"Bible's a broken reed, master, as you'll live to find out yet."
"No, Jack. 'Tis what makes all other writing but a broken reed. A fountain that never runs dry, I promise you. No man will ever get the whole truth out of the Bible."
"No, by Gor! Because it ban't there," said the other.
"It's there all right—hidden for the little children to find it. You bandage your eyes and then you say you can't see—a fool's trick that."
"I can see so far as you. 'Tis you put coloured spectacles on your nose to make things look as you'd have 'em. Your book be played out, master. Let the childer read it, if you like, along with the other fairy tales; but don't think grown men be going to waste their time with it. The whole truth is that the book be built on a lie. There never was no Jehovah and never will be. Moses invented Him to frighten the folk from their naughtiness, same as you invent a scarecrow to frighten the birds from the seed. And the scarecrow works better than Jehovah did, by all accounts."
"You talk out of your narrow, bitter books, Jack."
"No need to call my books names. That's all your side can do. Why don't they try to answer 'em instead of blackguarding 'em?"
"'Tis a great danger to the poor that they begin to think so much."
"Don't you say that. Knowledge be the weapon the poor have been waiting for all these years and years. 'Tis the only weapon for a poor man. And what will it soon show 'em? It'll show 'em that the most powerful thing on this earth be the poor. They are just going to find it out; then you rich people will hear of something that will terrible astonish you."
"You're a rank Socialist, Jack. I've no patience with you."