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
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 execration 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?
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.