There is still another test: The civilized man gives to others the rights that he claims for himself. He believes in the liberty of thought and expression, and abhors persecution for conscience sake.
Did Jehovah believe in the innocence of thought and the liberty of expression? Kindness is found with true greatness. Tyranny lodges only in the breast of the small, the narrow, the shriveled and the selfish. Did Jehovah teach and practice generosity? Was he a believer in religious liberty? If he was and is, in fact, God, he must have known, even four thousand years ago, that worship must be free, and that he who is forced upon his knees cannot, by any possibility, have the spirit of prayer.
Let me call your attention to a few passages in the thirteenth chapter of Deuteronomy:
"If thy brother, the son of thy mother, or thy son, or thy daughter, or the wife of thy bosom, or thy friend, which is as thine own soul, entice thee secretly, saying, Let us go and serve other gods,... thou shalt not consent unto him, nor hearken unto him; neither shall thine eye pity him, neither shalt thou spare, neither shalt thou conceal him; but thou shalt surely kill him; thine hand shall be first upon him to put him to death, and afterwards the hand of all the people. And thou shalt stone him with stones, that he die."
Is it possible for you to find in the literature of this world more awful passages than these? Did ever savagery, with strange and uncouth marks, with awkward forms of beast and bird, pollute the dripping walls of caves with such commands? Are these the words of infinite mercy? When they were uttered, did "righteousness and peace kiss each other"? How can any loving man or woman "encircle the name of Jehovah"—author of these words—"with profoundest reverence and love"? Do I rebel because my "constitution is warped, impaired and dislocated"? Is it because of "total depravity" that I denounce the brutality of Jehovah? If my heart were only good—if I loved my neighbor as myself—would I then see infinite mercy in these hideous words? Do I lack "reverential calm"?
These frightful passages, like coiled adders, were in the hearts of Jehovah's chosen people when they crucified "the Sinless Man."
Jehovah did not tell the husband to reason with his wife. She was to be answered only with death. She was to be bruised and mangled to a bleeding, shapeless mass of quivering flesh, for having breathed an honest thought.
If there is anything of importance in this world, it is the family, the home, the marriage of true souls, the equality of husband and wife—the true republicanism of the heart—the real democracy of the fireside.
Let us read the sixteenth verse of the third chapter of Genesis:
"Unto the woman he said, I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception; in sorrow thou shalt bring forth children; and thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee."