Jacob and his sons were quietly living there. he should so arrange his plans that they had to go down into Egypt and be abject slaves for hundreds of years, whence to effect their exodus great miracles had to be performed, with the destruction of a vast amount of property and the taking of hundreds of thousands of lives; that he should be under the necessity of parting the Red Sea and destroying the Egyptian army in order for them to get away, instead of taking the direct course they pursued when they went into the country, Jahveh thus subjecting himself to the necessity of feeding and watering them daily by miraculous means for forty years, and at last that they should be obliged to put to death hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, of God's creatures in order to possess the land they once had quiet possession of. To a political economist it would seem more advisable for Jacob and his sons to have remained in the land of Canaan and be fed one, two, three, or more years in some miraculous manner-with manna if in no other way-than to lead them into centuries of servitude to regain what they once had, only by an unlimited number of long-continued miracles and an immense destruction of human life. It is not presumable that God would manage his business so badly, or that he could not lay better plans. It represents him as a very cruel and unjust being to devise plans by which millions of human beings had to meet untimely deaths, when it could have been so easily avoided.

5. It is improbable that within the lifetime of Shem, the eldest son of Noah, who outlived Abraham some thirty-five years, the races of mankind should become so numerous, so different and distinct in color, physical appearance etc., as the different nationalities then presented as strongly as they do to-day; and that in less than three hundred years the descendants of Noah should become so numerous as to found popu lous nations and build large cities in India, Burmah, China, Persia, Chaldea, Assyria, and Egypt, that existed in those countries long before the time of Abraham. It is improbable that literature and art could have made such rapid advances in so many lands in the lifetime of one individual. It is well known that great changes in nations and peoples, in their lan

guage, literature, arts, civilization, as well as in building cities and pefecting public improvements, are effected very slowly and that ages are necessary to produce them. The pyramids of Egypt were erected long before Abraham went there. The Egyptians had a language and a literature peculiar to themselves and unlike that of any other nation, and it is impossible that such a great people could spring from nothing, and do all this in three hundred years from the time when but one family existed on the earth. There is undoubtedly a great mistake and a great falsehood in the Bible story. There has been very little change for the last four thousand years in the climatic peculiarities of Hindoos, Chinese, Persians, Chaldeans, Assyrians, Arabians, Egyptians, Ethiopians, Africans, Europeans, etc. The Ethiopian was as black, the Asiatic was as yellow, the Caucasian as white, four thousand years ago as now. Very little change in color and physical differences has been apparent. How unlikely, then, as four thousand years have produced but few changes, that rast modifications in color, configuration, etc., could be effected in three hundred years. A sensible person cannot imagine anything so preposterous.

6. It is improbable that such a set of miracles was ever performed as the Jewish story relates, especially for so small a purpose and for such trivial advantages. Beginning with the ten plagues of Egypt, the opening of the Red Sea, the raining of manna for forty years, the production of water in the desert, the non-wearing out of clothes in two-fifths of a century, the feeding of flocks and herds so long in the desert, the visible appearance of a pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night, the pyrotechnic display on Mount Sinai, the forty days' job-twice executed-by Jahveh and Moses in getting up the table of commandments, the opening of the earth to swallow up Korah, Dathan, Abiram, and their adherents, the numerous plagues sent which took off many thousands of people, the astonishing supply of quails sent, the parting of the river Jordan, the stopping of the sun and moon -all these and many more are related, and it is wholly improbable that they ever occurred. In the past ages of ignorance and superstition fables, miracles, aud impossibil

ities were often narrated and claimed to be true. They were necessary to command the faith of the people. A new relig ion was hardly ever started on a large scale that was not abundantly embellished with the most astonishing miracles, and the more ignorant and rudimental the people, the more extravagant and numerous the miracles. But as men progress in intelligence, in understanding the unerring laws of nature, the relation between cause and effect, they have less confidence in all miraculous or unnatural operations. It is getting to be well understood that no effect can be produced without a cause; that no result was ever accomplished that was not effected by natural means; that natural causes bring about everything that is accomplished, and that supernatural agencies play no part in this world of ours. The time cannot be far distant when people of intelligence and scientific education must cease to believe all wild and groundless stories about miracles said to be performed thousands of years ago, or that even one miracle was ever performed. Nature has not changed in the past four thousand years. All results that transpired were produced by the same natural means then as now. God has changed no more than has nature. As God does not now interfere and set aside the laws of nature, it is only reasonable to believe that it ever was the same, and that such a thing as a miracle or a triumph of supernaturalism over nature never took place. It is far casier for men to be mistaken and to write falsehoods than for nature's laws to be superseded.

7. It is improbable that a god of love, mercy, kindness, and justice would so mislead a confiding people as to promise them great blessings and happiness, only to send them longcontinued sufferings, deprivation, and death. He dwelt largely, as the story runs, on the wonderful things he had done for them in bringing them out of Egypt "with a strong arm," and continually promised to bring them from the land of Egypt to a land flowing with milk and honey. But the streams of milk and honey they found in their forty years of suffering in the desert were extremely few and small. Instead of that rich diet they found hunger, suffering, and miserable deaths. But two who left Egypt-Joshua and Caleb-are

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said to have lived to cross the river Jordan. The three millions had perished on the journey, and were buried in the sand. God's promises were false, and his treatment of the people who confided in him was heartless and cruel, provided the story is taken for truth and God is such a being as there represented. The people were cheated, deceived, and abused, and their God was unreasonable, cruel, and dishonest. But such representations do great injustice to the beneficent Ruler of the universe, if there is such a personage. He could not be such a cruel monster.

8. The story is improbable because of the great difference God is said to have made between the descendants of Abraham and other people. If he is equally the father of all men and all nationalities, it makes him appear extremely partial and unjust to abuse and kill hundreds of thousands and even millions of other people that he might show his partiality toward the descendants of one man, who, by the bye, showed none of the superiority of character and conduct exhibited by men of other nations. If the God of the Jews was also the God of other nations, it was extremely unjust in him to select one family, bestow all his love upon them, call them his chosen, peculiar, and beloved people, turning a cold shoulder upon all other men and leaving them neglected and forsaken, to get along in the world the best they could, without any aid from him. This, according to the story, was just the way the beneficent father of all conducted himself toward the human race. He delighted to have the Jews kill and destroy as many of other nations as possible, utterly regardless of how much misery was thus produced. This view alone, and this character alone, thus imputed to the father of all, discredits the entire story. A just God could not act in that way. There was assuredly nothing in the character or disposition of the Jews that justified any such partiality. They were false cruel, revengeful, unprincipled, and dishonest, it is true. In morals they were not superior to other nations, and they were constantly relapsing into idolatry and forsaking the God who had undertaken to do so much for them. He accused them of being stiff-necked and rebellious, and in his anger he often threatened to consume them, to destroy or to scatter them

from before him. It certainly is very derogatory to the character of a just and loving God to paint him in such colors, to make him appear so odious and unlovable. If there was nothing else to make a reasonable person doubt the truth and divinity of the entire narrative, this representation of God, this caricature of the father of love and justice, is quite sufficient.

9. It is improbable if the divine author of all things should decide to select one family or one nation of people on whom to shower all his love, and to establish a system of religion superior to that practiced by the pagan nations, in whom he took little or no interest, that he would succeed, not only in producing no better people than other nations, but a system of religion no better than the other nations. possessed, and with not a single new or original feature. There is nothing new in the Jewish religion, nothing original, nothing that the other systems did not inculcate long before Judaism was known. The first rite commanded was circumcision; but that was not new. The Egyptians had practiced it for centuries, and perhaps thousands of years before Abraham lived. Herodotus informs us that the rite was practiced not only by the Egyptians in ancient times, but by the Colchians, Ethiopians, Phoenicians, and Syrians (Herodotus ii, 104). It has been found in modern times, not only in many parts of Africa-to which it may have come from Egyptbut in the South Sea Islands, and even on our own continent. According to Beecham, there are "some people" among the Gold Coast Africans who circumcise their children, though he does not state that the rite is general. Another traveler describes the practice of the rite in the negro kingdom of Fidee, or Juda, where the inhabitants claim the custom was handed down from their forefathers for many ages back. Acosta, in his account of Mexican rites, speaks of this ceremony being performed on the sons of kings and other impor tant personages. Thus it will be seen that Jahveh and Abraham, in adopting the rite of circumcision, did not select an original ceremony, but one that had been used by several pagan nations before that time, and has been used by many other pagan nations since the Jews commenced its use. If it