Thirty-ninth. What must we think of a man impudent enough to break in pieces tables of stone upon which God had written with his finger? What must we think of the goodness of a man that would issue the following order: "Thus saith the Lord God of Israel, Put every man his sword by his side, and go in and out from gate to gate throughout the camp, and slay every man his brother, and every man his companion, and every man his neighbor. Consecrate yourselves to-day to the Lord, even every man upon his son, and upon his brother; that he may bestow upon you a blessing this day"?1 Is it true that the God of the Bible demanded human sacrifice? Did it please him for man to kill his neighbor, for brother to murder his brother, and for the father to butcher his sou? If there is a God let him cause it to be written in the book of his memory, opposite my name, that I refuted this slander and denied this lie.
Fortieth. Can it be true that God was afraid to trust himself with the Jews for fear he would consume them? Can it be that in order to keep from devouring them he kept away and sent one of his angels in his place?2 Can it be that this same God talked to Moses "face to face, as a man speaketh unto his friend," when it is declared in the same chapter, by God himself, "Thou canst not see my face: for there shall no man see me, and live"?3
Forty-first. Why should a man, because he has done a bad action, go and kill a sheep? How can man make friends with God by cutting the throats of bullocks and goats? Why should God delight in the shedding of blood? Why should he want his altar sprinkled with blood, and the horns of his altar tipped with blood, and his priests covered with blood? Why should burning flesh be a sweet savor in the nostrils of God? Why did he compel his priests to be butchers, cutters and stabbers?
1 Ex. xxxii, 27-29. 2 Ex. xxxiii, 2, 3.
3 Ex. xxxiii, 11, 20.
Why should the same God kill a man for eating the fat of an ox, a sheep, or a goat?
Forty-second. Could it be a consolation to a man when dying to think that he had always believed that God told Aaron to take two goats and draw cuts to see which goat should be killed and which should be a scapegoat?1 And that upon the head of the scapegoat Aaron should lay both his hands and confess over him all the iniquities of the children of Israel, and all their transgressions, and put them all on the head of the goat, and send him away by the hand of a fit man into the wilderness; and that the goat should bear upon him all the iniquities of the people into a land not inhabited?2 How could a goat carry away a load of iniquities and transgressions? Why should he carry them to a land uninhabited? Were these sins contagious? About how many sins could an average goat carry? Could a man meet such a goat now without laughing?
Forty-third. Why should God object to a man wearing a garment made of woolen and linen? Why should he care whether a man rounded the corners of his beard?3 Why should God prevent a man from offering the sacred bread merely because he had a flat nose, or was lame, or had five fingers on one hand, or had a broken foot, or was a dwarf? If he objected to such people, why did he make them?4
Forty-fourth. Why should we believe that God insisted upon the sacrifice of human beings? Is it a sin to deny this, and to deny the inspiration of a book that teaches it? Read the twenty-eighth and twenty-ninth verses of the last chapter of Leviticus, a book in which there is more folly and cruelty, more stupidity and tyranny, than in any other book in this world except some others in the same Bible. Read the thirty-second chapter of Exodus and you will see how by the most infamous of crimes man becomes reconciled to this God.
1 Lev, xvi, 8. 2 Lev. xvi, 21, 22. 3 Lev. xix, 19, 27,
4 Lev. xxi, 18-20.
You will see that he demands of fathers the blood of their sons. Read the twelfth and thirteenth verses of the third chapter of Numbers, "And I, behold, I have taken the Levites from among the children of Israel," etc.