Fifty-first. Can we blame the Hebrews for getting tired of their God?
Never was a people so murdered, starved, stoned, burned, deceived,
humiliated, robbed, and outraged. Never was there so little liberty
among men. Never did the meanest king so meddle, eavesdrop, spy out,
harass, torment, and persecute his people. Never was ruler so jealous,
unreasonable, contemptible, exacting, and ignorant as this God of the
Jews. Never was such ceremony, such mummery, such stuff about bullocks,
goats, doves, red heifers, lambs, and unleavened dough--never was such
directions about kidneys and blood, ashes and fat, about curtains,
tongs, fringes, ribands, and brass pins--never such details for killing
of animals and men and the sprinkling of blood and the cutting of
clothes. Never were such unjust laws, such punishments, such damned
ignorance and infamy! Fifty-second. Is it not wonderful that the creator
of all worlds, infinite in power and wisdom, could not hold his own
against the gods of wood and stone? Is it not strange that after he had
appeared to his chosen people, delivered them from slavery, fed them
by miracles, opened the sea for a path, led them by cloud and fire,
and overthrown their pursuers, they still preferred a calf of their
own making? Is it not beyond belief that this God, by statutes and
commandments, by punishments and penalties, by rewards and promises,
by wonders and plagues, by earthquakes and pestilence, could not in the
least civilize the Jews--could not get them beyond a point where they
deserved killing? What shall we think of a God who gave his entire time
for forty years to the work of converting three millions of people, and
succeeded in getting only two men, and not a single woman, decent enough
to enter the promised land? Was there ever in the history of man so
detestible an administration of public affairs? Is it possible that
God sold his children to the king of Mesopotamia; that he sold them to
Jabin, king of Canaan, to the Philistines, and to the children of Ammon?
Is it possible that an angel of the Lord devoured unleavened cakes and
broth with fire that came out of the end of a stick as he sat under an
oak-tree?1 Can it be true that God made known his will by making dew
fall on wool without wetting the ground around it?2 Do you really
believe that men who lap water like a dog make the best soldiers?3 Do
you think that a man could hold a lamp in his left hand, a trumpet in
his right hand, blow his trumpet, shout "the sword of the Lord and of
Gideon," and break pitchers at the same time? 4
Fifty-third. Read the story of Jephthah and his daughter, and then tell
me what you think of a father who would sacrifice his daughter to God,
and what you think of a God who would receive such a sacrifice. This one
story should be enough to make every tender and loving father hold this
book in utter abhorrence. Is it necessary, in order to be saved, that
one must believe that an angel of God appeared unto Manoah in the
absence of her husband; that this angel afterward went up in a flame of
fire; that as a result of this visit a child was born whose strength was
in his hair? a child that made beehives of lions, incendiaries of foxes,
and had a wife that wept seven days to get the answer to his riddle?
Will the wrath of God abide forever upon a man for doubting the story
that Samson killed a thousand men with a new jawbone? Is there enough
in the Bible to save a soul with this story left out? Is hell hungry for
those who deny that water gushed from a "hollow place" in a dry bone? Is
it evidence of a new heart to believe that one man turned over a house
so large that over three thousand people were on the roof? For my part,
I cannot believe these things, and if my salvation depends upon my
credulity I am as good as damned already. I cannot believe that the
Philistines took back the ark with a present of five gold mice, and that
thereupon God relented.5