"_An all-wise, unchangeable God, who got out of patience with a world
which was just what his own stupid blundering had made it, knew no
better way out of the muddle than to destroy it by drowning!_"
Is that true? Was not the world exactly as God made it? Certainly. Did
he not, if the Bible is true, drown the people? He did. Did he know he
would drown them when he made them? He did. Did he know they ought to
be drowned when they were made? He did. Where then, is the blasphemy
in saying so? There is not a minister in this world who could explain
it--who would be permitted to explain it--under this statute. And yet
you would arrest this man and put him in the penitentiary. But after you
lock him in the cell, there remains the question still. Is it possible
that a good and wise God, knowing that he was going to drown them, made
millions of people? What did he make them for? I do not know. I do not
pretend to be wise enough to answer that question. Of course, you cannot
answer the question. Is there anything blasphemous in that? Would it
be blasphemy in me to say I do not believe that any God ever made men,
women and children--mothers, with babes clasped to their breasts, and
then sent a flood to fill the world with death?
A rain lasting for forty days--the water rising hour by hour, and the
poor wretched children of God climbing to the tops of their houses--then
to the tops of the hills. The water still rising--no mercy. The people
climbing higher and higher, looking to the mountains for salvation--the
merciless rain still falling, the inexorable flood still rising.
Children falling from the arms of mothers--no pity. The highest hills
covered--infancy and old age mingling in death--the cries of women, the
sobs and sighs lost in the roar of waves--the heavens still relentless.
The mountains are covered--a shoreless sea rolls round the world, and on
its billows are billions of corpses.
This is the greatest crime that man has imagined, and this crime is
called a deed of infinite mercy.
Do you believe that? I do not believe one word of it, and I have the
right to say to all the world that this is false.
If there be a good God, the story is not true. If there be a wise
God, the story is not true. Ought an honest man to be sent to the
penitentiary for simply telling the truth?
Suppose we had a statute that whoever scoffed at science--whoever
by profane language should bring the rule of three into contempt, or
whoever should attack the proposition that two parallel lines will never
include a space, should be sent to the penitentiary--what would you
think of it? It would be just as wise and just as idiotic as this.
And what else says the defendant?
"_The Bible-God says that his people made him jealous." "Provoked him to
anger._"
Is that true? It is. If it is true, is it blasphemous?