not listen to a
canting husband and believe that he is a holy man, when they know that
he is a bad husband and a tyrannical father.

There is not any way that I know of to make a home happy vicariously. No
confession of faith can take pain out of a mother's heart. No "testimony
of the spirit" can make love and beauty in a home where "the heathen"
hold the first place, and foreign missions get tangled up in the
children's hair. No man accustomed to a high intellectual temperature
can keep warm by theological fires. No man whose brain is king can ever
again recognize the authority of this mere undisciplined sentiment.

REVISION.

As a system Christianity has had its day. Long ago it may have served a
good purpose, but after eighteen hundred years it is worn threadbare and
useless. If some of its milder tenets still cling to and fit our vast
mediocrity, it is equally certain that the intellectual giants have
moulted it as the birds moult their plumage in a dying year, and have
taken on the bright new garments of higher thought, the spring plumage
of intellectual liberty.

When I heard that the Bible was going to be revised I felt very glad,
because I thought there was a wide field of usefulness open to somebody
right there; and I concluded to do all I could to help it along. I
understood that they wanted the substance retained as it was, with the
language made more as we use language now.

So I began my revision in this way: "Good morning, Moses, I hear that
you have some gods in this country. Do you know anything about it?"

"Oh, yes, I'm the head god's head man." "You are?"

"Yes, I had a talk with the head god--the top one of the three (we are
down to three here now), and he told me to tell people what a good god
he is, and that they must all praise him up for it."

"He did! Well is that all he said?"

"Oh, no, he told me to tell them that he is the only God, and is the
kind father of all, and loves all alike, and that they must all just
trust in him and he will take good care of them."

"I thought you said a while ago that there were three of these gods; now
this one says he is the only one. Is there trouble in the cabinet?"

"No, there are three, but there is one. See?"

"Well, no, I can't say that I do. But no matter, the rest of that about
the father business was pretty good. That was the best I ever heard. But
do you know that the very last man I talked with said that this god was
partial to so