Now, is it not a fact that the Old Testament does uphold polygamy? Abraham would have gotten into trouble in New Jersey—no doubt of that. Sarah could have obtained a divorce in this State—no doubt of that. What is the use of telling a falsehood about it? Let us tell the truth about the patriarchs.

Everybody knows that the same is true of Moses. We have all heard of Solomon—a gentleman with five or six hundred wives, and three or four hundred other ladies with whom he was acquainted. This is simply what the defendant says. Is there any blasphemy about that? It is only the truth. If Solomon were living in the United States to-day, we would put him in the penitentiary. You know that under the Edmunds Mormon law he would be locked up. If you should present a petition signed by his eleven hundred wives, you could not get him out.

So it was with David. There are some splendid things about David, of course. I admit that, and pay my tribute of respect to his courage—but he happened to have ten or twelve wives too many, so he shut them up, put them in a kind of penitentiary and kept them there till they died. That would not be considered good conduct even in Morristown. You know that. Is it any harm to speak of it? There are plenty of ministers here to set it right—thousands of them all over the country, every one with his chance to talk all day Sunday and nobody to say a word back. The pew cannot reply to the pulpit, you know; it has just to sit there and take it. If there is any harm in this, if it is not true, they ought to answer it. But it is here, and the only answer is an indictment.

I say that Lot was a bad man. So I say of Abraham, and of Jacob. Did you ever know of a more despicable fraud practiced by one brother on another than Jacob practiced on Esau? My sympathies have always been with Esau. He seemed to be a manly man. Is it blasphemy to say that you do not like a hypocrite, a murderer, or a thief, because his name is in the Bible? How do you know what such men are mentioned for? May be they are mentioned as examples, and you certainly ought not to be led away and induced to imagine that a man with seven hundred wives is a pattern of domestic propriety, one to be followed by yourself and your sons. I might go on and mention the names of hundreds of others who committed every conceivable crime, in the name of religion—who declared war, and on the field of battle killed men, women and babes, even children yet unborn, in the name of the most merciful God. The Bible is filled with the names and crimes of these sacred savages, these inspired beasts. Any man who says that a God of love commanded the commission of these crimes is, to say the least of it, mistaken. If there be a God, then it is blasphemous to charge him with the commission of crime.

But let us read further from this indictment:

"The aforesaid printed document contains other scandalous, infamous and blasphemous matters and things, to the tenor and effect following, that is to say—"

Then comes this particularly blasphemous line:

"Now, reader, take time and calmly think it over ."

Gentlemen, there are many things I have read that I should not have expressed in exactly the same language used by the defendant, and many things that I am going to read I might not have said at all, but the defendant had the right to say every word with which he is charged in this indictment. He had the right to give his honest thought, no matter whether any human being agreed with what he said or not, and no matter whether any other man approved of the manner in which he said these things. I defend his right to speak, whether I believe in what he spoke or not, or in the propriety of saying what he did. I should defend a man just as cheerfully who had spoken against my doctrine, as one who had spoken against the popular superstitions of my time. It would make no difference to me how unjust the attack was upon my belief—how maliciously ingenious; and no matter how sacred the conviction that was attacked, I would defend the freedom of speech. And why? Because no attack can be answered by force, no argument can be refuted by a blow, or by imprisonment, or by fine. You may imprison the man, but the argument is free; you may fell the man to the earth, but the statement stands.

The defendant in this case has attacked certain beliefs, thought by the Christian world to be sacred. Yet, after all, nothing is sacred but the truth, and by truth I mean what a man sincerely and honestly believes. The defendant says: