OF MOSES. 1 5 
 
 We do not wish to be forgiven, but we wish Christ- 
 ians to so act that we will not have to forgive them. 
 If all will admit that all have an equal right to 
 think, then the question is forever solved ; but as 
 long as organized and powerful churches, pretending 
 to hold the keys of heaven and hell, denounce every 
 person as an outcast and criminal who thinks for 
 himself and denies their authority, the world will 
 be filled with hatred and suffering. To hate man 
 and worship God seems to be the sum of all the 
 creeds. 
 
 That which has happened in most countries has 
 happened in ours. When a religion is founded, the 
 educated, the powerful — that is to say, the priests 
 and nobles, tell the ignorant and superstitious — that 
 is to say, the people, that the religion of their country 
 was given to their fathers by God himself ; that it is 
 the only true religion ; that all others were conceived 
 in falsehood and brought forth in fraud, and that all 
 who believe in the true religion will be happy for- 
 ever, while all others will burn in hell. For the 
 purpose of governing the people, that is to say, for 
 the purpose of being supported by the people, the 
 priests and nobles declare this religion to be sacred, 
 and that whoever adds to, or takes from it, will be 
 
1 6 SOME MISTAKES OF MOSES. 
 
 burned here by man, and hereafter by God. The 
 result of this is, that the priests and nobles will not 
 allow the people to change ; and when, after a time, 
 the priests, having intellectually advanced, wish to 
 take a step in the direction of progress, the people 
 will not allow them to change. At first, the rabble 
 are enslaved by the priests, and afterwards the rabble 
 become the masters. 
 
 One of the first things I wish to do, is to free the 
 orthodox clergy. I am a great friend of theirs, and 
 in spite of all they may say against me, I am going 
 to do them a great and lasting service. Upon their 
 necks are visible the marks of the collar, and upon 
 their backs those of the lash. They are not allowed 
 to read and think for themselves. They are taught 
 like parrots, and the best are those who repeat, with 
 the fewest mistakes, the sentences they have been 
 taught. They sit like owls upon some dead limb of 
 the tree of knowledge, and hoot the same old hoots 
 that have been hooted for eighteen hundred years. 
 Their congregations are not grand enough, nor 
 sufficiently civilized, to be willing that the poor 
 preachers shall think for themselves. They are not 
 employed for that purpose. Investigation is regarded 
 as a dangerous experiment, and the ministers are 
 
some! mistakes of moses. 17 
 
 warned that none of that kind of work will be toler- 
 ated. They are notified to stand by the old creed, 
 -and to avoid all original thought, as a mortal 
 pestilence. Every minister is employed like an 
 attorney — either for plaintiff or defendant, — and he is 
 expected to be true to his client. If he changes his 
 mind, he is regarded as a deserter, and denounced, 
 hated, and slandered accordingly. Every orthodox 
 clergyman agrees not to change. He contracts not 
 to find new facts, and makes a bargain that he will 
 deny them if he does. Such is the position of a 
 protestant minister in this Nineteenth Century. His 
 condition excites my pity ; and to better it, I am 
 going to do what little I can. 
 
 Some of the clergy have the independence to break 
 away, and the intellect to maintain themselves as free 
 men, but the most are compelled to submit to the 
 dictation of the orthodox, and the dead. They are 
 not employed to give their thoughts, but simply to 
 repeat the ideas of others. They are not expected 
 to give even the doubts that may suggest themselves, 
 but are required to walk in the narrow, verdureless 
 path trodden by the ignorance of the past. The 
 forests and fields on either side are nothing to them. 
 They must not even look at the purple hills, nof 
 2 
 
SOME MISTAKES OF MOSES. 
 
 pause to hear the babble of the brooks. They must 
 remain in the dusty road where the guide-boards are. 
 They must confine themselves to the " fall of man," 
 the expulsion from the garden, the " scheme of 
 salvation," the "second birth," the atonement, the 
 happiness of the redeemed, and the misery of the 
 lost. They must be careful not to express any new 
 ideas upon these great questions. It is much safer 
 for them to quote from the works of the dead. The 
 more vividly they describe the sufferings of the 
 unregenerate, of those who attended theatres and 
 balls, and drank wine in summer gardens on the 
 sabbath-day, and laughed at priests, the better 
 ministers they are supposed to be. They must show 
 that misery fits the good for heaven, while happiness 
 prepares the bad for hell ; that the wicked get all 
 their good things in this life, and the good all their 
 evil ; that in this world God punishes the people he 
 loves, and in the next, the ones he hates ; that happi- 
 ness makes us bad here, but not in heaven ; that pain 
 makes us good here, but not in hell. No matter 
 how absurd these things may appear to the carnal 
 mind, they must be preached and they must be 
 believed. If they were reasonable, there would be 
 no virtue in believing. Even the publicans and sin- 
 
SOME MISTAKES OF MOSES. 1 9 
 
 ners believe reasonable things. To believe without 
 evidence, or in spite of it, is accounted as righteous- 
 ness to the sincere and humble christian. 
 
 The ministers are in duty bound to denounce all 
 intellectual pride, and show that we are never quite 
 'so dear to God as when we admit that we are poor, 
 corrupt and idiotic worms ; that we never should 
 have been born ; that we ought to be damned with- 
 out the least delay ; that we are so infamous that we 
 like to enjoy ourselves ; that we love our wives and 
 children better than our God ; that we are generous 
 only because we are vile ; that we are honest from 
 the meanest motives, and that sometimes we have 
 fallen so low that we have had doubts about the in- 
 spiration of the Jewish scriptures. In short, they are 
 expected to denounce all pleasant paths and rustling 
 trees, to curse the grass and flowers, and glorify the 
 dust and weeds. They are expected to malign the 
 wicked people in the green and happy fields, who sit 
 and laugh beside the gurgling springs or climb the 
 hills and wander as they will. They are expected 
 to point out the dangers of freedom, the safety of 
 implicit obedience, and to show the wickedness of 
 philosophy, the goodness of faith, the immorality of 
 science and the purity of ignorance, 
 
20 SOME MISTAKES OF MOSES. 
 
 Now and then, a few pious people discover some 
 young man of a religious turn of mind and a con- 
 sumptive habit of body, not quite sickly enough to 
 die, nor healthy enough to be wicked. The idea 
 occurs to them that he would make a good orthodox 
 minister. They take up a contribution, and send the 
 young man to some theological school where he 
 can be taught to repeat a creed and despise reason. 
 Should it turn out that the young man had some 
 mind of his own, and, after graduating, should 
 change his opinions and preach a different doctrine 
 from that taught in the school, every man who con- 
 tributed a dollar towards his education would feel 
 that he had been robbed, and would denounce him 
 as a dishonest and ungrateful wretch. 
 
 The pulpit should not be a pillory. Congrega- 
 tions should allow the minister a little liberty. They 
 should, at least, permit him to tell the truth. 
 
 They have, in Massachusetts, at a place called 
 Andover, a kind of minister factory, where each 
 professor takes an oath once in five years — that time 
 being considered the life of an oath— that he has not, 
 during the last five years, and will not, durine the 
 next five years, intellectually advance. There is 
 probably no oath that they could easier keep. Prob- 
 
SOME MISTAKES OF MOSES. 2 1 
 
 ably, since the foundation stone of that institution 
 was laid there has not been a single case of perjury. 
 The old creed is still taught. They still insist that 
 God is infinitely wise, powerful and good, and that 
 all men are totally depraved. They insist that the 
 best man God ever made, deserved to be damned 
 the moment he was finished. Andover puts its brand 
 upon every minister it turns out, the same as Shef- 
 field and Birmingham brand their wares, and all who 
 see the brand know exactly what the minister be- 
 lieves, the books he has read, the arguments he 
 relies on, and just what he intellectually is. They 
 know just what he can be depended on to preach, 
 and that he will continue to shrink and shrivel, and 
 grow solemnly stupid day by day until he reaches 
 the Andover of the grave and becomes truly ortho- 
 dox forever. 
 
 I have not singled out the Andover factory 
 because it is worse than the others. They are all 
 about the same. The professors, for the most part, 
 are ministers who failed in the pulpit and were retired 
 to the seminary on account of their deficiency in 
 reason and their excess of faith. As a rule, they 
 know nothing- of this world, and far less of the next ; 
 but they have the power of stating the most absurd 
 
2 2 SOME MISTAKES OF MOSES. 
 
 propositions with faces solemn as stupidity touched 
 by fear. 
 
 Something should be done for the liberation of 
 these men. They should be allowed to grow — to 
 have sunlight and air. They should no longer be 
 chained and tied to confessions of faith, to mouldy 
 books and musty creeds. Thousands of ministers 
 are anxious to give their honest thoughts. The 
 hands of wives and babes now stop their mouths. 
 They must have bread, and so the husbands and 
 fathers are forced to preach a doctrine that they hold 
 in scorn. For the sake of shelter, food and clothes, 
 they are obliged to defend the childish miracles of the 
 past, and denounce the sublime discoveries of to-day. 
 They are compelled to attack all modern thought, to 
 point out the dangers of science, the wickedness of 
 investigation and the corrupting influence of logic. 
 It is for them to show that virtue rests upon 
 ignorance and faith, while vice impudently feeds and 
 fattens upon fact and demonstration. It is a part of 
 their business to malign and vilify the Voltaires, 
 Humes, Paines, Humboldts, Tyndals, Haeckels, 
 Darwins, Spencers, and Drapers, and to bow with 
 uncovered heads before the murderers, adulterers, 
 and persecutors of the world. They are, for the 
 
SOME MISTAKES OF MOSES. 23 
 
 most part, engaged in poisoning the minds of the 
 young, prejudicing children against science, teaching 
 the astronomy and geology of the bible, and inducing 
 all to desert the sublime standard of reason. 
 
 These orthodox ministers do not add to the sum 
 of knowledge. They produce nothing. They live 
 upon alms. They hate laughter and joy. They 
 officiate at weddings, sprinkle water upon babes, and 
 utter meaningless words and barren promises above 
 the dead. They laugh at the agony of unbelievers, 
 mock at their tears, and of their sorrows make a jest. 
 There are some noble exceptions. Now and then a 
 pulpit holds a brave and honest man. Their congre- 
 gations are willing that they should think — willing 
 that their ministers should have a little freedom. 
 
 As we become civilized, more and more liberty 
 will be accorded to these men, until finally ministers 
 will give their best and highest thoughts. The 
 congregations will finally get tired of hearing about 
 the patriarchs and saints, the miracles and wonders, 
 and will insist upon knowing something about the 
 men and women of our day, and the accomplishments 
 and discoveries of our time. They will finally insist 
 upon knowing how to escape the evils of this world 
 instead of the next. They will ask light upon the 
 
1\ SOME MISTAKES OF MOSES. 
 
 enigmas of this life. They will wish to know what 
 we shall do with our criminals instead of what God 
 will do with his — how we shall do away with beggary 
 and want — with crime and misery — with prostitution, 
 disease and famine, — with tyranny in all its cruel 
 forms — with prisons and scaffolds, and how we shall 
 reward the honest workers, and fill the world with 
 happy homes ! These are the problems for the 
 pulpits and congregations of an enlightened future. 
 If Science cannot finally answer these questions, it is 
 a vain and worthless thing. 
 
 The clergy, however, will continue to answer 
 them in the old way, until their congregations are 
 good enough to set them free. They will still talk 
 about believing in the Lord Jesus Christ, as though 
 that were the only remedy for all human ills. They 
 will still teach that retrogression is the only path 
 that leads to light ; that we must go back, that faith 
 is the only sure guide, and that reason is a delusive 
 glare, lighting only the road to eternal pain. 
 
 Until the clergy are free they cannot be intel- 
 lectually honest. We can never tell what they really 
 believe until they know that they can safely speak. 
 They console themselves now by a secret resolution 
 to be as liberal as they dare, with the hope that they 
 
SOME MISTAKES OF MOSES. 2 5 
 
 can finally educate their congregations to the point 
 of allowing them to think a little for themselves. 
 They hardly know what they ought to do. The 
 best part of their lives has been wasted in studying 
 subjects of no possible value. Most of them are 
 married, have families, and know but one way of 
 making their living. Some of them say that if they 
 do not preach these foolish dogmas, others will, and 
 that they may through fear, after all, restrain mankind. 
 Besides, they hate publicly to admit that they are 
 mistaken, that the whole thing is a delusion, that the 
 "scheme of salvation" is absurd, and that the bible 
 is no better than some other books, and worse than 
 most. 
 
 You can hardly expect a bishop to leave his 
 palace, or the pope to vacate the Vatican. As long 
 as people want popes, plenty of hypocrites will be 
 found to take the place. And as long as labor 
 fatigues, there will be found a good many men will- 
 ing to preach once a week, if other folks will work 
 and give them bread. In other words, while the 
 demand lasts, the supply will never fail. 
 
 If the people were a little more ignorant, as- 
 trology would flourish — if a little more enlightened, 
 religion would perish! 
 
II. 
 
 FREE SCHOOLS. 
 
 It is also my desire to free the schools. When a 
 professor in a college finds a fact, he should make 
 it known, even if it is inconsistent with something 
 Moses said. Public opinion must not compel the 
 professor to hide a-fact, and, "like the base Indian, 
 throw the pearl away." With the single exception 
 of Cornell, there is not a college in the United States 
 where truth has ever been a welcome guest. The 
 moment one of the teachers denies the inspiration of 
 the bible, he is discharged. If he discovers a fact 
 inconsistent with that book, so much the worse for 
 the fact, and especially for the discoverer of the fact. 
 He must not corrupt the minds of his pupils with 
 demonstrations. He must beware of every truth 
 that cannot, in some way be made to harmonize with 
 the superstitions of the Jews. Science has nothing 
 in common with religion. Facts and miracles never 
 
SOME MISTAKES OF MOSES. 2*] 
 
 did, and never will agree. They are not in the least 
 related. They are deadly foes. What has religion 
 to do with facts? Nothing. Can there be Methodist 
 mathematics, Catholic astronomy, Presbyterian geol- 
 ogy, Baptist biology, or Episcopal botany? Why, 
 then, should a sectarian college exist? Only that 
 which somebody knows should be taught in our 
 schools. We should not collect taxes to pay people 
 for Q-uessino-. The common school is the bread of 
 life for the people, and it should not be touched by 
 the withering hand of superstition. 
 
 Our country will never be filled with great insti- 
 tutions of learning until there is an absolute divorce 
 between Church and School. As long as the 
 mutilated records of a barbarous people are placed by 
 priest and professor above the reason of mankind, we 
 shall reap but little benefit from church or school. 
 
 Instead of dismissing professors for finding some- 
 thing out, let us rather discharge those who do not. 
 Let each teacher understand that investigation is not 
 dangerous for him ; that his bread is safe, no matter 
 how much truth he may discover, and that his salary 
 will not be reduced, simply because he finds that the 
 ancient Jews did not know the entire history of the 
 world. 
 
28 SOME MISTAKES OF MOSES. 
 
 Besides, it is not fair to make the Catholic sup- 
 port a Protestant school, nor is it just to collect taxes 
 from infidels and atheists to support schools in which 
 any system of religion is taught. 
 
 The sciences are not sectarian. People do not 
 persecute each other on account of disagreements in 
 mathematics. Families are not divided about botany, 
 and astronomy does not even tend to make a man 
 hate his father and mother. It is what people do not 
 know, that they persecute each other about. Science 
 will bring, not a sword, but peace. 
 
 Just as long as religion has control of the schools, 
 science will be an outcast. Let us free our institu- 
 tions of learning. Let us dedicate them to the 
 science of eternal truth. Let us tell every teacher 
 to ascertain all the facts he can — to give us light, to 
 follow Nature, no matter where she leads; to be 
 infinitely true to himself and us ; to feel that he is 
 without a chain, except the obligation to be honest; 
 that he is bound by no books, by no creed, neither 
 by the sayings of the dead nor of the living ; 
 that he is asked to look with his own eyes, to 
 reason for himself without fear, to investigate in 
 every possible direction, and to bring us the fruit oi 
 all his work. 
 
SOME MISTAKES OF MOSES. 20. 
 
 At present, a good many men engaged in scien- 
 tific pursuits, and who have signally failed in gaining 
 recognition among their fellows, are endeavoring to 
 make reputations among the churches by delivering 
 weak and vapid lectures upon the "harmony of 
 Genesis and Geology." Like all hypocrites, these 
 men overstate the case to such a degree, and so turn 
 and pervert facts and words that they succeed only 
 in gaining the applause of other hypocrites like them- 
 selves. Among the great scientists they are regarded 
 as orenerals regard sutlers who trade with both armies. 
 
 Surely the time must come when the wealth of the 
 world will not be wasted in the propagation of ignor- 
 ant creeds and miraculous mistakes. The time must 
 come when churches and cathedrals will be dedicated 
 to the use of man ; when minister and priest will deem 
 the discoveries of the living of more importance than 
 the errors of the dead ; when the truths of Nature 
 will outrank the "sacred" falsehoods of the past, and 
 when a single fact will outweigh all the miracles of 
 Holy Writ. 
 
 Who can over estimate the progress of the 
 world if all the money wasted in superstition 
 could be used to enlighten, elevate and civil- 
 ize mankind ? 
 
30 SOME MISTAKES OF MOSES. 
 
 When every church becomes a school, every 
 cathedral a university, every clergyman a teacher, 
 and all their hearers brave and honest thinkers, then, 
 and not until then, will the dream of poet, patriot, 
 philanthropist and philosopher, become a real and 
 blessed truth. 
 
III. 
 
 THE POLITICIANS. 
 
 I would like also to liberate the politician. At 
 present, the successful office-seeker is a good 
 deal like the centre of the earth ; he weighs nothing 
 himself, but draws everything else to him. There are 
 so many societies, so many churches, so many isms, 
 that it is almost impossible for an independent man 
 to succeed in a political career. Candidates are 
 forced to pretend that they are catholics with protest- 
 ant proclivities, or christians with liberal tendencies, 
 or temperance men who now and then take a glass 
 of wine, or, that although not members of any church 
 their wives are, and that they subscribe liberally to 
 all. The result of all this is that we reward hypocrisy 
 and elect men entirely destitute of real principle ; 
 and this will never change until the people become 
 grand enough to allow each other to do their own 
 thinking. 
 
32 SOME MISTAKES OF MOSES. 
 
 Our government should be entirely and purely 
 secular. The religious views of a candidate should 
 be kept entirely out of sight. He should not be 
 compelled to give his opinion as to the inspiration 
 of the bible, the propriety of infant baptism, or the 
 immaculate conception. All these things are private 
 and personal. He should be allowed to settle such 
 things for himself, and should he decide contrary to 
 the law and will of God, let him settle the matter 
 with God. The people ought to be wise enough 
 to select as their officers men who know something 
 of political affairs, who comprehend the present 
 greatness, and clearly perceive the future grandeur 
 of our country. If we were in a storm at sea, with 
 deck wave-washed and masts strained and bent with 
 storm, and it was necessary to reef the top sail, we 
 certainly would not ask the brave sailor who volun- 
 teered to go aloft, what his opinion was on the five 
 points of Calvinism. Our government has nothing 
 to do with religion. It is neither christian nor pagan ; 
 it is secular. But as long as the people persist in 
 voting for or against men on account of their relig- 
 ious views, just so long will hypocrisy hold place and 
 power. Just so long will the candidates crawl in the 
 dust — hide their opinions, flatter those with whom 
 
SOME MISTAKES OF MOSES. 33 
 
 they differ, pretend to agree with those whom they 
 despise ; and just so long will honest men be trampled 
 under foot. Churches are becoming political organ- 
 izations. Nearly every Catholic is a democrat; 
 nearly every Methodist in the North is a re- 
 publican. 
 
 It probably will not be long until the churches 
 will divide as sharply upon political, as upon the- 
 ological questions ; and when that day comes, if 
 there are not liberals enough to hold the balance of 
 power, this government will be destroyed. The 
 liberty of man is not safe in the hands of any church. 
 Wherever the bible and sword are in partnership, 
 man is a slave. 
 
 All laws for the purpose of making man worship 
 God, are born of the same spirit that kindled the 
 fires of the auto da fe, and lovingly built the dun- 
 geons of the Inquisition. All laws defining and 
 punishing blasphemy — making it a crime to give 
 your honest ideas about the bible, or to laugh at the 
 ignorance of the ancient Jews, or to enjoy yourself 
 on the Sabbath, or to give your opinion of Jehovah, 
 were passed by impudent bigots, and should be at 
 once repealed by honest men. An infinite God 
 ought to be able to protect himself, without going in 
 3 
 
34 SOME MISTAKES OF MOSES. 
 
 partnership with state legislatures. Certainly he 
 ought not so to act that laws become necessary to 
 keep him from being laughed at. No one thinks 
 of protecting Shakespeare from ridicule, by the 
 threat of fine and imprisonment. It strikes me that 
 God might write a book that would not necessarily 
 excite the laughter of his children. In fact, I think 
 it would be safe to say that a real God could produce 
 a work that would excite the admiration of mankind. 
 Surely politicians could be better employed than in 
 passing laws to protect the literary reputation of the 
 Jewish God. 
 
IV. 
 
 MAN AND WOMAN. 
 
 Let us forget that we are Baptists, Methodists, 
 _y Catholics, Presbyterians, or Free-thinkers, and 
 remember only that we are men and women. After 
 all, man and woman are the highest possible titles. 
 All other names belittle us, and show that we have, 
 to a certain extent, given up our individuality, and 
 have consented to wear the collar of authority — that 
 we are followers. Throwing away these names, 
 let us examine these questions not as partisans, 
 but as human beings with hopes and fears in 
 common. 
 
 We know that our opinions depend, to a great 
 degree, upon our surroundings — upon race, country, 
 and education. We are all the result of numberless 
 conditions, and inherit vices and virtues, truths and 
 prejudices. If we had been born in England, sur- 
 rounded by wealth and clothed with power, most of 
 
36 SOME MISTAKES OF MOSES. 
 
 us would have been Episcopalians, and believed in 
 Church and State. We should have insisted that the 
 people needed a religion, and that not having 
 intellect enough to provide one for themselves, it 
 was our duty to make one for them, and then com- 
 pel them to support it. We should have believed it 
 indecent to officiate in a pulpit without wearing a 
 gown, and that prayers should be read from a book. 
 Had we belonged to the lower classes, we might have 
 been dissenters and protested against the mummeries 
 of the High Church. Had we been born in Turkey, 
 most of us would have been Mohammedans and 
 believed in the inspiration of the Koran. We should 
 have believed that Mohammed actually visited 
 Heaven and became acquainted with an angel by the 
 name of Gabriel, who was so broad between the eyes 
 that it required three hundred days for a very 
 smart camel to travel the distance. If some man 
 had denied this story we should probably have 
 denounced him as a dangerous person, one who was 
 endeavoring to undermine the foundations of society, 
 and to destroy all distinction between virtue and vice. 
 We should have said to him, "What do you propose 
 to give us in place of that angel? We cannot afford 
 to give up an angel of that size for nothing." We 
 
SOME MISTAKES OF MOSES. 37 
 
 would have insisted that the best and wisest men 
 believed the Koran. We would have quoted from 
 the works and letters of philosophers, generals and 
 sultans, to show that the Koran was the best of 
 books, and that Turkey was indebted to that book 
 and to that alone for its greatness and prosperity. 
 We would have asked that man whether he knew 
 more than all the great minds of his country, whether 
 he was so much wiser than his fathers? We would have 
 pointed out to him the fact that thousands had been 
 consoled in the hour of death by passages from the 
 Koran ; that they had died with glazed eyes bright- 
 ened by visions of the heavenly harem, and gladly 
 left this world of grief an d tears. We would have 
 regarded Christians as the vilest of men, and on all 
 occasions would have repeated "There is but one 
 God, and Mohammed is his prophet!" 
 
 So, if we had been born in India, we should in 
 all probability have believed in the religion of that 
 country. We should have regarded the old records 
 as true and sacred, and looked upon a wandering 
 priest as better than the men from whom he begged, 
 and by whose labor he lived. We should have 
 believed in a god with three heads instead of three 
 gods with one head, as we do now. 
 
3 8 SOME MISTAKES OF MOSES. 
 
 Now and then some one says that the religion of 
 his father and mother is good enough for him, and 
 wonders why anybody should desire a better. Surely 
 we are not bound to follow our parents in religion 
 any more than in politics, science or art. China has 
 been petrified by the worship of ancestors. If our 
 parents had been satisfied with the religion of theirs, 
 we would be still less advanced than we are. If we 
 are, in any way, bound by the belief of our fathers, 
 the doctrine will hold good back to the first people 
 who had a religion ; and if this doctrine is true, we 
 ought now to be believers in that first religion. In 
 other words, we would all be barbarians. You can- 
 not show real respect to your parents by perpetuating 
 their errors. Good fathers and mothers wish their 
 children to advance, to overcome obstacles which 
 baffled them, and to correct the errors of their educa- 
 tion. If you wish to reflect credit upon your parents, 
 accomplish more than they did, solve problems that 
 they could not understand, and build better than they 
 knew. To sacrifice your manhood upon the grave 
 of your father is an honor to neither. Why should 
 a son who has examined a subject, throw away his 
 reason and adopt the views of his mother? Is not 
 such a course dishonorable to both? 
 
SOME MISTAKES OF MOSES. 39 
 
 We must remember that this "ancestor" anni- 
 merit is as old at least as the second generation of 
 men, that it has served no purpose except to enslave 
 mankind, and results mostly from the fact that 
 acquiescence is easier than investigation. This 
 argument pushed to its logical conclusion, would 
 prevent the advance of all people whose parents 
 were not free-thinkers. 
 
 It is hard for many people to give up the religion 
 in which they were born ; to admit that their fathers 
 were utterly mistaken, and that the sacred records of 
 their country are but collections of myths and 
 fables. 
 
 But when we look for a moment at the world, we 
 find that each nation has its "sacred records" — its 
 religion, and its ideas of worship. Certainly all can- 
 not be right ; and as it would require a life time to 
 investigate the claims of these various systems, it is 
 hardly fair to damn a man forever, simply because he 
 happens to believe the wrong one. All these 
 religions were produced by barbarians. Civilized 
 nations have contented themselves with changing 
 the religions of their barbaric ancestors, but they 
 have made none. Nearly all these religions are 
 intensely selfish. Each one was made by some con- 
 
40 SOME MISTAKES OF MOSES. 
 
 temptible little nation that regarded itself as of almost 
 infinite importance, and looked upon the other nations 
 as beneath the notice of their god. In all these 
 countries it was a crime to deny the sacred records, 
 to laugh at the priests, to speak disrespectfully of the 
 gods, to fail to divide your substance with the lazy 
 hypocrites who managed your affairs in the next 
 world upon condition that you would support them 
 in this. In the olden time these theological people 
 who quartered themselves upon the honest and 
 industrious, were called soothsayers, seers, charmers, 
 prophets, enchanters, sorcerers, wizards, astrologers, 
 and impostors, but now, they are known as cler- 
 gymen. 
 
 We are no exception to the general rule, and 
 consequently have our sacred books as well as 
 the rest. Of course, it is claimed by many of our 
 people that our books are the only true ones, the 
 only ones that the real God ever wrote, or had any- 
 thing whatever to do with. They insist that all 
 other sacred books were written by hypocrites and 
 impostors ; that the Jews were the only people that 
 God ever had any personal intercourse with, and that 
 all other prophets and seers were inspired only by im- 
 pudence and mendacity. True, it seems somewhat 
 
SOME MISTAKES OF MOSES. 4 1 
 
 strange that God should have chosen a barbarous 
 and unknown people who had little or nothing to do 
 with the other nations of the earth, as his messengers 
 to the rest of mankind. 
 
 It is not easy to account for an infinite God 
 making people so low in the scale of intellect as 
 to require a revelation. Neither is it easy to per- 
 ceive why, if a revelation was necessary for all, 
 it was made only to a few. Of course, I know that it 
 is extremely wicked to suggest these thoughts, and 
 that ignorance is the only armor that can effectually 
 protect you from the wrath of God. I am aware 
 that investigators with all their genius, never find 
 the road to heaven ; that those who look where 
 they are going are sure to miss it, and that only 
 those who voluntarily put out their eyes and 
 implicitly depend upon blindness can surely keep the 
 narrow path. 
 
 Whoever reads our sacred book is compelled to 
 believe it or suffer forever the torments of the lost. 
 We are told that we have the privilege of examining 
 it for ourselves ; but this privilege is only extended 
 to us on the condition that we believe it whether it 
 appears reasonable or not, We may disagree with 
 others as much as we please upon the meaning of 
 
42 SOME MISTAKES OF MOSES. 
 
 all passages in the bible, but we must not deny 
 the truth of a single word. We must believe 
 that the book is inspired. If we obey its every pre- 
 cept without believing in its inspiration we will be 
 damned just as certainly as though we disobeyed its 
 every word. We have no right to weigh it in the 
 scales of reason — to test it by the laws of nature, 
 or the facts of observation and experience. To 
 do this, we are told, is to put ourselves above the 
 word of God, and sit in judgment on the works 
 of our creator. 
 
 For my part, I cannot admit that belief is a volun- 
 tary thing. It seems to me that evidence, even in 
 spite of ourselves, will % have its weight, and that 
 whatever our wish may be, we are compelled to stand 
 with fairness by the scales, and give the exact result. 
 It will not do to say that we reject the bible because 
 we are wicked. Our wickedness must be ascertained 
 not from our belief but from our acts. 
 
 I am told by the clergy that I ought not to attack 
 the bible ; that I am leading thousands to perdition 
 and rendering certain the damnation of my own soul. 
 They have had the kindness to advise me that, if my 
 object is to make converts, I am pursuing the wrong 
 course. They tell me to use gentler expressions, 
 
SOME MISTAKES OF MOSES. 43 
 
 and more cunning words. Do they really wish 
 me to make more converts ? If their advice is 
 honest, they are traitors to their trust. If their advice 
 is not honest, then they are unfair with me. 
 Certainly they should wish me to pursue the course 
 that will make the fewest converts, and yet they pre- 
 tend to tell me how my influence could be increased. 
 It may be, that upon this principle John Bright 
 advises America to adopt free trade, so that our 
 country can become a successful rival of Great Britain. 
 Sometimes I think that even ministers are not en- 
 tirely candid. 
 
 Notwithstanding the advice of the clergy, I have 
 concluded to pursue my own course, to tell my honest 
 thoughts, and to have my freedom in this world 
 whatever my fate may be in the next. 
 
 The real oppressor, enslaver and corrupter of the 
 people is the bible. That book is the chain that 
 binds, the dungeon that holds the clergy. That book 
 spreads the pall of superstition over the colleges and 
 schools. That book puts out the eyes of science, and 
 -makes honest investigation a crime. That book 
 unmans the politician and degrades the people. 
 That book fills the world with bigotry, hypocrisy 
 and fear. It plays the same part in our country 
 
44 SOME MISTAKES OF MOSES. 
 
 that has been played by " sacred records " in all 
 the nations of the world. 
 
 A little while ago I saw one of the bibles of the 
 Middle Ages. It was about two feet in length, and 
 one and a half in width. It had immense oaken 
 covers, with hasps, and clasps, and hinges large 
 enough almost for the doors of a penitentiary. It 
 was covered with pictures of winged angels and 
 aureoled saints. In my imagination I saw this book 
 carried to the cathedral altar in solemn pomp — heard 
 the chant of robed and kneeling priests, felt the 
 strange tremor of the organ's peal ; saw the colored 
 light streaming through windows stained and touched 
 by blood and flame — the swinging censer with its 
 perfumed incense rising to the mighty roof, dim with 
 height and rich with legend carved in stone, while on 
 the walls was hung, written in light, and shade, and 
 all the colors that can tell of joy and tears, the pictured 
 history of the martyred Christ. The people fell upon 
 their knees. The book was opened, and the priest 
 read the messages from God to man. To the multi- 
 tude, the book itself was evidence enough that it was 
 not the work of human hands. How could those 
 little marks and lines and dots contain, like tombs, the 
 thoughts of men, and how could they, touched by a 
 
SOME MISTAKES OF MOSES. 45 
 
 ray of light from human eyes, give up their dead ? 
 How could these characters span the vast chasm 
 dividing the present from the past, and make it 
 possible for the living still to hear the voices of the 
 dead ? 
 
V. 
 
 THE PENTATEUCH. 
 
 The first five books in our bible are known as the 
 Pentateuch. For a long time it was supposed 
 that Moses was the author, and among the ignorant 
 the supposition still prevails. As a matter of fact, it 
 seems to be well settled that Moses had nothing to 
 do with these books, and that they were not written 
 until he had been dust and ashes for hundreds of 
 years. But, as all the churches still insist that he was 
 the author, that he wrote even an account of his own 
 death and burial, let us speak of him as though these 
 books were in fact written by him. As the christians 
 maintain that God was the real author, it makes but 
 little difference whom he employed as his pen, or 
 clerk. 
 
 Nearly all authors of sacred books have given an 
 account of the creation of the universe, the origin of 
 matter, and the destiny of the human race. Nearly 
 
SOME MISTAKES OF MOSES. 47 
 
 all have pointed out the obligation that man is under 
 to his creator for having placed him upon the earth, 
 and allowed him to live and suffer, and have taught 
 that nothing short of the most abject worship could 
 possibly compensate God for his trouble and labor 
 suffered and done for the good of man. They have 
 nearly all insisted that we should thank God for all 
 that is good in life ; but they have not all informed 
 us as to whom we should hold responsible for the 
 evils we endure. 
 
 Moses differed from most of the makers of sacred 
 books by his failure to say anything of a future life, 
 by failing to promise heaven, and to threaten hell. 
 Upon the subject of a future state, there is not one 
 word in the Pentateuch. Probably at that early day 
 God did not deem it important to make a revelation 
 as to the eternal destiny of man. He seems to have 
 thought that he could control the Jews, at least, by 
 rewards and punishments in this world, and so he 
 kept the frightful realities of eternal joy and torment 
 a profound secret from the people of his choice. He 
 thought it far more important to tell the Jews their 
 origin than to enlighten them as to their destiny. 
 
 We must remember that every tribe and nation 
 has some way in which, the more striking phenomena 
 
48 SOME MISTAKES OF MOSES. 
 
 of nature are accounted for. These accounts are 
 handed down by tradition, changed by numberless 
 narrators as intelligence increases, or to account for 
 newly discovered facts, or for the purpose of satisfy- 
 ing the appetite for the marvelous. 
 
 The way in which a tribe or nation accounts for 
 day and night, the change of seasons, the fall of snow 
 and rain, the flight of birds, the origin of the rain- 
 bow, the peculiarities of animals, the dreams of sleep, 
 the visions of the insane, the existence of earth- 
 quakes, volcanoes, storms, lightning and the thousand 
 things that attract the attention and excite the 
 wonder, fear or admiration of mankind, may be called 
 the philosophy of that tribe or nation. And as all 
 phenomena are, by savage and barbaric man 
 accounted for as the action of intelligent beings for 
 the accomplishment of certain objects, and as these 
 beings were supposed to have the power to assist or 
 injure man, certain things were supposed necessary 
 for man to do in order to gain the assistance, and 
 avoid the anger of these gods. Out of this belief 
 grew certain ceremonies, and these ceremonies united 
 with the belief, formed religion ; and consequently 
 every religion has for its foundation a misconception 
 of the cause of phenomena. 
 
SOME MISTAKES OF MOSES. 49 
 
 All worship is necessarily based upon the 
 belief that some being exists who can, if he will, 
 change the natural order of events. The savage 
 prays to a stone that he calls a god, while the 
 christian prays to a god that he calls a spirit, 
 and the prayers of both are equally useful. The 
 savage and the christian put behind the Universe 
 an intelligent cause, and this cause whether repre- 
 sented by one god or many, has been, in all ages, the 
 object of all worship. To carry a fetich, to utter a 
 prayer, to count beads, to abstain from food, to 
 sacrifice a lamb, a child or an enemy, are simply 
 different ways by which the accomplishment of the 
 same object is sought, and are all the offspring of the 
 same error. 
 
 Many systems of religion must have existed 
 many ages before the art of writing was discovered, 
 and must have passed through many changes before 
 the stories, miracles, histories, prophesies and mis- 
 takes became fixed and petrified in written words. 
 After that, change was possible only by giving new 
 meanings to old words, a process rendered necessary 
 by the continual acquisition of facts somewhat incon- 
 sistent with a literal interpretation of the " sacred 
 records." In this way an honest faith often prolongs 
 
5o SOME MISTAKES OE MOSES. 
 
 its life by dishonest methods ; and in this way the 
 Christians of to-day are trying to harmonize the 
 Mosaic account of creation with the theories and 
 discoveries of modern science. 
 
 Admitting that Moses was the author of the 
 Pentateuch, or that he gave to the Jews a religion, 
 the question arises as to where he obtained his infor- 
 mation. We are told by the theologians that he 
 received his knowledge from God, and that every 
 word he wrote was and is the exact truth. It is 
 admitted at the same time that he was an adopted 
 son of Pharaoh's daughter, and enjoyed the rank and 
 privilege of a prince. Under such circumstances, he 
 must have been well acquainted with the literature, 
 philosophy and religion of the Egyptians, and must 
 have known what they believed and taught as to the 
 creation of the world. 
 
 Now, if the account of the origin of this earth as 
 given by Moses is substantially like that given by 
 the Egyptians, then we must conclude that he learned 
 it from them. Should we imagine that he was 
 divinely inspired because he gave to the Jews what 
 the Egyptians had given him ? 
 
 The Egyptian priests taught first, that a god 
 created the original matter, leaving it in a state of 
 
SOME MISTAKES OF MOSES. 5 1 
 
 chaos ; second, that a god moulded it into form ; 
 third, that the breath of a god moved upon the face 
 of the deep ; fourth, that a god created simply by 
 saying "Let it be ; " fifth, that a god created light 
 before the sun existed. 
 
 Nothing can be clearer than that Moses received 
 from the Egyptians the principal parts of his narra- 
 tive, making such changes and additions as were 
 necessary to satisfy the peculiar superstitions of his 
 own people. 
 
 If some man at the present day should assert that 
 he had received from God the theories of evolution, 
 the survival of the fittest, and the law of heredity, 
 and we should afterwards find that he was hot only 
 an Englishman, but had lived in the family of Charles 
 Darwin, we certainly would account for his having 
 these theories in a natural way, So, if Darwin him- 
 self should pretend that he was inspired, and had 
 obtained his peculiar theories from God, we should 
 probably reply that his grandfather suggested the 
 the same ideas, and that Lamarck published substan- 
 tially the same theories the same year that Mr. 
 Darwin was born. 
 
 Now, if we have sufficient courage, we will, by 
 the same course of reasoning, account for the story 
 
52 SOME MISTAKES OF MOSES. 
 
 of creation found in the bible. We will say that 
 it contains the belief of Moses, and that he received 
 his information from the Egyptians, and not from 
 God. If we take the account as the absolute truth 
 and use it for the purpose of determining the value 
 of modern thought, scientific advancement becomes 
 impossible. And even if the account of the Creation 
 as given by Moses should turn out to be true, and 
 should be 60 admitted by all the scientific world, the 
 claim that he was inspired would still be without the 
 least particle of proof. We would be forced to admit 
 that he knew more than we had supposed. It cer- 
 tainly is no proof that a man is inspired simply 
 because he is right. 
 
 No one pretends that Shakespeare was inspired, 
 and yet all the writers of the books of the Old Testa- 
 ment put together, could not have produced 
 Hamlet. 
 
 Why should we, looking upon some rough and 
 awkward thing, or god in stone, say that it must have 
 been produced by some inspired sculptor, and with the 
 same breath pronounce the Venus de Milo to be the 
 work of man? Why should we, looking at some 
 ancient daub of angel, saint or virgin, say its painter 
 must have been assisted by a god? 
 
SOME MISTAKES OF MOSES. 53 
 
 Let us account for all we see by the facts we 
 know. If there are things for which we cannot 
 account, let us wait for light. To account for any- 
 thing by supernatural agencies is, in fact to say that 
 we do not know. Theology is not what we know 
 about God, but what we do not know about Nature. 
 In order to increase our respect for the bible, it 
 became necessary for the priests to exalt and extol 
 that book, and at the same time to decry and belittle 
 the reasoning powers of man. The whole power of 
 the pulpit has been used for hundreds of years to 
 destroy the confidence of man in himself — to induce 
 him to distrust his own powers of thought, to believe 
 that he was wholly unable to decide any question for 
 himself, and that all human virtue consists in faith 
 and obedience. The Church has said, " Believe, and 
 obey! If you reason, you will become an unbeliever, 
 and unbelievers will be lost. If you disobey, you 
 will do so through vain pride and curiosity, and will, 
 like Adam and Eve, be thrust from paradise 
 forever ! " 
 
 For my part, I care nothing for what the Church 
 says, except in so far as it accords with my reason ; 
 and the bible is nothing to me, only in so far as it 
 agrees with what I think or know. 
 
54 SOME MISTAKES OF MOSES. 
 
 All books should be examined in the same spirit, 
 and truth should be welcomed and falsehood ex- 
 posed, no matter in what volume they may be 
 found. 
 
 Let us in this spirit examine the Peutateuch ; 
 and if anything appears unreasonable, contradictory 
 or absurd, let us have the honesty and courage 
 to admit it. Certainly no good can result either 
 from deceiving ourselves or others. Many millions 
 have implicitly believed this book, and have 
 just as implicitly believed that polygamy was 
 sanctioned by God. Millions have regarded this 
 book as the foundation of all human progress, 
 and at the same time looked upon slavery as a 
 divine institution. Millions have declared this book 
 to have been infinitely holy, and to prove that 
 they were right, have imprisoned, robbed and 
 burned their fellow men. The inspiration of this 
 book has been established by famine, sword and 
 fire, by dungeon, chain and whip, by dagger and 
 by rack, by force and fear and fraud, and genera- 
 tions have been frightened by threats of hell, and 
 bribed with promises of heaven. 
 
 Let us examine a portion of this book, not in the 
 darkness of our fear, but in the light of reason. 
 
SOME MISTAKES OF MOSES. 55 
 
 And first, let us examine the account given of 
 the Creation of this world, commenced, according to 
 the bible, on Monday morning about five thousand 
 eight hundred and eighty-three years ago. 
 
VI. 
 
 MONDAY. 
 
 Moses commences his story by telling us that 
 in the beginning God created the heaven 
 and the earth. 
 
 If this means anything, it means that God 
 produced, caused to exist, called into being, the 
 heaven and the earth. It will not do to say that he 
 formed the heaven and the earth of previously 
 existing matter. Moses conveys, and intended to 
 convey the idea that the matter of which the heaven 
 and the earth are composed, was created. 
 
 It is impossible for me to conceive of something 
 being created from nothing. Nothing, regarded in 
 the light of a raw material, is a decided failure. I 
 cannot conceive of matter apart from force. Neither 
 is it possible to think of force disconnected with 
 matter. You cannot imagine matter going back to 
 absolute nothing. Neither can you imagine nothing 
 being changed into something. .You may be 
 eternally damned if you do not say that you can 
 conceive these things, but you cannot conceive them. 
 
SOME MISTAKES OF MOSES. 5/ 
 
 Such is the constitution cf the human mind that it 
 cannot even think of a commencement or an end ot 
 matter, or force. 
 
 If God created the universe, there was a time 
 when he commenced to create. Back of that com- 
 mencement there must have been an eternity. In 
 that eternity what was this God doing? He certainly 
 did not think. There was nothing to think about. 
 He did not remember. Nothing had ever happened. 
 What did he do? Can you imagine anything more 
 absurd than an infinite intelligence in infinite nothing 
 wasting an eternity? 
 
 I do not pretend to tell how all these things really 
 are ; but I do insist that a statement that cannot 
 possibly be comprehended by any human being, and 
 that appears utterly impossible, repugnant to every 
 fact of experience, and contrary to everything that 
 we really know, must be rejected by every honest 
 man. 
 
 We can conceive of eternity, because we cannot 
 conceive of a cessation of time. We can conceive of 
 infinite space because we cannot conceive of so much 
 matter that our imagination will not stand upon the 
 farthest star, and see infinite space beyond. In other 
 words, we cannot conceive of a cessation of time ; 
 
58 SOME MISTAKES OF MOSES. 
 
 therefore eternity is a necessity of the mind. 
 Eternity sustains the same relation to time that space 
 does to matter. 
 
 In the time of Moses, it was perfectly safe for him 
 to write an account of the creation of the world. He 
 had simply to put in form the crude notions of the 
 people. At that time, no other Jew could have 
 written a better account. Upon that subject he felt 
 at liberty to give his imagination full play. There 
 was no one who could authoritatively contradict any- 
 thing he might say. It was substantially the same 
 story that had been imprinted in curious characters 
 upon the clay records of Babylon, the gigantic 
 monuments of Egypt, and the gloomy temples of 
 India. In those days there was an almost infinite 
 difference between the educated and ignorant. The 
 people were controlled almost entirely by signs and 
 wonders. By the levef of fear, priests moved the 
 world. The sacred records were made and kept, 
 and altered by them. The people could not read, 
 and looked upon one who could, as almost a god. 
 In our day it is hard to conceive of the influence of 
 an educated class in a barbarous age. It was only 
 necessary to produce the " sacred record," and 
 ignorance fell upon its face. The people were taught 
 
SOME MISTAKES OF MOSES. 59 
 
 that the record was inspired, and therefore true. 
 They were not taught that it was true, and therefore 
 inspired. 
 
 After all, the real question is not whether the 
 bible is inspired, but whether it is true. If it is true, 
 it does not need to be inspired. If it is true, it 
 makes no difference whether it was written by a man 
 or a god. The multiplication table is just as useful, 
 just as true as though God had arranged the figures 
 himself. If the bible is really true, the claim of 
 inspiration need not be urged ; and if it is not true, 
 its inspiration can hardly be established. As a 
 matter of fact, the truth does not need to be inspired. 
 Nothing needs inspiration except a falsehood or a 
 mistake. Where truth ends, where probability stops, 
 inspiration begins. A fact never went into partner- 
 ship with a miracle. Truth does not need the 
 assistance of miracle. A fact will fit every other 
 fact in the Universe, because it is the product of all 
 other facts. A lie will fit nothing except another lie 
 made for the express purpose of fitting it. After a 
 while the man gets tired of lying, and then the last 
 lie will not fit the next fact, and then there is an 
 opportunity to use a miracle. Just at that point, it 
 is necessary to have a little inspiration. 
 
60 SOME MISTAKES OF MOSES. 
 
 It seems to me that reason is the highest attribute 
 of man, and that if there can be any communication 
 from God to man, it must be addressed to his reason. 
 It does not seem possible that in order to understand 
 a message from God it is absolutely essential to 
 throw our reason away. How could God make 
 known his will to any being destitute of reason ? 
 How can any man accept as a revelation from God 
 that which is unreasonable to him ? God cannot 
 make a revelation to another man for me. He must 
 make it to me, and until he convinces my reason that 
 it is true, I cannot receive it. 
 
 The statement that in the beginning God created 
 the heaven and the earth, I cannot accept. It is 
 contrary to my reason, and I cannot believe it. It 
 appears reasonable to me that force has existed from 
 eternity. Force cannot, as it appears to me, exist 
 apart from matter. Force, in its nature, is forever 
 active, and without matter it could not act ; and so I 
 think matter must have existed forever. To con- 
 ceive of matter without force, or of force without 
 matter, or of a time when neither existed, or of 
 a being who existed for an eternity without 
 either, and who out of nothing created both, is to 
 me utterly impossible. I may be damned on this 
 
SOME MISTAKES OK MOSES. 6 1 
 
 account, but I cannot help it. In my judgment, 
 Moses was mistaken. 
 
 It will not do to say that Moses merely intended 
 to tell what God did, in making- the heavens and the 
 earth out of matter then in existence. He distinctly 
 states that in the beginning God created them. If 
 this account is true, we must believe that God, 
 existing in infinite space surrounded by eternal 
 nothing, naught and void, created, produced, called 
 into being-, willed into existence this universe of 
 countless stars. 
 
 The next thing we are told by this inspired 
 gentleman is, that God created light, and proceeded 
 to divide it from the darkness. 
 
 Certainly, the person who wrote this believed 
 that darkness was a thing, an entity, a material that 
 could get mixed and tangled up with light, and that 
 these entities, light and darkness, had to be separated. 
 In his imagination he probably saw God throwing 
 pieces and chunks of darkness on one side, and rays 
 and beams of light on the other. It is hard for a 
 man who has been born but once to understand 
 these things. For my part I cannot understand how 
 light can be separated from darkness. I had always 
 supposed that darkness was simply the absence of 
 
62 SOME MISTAKES OF MOSES. 
 
 light, and that under no circumstances could it be 
 necessary to take the darkness away from the light. 
 It is certain, however, that Moses believed darkness 
 to be a form of matter, because I find that in another 
 place he speaks of a darkness that could be felt. 
 They used to have on exhibition at Rome a bottle 
 of the darkness that overspread Egypt. 
 
 You cannot divide light from darkness any more 
 than you can divide heat from cold. Cold is an 
 absence of heat, and darkness is an absence of light. 
 I suppose that we have no conception of absolute 
 cold. We know only degrees of heat. Twenty 
 degrees below zero is just twenty degrees warmer 
 than forty degrees below zero. Neither cold nor 
 darkness are entities, and these words express simply 
 either the absolute or partial absence of heat or light. 
 I cannot conceive, how light can be divided from 
 darkness, but I can conceive how a barbarian several 
 thousand years ago, writing upon a subject about 
 which he knew nothing, could make a mistake. 
 The creator of li^ht could not have written in this 
 way. If such a being exists, he must have known 
 the nature of that " mode of motion " that paints the 
 earth on every eye, and clothes in garments seven- 
 hued this universe of worlds. 
 
VTI. 
 
 TUESDAY. 
 
 We are next informed by Moses that " God 
 said Let there be a firmament in the midst 
 of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the 
 waters ; " and that " God made the firmament, and 
 divided the waters which were under the firmament 
 from the waters which were above the firmament." 
 
 What did the writer mean by the word firma- 
 ment ? Theoloeians now tell us that he meant an 
 " expanse." This will not do. How could an 
 expanse divide the waters from the waters, so that 
 the waters above the expanse would not fall into and 
 mingle with the waters below the expanse ? The 
 truth is that Moses regarded the firmament as a solid 
 affair. It was where God lived, and where water 
 was kept. It was for this reason that they used to 
 pray for rain. They supposed that some angel could 
 with a lever raise a gate and let out the quantity of 
 moisture desired. It was with the water from this 
 firmament that the world was drowned when the 
 windows of heaven were opened. It was in this 
 
64 SOME MISTAKES OF MOSES. 
 
 firmament that the sons of God lived — the sons who 
 " saw the daughters of men that they were fair and 
 took them wives of all which they chose." The 
 issue of such marriages were giants, and " the same 
 became mighty men which were of old, men of 
 renown." 
 
 Nothing is clearer than that Moses regarded the 
 firmament as a vast material division that separated 
 the waters of the world, and upon whose floor God 
 lived, surrounded by his sons. In no other way could 
 he account for rain. Where did the water come 
 from ? He knew nothing about the laws of evapo- 
 ration. He did not know that the sun wooed with 
 amorous kisses the waves of the sea, and that they, 
 clad in glorified mist rising to meet their lover, were, 
 by disappointment, changed to tears and fell as 
 rain. 
 
 The idea that the firmament was the abode of 
 the Deity must have been in the mind of Moses 
 when he related the dream of Jacob. " And he 
 dreamed, and behold, a ladder set upon the earth 
 and the top of it reached to heaven ; and behold the 
 angels of God ascending and descending on it ; and 
 behold the Lord stood above it and said, I am the 
 Lord God." 
 
SOME MISTAKES OF MOSES. 65 
 
 So, when the people were building the tower of 
 Babel " the Lord came down to see the city, and the 
 tower which the children of men builded. And the 
 Lord said, Behold the people is one, and they have 
 all one language : and this they begin to do ; and 
 nothing will be restrained from them which they 
 imagined to do. Go to, let us go down and confound 
 their language that they may not understand one 
 another's speech." 
 
 The man who wrote that absurd account must 
 have believed that God lived above the earth, in the 
 firmament. The same idea was in the mind of the 
 Psalmist when he said that God "bowed the heavens 
 and came down." 
 
 Of course, God could easily remove any person 
 bodily to heaven, as it was but a little way above 
 the earth. "Enoch walked with God, and he was 
 not, for God took him." The accounts in the bible 
 of the ascension of Elijah, Christ and St. Paul were 
 born of the belief that the firmament was the dwelling- 
 place of God. It probably never occurred to these 
 writers that if the firmament was seven or eight miles 
 away, Enoch and the rest would have been frozen 
 perfectly stiff long before the journey could have 
 been completed. Possibly Elijah might have made 
 
 5 
 
66 SOME MISTAKES OF MOSES. 
 
 the voyage, as he was carried to heaven in a chariot 
 of fire "by a whirlwind." 
 
 The truth is, that Moses was mistaken, and 
 upon that mistake the christians located their 
 heaven and their hell. The telescope destroyed 
 the firmament, did away with the heaven of the 
 New Testament, rendered the ascension of our 
 Lord and the assumption of his Mother infinitely 
 absurd, crumbled to chaos the gates and palaces of 
 the New "Jerusalem, and in their places gave to man 
 a wilderness of worlds. 
 
VIII. 
 WEDNESDAY. 
 
 We are next informed by the historian of 
 Creation, that after God had finished 
 making the firmament and had succeeded in dividing 
 the waters by means of an "expanse," he proceeded 
 "to gather the waters on the earth together in seas, 
 so that the dry land might appear." 
 
 Certainly the writer of this did not have any 
 conception of the real form of the earth. He could 
 not have known anything of the attraction of gravi- 
 tation. He must have regarded the earth as flat and 
 supposed that it required considerable force and 
 power to induce the water to leave the mountains 
 and collect in the valleys. Just as soon as the water 
 was forced to run down hill, the dry land appeared, 
 and the grass began to grow, and the mantles of 
 green were thrown over the shoulders of the hills, 
 and the trees laughed into bud and blossom, and the 
 branches were laden with fruit. And all this 
 happened before a ray had left the quiver of the sun, 
 before a cditterin^ beam had thrilled the bosom of a 
 
6<S SOME MISTAKES OF MOSES. 
 
 flower, and before the Dawn with trembling hands 
 had drawn aside the curtains of the East and 
 welcomed to her arms the eager god of Day. 
 
 It does not seem to me that grass and trees could 
 grow and ripen into seed and fruit without the sun. 
 According to the account, this all happened on the 
 third day. Now, if, as the christians say, Moses did 
 not mean by the word day a period of twenty-four 
 hours, but an immense and almost measureless space 
 of time, and as God did not, according to this view 
 make any animals until the fifth day, that is, not for 
 millions of years after he made the grass and trees, 
 for what purpose did he cause the trees to bear 
 fruit ? 
 
 Moses says that God said on the third day, " Let 
 the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, 
 and the fruit tree yielding fruit after his kind, whose 
 seed is in itself upon the earth ; and it was so. And 
 the earth brought forth grass and herb yielding seed 
 after his kind, and the tree yielding fruit whose seed 
 was in itself after his kind ; and God saw that it was 
 good, and the evening and the morning were the 
 third day." 
 
 There was nothing to eat this fruit ; not an insect 
 with painted wings sought the honey of the flowers ; 
 
SOME MISTAKES OF MOSES. 69 
 
 not a single living, breathing thing upon the earth. 
 Plenty of grass, a great variety of herbs, an abundance 
 of fruit, but not a mouth in all the world. If Moses 
 is right, this state of things lasted only two days ; but 
 if the modern theologians are correct, it continued 
 for millions of ages. 
 
 " It is now well known that the organic history of 
 the earth can be properly divided into five epochs — 
 the Primordial, Primary, Secondary, Tertiary, and 
 Quaternary. Each of these epochs is characterized 
 by animal and vegetable life peculiar to itself. In the 
 First will be found Algse and Skull-less Vertebrates, 
 in the Second, Ferns and Fishes, in the Third, Pine 
 Forests and Reptiles, in the Fourth, Foliaceous 
 Forests and Mammals, and in the Fifth, Man." 
 
 How much more reasonable this is than the idea 
 that the Earth was covered with grass, and herbs, 
 and trees loaded with fruit for millions of years 
 before an animal existed. 
 
 There is, in Nature, an even balance forever kept 
 between the total amounts of animal and vegetable 
 life. "In her wonderful economy she must form and 
 bountifully nourish her vegetable progeny — twin- 
 brother life to her, with that of animals. The per- 
 fect balance between plant existences and animal 
 
^O SOME MISTAKES OF MOSES. 
 
 existences must always be maintained, while matter 
 courses through the eternal circle, becoming each in 
 turn. If an animal be resolved into its ultimate 
 constituents in a period according to the surrounding 
 circumstances, say, of four hours, of four months, of 
 four years, or even of four thousand years,— for it is 
 impossible to deny that there may be instances of all 
 these periods during which the process has continued 
 — those elements which assume the gaseous form 
 mingle at once with the atmosphere and are taken up 
 from it without delay by the ever-open mouths of 
 vegetable life. By a thousand pores in every leaf 
 the carbonic acid which renders the atmosphere unfit 
 for animal life is absorbed, the carbon being sepa- 
 rated, and assimilated to form the vegetable fibre, 
 which, as wood, makes and furnishes our houses and 
 ships, is burned for our warmth, or is stored up 
 under pressure for coal. All this carbon has played 
 its part, and many parts in its time, as animal 
 existences from monad up to man. Our mahogany 
 of to-day has been many negroes in its turn, and 
 before the African existed, was integral portions of 
 many a generation of extinct species." 
 
 It seems reasonable to suppose that certain kinds 
 of vegetation and certain kinds of animals should 
 
SOME MISTAKES OF MOSES. 7 1 
 
 exist together, and that as the character of the 
 vegetation changed, a corresponding change would 
 take place in the animal world. It may be that I am 
 led to these conclusions by " total depravity," or that 
 I lack the necessary humility of spirit to satisfactorily 
 harmonize Haeckel and Moses ; or that I am carried 
 away by pride, blinded by reason, given over to 
 hardness of heart that I might be damned, but I 
 never can believe that the earth was covered with 
 leaves, and buds, and flowers, and fruits before the 
 sun with glittering spear had driven back the hosts 
 of Night. 
 
IX. 
 
 THURSDAY. 
 
 After the world was covered with vegetation, it 
 occurred to Moses that it was about time to 
 make a sun and moon ; and so we are told that on 
 the fourth day God said, " Let there be light in the 
 firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the 
 night ; and let them be for signs and for seasons, and 
 for days and years ; and let them be for lights in the 
 firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth ; 
 and it was so. And God made two great lights ; the 
 greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to 
 rule the night; he made the stars also." 
 
 Can we believe that the inspired writer had any 
 idea of the size of the sun ? Draw a circle five inches 
 in diameter, and by its side thrust a pin through the 
 paper. The hole made by the pin will sustain about 
 the same relation to the circle that the earth does to 
 the sun. Did he know that the sun was eight 
 hundred and sixty thousand miles in diameter; that 
 it was enveloped in an ocean of fire thousands of 
 miles in depth, hotter even than the christian's hell, 
 
SOME MISTAKES OF MOSES. 73 
 
 over which sweep tempests of flame moving at the 
 rate of one hundred miles a second, compared with 
 which the wildest storm that ever wrecked the forests 
 of this world was but a calm ? Did he know that the 
 sun every moment of time throws out as much heat 
 as could be generated by the combustion of mill- 
 ions upon millions of tons of coal? Did he know 
 that the volume of the Earth is less than one-millionth 
 of that of the sun ? Did he know of the one hundred 
 and four planets belonging to our solar system, all 
 children of the sun ? Did he know of Jupiter eighty- 
 five thousand miles in diameter, hundreds of times as 
 large as our earth, turning on his axis at the rate of 
 twenty-five thousand miles an hour accompanied by 
 four moons, making the tour of his orbit in fifty years, 
 a distance of three thousand million miles ? Did he 
 know anything about Saturn, his rings and his eight 
 moons ? Did he have the faintest idea that all these 
 planets were once a part of the sun ; that the vast 
 luminary was once thousands of millions of miles in 
 diameter; that Neptune, Uranus, Saturn, Jupiter 
 and Mars were all born before our earth, and that by 
 no possibility could this world have existed three 
 days, nor three periods, nor three "good whiles" 
 before its source, the sun ? 
 
74 SOME MISTAKES OF MOSES. 
 
 Moses supposed the sun to be about three or four 
 feet in diameter and the moon about half that size. 
 Compared with the earth they were but simple 
 specks. This idea seems to have been shared by all 
 the "inspired" men. We find in the book of Joshua 
 that the sun stood still, and the moon stayed until 
 the people had avenged themselves upon their 
 enemies. " So the sun stood still in the midst 
 of heaven, and hasted not to go down about a 
 whole day." 
 
 We are told that the sacred writer wrote in 
 common speech as we do when we talk about the 
 rising and setting of the sun, and that all he intended 
 to say was that the earth ceased to turn on its axis 
 "for about a whole day." 
 
 My own opinion is that General Joshua knew no 
 more about the motions of the earth than he did about 
 mercy and justice. If he had known that the earth 
 turned upon its axis at the rate of a thousand miles 
 an hour, and swept in its course about the sun at the 
 rate of sixty-eight thousand miles an hour, he would 
 have doubled the hailstones, spoken of in the same 
 chapter, that the Lord cast down from heaven, and 
 allowed the sun and moon to rise and set in the 
 usual way. 
 
SOME MISTAKES OF MOSES. /5 
 
 It is impossible to conceive of a more absurd 
 story than this about the stopping of the sun and 
 moon, and yet nothing so excites the malice of the 
 orthodox preacher as to call its truth in question. 
 Some endeavor to account for the phenomenon by 
 natural causes, while others attempt to show that God 
 could, by the refraction of light have made the sun 
 visible although actually shining on the opposite side 
 of the earth. The last hypothesis has been seriously 
 urged by ministers within the last few months. The 
 Rev. Henry M. Morey of South Bend, Indiana, says 
 " that the phenomenon was simply optical. The 
 rotary motion of the earth was not disturbed, but the 
 light of the sun was prolonged by the same laws of 
 refraction and reflection by which the sun now 
 appears to be above the horizon when it is really 
 below. The medium through which the sun's rays 
 passed may have been miraculously influenced so as 
 to have caused the sun to linger above the horizon 
 long after its usual time for disappearance." 
 
 This is the latest and ripest product of christian 
 scholarship upon this question no doubt, but still it is 
 not entirely satisfactory to me. According to the 
 sacred account the sun did not linger, merely, above 
 the horizon, but stood still "in the midst of heaven 
 
SOME MISTAKES OF MOSES. 
 
 for about a whole day," that is to say, for about twelve 
 hours. If the air was miraculously changed, so that 
 it would refract the rays of the sun while the earth 
 turned over as usual for "about a whole day," then, 
 at the end of that time the sun must have been visible 
 in the east, that is, it must by that time have been 
 the next morning. According to this, that most 
 wonderful day must have been at least thirty-six 
 hours in length. We have first, the twelve hours of 
 natural light, then twelve hours of "refracted and 
 reflected" light. By that time it would again be 
 morning, and the sun would shine for twelve hours 
 more in the natural way, making thirty-six hours 
 in all. 
 
 If the Rev. Morey would depend a little less 
 on "refraction" and a little more on "reflection," he 
 would conclude that the whole story is simply a 
 barbaric myth and fable. 
 
 It hardly seems reasonable that God, if there is 
 one, would either stop the globe, change the consti- 
 tution of the atmosphere or the nature of light simply 
 to afford Joshua an opportunity to kill people on that 
 day when he could just as easily have waited until the 
 next morning. It certainly cannot be very gratifying 
 to God for us to believe such childish things. 
 
SOME MISTAKES OF MOSES. J J 
 
 It has been demonstrated that force is eternal ; 
 that it is forever active, and eludes destruction by- 
 change of form. Motion is a form of force, and all 
 arrested motion changes instantly to heat. The 
 earth turns upon its axis at about one thousand miles 
 an hour. Let it be stopped and a force beyond our 
 imagination is changed to heat. It has been calcu- 
 lated that to stop the world would produce as much 
 heat as the burning of a solid piece of coal three 
 times the size of the earth. And yet we are asked 
 to believe that this was done in order that one 
 barbarian might defeat another. Such stories never 
 would have been written, had not the belief been 
 general that the heavenly bodies were as nothing 
 compared with the earth. 
 
 The view of Moses was acquiesced in by the 
 Jewish people and by the Christian world for thou- 
 sands of years. It is supposed that Moses lived 
 about fifteen hundred years before Christ, and 
 although he was " inspired," and obtained his infor- 
 mation directly from God, he did not know as much 
 about our solar system as the Chinese did a thousand 
 years before he was born. " The Emperor Chwen- 
 hio adopted as an epoch, a conjunction of the planets 
 Mercury, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn, which has been 
 
J& SOME MISTAKES OF MOSES. 
 
 shown by M. Bailly to have occurred no less than 
 2449 years before Christ." The ancient Chinese 
 knew not only the motions of the planets, but they 
 could calculate eclipses. " In the reign of the 
 Emperor Chow-Kang, the chief astronomers, Ho 
 and Hi were condemned to death for neo-lectinof 
 to announce a solar eclipse which took place 2169 
 B. C, a clear proof that the prediction of eclipses was 
 a part of the duty of the imperial astronomers." 
 
 Is it not strange that a Chinaman should find out 
 by his own exertions more about the material 
 universe than Moses could when assisted by its 
 Creator ? 
 
 About eight hundred years after God gave 
 Moses the principal facts about the creation of the 
 " heaven and the earth " he performed another 
 miracle far more wonderful than stopping the world. 
 On this occasion he not only stopped the earth, but 
 actually caused it to turn the other way. A Jewish 
 king was sick, and God, in order to convince him 
 that he would ultimately recover, offered to make 
 the shadow on the dial go forward, or backward 
 ten degrees. The king thought it was too easy a 
 thing to make the shadow go forward, and asked 
 that it be turned back. Thereupon, " Isaiah the 
 
SOME MISTAKES OF MOSES. 79 
 
 prophet cried unto the Lord, and he brought the 
 shadow ten degrees backward by which it had gone 
 down in the dial of Ahaz." I hardly see how this 
 miracle could be accounted for even by " refraction " 
 and " reflection." 
 
 It seems, from the account, that this stupendous 
 miracle was performed after the king had been 
 cured. The account of the shadow gfoingf backward 
 is given in the eleventh verse of the twentieth 
 chapter of Second Kings, while the cure is given in 
 the seventh verse of the same chapter. " And 
 Isaiah said, Take a lump of figs. And they took and 
 laid it on the boil, and he recovered." 
 
 Stopping the world and causing it to turn back 
 ten degrees after that, seems to have been, as the 
 boil was already cured by the figs, a useless display 
 of power. 
 
 The easiest way to account for all these wonders 
 is to say that the ''inspired" writers were mistaken. 
 In this way a fearful burden is lifted from the credulity 
 of man, and he is left free to believe the evidences of 
 his own senses, and the demonstrations of science. 
 In this way he can emancipate himself from the 
 slavery of superstition, the control of the barbaric 
 dead, and the despotism of the church. 
 
SO SOME MISTAKES OF MOSES. 
 
 Only about a hundred years ago, Buffon, the 
 naturalist, was compelled by the faculty of theology 
 at Paris to publicly renounce fourteen "errors" in his 
 work on Natural History because they were at 
 variance with the Mosaic account of creation. The 
 Pentateuch is still the scientific standard of the 
 church, and ignorant priests, armed with that, pro- 
 nounce sentence upon the vast accomplishments of 
 modern thought. 
 
X. 
 
 "HE MADE THE STARS ALSO." 
 
 Moses came very near forgetting about the 
 stars, and only gave five words to all the 
 hosts of heaven. Can it be possible that he knew 
 anything about the stars beyond the mere fact that 
 he saw them shining above him ? 
 
 Did he know that the nearest star, the one we 
 ought to be the best acquainted with, is twenty-one 
 billion of miles away, and that it is a sun shining by 
 its own light ? Did he know of the next, that is 
 thirty-seven billion miles distant ? Is it possible that 
 he was acquainted with Sirius, a sun two thousand 
 six hundred and eighty-eight times larger than our 
 own, surrounded by a system of heavenly bodies, 
 several of which are already known, and distant from 
 us eighty-two billion miles ? Did he know that the 
 Polar star that tells the mariner his course and 
 guided slaves to liberty and joy, is distant from this 
 little world two hundred and ninety-two billion miles, 
 
 6 
 
82 SOME MISTAKES OF MOSES. 
 
 and that Capella wheels and shines one hundred and 
 thirty-three billion miles beyond ? Did he know 
 that it would require about seventy-two years for 
 light to reach us from this star ? Did he know that 
 light travels one hundred and eighty-five thousand 
 miles a second ? Did he know that some stars 
 are so far away in the infinite abysses that five 
 millions of years are required for their light to reach 
 this globe ? 
 
 If this is true, and if as the bible tells us, the 
 stars were made after the earth, then this world has 
 been wheeling in its orbit for at least five million 
 years. 
 
 It may be replied that it was not the intention 
 of God to teach geology and astronomy. Then 
 why did he say anything upon these subjects ? 
 and if he did say anything, why did he not give 
 the facts ? 
 
 According to the sacred records God created, on 
 the first day, the heaven 'and the earth, "moved upon 
 the face of the waters," and made the lieht. On the 
 second day he made the firmament or the "expanse" 
 and divided the waters. On the third day he 
 gathered the waters into seas, let the dry land appear 
 and caused the earth to bring forth grass, herbs and 
 
SOME MISTAKES OF MOSES. 83 
 
 fruit trees, and on the fourth day he made the sun, 
 moon and stars and set them in the firmament of 
 heaven to give light upon the earth. This division 
 of labor is very striking. The work of the other 
 "days is as nothing when compared with that of the 
 fourth. Is it possible that it required the same time 
 and labor to make the grass, herbs and fruit trees, 
 that it did to fill with countless constellations the 
 infinite expanse of space ? 
 
XI. 
 
 FRIDAY. 
 
 We are then told that on the next day " God 
 said, Let the waters bring forth abundantly 
 the moving creatures that hath life, and fowl that 
 may fly above the earth in the open firmament of 
 heaven. And God created great whales and every 
 living creature which the waters brought forth 
 abundantly, after their kind, and every winged fowl 
 after his kind, and God saw that it was good. And 
 God blessed them, saying, Be fruitful and multiply 
 and fill the waters in the seas, and let fowl multiply 
 in the earth." 
 
 Is it true that while the dry land was covered 
 with grass, and herbs, and trees bearing fruit, the 
 ocean was absolutely devoid of life, and so remained 
 for millions of years ? 
 
 If Moses meant twenty-four hours by the word 
 day, then it would make but little difference on which 
 of the six days animals were made ; but if the word 
 
SOME MISTAKES OF MOSES. 
 
 day was used to express millions of ages, during 
 which life was slowly evolved from monad up to 
 man, then the account becomes infinitely absurd, 
 puerile and foolish. There is not a scientist of high 
 standing who will say that in his judgment the earth 
 was covered with fruit bearing trees before the 
 moners, the ancestors it may be of the human race, 
 felt in Laurentian seas the first faint throb of life. 
 Nor is there one who will declare that there was a 
 single spire of grass before the sun had poured 
 upon the world his flood of gold. 
 
 Why should men in the name of religion try to 
 harmonize the contradictions that exist between 
 Nature and a book ? Why should philosophers be 
 denounced for placing more reliance upon what they 
 know than upon what they have been told ? If 
 there is a God, it is reasonably certain that he made 
 the world, but it is by no means certain that he is 
 the author of the bible. Why then should we not 
 place greater confidence in Nature than in a book ? 
 And even if this God made not only the world but 
 the book besides, it does not follow that the book is 
 the best part of Creation, and the only part that we 
 will be eternally punished for denying. It seems to 
 me that it is quite as important to know something 
 
86 SOME MISTAKES OF MOSES. 
 
 of the solar system, something of the physical history 
 of this globe, as it is to know the adventures of 
 Jonah or the diet of Ezekiel. For my part, I would 
 infinitely prefer to know all the results of scientific 
 investigation, than to be inspired as Moses was. 
 Supposing the bible to be true ; why is it any worse 
 or more wicked for free-thinkers to deny it, than for 
 priests to deny the doctrine of Evolution, or the 
 dynamic theory of heat ? Why should we be damned 
 for laughing at Samson and his foxes, while others, 
 holding the Nebular Hypothesis in utter contempt, 
 go straight to heaven ? It seems to me that a belief 
 in the great truths of science are fully as essential to 
 salvation, as the creed of any church. We are 
 taught that a man may be perfectly acceptable to 
 God even if he denies the rotundity of the earth, the 
 Copernican system, the three laws of Kepler, the 
 indestructibility of matter and the attraction of 
 gravitation. And we are also taught that a man 
 may be right upon all these questions, and yet, for 
 failing to believe in the " scheme of salvation," be 
 eternally lost. 
 
XII. 
 SATURDAY. 
 
 On this, the last day of creation, God said : — 
 " Let the earth bring forth the living creature 
 after his kind, cattle and creeping thing and beast of 
 the earth after his kind ; and it was so. And God 
 made the beast of the earth after his kind, and cattle 
 after their kind, and every thing that creepeth upon 
 the earth after his kind ; and God saw that it was 
 good." 
 
 Now, is it true that the seas were filled with fish, 
 the sky with fowls, and the earth covered with grass, 
 and herbs, and fruit bearing trees, millions of ages 
 before there was a creeping thing in existence ? 
 Must we admit that plants and animals were the 
 result of the fiat of some incomprehensible intelligence 
 independent of the operation of what are known as 
 natural causes ? Why is a miracle any more 
 necessary to account for yesterday than for to-day 
 or for to-morrow ? 
 
SOME MISTAKES OF MOSES. 
 
 If there is an infinite Power, nothing can be more 
 certain than that this Power works in accordance with 
 what we call law, that is, by and through natural 
 causes. If anything can be found without a pedigree 
 of natural antecedents, it will then be time enough to 
 talk about the fiat of creation. There must have 
 been a time when plants and animals did not exist 
 upon this globe. The question, and the only question 
 is, whether they were naturally produced. If the 
 account given by Moses is true, then the vegetable 
 and animal existences are the result of certain special 
 fiats of creation entirely independent of the operation 
 of natural causes. This is so grossly improbable, so at 
 variance with the experience and observation of man- 
 kind, that it cannot be adopted without abandoning 
 forever the basis of scientific thought and action. 
 
 It may be urged that we do not understand the 
 sacred record correctly. To this it may be replied 
 that for thousands of years the account of the creation 
 has, by the Jewish and Christian world, been regarded 
 as literally true. If it was inspired, of course God 
 must have known just how it would be understood, 
 and consequently must have intended that it should 
 be understood just as he knew it would be. One 
 man writing to another, may mean one thing, and 
 
SOME MISTAKES OF MOSES. 89 
 
 yet be understood as meaning something else. 
 Now, if the writer knew that he would be misunder- 
 stood, and also knew that he could use other words 
 that would convey his real meaning, but did not, we 
 would say that he used words on purpose to mislead, 
 and was not an honest man. 
 
 If a being of infinite wisdom wrote the bible, or 
 caused it to be written, he must have known exactly 
 how his words would be interpreted by all the world, 
 and he must have intended to convey the very 
 meaning that was conveyed. He must have known 
 that by reading that book, man would form erroneous 
 views as to the shape, antiquity, and size of this 
 world ; that he would be misled as to the time and 
 order of creation ; that he would have the most 
 childish and contemptible views of the creator ; that 
 the "sacred word" would be used to support slavery 
 and polygamy ; that it would build dungeons for the 
 good, and light fagots to consume the brave, and 
 therefore he must have intended that these results 
 should follow. He also must have known that 
 thousands and millions of men and women never 
 could believe his bible, and that the number of unbe- 
 lievers would increase in the exact ratio of civilization, 
 and therefore, he must have intended that result. 
 
90 SOME MISTAKES OF MOSES. 
 
 Let us understand this. An honest finite being 
 uses the best words, in his judgment, to convey his 
 meaning. This is the best he can do, because he 
 cannot certainly know the exact effect of his words 
 on others. But an infinite being must know not only 
 the real meaning of the words, but the exact meaning 
 they will convey to every reader and hearer. He 
 must know every meaning that they are capable of 
 conveying to every mind. He must also know what 
 explanations must be made to prevent misconception. 
 If an infinite being cannot, in making a revelation to 
 man, use such words that every person to whom a 
 revelation is essential will understand distinctly what 
 that revelation is, then a revelation from God through 
 the instrumentality of language is impossible, or it is 
 not essential that all should understand it correctly. 
 It may be urged that millions have not the capacity 
 to understand a revelation, although expressed in the 
 plainest words. To this it seems a sufficient reply 
 to ask, why a being of infinite power should create 
 men so devoid of intelligence, that he cannot by any 
 means make known to them his will ? We are told 
 that it is exceedingly plain, and that a wayfaring 
 man, though a fool, need not err therein. This 
 statement is refuted by the religious history of the 
 
SOME MISTAKES OF MOSES. §1 
 
 christian world. Every sect is a certificate that God 
 has not plainly revealed his will to man. To each 
 reader the bible conveys a different meaning. About 
 the meaning of this booK, called a revelation, there 
 have been a^es of war, and centuries of sword and 
 flame. If written by an infinite God, he must have 
 known that these results must follow ; and thus 
 knowing, he must be responsible for all. 
 
 Is it not infinitely more reasonable to say that 
 this book is the work of man, that it is filled with 
 mingled truth and error, with mistakes and facts, and 
 reflects, too faithfully perhaps, the "very form and 
 pressure of its time ? " 
 
 If there are mistakes in the bible, certainly they 
 were made by man. If there is anything contrary to 
 nature, it was written by man. If there is anything 
 immoral, cruel, heartless or infamous, it certainly was 
 never written by a being worthy of the adoration 
 of mankind. 
 
XIII. 
 
 LET US MAKE MAN.* 
 
 We are next informed by the author of the 
 Pentateuch that God said " Let us make 
 man in our image, after our likeness," and that 
 " God created man in his own image, in the image 
 of God created he him — male and female created he 
 them." 
 
 If this account means anything, it means that 
 man was created in the physical image and likeness 
 of God. Moses while he speaks of man as having 
 been made in the image of God, never speaks of 
 God except as having the form of a man. He 
 speaks of God as " walking in the garden in the cool 
 of the day ; " and that Adam and Eve " heard his 
 voice." He is constantly telling what God said, and 
 in a thousand passages he refers to him as not only 
 having the human form, but as performing actions, 
 such as man performs. The God of Moses was a 
 God with hands, with feet, with the organs of speech. 
 
SOME MISTAKES OF MOSES. 93 
 
 A God of passion, of hatred, of revenge, of affection, 
 of repentance ; a God who made mistakes : — in 
 other words, an immense and powerful man. 
 
 It will not do to say that Moses meant to convey 
 the idea that God made man in his mental or moral 
 image. Some have insisted that man was made in 
 the moral image of God because he was made pure. 
 Purity cannot be manufactured. A moral character 
 cannot be made for man by a god. Every man 
 must make his own moral character. Consequently, 
 if God is infinitely pure, Adam and Eve were not 
 made in his image in that respect. Others say that 
 Adam and Eve were made in the mental image of 
 God. If it is meant by that, that they were created 
 with reasoning powers like, but not to the extent of 
 those possessed by a god, then this may be admitted. 
 But certainly this idea was not in the mind of Moses. 
 He regarded the human form as being in the image 
 of God, and for that reason always spoke of God as 
 having- that form. No one can read the Pentateuch 
 without coming to the conclusion that the author 
 supposed that man was created in the physical like- 
 ness of Deity. God said " Go to, let us go down." 
 " God smelled a sweet savor ; " " God repented him 
 that he had made man ; " " and God said ; " and 
 
94 SOME MISTAKES OF MOSES. 
 
 " walked ; " and " talked ; " and " rested." All these 
 expressions are inconsistent with any other idea than 
 that the person using them regarded God as having 
 the form of man. 
 
 As a matter of fact, it is impossible for a man to 
 conceive of a personal God, other than as a being 
 having the human form. No one can think of an 
 infinite being having the form of a horse, or of a 
 bird, or of any animal beneath man. It is one of 
 the necessities of the mind to associate forms with 
 intellectual capacities. The highest form of which 
 we have any conception is man's, and consequently, 
 his is the only form that we can find in imagination 
 to give to a personal God, because all other forms 
 are, in our minds, connected with lower intelligences. 
 
 It is impossible to think of a personal God as a 
 spirit without form. We can use these words, but 
 they do not convey to the mind any real and 
 tangible meaning. Every one who thinks of a 
 personal God at all, thinks of him as having the 
 human form. Take from God the idea of form ; 
 speak of him simply as an all pervading spirit — 
 which means an all pervading something about 
 which we know nothing — and Pantheism is the 
 result. 
 
SOME MISTAKES OF MOSES. 95 
 
 We are told that God made man ; and the 
 question naturally arises, how was this done ? Was 
 it by a process of "evolution," "development;" 
 the " transmission of acquired habits ; " the " sur- 
 vival of the fittest," or was the necessary amount of 
 clay kneaded to the proper consistency, and then 
 by the hands of God moulded into form ? Modern 
 science tells that man has been evolved, through 
 countless epochs, from the lower forms ; that he is 
 the result of almost an infinite number of actions, 
 reactions, experiences, states, forms, wants and adap- 
 tations. Did Moses intend to convey such a mean- 
 ing, or did he believe that God took a sufficient 
 amount of dust, made it the proper shape, and 
 breathed into it the breath of life ? Can any 
 believer in the bible give any reasonable account of 
 this process of creation ? Is it possible to imagine 
 what was really done ? Is there any theologian 
 who will contend that man was created directly from 
 the earth ? Will he say that man was made sub- 
 stantially as he now is, with all his muscles properly 
 developed for walking and speaking, and performing 
 every variety of human action ? That all his bones 
 were formed as they now are, and all the relations of 
 nerve, ligament, brain and motion as they are to-day ? 
 
96 SOME MISTAKES OF MOSES. 
 
 Looking back over the history of animal life from 
 the lowest to the highest forms, we find that there 
 has been a slow and gradual development ; a certain 
 but constant relation between want and production ; 
 between use and form. The Moner is said to be the 
 simplest form of animal life that has yet been found. 
 It has been described as " an organism without 
 organs." It is a kind of structureless structure ; a 
 little mass of transparent jelly that can flatten itself 
 out, and can expand and contract around its food. 
 It can feed without a mouth, digest without a stomach, 
 walk without feet, and reproduce itself by simple 
 division. By taking this Moner as the commence- 
 ment of animal life, or rather as the first animal, it is 
 easy to follow the development of the organic 
 structure through all the forms of life to man himself. 
 In this way finally every muscle, bone and joint, 
 every organ, form and function may be accounted for. 
 In this way, and in this way only, can the existence 
 of rudimentary organs be explained. Blot from the 
 human mind the ideas of evolution, heredity, adapta- 
 tion, and "the survival of the fittest," with which it has 
 been enriched by Lamarck, Goethe, Darwin, Hceckel 
 and Spencer, and all the facts in the history of animal 
 life become utterly disconnected and meaningless. 
 
SOME MISTAKES OF MOSES. 97 
 
 Shall we throw away all that has been dis- 
 covered with regard to organic life, and in its 
 place take the statements of one who lived in the 
 rude morning of a barbaric day ? Will anybody now 
 contend that man was a direct and independent 
 creation, and sustains and bears no relation to the 
 animals below him ? Belief upon this subject must 
 be governed at last by evidence. Man cannot 
 believe as he pleases. He can control his speech, 
 and can say that he believes or disbelieves ; but after 
 all, his will cannot depress or raise the scales with 
 which his reason finds the worth and weight of facts. 
 If this is not so, investigation, evidence, judgment 
 and reason are but empty words. 
 
 I ask again, how were Adam and Eve created ? 
 In one account they are created male and female, 
 and apparently at the same time. In the next 
 account, Adam is made first, and Eve a long time 
 afterwards, and from a part of the man. Did God 
 simply by his creative fiat cause a rib slowly to 
 expand, grow and divide into nerve, ligament, car- 
 tilage and flesh ? How was the woman created 
 from a rib ? How was man created simply from 
 dust ? For my part, I cannot believe this statement. 
 I may suffer for this in the world to come ; and may, 
 
 7 
 
98 SOME MISTAKES OF MOSES. 
 
 millions of years hence, sincerely wish that I had 
 never investigated the subject, but had been content 
 to take the ideas of the dead. I do not believe that 
 any Deity works in that way. So far as my experience 
 goes, there is an unbroken procession of cause and 
 effect. Each thing is a necessary link in an infinite 
 chain ; and I cannot conceive of this chain being 
 broken even for one instant. Back of the simplest 
 moner there is a cause, and back of that another, and 
 so on, it seems to me, forever. In my philosophy I 
 postulate neither beginning nor ending. 
 
 If the Mosaic account is true, we know how long 
 man has been uppn this earth. If that account can 
 be relied on, the first man was made about five 
 thousand eight hundred and eighty-three years ago. 
 Sixteen hundred and fifty-six years after the making 
 of the first man, the inhabitants of the world, with 
 the exception of eight people, were destroyed by a 
 flood. This flood occurred only about four thousand 
 two hundred and twenty-seven years ago. If this ac- 
 count is correct, at that time, only one kind of men 
 existed. Noah and his family were certainly of the 
 same blood. It therefore follows that all the differences 
 we see between the various races of men have been 
 caused in about four thousand years, If the 
 
SOME MISTAKES OF MOSES. 99 
 
 account of the deluge is true, then since that event 
 all the ancient kingdoms of the earth were founded, 
 and their inhabitants passed through all the stages 
 of savage, nomadic, barbaric and semi-civilized life ; 
 through the epochs of Stone, Bronze and Iron ; 
 established commerce, cultivated the arts, built 
 cities, filled them with palaces and temples, invented 
 writing, produced a literature and slowly fell to 
 shapeless ruin. We must believe that all this has 
 happened within a period of four thousand years. 
 
 From representations found upon Egyptian 
 granite made more than three thousand years ago, we 
 know that the negro was as black, his lips as full, and 
 his hair as closely curled then as now. If we know 
 anything, we know that there was at that time sub- 
 stantially the same difference between the Egyptian 
 and the Negro as now. If we know anything, we 
 know that magnificent statues were made in Egypt 
 four thousand years before our era— that is to say, 
 about six thousand years ago. There was at the 
 World's Exposition, in the Egyptian department, a 
 statue of king Cephren, known to have been 
 chiseled more than six thousand years ago. In 
 other words, if the Mosaic account must be believed, 
 this statue was made before the world. We also 
 
IOO SOME MISTAKES OF MOSES. 
 
 know, if we know anything, that men lived in 
 Europe with the hairy mammoth, the cave bear, the 
 rhinoceros, and the hyena. Among the bones of 
 these animals have been found the stone hatchets 
 and flint arrows of our ancestors. In the caves 
 where they lived have been discovered the remains 
 of these animals that had been conquered, killed and 
 devoured .as food, hundreds of thousands of years 
 ago. 
 
 If these facts are true, Moses was mistaken. 
 For my part, I have infinitely more confidence in the 
 discoveries of to-day, than in the records of a bar- 
 barous people. It will not now do to say that man 
 has existed upon this earth for only about six thou- 
 sand years. One can hardly compute in his imag- 
 ination the time necessary for man to emerge from 
 the barbarous state, naked and helpless, surrounded 
 by animals far more powerful than he, to progress 
 and finally create the civilizations of India, Egypt and 
 Athens. The distance from savagery to Shake- 
 speare must be measured not by hundreds, but by 
 millions of years. 
 
XIV. 
 
 SUNDAY. 
 
 w 7T nd on the seventh day God ended his work 
 _£\_ which he had made, and he rested on the 
 seventh day from all his work which he had made. 
 And God blessed the seventh day and sanctified it; 
 because that in it he had rested from all his work 
 which God created and made." 
 
 The great work had been accomplished, the world, 
 the sun, and moon, and all the hosts of heaven were 
 finished ; the earth was clothed in green, the seas 
 were filled with life, the cattle wandered by the 
 brooks — insects with painted wings were in the happy 
 air, Adam and Eve were making each other's 
 acquaintance, and God was resting from his work. 
 He was contemplating the accomplishments of a 
 week. 
 
 Because he rested on that day he sanctified it, 
 and for that reason and for that alone, it was by the 
 Jews considered a holy day. If he only rested on 
 
102 SOME MISTAKES OF MOSES. 
 
 that day, there ought to be some account of what he 
 did the following Monday. Did he rest on that day ? 
 What did he do after he got rested ? Has he done 
 anything in the way of creation since Saturday 
 evening of the first week ? 
 
 It is now claimed by the "scientific" christians 
 that the "days" of creation were not ordinary days 
 of twenty-four hours each, but immensely long 
 periods of time. If they are right, then how long 
 was the seventh day ? Was that, too, a geologic 
 period covering thousands of ages ? That cannot 
 be, because Adam and Eve were created the Saturday 
 evening before, and according to the bible that was 
 about five thousand eight hundred and eighty-three 
 years ago. I cannot state the time exactly, because 
 there have been as many as one hundred and forty 
 different opinions given by learned biblical students 
 as to the time between the creation of the world and 
 the birth of Christ. We are quite certain, however, 
 that, according to the bible, it is not more than six 
 thousand years since the creation of Adam. From 
 this it would appear that the seventh day was not a 
 geologic epoch, but was in fact a period of less than 
 six thousand years, and probably of only twenty-four 
 hours. 
 
SOME MISTAKES OF MOSES. IO3 
 
 The theologians who " answer " these things may 
 take their choice. If they take the ground that the 
 " days " were periods of twenty-four hours, then 
 geology will force them to throw away the whole 
 account. If, on the other hand, they admit that the 
 days were vast "periods," then the sacredness of the 
 sabbath must be given up. 
 
 There is found in the bible no intimation that 
 there was the least difference in the days. They are 
 all spoken of in the same way. It may be replied 
 that our translation is incorrect. If this is so, then 
 only those who understand Hebrew, have had a 
 revelation from God, and all the rest have been 
 deceived. 
 
 How is it possible to sanctify a space of time ? 
 Is rest holier than labor ? If there is any difference 
 between days, ought not that to be considered best 
 in which the most useful labor has been performed ? 
 
 Of all the superstitions of mankind, this insanity 
 about the " sacred sabbath " is the most absurd. The 
 idea of feeling it a duty to be solemn and sad one- 
 seventh of the time ! To think that we can please 
 an infinite being by staying in some dark and sombre 
 room, instead of walking in the perfumed fields ! 
 Why should God hate to see a man happy ? Why 
 
104 SOME MISTAKES OF MOSES. 
 
 should it excite his wrath to see a family in the 
 woods, by some babbling stream, talking, laughing 
 and loving? Nature works on that "sacred" day. 
 The earth turns, the rivers run, the trees grow, buds 
 burst into flower, and birds fill the air with song. 
 Why should we look sad, and think about death, and 
 hear about hell ? Why should that day be filled with 
 gloom instead of joy? 
 
 A poor mechanic, working all the week in dust 
 and noise, needs a day of rest and joy, a day to visit 
 stream and wood — a day to live with wife and child ; 
 a day in which to laugh at care, and gather hope and 
 strength for toils to come. And his weary wife needs 
 a breath of sunny air, away from street and wall, 
 amid the hills or by the margin of the sea, where she 
 can sit and prattle with her babe, and fill with happy 
 dreams the long, glad day. 
 
 The "sabbath" was born of asceticism, hatred 
 of human joy, fanaticism, ignorance, egotism of 
 priests and the cowardice of the people. This day, 
 for thousands of years, has been dedicated to super- 
 stition, to tt"^ dissemination of mistakes, and the 
 establishment of falsehoods. Every Freethinker, 
 as a matter of duty, should violate this day. He 
 should assert his independence, and do all within his 
 
SOMfi mistakes of moses. io5 
 
 power to wrest the sabbath from the gloomy church 
 and give it back to liberty and joy. Freethinkers 
 should make the sabbath a day of mirth and music ; 
 a day to spend with wife and child — a day of games, 
 and books, and dreams — a day to put fresh flowers 
 above our sleeping dead — a day of memory and hope, 
 of love and rest. 
 
 Why should we in this age of the world be 
 dominated by the dead ? Why should barbarian 
 Jews who went down to death and dust three 
 thousand years ago, control the living world ? Why 
 should we care for the superstition of men who began 
 the sabbath by paring their nails, "beginning at the 
 fourth finger, then going to the second, then to the 
 fifth, then to the third, and ending with the thumb ? " 
 How pleasing to God this must have been. The 
 Jews were very careful of these nail parings. They 
 who threw them upon the ground were wicked, 
 because Satan used them to work evil upon the 
 earth. They believed that upon the Sabbath, souls 
 were allowed to leave purgatory and cool their 
 burning souls in water. Fires were neither allowed 
 to be kindled nor extinguished, and upon that day it 
 was a sin to bind up wounds. "The lame might use 
 a staff, but the blind could not." So strict was the 
 
I06 SOME MISTAKES OF MOSES. 
 
 sabbath kept, that at one time " if a Jew on a journey 
 was overtaken by the 'sacred day' in a wood, or on 
 the highway, no matter where, nor under what 
 circumstances, he must sit down," and there remain 
 until the day was gone. "If he fell down in the 
 dirt, there he was compelled to stay until the day 
 was done." For violating the sabbath, the punish- 
 ment was death, for nothing short of the offender's 
 blood could satisfy the wrath of God. There are, in 
 the Old Testament, two reasons given for abstaining 
 from labor on the sabbath : — the resting of God, and 
 the redemption of the Jews from the bondage of 
 Egypt. 
 
 Since the establishment of the Christian religion, 
 the day has been changed, and Christians do not 
 regard the day as holy upon which God actually 
 rested, and which he sanctified. The Christian 
 Sabbath, or the " Lord's day" was legally established 
 by the murderer Constantine, because upon that day 
 Christ was supposed to have risen from the dead. 
 
 It is not easy to see where Christians got the 
 right to disregard the direct command of God, to 
 labor on the day he sanctified, and keep as sacred, a 
 day upon which he commanded men to labor. The 
 labbath of God is Saturday, and if any day is to be 
 
SOME MISTAKES OF MOSES. IOJ 
 
 kept holy, that is the one, and not the Sunday of 
 the Christian. 
 
 Let us throw away these superstitions and take 
 the higher, nobler ground, that every day should be 
 rendered sacred by some loving act, by increasing 
 the happinesss of man, giving birth to noble thoughts, 
 putting in the path of toil some flower of joy, helping 
 the unfortunate, lifting the fallen, dispelling gloom, 
 destroying prejudice, defending the helpless and 
 filling homes with light and love. 
 
XV. 
 THE NECESSITY FOR A GOOD MEMORY. 
 
 It must not be forgotten that there are two accounts 
 of the creation in Genesis. The first account 
 stops with the third verse of the second chapter. 
 The chapters have been improperly divided. In the 
 original Hebrew the Pentateuch was neither divided 
 into chapters nor verses. There was not even any 
 system of punctuation. It was written wholly with 
 consonants, without vowels, and without any marks, 
 dots, or lines to indicate them. 
 
 These accounts are materially different, and both 
 cannot be true. Let us see wherein they differ. 
 
 The second account of the creation begins with 
 the fourth verse of the second chapter, and is as 
 follows : 
 
 " These are the generations of the heavens 
 and of the earth when they were created, in the 
 day that the Lord God made the earth and the 
 heavens. 
 
SOME MISTAKES OF MOSES. IO9 
 
 " And every plant of the field before it was in the 
 earth, and every herb of the field before it grew ; for 
 the Lord God had not caused it to rain upon the 
 earth, and there was not a man to till the ground. 
 
 " But there went up a mist from the earth and 
 watered the whole face of the ground. 
 
 " And the Lord God formed man of the dust 
 of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the 
 breath of life ; and man became a living soul. 
 
 " And the Lord God planted a garden eastward 
 in Eden ; and there he put the man whom he had 
 formed. 
 
 " And out of the ground made the Lord God to 
 grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight, and 
 good for food ; the tree of life also in the midst of 
 the garden, and the tree of knowledge of good and 
 evil. 
 
 " And a river went out of Eden to water the 
 garden ; and from thence it was parted and became 
 into four heads. 
 
 " The name of the first is Pison ; that is it which 
 compasseth the whole land of Havilah, where there 
 is gold. 
 
 " And the gold of that land is good : there is 
 bdellium and the onyx stone. 
 
IIO SOME MISTAKES OF MOSES. 
 
 " And the name of the second river is Gihon : 
 the same is it that compasseth the whole land of 
 Ethiopia. 
 
 " And the name of the third river is Hiddekel ; 
 that is it which goeth toward the east of Assyria. 
 And the fourth river is Euphrates. 
 
 "And the Lord God took the man, and put him 
 into the garden of Eden to dress it and to keep it. 
 
 " And the Lord God commanded the man, 
 saying, Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely 
 eat ; But of the tree of the knowledge of good and 
 evil, thou shalt not eat of it ; for in the day that 
 thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die. 
 
 " And the Lord God said, It is not good that the 
 man should be alone ; I will make him an helpmeet 
 for him. 
 
 " And out of the ground the Lord God formed 
 every beast of the field, and every fowl of the air ; 
 and brought them unto Adam to see what he would 
 call them : and whatsoever Adam called every living 
 creature, that was the name thereof. 
 
 " And Adam gave names to all cattle, and to the 
 fowl of the air, and to every beast of the field ; but 
 for Adam there was not found a helpmeet for 
 him. 
 
SOME MISTAKES OF MOSES. I I I 
 
 " And the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall 
 upon Adam, and he slept ; and he took one of his 
 ribs, and closed up the flesh instead thereof; 
 
 " And the rib, which the Lord God had taken from 
 man, made he a woman and brought her unto the man. 
 
 "And Adam said, This is now bone of my bones, 
 and flesh of my flesh ; she shall be called Woman, 
 because she was taken out of man. 
 
 "Therefore shall a man leave his father and his 
 mother, and shall cleave unto his wife ; and they 
 shall be one flesh. 
 
 " And they were both naked, the man and his 
 wife, and were not ashamed." 
 
 Order of creation in the first account : 
 
 i. The heaven and the earth, and light were 
 made. 
 
 2. The firmament was constructed and the 
 waters divided. 
 
 3. The waters gathered into seas — and then 
 came dry land, grass, herbs and fruit trees. 
 
 4. The sun and moon. He made the stars also. 
 
 5. Fishes, fowls, and great whales. 
 
 6. Beasts, cattle, every creeping thing, man and 
 woman. 
 
i i 2 some mistakes of moses. 
 
 Order of creation in the second account : 
 
 i. The heavens and the earth. 
 
 2. A mist went up from the earth, and watered 
 the whole face of the ground. 
 
 3. Created a man out of dust, by the name of 
 Adam. 
 
 4. Planted a garden eastward in Eden, and put 
 the man in it. 
 
 5. Created the beasts and fowls. 
 
 6. Created a woman out of one of the man's 
 ribs. 
 
 In the second account, man was made before the 
 beasts and fowls. If this is true, the first account is 
 false. And if the theologians of our time are correct 
 in their view that the Mosaic day means thousands 
 of ages, then, according to the second account, Adam 
 existed millions of years before Eve was formed. 
 He must have lived one Mosaic day before there 
 were any trees, and another Mosaic day before the 
 beasts and fowls were created. Will some kind 
 clergymen tell us upon what kind of food Adam 
 subsisted during these immense periods ? 
 
 In the second account a man is made, and the 
 fact that he was without a helpmeet did not occur to 
 
SOME MISTAKES OF MOSES. I 1 3 
 
 the Lord God until a couple "of vast periods" after- 
 wards. The Lord God suddenly coming to an 
 appreciation of the situation said, " It is not good that 
 the man should be alone. I will make him a help- 
 meet for him." 
 
 Now, after concluding to make " an helpmeet" for 
 Adam, what did the Lord God do ? Did he at once 
 proceed to make a woman ? No. What did he do ? 
 He made the beasts, and tried to induce Adam to 
 take one of them for "an helpmeet." If I am 
 incorrect, read the following account, and tell me 
 what it means : 
 
 "And the Lord God said, It is not good that the 
 man should be alone ; I will make him an helpmeet 
 for him. 
 
 "And out of the ground the Lord God 
 formed every beast of the field, and every fowl 
 of the air; and brought them unto Adam to see 
 what he would call them : and whatsoever Adam 
 called every living creature, that was the name 
 thereof. 
 
 "And Adam gave names to all cattle, and to 
 the fowl of the air, and to every beast of the field ; 
 but for Adam there was not found an helpmeet 
 for him." 
 
 8 
 
114 SOME MISTAKES OF MOSES. 
 
 Unless the Lord God was looking for an help- 
 meet for Adam, why did he cause the animals to 
 pass before him ? And why did he, after the 
 menagerie had passed by, pathetically exclaim, 
 " But for Adam there was not found an helpmeet 
 for him ?" 
 
 It seems that Adam saw nothing that struck his 
 fancy. The fairest ape, the sprightliest chimpanzee, 
 the loveliest baboon, the most bewitching orang- 
 outang, the most fascinating gorilla failed to touch 
 with love's sweet pain, poor Adam's lonely heart. 
 Let us rejoice that this was so. Had he fallen in 
 love then, there never would have been a Free- 
 thinker in this world. 
 
 Dr. Adam Clark, speaking of this remarkable 
 proceeding says: — "God caused the animals to pass 
 before Adam to show him that no creature yet formed 
 could make him a suitable companion ; that Adam 
 was convinced that none of these animals could be 
 a suitable companion for him, and that therefore 
 he must continue in a state that was not good 
 (celibacy) unless he became a further debtor to 
 the bounty of his maker, for among all the animals 
 which he had formed, there was not a helpmeet 
 for Adam." 
 
SOME MISTAKES OF MOSES. I 1 5 
 
 Upon this same subject, Dr. Scott informs us 
 "that it was not conducive to the happiness of the 
 man to remain without the consoling society, and 
 endearment of tender friendship, nor consistent with 
 the end of his creation to be without marriage by 
 which the earth might be replenished and worshipers 
 and servants raised up to render him praise and 
 glory. Adam seems to have been vastly better 
 acquainted by intuition or revelation with the distinct 
 properties of every creature than the most sagacious 
 observer since the fall of man. 
 
 " Upon this review of the animals, not one was 
 found in outward form his counterpart, nor one suited 
 to engage his affections, participate in his enjoyments, 
 or associate with him in the worship of God." 
 
 Dr. Matthew Henry admits that "God brought 
 all the animals together to see if there was a suitable 
 match for Adam in any of the numerous families of 
 the inferior creatures, but there was none. They 
 were all looked over, but Adam could not be matched 
 among them all. Therefore God created a new thing 
 to be a helpmeet for him." 
 
 Failing to satisfy Adam with any of the inferior 
 animals, the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall 
 upon him, and while in this sleep took out one of 
 
I 1 6 SOME MISTAKES OF MOSES. 
 
 Adam's ribs and " closed up the flesh instead thereof." 
 And out of this rib, the Lord God made a woman, 
 and brought her to the man. 
 
 Was the Lord God compelled to take a part of 
 the man because he had used up all the original 
 "nothing" out of which the universe was made ? Is 
 it possible for any sane and intelligent man to believe 
 this story ? Must a man be born a second time 
 before this account seems reasonable ? 
 
 Imagine the Lord God with a bone in his hand 
 with which to start a woman, trying to make up his 
 mind whether to make a blonde or a brunette ! 
 
 Just at this point it may be proper for me to 
 warn all persons from laughing at or making light of, 
 any stories found in the " Holy Bible." When you 
 come to die, every laugh will be a thorn in your 
 pillow. At that solemn moment, as you look back 
 upon the records of your life, no matter how many 
 men you may have wrecked and ruined ; no matter 
 how many women you have deceived and deserted, 
 all that can be forgiven ; but if you remember then 
 that you have laughed at even one story in God's 
 " sacred book " you will see through the gathering 
 shadows of death the forked tongues of devils, and 
 the leering eyes of fiends. 
 
SOME MISTAKES OF MOSES. I I J 
 
 These stories must be believed, or the work 
 of regeneration can never be commenced. No 
 matter how well you act your part, live as honestly 
 as you may, clothe the naked, feed the hungry, 
 divide your last farthing with the poor, and you are 
 simply traveling the broad road that leads inevitably 
 to eternal death, unless at the same time you im- 
 plicitly believe the bible to be the inspired word of 
 God. 
 
 Let me show you the result of unbelief. Let us 
 suppose, for a moment, that we are at the Day of 
 Judgment, listening to the trial of souls as they 
 arrive. The Recording Secretary, or whoever does 
 the cross-examining, says to a soul : 
 
 Where are you from ? 
 
 I am from the Earth. 
 
 What kind of a man were you ? 
 
 Well, I don't like to talk about myself. I sup- 
 pose you can tell by looking at your books. 
 
 No sir. You must tell what kind of a man you 
 were. 
 
 Well, I was what you might call a first-rate 
 fellow. I loved my wife and children. My 
 home was my heaven. My fireside was a 
 paradise to me. To sit there and see the lights 
 
Il8 SOME MISTAKES OF MOSES. 
 
 and shadows fall upon the faces of those I loved, 
 was to me a perfect joy. 
 
 How did you treat your family ? 
 
 I never said an unkind word. I never caused 
 my wife, nor one of my children, a moment's pain. 
 
 Did you pay your debts ? 
 
 I did not owe a dollar when I died, and left 
 enough to pay my funeral expenses, and to keep the 
 fierce wolf of want from the door of those I loved. 
 
 Did you belong to any church ? 
 
 No sir. They were too narrow, pinched and 
 bigoted for me, I never thought that I could be very 
 happy if other folks were damned. 
 
 Did you believe in eternal punishment ? 
 
 Well, no. I always thought that God could get 
 his revenge in far less time. 
 
 Did you believe the rib story ? 
 
 Do you mean the Adam and Eve business ? 
 
 Yes ! Did you believe that ? 
 
 To tell you the God's truth, that was just a little 
 more than I could swallow. 
 
 Away with him to hell ! 
 
 Next! 
 
 Where are you from ? 
 I am from the world too. 
 
SOME MISTAKES OF MOSES. I 1 9 
 
 Did you belong to any church ? 
 
 Yes sir, and to the Young- Men's Christian As- 
 sociation besides. 
 
 What was your business ? 
 
 Cashier in a Savings Bank. 
 
 Did you ever run away with any money ? 
 
 Where I came from, a witness could not be com- 
 pelled to criminate himself. 
 
 The law is different here. Answer the question. 
 Did you run away with any money ? 
 
 Yes sir. 
 
 How much ? 
 
 One hundred thousand dollars. 
 
 Did you take anything else with you ? 
 
 Yes sir. 
 
 Well, what else ? 
 
 I took my neighbor's wife — we sang together in 
 the choir. 
 
 Did you have a wife and children of your own ? 
 
 Yes sir. 
 
 And you deserted them ? 
 
 Yes sir, but such was my confidence in God that 
 I believed he would take care of them. 
 
 Have you heard of them since ? 
 
 No sir. 
 
120 SOME MISTAKES OF MOSES. 
 
 Did you believe in the rib story ? 
 
 Bless your soul, of course I did. A thousand 
 times I regretted that there were no harder stories 
 in the bible, so that I could have shown my wealth 
 of faith. 
 
 Do you believe the rib story yet ? 
 
 Yes, with all my heart. 
 
 Give him a harp ! 
 
 Well, as I was saying, God made a woman from 
 Adam's rib. Of course, I do not know exactly how 
 this was done, but when he got the woman finished, 
 he presented her to Adam. He liked her, and they 
 commenced house-keeping in the celebrated garden 
 of Eden. 
 
 Must we, in order to be good, gentle and loving 
 in our lives, believe that the creation of woman was 
 a second thought ? That Jehovah really endeavored 
 to induce Adam to take one of the lower animals as 
 an helpmeet for him ? After all, is it not possible to 
 live honest and courageous lives without believing 
 these fables ? It is said that from Mount Sinai God 
 gave, amid thunderings and lightnings, ten command- 
 ments for the guidance of mankind ; and yet among 
 them is not found — " Thou shalt believe the Bible." 
 
XVI. 
 THE GARDEN. 
 
 Tn the first account we are told that God made 
 man, male and female, and said to them " Be 
 fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth and 
 subdue it." 
 
 In the second account only the man is made, and 
 he is put in a garden "to dress it and to keep it." 
 He is not told to subdue the earth, but to dress and 
 keep a garden. 
 
 In the first account man is given every herb 
 bearing seed upon the face of the earth and the fruit 
 of every tree for food, and in the second, he is given 
 only the fruit of all the trees in the garden with the 
 exception "of the tree of the knowledge of good and 
 evil " which was a deadly poison. 
 
 There was issuing from this garden a river that 
 was parted into four heads. The first of these, Pison, 
 compassed the whole land of Havilah, the second, 
 Gihon, that compassed the whole land of Ethiopia, 
 
122 SOME MISTAKES OF MOSES. 
 
 the third, Heddekel, that flowed toward the east of 
 Assyria, and the fourth, the Euphrates. Where are 
 these four rivers now ? The brave prow of discovery 
 has visited every sea ; the traveler has pressed with 
 weary feet the soil of every clime ; and yet there has 
 been found no place from which four rivers sprang. 
 The Euphrates still journeys to the gulf, but where 
 are Pison, Gihon and the mighty Heddekel ? Surely 
 by going to the source of the Euphrates we ought to 
 find either these three rivers or their ancient beds. 
 Will some minister when he answers the " Mistakes 
 of Moses" tell us where these rivers are or were? 
 The maps of the world are incomplete without these 
 mighty streams. We have discovered the sources 
 of the Nile ; the North Pole will soon be touched by 
 an American ; but these three rivers still rise in 
 unknown hills, still flow through unknown lands, and 
 empty still in unknown seas. 
 
 The account of these four rivers is what the 
 Rev. David Swing would call "a geographical 
 poem." The orthodox clergy cover the whole 
 affair with the blanket of allegory, while the 
 "scientific" christian folks talk about cataclysms, 
 upheavals, earthquakes, and vast displacements of 
 the earth's crust. 
 
SOME MISTAKES OF MOSES. 1 23 
 
 The question, then arises, whether within the last 
 six thousand years there have been such upheavals 
 and displacements ? Talk as you will about the vast 
 "creative periods" that preceded the appearance of 
 man ; it is, according to the bible, only about six 
 thousand years since man was created. Moses gives 
 us the generations of men from Adam until his day, 
 and this account cannot be explained away by calling 
 centuries, days. 
 
 According to the second account of creation, these 
 four rivers were made after the creation of man, and 
 consequently they must have been obliterated by 
 convulsions of Nature within six thousand years. 
 
 Can we not account for these contradictions, 
 absurdities, and falsehoods by simply saying that 
 although the writer may have done his level best, he 
 failed because he was limited in knowledge, led away 
 by tradition, and depended too implicitly upon the 
 correctness of his imagination ? Is not such a course 
 far more reasonable than to insist that all these things 
 are true and must stand though every science shall 
 fall to mental dust ? 
 
 Can any reason be given for not allowing man to 
 eat of the fruit of the tree of knowledge ? What 
 kind of tree was that ? If it is all an allegory, what 
 
124 SOME MISTAKES OF MOSES. 
 
 truth is sought to be conveyed ? Why should God 
 object to that fruit being eaten by man ? Why did 
 he put it in the midst of the garden ? There was 
 certainly plenty of room outside. If he wished to 
 keep man and this tree apart, why did he put them 
 together? And why, after he had eaten, was he 
 thrust out ? The only answer that we have a right 
 to give, is the one given in the bible. "And the 
 Lord God said, Behold the man has become as one 
 of us to know good and evil ; and now, lest he put 
 forth his hand and take also of the tree of life, and 
 eat, and live forever : Therefore the Lord God sent 
 him forth from the garden of Eden, to till the ground 
 from whence he was taken." 
 
 Will some minister, some graduate of Andover, 
 tell us what this means ? Are we bound to believe 
 it without knowing what the meaning is? If it is a 
 revelation, what does it reveal ? Did God object to 
 education then, and does that account for the hostile 
 attitude still assumed by theologians towards all 
 scientific truth ? Was there in the garden a tree of 
 life, the eating of which would have rendered Adam 
 and Eve immortal ? Is it true, that after the Lord 
 God drove them from the garden that he placed 
 upon its Eastern side " Cherubim and a flaming 
 
SOME MISTAKES OF MOSES. 125 
 
 sword which turned every way to keep the way of 
 the tree of life ? " Are the Cherubims and the 
 flaming- sword guarding- that tree yet, or was it 
 destroyed, or did its rotting trunk, as the Rev. 
 Robert Collyer suggests " nourish a bank of 
 violets ? " 
 
 What objection could God have had to the 
 immortality of man ? You see that after all, this 
 sacred record, instead of assuring us of immortality, 
 shows us only how we lost it. In this there is 
 assuredly but little consolation. 
 
 According to this story we have lost one Eden, 
 but nowhere in the Mosaic books are we told how 
 we may gain another. I know that the Christians 
 tell us there is another, in which all true believers 
 will finally be gathered, and enjoy the unspeakable 
 happiness of seeing the unbelievers in hell ; but they 
 do not tell us where it is. 
 
 Some commentators say that the Garden of 
 Eden was in the third heaven — some in the fourth, 
 others have located it in the moon, some in the air 
 beyond the attraction of the earth, some on the 
 Earth, some under the Earth, some inside the Earth, 
 some at the North Pole, others at the South, some 
 in Tartary, some in China, some on the borders of 
 
126 SOME MISTAKES OF MOSES. 
 
 the Ganges, some in the island of Ceylon, some in 
 Armenia, some in Africa, some under the Equator, 
 others in Mesopotamia, in Syria, Persia, Arabia, 
 Babylon, Assyria, Palestine and Europe. Others 
 have contended that it was invisible, that it was an 
 allegory, and must be spiritually understood. 
 
 But whether you understand these things or not, 
 you must believe them. You may be laughed at in 
 this world for insisting that God put Adam into a 
 deep sleep and made a woman out of one of his ribs, 
 but you will be crowned and glorified in the next. 
 You will also have the pleasure of hearing the 
 gentlemen howl there, who laughed at you here. 
 While you will not be permitted to take any revenge, 
 you will be allowed to smilingly express your entire 
 acquiescence in the will of God. But where is the 
 new Eden ? No one knows. The one was lost, and 
 the other has not been found. 
 
 Is it true that man was once perfectly pure and 
 innocent, and that he became degenerate by disobe- 
 dience ? No. The real truth is, and the history of 
 man shows, that he has advanced. Events, like the 
 pendulum of a clock have swung forward and back 
 ward, but after all, man, like the hands, has orone 
 steadily on. Man is growing grander. He is not 
 
SOME MISTAKES OF MOSES. 127 
 
 degenerating. Nations and individuals fail and die, 
 and make room for higher forms. The intellectual 
 horizon of the world widens as the centuries pass. 
 Ideals grow grander and purer ; the difference 
 between justice and mercy becomes less and less ; 
 liberty enlarges, and love intensifies as the years 
 sweep on. The ages of force and fear, of cruelty 
 and wrong, are behind us and the real Eden is 
 beyond. It is said that a desire for knowledge lost 
 us the Eden of the past ; but whether that is true or 
 not, it will certainly give us the Eden of the future. 
 
XVII. 
 THE FALL. 
 
 We are told that the serpent was more subtle 
 than any beast of the field, that he had a 
 conversation with Eve, in which he gave his opinion 
 about the effect of eating certain fruit; that he 
 assured her it was good to eat, that it was pleasant 
 to the eye, that it would make her wise ; that she 
 was induced to take some ; that she persuaded her 
 husband to try it ; that God found it out, that he then 
 cursed the snake ; condemning it to crawl and eat 
 the dust ; that he multiplied the sorrows of Eve, 
 cursed the ground for Adam's sake, started thistles 
 and thorns, condemned man to eat the herb of the 
 field in the sweat of his face, pronounced the curse of 
 death, "Dust thou art and unto dust shalt thou 
 return," made coats of skins for Adam and Eve, and 
 drove them out of Eden. 
 
 Who, and what was this serpent ? Dr. Adam 
 Clark says: — "The serpent must have walked erect, 
 
SOME MISTAKES OF MOSES. I 29 
 
 for this is necessarily implied in his punishment. 
 That he was endued with the gift of speech, also with 
 reason. That these things were given to this 
 creature. The woman no doubt having often seen 
 him walking erect, and talking and reasoning, there- 
 fore she testifies no sort of surprise when he accosts 
 her in the language related in the text. It therefore 
 appears to me that a creature of the ape or orang- 
 outang kind is here intended, and that satan made 
 use of this creature as the most proper instrument 
 for the accomplishment of his murderous purposes 
 against the life of the soul of man. Under this 
 creature he lay hid, and by this creature he seduced 
 our first parents. Such a creature answers to every 
 part of the description in the text. It is evident 
 from the structure of its limbs and its muscles that it 
 might have been originally designed to walk erect, 
 and that nothing else than the sovereign controlling 
 power could induce it to put down hands — in every 
 respect formed like those of man — and walk like 
 those creatures whose claw-armed parts prove them 
 to have been designed to walk on all fours. The 
 stealthy cunning, and endless variety of the pranks 
 and tricks of these creatures show them even now to 
 
 be wiser and more intelligent than any other creature 
 9 
 
130 SOME MISTAKES OF MOSES. 
 
 man alone excepted. Being obliged to walk on all 
 fours and gather their food from the ground, they are 
 literally obliged to eat the dust ; and though 
 exceeding cunning, and careful in a variety of 
 instances to separate that part which is wholesome 
 and proper for food from that which is not so, in the 
 article of cleanliness they are lost to all sense of 
 propriety. Add to this their utter aversion to walk 
 upright; it requires the utmost discipline to bring 
 them to it, and scarcely anything offends or irritates 
 them more than to be obliged to do it. Long 
 observation of these animals enables me to state 
 these facts. For earnest, attentive watching, and for 
 chattering and babbling they (the ape) have no 
 fellows in the animal world. Indeed, the ability and 
 propensity to chatter, is all they have left of their 
 original gift of speech, of which they appear to have 
 been deprived at the fall as a part of their punish- 
 ment." 
 
 Here then is the " connecting link " between 
 man and the lower creation. The serpent was 
 simply an orang-outang that spoke Hebrew with the 
 greatest ease, and had the outward appearance of a 
 perfect gentleman, seductive in manner, plausible, 
 polite, and most admirably calculated to deceive. 
 
SOME MISTAKES OF MOSES. 1 3 1 
 
 It never did seem reasonable to me that a loner cold 
 and disgusting snake with an apple in his mouth, 
 could deceive anybody ; and I am glad, even at this 
 late date to know that the something that persuaded 
 Eve to taste the forbidden fruit was, at least, in the 
 shape of a man. 
 
 Dr. Henry does not agree with the zoological 
 explanation of Mr. Clark, but insists that "it is 
 certain that the devil that beguiled Eve is the old 
 serpent, a malignant by creation, an angel of light, 
 an immediate attendant upon God's throne, but by 
 sin an apostate from his first state, and a rebel 
 against God's crown and dignity. He who attacked 
 our first parents was surely the prince of devils, the 
 ring leader in rebellion. The devil chose to act his 
 part in a serpent, because it is a specious creature, 
 has a spotted, dappled skin, and then, went erect. 
 Perhaps it was a flying serpent which seemed to come 
 from on high, as a messenger from the upper world, 
 one of the seraphim ; because the serpent is a subtile 
 creature. What Eve thought of this serpent speak- 
 ing to her, we are not likely to tell, and, I believe, 
 she herself did not know what to think of it. At 
 first, perhaps, she supposed it might be a good 
 angel, and yet afterwards might suspect something 
 
132 SOME MISTAKES OF MOSES. 
 
 amiss. The person tempted was a woman, now 
 alone, and at a distance from her husband, but near 
 the forbidden tree. It was the devil's subtlety to 
 assault the weaker vessel with his temptations, as we 
 may suppose her inferior to Adam in knowledge, 
 strength and presence of mind. Some think that 
 Eve received the command not immediately from 
 Cod, but at second hand from her husband, and 
 might, therefore, be the more easily persuaded to 
 discredit it. It was the policy of the devil to enter 
 into discussion with her when she was alone. He 
 took advantage by finding her near the forbidden 
 tree. God permitted Satan to prevail over Eve, 
 for wise and holy ends. Satan teaches men first to 
 doubt, and then to deny. He makes skeptics first, 
 and by degrees makes them atheists." 
 
 We are compelled to admit that nothing could 
 be more attractive to a woman than a snake walking 
 erect, with a " spotted, dappled skin," unless it were 
 a serpent with wings. Is it not humiliating to know 
 that our ancestors believed these things ? Why 
 should we object to the Darwinian doctrine of descent 
 after this ? 
 
 Our fathers thought it their duty to believe, 
 thought it a sin to entertain the slightest doubt, and 
 
SOME MISTAKES OF MOSES. 135 
 
 really supposed that their credulity was exceedingly/ 
 gratifying to God. To them, the story was entirely 
 real. They could see the garden, hear the babble of 
 waters, smell the perfume of flowers. They believed 
 there was a tree where knowledge grew like plums 
 or pears ; and they could plainly see the serpent 
 coiled amid its rustling leaves, coaxing Eve to violate 
 the laws of God. 
 
 Where did the serpent come from ? On which 
 of the six days was he created ? Who made him ? 
 Is it possible that God would make a successful rival? 
 He must have known that Adam and Eve would fall. 
 He knew what a snake with a " spotted, dappled skin " 
 could do with an inexperienced woman. Why did 
 he not defend his children ? He knew that if the 
 serpent got into the garden, Adam and Eve would 
 sin, that he would have to drive them out, that after- 
 wards the world would be destroyed, and that he 
 himself would die upon the cross. 
 
 Again, I ask what and who was this serpent? 
 He was not a man, for only one man had been made. 
 He was not a woman. He was not a beast of the 
 field, because " he was more subtile than any beast 
 of the field which the Lord God had made." He 
 was neither fish nor fowl, nor snake, because he had 
 
134 SOME MISTAKES OF MOSES. 
 
 the power of speech, and did not crawl upon his 
 belly until after he was cursed. Where did this 
 serpent come from ? Why was he not kept out of 
 the garden ? Why did not the Lord God take him 
 by the tail and snap his head off? Why did he not 
 put Adam and Eve on their guard about this serpent? 
 They, of course, were not acquainted in the neighbor- 
 hood, and knew nothing about the serpent's reputation 
 for truth and veracity among his neighbors. Prob- 
 ably Adam saw him when he was looking for " an 
 helpmeet." and gave him a name, but Eve had never 
 met him before. She was not surprised to hear a 
 serpent talk, as that was the first one she had ever 
 met. Every thing being new to her, and her husband 
 not being with her just at that moment, it need hardly 
 excite our wonder that she tasted the fruit by way of 
 experiment. Neither should we be surprised that 
 when she saw it was good and pleasant to the eye, 
 and a fruit to be desired to make one wise, she had 
 the generosity to divide with her husband. 
 
 Theologians have filled thousands of volumes 
 with abuse of this serpent, but it seems that he told 
 the exact truth. We are told that this serpent was, 
 in fact, Satan, the greatest enemy of mankind, and 
 that he entered the serpent, appearing to our first 
 
SOME MISTAKES OF MOSES. I ^5 
 
 parents in its body. If this is so, why should the 
 serpent have been cursed ? Why should God curse 
 the serpent for what had really been done by the 
 devil ? Did Satan remain in the body of the serpent, 
 ^nd in some mysterious manner share his punish- 
 ment ? Is it true that when we kill a snake we also 
 destroy an evil spirit, or is there but one devil, and 
 did he perish at the death of the first serpent ? Is it 
 on account of that transaction in the garden of Eden, 
 that all the descendents of Adam and Eve known as 
 Jews and Christians hate serpents ? 
 
 Do you account for the snake-worship in Mexico, 
 Africa and India in the same way ? 
 
 What was the form of the serpent when he 
 entered the garden, and in what way did he move 
 from place to place ? Did he walk or fly ? Certainly 
 he did not crawl, because that mode of locomotion 
 was pronounced upon him as a curse. Upon what 
 food did he subsist before his conversation with Eve ? 
 We know that after that he lived upon dust, but 
 what did he eat before ? It may be that this is all 
 poetic ; and the truest poetry is, according to Touch- 
 stone, "the most feigning." 
 
 In this same chapter we are informed that "unto 
 Adam also and to his wife did the Lord God make 
 
SOME MISTAKES OF MOSES. 
 
 coats of skins and clothed them." Where did the 
 Lord God get those skins ? He must have taken 
 them from the animals ; he was a butcher. Then he 
 had to prepare them ; he was a tanner. Then he 
 made them into coats ; he was a tailor. How did it 
 happen that they needed coats of skins, when they 
 had been perfectly comfortable in a nude condition ? 
 Did the "fall" produce a change in the climate? 
 
 Is it really necessary to believe this account in 
 order to be happy here, or hereafter ? Does it tend 
 to the elevation of the human race to speak of " God" 
 as a butcher, tanner and tailor ? 
 
 And here, let me say once for all, that when I 
 speak of God, I mean the being described by Moses : 
 the Jehovah of the Jews. There may be for aught I 
 know, somewhere in the unknown shoreless vast, 
 some beinof whose dreams are constellations and 
 within whose thought the infinite exists. About this 
 being, if such an one exists, I have nothing to say. 
 He has written no books, inspired no barbarians, 
 required no worship, and has prepared no hell in 
 which to burn the honest seeker after truth. 
 
 When I speak of God, I mean that god who pre- 
 vented man from putting forth his hand and taking 
 also of the fruit of the tree of life that he might live 
 
SOME MISTAKES OF MOSES. 137 
 
 forever; of that god who multiplied the agonies of 
 woman, increased the weary toil of man, and in his 
 anger drowned a world — of that god whose altars 
 reeked with human blood, who butchered babes, 
 violated maidens, enslaved men and filled the earth 
 with cruelty and crime ; of that god who made heaven 
 for the few, hell for the many, and who will gloat 
 forever and ever upon the writhings of the lost and 
 damned. 
 
XVIII. 
 
 DAMPNESS. 
 
 a ir nd It came to pass, when men began to 
 Jt\_ multiply on the face of the earth, and 
 daughters were born unto them. 
 
 "That the sons of God saw the daughters of men 
 that they were fair ; and they took them wives of all 
 which they chose. 
 
 "And the Lord said, My spirit shall not always 
 strive with man, for that he also is flesh ; yet his days 
 shall be an hundred and twenty years. 
 
 "There were giants in the earth in those days; 
 and also after that when the sons of God came in 
 unto the daughters of men, and they bare children to 
 them, the same became mighty men which were of 
 old, men of renown. 
 
 "And God saw that the wickedness of man 
 was great in the earth, and that every imagina- 
 tion of the thoughts of his heart was only evil 
 continually. 
 
SOME MISTAKES OF MOSES. 139 
 
 " And it repented the Lord that he had made 
 man on the earth, and it grieved him at his 
 heart. 
 
 "And the Lord said, I will destroy man whom I 
 have created from the face of the earth; both man, 
 and beast, and the creeping thing, and the fowls of 
 the air ; for it repenteth me that I have made 
 them." 
 
 From this account it seems that driving Adam 
 and Eve out of Eden did not have the effect to 
 improve them or their children. On the contrary, 
 the world grew worse and worse. They were under 
 the immediate control and government of God, 
 and he from time to time made known his will ; 
 but in spite of this, man continued to increase 
 in crime. 
 
 Nothing in particular seems to have been done. 
 Not a school was established. There was no written 
 language. There was not a bible in the world. 
 The " scheme of salvation " was kept a profound 
 secret. The five points of Calvinism had not been 
 taught. Sunday schools had not been opened. In 
 short, nothing had been done for the reformation of 
 the world. God did not even keep his own sons at 
 home, but allowed them to leave their abode in the 
 
I40 SOME MISTAKES OF MOSES. 
 
 firmament, and make love to the daughters of men. 
 As a result of this, the world was filled with wicked- 
 ness and giants to such an extent that God regretted 
 " that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved 
 him at his heart." 
 
 Of course God knew when he made man, that he 
 would afterwards regret it. He knew that the 
 people would grow worse and worse until destruction 
 would be the only remedy. He knew that he would 
 have to kill all except Noah and his family, and it is 
 hard to see why he did not make Noah and his 
 family in the first place, and leave Adam and Eve in 
 the original dust. He knew that they would be 
 tempted, that he would have to drive them out of 
 the garden to keep them from eating of the tree of 
 life ; that the whole thing would be a failure ; that 
 Satan would defeat his plan ; that he could not 
 reform the people ; that his own sons would corrupt 
 them, and that at last he would have to drown them 
 all except Noah and his family. Why was the 
 garden of Eden planted ? Why was the experiment 
 made ? Why were Adam and Eve exposed to the 
 seductive arts of the serpent ? Why did God wait 
 until the cool of the day before looking after his 
 children ? Why was he not on hand in the morning? 
 
SOME MISTAKES OF MOSES. I4I 
 
 Why did he fill the world with his own children, 
 knowing that he would have to destroy them ? And 
 why does this same God tell me how to raise my 
 children when he had to drown his ? 
 
 It is a little curious that when God wished to 
 reform the ante-diluvian world he said nothing about 
 hell ; that he had no revivals, no camp-meetings, no 
 tracts, no outpourings of the Holy Ghost, no bap- 
 tisms, no noon prayer meetings, and never mentioned 
 the great doctrine of salvation by faith. If the 
 orthodox creeds of the world are true, all those 
 people went to hell without ever having heard that 
 such a place existed. If eternal torment is a fact, 
 surely these miserable wretches ought to have been 
 warned. They were threatened only with water 
 when they were in fact doomed to eternal fire ! 
 
 Is it not strange that God said nothing to Adam 
 and Eve about a future life ; that he should have kept 
 these " infinite verities " to himself and allowed 
 millions to live and die without the hope of heaven, 
 or the fear of hell ? 
 
 It may be that hell was not made at that time. 
 In the six days of creation nothing is said about the 
 construction of a bottomless pit, and the serpent 
 himself did not make his appearance until after the 
 
142 SOME MISTAKES OF MOSES. 
 
 creation of man and woman. Perhaps he was made 
 on the first Sunday, and from that fact came, it may 
 be, the old couplet, 
 
 "And Satan still some mischief finds 
 For idle hands to do." 
 
 The sacred historian failed also to tell us when 
 the cherubim and the flaming sword were made, and 
 said nothing about two of the persons composing the 
 trinity. It certainly would have been an easy thing 
 to enlighten Adam and his immediate descendants. 
 The world was then only about fifteen hundred and 
 thirty-six years old, and only about three or four 
 generations of men had lived. Adam had been dead 
 only about six hundred and six years, and some of 
 his grand children must, at that time, have been alive 
 and well. 
 
 It is hard to see why God did not civilize these 
 people. He certainly had the power to use, and the 
 wisdom to devise the proper means. What right 
 has a god to fill a world with fiends ? Can there be 
 goodness in this? Why should he make experi- 
 ments that he knows must fail ? Is there wisdom in 
 this ? And what right has a man to charge an 
 infinite being with wickedness and folly ? 
 
SOME MISTAKES OF MOSES. 143 
 
 According to Moses, God made up his mind not 
 only to destroy the people, but the beasts and the 
 creeping things, and the fowls of the air. What had 
 the beasts, and the creeping things, and the birds 
 done to excite the anger of God ? Why did he 
 repent having made them ? Will some christian 
 give us an explanation of this matter ? No good 
 man will inflict unnecessary pain upon a beast ; how 
 then can we worship a god who cares nothing for 
 the agonies of the dumb creatures that he made ? 
 
 Why did he make animals that he knew he 
 would destroy ? Does God delight in causing pain? 
 He had the power to make the beasts, and fowls, 
 and creeping things in his own good time and way, 
 and it is to be presumed that he made them accord- 
 ing to his wish. Why should he destroy them ? 
 They had committed no sin. They had eaten no 
 forbidden fruit, made no aprons, nor tried to reach 
 the tree of life. Yet this god, in blind unreasoning 
 wrath destroyed " all flesh wherein was the breath of 
 life, and every living thing beneath the sky, and 
 every substance wherein was life that he had 
 made." 
 
 Jehovah, having made up his mind to drown the 
 world, told Noah to make an Ark of gopher wood 
 
144 SOME MISTAKES OF MOSES. 
 
 three hundred cubits long, fifty cubits wide and thirty 
 cubits high. A cubit is twenty-two inches ; so that 
 the ark was five hundred and fifty feet long, ninety- 
 one feet and eight inches wide and fifty-five feet 
 high. This ark was divided into three stories, and 
 had on top, one window twenty-two inches square. 
 Ventilation must have been one of Jehovah's 
 hobbies. Think of a ship larger than the Great 
 Eastern with only one window, and that but twenty- 
 two inches square! 
 
 The ark also had one door set in the side thereof 
 that shut from the outside. As soon as this ship was 
 finished, and properly victualed, Noah received seven 
 days notice to get the animals in the ark. 
 
 It is claimed by some of the scientific theologians 
 that the flood was partial, that the waters covered 
 only a small portion of the world, and that conse- 
 quently only a few animals were in the ark. It is 
 impossible to conceive of language that can more 
 clearly convey the idea of a universal flood than that 
 found in the inspired account. If the flood was only 
 partial, why did God say he would "destroy all flesh 
 wherein is the breath of life from under heaven, and 
 that every thing that is in the earth shall die?" 
 Why did he say " I will destroy man whom I have 
 
SOME MISTAKES OF MOSES. 145 
 
 created from the face of the earth, both man and 
 beast, and the creeping thing and the fowls of the 
 air ? " Why did he say " And every living substance 
 that I have made will I destroy from off the face of 
 the earth ? " Would a partial, local flood have fulfilled 
 these threats ? 
 
 Nothing can be clearer than that the writer of 
 this account intended to convey, and did convey the 
 idea that the flood was universal. Why should 
 christians try to deprive God of the glory of having 
 wrought the most stupendous of miracles ? Is it 
 possible that the Infinite could not overwhelm with 
 waves this atom called the Earth ? Do you doubt 
 his power, his wisdom or his justice ? 
 
 Believers in miracles should not endeavor to 
 explain them. There is but one way to explain any- 
 thing, and that is to account for it by natural 
 agencies. The moment you explain a miracle, it 
 disappears. You should depend not upon explana 
 tion, but assertion. You should not be driven from 
 the field because the miracle is shown to be 
 unreasonable. You should reply that all miracles are 
 unreasonable. Neither should you be in the least 
 disheartened if it is shown to be impossible. The 
 possible is not miraculous. You should take the 
 
 10 
 
I46 SOME MISTAKES OF MOSES. 
 
 ground that if miracles were reasonable, and possible, 
 there would be no reward paid for believing them. 
 The christian has the goodness to believe, while the 
 sinner asks for evidence. It is enough for God to 
 work miracles without being called upon to sub- 
 stantiate them for the benefit of unbelievers. 
 
 Only a few years ago, the christians believed 
 implicitly in the literal truth of every miracle recorded 
 in the bible. Whoever tried to explain them in some 
 natural way, was looked upon as an infidel in dis- 
 guise, but now he is regarded as a benefactor. The 
 credulity of the Church is decreasing, and the most 
 marvelous miracles are now either "explained," or 
 allowed to take refuge behind the mistakes of the 
 translators, or hide in the drapery of allegory. 
 
 In the sixth chapter, Noah is ordered to take "of 
 every living thing of all flesh, two of every sort into 
 the ark — male and female." In the seventh chapter 
 the order is changed, and Noah is commanded, 
 according to the Protestant bible, as follows : " Of 
 every clean beast thou shalt take to thee by sevens, 
 the male and his female, and of beasts that are 
 not clean, by two, the male and his female. Of 
 fowls also of the air by sevens, the male and the 
 female." 
 
SOME MISTAKES OF MOSES. 1 47 
 
 According to the Catholic bible, Noah was. 
 commanded — "Of all clean beasts take seven and 
 seven, the male and the female. But of the beasts 
 that are unclean two and two, the male and the 
 female. Of the fowls also of the air seven and seven, 
 the male and the female." 
 
 For the purpose of belittling this miracle, many 
 commentators have taken the ground t] lat Noah was 
 not ordered to take seven males and seven females 
 of each kind of clean beasts, but seven in all. Many 
 christians contend that only seven clean beasts of 
 each kind were taken into the ark — three and a half 
 of each sex. 
 
 If the account in the seventh chapter means any- 
 thing, it meansyfrjr/, that of each kind of clean beasts, 
 fourteen were to be taken, seven males, and seven 
 females ; second, that of unclean beasts should be 
 taken, two of each kind, one of each sex, and third, 
 that he should take of every kind of fowls, seven of 
 each sex. 
 
 It is equally clear that the command in the 19th 
 and 20th verses of the 6th chapter, is to take two of 
 each sort, one male and one female. And this agrees 
 exactly with the account in the 7th, 8th, 9th, 14th. 
 1 5th, and 16th verses of the 7th chapter. 
 
I48 SOME MISTAKES OF MOSES. 
 
 The next question is, how many beasts, fowls and 
 creeping things did Noah take into the ark ? 
 
 There are now known and classified at least 
 twelve thousand five hundred species of birds. 
 There are still vast territories in China, South 
 America, and Africa unknown to the ornithologist. 
 
 Of the birds, Noah took fourteen of each species, 
 according to the 3d verse of the 7th chapter, " Of 
 fowls also of the air by sevens, the male and the 
 female," making a total of 17 5, 000 birds. 
 
 And right here allow me to ask a question. If the 
 flood was simply a partial flood, why were birds taken 
 into the ark ? It seems to me that most birds, attend- 
 ing strictly to business, might avoid a partial flood. 
 
 There are at least sixteen hundred and fifty-eight 
 kinds of beasts. Let us suppose that twenty-five of 
 these are clean. Of the clean, fourteen of each kind 
 — seven of each sex — were taken. These amount to 
 35o. Of the unclean — two of each kind, amounting 
 to 3,266. There are some six hundred and fifty 
 species of reptiles. Two of each kind amount to 
 1 ,300. And lastly, there are of insects including the 
 creeping things, at least one million species, so that 
 Noah and his folks had to get of these into the ark 
 about 2,000,000. 
 
SOME MISTAKES OF MOSES. 1 49 
 
 Animalculae have not been taken into consider- 
 ation. There are probably many hundreds of 
 thousands of species ; many of them invisible ; and 
 yet Noah had to pick them out by pairs. Very few 
 people have any just conception of the trouble 
 Noah had. 
 
 We know that there are many animals on this 
 continent not found in the Old World. These must 
 have been carried from here to the ark, and then 
 brought back afterwards. Were the peccary, arma- 
 dillo, ant-eater, sloth, agouti, vampire-bat, marmoset, 
 howling and prehensile-tailed monkey, the raccoon 
 and muskrat carried by the angels from America to 
 Asia ? How did they get there ? Did the polar 
 bear leave his field of ice and journey toward the 
 tropics ? How did he know where the ark was ? 
 Did the kangaroo swim or jump from Australia to 
 Asia ? Did the giraffe, hippopotamus, antelope and 
 orang-outang journey, from Africa in search of the 
 ark ? Can absurdities £0 farther than this ? 
 
 What had these animals to eat while on the 
 journey ? What did they eat while in the ark ? 
 What did they drink ? When the rain came, of 
 course the rivers ran to the seas, and these seas rose 
 and finally covered the world. The waters of the 
 
l5o SOME MISTAKES OF MOSES. 
 
 seas, mingled with those of the flood, would make all 
 salt. It has been calculated that it required, to 
 drown the world, about eight times as much water as 
 was in all the seas. To find how salt the waters of 
 the flood must have been, take eight quarts of fresh 
 water, and add one quart from the sea. Such water 
 would create instead of allaying thirst. Noah had to 
 take in his ark fresh water for all his beasts, birds 
 and living things. He had to take the proper food 
 for all. How long was he in the ark ? Three 
 hundred and seventy-seven days ! Think of the food 
 necessary for the monsters of the ante-diluvian 
 world ! 
 
 Eight persons did all the work. They attended 
 to the wants of 175,000 birds, 3,616 beasts, 1,300 
 reptiles, and 2,000,000 insects, saying nothing of 
 countless animalculse. 
 
 Well, after they all got in, Noah pulled down 
 the window, God shut the door, and the rain com- 
 menced. 
 
 How \oncr did it rain ? 
 
 Forty days. 
 
 How deep did the water get ? 
 
 About five miles and a half. 
 
 How much did it rain a day ? 
 
SOME MISTAKES OF MOSES. l5l 
 
 Enough to cover the whole world to a depth of 
 about seven hundred and forty-two feet. 
 
 Some Christians say that the fountains of the 
 great deep were broken up. Will they be kind 
 enough to tell us what the fountains of the great 
 deep are ? Others say that God had vast stores of 
 water in the center of the earth that he used on 
 that occasion. How did these waters happen to run 
 up hill ? 
 
 Gentlemen, allow me to tell you once more that 
 you must not try to explain these things. Your 
 efforts in that direction do no good, because your 
 explanations are harder to believe than the miracle 
 itself. Take my advice, stick to assertion, and let 
 explanation alone. 
 
 Then, as now, Dhawalagiri lifted its crown of 
 snow twenty-nine thousand feet above the level of 
 the sea, and on the cloudless cliffs of Chimborazo 
 then, as now, sat the condor ; and yet the waters 
 rising seven hundred and twenty-six feet a day — 
 thirty feet an hour, six inches a minute, — rose over 
 the hills, over the volcanoes, filled the vast craters, 
 extinguished all the fires, rose above every mountain 
 peak until the vast world was but one shoreless sea 
 covered with the innumerable dead. 
 
1 52 SOME MISTAKES OF MOSES. 
 
 Was this the work of the most merciful God, the 
 father of us all ? If there is a God, can there be the 
 slightest danger of incurring his displeasure by 
 doubting even in a reverential way, the truth 
 of such a cruel lie ? If we think that God is 
 kinder than he really is, will our poor souls be 
 burned for that ? 
 
 How many trees can live under miles of water for 
 a year ? What became of the soil washed, scattered, 
 dissolved, and covered with the debris of a world ? 
 How were the tender plants and herbs preserved ? 
 How were the animals preserved after leaving the 
 ark ? There was no grass except such as had been 
 submerged for a year. There were no animals to 
 be devoured by the carnivorous beasts. What be- 
 came of the birds that fed on worms and insects ? 
 What became of the birds that devoured other 
 birds ? 
 
 It must be remembered that the pressure of the 
 water when at the highest point — say twenty-nine 
 thousand feet, would have been about eight hundred 
 tons on each square foot. Such a pressure certainly 
 would have destroyed nearly every vestige of vege- 
 table life, so that when the animals came out of 
 the ark, there was not a mouthful of food in 
 
SOME MISTAKES OF MOSES. 1 53 
 
 the wide world. How were they supported 
 until the world was again clothed with grass ? 
 How were those animals taken care of that sub- 
 sisted on others ? Where did the bees get 
 honey, and the ants seeds ? There was not a 
 creeping thing upon the whole earth ; not a 
 breathing creature beneath the whole heavens ; 
 not a living substance. Where did the tenants 
 of the ark get food ? 
 
 There is but one answer, if the story is true. 
 The food necessary not only during the year of the 
 flood, but sufficient for many months afterwards, must 
 have been stored in the ark. 
 
 There is probably not an animal in the 
 world that will not, in a year, eat and drink 
 ten times its weight. Noah must have pro- 
 vided food and water for a year while in the 
 ark, and food for at least six months after they 
 got ashore. It must have required for a pair 
 of elephants, about one hundred and fifty tons 
 of food and water. A couple of mammoths 
 would have required about twice that amount. 
 Of course there were other monsters that lived 
 on trees ; and in a year would have devoured 
 quite a forest. 
 
1 54 SOME MISTAKES OF MOSES. 
 
 How could eight persons have distributed this 
 food, even if the ark had been large enough to hold 
 it ? How was the ark kept clean ? We know how 
 it was ventilated ; but what was done with the filth ? 
 How were the animals watered? How were some 
 portions of the ark heated for animals from the 
 tropics, and others kept cool for the polar bears ? 
 How did the animals get back to their respective 
 countries ? Some had to creep back about six 
 thousand miles, and they could only go a few feet a 
 day. Some of the creeping things must have started 
 for the ark just as soon as they were made, and kept 
 up a steady jog for sixteen hundred years. Think 
 of a couple of the slowest snails leaving a point 
 opposite the ark and starting for the plains of Shinar, 
 a distance of twelve thousand miles. Goine at the 
 rate of a mile a month, it would take them a thousand 
 years. How did they get there ? Polar bears must 
 have gone several thousand miles, and so sudden a 
 change in climate must have been exceedingly trying 
 upon their health. How did they know the way to 
 go ? Of course, all the polar bears did not go. 
 Only two were required. Who selected these ? 
 
 Two sloths had to make the journey from South 
 America. These creatures cannot travel to exceed 
 
SOME MISTAKES OF MOSES. 1 55 
 
 three rods a day. At this rate, they would make a 
 mile in about a hundred days. They must have gone 
 about six thousand five hundred miles, to reach the 
 ark. Supposing them to have traveled by a reason- 
 ably direct route, in order to complete the journey 
 before Noah hauled in the plank, they must have 
 started several years before the world was created. 
 We must also consider that these sloths had to board 
 themselves on the way, and that most of their time 
 had to be taken up getting food and water. It is 
 exceedingly doubtful whether a sloth could travel six 
 thousand miles and board himself in less than three 
 thousand years. 
 
 Volumes might be written upon the infinite 
 absurdity of this most incredible, wicked and foolish 
 of all the fables contained in that repository of the 
 impossible, called the bible. To me it is a matter of 
 amazement, that it ever was for a moment believed 
 by any intelligent human being. 
 
 Dr. Adam Clark says that ''the animals were 
 brought to the ark by the power of God, and their 
 enmities were so removed or suspended, that the 
 lion could dwell peaceably with the lamb, and the 
 wolf sleep happily by the side of the kid. There is 
 no positive evidence that animal food was ever 
 
1 56 SOME MISTAKES OF MOSfiS. 
 
 used before the flood. Noah had the first grant of 
 this kind." 
 
 Dr. Scott remarks, "There seems to have been a 
 very extraordinary miracle, perhaps by the ministra- 
 tion of angels, in bringing two of every species to 
 Noah, and rendering them submissive, and peaceful 
 with each other. Yet it seems not to have made any 
 impression upon the hardened spectators. The sus- 
 pension of the ferocity of the savage beasts during 
 their continuance in the ark, is generally considered 
 as an apt figure of the change that takes place in the 
 disposition of sinners when they enter the true 
 church of Christ." 
 
 He believed the deluge to have been universal. 
 In his day science had not demonstrated the absurdity 
 of this belief, and he was not compelled to resort to 
 some theory not found in the bible. He insisted 
 that "by some vast convulsion, the very bowels of 
 the earth were forced upwards, and rain poured down 
 in cataracts and water-spouts, with no intermission 
 for forty days and nights, and until in every place a 
 universal deluge was effected. 
 
 "The presence of God was the only comfort of 
 Noah in his dreary confinement, and in witnessing 
 the dire devastation of the earth and its inhabitants, 
 
SOME MISTAKES OF MOSES. 1 5/ 
 
 and especially of the human species — of his com- 
 panions, his neighbors, his relatives — all those to 
 whom he had preached, for whom he had prayed and 
 over whom he had wept, and even of many who had 
 helped to build the ark. 
 
 " It seems that by a peculiar providential interpo- 
 sition, no animal of any sort died, although they had 
 been shut up in the ark above a year ; and it does 
 not appear that there had been any increase of them 
 during that time. 
 
 "The Ark was flat-bottomed — square at each 
 end — roofed like a house so that it terminated at the 
 top in the breadth of a cubit. It was divided into 
 many little cabins for its intended inhabitants. 
 Pitched within and without to keep it tight and 
 sweet, and lighted from the upper part. But it must, 
 at first sight, be evident that so lar^e a vessel, thus 
 constructed, with so few persons on board, was 
 utterly unfitted to weather out the deluge, except it 
 was under the immediate guidance and protection of 
 the Almighty." 
 
 Dr. Henry furnished the Christian world with 
 the following 1 : — 
 
 " As our bodies have in them the humors which, 
 when God pleases, become the springs and seeds of 
 
1 58 SOME MISTAKES OF MOSES. 
 
 mortal disease, so the earth had, in its bowels, those 
 waters which, at God's command, sprung up and 
 flooded it. 
 
 " God made the world in six days, but he was 
 forty days in destroying it, because he is slow to 
 anger. 
 
 " The hostilities between the animals in the ark 
 ceased, and ravenous creatures became mild and 
 manageable, so that the wolf lay down with the lamb, 
 and the lion ate straw like an ox. 
 
 " God shut the door of the ark to secure Noah 
 and to keep him safe, and because it was necessary 
 that the door should be shut very close lest the water 
 should break in and sink the ark, and very fast lest 
 others might break it down. 
 
 "The waters rose so high that not only the low 
 flat countries were deluged, but to make sure work 
 and that none might escape, the tops of the highest 
 mountains were overflowed fifteen cubits. That is, 
 seven and a half yards, so that salvation was not 
 hoped for from hills or mountains. 
 
 " Perhaps some of the people got to the top of the 
 ark, and hoped to shift for themselves there. But 
 either they perished there for want of food, or the 
 dashing rain washed them off the top. Others, it 
 
SOME MISTAKES OF MOSES. 1 59 
 
 may be, hoped to prevail with Noah for admission 
 into the ark, and plead old acquaintance. 
 
 " ' Have we not eaten and drank in thy presence ? 
 Hast thou not preached in our streets ? ' ' Yea,' 
 said Noah, ' many a time, but to little purpose. I 
 called but ye refused ; and now it is not in my 
 power to help you. God has shut the door and I 
 cannot open it.' 
 
 " We may suppose that some of those who per- 
 ished in the deluge had themselves assisted Noah, or 
 were employed by him in building the ark. 
 
 " Hitherto, man had been confined to feed only 
 upon the products of the earth. Fruits, herbs and 
 roots, and all sorts of greens, and milk, which was 
 the first grant ; but the flood having perhaps washed 
 away much of the fruits of the earth, and rendered 
 them much less pleasant and nourishing, God 
 enlarged the grant and allowed him to eat flesh, 
 which perhaps man never thought of until now, that 
 God directed him to it. Nor had he any more desire 
 to it than the sheep has to suck blood like the wolf. 
 But now, man is allowed to feed upon flesh as freely 
 and safely as upon the green herb." 
 
 Such was the debasing influence of a belief in 
 the literal truth of the bible upon these men, that 
 
l6o SOME MISTAKES OF MOSES. 
 
 their commentaries are filled with passages utterly 
 devoid of common sense. 
 
 Dr. Clark speaking of the mammoth says : 
 
 " This animal, an astonishing proof of God's 
 power, he seems to have produced merely to show 
 what he could do. And after suffering a few of 
 them to propagate, he extinguished the race by a 
 merciful providence, that they might not destroy 
 both man and beast. 
 
 " We are told that it would have been much 
 easier for God to destroy all the people and make 
 new ones, but he would not want to waste anything 
 and no power or skill should be lavished where no 
 necessity exists. 
 
 " The animals were brought to the ark by the 
 power of God." 
 
 Again gentlemen, let me warn you of the danger 
 of trying to explain a miracle. Let it alone. Say 
 that you do not understand it, and do not expect to 
 until taught in the schools of the New Jerusalem. 
 The more reasons you give, the more unreason- 
 able the miracle will appear. Through what you 
 say in defence people are led to think, and as 
 soon as they really think, the miracle is thrown 
 away. 
 
SOME MISTAKES OF MOSES. l6l 
 
 Among the most ignorant nations you will find 
 the most wonders, among the most enlightened, the 
 least. It is with individuals, the same as with 
 nations. Ignorance believes, Intelligence examines 
 and explains. 
 
 For about seven months the ark, with its cargo of 
 men, animals and insects, tossed and wandered with- 
 out rudder or sail upon a boundless sea. At last it 
 grounded on the mountains of Ararat ; and about 
 three months afterwards the tops of the mountains 
 became visible. It must not be forgotten that the 
 mountain where the ark is supposed to have first 
 touched bottom, was about seventeen thousand feet 
 high. How were the animals from the tropics kept 
 warm ? When the waters were abated it would be 
 intensely cold at a point seventeen thousand feet 
 above the level of the sea. May be there were 
 stoves, furnaces, fire places and steam coils in the ark, 
 but they are not mentioned in the inspired narrative. 
 How were the animals kept from freezing ? It will 
 not do to say that Ararat was not very high after all. 
 
 If you will read the fourth and fifth verses of the 
 
 eight chapter you will see that although " the ark 
 
 rested in the seventh month, on the seventeenth day 
 
 of the month, upon the mountains of Ararat, it was 
 u 
 
1 62 SOME MISTAKES OF MOSES. 
 
 not until the first day of the tenth month " that the 
 tops of the mountains could be seen." From this it 
 would seem that the ark must have rested upon about 
 the highest peak in that country. Noah waited forty 
 days more, and then for the first time opened the 
 window and took a breath of fresh air. He then 
 sent out a raven that did not return, then a dove that 
 returned. He then waited seven days and sent 
 forth a dove that returned not. From this he knew 
 that the waters were abated. Is it possible that he 
 could not see whether the waters had gone ? Is it 
 possible to conceive of a more perfectly childish way 
 of ascertaining whether the earth was dry ? 
 
 At last Noah " removed the covering of the ark, 
 and looked and behold the face of the ground was 
 dry," and thereupon God told him to disembark. 
 In his gratitude Noah built an altar and took of 
 every clean beast and of every clean fowl, and offered 
 burnt offerings. P .id the Lord smelled a sweet 
 savor and said ir his heart that he would not any 
 more curse the ground for man's sake. For saying 
 this in his heart the Lord gives as a reason, not that 
 man is, or will be good, but because " the imagina- 
 tion of man's heart is evil from his youth." God 
 destroyed man because " the wickedness of man was 
 
SOME MISTAKES OF MOSES. 1 6 
 
 6 
 
 great in the earth, and because every imagination of 
 the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually '." 
 And he promised for the same reason not to destroy 
 him again. Will some gentleman skilled in theology 
 give us an explanation ? 
 
 After God had smelled the sweet savor of sacri- 
 fice, he seems to have changed his idea as to the 
 proper diet for man. When Adam and Eve were 
 created they were allowed to eat herbs bearing seed, 
 and the fruit of trees. When they were turned out 
 of Eden, God said to them " Thou shalt eat the herb 
 of the field." In the first chapter of Genesis the 
 " green herb " was given for food to the beasts, fowls 
 and creeping things. Upon being expelled from the 
 garden, Adam and Eve, as to their food, were put 
 upon an equality with the lower animals. According 
 to this, the ante-diluvians were vegetarians. This 
 may account for their wickedness and longevity. 
 
 After Noah sacrificed, and God smelled the sweet 
 savor ; he said — " Every moving thing that liveth 
 shall be meat for you, even as the green herb have I 
 given you all things." Afterwards this same God 
 changed his mind again, and divided the beasts and 
 birds into clean and unclean, and made it a crime for 
 man to eat the unclean. Probably food was so 
 
164 SOME MISTAKES OF MOSES. 
 
 scarce when Noah was let out of the ark that Jehovah 
 generously allowed him to eat anything and every- 
 thing he could find. 
 
 According to the account, God then made a 
 covenant with Noah to the effect that he would not 
 again destroy the world with a flood, and as the 
 attesting witness of this contract, a rainbow was set 
 in the cloud. This bow was placed in the sky so 
 that it might perpetually remind God of his promise 
 and covenant. Without this visible witness and re- 
 minder, it would seem that Jehovah was liable to 
 forget the contract, and drown the world again. 
 Did the rainbow originate in this way ? Did God 
 put it in the cloud simply to keep his agreement in 
 his memory ? 
 
 For me it is impossible to believe the story of the 
 deluge. It seems so cruel, so barbaric, so crude in 
 detail, so absurd in all its parts, and so contrary to all 
 we know of law, that even credulity itself is 
 shocked. 
 
 Many nations have preserved accounts of a 
 deluge in which all people, except a family or two, 
 were destroyed. Babylon was certainly a city before 
 Jerusalem was founded. Egypt was in the height of 
 her power when there were only seventy Jews in the 
 
SOME MISTAKES OF MOSES; i65 
 
 world, and India had a literature before the name 
 of Jehovah had passed the lips of superstition. An 
 account of a general deluge "was discovered by 
 George Smith, translated from another account that 
 was written about two thousand years before Christ." 
 Of course it is impossible to tell how long the story 
 had lived in the memory of tradition before it was 
 reduced to writing by the Babylonians. According 
 to this account, which is, without doubt, much older 
 than the one given by Moses, Tamzi built a ship at 
 the command of the god Hea, and put in it his family 
 and the beasts of the field. He pitched the ship 
 inside and outside with bitumen, and as soon as it 
 was finished, there came a flood of rain and 
 "destroyed all life from the face of the whole earth. 
 On the seventh day there was a calm, and the ship 
 stranded on the mountain Nizir." Tamzi waited for 
 seven days more, and then let out a dove. After 
 wards, he let out a swallow, and that, as well as the 
 dove returned. Then he let out a raven, and as that 
 did not return, he concluded that the water had dried 
 away, and thereupon left the ship. Then he made 
 an offering to god, or the gods, and " Hea interceded 
 with Bel," so that the earth might never again be 
 drowned. 
 
1 66 Some mistakes of mOses. 
 
 This is the Babylonian story, told without the 
 contradictions of the original. For in that, it seems, 
 there are two accounts, as well as in the bible. Is it 
 not a strange coincidence that there should be 
 contradictory accounts mingled in both the Baby- 
 lonian and Jewish stories ? 
 
 In the bible there are two accounts. In one 
 account, Noah was to take two of all beasts, birds, 
 and creeping things into the ark, while in the other, 
 he was commanded to take of clean beasts, and all 
 birds by sevens of each kind. According to one 
 account, the flood only lasted one hundred and fifty 
 days — as related in the third verse of the eighth 
 chapter ; while the other account fixes the time at 
 three hundred and seventy-seven days. Both of 
 these accounts cannot be true. Yet in order to be 
 saved, it is not sufficient to believe one of them — 
 you must believe both. 
 
 Among the Egyptians there was a story to the 
 effect that the great god Ra became utterly maddened 
 with the people, and deliberately made up his mind 
 that he would exterminate mankind. Thereupon he 
 began to destroy, and continued in the terrible work 
 until blood flowed in streams, when suddenly he 
 ceased, and took an oath that he would not again 
 
SOME MISTAKES OF MOSES. 1 67 
 
 destroy the human race. This myth was probably 
 thousands of years old when Moses was born. 
 
 So, in India, there was a fable about the flood. 
 A fish warned Manu that a flood was coming. 
 Manu built a "box" and the fish towed it to a 
 mountain and saved all hands. 
 
 The same kind of stories were told in Greece, 
 and among our own Indian tribes. At one time the 
 christian pointed to the fact that many nations told 
 of a flood, as evidence of the truth of the Mosaic 
 account ; but now, it having been shown that other 
 accounts are much older, and equally reasonable, 
 that argument has ceased to be of any great value. 
 
 It is probable that all these accounts had a 
 common origin. They were likely born of some- 
 thing in nature visible to all nations. The idea of a 
 universal flood, produced by a god to drown the 
 world on account of the sins of the people, is infinitely 
 absurd. The solution of all these stories has been 
 supposed to be, the existence of partial floods in most 
 countries ; and for a long time this solution was 
 satisfactory. But the fact that these stories are 
 greatly alike, that only one man is warned, that only 
 one family is saved, that a boat is built, that birds are 
 sent out to find if the water had abated, tend to show 
 
1 68 SOME MISTAKES OF MOSES. 
 
 that they had a common origin. Admitting that 
 there were severe floods in all countries ; it certainly 
 cannot follow that in each instance only one family 
 would be saved, or that the same story would in each 
 instance be told. It may be urged that the natural 
 tendency of man to exaggerate calamities, might 
 account for this agreement in all the accounts, and it 
 must be admitted that there is some force in the 
 suggestion. I believe, though, that the real origin 
 of all these myths is the same, and that it was 
 originally an effort to account for the sun, moon and 
 stars. The sun and moon were the man and wife, 
 or the god and goddess, and the stars were their 
 children. From a celestial myth, it became a ter- 
 restrial one ; the air, or ether-ocean became a flood, 
 produced by rain, and the sun moon and stars 
 became man, woman and children. 
 
 In the original story, the mountain was the place 
 where in the far east the sky was supposed to touch 
 the earth, and it was there that the ship containing 
 the celestial passengers finally rested from its voyage. 
 But whatever may be the origin of the stories of the 
 flood, whether told first by Hindu, Babylonian or 
 Hebrew, we may rest perfectly assured that they are 
 all equally false. 
 
XIX. 
 
 BACCHUS AND BABEL. 
 
 tt s soon as Noah had disembarked, he proceeded 
 AV to plant a vineyard, and began to be a hus- 
 bandman ; and when the grapes were ripe he made 
 wine and drank of it to excess ; cursed his grandson, 
 blessed Shem and Japheth,and after that lived for 
 three hundred and fifty years. What he did during 
 these three hundred and fifty years, we are not told. 
 We never hear of him again. For three hundred and 
 fifty years he lived among his sons, and daughters, 
 and their descendants. He must have been a vener- 
 able man. He was the man to whom God had made 
 known his intention of drowning the world. By his 
 efforts, the human race had been saved. He must 
 have been acquainted with Methuselah for six hun- 
 dred years, and Methuselah was about two hundred 
 and forty years old, when Adam died. Noah must 
 himself have known the history of mankind, and must 
 have been an object of almost infinite interest ; and 
 
I JO SOME MISTAKES OF MOSES. 
 
 yet for three hundred and fifty years he is neither 
 directly nor indirectly mentioned. When Noah died, 
 Abraham must have been more than fifty years old ; 
 and Shem, the son of Noah, lived for several 
 hundred years after the death of Abraham ; and yet 
 he is never mentioned. Noah when he died, was 
 the oldest man in the whole world by about five 
 hundred years ; and everybody living at the time of 
 his death knew that they were indebted to him, and 
 yet no account is given of his burial. No monument 
 was raised to mark the spot. This, however, is no 
 more wonderful than the fact that no account is 
 given of the death of Adam or of Eve, nor of the 
 place of their burial. This may all be accounted for 
 by the fact that the language of man was confounded 
 at the building of the tower of Babel, whereby all 
 tradition may have been lost, so that even the sons 
 of Noah could not give an account of their voyage 
 in the ark ; and, consequently, some one had to be 
 directly inspired to tell the story, after new languages 
 had been formed. 
 
 It has always been a mystery to me how Adam, 
 Eve, and the serpent were taught the same language- 
 Where did they get it ? We know now, that it re- 
 quires a great number of years to form a language ; 
 
SOME MISTAKES OF MOSES. Ijl 
 
 that it is of exceedingly slow growth. We also 
 know that by language, man conveys to his fellows 
 the impressions made upon him by what he sees, 
 hears, smells and touches. We know that the 
 language of the savage consists of a few sounds, 
 capable of expressing only a few ideas or states of 
 the mind, such as love, desire, fear, hatred, aversion 
 and contempt. Many centuries are required to pro- 
 duce a language capable of expressing complex ideas. 
 It does not seem to me that ideas can be manu- 
 factured by a deity and put in the brain of man. 
 These ideas must be the result of observation and 
 experience. 
 
 Does anybody believe that God directly taught a 
 lano-uaee to Adam and Eve, or that he so made 
 them that they, by intuition spoke Hebrew, or some 
 language capable of conveying to each other their 
 thoughts ? How did the serpent learn the same 
 language ? Did God teach it to him, or did he 
 happen to overhear God, when he was teaching 
 Adam and Eve ? We are told in the second chapter 
 of Genesis that God caused all the animals to pass 
 before Adam to see what he would call them. We 
 cannot infer from this that God named the animals 
 and informed Adam what to call them. Adam 
 
172 SOME MISTAKES OF MOSES. 
 
 named them himself. Where did he get his words ? 
 We cannot imagine a man just made out of dust, 
 without the experience of a moment, having the 
 power to put his thoughts in language. In the first 
 place, we cannot conceive of his having any thoughts 
 until he has combined, through experience and obser- 
 vation, the impressions that nature had made upon 
 him through the medium of his senses. We cannot 
 imagine of his knowing anything, in the first instance, 
 about different degrees of heat, nor about darkness, if 
 he was made in the day-time, nor about light, if cre- 
 ated at ni^ht, until the next morninof. Before a man 
 can have what we call thoughts, he must have had 
 a little experience. Something must have happened 
 to him before he can have a thought, and before he 
 can express himself in language. Language is a 
 growth, not a gift. We account now for the 
 diversity of language by the fact that tribes and 
 nations have had different experiences, different 
 wants, different surroundings, and, one result of all 
 these differences is, among other things, a difference 
 in language. Nothing can be more absurd than to 
 account for the different languages of the world by 
 saying that the original language was confounded at 
 the tower of Babel. 
 
SOME MISTAKES OF MOSES. 1 73 
 
 According to the bible, up to the time of the 
 building of that tower, the whole earth was of 
 one language and of one speech, and would have 
 so remained until the present time had not an 
 effort been made to build a tower whose top 
 should reach into heaven. Can any one imagine 
 what objection God would have to the building of 
 such a tower ? And how could the confusion of 
 tongues prevent its construction ? How could 
 language be confounded ? It could be confounded 
 only by the destruction of memory. Did God 
 destroy the memory of mankind at that time, and if 
 so, how ? Did he paralyze that portion of the brain 
 presiding over the organs of articulation, so that they 
 could not speak the words, although they remem- 
 bered them clearly, or did he so touch the brain 
 that they could not hear ? Will some theologian, 
 versed in the machinery of the miraculous, tell us 
 in what way God confounded the language of 
 mankind ? 
 
 Why would the confounding of the language 
 make them separate ? Why would they not stay 
 together until they could understand each other ? 
 People will not separate, from weakness. When in 
 trouble they come together and desire the assistance 
 
174 SOME MISTAKES OF MOSES. 
 
 of each other. Why, in this instance, did they 
 separate ? What particular ones would naturally 
 come together if nobody understood the language 
 of any other person ? Would it not have been just 
 as hard to agree when and where to go, without any 
 language to express the agreement, as to go on with 
 the building of the tower ? 
 
 Is it possible that any one now believes that the 
 whole world would be of one speech had the lan- 
 guage not been confounded at Babel ? Do we not 
 know that every word was suggested in some way 
 by the experience of men ? Do we not know that 
 words are continually dying, and continually being 
 born ; that every language has its cradle and its 
 cemetery — its buds, its blossoms, its fruits and its 
 withered leaves? Man has loved, enjoyed, hated, 
 suffered and hoped, and all words have been born of 
 these experiences. 
 
 Why did " the Lord come down to see the city 
 and the tower ? " Could he not see them from 
 where he lived or from where he was ? Where did 
 he come down from ? Did he come in the daytime, 
 or in the night ? We are taught now that God is 
 everywhere ; that he inhabits immensity ; that he is 
 in every atom, and in every star. If this is true, 
 
SOME MISTAKES OF MOSES. 1/5 
 
 why did he " come down to see the city and the 
 tower ? " Will some theologian explain this ? 
 
 After all, is it not much easier and altogether 
 more reasonable to say that Moses was mistaken, 
 that he knew little of tne science of language, and 
 that he guessed a great deal more than he investi- 
 gated ? 
 
XX 
 
 FAITH IN FILTH. 
 
 No light whatever is shed upon what passed in 
 the world after the confounding of language 
 at Babel, until the birth of Abraham. But, before 
 speaking of the history of the Jewish people, it may 
 be proper for me to say that many things are re- 
 counted in Genesis, and other books attributed to 
 Moses, of which I do not wish to speak. There are 
 many pages of these books unfit to read, many 
 stories not calculated, in my judgment, to improve 
 the morals of mankind. I do not wish even to call 
 the attention of my readers to these things, except in 
 a general way. It is to be hoped that the time will 
 come when such chapters and passages as cannot be 
 read without leaving the blush of shame upon the 
 cheek of modesty, will be left out, and not published 
 as a part of the bible. If there is a God, it certainly 
 is blasphemous to attribute to him the authorship of 
 
SOME MISTAKES OF MOSES. 177 
 
 pages too obscene, beastly and vulgar to be read in 
 the presence of men and women. 
 
 The believers in the bible are loud in their 
 denunciation of what they are pleased to call the 
 immoral literature of the world ; and yet few books 
 have been published containing more moral filth 
 than this inspired word of God. These stories are 
 not redeemed by a single flash of wit or humor. 
 They never rise above the dull details of stupid vice. 
 For one, I cannot afford to soil my pages with 
 extracts from them ; and all such portions of the 
 Scriptures I leave to be examined, written upon, and 
 explained by the clergy. Clergymen may know 
 some way by which they can extract honey from 
 these flowers. Until these passages are expunged 
 from the Old Testament, it is not a fit book to be 
 read by either old or young. It contains pages 
 that no minister in the United States would read to 
 his congregation f or any reW ard whatever. There 
 are chapters that no gentleman would read in the 
 presence of a lady. There are chapters that no 
 father would read to his child. There are narratives 
 utterly unfit to be told ; and the time will come 
 when mankind will wonder that such a book was 
 
 ever called inspired. 
 12 
 
1 78 SOME MISTAKES OF MOSES. 
 
 I know that in many books besides the bible, 
 there are immodest lines. Some of the greatest 
 writers have soiled their pages with indecent words. 
 We account for this by saying that the authors were 
 human ; that they catered to the taste and spirit of 
 their times. We make excuses, but at the same time 
 regret that in their works they left an impure word. 
 But what shall we say of God ? Is it possible that a 
 being of infinite purity — the author of modesty, 
 would smirch the pages of his book with stories 
 lewd, licentious and obscene ? If God is the author 
 of the bible, it is, of course, the standard by which 
 all other books can, and should be measured. If the 
 bible is not obscene, what book is ? Why should 
 men be imprisoned simply for imitating God ? The 
 christian world should never say another word 
 against immoral books until it makes the inspired 
 volume clean. These vile and filthy things -were not 
 written for the purpose of conveying and enforcing 
 moral truth, but seem to have been written because 
 the author loved an unclean thine. There is no 
 moral depth below that occupied by the writer or 
 publisher of obscene books, that stain with lust, the 
 loving heart of youth. Such men should be im- 
 prisoned and their books destroyed. The literature 
 
SOME MISTAKES OF MOSES. 1 79 
 
 of the world should be rendered decent, and no book 
 should be published that cannot be read by, and in 
 the hearing of the best and purest people. But as 
 long" as the bible is considered as the work of God, 
 it will be hard to make all men too good and pure 
 to imitate it ; and as long as it is imitated there will 
 be vile and filthy books. The literature of our 
 country will not be sweet and clean until the bible 
 ceases to be regarded as the production of a god. 
 
 We are continually told that the bible is the very 
 foundation of modesty and morality ; while many of 
 its pages are so immodest and immoral that a 
 minister, for reading them in the pulpit, would be 
 instantly denounced as an unclean wretch. Every 
 woman would leave the church, and if the men 
 stayed, it would be for the purpose of chastising the 
 minister. 
 
 Is there any saving grace in hypocrisy ? Will 
 men become clean in speech by believing that God 
 is unclean ? Would it not be far better to admit 
 that the bible was written by barbarians in a 
 barbarous, coarse and vulgar age ? Would it not be 
 safer to charge Moses with vulgarity, instead of God? 
 Is it not altogether more probable that some ignorant 
 Hebrew would write the vulgar words ? The chris- 
 
I SO SOME MISTAKES OF MOSES. 
 
 tians tell me that God is the author of these vile and 
 stupid things? I have examined the question to the 
 best of my ability, and as to God my verdict is : — 
 Not guilty. Faith should not rest in filth. 
 
 Every foolish and immodest thing should be 
 expunged from the bible. Let us keep the good. 
 Let us preserve every great and splendid thought, 
 every wise and prudent maxim, every just law, every 
 elevated idea, and every word calculated to make 
 man nobler and purer, and let us have the courage to 
 throw the rest away. The souls of children should 
 not be stained and soiled. The charming instincts 
 of youth should not be corrupted and defiled. The 
 girls and boys should not be taught that unclean 
 words were uttered by "inspired" lips. Teach them 
 that these words were born of savagery and lust. 
 Teach them that the unclean is the unholy, and that 
 only the pure is sacred. 
 
XXI. 
 
 THE HEBREWS. 
 
 After language had been confounded and the 
 people scattered, there appeared in the land 
 of Canaan a tribe of Hebrews ruled by a chief or 
 sheik called Abraham. They had a few cattle, lived 
 in tents, practiced polygamy, wandered from place to 
 place, and were the only folks in the whole world 
 to whom God paid the slightest attention. At this 
 time there were hundreds of cities in India filled with 
 temples and palaces ; millions of Egyptians wor- 
 shiped Isis and Osiris, and had covered their land 
 with marvelous monuments of industry, power and 
 skill. But these civilizations were entirely neglected 
 by the Deity, his whole attention being taken up 
 with Abraham and his family. 
 
 It seems, from the account, that God and 
 Abraham were intimately acquainted, and conversed 
 frequently upon a great variety of subjects. By the 
 twelfth chapter of Genesis it appears that he made 
 
152 SOME MISTAKES OF MOSES. 
 
 the following promises to Abraham. " I will make 
 of thee a great nation, and I will bless thee, and 
 make thy name great : and thou shalt be a blessing. 
 And I will bless them that bless thee, and curse him 
 that curseth thee." 
 
 After receiving this communication from the 
 Almighty, Abraham went into the land of Canaan, 
 and again God appeared to him and told him to take 
 a heifer three years old, a goat of the same age, a 
 sheep of equal antiquity, a turtle dove and a young 
 pigeon. Whereupon Abraham killed the animals 
 " and divided them in the midst, and laid each piece 
 one against another." And it came to pass that 
 when the sun went down and it was dark, behold a 
 smoking furnace and a burning lamp that passed 
 between the raw and bleeding meat. The killine of 
 these animals was a preparation for receiving a visit 
 from God. Should an American missionary in 
 Central Africa find a negro chief surrounded by a 
 butchered heifer, a goat and a sheep, with which to 
 receive a communication from the infinite God, my 
 opinion is, that the missionary would regard the 
 proceeding as the direct result of savagery. And if 
 the chief insisted that he had seen a smoking furnace 
 and a burning lamp going up and down between the 
 
SOME MISTAKES OF MOSES. 1 83 
 
 pieces of meat, the missionary would certainly con- 
 clude that the chief was not altogether risrht in his 
 mind. 
 
 If the bible is true, this same God told Abraham 
 to take and sacrifice his only son, or rather the only 
 son of his wife, and a murder would have been 
 committed had not God, just at the right moment, 
 directed him to stay his hand and take a sheep 
 instead. 
 
 God made a great number of promises to 
 Abraham, but few of them were ever kept. He 
 agreed to make him the father of a great nation, but 
 he did not. He solemnly promised to give him a 
 great country, including all the land between the 
 river of Egypt and the Euphrates, but he did not. 
 
 In due time Abraham passed away, and his son 
 Isaac took his place at the head of the tribe. Then 
 came Jacob, who " watered stock " and enriched 
 himself with the spoil of Laban. Joseph was sold 
 into Egypt by his jealous brethren, where he became 
 one of the chief men of the kingdom, and in a few 
 years his father and brothers left their own country 
 and settled in Egypt. At this time there were 
 seventy Hebrews in the world, counting Joseph and 
 his children. They remained in Egypt two hundred 
 
I §4 SOME MISTAKES OF MOSES. 
 
 and fifteen years. It is claimed by some that they 
 were in that country for four hundred and thirty 
 years. This is a mistake. Josephus says they were 
 in Egypt two hundred and fifteen years, and this 
 statement is sustained by the best biblical scholars 
 of all denominations. According to the 17th verse 
 of the 3rd chapter of Galatians, it was four hundred 
 and thirty years from the time the promise was made 
 to Abraham to the giving of the law, and as the 
 Hebrews did not go to Egypt for two hundred and 
 fifteen years after the making of the promise to 
 Abraham, they could in no event have been in Egypt 
 more than two hundred and fifteen years. In our 
 bible the 40th verse of the 12th chapter of Exodus, 
 is as follows :— 
 
 " Now the sojourning of the children of Israel, 
 who dwelt in Egypt, was four hundred and thirty 
 years." 
 
 This passage does not say that the sojourning 
 was all done in Egypt ; neither does it say that the 
 children of Israel dwelt in Egypt four hundred and 
 thirty years ; but it does say that the sojourning of 
 the children of Israel who dwelt in Egypt was four 
 hundred and thirty years. The Vatican copy of the 
 Septuagint renders the same passage as follows : — 
 
SOME MISTAKES OF MOSES. 1 85 
 
 "The sojourning of the children of Israel which 
 they sojourned in Egypt, and in the land of Canaan, 
 was four hundred and thirty years." 
 
 The Alexandrian version says : — "The sojourning 
 of the children of Israel which they and their fathers 
 sojourned in Egypt, and in the land of Canaan, was 
 four hundred and thirty years." 
 
 And in the Samaritan bible we have : — " The 
 sojourning of the children of Israel and of their 
 fathers which they sojourned in the land of Canaan, 
 and in the land of Egypt, was four hundred and 
 thirty years." 
 
 There were seventy souls when they went down 
 into Egypt, and they remained two hundred and 
 fifteen years, and at the end of that time they had 
 increased to about three million. How do we know 
 that there were three million at the end of two 
 hundred and fifteen years ? We know it because we 
 are informed by Moses that "there were six hundred 
 thousand men of war." Now, to each man of war, 
 there must have been at least five other people. In 
 every State in this Union there will be to each voter, 
 five other persons at least, and we all know that 
 there are always more voters than men of war. If 
 there were six hundred thousand men of war, there 
 
I 86 SOME MISTAKES OF MOSES. 
 
 must have been a population of at least three million. 
 Is it possible that seventy people could increase to 
 that extent in two hundred and fifteen years ? You 
 may say that it was a miracle ; but what need was 
 there of working- a miracle ? Why should God 
 miraculously increase the number of slaves ? If he 
 wished miraculously to increase the population, why 
 did he not wait until the people were free ? 
 
 In 1776, we had in the American Colonies about 
 three millions of people. In one hundred years we 
 doubled four times : that is to say, six, twelve, 
 twenty-four, forty-eight million, — our present popu- 
 lation. 
 
 We must not forget that during all these years 
 there has been pouring into our country a vast stream 
 of emigration, and that this, taken in connection with 
 the fact that our country is productive beyond all 
 others, gave us only four doubles in one hundred 
 years. Admitting that the Hebrews increased as 
 rapidly without emigration as we, in this country, 
 have with it, we will give to them four doubles each 
 century, commencing with seventy people, and they 
 would have, at the end of two hundred years, a 
 population of seventeen thousand nine hundred and 
 twenty. Giving them another double for the odd 
 
SOME MISTAKES OF MOSES; i8/ 
 
 fifteen years and there would be, provided no deaths 
 had occurred, thirty-five thousand eight hundred and 
 forty people. And yet we are told that instead of 
 having this number, they had increased to such an 
 extent that they had six hundred thousand men of 
 war : that is to say, a population of more than three 
 millions! 
 
 Every sensible man knows that this account is 
 not, and cannot be true. We know that seventy 
 people could not increase to three million in two 
 hundred and fifteen years. 
 
 About this time the Hebrews took a census, and 
 found that there were twenty-two thousand two 
 hundred and seventy-three first born males. It is 
 reasonable to suppose that there were about as many 
 first born females. This would make forty-four 
 thousand five hundred and forty-six first born 
 children. Now, there must have been about as 
 many mothers as there were first born children. If 
 there were only about forty-five thousand mothers 
 and three millions of people, the mothers must have 
 had on an average about sixty-six children apiece. 
 
 At this time, the Hebrews were slaves, and had 
 been for two hundred and fifteen years. A little 
 while before, an order had been made by the 
 
SOME MISTAKES OF MOSES. 
 
 Egyptians that all the male children of the Hebrews 
 should be killed. One, contrary to this order, was 
 saved in an ark made of bullrushes daubed with 
 slime. This child was found by the daughter of 
 Pharaoh, and was adopted, it seems, as her own, 
 and, may be, was. He grew to be a man, sided 
 with the Hebrews, killed an Egyptian that was 
 smiting a slave, hid the body in the sand, and fled 
 from Egypt to the land of Midian, became acquainted 
 with a priest who had seven daughters, took the 
 side of the daughters against the ill-mannered shep- 
 herds of that country, and married Zipporah, one of 
 the girls, and became a shepherd for her father. 
 Afterward, while tending his flock, the Lord appeared 
 to him in a burning bush, and commanded him to 
 go to the king of Egypt and demand from him the 
 liberation of the Hebrews. In order to convince 
 him that the something burning in the bush was 
 actually God, the rod in his hand was changed into 
 a serpent, which, upon being caught by the tail, 
 became again a rod. Moses was also told to put 
 his hand in his bosom, and when he took it out it 
 was as leprous as snow. Quite a number of strange 
 things were performed, and others promised. Moses 
 then agreed to go back to Egypt provided his 
 
SOME MISTAKES OF MOSES. 1 89 
 
 brother could go with him. Whereupon the Lord 
 appeared to Aaron, and directed him to meet Moses 
 in the wilderness. They met at the mount of God, 
 went to Egypt, gathered together all the elders of 
 the children of Israel, spake all the words which God 
 had spoken unto Moses, and did all the signs in the 
 sight of the people. The Israelites believed, bowed 
 their heads and worshiped ; and Moses and Aaron 
 went in and told their message to Pharaoh the 
 king. 
 
XXII. 
 
 THE PLAGUES. 
 
 Three millions of people were in slavery. They 
 were treated with the utmost rigor, and so 
 fearful were their masters that they might, in time, 
 increase in numbers sufficient to avenge themselves, 
 that they took from the arms of mothers all the male 
 children and destroyed them. If the account given 
 is true, the Egyptians were the most cruel, heartless 
 and infamous people of which history gives any 
 record. God finally made up his mind to free the 
 Hebrews ; and for the accomplishment of this pur- 
 pose he sent, as his agents, Moses and Aaron, to 
 the king of Egypt. In order that the king might 
 know that these men had a divine mission, God 
 gave Moses the power of changing a stick into a 
 serpent, and water into blood. Moses and Aaron 
 went before the kinor stating that the Lord God of 
 Israel ordered the King of Egypt to let the Hebrews 
 
SOME MISTAKES OF MOSES. 1 9 1 
 
 go that they might hold a feast with God in the 
 wilderness. Thereupon Pharaoh, the king, enquired 
 who the Lord was, at the same time stating that he 
 had never made his acquaintance, and knew nothing 
 about him. To this they replied that the God of the 
 Hebrews had met with them, and they asked to go a 
 three days journey into the desert and sacrifice unto 
 this God, fearing that if they did not he would fall 
 upon them with pestilence or the sword. This 
 interview seems to have hardened Pharaoh, for lje 
 ordered the tasks of the children of Israel to be 
 increased ; so that the only effect of the first appeal 
 was to render still worse the condition of the 
 Hebrews. Thereupon, Moses returned unto the 
 Lord and said " Lord, wherefore hast thou so evil 
 entreated this people ? Why is it that thou hast 
 sent me ? For since I came to Pharaoh to speak in 
 thy name he hath done evil to this people ; neither 
 hast thou delivered thy people at all." 
 
 Apparently stung by this reproach, God an- 
 swered : — 
 
 " Now shalt thou see what I will do to Pharoah ; 
 for with a strong hand shall he let them go ; and 
 with a strong hand shall he drive them out of his 
 land." 
 
192 SOME MISTAKES OF MOSES. 
 
 God then recounts the fact that he had appeared 
 unto Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, that he had estab- 
 lished a covenant with them to give them the land 
 of Canaan, that he had heard the groanings of the 
 children of Israel in Egyptian bondage ; that their 
 groanings had put him in mind of his covenant, and 
 that he had made up his mind to redeem the children 
 of Israel with a stretched out arm and with srreat 
 judgments. Moses then spoke to the children of 
 Isjael again, but they would listen to him no more. 
 His first effort in their behalf had simply doubled 
 their trouble and they seemed to have lost confidence 
 in his power. Thereupon Jehovah promised Moses 
 that he would make him a god unto Pharaoh, and 
 that Aaron should be his prophet, but at the same 
 time informed him that his message would be of no 
 avail ; that he would harden the heart of Pharaoh so 
 that he would not listen ; that he would so harden 
 his heart that he might have an excuse for destroy- 
 ing the Egyptians. Accordingly, Moses and Aaron 
 again went before Pharaoh. Moses said to Aaron ; 
 — " Cast down your rod before Pharaoh," which he 
 did, and it became a serpent. Then Pharaoh not in 
 the least surprised, called for his wise men and his 
 sorcerers, and they threw down their rods and 
 
SOME MISTAKES OF MOSES. 193 
 
 changed them into serpents. The serpent that had 
 been changed from Aaron's rod was, at this time 
 crawling upon the floor, and it proceeded to swallow 
 the serpents that had been produced by the 
 magicians of Egypt. What became of these serpents 
 that were swallowed, whether they turned back into 
 sticks again, is not stated. Can we believe that the 
 stick was changed into a real living serpent, or did 
 it assume simply the appearance of a serpent ? If it 
 bore only the appearance of a serpent it was a 
 deception, and could not rise above the dignity of 
 legerdemain. Is it necessary to believe that God 
 is a kind of prestigiator — a sleight-of-hand per- 
 former, a magician or sorcerer ? Can it be possible 
 that an infinite being would endeavor to secure the 
 liberation of a race by performing a miracle that 
 could be equally performed by the sorcerers and 
 magicians of a barbarian king- ? 
 
 Not one word was said by Moses or Aaron as to 
 the wickedness of depriving a human being of his 
 liberty. Not a word was said in favor of liberty. 
 Not the slightest intimation that a human being was 
 justly entitled to the product of his own labor. Not 
 a word about the cruelty of masters who would 
 destroy even the babes of slave mothers. It seems 
 
 13 
 
194 SOME MISTAKES OF MOSES. 
 
 to me wonderful that this God did not tell the king 
 of Egypt that no nation could enslave another, with- 
 out also enslaving itself; that it was impossible to 
 put a chain around the limbs of a slave, without 
 putting manacles upon the brain of the master. 
 Why did he not tell him that a nation founded upon 
 slavery could not stand? Instead of declaring these 
 things, instead of appealing to justice, to mercy and 
 to liberty, he resorted to feats of jugglery. Suppose 
 we wished to make a treaty with a barbarous nation, 
 and the president should employ a sleight-of-hand 
 performer as envoy extraordinary, and instruct him, 
 that when he came into the presence of the savage 
 monarch, he should cast down an umbrella or a 
 walking stick, which would change into a lizard or 
 a turtle ; what would we think ? Would we not 
 regard such a performance as beneath the dignity 
 even of a president ? And what would be our 
 feelings if the savage king sent for his sorcerers and 
 had them perform the same feat ? If such things 
 would appear puerile and foolish in the president of 
 a great republic, what shall be said when they were 
 resorted to by the creator of all worlds ? How 
 small, how contemptible such a God appears ! 
 Pharaoh, it seems, took about this view of the 
 
SOME MISTAKES OF MOSES. 19$ 
 
 matter, and he would not be persuaded that such 
 tricks were performed by an infinite being. 
 
 Again, Moses and Aaron came before Pharaoh 
 as he was going to the river's bank, and the same 
 rod which had changed to a serpent, and, by this 
 time changed back, was taken by Aaron, who, in the 
 presence of Pharaoh, smote the water of the river, 
 which was immediately turned to blood, as well as 
 all the water in all the streams, ponds, and pools, 
 as well as all water in vessels of wood and vessels of 
 stone in the entire land of Egypt. As soon as all 
 the waters in Egypt had been turned into blood, the. 
 magicians of that country did the same with their 
 enchantments. We are not informed where they 
 got the water to turn into blood, since all the water 
 in Egypt had already been so changed. It seems 
 from the account that the fish in the Nile died, and 
 the river emitted a stench, and there was not a drop 
 of water in the land of Egypt that had not been 
 changed into blood. In consequence of this, the 
 Egyptians digged " around about the river " for 
 water to drink. Can we believe this story ? Is it 
 necessary to salvation to admit that all the rivers, 
 pools, ponds and lakes of a country were changed 
 into blood, in order that a king might be induced to 
 
I96 SOME MISTAKES OF MOSES. 
 
 allow the children of Israel the privilege of going 
 a three days journey into the wilderness to make 
 sacrifices to their God ? 
 
 It seems from the account that Pharaoh was told 
 that the God of the Hebrews would, if he refused to 
 let the Israelites go, change all the waters of Egypt 
 into blood, and that, upon his refusal, they were so 
 changed. This had, however, no influence upon 
 him, for the reason that his own magicians did the 
 same. It does not appear that Moses and Aaron 
 expressed the least surprise at the success of the 
 Egyptian sorcerers. At that time it was believed 
 that each nation had its own god. The only claim 
 that Moses and Aaron made for their God was, that 
 he was the greatest and most powerful of all the 
 gods, and that with anything like an equal chance he 
 could vanquish the deity of any other nation. 
 
 After the waters were changed to blood Moses 
 and Aaron waited for seven days. At the end of 
 that time God told Moses to again go to Pharaoh 
 and demand the release of his people, and to inform 
 him that, if he refused, God would strike all the 
 borders of Egypt with frogs. That he would make 
 frogs so plentiful that they would go into the houses 
 of Pharaoh, into his bedchamber, upon his bed, into 
 
SOME MISTAKES OF MOSES. 19/ 
 
 the houses of his servants, upon his people, into 
 their ovens, and even into their kneading troughs. 
 This threat had no effect whatever upon Pharaoh. 
 And thereupon Aaron stretched out his hand over 
 the waters of Egypt, and the frogs came up and 
 covered the land. The magicians of Egypt did the 
 same, and with their enchantments brought more 
 frogs upon the land of Egypt. 
 
 These magicians do not seem to have been 
 original in their ideas, but so far as imitation is con- 
 cerned, were perfect masters of their art. The frogs 
 seem to have made such an impression upon Pharaoh 
 that he sent for Moses and asked him to entreat the 
 Lord that he would take away the frogs. Moses 
 agreed to remove them from the houses and the 
 land, and allow them to remain only in the rivers. 
 Accordingly the frogs died out of the houses, and out 
 of the villages, and out of the fields, and the people 
 gathered them together in heaps. As soon as the 
 frogs had left the houses and fields, the heart of 
 Pharaoh became again hardened, and he refused to 
 let the people go. 
 
 Aaron then, according to the command of God. 
 stretched out his hand, holding the rod, and smote 
 the dust of the earth, and it became lice in man and 
 
I98 SOME MISTAKES OF MOSES. 
 
 in beast, and all the dust became lice throughout the 
 land of Egypt. Pharaoh again sent for his magicians, 
 and they sought to do the same with their enchant- 
 ments, but they could not. Whereupon the sor- 
 cerers said unto Pharaoh : " This is the finger of 
 God." 
 
 Notwithstanding this, however, Pharaoh refused 
 to let the Hebrews go. God then caused a grievous 
 swarm of flies to come into the house of Pharaoh 
 and into his servants' houses, and into all the land of 
 Egypt, to such an extent that the whole land was 
 corrupted by reason of the flies. But into that part 
 of the country occupied by the children of Israel 
 there came no flies. Thereupon Pharaoh sent for 
 Moses and Aaron and said to them : " Go, and 
 sacrifice to your God in this land." They were not 
 willing to sacrifice in Egypt, and asked permission 
 to go on a journey of three days into the wilderness. 
 To this Pharaoh acceded, and in consideration of 
 this Moses agreed to use his influence with the Lord 
 to induce him to send the flies out of the country. 
 He accordingly told the Lord of the bargain he had 
 made with Pharaoh, and the Lord agreed to the 
 compromise, and removed the flies from Pharaoh and 
 from his servants and from his people, and there 
 
SOME MISTAKES OF MOSES. 1 99 
 
 remained not a single fly in the land of Egypt. As 
 soon as the flies were gone, Pharaoh again changed 
 his mind, and concluded not to permit the children of 
 Israel to depart. The Lord then directed Moses to 
 2fo to Pharaoh and tell him that if he did not allow 
 the children of Israel to depart, he would destroy his 
 cattle, his horses, his camels and his sheep ; that 
 these animals would be afflicted with a grievous 
 disease, but that the animals belonging to the 
 Hebrews should not be so afflicted. Moses did as 
 he was bid. On the next day all the cattle of Egypt 
 died ; that is to say, all the horses, all the asses, all 
 the camels, all the oxen and all the sheep ; but of 
 the animals owned by the Israelites, not one perished. 
 This disaster had no effect upon Pharaoh, and he still 
 refused to let the children of Israel go. The Lord 
 then told Moses and Aaron to take some ashes 
 out of a furnace, and told Moses to sprinkle them 
 toward the heavens in the sight of Pharaoh ; saying 
 that the ashes should become small dust in all the 
 land of Egypt, and should be a boil breaking forth 
 with blains upon man and upon beast throughout all 
 the land. 
 
 How these boils breaking out with blains, upon 
 cattle that were already dead, should affect Pharaoh, 
 
200 SOME MISTAKES OF MOSES. 
 
 is a little hard to understand. It must not be for- 
 gotten that all the cattle and all beasts had died with 
 the murrain before the boils had broken out. 
 
 This was a most decisive victory for Moses and 
 Aaron. The boils were upon the magicians to that 
 extent that they could not stand before Moses. But 
 it had no effect upon Pharaoh, who seems to have 
 been a man of great firmness. The Lord then 
 instructed Moses to get up early in the morning and 
 tell Pharaoh that he would stretch out his hand and 
 smite his people with a pestilence, and would, on the 
 morrow, cause it to rain a very grievous hail, such 
 as had never been known in the land of Egypt. He 
 also told Moses to give notice, so that they might 
 get all the cattle that were in the fields under cover. 
 It must be remembered that all these cattle had 
 recently died of the murrain, and their dead bodies 
 had been covered with boils and blains. This, 
 however, had no effect, and Moses stretched forth 
 his hand toward heaven, and the Lord sent thunder, 
 and hail and lightning, and fire that ran along the 
 -round, and the hail fell upon all the land of Egypt, 
 and all that were in the fields, both man and 
 beast, were smitten, and the hail smote every 
 herb of the field, and broke every tree of the 
 
SOME MISTAKES OF MOSES. 201 
 
 country except that portion inhabited by the children 
 of Israel ; there, there was no hail. 
 
 During this hail storm Pharaoh sent for Moses 
 and Aaron and admitted that he had sinned, that the 
 Lord was righteous, and that the Egyptians were 
 wicked, and requested them to ask the Lord that 
 there be no more thunderings and hail, and that he 
 would let the Hebrews go. Moses agreed that as 
 soon as he got out of the city he would stretch forth 
 his hands unto the Lord, and that the thunderings 
 should cease and the hail should stop. But, when 
 the rain and the hail and the thundering ceased, 
 Pharaoh concluded that he would not let the 
 children of Israel go. 
 
 Again, God sent Moses and Aaron, instructing 
 them to tell Pharaoh that if he refused to let the 
 people go, the face of the earth would be covered 
 with locusts, so that man would not be able to see 
 the ground, and that these locusts would eat the 
 residue of that which escaped from the hail ; that 
 they would eat every tree out of the field ; that they 
 would fill the houses of Pharaoh and the houses of 
 all his servants, and the houses of all the Egyptians. 
 Moses delivered the message, and went out from 
 Pharaoh. Some of Pharaoh's servants entreated 
 
202 SOME MISTAKES OF MOSES. 
 
 their master to let the children of Israel go. 
 Pharaoh sent for Moses and Aaron and asked 
 them, who wished to go into the wilderness to 
 sacrifice. They replied that they wished to go with 
 the young and old ; with their sons and daughters, 
 with flocks and herds. Pharaoh would not consent 
 to this, but agreed that the men might go. There 8 
 upon Pharaoh drove Moses and Aaron out of his 
 sio-ht. Then God told Moses to stretch forth his 
 
 o 
 
 hand upon the land of Egypt for the locusts, that 
 they might come up and eat every herb, even all 
 that the hail had left. " And Moses stretched out 
 his rod over the land of Egypt, and the Lord brought 
 an East wind all that day and all that night ; and 
 and when it was morning the East wind brought the 
 locusts ; and they came up over all the land of Egypt 
 and rested upon all the coasts covering the face of 
 tin- whole earth, so that the land was darkened ; 
 and they ate every herb and all the fruit of the 
 trees which the hail had left, and there remained 
 not any green thing on the trees or in the herbs 
 of the field throughout the land of Egypt." Pharaoh 
 then called for Moses and Aaron in great haste, 
 admitted that he had sinned against the Lord their 
 God and against them, asked their forgiveness and 
 
SOME MISTAKES OE MOSES. 20' 
 
 requested them to intercede with God that he might 
 take away the locusts. They went out from his 
 presence and asked the Lord to drive the locusts 
 away, " And the Lord made a strong west wind 
 which took away the locusts, and cast them into the 
 Red Sea so that there remained not one locust in all 
 the coasts of Egypt." 
 
 As soon as the locusts were gone, Pharaoh 
 changed his mind, and, in the language of the sacred 
 text, " the Lord hardened Pharaoh's heart so that he 
 would not let the children of Israel go." 
 
 The Lord then told Moses to stretch out his 
 hand toward heaven that there might be darkness 
 over the land of Egypt, " even darkness which might 
 be felt." " And Moses stretched forth his hand 
 toward heaven, and there was a thick darkness over 
 the land of Egypt for three days during which time 
 they saw not each other, neither arose any of the 
 people from their places for three days ; but the 
 children of Israel had liidit in their dwellings." 
 
 It strikes me that when the land of Egypt was 
 covered with thick darkness — so thick that it could 
 be felt, and when lisdit was in the dwelling's of the 
 Israelites, there could have been no better time for 
 the Hebrews to have left the country. 
 
204 SOME MISTAKES OF MOSES. 
 
 Pharaoh again called for Moses, and told him 
 that his people could go and serve the Lord, pro- 
 vided they would leave their flocks and herds. 
 Moses would not agree to this, for the reason that 
 they needed the flocks and herds for sacrifices and 
 burnt offerings, and he did not know how many of 
 the animals God might require, and for that reason 
 he could not leave a single hoof. Upon the question 
 of the cattle, they divided, and Pharaoh again refused 
 to let the people go. God then commanded Moses 
 to tell the Hebrews to borrow, each of his neighbor, 
 jewels of silver and gold. By a miraculous interpo- 
 sition the Hebrews found favor in the sight of the 
 Egyptians so that they loaned the articles asked for. 
 After this, Moses again went to Pharaoh and told 
 him that all the first-born in the land of Egypt, from 
 the first-born of Pharaoh upon the throne, unto the 
 first-born of the maid-servant who was behind the 
 mill, as well as the first-born of beasts, should die. 
 
 As all the beasts had been destroyed by disease 
 and hail, it is troublesome to understand the meaning 
 of the threat as to their first-born. 
 
 Preparations were accordingly made for carrying 
 this frightful threat into execution. Blood was put 
 on the door-posts of all houses inhabited by Hebrews, 
 
SOME MISTAKES OF MOSES. 205 
 
 so that God, as he passed through that land, might 
 not be mistaken and destroy the first-born of the 
 Jews. "And it came to pass that at midnight the 
 Lord smote all the first-born in the land of Egypt, 
 the first-born of Pharaoh who sat on the throne, and 
 the first-born of the captive who was in the dungeon. 
 And Pharaoh rose up in the night, and all his 
 servants, and all the Egyptians, and there was a 
 great cry in Egypt, for there was not a house where 
 there was not one dead." 
 
 What had these children done ? Why should 
 the babes in the cradle be destroyed on account of 
 the crime of Pharaoh ? Why should the cattle be 
 destroyed because man had enslaved his brother ? 
 In those days women and children and cattle were 
 put upon an exact equality, and all considered 
 as the property of the men ; and when man in 
 some way excited the wrath of God, he punished 
 th3m by destroying all their cattle, their wives, 
 and their little ones. Where can words be found 
 bitter enough to describe a god who would kill 
 wives and babes because husbands and fathers 
 had failed to keep his law ? Every good man, 
 and every good woman, must hate and despise 
 such a deity. 
 
206 SOME MISTAKES OF MOSES. 
 
 Upon the death of all the first-born Pharaoh sent 
 for Moses and Aaron, and not only gave his consent 
 that they might go with the Hebrews into the 
 wilderness, but besought them to go at once. 
 
 Is it possible that an infinite God, creator of all 
 worlds and sustainer of all life, said to Pharaoh, 
 " If you do not let my people go, I will turn 
 all the water of your country into blood," and 
 that upon the refusal of Pharaoh to release the 
 people, God did turn all the waters into blood ? 
 Do you believe this ? 
 
 Do you believe that Pharaoh even after all the 
 water was turned to blood, refused to let the 
 Hebrews go, and that thereupon God told him he 
 would cover his land with frogs? Do you believe 
 this ? 
 
 Do you believe that after the land was covered 
 with frogs Pharaoh still refused to let the people go, 
 and that God then said to him, " I will cover you and 
 all your people with lice?" Do you believe God 
 would make this threat? 
 
 Do you also believe that God told Pharaoh, "If 
 you do not let these people go, I will fill all your 
 houses and cover your country with flies ? " Do you 
 believe God makes such threats as this ? 
 
SOME! MISTAKES OF MOSES. ZOJ 
 
 Of course God must have known that turning the 
 waters into blood, covering the country with frogs, 
 infesting all flesh with lice, and filling all houses with 
 flies, would not accomplish his object, and that all 
 these plagues would have no effect whatever upon 
 the Egyptian king. 
 
 Do you believe that, failing to accomplish any- 
 thing by the flies, God told Pharaoh that if he did 
 not let the people go he would kill his cattle with 
 murrain ? Does such a threat sound God-like ? 
 
 Do you believe that, failing to effect anything by 
 killing the cattle, this same God then threatened to 
 afflict all the people with boils, including the magi- 
 cians who had been rivaling him in the matter of 
 miracles ; and failing to do anything by boils, that 
 he resorted to hail ? Does this sound reasonable ? 
 The hail experiment having accomplished nothing, 
 do you believe that God murdered the first-born of 
 animals and men ? Is it possible to conceive of 
 anything more utterly absurd, stupid, revolting, cruel 
 and senseless, than the miracles said to have been 
 wrought by the Almighty for the purpose of inducing 
 Pharaoh to liberate the children of Israel ? 
 
 Is it not altogether more reasonable to say that 
 the Jewish people, being in slavery, accounted for 
 
208 SOME MISTAKES OF MOSES. 
 
 the misfortunes and calamities, suffered by the 
 Egyptians, by saying that they were the judgments 
 of God ? 
 
 When the Armada of Spain was wrecked and 
 scattered by the storm, the English people believed 
 that God had interposed in their behalf, and publicly 
 gave thanks. When the battle of Lepanto was won, 
 it was believed by the catholic world that the victory 
 was given in answer to prayer. So, our fore-fathers 
 in their revolutionary struggle saw, or thought they 
 saw, the hand of God, and most firmly believed that 
 they achieved their independence by the interposi- 
 tion of the Most High. 
 
 Now, it may be that while the Hebrews were 
 enslaved by the Egyptians, there were plagues of 
 locusts and flies. It may be that there were some dis- 
 eases by which many of the cattle perished. It may be 
 that a pestilence visited that country so that in nearly 
 every house there was some one dead. If so, it was 
 but natural for the enslaved and superstitious Jews 
 to account for these calamities by saying that they 
 were punishments sent by their God. Such ideas 
 will be found in the history of every country. 
 
 For a long time the Jews held these opinions, 
 and they were handed from father to son simply by 
 
SOME MISTAKES OF MOSES. » 2CX) 
 
 tradition. By the time a written language had been 
 produced, thousands of additions had been made, 
 and numberless details invented ; so that we have 
 not only an account of the plagues suffered by the 
 Egyptians, but the whole woven into a connected 
 story, containing the threats made by Moses and 
 Aaron, the miracles wrought by them, the promises 
 of Pharaoh, and finally the release of the Hebrews, 
 as a result of the marvelous things performed in their 
 behalf by Jehovah. 
 
 In any event it is infinitely more probable that 
 the author was misinformed, than that the God of 
 this universe was guilty of these childish, heartless 
 and infamous things. The solution of the whole 
 matter is this : — Moses was mistaken. 
 
 14 
 
XXIII. 
 THE FLIGHT. 
 
 Three millions of people, with their flocks and 
 herds, with borrowed jewelry and raiment, with 
 unleavened dough in kneading troughs bound in 
 their clothes upon their shoulders, in one night com- 
 menced their journey for the land of promise. We 
 are not told how they were informed of the precise 
 time to start. With all the modern appliances, it 
 would require months of time to inform three millions 
 of people of any fact. 
 
 In this vast assemblage there were six hundred 
 thousand men of war, and with them were the old, 
 the young, the diseased and helpless. Where were 
 those people going ? They were going to the desert 
 of Sinai, compared with which Sahara is a garden. 
 Imagine an ocean of lava torn by storm and vexed 
 by tempest, suddenly gazed at by a Gorgon and 
 changed instantly to stone ! Such was the desert of 
 Sinaio 
 
SOME MISTAKES OF MOSES. 211 
 
 All of the civilized nations of the world 
 could not feed and support three millions of 
 people on the desert of Sinai for forty years. 
 It would cost more than one hundred thousand 
 millions of dollars, and would bankrupt Chris- 
 tendom. They had with them their flocks and 
 herds, and the sheep were so numerous that 
 the Israelites sacrificed, at one time, more than 
 one hundred and fifty thousand first-born lambs. 
 How were these flocks supported ? What did 
 they eat ? Where were meadows and pastures 
 for them ? There was no grass, no forests — 
 nothing ! There is no account of its having 
 rained baled hay, nor is it even claimed that they 
 were miraculously fed. To support these flocks, 
 millions of acres of pasture would 4iave been re- 
 quired. God did not take the Israelites through 
 the land of the Philistines, for fear that when 
 they saw the people of that country they would 
 return to Egypt, but he took them by the way 
 of the wilderness to the Red Sea, going before 
 them by day in a pillar of cloud, and by night, in a 
 pillar of fire. 
 
 When it was told Pharaoh that the people had 
 fled, he made ready and took six hundred chosen 
 
2 12 SOME MISTAKES OF MOSES. 
 
 chariots of Egypt, and pursued after the children of 
 Israel, overtaking them by the sea. As all the 
 animals had long before that time been destroyed, 
 we are not informed where Pharaoh obtained the 
 horses for his chariots. The moment the children 
 of Israel saw the hosts of Pharaoh, although they 
 had six hundred thousand men of war, they imme- 
 diately cried unto the Lord for protection. It is 
 wonderful to me that a land that had been ravaged 
 by the plagues described in the bible, still had the 
 power to put in the field an army that would carry 
 terror to the hearts of six hundred thousand men of 
 war. Even with the help of God, it seems, they were 
 not strong enough to meet the Egyptians in the open 
 field, but resorted to strategy. Moses again stretched 
 forth his wonderful rod over the waters of the Red 
 Sea, and they were divided, and the Hebrews passed 
 through on dry land, the waters standing up like a 
 wall on either side. The Egyptians pursued them ; 
 " and in the morning watch the Lord looked into the 
 hosts of the Egyptians, through the pillar of fire," 
 and proceeded to take the wheels off their chariots. 
 As soon as the wheels were off, God told Moses to 
 stretch out his hand over the sea. Moses did so, 
 and immediately " the waters returned and covered 
 
SOME MISTAKES OF MOSES. 
 
 213 
 
 the chariots and horsemen and all the hosts of 
 Pharaoh that came into the sea, and there remained 
 not so much as one of them." 
 
 This account may be true, but still it hardly looks 
 reasonable that God would take the wheels off the 
 chariots. How did he do it ? Did he pull out the 
 linch-pins, or did he just take them off by main 
 force ? 
 
 What a picture this presents to the mind ! God 
 the creator of the universe, maker of every shinino-, 
 glittering star, engaged in pulling off the wheels of 
 wagons, that he might convince Pharaoh of his 
 greatness and power ! 
 
 Where were these people going ? They were 
 going to the promised land. How large a country 
 was that? About twelve thousand square miles. 
 About one-fifth the size of the State of Illinois. It 
 was a frightful country, covered with rocks and deso- 
 lation. How many people were in the promised land 
 already ? Moses tells us there were seven nations in 
 that country mightier than the Jews. As there were 
 at least three millions of Jews, there must have been 
 at least twenty-one millions of people already in that 
 country. These had to be driven out in order that 
 room might be made for the chosen people of God. 
 
2 14 SOME MISTAKES OF MOSES. 
 
 It seems, however, that God was not willing to take 
 the children of Israel into the promised land imme- 
 diately. They were not fit to inhabit the land of 
 Canaan ; so he made up his mind to allow them to 
 wander upon the desert until all except two, who 
 had left Egypt, should perish. Of all the slaves 
 released from Egyptian bondage, only two were 
 allowed to reach the promised land ! 
 
 As soon as the Hebrews crossed the Red Sea, 
 they found themselves without food, and with water 
 unfit to drink by reason of its bitterness, and they 
 began to murmur against Moses, who cried unto the 
 Lord, and " the Lord showed him a tree." Moses 
 cast this tree into the waters, and they became sweet. 
 " And it came to pass in the morning the dew lay 
 around about the camp ; and when the dew that lay 
 was gone, behold, upon the face of the wilderness lay 
 a small round thing, small as the hoar-frost upon the 
 ground. And Moses said unto them, this is the 
 bread which the Lord hath given you to eat." This 
 manna was a very peculiar thing. It would melt in 
 the sun, and yet they could cook it by seething and 
 baking. One would as soon think of frying snow or 
 of broiling icicles. But this manna had another 
 remarkable quality. No matter how much or little 
 
SOME MISTAKES OF MOSES. 2l5 
 
 any person gathered, he would have an exact 
 omer ; if he gathered more, it would shrink 
 to that amount, and if he gathered less, it 
 would swell exactly to that amount. What a 
 magnificent substance manna would be with 
 which to make a currency — shrinking and swell- 
 ing according to the great laws of supply and 
 demand ! 
 
 " Upon this manna the children of Israel lived for 
 forty years, until they came to a habitable land. 
 With this meat were they fed until they reached the 
 borders of the land of Canaan." We are told 
 in the twenty-first chapter of Numbers, that the 
 people at last became tired of the manna, com- 
 plained of God, and asked Moses why he brought 
 them out of the land of Egypt to die in the 
 wilderness. And they said: — "There is no bread, 
 nor have we any water. Our soul loatheth this 
 light food." 
 
 We are told by some commentators that the 
 Jews lived on manna for forty years ; by others that 
 they lived upon it for only a short time. As a 
 matter of fact the accounts differ, and this difference 
 is the opportunity for commentators. It also allows 
 u-s to exercise faith in believing that both accounts 
 
2l6 SOME MISTAKES OF MOSES. 
 
 are true. If the accounts agreed, and were reasona- 
 ble, they would be believed by the wicked and 
 unregenerated. But as they are different and 
 unreasonable, they are believed only by the good. 
 Whenever a statement in the bible is unreasonable, 
 and you believe it, you are considered quite a good 
 christian. If the statement is grossly absurd and 
 infinitely impossible, and you still believe it, you are 
 a saint. 
 
 The children of Israel were in the desert, and 
 they were out of water. They had nothing to eat 
 but manna, and this they had had so long that the 
 soul of every person abhorred it. Under these 
 circumstances they complained to Moses. Now, as 
 God is infinite, he could just as well have furnished 
 them with an abundance of the purest and coolest of 
 water, and could, without the slightest trouble to 
 himself, have given them three excellent meals a 
 day, with a generous variety of meats and vegetables, 
 it is very hard to see why* he did not do so. It is 
 still harder to conceive why he fell into a rage when 
 the people mildly suggested that they would like a 
 change of diet. Day after day, week after week, 
 month after month, year after year, nothing but 
 manna. No doubt they did the best they could by 
 
SOME MISTAKES OF MOSES. 21 7 
 
 cooking it in different ways, but in spite of them- 
 selves they began to loathe its sight and taste, and 
 so they asked Moses to use his influence to secure a 
 change in the bill of fare. 
 
 Now, I ask, whether it was unreasonable for the 
 Jews to suggest that a little meat would be very 
 gratefully received ? It seems, however, that as 
 soon as the request was made, this God of infinite 
 mercy became infinitely enraged, and instead of 
 granting it, went into partnership with serpents, for 
 the purpose of punishing the hungry wretches to 
 whom he had promised a land flowing with milk 
 and honey. 
 
 Where did these serpents come from ? How did 
 God convey the information to the serpents, that he 
 wished them to go to the desert of Sinai and bite 
 some Jews ? It may be urged that these serpents 
 were created for the express purpose of punishing 
 the children of Israel for having had the presumption, 
 like Oliver Twist, to ask for more. 
 
 There is another account in the eleventh chapter 
 of Numbers, of the people murmuring because of their 
 food. They remembered the fish, the cucumbers, 
 the melons, the leeks, the onions and the garlic of 
 Egypt, and they asked for meat. The people went 
 
2l8 SOME MISTAKES OF MOSES. 
 
 to the tent of Moses and asked him for flesh. Moses 
 cried unto the Lord and asked him why he did not 
 take care of the multitude. God thereupon agreed 
 that they should have meat, not for a day or two, 
 but for a month, until the meat should come out of 
 their nostrils and become loathsome to them. He 
 then caused a wind to bring quails from beyond the 
 sea, and cast them into the camp, on every side of 
 the camp around about for the space of a days 
 journey. And the people gathered them, and while 
 the flesh was yet between their teeth the wrath of 
 God being provoked against them, struck them with 
 an exceeding great plague. Serpents, also, were 
 sent among them, and thousands perished for the 
 crime of having been hungry. 
 
 The Rev. Alexander Cruden commenting upon 
 this account says : — 
 
 " God caused a wind to rise that drove the quails 
 within and about the camp of the Israelites ; and it 
 is in this that the miracle consists, that they were 
 brought so seasonably to this place, and in so great 
 numbers as to suffice above a million of persons 
 above a month. Some authors affirm, that in those 
 eastern and southern countries, quails are innumer- 
 able, so that in one part of Italy within the compass 
 
SOME MISTAKES OF MOSES. 2IO. 
 
 of five miles, there were taken about an hundred 
 thousand of them every day for a month together ; 
 and that sometimes they fly so thick over the sea, 
 that being weary they fall into ships, sometimes in 
 such numbers, that they sink them with their 
 weight." 
 
 No wonder Mr. Cruden believed the Mosaic 
 account. 
 
 Must we believe that God made an arrangement 
 with hornets for the purpose of securing their services 
 in driving the Canaanites from the land of promise ? 
 Is this belief necessary unto salvation ? Must we 
 believe that God said to the Jews that he would send 
 hornets before them to drive out the Canaanites, as 
 related in the twenty-third chapter of Exodus, and 
 the seventh chapter of Deuteronomy? How would 
 the hornets know a Canaanite ? In what way would 
 God put it in the mind of a hornet to attack a 
 Canaanite ? Did God create hornets for that especial 
 purpose, implanting an instinct to attack a Canaanite, 
 but not a Hebrew ? Can we conceive of the 
 Almighty granting letters of marque and reprisal to 
 hornets ? Of course it is admitted that nothing in 
 the world would be better calculated to make a man 
 leave his native land than a few hornets. Is it 
 
220 SOME MISTAKES OF MOSES. 
 
 possible for us to believe that an infinite being would 
 resort to such expedients in order to drive the 
 Canaanites from their country ? He could just as 
 easily have spoken the Canaanites out of existence 
 as to have spoken the hornets in. In this way a vast 
 amount of trouble, pain and suffering would have 
 been saved. Is it possible that there is, in this 
 country, an intelligent clergyman who will insist that 
 these stories are true ; that we must believe them in 
 in order to be good people in this world, and glori- 
 fied souls in the next ? 
 
 We are also told that God instructed the Hebrews 
 to kill the Canaanites slowly, giving as a reason that 
 the beasts of the field might increase upon his chosen 
 people. When we take into consideration the fact 
 that the Holy Land contained only about eleven or 
 twelve thousand square miles, and was at that time 
 inhabited by at least twenty-one millions of people, 
 it does not seem reasonable that the wild beasts could 
 have been numerous enough to cause any great 
 alarm. The same ratio of population would give to 
 the State, of Illinois at least one hundred and twenty 
 millions of inhabitants. Can anybody believe that, 
 under such circumstances, the danger from wild 
 beasts could be very great ? What would we think 
 
SOME MISTAKES OF MOSES. 221 
 
 of a general, invading such a state, if he should order 
 his soldiers to kill the people slowly, lest the wild 
 beasts might increase upon them ? Is it possible 
 that a God capable of doing the miracles recounted 
 in the Old Testament could not, in some way, have 
 disposed of the wild beasts ? After the Canaanites 
 were driven out, could he not have employed the 
 hornets to drive out the wild beasts ? Think of a 
 God that could drive twenty-one millions of people 
 out of the promised land, could raise up innumerable 
 stinging flies, and could cover the earth with fiery 
 serpents, and yet seems to have been perfectly 
 powerless against the wild beasts of the land of 
 Canaan ! 
 
 Speaking of these hornets, one of the good old 
 commentators, whose views have long been con- 
 sidered of great value by the believers in the 
 inspiration of the bible, uses the following language : 
 — " Hornets are a sort of strong flies, which the Lord 
 used as instruments to plague the enemies of his 
 people. They are of themselves very troublesome 
 and mischievous, and those the Lord made use of 
 were, it is thought, of an extraordinary bigness and 
 perniciousness. It is said they live as the wasps, 
 and that they have a king or captain, and pestilent 
 
2 22 SOME MISTAKES OF MOSES; 
 
 stings as bees, and that, if twenty-seven of them 
 stine man or beast, it is certain death to either. 
 Nor is it strange that such creatures did drive out 
 the Canaanites from their habitations ; for many 
 heathen writers give instances of some people driven 
 from their seats by frogs, others by mice, others by 
 bees and wasps. And it is said that a christian city, 
 being besieged by Sapores, king of Persia, was 
 delivered by hornets ; for the elephants and beasts 
 being stung by them, waxed unruly, and so the 
 whole army fled." 
 
 Only a few years ago, all such stories were 
 believed by the christian world ; and it is a historical 
 fact, that Voltaire was the third man of any note in 
 Europe, who took the ground that the mythologies 
 of Greece and Rome were without foundation. 
 Until his time, most christians believed as thoroughly 
 in the miracles ascribed to the Greek and Roman 
 gods as in those of Christ and Jehovah. The 
 christian world cultivated credulity, not only as one 
 of the virtues, but as the greatest of them all. But, 
 when Luther and his followers left the church of 
 Rome, they were compelled to deny the power of 
 the catholic church, at that time, to suspend the 
 laws of nature, but took the ground that such power 
 
SOME MISTAKES OF MOSES. 223 
 
 ceased with the apostolic age. They insisted that 
 all things now happened in accordance with the laws 
 of nature, with the exception of a few special inter- 
 ferences in favor of the protestant church in answer 
 to prayer. They taught their children a double 
 philosophy : by one, they were to show the impossi- 
 bility of catholic miracles, because opposed to the 
 laws of nature ; by the other, the probability of the 
 miracles of the apostolic age, because they were in 
 conformity with the statements of the scriptures. 
 They had two foundations : one, the law of nature, 
 and the other, the word of God. The protestants 
 have endeavored to carry on this double process of 
 reasoning, and the result has been a gradual increase 
 of confidence in the law of nature, and a gradual 
 decrease of confidence in the word of God. 
 
 We are told, in this inspired account, that the 
 clothing of the Jewish people did not wax old, and 
 that their shoes refused to wear out. Some 
 commentators have insisted that angels attended 
 to the wardrobes of the Hebrews, patched their 
 garments, and mended their shoes. Certain it is, 
 however, that the same clothes lasted them for forty 
 years, during the entire journey from Egypt to the 
 Holy Land. Little boys starting out with their first 
 
2 24 ' SOME MISTAKES OF MOSES. 
 
 pantaloons, grew as they traveled, and their clothes 
 grew with them. 
 
 Can it be necessary to believe a story like this ? 
 Will men make better husbands, fathers, neighbors, 
 and citizens, simply by giving credence to these 
 childish and impossible things ? Certainly an infinite 
 God could have transported the Jews to the Holy 
 Land in a moment, and could, as easily, have 
 removed the Canaanites to some other country. 
 Surely there was no necessity for doing thousands 
 and thousands of petty miracles, day after day for 
 forty years, looking after the clothes of three millions 
 of people, changing the nature of wool, and linen, 
 and leather, so that they would not "wax old." 
 Every step, every motion, would wear away some 
 part of the clothing, some part of the shoes. Were 
 these parts, so worn away, perpetually renewed, or 
 was the nature of things so changed that they could 
 not wear away? We know that whenever matter 
 comes in contact with matter, certain atoms, by 
 abrasion, are lost. Were these atoms slathered 
 up every night by angels, and replaced on the 
 soles of the shoes, on the elbows of coats, and 
 on the knees of pantaloons, so that the next 
 morning they would be precisely in the condi- 
 
SOME MISTAKES OF MOSES. 2 25 
 
 tion they were on the morning before ? There 
 must be a mistake somewhere. 
 
 Can we believe that the real God, if there is one, 
 ever ordered a man to be killed simply for making 
 hair oil, or ointment ? We are told in the thirtieth 
 chapter of Exodus, that the Lord commanded Moses 
 to take myrrh, cinnamon, sweet calamus, cassia, and 
 olive oil, and make a holy ointment for the purpose 
 of anointing the tabernacle, tables, candlesticks and 
 other utensils, as well as Aaron and his sons ; saying, 
 at the same time, that whosoever compounded any 
 like it, or whoever put any of it on a stranger, should 
 be put to death. In the same chapter, the Lord 
 furnishes Moses with a recipe for making a 
 perfume, saying, that whoever should make any 
 which smelled like it, should be cut off from his 
 people. This, to me, sounds so unreasonable that I 
 cannot believe it. Why should an infinite God care 
 whether mankind made ointments and perfumes like 
 his or not ? Why should the Creator of all things 
 threaten to kill a priest who approached his altar 
 without having: washed his hands and feet ? These 
 commandments and these penalties would disgrace 
 the vainest tyrant that ever sat, by chance v upon a 
 throne. There must be some mistake. I cannot 
 
 15 
 
2 26 SOME MISTAKES OF MOSES. 
 
 believe that an infinite Intelligence appeared to 
 Moses upon Mount Sinai having with him a variety 
 of patterns for making a tabernacle, tongs, snuffers 
 and dishes. Neither can I believe that God told 
 Moses how to cut and trim a coat for a priest. Why 
 should a God care about such things ? Why should 
 he insist on having buttons sewed in certain rows, 
 and fringes of a certain color ? Suppose an intelli- 
 gent civilized man was to overhear, on Mount Sinai, 
 the following instructions from God to Moses : — 
 
 " You must consecrate my priests as follows : — 
 You must kill a bullock for a sin offering, and 
 have Aaron and his sons lay their hands upon the 
 head of the bullock. Then you must take the blood 
 and put it upon the horns of the altar round about 
 with your finger, and pour some blood at the bottom 
 of the altar to make a reconciliation ; and of the fat 
 that is upon the inwards, the caul above the liver 
 and two kidneys, and their fat, and burn them upon 
 the altar. You must get a ram for a burnt offering, 
 and Aaron and his sons must lay their hands upon 
 the head of the ram. Then you must kill it and 
 sprinkle the blood upon the altar, and cut the ram 
 into pieces, and burn the head, and the pieces, and 
 the fat, and wash the inwards and the lungs in water 
 
SOME. MISTAKES OF MOSES. 227 
 
 and then burn the whole ram upon the altar for a 
 sweet savor unto me. Then you must get another 
 ram, and have Aaron and his sons lay their hands 
 upon the head of that, then kill it and take of its 
 blood, and put it on the top of Aaron's right ear, 
 and on the thumb of his right hand, and on the great 
 toe of his right foot. And you must also put a little 
 of the blood upon the top of the right ears of Aaron's 
 sons, and on the thumbs of their right hands and on 
 the great toes of their right feet. And then you 
 must take of the fat that is on the inwards, and the 
 caul above the liver and the two kidneys, and their 
 fat, and the right shoulder, and out of a basket of 
 unleavened bread you must take one unleavened 
 cake and another of oil bread, and one wafer, and 
 put them on the fat of the right shoulder. And you 
 must take of the anointing oil, and of the blood, and 
 sprinkle it on Aaron, and on his garments, and on 
 his sons' garments, and sanctify them and all their 
 clothes." — Do you believe that he would have even 
 suspected that the creator of the universe was 
 talking ? 
 
 Can any one now tell why God commanded the 
 Jews, when they were upon the desert of Sinai, to 
 plant trees, telling them at the same time that they 
 
228 SOME MISTAKES OF MOSES. 
 
 must not eat any of the fruit of sucn trees until after 
 the fourth year ? Trees could not have been planted 
 in that desert, and if they had. been, they could not 
 have lived. Why did God tell Moses, while in the 
 desert, to make curtains of fine linen ? Where could 
 he have obtained his flax ? There was no land upon 
 which it could have been produced. Why did he 
 tell him to make things of gold, and silver, and 
 precious stones, when they could not have been in 
 possession of these things ? There is but one 
 answer, and that is, the Pentateuch was written 
 hundreds of years after the Jews had settled in the 
 Holy Land, and hundreds of years after Moses was 
 dust and ashes. 
 
 When the Jews had a written language, and that 
 must have been long after their flight from Egypt, 
 they wrote out their history and their laws. Tradi- 
 tion had filled the infancy of the nation with miracles 
 and special interpositions in their behalf by Jehovah. 
 "Patriotism would not allow these wonders to grow 
 small, and priestcraft never denied a miracle. There 
 were traditions to the effect that God had spoken 
 face to face with Moses ; that he had given him the 
 tables of the law, and had, in a thousand ways, made 
 known his will ; and whenever the priests wished to 
 
SOME MISTAKES OF MOSES. 2 29 
 
 make new laws, or amend old ones, they pretended 
 to have found something more that God said to 
 Moses at Sinai. In this way obedience was more 
 easily secured. Only a very few of the people could 
 read, and, as a consequence, additions, interpolations 
 and erasures had no fear of detection. In this way 
 we account for the fact that Moses is made to speak 
 of things that did not exist in his day, and were 
 unknown for hundreds of years after his death. 
 
 In the thirtieth chapter of Exodus, we are told 
 that the people, when numbered, must give each one 
 a half shekel after the shekel of the sanctuary. At 
 that time no such money existed, and consequently 
 the account could not, by any possibility, have been 
 written until after there was a shekel of the sanctuary, 
 and there was no such thing until long after the 
 death of Moses. If we should read that Caesar paid 
 his troops in pounds, shillings and pence, we would 
 certainly know that the account was not written by 
 Caesar, nor in his time, but we would know that it 
 was written after the English had given these names 
 to certain coins. 
 
 So, we find, that when the Jews were upon the 
 desert it was commanded that every mother should 
 bring, as a sin offering, a couple of doves to the 
 
23O SOME MISTAKES OF MOSES. 
 
 priests, and the priests were compelled to eat these 
 doves in the most holy place. At the time this law 
 appears to have been given, there were three million 
 people, and only three priests, Aaron, Eleazer and 
 Ithamar. Among three million people there would 
 be, at least, three hundred births a day. Certainly 
 we are not expected to believe that these three 
 priests devoured six hundred pigeons every twenty- 
 four hours. 
 
 Why should a woman ask pardon of God for 
 having been a mother ? Why should that be con- 
 sidered a crime in Exodus, which is commanded as a 
 duty in Genesis ? Why should a mother be declared 
 unclean ? Why should giving birth to a daughter 
 be regarded twice as criminal as giving birth to a 
 son ? Can we believe that such laws and ceremonies 
 were made and instituted by a merciful and intelligent 
 God ? If there is anything in this poor world sug- 
 gestive of, and standing for, all that is sweet, loving 
 and pure, it is a mother holding in her thrilled and 
 happy arms her prattling babe. Read the twelfth 
 chapter of Leviticus, and you will see that when a 
 woman became the mother of a boy she was so 
 unclean that she was not allowed to touch a hallowed 
 thing, nor to enter the sanctuary for forty days. If 
 
SOME MISTAKES OF MOSES. 2^1 
 
 the babe was a girl, then the mother was unfit for 
 eighty days, to enter the house of God, or to touch 
 the sacred tongs and snuffers. These laws, born of 
 barbarism, are unworthy of our day, and should be 
 regarded simply as the mistakes of savages. 
 
 Just as low in the scale of intelligence are the 
 directions given in the fifth chapter of Numbers, for 
 the trial of a wife of whom the husband was jealous. 
 This foolish chapter has been the foundation of all 
 appeals to God for the ascertainment of facts, such as 
 the corsned, trial by battle, by water, and by fire, the 
 last of which is our judicial oath. It is very easy to 
 believe that in those days a guilty woman would be 
 afraid to drink the water of jealousy and take the 
 oath, and that, through fear, she miofht be made to 
 confess. Admitting that the deception tended not 
 only to prevent crime, but to discover it when 
 committed, still, we cannot admit that an honest 
 god would, for any purpose, resort to dishonest 
 means. In all countries fear is employed as a means 
 of getting at the truth, and in this there is nothing 
 dishonest, provided falsehood is not resorted to for 
 the purpose of producing the fear. Protestants laugh 
 at catholics because of their belief in the efficacy of 
 holy water, and yet they teach their children that a 
 
232 SOME MISTAKES OF MOSES. 
 
 little holy water, in which had been thrown some 
 dust from the floor of the sanctuary, would work a 
 miracle in a woman's flesh. For hundreds of years 
 our fathers believed that a perjurer could not swallow 
 a piece of sacramental bread. Such stories belong 
 to the childhood of our race, and are now believed 
 only by mental infants and intellectual babes. 
 
 I cannot believe that Moses had in his hands a 
 couple of tables of stone, upon which God had 
 written the ten commandments, and that when he 
 saw the golden calf, and the dancing, that he dashed 
 the tables to the earth and broke them in pieces. 
 Neither do I believe that Moses took a golden calf, 
 burnt it, ground it to powder, and made the people 
 drink it with water, as related in the thirty-second 
 chapter of Exodus. 
 
 There is another account of the giving of the ten 
 commandments to Moses, in the nineteenth and 
 twentieth chapters of Exodus. In this account not 
 one word is said about the people having made a 
 golden calf, nor about the breaking of the tables of 
 stone. In the thirty-fourth chapter of Exodus, there 
 is an account of the renewal of the broken tables of 
 the law, and the commandments are given, but they 
 are not the same commandments mentioned in the 
 
SOME MISTAKES OF MOSES. 2^3 
 
 twentieth chapter. There are two accounts of the 
 same transaction. Both of these stories cannot be 
 true, and yet both must be believed. Any one who 
 will take the trouble to read the nineteenth and 
 twentieth chapters, and the last verse of the thirty- 
 first chapter, the thirty-second, thirty-third, and 
 thirty-fourth chapters of Exodus, will be compelled 
 to admit that both accounts cannot be true. 
 
 From the last account it appears that while Moses 
 was upon Mount Sinai receiving the commandments 
 from God, the people brought their jewelry to Aaron, 
 and he cast for them a golden calf. This happened 
 before any commandment against idolatry had been 
 given. A god ought, certainly, to publish his laws 
 before inflicting penalties for their violation. To 
 inflict punishment for breaking unknown and un- 
 published laws is, in the last degree, cruel and 
 unjust. It may be replied that the Jews knew better 
 than to worship idols, before the law was given. If 
 this is so, why should the law have been given ? In 
 all civilized countries, laws are made and pro- 
 mulgated, not simply for the purpose of informing 
 the people as to what is right and wrong, but to 
 inform them of the penalties to be visited upon those 
 who violate the laws. When the ten command- 
 
234 SOME MISTAKES OF MOSES. 
 
 ments were given, no penalties were attached. Not 
 one word was written on the tables of stone as to the 
 punishments that would be inflicted for breaking any 
 or all of the inspired laws. The people should not 
 have been punished for violating a commandment 
 before it was given. And yet, in this case, Moses 
 commanded the sons of Levi to take their swords 
 and slay every man his brother, his companion, and 
 his neighbor. The brutal order was obeyed, and 
 three thousand men were butchered. The Levites 
 consecrated themselves unto the Lord by murdering 
 their sons, and their brothers, for having violated a 
 commandment before it had been p"iven. 
 
 It has been contended for many years that the 
 ten commandments are the foundation of all ideas of 
 justice and of law. Eminent jurists have bowed to 
 popular prejudice, and deformed their works by 
 statements to the effect that the Mosaic laws are the 
 fountains from which sprang all ideas of right and 
 wrong. Nothing can be more stupidly false than 
 such assertions. Thousands of years before Moses 
 was born, the Egyptians had a code of laws. They 
 had laws against blasphemy, murder, adultery, 
 larceny, perjury, laws for the collection of debts, the 
 enforcement of contracts, the ascertainment of 
 
SOME MISTAKES OF MOSES. 23!) 
 
 damages, the redemption of property pawned, and 
 upon nearly every subject of human interest. The 
 Egyptian code was far better than the Mosaic. 
 
 Laws spring from the instinct of self-preservation. 
 Industry objected to supporting idleness, and laws 
 were made against theft. Laws were made against 
 murder, because a very large majority of the people 
 have always objected to being murdered. All 
 fundamental laws were born simply of the instinct of 
 self-defence. Long before the Jewish savages 
 assembled at the foot of Sinai, laws had been made 
 and enforced, not only in Egypt and India, but by 
 every tribe that ever existed. 
 
 It is impossible for human beings to exist 
 together, without certain rules of conduct, certain 
 ideas of the proper and improper, of the right and 
 wrong, growing out of the relation. Certain rules 
 must be made, and must be enforced. This implies 
 law, trial and punishment. Whoever produces 
 anything by weary labor, does not need a revelation 
 from heaven to teach him that he has a right to the 
 thing produced. Not one of the learned gentlemen 
 who pretend that the Mosaic laws are filled with 
 justice and intelligence, would live, for a moment, 
 in any country where such laws were in force. 
 
236 SOME MISTAKES OF MOSES. 
 
 Nothing can be more wonderful than the medical 
 ideas of Jehovah. He had the strangest notions 
 about the cause and cure of disease. With him 
 everything was miracle and wonder. In the four- 
 teenth chapter of Leviticus, we find the law for 
 cleansing a leper : — " Then shall the priest take for 
 him that is to be cleansed, two birds, alive and clean, 
 and cedar wood, and scarlet, and hyssop. And the 
 priest shall command that one of the birds be killed 
 in an earthen vessel, over running water. As for 
 the living bird, he shall take it, and the cedar wood, 
 and the scarlet, and the hyssop, and shall dip them, 
 and the living bird, in the blood of the bird that was 
 killed over the running water. And he shall 
 sprinkle upon him that is to be cleansed from the 
 leprosy, seven times, and shall pronounce him clean, 
 and shall let the living bird loose into the open 
 field." 
 
 We are told that God himself grave these direc- 
 tions to Moses. Does anybody believe this ? Why 
 should the bird be killed in an earthen vessel ? 
 Would the charm be broken if the vessel was of 
 wood ? Why over running water ? What would 
 be thought of a physician now, who would give a 
 prescription like that ? 
 
SOME MISTAKES OF MOSES. 237 
 
 Is it not strange that God, although he gave 
 hundreds of directions for the purpose of discovering 
 the presence of leprosy, and .for cleansing the leper 
 after he was healed, forgot to tell how that disease 
 could be cured ? Is it not wonderful that while God 
 told his people what animals were fit for food, he 
 failed to give a list of plants that man might eat ? 
 Why did he leave his children to find out the hurtful 
 and the poisonous by experiment, knowing that ex- 
 periment, in millions of cases, must be death ? 
 
 When reading the history of the Jewish people, 
 of their flight from slavery to death, of their exchange 
 of tyrants, I must confess that my sympathies are all 
 aroused in their behalf. They were cheated, de- 
 ceived and abused. Their god was quick-tempered 
 unreasonable, cruel, revengeful and dishonest. He 
 was always promising but never performed. He 
 wasted time in ceremony and childish detail, and in 
 the exaggeration of what he had done. It is impos- 
 sible for me to conceive of a character more utterly 
 detestable than that of the Hebrew god. He had 
 solemnly promised the Jews that he would take them 
 from Egypt to a land flowing with milk and honey. 
 He had led them to believe that in a little while their 
 troubles would be over, and that they would soon 
 
SOME MISTAKES OF MOSES. 
 
 in the land of Canaan, surrounded by their wives and 
 little ones, forget the stripes and tears of Egypt. 
 After promising the poor wanderers again and again 
 that he would lead them in safety to the promised 
 land of joy and plenty, this God, forgetting every 
 promise, said to the wretches in his power : — " Your 
 carcasses shall fall in this wilderness and your children 
 shall wander until your carcasses be wasted." This 
 curse was the conclusion of the whole matter. Into 
 this dust of death and night faded all the promises 
 of God. Into this rottenness of wandering despair 
 fell all the dreams of liberty and home. Millions 
 of corpses were left to rot in the desert, and 
 each one certified to the dishonesty of Jehovah. I 
 cannot believe these things. They are so cruel and 
 heartless, that my blood is chilled and my sense of 
 justice shocked. A book that is equally abhorrent 
 to my head and heart, cannot be accepted as a rev- 
 elation from God. 
 
 When we think of the poor Jews, destroyed, 
 murdered, bitten by serpents, visited by plagues, 
 decimated by famine, butchered by each other, 
 swallowed by the earth, frightened, cursed, starved, 
 deceived, robbed and outraged, how thankful we 
 should be that we are not the chosen people of 
 
SOME MISTAKES OF MOSES. 239 
 
 God. No wonder that they longed for the slavery 
 of Egypt, and remembered with sorvow the unhappy 
 day when they exchanged masters. Compared with 
 Jehovah, Pharaoh was a benefactor, and the tyranny 
 of Egypt was freedom to those who suffered the 
 liberty of God. 
 
 While reading the Pentateuch, I am filled with 
 indignation, pity and horror. Nothing can be 
 sadder than the history of the starved and frightened 
 wretches who wandered over the desolate crag's and 
 sands of wilderness and desert, the prey of famine, 
 sword, and plague. Ignorant and superstitious to 
 the last degree, governed by falsehood, plundered by 
 hypocrisy, they were the sport of priests, and the 
 food of fear. God was their greatest enemy, and 
 death their only friend. 
 
 It is impossible to conceive of a more thoroughly 
 despicable, hateful, and arrogant being, than the 
 Jewish god. He is without a redeeming feature. 
 In the mythology of the world he has no parallel. 
 He, only, is never touched by agony and tears. He 
 delights only in blood and pain. Human affections 
 are naught to him. He cares neither for love nor 
 music, beauty nor joy. A false friend, an unjust 
 judge, a braggart, hypocrite, and tyrant, sincere in 
 
24O SOME MISTAKES OF MOSES. 
 
 hatred, jealous, vain, aad revengeful, false in promise, 
 honest in curse, suspicious, ignorant, and changeable, 
 infamous and hideous : — such is the God of the 
 Pentateuch. 
 
XXIV. 
 CONFESS AND AVOID. 
 
 The scientific christians now admit that the bible 
 is not inspired in its astronomy, geology, 
 botany, zoology, nor in any science. In other words, 
 they admit that on these subjects, the bible cannot 
 be depended upon. If all the statements in the 
 scriptures were true, there would be no necessity for 
 admitting that some of them are not inspired. A 
 christian will not admit that a passage in the bible is 
 uninspired, until he is satisfied that it is untrue. 
 Orthodoxy itself has at last been compelled to say, 
 that while a passage may be true and uninspired, it 
 cannot be inspired if false. 
 
 If the people of Europe had known as much of 
 astronomy and geology when the bible was intro- 
 duced among them, as they do now, there never 
 could have been one believer in the doctrine of 
 inspiration. If the writers of the various parts of 
 the bible had known as much about the sciences as 
 
 16 
 
242 SOME MISTAKES OF MOSES. 
 
 is now known by every intelligent man, the book 
 never could have been written. It was produced by 
 ignorance, and has been believed and defended by 
 its author. It has lost power in the proportion that 
 man has gained knowledge. A few years ago, this 
 book was appealed to in the settlement of all scientific 
 questions ; but now, even the clergy confess that in 
 such matters, it has ceased to speak with the voice 
 of authority. For the establishment of facts, the 
 word of man is now considered far better than the 
 word of God. In the world of science, Jehovah was 
 superseded by Copernicus, Galileo, and Kepler. 
 All that God told Moses, admitting the entire 
 account to be true, is dust and ashes compared 
 to the discoveries of Des Cartes, La Place, and 
 Humboldt. In matters of fact, the bible has ceased 
 to be regarded as a standard. Science has succeeded 
 in breaking the chains of theology. A few years 
 ago, Science endeavored to show that it was not 
 inconsistent with the bible. The tables have been 
 turned, and now, Religion is endeavoring to prove 
 that the bible is not inconsistent with Science. The 
 standard has been changed. 
 
 For many ages, the christians contended that the 
 bible, viewed simply as a literary performance, was 
 
SOME MISTAKES OF MOSES. 243 
 
 beyond all other books, and that man without the 
 assistance of God could not produce its equal. This 
 claim was made when but few books existed, and 
 the bible, being the only book generally known, had 
 no rival. But this claim, like the other, has been 
 abandoned by many, and soon will be, by all. Com- 
 pared with Shakespeare's " book and volume of the 
 brain," the " sacred " bible shrinks and seems as 
 feebly impotent and vain, as would a pipe of Pan, 
 when some great organ, voiced with every tone, 
 from the hoarse thunder of the sea to the w r inged 
 warble of a mated bird, floods and fills cathedral 
 aisles with all the wealth of sound. 
 
 It is now maintained — and this appears to be the 
 last fortification behind which the doctrine of inspi- 
 ration skulks and crouches — that the bible, although 
 false and mistaken in its astronomy, geology, geog- 
 raphy, history and philosophy, is inspired in its 
 morality. It is now claimed that had it not been for 
 this book, the world would have been inhabited only 
 by savages, and that had it not been for the holy 
 scriptures, man never would have even dreamed of 
 the unity of God. A belief in one God is claimed to 
 be a dogma of almost infinite importance, that with- 
 out this belief civilization is impossible, and that this 
 
244 SOME MISTAKES OF MOSES. 
 
 fact is the sun around which all the virtues revolve. 
 For my part, I think it infinitely more important 
 to believe in man. Theoiogy is a superstition 
 — Humanity a religion. 
 
XXV. 
 
 -INSPIRED" SLAVERY. 
 
 Perhaps the bible was inspired upon the subject 
 of human slavery. Is there, in the civilized 
 world, to day, a clergyman who believes in the 
 divinity of slavery ? Does the bible teach man to 
 enslave his brother ? If it does, is it not blasphe- 
 mous to say that it is inspired of God ? If you find 
 the institution of slavery upheld in a book said to 
 have been written by God, what would you expect 
 to find in a book inspired by the devil ? Would you 
 expect to find that book in favor of liberty ? Modern 
 christians, ashamed of the God of the Old Testament, 
 endeavor now to show that slavery was neither 
 commanded nor opposed by Jehovah. Nothing can 
 be plainer than the following passages from the 
 twenty-fifth chapter of Leviticus. " Moreover of the 
 children of the strangers that do sojourn among you, 
 of them shall ye buy, and of their families that are 
 with you, which they begat in your land : and they 
 
246 SOME MISTAKES OF MOSES. 
 
 shall be your possession. And ye shall* take them 
 as an inheritance for your children after you, to 
 inherit them for a possession, they shall be your 
 bond-men forever. Both thy bond-men, and thy 
 bond-maids, which thou shalt have, shall be of the 
 heathen that are round about you ; of them shall ye 
 buy bond-men, and bond-maids." 
 
 Can we believe in this, the Nineteenth Century, 
 that these infamous passages were inspired by God ? 
 that God approved not only of human slavery, but 
 instructed his chosen people to buy the women, 
 children and babes of the heathen round about them ? 
 If it was right for the Hebrews to buy, it was also 
 right for the heathen to sell. This God, by com- 
 manding the Hebrews to buy, approved of the selling 
 of sons and daughters. The Canaanite who, tempted 
 by gold, lured by avarice, sold from the arms of his 
 wife the dimpled babe, simply made it possible for 
 the Hebrews to obey the orders of their God. If 
 God is the author of the bible, the reading of these 
 passages ought to cover his cheeks with shame. I 
 ask the christian world to-day, was it right for the 
 heathen to sell their children ? Was it right for 
 God not only to uphold, but to command the in- 
 famous trartic in human flesh ? Could the most 
 
SOME MISTAKES OF MOSES. 247 
 
 revengeful fiend, the most malicious vagrant in the 
 gloom of hell, sink to a lower moral depth than 
 this ? 
 
 According to this God, his chosen people were 
 not only commanded to buy of the heathen round 
 about them, but were also permitted to buy each 
 other for a term of years. The law governing the 
 purchase of Jews is laid down in the twenty-first 
 chapter of Exodus. " If thou buy a Hebrew servant, 
 six years shall he serve : and in the seventh he shall 
 go out free for nothing. If he came in by himself, 
 he shall go out by himself : if he were married, then 
 his wife shall gro out with him. If his master have 
 given him a wife, and she have borne him sons or 
 daughters, the w T ife and her children shall be her 
 master's, and he shall go out by himself. And if the 
 servant shall plainly say, I love my master, my wife, 
 and my children ; I will not go out free : Then his 
 master shall bring him unto the judges ; he shall 
 also bring him to the door, or unto the door-post : 
 and his master shall bore his ear through with an 
 awl : and he shall serve him forever." 
 
 Do you believe that God was the author of this 
 infamous law ? Do you believe that the loving 
 father of us all, turned the dimpled arms of babes 
 
248 SOME MISTAKES OF MOSES. 
 
 into manacles of iron ? Do you believe that he 
 baited the dungeon of servitude with wife and child ? 
 Is it possible to love a God who would make such 
 laws ? Is it possible not to hate and despise him ? 
 
 The heathen are not spoken of as human beings. 
 Their rights are never mentioned. They were the 
 rightful food of the sword, and their bodies were 
 made for stripes and chains. 
 
 In the same chapter of the same inspired book, 
 we are told that, " if a man smite his servant, or his 
 maid, with a rod, and he dies under his hand, he 
 shall be surely punished. Notwithstanding, if he 
 continue a day or two, he shall not be punished, for 
 he is his money." 
 
 Must we believe that God called some of his 
 children the money of others ? Can we believe that 
 God made lashes upon the naked back, a legal 
 tender for labor performed? Must we regard the 
 auction block as an altar? Were blood hounds 
 apostles ? Was the slave-pen a temple ? Were the 
 stealers and whippers of babes and women the 
 justified children of God ? 
 
 It is now contended that while the Old Testa- 
 ment is touched with the barbarism of its time, that 
 the New Testament is morally perfect, and that on 
 
SOME MISTAKES OF MOSES. 249 
 
 its pages can be found no blot or stain. As a matter 
 of fact, the New Testament is more decidedly in 
 favor of human slavery than the old. 
 
 For my part, I never will, I never can, worship a 
 God who upholds the institution of slavery. Such a 
 God I hate and defy. I neither want his heaven, 
 nor fear his hell. 
 
XXVI. 
 
 -INSPIRED" MARRIAGE. 
 
 Is there an orthodox clergyman in the world, who 
 will now declare that he believes the institution 
 of polygamy to be right ? Is there one who will 
 publicly declare that, in his judgment, that institution 
 ever was right ? Was there ever a time in the 
 history of the world when it was right to treat woman 
 simply as property ? Do not attempt to answer 
 these questions by saying, that the bible is an 
 exceedingly good book, that we are indebted for our 
 civilization to the sacred volume, and that without it, 
 man would lapse into savagery, and mental night. 
 This is no answer. Was there a time when the 
 institution of polygamy was the highest expression 
 of human virtue ? Is there a christian woman, 
 civilized, intelligent, and free, who believes in the 
 institution of polygamy ? Are we better, purer, and 
 more intelligent than God was four thousand years 
 ago ? Why should we imprison Mormons, and 
 
SOME MISTAKES OF MOSES. 2D1 
 
 worship God ? Polygamy is just as pure in Utah, 
 as it could have been in the promised land. Love 
 and Virtue are the same the whole world round, and 
 Justice is the same in every star. All the languages 
 of the world are not sufficient to express the filth of 
 polygamy. It makes of man, a beast, of woman, a 
 trembling slave. It destroys the fireside, makes 
 virtue an outcast, takes from human speech its 
 sweetest words, and leaves the heart a den, where 
 crawl and hiss the slimy serpents of most loathsome 
 lust. Civilization rests upon the family. The good 
 family is the unit of good government. The virtues 
 grow about the holy hearth of home — they cluster, 
 bloom, and shed their perfume round the fireside 
 where the one man loves the one woman. Lover- 
 husband — wife — mother — father — child — home ! — 
 without these sacred words, the world is but a lair, 
 and men and women merely beasts. 
 
 Why should the innocent maiden and the loving 
 mother worship the heartless Jewish God ? Why 
 should they, with pure and stainless lips, read the 
 vile record of inspired lust ? 
 
 The marriage of the one man to the one 
 woman is the citadel and fortress of civilization. 
 Without this, woman becomes the prey and slave of 
 
2$2 SOME MISTAKES OF MOSES. 
 
 lust and power, and man goes back to savagery and 
 crime. From the bottom of my heart I hate, abhor 
 and execrate all theories of life, of which the pure 
 and sacred home is not the corner-stone. Take 
 from the world the family, the fireside, the children 
 born of wedded love, and there is nothing left. 
 The home where virtue dwells with love is like a 
 lily with a heart of fire — the fairest flower in all the 
 world. 
 
XXVII. 
 "INSPIRED" WAR. 
 
 If the bible be true, God commanded his chosen 
 people to destroy men simply for the crime of 
 defending their native land. They were not allowed 
 to spare trembling and white-haired age, nor dimpled 
 babes clasped in the mothers' arms. They were 
 ordered to kill women, and to pierce, with the sword 
 of war, the unborn child. "Our heavenly Father" 
 commanded the Hebrews to kill the men and women, 
 the fathers, sons and brothers, but to preserve the 
 girls alive. Why were not the maidens also killed ? 
 Why were they spared ? Read the thirty-first 
 chapter of Numbers, and you will find that the 
 maidens were given to the soldiers and the priests. 
 Is there, in all the history of war, a more infamous 
 thing than this ? Is it possible that God permitted 
 the violets of modesty, that grow and shed their 
 perfume in the maiden's heart, to be trampled 
 
2 S4 SOME MISTAKES OF MOSES. 
 
 beneath the brutal feet of lust ? If this was the 
 order of God, what, under the same circumstances, 
 would have been the command of a devil ? When, 
 in this age of the world, a woman, a wife, a mother, 
 reads this record, she should, with scorn and loathing, 
 throw the book away. A general, who now should 
 make such an order, giving over to massacre and 
 rapine a conquered people, would be held in execra- 
 tion by the whole civilized world. Yet, if the bible 
 be true, the supreme and infinite God was once a 
 savage. 
 
 A little while ago, out upon the western plains, 
 in a little path leading to a cabin, were found the 
 bodies of two children and their mother. Her breast 
 was filled with wounds received in the defence of 
 her darlings. They had been murdered by the 
 savages. Suppose when looking at their lifeless 
 forms, some one had said, " This was done by the 
 command of God !" In Canaan there were countless 
 scenes like this. There was no pity in inspired war. 
 God raised the black flag, and commanded his 
 soldiers to kill even the smiling- infant in its mother's 
 arms. Who is the blasphemer ; the man who denies 
 the existence of God, or he who covers the robes of 
 the Infinite with innocent blood ? 
 
SOME MISTAKES OF MOSES. 2 55 
 
 We are told in the Pentateuch, that God, the 
 father of us all, gave thousands of maidens, after 
 having killed their fathers, their mothers, and their 
 brothers, to satisfy the brutal lusts of savage men. 
 If there be a God, I pray him to write in his book, 
 opposite my name, that I denied this lie for him. 
 
XXVIII. 
 "INSPIRED" RELIGIOUS LIBERTY. 
 
 According to the bible, God selected the Jewish 
 people through whom to make known the 
 great fact, that he was the only true and living God, 
 For this purpose, he appeared on several occasions 
 to Moses — came down to Sinai's top clothed in 
 cloud and fire, and wrought a thousand miracles for 
 the preservation and education of the Jewish people. 
 In their presence he opened the waters of the sea. 
 For them he caused bread to rain from heaven. To 
 quench their thirst, water leaped from the dry and 
 barren rock. Their enemies were miraculously 
 destroyed ; and for forty years, at least, this God 
 took upon himself the government of the Jews. 
 But, after all this, many of the people had less 
 confidence in him than in gods of wood and stone. 
 In moments of trouble, in periods of disaster, in the 
 darkness of doubt, in the hunger and thirst of famine, 
 instead of asking this God for aid, they turned and 
 
SOME MISTAKES OF MOSES. 257 
 
 sought the help of senseless things. This God, with 
 all his power and wisdom, could not even convince 
 a few wandering and wretched savages that he was 
 more potent than the idols of Egypt. This God was 
 not willing that the Jews should think and investigate 
 for themselves. For heresy, the penalty was death. 
 Where this God reigned, intellectual liberty was 
 unknown. He appealed only to brute force ; he 
 collected taxes by threatening plagues ; he demanded 
 worship on pain of sword and fire ; acting as spy, 
 inquisitor, judge and executioner. 
 
 In the thirteenth chapter of Deuteronomy, we 
 have the ideas of God as to mental freedom. " If 
 thy brother, the son of thy mother, or thy son, or the 
 wife of thy bosom, or thy 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 ; namely of the gods of the people 
 which are around about you, nigh unto thee, or far 
 off from thee, from the one end of the earth even 
 unto the other end of the earth, Thou shalt not con- 
 sent unto him, nor hearken unto him, neither shall 
 thine eye pity him, neither shalt thou spare him, 
 neither shalt thou conceal him. But thou shalt 
 surely kill him ; thine hand shall be first upon him 
 
 17 
 
2 58 SOME MISTAKES OF MOSES. 
 
 to put him to death, and afterward the hand of all the 
 people. And thou shalt stone him with stones that 
 he die." 
 
 This is the religious liberty of God ; the tolera- 
 tion of Jehovah. If I had lived in Palestine at that 
 time, and my wife, the mother of my children, had 
 said to me, "I am tired of Jehovah, he is always 
 asking for blood ; he is never weary of killing ; he 
 is always telling of his might and strength ; always 
 telling what he has done for the Jews, always asking 
 for sacrifices ; for doves and lambs — blood, nothing 
 but blood. — Let us worship the sun. Jehovah is too 
 revengeful, too malignant, too exacting. Let us 
 worship the sun. The sun has clothed the world in 
 beauty ; it has covered the earth with flowers ; by 
 its divine light I first saw your face, and my beautiful 
 babe." — If I had obeyed the command of God, I 
 would have killed her. My hand would have been 
 first upon her, and after that the hands of all the 
 people, and she would have been stoned with stones 
 until she died. For my part, I would never kill my 
 wife, even if commanded so to do by the real God 
 of this universe. Think of taking up some ragged 
 rock and hurling it against the white bosom filled 
 with love for you ; and when you saw oozing from 
 
SOME MISTAKES OF MOSES. 259 
 
 the bruised lips of the death wound, the red current 
 of her sweet life — think of looking up to heaven and 
 receivino- the congratulations of the infinite fiend 
 whose commandment you had obeyed ! 
 
 Can we believe that any such command was ever 
 given by a merciful and intelligent God ? Suppose, 
 however, that God did give this law to the Jews, 
 and did tell them that whenever a man preached a 
 heresy, or proposed to worship any other god that 
 they should kill him ; and suppose that afterward 
 this same God took upon himself flesh, and came to 
 this very chosen people and taught a different 
 religion, and that thereupon the Jews crucified him ; 
 I ask you, did he not reap exactly what he had sown ? 
 What right would this God have to complain of a 
 crucifixion suffered in accordance with his own 
 command ? 
 
 Nothing can be more infamous than intellectual 
 tyranny. To put chains upon the body is as nothing 
 compared with putting shackles on the brain. No 
 god is entitled to the worship or the respect of man 
 who does not give, even to the meanest of his 
 children, every right that he claims for himself. 
 
 If the Pentateuch be true, religious persecution is 
 a duty. The dungeons of the Inquisition were 
 
260 SOME MISTAKES OF MOSES. 
 
 temples, and the clank of every chain upon the 
 limbs of heresy was music in the ear of God. If 
 the Pentateuch was inspired, every heretic should 
 be destroyed ; and every man who advocates a fact 
 inconsistent with the sacred book, should be con- 
 sumed by sword and flame. 
 
 In the Old Testament no one is told to reason 
 with a heretic, and not one word is said about 
 relying upon argument, upon education, nor upon 
 intellectual development — nothing except simple 
 brute force. Is there to-day a christian who will say 
 that four thousand years ago, it was the duty of a 
 husband to kill his wife if she differed with him upon 
 the subject of religion ? Is there one who will now 
 say that, under such circumstances, the wife ought to 
 have been killed ? Why should God be so jealous 
 of the wooden idols of the heathen ? Could he not 
 compete with Baal ? Was he envious of the success 
 of the Egyptian magicians ? Was it not possible for 
 him to make such a convincing display of his power 
 as to silence forever the voice of unbelief? Did this 
 God have to resort to force to make converts? 
 Was he so ignorant of the structure of the human 
 mind as to believe all honest doubt a crime ? If he 
 wished to do away with the idolatry of the Canaan- 
 
SOME MISTAKES OF MOSES. 26 1 
 
 ites, why did he not appear to them ? Why did he 
 not give them the tables of the law ? Why did he 
 only make known his will to a few wandering- 
 savages in the desert of Sinai ? Will some theo- 
 logian have the kindness to answer these questions ? 
 Will some minister, who now believes in religious 
 liberty, and eloquently denounces the intolerance of 
 Catholicism, explain these things ; will he tell us why 
 he worships an intolerant God ? Is a god who will 
 burn a soul forever in another world, better than a 
 christian who burns the body for a few hours in this ? 
 Is there no intellectual liberty in heaven ? Do the 
 angels all discuss questions on the same side ? Are 
 all the investigators in perdition ? Will the penitent 
 thief, winged and crowned, laugh at the honest folks 
 in hell ? Will the agony of the damned increase or 
 decrease the happiness of God ? Will there be, in 
 the universe, an eternal auto dafe ? 
 
XXIX. 
 CONCLUSION. 
 
 If the Pentateuch is not inspired in its astronomy, 
 geology, geography, history or philosophy, if it 
 is not inspired concerning slavery, polygamy, war, 
 law, religious or political liberty, or the rights of men, 
 women and children, what is it inspired in, or about ? 
 The unity of God ? — that was believed long before 
 Moses was born. Special providence ? — that has 
 been the doctrine of igmorance in all a^es. The 
 rights of property ? — theft was always a crime. The 
 sacrifice of animals ? — that was a custom thousands 
 of years before a Jew existed. The sacredness of 
 life ? — there have always been laws against murder. 
 The wickedness of perjury ? — truthfulness has always 
 been a virtue. The beauty of chastity ? — the Pen- 
 tateuch does not teach it. Thou shalt worship no 
 other God ? — that has been the burden of all re- 
 ligions. 
 
SOME MISTAKES OF MOSES. 263 
 
 Is it possible that the Pentateuch could not have 
 been written by uninspired men ? that the assistance 
 of God was necessary to produce these books ? Is 
 it possible that Galileo ascertained the mechanical 
 principles of " Virtual Velocity," the laws of falling- 
 bodies and of all motion ; that Copernicus ascertained 
 the true position of the earth and accounted for all 
 celestial phenomena ; that Kepler discovered his 
 three laws — discoveries of such importance that the 
 8th of May, 1618, may be called the birth-day of 
 modern science ; that Newton gave to the world 
 the Method of Fluxions, the Theory of Universal 
 Gravitation, and the Decomposition of Lio-ht ; that 
 Euclid, Cavalieri, Des Cartes, and Leibnitz, almost 
 completed the science of mathematics ; that all the 
 discoveries in optics, hydrostatics, pneumatics and 
 chemistry, the experiments, discoveries, and inven- 
 tions of Galvani, Volta, Franklin and Morse, of 
 Trevethick, Watt and Fulton and of all the pioneers 
 of progress — that all this was accomplished by 
 uninspired men, while the writer of the Pentateuch 
 was directed and inspired by an infinite God ? Is it 
 possible that the codes of China, India, Egypt, 
 Greece and Rome were made by man, and that the 
 laws recorded in the Pentateuch were alone given by 
 
264 SOME MISTAKES OF MOSES. 
 
 God? Is it possible that ^Eschylus and Shakespeare, 
 Burns, and Beranger, Goethe and Schiller, and all the 
 poets of the world, and all their wondrous tragedies 
 and songs, are but the work of men, while no intelli- 
 gence except the infinite God could be the author 
 of the Pentateuch ? Is it possible that of all the 
 books that crowd the libraries of the world, the 
 books of science, fiction, history and song, that all 
 save only one, have been produced by man ? Is it 
 possible that of all these, the bible only is the work 
 of God ? 
 
 If the Pentateuch is inspired, the civilization of 
 of our day is a mistake and crime. There should be 
 no political liberty. Heresy should be trodden out 
 beneath the bigot's brutal feet. Husbands should 
 divorce their wives at will, and make the mothers of 
 their children houseless and weeping wanderers. 
 Polygamy ought to be practiced ; women should be- 
 come slaves ; we should buy the sons and daughters 
 of the heathen and make them bondmen and bond- 
 women forever. We should sell our own flesh and 
 blood, and have the right to kill our slaves. Men 
 and women should be stoned to death for laboring 
 on the seventh day. " Mediums," such as have 
 familiar spirits, should be burned with fire. Every 
 
SOME MISTAKES OF MOSES. 2 65 
 
 vestige of mental liberty should be destroyed, and 
 reason's holy torch extinguished in the martyr's 
 blood. 
 
 Is it not far better and wiser to say that the 
 Pentateuch while containing some good laws, some 
 truths, some wise and useful things is, after all, 
 deformed and blackened by the savagery of its time ? 
 Is it not far better and wiser to take the good and 
 throw the bad away ? 
 
 Let us admit what we know to be true ; that 
 Moses was mistaken about a thousand things ; that 
 the story of creation is not true ; that the garden of 
 Eden is a myth ; that the serpent and the tree of 
 knowledge, and the fall of man are but fragments of 
 old mythologies lost and dead ; that woman was not 
 made out of a rib ; that serpents never had the 
 power of speech ; that the sons of God did not marry 
 the daughters of men ; that the story of the flood 
 and ark is not exactly true ; that the tower of Babel 
 is a mistake ; that the confusion of tongues is a 
 childish thing ; that the origin of the rainbow is a 
 foolish fancy ; that Methuselah did not live nine 
 hundred and sixty-nine years ; that Enoch did not 
 leave this world, taking with him his flesh and bones ; 
 that the story of Sodom and Gomorrah is somewhat 
 
2 66 SOME MISTAKES OF MOSES. 
 
 improbable ; that burning brimstone never fell like 
 rain ; that Lot's wife was not changed into chloride 
 of sodium ; that Jacob did not, in fact, put his hip 
 out of joint wrestling with God ; that the history of 
 Tamar might just as well have been left out ; that a 
 belief in Pharaoh's dreams is not essential to salva- 
 tion ; that it makes but little difference whether the 
 rod of Aaron was changed to a serpent or not ; that 
 of all the wonders said to have been performed in 
 Egypt, the greatest is, that anybody ever believed 
 the absurd account ; that God did not torment the 
 innocent cattle on account of the sins of their owners ; 
 .that he did not kill the first born of the poor maid 
 behind the mill because of Pharaoh's crimes ; that: 
 flies and frogs were not ministers of God's wrath ; 
 that lice and locusts were not the executors of his 
 will ; that seventy people did not, in two hundred 
 and fifteen years, increase to three million ; that 
 three priests could not eat six hundred pigeons in a 
 day ; that gazing at a brass serpent could not extract 
 poison from the blood ; that God did not go in 
 partnership with hornets ; that he did not murder 
 people simply because they asked for something to 
 eat ; that he did not declare the making of hair oil 
 and ointment an offence to be punished with death ; 
 
SOME MISTAKES OF MOSES. 267 
 
 that he did not miraculously preserve cloth and 
 leather ; that he was not afraid of wild beasts ; that 
 he did not punish heresy with sword and fire ; that 
 he was not jealous, revengeful, and unjust ; that he 
 knew all about the sun, moon, and stars ; that he 
 did not threaten to kill people for eating the fat of 
 an ox ; that he never told Aaron to draw cuts to see 
 which of two goats should be killed ; that he never 
 objected to clothes made of woolen mixed with linen; 
 that if he objected to dwarfs, people with flat noses 
 and too many fingers, he ought not to have created 
 such folks ; that he did not demand human sacrifices 
 as set forth in the last chapter of Leviticus ; that he 
 did not object to the raising of horses ; that he never 
 commanded widows to spit in the faces of their 
 brothers-in-law ; that several contradictory accounts 
 of the same transaction cannot all be true ; that God 
 did not talk to Abraham as one man talks to another ; 
 that angels were not in the habit of walking about 
 the earth eatine veal dressed with milk and butter, 
 and making bargains about the destruction of cities ; 
 that God never turned himself into a flame of fire, 
 and lived in a bush ; that he never met Moses in a 
 hotel and tried to kill him ; that it was absurd to 
 perform miracles to induce a king to act in a certain 
 
268 SOME MISTAKES OF MOSES. 
 
 way and then harden his heart so that he would 
 refuse ; that God was not kept from killing the Jews 
 by the fear that the Egyptians would laugh at him ; 
 that he did not secretly bury a man and then allow 
 the corpse to write an account of the funeral ; that he 
 never believed the firmament to be solid ; that he 
 knew slavery was and always would be a frightful 
 crime ; that polygamy is but stench and filth ; that 
 the brave soldier will always spare an unarmed foe ; 
 that only cruel cowards slay the conquered and the 
 helpless ; that no language can describe the murderer 
 of a smiling babe ; that God did not want the blood 
 of doves and lambs ; that he did not love the smell of 
 burning flesh ; that he did not want his altars daubed 
 with blood ; that he did not pretend that the sins of 
 a people could be transferred to a goat ; that he did 
 not believe in witches, wizards, spooks, and devils ; 
 that he did not test the virtue of woman with dirty 
 water ; that he did not suppose that rabbits chewed 
 the cud ; that he never thought there were any four- 
 footed birds ; that he did not boast for several 
 hundred years that he had vanquished an Egyptian 
 king ; that a dry stick did not bud, blossom, and 
 bear almonds in one night ; that manna did not 
 shrink and swell, so that each man could gather only 
 
Some mistakes of moses. 269 
 
 just one omer ; that it was never wrong to " coun- 
 tenance the poor man in his cause ; " that God never 
 told a people not to live in peace with their neighbors ; 
 that he did not spend forty days with Moses on 
 Mount Sinai giving him patterns for making clothes, 
 tongs, basins, and snuffers ; that maternity is not a 
 sin ; that physical deformity is not a crime ; that 
 an atonement cannot be made for the soul by 
 shedding innocent blood ; that killing a dove over 
 running water will not make its blood a medicine ; 
 that a eod w h Q demands love knows nothing of 
 the human heart ; that one who frightens savages 
 with loud noises is unworthy the love of civilized 
 men ; that one who destroys children on account of 
 the sins of their fathers is a monster ; that an infinite 
 god never threatened to give people the itch ; that 
 he never sent wild beasts to devour babes ; that he 
 never ordered the violation of maidens ; that he 
 never regarded patriotism as a crime ; that he never 
 ordered the destruction of unborn children ; that he 
 never opened the earth and swallowed wives and 
 babes because husbands and fathers had displeased 
 him ; that he never demanded that men should kill 
 their sons and brothers, for the purpose of sanctifying 
 themselves ; that we cannoi please God by believing 
 
1*]Q> SOME MISTAKES OF MOSES. 
 
 the improbable ; that credulity is not a virtue ; that 
 investigation is not a crime ; that every mind should 
 be free ; that all religious persecution is infamous in 
 God, as well as man ; that without liberty, virtue is 
 impossible ; that without freedom, even love cannot 
 exist ; that every man should be allowed to think 
 and to express his thoughts ; that woman is the 
 equal of man ; that children should be governed by 
 love and reason ; that the family relation is sacred ; 
 that war is a hideous crime ; that all intolerance is 
 born of ignorance and hate ; that the freedom of to- 
 day is the hope of to-morrow ; that the enlightened 
 present ought not to fall upon its knees and blindly 
 worship the barbaric past ; and that every free, brave 
 and enlightened man should publicly declare that all 
 the ignorant, infamous, heartless, hideous things re- 
 corded in the " inspired " Pentateuch are not the words 
 of God, but simply " Some Mistakes of Moses." 
 
Prose-poems 
 
 -AND- 
 
 Selections, 
 
 OBERT .y [WGERSOLL. 
 
 Third Edition, Revised and Enlarged. 
 
 R handsome Quarto, conXaimng oner 300 pages. 
 
 THIS is, beyond question, the most elegant volume in Liberal literature. Its 
 mechanical finish is worthy of its intrinsic excellence. No expense has been 
 spared to make it the thing of beauty it is. The type is large and clear, the 
 paper heavy, highly calendered and richly tinted, the press-work faultless, and the 
 binding as perfect as the best materials and skill can make it. The book is in every 
 way an artistic triumph. 
 
 As to the contents, it is enough to say that they include some of the choicest 
 utterances of the greatest writer on the topics treated that has ever lived. 
 
 Those who have not the good fortune to own all of Mr. Ingersoll's published 
 works, will have in this book of selections many bright samples of his lofty thought, 
 his matchless eloquence, his wonderful imagery, and his epigrammatic and poetic 
 power. The collection includes all of the " Tributes " that have become famous in 
 literature — notably those to his brother E. C. Ingersoll, Lincoln, Grant, Beecher and 
 Elizur Wright; his peerless monograms on "The Vision of War," Love, Liberty, 
 Science, Nature, The Imagination, Decoration Day Oration, and on the great heroes 
 of intellectual liberty. Besides these are innumerable gems taken here and there 
 from the orations, speeches, arguments, toasts, lectures, letters, and day to day con- 
 versations of the author. 
 
 The book is designed for, and will be accepted by, admiring friends as a rare 
 personal souvenir. To help it serve this purpose, a fine steel portrait, witli autograph 
 facsimile, has been prepare .1 especially for it. In the more elegant styles of bindirg 
 it is eminently suited for presentation purposes, for any season or occasion. 
 
 PRIC E S. 
 
 In Cloth, beveled boards, gilt edges, - - $2.50 
 
 In Half Morocco, gilt edges, - 4.50 
 
 In Half Calf, mottled edges, library style, - 4-.50 
 
 In Full Turkey Morocco, gilt, exquisitely fine, 7.50 
 
 In Full Tree-Calf, highest possible finish, - - 9.00 
 Sent to any address, by express, prepaid, or mail, post free, on receipt of price. 
 
 Address C. F\ KARRELL, Publisher, 
 400 Fifth Avenue, New v«rk City. 
 
OTTTST OUT ! 
 
 TH K 
 
 Ingersoll- Field 
 
 TX^cussion 
 
 — BETWEEN — 
 
 Robert G. Ingersoll 
 
 — AND — 
 
 Henry M. Field, D. D. 
 
 -» ■ <» » » < 4- 
 
 77 LL intelligent people love discussion — delight in word encounters, in intellectual 
 /l combats. The North American Review has lately been the arena of one of these 
 mental tournaments— the discussion between Mr. Ingersoll and Dr. Field, who is 
 editor of The New York Evangelist and one of the celebrated Field family. 
 
 Intense interest has naturally followed each step of this discussion as it appeared 
 from month to month in the Review. Extra editions were soon exhausted, and the 
 supply was always short of the demand. To satisfy the desire to have these articles 
 in complete and inexpensive form, the publisher, by arrangement with the Review, 
 nas printed the entire series in one volume. 
 
 It is needless to say that it is lively reading. The question is an absorbing one, 
 and will probably remain so even after the arguments pro and con are all in. Those 
 who say that Mr. Ingersoll never brings forward a new argument, that his views 
 have been answered over and over again, will do well to read this discussion, and to 
 bear in mind while reading it that, as he says, " An argument is always new — has the 
 dew of morning upon it — until it is answered." 
 
 Two leaders of thought are here arrayed in friendly antagonism — one the ac- 
 knowledged intellectual giant of Freethought in this century, and the other an 
 accepted champion of the Church. The weapons are of their own choice. How deftly 
 wielded, and with what effect, the readers on each side will determine. It is certain 
 that intellectual liberty has been and will be advanced by the discussion, and that 
 many thousands of eager spectators will come to this book to witness the splendid 
 combat. 
 
 The volume is a large octavo of ninety-six pages. Price, in cloth, $1.00; paper, 
 50 cents. 
 
 Orders will be registered and filled as to date of reception. Sent post-paid on 
 receipt of price, or in quantities by express, C. O. D., at special rates. Address: 
 
 C. F\ FARRELL, Publisher, 
 
 400 FIFTH AVE., NEW YORK. 
 (Only authorized Publisher of all of Mr. Ingersoll's Works.) 
 
IF 
 
 4tR Prose Poem.K* 
 
 By Robert G. Ingersoll. 
 
 *♦* 
 
 Nothing in the English language equals this master-piece — 
 nothing, in fact, in any language. 
 
 Like all the wonderful monograms of Mr. Ingersoll, it is 
 simply perfect. 
 
 It portrays every era and phase of human life— the birth — the 
 rapture of motherhood — the careless joys and transient griefs 
 of childhood — the passions of youth — the ambitions and 
 struggles of manhood — the creeping shadows of age — the de- 
 crepitude — the end. 
 
 No word painting ever held as much on a single canvas. 
 There are many figures, — many scenes — but no confusion, no 
 crowding. Each stands out in clear and beautiful outline, and 
 all blend in the harmony of a finished picture. 
 
 The publisher takes pleasure in producing this master-piece 
 in suitable shape for the wall, the cabinet, the mantel or the 
 centre-table, and has had it beautifully printed, in large type, 
 on heavy card-board, panel-shape, with beveled gilt edges. 
 
 Sent by mail, carefully wrapped, on receipt of Fifty Cents. 
 
 Address C. P. FARRELL, NEW YORK City. 
 
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BS1225.8.I47 
 
 Some mistakes of Moses. 
 
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