He hated Palestine: the Jordan, the Mount of Olives, the holy bazaars,
the geographical sanctity of shrines and soils, the long torture of
prophetic texts and apocalyptic interpretations, all the devotional
maunderings of the fool and the Philistine. He would have had the
Bible prohibited for a century or two, till mankind should be able to
read it with fresh vision and true profit. He wished that Christ had
crucified the Jews and defeated the plan for the world's salvation. O
happy Christ, to have died without foresight of the Crusades or the
Inquisition!