conundrums? Even when we have decided that the Mohammedan god is no god at all, and agreed upon our own deity, are we sure that his character as represented to us is calculated to encourage the moral life? That is an important point. What do we know about the character of God except what the priests tell us, and what we read in their books about him.

Now, I wish to make an explanation. It is not the first time I have been compelled to make it either. It is very unpleasant to say unpopular things. To stand up here and say the things which make me appear sacrilegious and blasphemous in the eyes of the respectable majority is not, I assure you, a pleasure; it is a sacrifice. But I have undertaken the work and I must do it.

The character of God as painted for us in the Bible is not calculated, in my humble opinion, to encourage the moral life. The god of the Jewish and Christian scriptures is not a moral being. He does not live up to his profession. He violates his own commandments. I do not say this hastily or carelessly,—I have studied the question. Take the commandment, "Thou shalt not kill." Jehovah breaks that commandment a hundred times, if the Bible is reliable. No sooner had Moses descended from Mt. Sinai, with the Ten Commandments, than God urged him to get the Jews to kill one another, and fifty thousand were slain in one passion. The repeated commandment of God to the Jews to exterminate their neighbors,—to put men, women and children to the edge of the sword, would indicate that he did not mean to live up to his profession.

In the same way he commands "Thou shalt not steal," and then tells his people how they may spoil their neighbors, destroy their altars and temples and seize their lands.

He says "Thou shalt not commit adultery," and then commands his soldiers to capture the daughters of the Gentiles and keep them forcibly.

He says "Thou shalt not bear false witness," and on every page in the Old Testament, everything base is said of the Egyptians, the Babylonians, the Assyrians, whose character modern research has vindicated, and it has been proved that their civilization was far in advance of that of their accusers.

He says "Thou shalt not covet"—and then shows them the pleasant lands and homes of other peoples, to arouse their covetousness, to satisfy which they wade through a sea of blood from Egypt to the land of Canaan.

How can a being, who does not live up to his profession,—who breaks his own commandments, be our moral ideal or model? In our attempt to reconcile God's conduct with morality, we resort to sophistry. We say God is not bound by the same moral law that we are: He can take away life, land, or property from one man and give it to another. He is above all law. He is good even when he does that which if we did it would make us criminals, and so on. Thus, sophistry becomes a profession. We develop Jesuitical powers; we become intellectual gymnasts, dancing on ropes and splitting hairs to prove that God can break all the moral commandments and still be our model and pattern for morality.

It is a fact, moreover, that close indentification with such a being has contributed to corrupt both the church and the state. Tyrants have claimed the right to violate the moral law when ever it interfered with their personal pleasures. As the anointed of God, kings have tried to answer all protests against their misdeeds by quoting the example of God. Priests have persecuted and exterminated whole races, and have given the example of God who destroys the heretics as their justification. The atmosphere created about us by the consciousness that our moral teacher has himself done the very things he has forbidden is an evil one.

But it may be answered that the Old Testament is no longer the authority it once was, and that the New Testament, or rather, the character of God as revealed in Christ, is our ideal. I have the highest reverence for the beautiful things Jesus is reported to have said. I rejoice that some of his words have made twenty centuries of the world's life fragrant I would sooner die this instant than feel that I am guilty of misrepresenting the facts, of taking a fact and twisting it into an argument for my party. If I have any happiness in life, if I have any self-respect, it is from this source,—that I am honest with the facts.

Yet the teachings of Jesus condensed in his direct command not to resist evil is the very negation of morality. We had recently the yellow fever in New Orleans. What did we do? We organized against it, threw ourselves against it, resisted it. It is the only way physical evil can be destroyed. There was a time when if the cholera came to a city it was said that God had sent it, and it was useless to fight it. Today we don't care who sent it, we don't want it, and shall not have it. We shall resist it. Consider the disclosures of dishonest banking houses and insurance companies. What do we do? We drag the guilty into the light; we examine, we investigate, we expose, we punish, we do not say to these people, you have taken so much of our money, take also what is left. We resist evil. In politics, in commerce, in every department of life we find that in resistance alone is our salvation, and yet Jesus, the Oriental monk, believing the end of the world to be close at hand, would tie our hands, paralyze our will and give evil, physical or moral, a free field. If we do not resist evil we will soon be so incapacitated for effort, so emptied of energy and ambition that we will become the victim not only of every physical pest but also of every moral iniquity. "Resist not" is just what a priest would say to his people, and a king to his subjects. But "resist" is what the liberator would say to his fellowmen.

But are there not examples of the highest morality in the Christian world? Yes, surely, and I am glad to admit it, but it is in spite of the Christian creed. It shows that,—listen to this,—theology is listened to only one day in the week, the other six days we listen to common sense. We are better than our beliefs, better than our creeds. The Asiatic theology which we call inspired has not succeeded in perverting Anglo-Saxon human nature. That is what it proves.

What importance did Jesus attach to the moral life? Let us see. You know that when he was on the cross there were two thieves crucified with him. One of them reviled him, the other said to him "Lord, when thou comest into thy kingdom remember me," and Jesus said, "This day shall thou be with me in Paradise." Ah, indeed!

What had this man done to deserve such sudden glorification?

It gives me pain to say, but say I must, that a greater slight upon morality could not have been placed. Think of saying to a malefactor whom the laws of society were justly punishing,—that his life of guilt and crime, that the thefts and perhaps murders which he had committed,—were all forgiven him. Is the moral life as easy as that? Is it possible that by simply calling Jesus "Lord," and by accepting him as the Son of God, a malefactor can enter heaven, while the man whose whole life has been above reproach must go to perdition if he has not the faith of the malefactor? Why then be moral at all? What is required of men is that they use deferential language to Jesus, call him "Lord"—believe in him, and all their wickedness shall not prevent them from glory. If in one moment, and by a mere profession, a thief and a murderer can step ahead of the righteous and the honest, then the Christian religion is right, righteousness is but "filthy rags." No deeper accusation could be brought against Christianity than that it calls righteousness "filthy rags." But is such a religion—is the example of the malefactor taken to heaven, and his victims permitted to go to everlasting destruction—calculated to command the respect of noble minds? Charles Spurgeon must have had the example of Jesus in mind when he said to his hearers, in the London Tabernacle, that "thirty years of sin will take less than thirty minutes to wipe out in." To him repentance at the